The Survivor

McGuire’s mother sifts through the contents-a cross pendant, dog tags, a G-Shock watch with a smashed face-and feels the need to say, “I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a son-”

“Two,” the big man says sharply. “We lost both.” He looks up and away, a distant glint in his eyes. “How’s the war going, son?”

“I hope we’ve turned a corner, sir,” Nate says lamely.

“Yeah, what corner is that?” He snickers at the silence. “We had a name for that corner, too, when I was in the Corps. We called it Clusterfuck Bend.”

Nate cannot think of a response, so he keeps his mouth closed.

“His body?” Mr. McGuire asks.

“It’s been well taken care of. It shipped from Ramstein, full honors rendered at each point of transfer-”

“I don’t give a shit about that. What kind of shape?” A pause. “Well?”

“We didn’t recover his whole body, sir.”

“What’s missing?” Mr. McGuire wets his lips. “Go on, son. If I can take it, you sure as hell can.”

“A leg. And … and … part of his head.”

Mrs. McGuire’s eyes move abruptly to the ceiling.

“Who went down with him?” Mr. McGuire asks.

Nate lists the names, ending with Charles.

Mrs. McGuire says, “You tell their mothers and fathers thank you for us.”

It is a full minute before Nate dares to speak again. Though he has been forbidden to offer any details about the activities surrounding the death, he hears himself start to spill: “It was an IED hidden in a rucksack. Right in front of me. I should’ve gotten to it before it went off. I could have-”

The deep voice cuts him off. “See, son. Now you’re making your problems our problem. Don’t ya think we got enough problems tonight?”

Nate’s entire body is trembling. “Yes, sir.”

“So act like you got some sense in you.” The man’s face has turned ruddy. “Don’t leave us with more to chew on. See, you’ll go on home, eat dinner with your wife, tuck your kids into bed. You’ll move on. We’ll be here. So you think of us from time to time.”

Mrs. McGuire says, softly, “Jim,” and he silences.

Nate looks down into his lap for a long time. “May I please use your restroom?”

She points. “Powder room off the hall there.”

Nate runs the water to cover the sound of his vomiting. He splashes water on his face, dries his eyes with a pink hand towel that smells of floral detergent. Studying his reflection, he vows to learn how to do this better. He squares himself, emerges, delivers the necessary information as best he can, and shows himself out. As he drives away, his sweat-drenched uniform clings to him like a bad dream.

Johnson’s family, next up, is kind and appreciative, and that is all the worse. Then comes Miles’s stepmother, who says, “Well, then,” and closes the door. Bilton’s wife asks Nate to drive her to school to tell her son. The following day begins with a sad meeting in a church basement-stained coffeemaker, cinder-block walls, and unbroken wailing. Tommy K’s mother takes her son’s baseball cap from the bag of effects, presses it to her face, and inhales. By dusk the compounded effect of so much suffering has left Nate utterly void. He welcomes the numbness, because he fears that if he starts crying, he will crack wide open.

Arriving at Charles’s childhood house, Nate realizes he has saved this, the worst, for last. Inside, he sees Grace Brightbill bustling at the sink, a plump, pleasant-looking woman with dyed blond hair cut in a bob. He recalls her pride at every one of Charles’s papers, no matter how bad. The report cards pinned to the fridge by photo magnets of Charles in T-ball. Nate sits in his car, replaying her son’s voice-don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t you leave me-and feeling the heat of the explosion, the sand raining down on him. How he himself couldn’t leap for the rucksack.

And so Charles had.

Nate struggles to keep breathing. Self-loathing swells and washes over him, and he realizes he is too craven to proceed. Driving away, he dials headquarters to request that someone else be sent to serve Charles’s death notice. He knows already that this will be a decision he will regret for the rest of his life, but he cannot stop himself from making it.

The next day, depleted and emotionally hungover, he takes Cielle to lunch as promised. She eats ten chicken nuggets and then five more. When she asks for a sundae, he says, “I think you’ve had enough, honey.”

“But I can’t get full.”

As they walk out, a teenage kid accidentally pops a ketchup packet in his hand, and red goo snakes down his wrist, his forearm. All of a sudden, Nate’s face goes hot and he is back in the Sandbox, spinning in the wake of the explosion, his ears ringing. McGuire is there holding his severed leg and-

“Daddy? Daddy?”

He has blanked out completely in the doorway of the fast-food joint. He swallows hard, turns his head from the guy, and says, “Let’s go.”

There are other signs, too, in the weeks that follow. He cannot watch a plane in flight without bracing for it to explode. Despite the mounting bills, he cannot bring himself to go back to his job as a buyer of men’s suits. He and Janie make love with more urgency, as if they’re trying to hold on to something. They talk less afterward, Janie rolling over into a paperback, Nate staring at the ceiling, watching the fan blades spin like the rotors of a helo and reliving those instants confronting the left-behind rucksack. Night after night, lying beside his wife, he changes the dance steps, rewrites history. A thousand times he watches Abibas pause on the dune and stare back at them, then turn and run. Nate looks over at the rucksack. But in this alternate history, he puts his promise to Cielle out of his mind; he unlocks his legs; he leaps.

In the morning when Nate brushes his teeth, he hears Charles’s voice in his head, sees him sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Charles is in his green-and-khaki ACUs and wears his combat helmet, but one thing is different: There is a massive hole blown in his stomach, and he is dripping blood onto the ivory bathroom tiles.

“What the fuck?” Charles says. “It’s indulgent, all this moping and shit. Get over it already. You’re home.”

“I know,” Nate says through a mouthful of toothpaste. “I know that. But I can’t get it from my head into my gut.”

Charles peers through the hole in his stomach wall. He flexes, making the intestines wiggle, then looks up with a pleased smile. Noting Nate’s expression, he assumes a serious face. “Don’t get boring.”

Nate spits foam into the sink, rinses. “Sorry. I’m hung up on killing you.”

“That crap again?” Charles waves a bloody hand. “What could you have done?”

For the first time, Nate actually speaks out loud. “I could’ve jumped first.”

He goes in search of work but inevitably winds up sitting with Casper on the curb by the car wash, watching the vehicles go in filthy and come out spotless, that toxic film reel throwing images against the walls of his skull, corroding him from the inside out. No matter how many times he works and reworks the equation he is locked inside, it is destined to tally up the same-two dead legs, three frozen seconds, threadbare rucksack five feet away.

Nate takes Casper out late when the neighborhood is still enough to mute the noise in his head. One night he arrives home to find Janie swaying on the porch swing. “Maybe you should bring Cielle on your walks. I’m worried about her weight.”

He says, “I’m not home most nights until she’s in bed.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s getting so heavy,” Janie says. “She’s been comforting herself with food since you-”

“I know.” He feels a burn across his face. “I just … can’t clear my head right now. It’s just temporary.”

“Maybe if you were busier…?”

He waves a hand, but the gesture loses momentum. “I can’t buy men’s suits again, Janie.”

“I don’t want you to buy men’s suits. I don’t care about the money. I’ll pick up an extra shift at the hospital if I have to, to cover the mortgage.”

“I will always make sure the mortgage is covered. I just need a little time. I’ve