The Heart You Carry Home (20 page)

She turned her face to the vast, starlit sky. She knew Ben was probably searching for her, that somewhere inside, he knew exactly what he'd done to her. And if he really, truly did not know, then she could never tell him. She could never hurt him like that.

But she was no longer in his sights or on his team. She was part of
this
unit now, a member of these special forces that had set out across the heartland to save King.

 

PART III

December 13, 1979

Dear Willy,

There are a dozen men here now, all of them wounded. They found their way to me through rumors, stories of a wise man living in the two dead towns. But in truth, Durga brought them to me. Because I am carrying her heart. Because I am anointed. The men call me their commanding officer.

There is a routine to our days. We wake early and exercise. Then we cook breakfast and eat together. Each afternoon we study the ancient warriors. Durga, the writings of Sun Tzu, the Stoics, and, of course, by your example, Homer. When I feel a man is ready, I teach him about the heart. And that's when the real work begins—the process of a soldier being reborn. There are many tasks and challenges to aid this process, but I ask all of my men to do what I have done: tell their stories, pour their pain into the earth, and mark the spot. Each week we do this and bury more of the dead.

But laying the dead to rest is not enough. We must honor each man's spirit, let him know that he earned his death fiercely and proudly. For this reason, I have decided to call this place Kleos, from the Greek word meaning “battle glory,” a warrior's greatest achievement.
Kleos
is what the war gave to us and it is what I pass on to every man here. I give them
kleos
, bestowed as from a father to his son.

It is meaningful, don't you think, that the name Patroclus—which translates to “glory of the father”—holds the word
kleos
within itself? You should not think for a minute that I've forgotten that night, Willy, when you told me about Achilles's closest companion. I think of it always. I hold that memory inside of me as
Patroclus
holds
kleos
. Inside of my belly, the memory of that night writhes like a worm. I should have answered you when you asked me about Patroclus. I know that now. But I was a different man then. A lesser man. Can you understand? Will you ever forgive me for my silence?

I have a story for you, Willy, that I've been eager to share. A few weeks ago, a motorcycle pulled up. The driver did not dismount, but the passenger got off and walked with great purpose toward where I stood by the river. She planted herself in front of me. Her eyes were large and hungry-looking. Her ears poked elf-like through her brown hair. She was the first woman who had ever stepped foot on my land. I'd made no rules against this, but the men implicitly understood that if they were in need of companionship, it was best to seek it in town. I had unwittingly taken a vow of chastity. Durga, after all, is female. And her heart is inside of me, like a lover, but permanent.

Which is all to say that I found myself face to face with a woman I should have desired but didn't.

“That's my husband glued to that bike up there,” the woman said. “We've been searching for you. And now that we've found you, I'm hoping you can help him.” Here, her veneer cracked, and I saw tears in her eyes. “He's so angry. And he's in so much pain. Can you . . .”

I smiled and reached out my arm. The woman stepped forward until I could touch her shoulder. “I can try,” I said. “But you will have to leave. He needs to be here on his own.”

“For how long?” She swallowed her emotion and fixed her face into a stoic mask.

“I don't have an answer for that,” I said. But now the biker was approaching. I knew this man, I realized with shock. It was King Keller. His body was large but somehow wasted, as though his skeleton had grown in size as the flesh had shrunk away. He'd been twenty-two the last time I'd seen him, nine years before.

Silently, we took each other in. And then he began to cry. I'd never seen King cry. That wasn't something we did—certainly not in front of each other. But here he was, weeping. So I did something I'd never done before either: I hugged him.

It was at that moment, feeling King sob against my shoulder, that I truly understood what it meant to be Durga's anointed.

Currahee!

CO Proudfoot

H
EY!” LUCY SNAPPED
at her nephew. “Put your seat belt back on!”

Ben had driven the car into Monument Valley, where the rock formations resembled monstrous petrified cacti. Jacob was kneeling on the seat, his face pressed to the window, his open mouth fogging a circle of glass. He made a show of sitting down, but seconds later, he was back up, eager as a puppy. Lucy's orders were no match for the command of that extraordinary rock, its brown and orange and red washes of color flashing against the sky.

“All of this used to be underwater,” Jacob announced as they passed between two enormous buttes. Ben considered the possibility that they were moving through some giant's decorative rock garden. At any moment, the car could be mistaken for an ant and squashed.

“Now, that can't be true,” Lucy said, swiveling around to eye her nephew. “We're in the middle of the desert.”

Jacob squeezed his lips like a fish and giggled.

“I'm pretty sure he's right,” Ben said. “You can see the striations on the rock walls where water used to be. This was probably the bottom of an underwater canyon. Really, we're driving across the ocean floor.” Ben glanced in the rearview. Jacob was smiling with triumph.

“Well, I don't like to think about that,” Lucy said, folding her arms across her chest. “I can't swim. And this talk makes me think about flash floods. I'm a flash-flood-aphobic.”

“The water left millions of years ago, Aunt Lucy,” Jacob said.

“I know that,” she answered testily and ended the conversation by turning on the CD player. David Grisman's “Wayfaring Stranger” rose from of the speakers. “Hick music!” Lucy announced. Though Jacob had easily recovered from Ben's fury back at the Four Corners, Lucy was taking longer to forgive him.

“You don't like it?” Ben asked.

“I like my music harder. I guess I got a lot of rage.”

“Wouldn't you say that I've got more?”

Lucy nodded. “Headbanging as anger management. You need some Metallica or Anthrax.”

