“Yup. He’s got a place near Waynesboro. Seems he’s doing well.”
Fierro really looked up to Sergeant Fletcher. I did, too, in the beginning. The first time I saw him, he was standing in the brightness of a January morning with his hands on his hips, waiting for us to get in formation. He had very delicate features—brown eyes, a small nose, perfect teeth—which seemed oddly out of place in a barracks full of men who did their best to look tough. At all times, he remained calm. He never got worked up, never even raised his voice. He was from Fairfax County, Virginia. The kind of place where kids grow up with fencing lessons, math tutors, trips to the botanical gardens. Doctor dad, lawyer mom. How someone like him had ended up in the Marines, no one knew. Something about a brawl at a country club when he was a senior in high school, but that sounded to me like nothing more than barracks gossip. He’d already served in Afghanistan and now here he was in Iraq, with three stripes on his right sleeve. In the beginning he seemed aloof, whether because of his upbringing or his experience, I wasn’t sure. And it got worse when there was a reshuffling from the higher-ups and Lieutenant Carter was assigned to the platoon. The lieutenant was everything Fletcher wasn’t: average-looking, funny, approachable, always willing to play Halo or Call of Duty with the men after they got back to base. And he never minded when he lost a game to a grunt.
One day the lieutenant announced we had to check on a safe house outside Ramadi. It turned out to be a farm, the land around it nearly barren, the only animals three thin goats obstinately grazing on a small patch of yellow grass. Sergeant Fletcher had a lot more experience, so when he suggested going in with the terp and two others to talk to the owner, the lieutenant agreed. The air was still and heavy with heat. The men waited, drinking from their CamelBaks now and then. After idling for thirty minutes, the Humvees grew so hot that it seemed a relief when the lieutenant gave the order to dismount and start the search. I found myself with Perez and Sanger, rounding the farmhouse toward the well. An old tractor sat on its side, wheels in the air, gathering dust. Here and there lay all manner of farm tools.
From a eucalyptus tree nearby came the sudden fluttering of bird wings. Out of instinct, I looked up. Then I felt my foot give in and the next thing I knew I was sliding down a dark hole, dragging dirt and tarp and branches down with me and landing over a body, the weight of my ballistic plate pinning it to the ground. But it wasn’t a body, it was a man, alive and awake. I locked eyes with him, surprised to find my own fear reflected back at me. The smell of our sweat filled my nostrils. Even with Sanger and Perez shouting from above the hole, I heard the distinct click of the man’s gun under me, followed, after a second that stretched into eternity, by the merciful sound of an empty barrel.
Everything else after that happened quickly—Sanger jumped into the hole, helped me put the suspect in cuffs, Perez called for Doc Jones—but all I could think of was that I could have died right then, before I’d turned twenty, before I’d had a chance to hike in the Grand Canyon or see the Empire State Building or ride in one of those glass elevators I’d always wanted to try. I had been in Iraq nineteen days. The thought that this would be my life for the foreseeable future had the brutal force of a revelation. Later, while Doc Jones checked my knee, I watched Sergeant Fletcher pull the lieutenant to the side. “Sir, there was no need to send the men in like that. The farmer was cooperating, he told us about the hideout.”
“No harm done,” the lieutenant said.
“Not this time.”
“Next time, we’ll wait for you to finish your palavers.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Fletcher said, but the way he said it sounded more like a warning. Don’t make this mistake again, asshole. The lieutenant looked away, fiddled with his headset, said we should be ready to mount up soon. Fletcher came over to where I sat on the dirt with Doc Jones. “How’s that knee, Gorecki?”
“It’s inflamed,” Doc Jones answered. “I’ll give him some Motrin, but he’ll have to stay off it for a day or two.”
“Looks like you earned yourself a little break,” Fletcher said with a smile.
I nodded, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that I owed my life to chance. An empty barrel. Nor could I forget that the lieutenant had put me in that hole. Everything I’d once liked about him irritated me now. His jokes. His games. How he made sure everyone in the platoon knew he’d graduated from Duke. There was no subtlety to his bragging, either. Another thing: the lieutenant loved to have the whole platoon stand in their gear in the sun while he pontificated about the day’s briefs, no matter how straightforward they were. I found myself wishing that Sergeant Fletcher had been in charge. Fletcher was smart, cautious, took care of his men like they were his own children. Sometimes, I still caught myself thinking about him that way.
As a father.
Which made what happened later all the more painful.
We were finally called to lane 8. In my hands, the gun was cold and hard and familiar. More than once I hit the bull’s-eye. I was a good shot, had always been. Back in boot camp, my score on marksmanship had given me the confidence that the grueling physical training had all but taken away. Nothing compared to the rush of adrenaline before the shot, the cool calm in the aftermath, the reliability of the exercise in a world that was so plainly unreliable.
In the car, Fierro said he liked his new Glock so much that maybe he’d get one for his younger brother for Christmas. We were quiet as we listened to the radio. He coughed into his hands a few times, said, Dude, I think I’m coming down with something. Then we were in the driveway, saying goodbye with a handshake and a shoulder bump, telling each other we’d talk again in a few days. When I walked back inside my house, the scent of peonies and chocolate greeted me in the hallway. I put my gun in the safe and went out again.
* * *
—
At the cabin, the porch light was off. But I tried the knob; the door was unlocked. I found Nora asleep on the couch, one of her hands folded under her face. She looked peaceful and fragile all at once, and I had a little argument with myself whether I should wake her. Then I ran my thumb along the arch of her foot. She stirred, looked at me confusedly as I knelt beside her. “You shouldn’t leave the door open like that. It’s not safe.”
“I must’ve fallen asleep,” she said, sitting up in surprise. The strap of her dress slid down, revealing the swell of a breast. I leaned in to kiss her. Pages from her composition, which had been resting on her stomach, fell to the floor. Black pen marks snaked between the lines and along the margins of every page. She picked them up, stacked them on her lap, holding them as lovingly as she might a child. “So,” she said, and by the way she inflected the word I knew what she was going to ask next. “You go shooting guns often?”
“I’m a cop, Nora.”
“I know, but even if you weren’t, you’d have a gun?”
“Probably.”
“Why?”
“For protection.”
“From what?”
“People who come into your house without knocking,” I teased. She waited for me to say more, but I had a feeling that talk of guns might lead to talk of war, which I was trying to avoid, so I handed her the pages of sheet music that had fallen to the floor and changed the subject. “Can I hear this sometime?” I asked.
“You want to?”
I’d found two pieces of hers online, one a classical composition and the other one more jazzy and I’d liked them both, but they were from three years before, and I was curious about what she was working on now. “Yes, of course.”
She hesitated. “It’s not done yet.”