Episode I: Hearts of War

If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.
—Tim O’brien, The Things They Carried

Hearts of War

Only a handful of mourners are present, standing together at the foot of a mountain on a narrow spit of lawn. Like a knot of sullen protestors huddled beneath the rain-drenched sky and mushrooming plume of umbrellas. Their faces are turned down and their shoulders squared off against the autumn wet and cold and the melancholy note of mortality while a few feet away standing before them a gray-bearded man in a camouflaged jacket addresses the solemn assembly. He is sharing a few words, presumably, of the figure wrapped head to toe in a white burial shroud, presented before them on a long willow frame set on four equal risers of gray cinder block. His voice is low and muffled against the falling rain which has begun in places to soak through the thin ceremonial fabric, giving way to patches of grayish-pink flesh. A broad forehead. The bridge of a nose. A pair of prominent cheek bones. One hand resting atop the other.

At the edge of the congregation a young woman pokes her head from beneath an umbrella and jeers skyward. Her eyes are puffy and red and harden with admonishment as they fixate on the foul weather. Her jaw hardens too as she turns and leans over the head of a child to speak in the ear of the bald bearded man standing next to him. The man in return offers barely a look. A single slight shake of his head. The woman straightens and stares. She says something more in his direction and before he can register any further dissent she passes the boy her umbrella and turns out into the rain. 

She hurries across the lawn to a woodshed where stands a short rounded man with his back to the funeral service. He is dressed in full Highlands costume. Scottish green kilt. Black feather bonnet. Tartan piper’s plaid. The whole freaking works. She taps him on the shoulder and he turns and she gestures to the bagpipe he has cradled in his arms. Draws for him a series of tiny tight agitated circles in the air. The bagpiper smiles and nods and he fingers the blowpipe to his mouth but stops then abruptly to float through clenched jaws this one question: Sorry for askin again, but who is it here we’re honorin?

Edith:

I remember the day—the very minute in fact—John David told us he was joining the Army. He was eighteen, I was twelve. We’d just sat down to dinner, which I remember because his graduation was the next day and so Daddy was pressuring him again about going to college. He was offering the same argument of income and opportunity that he would later use on me—right up until I got pregnant that is. Anyway, John David had long since made his mind up and he sat there not saying a word. After a while Daddy did the same. The two of them just sitting there stewing and picking over their plates until the silence got too big even for them and one of them just had to say something.

--- ––– ---

You’re sure about this? Frank asked.

Pretty sure, John David answered.

A decision this big seems you ought to be more than just pretty sure.

John David looked across the table at Edith. Would you pass me the beans please Edie? 

Edith looked at him as if he’d spoken to her in a language he’d just made up. What?

The beans.

So when might this happen? their father pressed.

John David shrugged. All depends on the needs of the Army. 

The needs of the Army? 

That’s what they said.

Sounds like a thing a recruiter might say, Frank replied. They at least give you some kind of indication?

Yeah.

Which was?

You know. Different things.

Edith sat watching them. Neither had yet to mention the fact there was a war going on. Why don’t you share just one of them, Frank suggested.

Maybe infantry.

Infantry?

That’s right.

And the others?

Communications. Supply. Motor pool.

What’s motor pool? Edith asked.

A truck driver, John David answered.

A truck driver?

Yea.

You hate even driving the tractor. I can’t believe you joined the Army to drive a truck?

John David leveled his eyes on her. That’s not why. 

Then what is? Frank interjected.

John David leaned back in his chair. It doesn’t matter, he said. I’d do whatever they asked.

No one spoke for a few long seconds then Edith drilled her brother with the best icy stare she could muster and said, Well that just sounds absurd.

Once the mourners had retreated to inside the house and the woman, Edith, now wearing a yellow rain jacket, is standing beneath the woodshed along with another, a man leaning on two long-handled shovels. She is slipping a pair of tall mud boots over her black hosiery when this other leans forward to get her attention. She looks up and he gestures toward the house. There, the bald bearded one from before is jogging toward them. Edith turns and sets her resolve and her hands on her hips as if she knows exactly what to expect and been waiting for it to arrive.

What are you doing, Edie? the man asks as he wipes the rain from his face and beard.

You know what I’m doing.

I thought we said it could wait.

No, you said that, Jordan, not me.

He thrusts a hand toward the sky. It’s fucking raining.

Yeah. I can see that.

Jordan glances at the shovels and pulls himself fully erect, as if bearing alone might weaken her will. As if all of her life hadn’t prepared her for this, a man’s motherfucking machismo. People are waiting, he says.

I don’t care, Edith answers. I’m not leaving him like this. 

They turn to look at the figure lying now like a chord of deadwood beneath a blue tarp. Further back along the woodline lie two other gravesites, one more recent than the other and next to them sits a pile of freshly dug dirt. Alongside the dirt stands a tractor.

Please, come inside. 

Edith shakes her head no. She says, John David wouldn’t wait on the weather. Daddy wouldn’t either. And by God neither will I.

A commotion arises from outside the house. Someone calling and waving their arms as they come loping like some hobbled simian creature across the rain drenched lawn. Edith and Jordan watch without speaking as he steps under the canopy. He lowers his hands to his knees and trades alternating upward glances as if unsure which of them to address. 

What is it, Brian? Edith finally spares him. 

Someone’s here to see you. From the Army, I think.

They didn’t say?

Brian stares blankly at her. Edith rolls her eyes and flips the rain hood over her head and turns to take one of the shovels.

What do I tell him? 

The same thing they told John David. To go fuck themselves.

Is that the guy? Jordan asks and they turn to see a man dressed in black wearing a crew cut limping with purpose toward the burial site. Edith calls out to him but the man either does not hear or does not care. He seems on the whole as if taken with some fixed intent and she and Jordan share a look and then watch as the stranger reaches the tarp and drops to one knee. He starts to peel back one corner. 

What the fuck? Edith calls out again but she is not waiting this time for the bastard to not respond and has already started running toward the man. Who has produced a small knife from somewhere on his person, his boot perhaps, and with the other hand gathers a handful of shroud. He starts to cut through the fabric and then pauses as if something primal in him senses imminent danger, but he is too late, and Edith raises the shovel just as he starts to turn his head and she crashes it down on his skull.

Edith:

The truth is everyone failed him. Not just the Army, though they fucked him over royally. Everyone did. Me. Daddy. Even you, and you didn’t even know him. The whole fuckin country failed him and anyone else who went over there. And honestly what were we even thinking? We sent them away and asked them to commit these horrible things and then, once they come home, their entire lives hanging by a thread, what do we do? We throw them a fuckin parade. A goddamn parade. Thanking them for their service. Applauding their sacrifice and pretending all along that we understood their pain and hurt. And then we turned them loose. Just left them to deal with that bullshit all alone, as best they could, without hope or purpose or with any plan for moving forward. I mean really. What did we expect John David to do? Carry on like nothing happened?