“Maybe,” Ben said and thought about Becca asking him—no, begging him—to play the fiddle. “It'll make you feel better,” she'd assured him. “Like your old self.” But he couldn't touch the thing. The mere thought of playing brought to mind that horrible vision: his dad standing on the street in Iraq, the smell of Coleman's Humvee, and “Sally in the Garden”—notes that seeped into him like some kind of poison gas. But wasn't music just sound? Invisible waves, no more real than the snipers and bombs he imagined surrounded him here in America.

“I used to play a lot,” he told Lucy. “I performed, actually.”

“Like on tours? Ooh, I bet you had groupies.”

“That's generous of you.”

The Death Star coughed and shuddered and the three riders fell quiet. The car had over a hundred thousand miles on it. For the first time, Ben was thankful that Miles had given it an inspection, even if the tune-up had come with a Breathalyzer. “I think we should give her a rest for the night,” Ben said.

“We can stop in Kayenta,” Lucy said. “But you have to promise me something.”

“All right.”

“Let me play your sponsor tonight.”

“I'll be fine,” Ben said. “I've been sober for four days.” But even as he said it, he heard how ridiculous the number sounded.

“Which is wonderful,” Lucy said. “But you're still bouncing, and back there at the Four Corners . . .”

“I said I was sorry,” he snapped. Lucy just looked at him. Not judging him, or asking anything more, just waiting.

Ben breathed in and out a couple of times. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You're right.”

Kayenta was a Monument Valley outpost, a frontier town for tourists. Ben drove along the main strip, past cheap restaurants and chain motels and stretches of lumpy earth resembling soil that had been turned over but not yet replanted. They followed signs to the Diné Inn, a motel that looked like an overly long railway car. The only other vehicle there was a Nissan so dusty, it resembled a tumbleweed. The place was a lot more
Psycho
than Ben would have liked.

After dinner, they inspected the map, tilting their heads together over the diner table. Ben could smell the sweetness of Lucy's shampoo and Jacob's soap-scrubbed, faintly chocolate scent. The proximity of these bodies—their warmth and life—put Ben on an odd type of alert. He felt as though his heart were pumping too close to the skin. Like it might burst out of him and sit there, pumping on the table. It was not a pleasant feeling and yet he wanted to freeze this moment. He wanted to sit right here, as part of this trio, absorbing the human-ness of his companions.

“So where are we going?” Ben asked, hoping that he had managed to gain Lucy's trust despite the incident at the Four Corners.

“You've got Internet on your cell phone? The place we're going isn't on this map.”

Ben handed over his phone and waited. Lucy looked from the phone to the map on the table and back again. Finally, she pursed her lips and glanced out the window.

“I can't find the place,” she said quietly. “I assumed it would be here somewhere, but it isn't.” Lucy shrank back as though afraid that Ben might scream at her. But Ben felt none of the stringent anger or panic from earlier. He felt neither disembodied nor detached from himself. If anything, he felt too present. And so he was able to see the situation for what it was: a problem that needed to be solved.

“It's okay,” he said and looked at Jacob, who was also following his aunt's lead and cowering into the booth. “We're doing the best we can, right?”

Lucy relaxed a little. “My sister told me the church was on a mission to someplace named Kleos. It's supposed to be near Navajo Perch, Utah. That's all I know.”

This information was all Ben needed. It had been all he'd needed for the past two days. He felt relief, edifying and energizing. “Okay,” he said and folded his hands on the table. “Here's the plan.”

He'd been such a good soldier precisely because he could recognize the appropriate course of action in any given moment and then execute. Right now, what was required was a show of confidence.

“We'll get up early tomorrow, drive to Navajo Perch, and ask around. I'm sure somebody local can direct us. We will find your sister—and your mom,” he said, nodding at Jacob. “Everything will be fine.”

“And you'll be fine too?” Lucy said, clearly thinking about the afternoon.

It was not a moment for hesitation. “Absolutely,” he said.

The Diné Inn faced a lot of nothing. There were no streetlights outside of town, just the motel's neon
VACANCY
sign fizzing at the roadside. Not so far away, the darkness dissolved into a small bubble of light: fast-food franchises through which residents of Kayenta eked out a living, and hotels with names that attempted to evoke luxurious getaways, Hamptons and Holidays.

“So, Utah,” Ben said. “Is your sister trying to convert some Mormons?” They were sitting on the plastic chairs outside their adjacent rooms; Jacob was inside, glued to the TV.

“Not exactly,” Lucy said. She did not seem enthusiastic about this line of questioning. “Listen,” she said a moment later. “I'm sorry for being such a hard-ass about our destination. But I couldn't risk you stranding us at some gas station.” Ben gave her a quizzical look. “I know you didn't want us along.”

Ben saw how sincerely she believed this—that he might have abandoned them, without a second thought. “I wouldn't do that,” he said.

Lucy glanced at the motel window. The curtain was pulled shut, but you could tell there was a television flickering inside. “I try to look out for him as best I can, but I'm on the road all summer. He deserves better than what he's got.”

Ben could not even imagine what it was like to be a kid like Jacob: poor, with a mother who put her religious convictions before her child, and no father to speak of. But that nearly described Becca. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

Lucy nodded.

“How would you feel if Ricky came looking for you?”

“He won't. I know him.”

“But for the sake of argument. What if he did?”

“Hard to answer that question. I guess I'd be angry. Once I'd gotten up the courage to leave, I wouldn't want anything interfering with the decision. A clean split—that's important.”

“You've never left him before?”

Lucy laughed. “I leave him at least twice a year . . . and I always go back. It's because I'm an optimist and, also, a pushover.”

“Pushover—you?”

“I took some business classes when we were just starting up the frybread operation, and I'll never forget, they talked about this thing called sunk costs. You know what that is?”

Ben shook his head.

“Basically, it means that no matter how much money you've invested in something, if the venture is failing, the best thing to do is get out.”