“It is a metaphor, I hope you know.” I smile, because I’m teasing. “I do not mean I will carry a real thing. I mean you will tell me this story, and by telling me, it will be mine, and not just yours. This, I hope, will lighten the load I see weighing on those so very broad shoulders of yours.”
He sniffs. “Teasing me, huh?”
“Yes, I am. This teasing, I like it. It is a way of being funny together. I can show you that I know you and I like you by the way I tease you.”
“Fuck.” He heaves a great, deep, loud breath. “Fine. Okay. Okay.” He swallows hard, puts another log on the fire, using a long thick stick to poke the glowing coals around, making the fire somehow hotter, brighter.
“Hope you’re ready for this, babe.” He puts the charred end of the stick in the dirt between his boots, rests his palms on the top end, his chin on his hands. “I was point. Ranking officer. Means I was in charge of my team, and I was leading us where we had to go. We had a mission. Me, and my seven men. We were tasked with taking out a place where the enemy had dug in. They had a mortar, and an emplaced machine gun. Regular troops couldn’t get to it, and it was cutting off a route our boys needed to make resupply faster. Air strikes couldn’t get to it either, so they sent us in.”
I understand some of what he means—a difficult mission of military importance. That is all I need to know, I think, so I do not ask any questions.
“We were supposed to circle around behind and take the emplacement from the flank. It was…fuck, it was hellish country. Way the fuck up on the top of the world. So high the sky was darker blue than anywhere else, simply because we were closer to fuckin’ space. Nothing but rock, dirt, and hills. Jagged mountains, like knives. Beautiful country, in a brutal sorta way.”
I wait.
After a while, he continues. “I fucked up. I still, to this day, do not know how. But I did. I made a navigation error. I fucked up.” His voice is low, thick, tight. “Intel was, they had maybe twenty guys. The mortar, the fifty-cal. Flank ’em from the south, hit ’em before they know what’s happenin’. That close, the mortar don’t mean shit, and Deke would hit the fifty-cal with the two-oh-one.”
I am not following, exactly. I keep quiet and listen. It does not matter.
“We should’a been able to take it. Done it fuckin’ dozens of times, under worse conditions.” He halts, swallows hard. “I fucked up. Somehow, I brought us too far east, not far enough south. Too close. I walked us…” He shakes his head. His breathing is heavy, rasping. “I walked us right up their asses. It was like swatting a hornet’s nest. The emplacement was hidden over the next hill, so I couldn’t see it even with night vision. But then, fuckin’…all hell broke loose. Deke was down, first shot. Malone went down next, seconds later.” His jaw is tight, his words coming out as if squeezing past his grinding molars. “It was an ambush. They knew we were coming. Dunno. They were expecting us, and they had reinforcements. Thirty on eight, and they had surprise on their side. It was…it was a goddamnslaughter.”
“Oh…Kane.” My eyes sting at the tone of his voice, so thin, such pain. Suchguilt.
He does not hear me, I think. “I tried to get us regrouped up the hill, but it was like walking through a buzzsaw. Couldn’t see shit, takin’ fire from every fuckin’ direction. By the time I got us to somethin’ like cover, Deke, Malone, Nichols, and Corny were all dead. I was hit in the leg, Muñoz had a round through the throat and was choking out, and Yates had one in the arm. Only Cole was uninjured.”
What is there to say? Nothing. So I stay quiet, only hold his arm, move as close to him as I can get.
“Yates, Cole, and me…we fought ‘em off for fuckin’ hours.” He picks up another piece of stick and resumes snapping pieces off, feeding them to the fire. “Finally got a call through, but…there was no extract. No support, nothin’. We never got the fifty-cal down, or the mortar. So all that, for fuckin’ nothin’. Failed the mission, killed my guys. Yates took one to the face. Cole and me, we knew we had to go. They just kept comin’, and we were outta ammo. Cole was down to his sidearm, and I only had a few rounds left.”
Another long silence, as his memories claw at him. I want to comfort him, but I do not know how. I asked for this, now I must listen.
“We ran. Left the guys—" he chokes off. “No man left behind, and we fuckin’ left ‘em. Got a couple miles, and Cole rolled his ankle and then took a glancing round to the head, knocked him out cold, bleeding out. They were after us. Caught us. Fought ‘em with our sidearms.”
I squeeze him, hard.
He shakes his head, spits into the dirt. “My whole fuckin’ squad. My fuckin’ fault. They all died, and I didn’t. I fuckin’ survived. Limped twenty miles back to the E-Z, carryin’ Cole.” He clenches his eyes shut, his fists tight. “They tried to fly me back to Kandahar, but I fought ‘em on it and won—no fuckin’ way I was leaving until my guys were home. I went with another much larger assault group to get our guys back. Lost a couple more guys, but…we took it. I got my guys back. Rode the Chinook with their fuckin’ bodies.”
More spit in the dirt, as if he is fighting back the urge to vomit.
“Gave me a silver fuckin’ star. Bullshit. I killed those men. I fucked up, walked us into an ambush.” He shakes his head again. “Official investigation shows they got wind of our attack somehow, and even if I’d brought us in on the right heading, it’d have been the same—an ambush. But I…I can’t accept that. They cleared me of any culpability, officially, and even gave me a goddamn medal.” He barely manages a whisper. “My fuckin’ fault. I killed those men.”
I cannot take his sorrow, his grief, his guilt any longer. I crawl into his lap. Wrap myself around him, arms around his neck, legs around his hips, chest to chest, weeping.
“This is where you tell me itwasn’tmy fuckin’ fault, right?” He says this roughly, almost angrily.
I shake my head. “I am in no position to judge such things, Kane. If your own commanders say you are not to blame…?” I shrug. “Who am I to say?”
He pulls away, holds my face, brushing my tears away with his large, rough thumbs. “Babe.”
“How should I provide you comfort, Kane? I cannot tell you ‘do not feel this way,’ ‘or do not feel that way.’ It is not my place to say you are at fault or you are not.” I play with his hair at the back of his neck, where it is long, curling at the ends. “You carried your friend twenty miles, with a wounded leg. You went back and brought home your men. You are awarrior, Kane. You fought bravely. I think…I do not know anything of war, but this is the way of things, I think. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you cannot win, and good men die.”
He nods. “You’re not wrong.”
He rests his hands on my thighs where they bend up to my hips. Just looks at me, his eyes dark, greener in this light, in this place, than any other color.
I bite my lip, and shift closer to him, so my crotch rides against his zipper, so my chest pushes on his. “Perhaps, if you were to kiss me, you would feel a little better?”
His eyes flash hot, the evil and the sorrow and the guilt still there but fading. “Worth a shot,” he says.
