They had spot-welded scrap metal to the floorboard of the Hummers. They had not live-fired their A4s. They were staged at distance from the action, on the periphery, waiting. And the goats had charged at them for food. And pop-op-op, brass casings hit the sand. They dropped half of the herd within seconds, and then Colleen and Van Dorn and the rest of the squad had held the shepherd kid back at gunpoint, his face a squall of Why?
This was early in the tour. They still held indoctrinations of faith, honor, manhood, love, remorse, reunion, memorial. Yet after the episode, the simple killing of goats, Colleen had sensed something sensational about herself, about all of them: They were free. Of obligation, code, or history.
Of land. Day upon day, staring into the void of sand, surrounded by it, coated in it, the talc-like granules circulating in her lungs, deposited, expelled, she was divorced from her lifelong relationship to land: how it had defined her, and her parents, and even how earth itself had been defined by others before she was even born. How the passing down or manipulation of soil determined both who you were and what you weren’t.
Yet looking across the desert, ridiculous in its capacity, all direction marred by only what was temporary, truck to tent to trailerlike CHU barracks, to the drift, even, of landmass, the dissolution of history by wind, Colleen understood that for the first time she was rendered landless — but with total authority. There was nothing to accumulate, to pay down, to pass on. No demarcation, save sand and rock and horizon, and the ability to navigate it at will.
The void was lawless, and gorgeous with opportunity. They were able in theory and by firepower to traverse the space as deemed fit.
It was strange to her that the majority of her unit still stoked the narratives that they felt relied upon them: the things they owned or could potentially own; the foods they had always eaten, or the women and kids who depended on them. The talk was not of transcendence, but of combat pay and mortgages and church; of the predetermined highways that would guide their new, postwar pickups. They yammered about GI Bills and VA loans, and the fixed-rate rewards of making it home in one piece.
Again, this was early on. By the end of the tour most of them didn’t care if they ever redeployed.
One morning, a few months into that first tour, Colleen had requisitioned a Deuce-and-a-Half truck, then veered off of the asphalt two-lane and into the gut of the desert, alone, carving the sand, fishtailing wildly. She looped the vehicle a time or two, marking great quarter-mile circles, and then cut deeper into the expanse, weaving in snakelike curls. Her vision and hands forged new pathways with the wheel; her tires left ruts where none had rutted. She ran out of gas in the middle of everything, and then watched the sand-drift devour her tracks. She was scared. Thrilled. She wriggled out of her clunky, ill-fitting body armor, and she squatted and pissed in the sand. Laughed so hard that she teetered onto her backside — and then laughed even louder, and applauded for nobody.
The roads, she thought now, as she stared at that popcorn ceiling. “The land,” she whispered as she looked to her pink bedroom walls.
She got out of bed, and tiptoed across the room. Chewed on her thumbnail and looked out the window, to the moonlit pines that walled the edge of the property. In memory, she again heard the bleating of the goats, the hobbles, the pop-op-op. She remembered the balance of the herd trotting over their dead.
They had given the kid a wad of USD for the damage, joked, “Get along, now, little haji.” When he had continued to protest they waved him back with rifle barrels. Corporal Van Dorn then razor-wired a nanny to the hood of the Humvee.
Picturing Van Dorn made her eyes well. Colleen shuddered, and wiped her palms against her cheeks, and then rocked on her heels to try and strangle his memory — though she knew this would never, ever happen. She smoked another cigarette, and stared at the lighter. She flicked it and flicked it, then hurled it across the room.
CRIED, BEAT EACH OTHER
SHE had come home on a chartered United 777, landing at Fort Bragg after a stopover in Ireland, a layover at an airport terminal full of whiskey kiosks, and with windows that showcased a green landscape shined by rain. It was the loveliest place she’d ever seen — a judgment aided by the daze of jet lag, and the lens of the Occidentaclass="underline" lipstick, skirts, 3-D movie ads. Colleen, swollen with optimism, swore she would return to Ireland one day. . if she could remember the name of the town.
Stepping onto the tarmac back at Bragg, she felt nothing, save annoyed. Everyone else’s lovers and wives kept bumping into her. They carried handhelds and placards, and children who wagged tiny American flags. They knocked her about, not even an “Excuse me,” as she cut across the steaming black asphalt, looking for recognition.
Her mother stood in back of the melee, in Dress Barn denim, crying. Colleen walked up and accepted a too-long hug, and was told that her daddy wasn’t there because of work, because the fields back home were snowing in cotton.
“Of course,” Colleen said. She wondered, though, if maybe her mother, Janette, hadn’t encouraged this arrangement. Or, conversely, if her father hadn’t tempered his own desire, in order to let the two vets share their moment.
Janette hugged her several more times, and then returned to the crusty, base-side motel when Colleen’s unit was beckoned to their barracks. She told Colleen that she was going to stay for however long it took to finish things up. That they would drive back to Mississippi together. Janette then insisted that Colleen name the food she had missed the most, and Colleen couldn’t really think of anything, because missing food was a frivolity that had vanished months before, when the actual missing of anything could no longer be satisfied by shit concept or dream. When pushed, Colleen threw out that the catfish plate from Cracker Barrel would be awesome, thanks, and Janette said she’d bring one back ASAP.
The subsequent communion, a to-go catfish dinner on a weather-beaten picnic bench, soggy batter and Sysco-esque bins of tartar sauce, was meant to bridge a lifelong rift. The squeak of plastic fork on Styrofoam, the straw-suck of sweet tea and the sticky glaze on fried apples brought the brokering of her mother’s own National Guard deployment, Operation Desert Storm, 1991.
“You know, Mama, you never talked about your mobilization,” Colleen said.
Janette glanced up and smirked, then stabbed at her fried okra. “Well. You were a toddler when I was called up. Too young to understand what—”
“I could feel it, though. After you came home. Always.”
“That’s dramatic,” Janette said, rolling her eyes. “Hell, Colleen, my greatest regret is that I joined the Guard even though I was plannin’ for a family. That I spent a year of my life gone. I cried every single day over there, then smothered you with hugs when I got back.”
Colleen said nothing.
“What?” Janette asked.
“Only two times I remember you even talkin’ ’bout the war, Mama. One was the screaming match you and Daddy had after you refused to attend church in uniform for Veterans Day. Two, when you gave me your campaign service medal after we lost at regionals, seventh grade.”
“You were so good at basketball. Why didn’t you pick it back up in high school?”
“You said I was your hero,” Colleen continued. “And Mama, you pinning that medal on my chest was awesome. But, like, that was it. That was all.”