THE WITNESS
I only am escaped alone to tell thee …
My thought
Darkened as by wind the water …
There’s always
Someone has to tell them, isn’t there?…
Someone chosen by the chance of seeing,
By the accident of sight,
By the stumbling on the moment of it,
Unprepared, unwarned, unready,
Thinking of nothing … and it happens, and he sees it.
Caught in that inextricable net
Of having witnessed, having seen …
It was I.
I only. I alone. The moment
Closed us together in its gaping grin
Of horrible incredulity.
I only. I alone, to tell thee …
I who have understood nothing, have known
Nothing, have been answered nothing.
—Archibald MacLeish,
J.B
.
God always wins.
—Archibald MacLeish, J.B.
Snake River, Idaho: Early Spring, 1989
It was snowing. It had been snowing for days. It seemed the snow would never end.
I had been driving through the thick of it since well before dawn. I stopped at midnight in Jackpot, Nevada, the only pink neon glow in the sky through at least a hundred miles of rocky wasteland in my long ascent from California back to Idaho, back to my job at the nuclear site. There in Jackpot, against the jangle of slot machines, I sat at a counter and ate blood-rare grilled steak with fries, chugged a glass of Scotch whiskey, and washed it down with a mug of hot black coffee—the multi-ingredient cure-all my uncle Earnest had always recommended for this kind of stress and heartache. Then I went back out into the cold black night and hit the road again.
If I hadn’t stopped back in the Sierras, when the first fresh snow came down for the day of skiing I’d suddenly felt I needed to soothe my aching soul, I wouldn’t have been in this predicament now, sailing along on black ice in the middle of nowhere. At least this was a nowhere I knew well—every wrinkle of road along this trek from the Rockies to the coast. I’d crossed it often enough on business, for my job as a nuclear security expert. Ariel Behn, girl nuke. But the reason for this last jaunt was a business I’d as soon have missed.
I could feel my body slipping into autopilot on that long, monotonous stretch of highway. The dark waters of my mind started pulling me back to a place I knew I didn’t want to go. The miles clicked away, the snow swirled around me. The studded tires crunched on the black ice that flowed beneath.
I could not erase the dappled image of the grassy slope back there in California, the smoothly geometric pattern of those tombstones moving across it, those thin, thin layers of stone and grass. All that separated life from death—all that separated me from Sam—forever.
The grass was electric green—that shimmering, wonderful green that only exists in San Francisco, and only at this time of year. Against the brilliant lawn, the chalk white gravestones marched in undulating rows across the hill. Dark eucalyptus trees towered over the cemetery between the rows of markers, their silver leaves dripping with water. I looked through the tinted windows of the limousine as we pulled from the main road and doubled back into the Presidio.
I had driven this road so many times when in the Bay Area. It was the only route from the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Francisco Marina, and it passed directly by the military cemetery we were entering. Today, observed up close and in slow motion, it was all so beautiful, so ravishing to the eye.
“Sam would have loved being here,” I said, speaking aloud for the first time during the ride.
Jersey, sitting beside me in the limo, said curtly, “Well, after all, he is here, isn’t he? Or what’s all the hoopla about?”
At these close quarters, I caught a whiff of her breath.
“Mother, how much have you had to drink?” I said. “You smell like a brewery.”
“Cutty Sark,” she said with a smile. “In honor of the Navy.”
“For God’s sake, this is a funeral,” I said irritably.
“I’m Irish,” she pointed out. “We call it a wake: drink the buggers on their merry way. In my opinion, a far more civilized tradition …”
She was already having trouble with the three-syllable words. Inwardly I was cringing, hoping she wouldn’t try to give part of the eulogy that was to be delivered by the military at graveside. I wouldn’t put anything past her—especially in this state of incipient inebriation. And Augustus and Grace, my well-starched father and stepmother who disapproved of everything, were in the car just behind.
The limousines pulled through the iron gates of the Presidio cemetery and slid on past the funeral parlor. There would be no indoor service, and the coffin was already sealed for reasons pertaining, we’d been told, to national security. Besides, as we had also been told somewhat more discreetly, it might be hard to recognize Sam. Families of bombing victims usually preferred not to be afforded that opportunity.
The cortege moved along Lincoln Avenue and pulled up the drive sheltered by brooding eucalyptus at the far end of the cemetery. Several cars were already parked there, all with the recognizable white license plates of the U.S. government. Atop the small knoll was a freshly dug open grave with a cluster of men standing around it. One was an army chaplain, and one with a long thick braid of hair looked like the shaman I’d asked for. Sam would have liked that.
Our three limos pulled up in front of the government vehicles: Jersey and I in the family car, Augustus and Grace behind us, and Sam in the black limousine up front. In a lead-lined coffin. We all got out and started up the hill as they unloaded Sam from the hearse. Augustus and Grace stood quietly aside, not mingling—which I frankly appreciated, so Jersey’s breath wouldn’t be a problem. Unless someone lit a match near her.
A man with dark glasses and a
