Casualties (32 page)

That morning Casey limped his way to the office and paid for another night. He brought back coffee and a couple of rolls, but Ruth didn't touch them. She lay on her bed, curved toward the wall, not asleep but not what he would call awake either. Helplessness rained down on him. The book he'd been trying to read lay facedown on his lap and he shifted in his chair.

When Ruth finally turned over it was nearly one o'clock. Casey stood, half thinking he should go to her. But she looked fragile. He was afraid to touch her.

“You okay? You hungry? Coffee's cold now, but the rolls are okay. I can go get you something else.”

But she didn't respond. Casey glanced at his watch. “You should eat. I'll go out, find something better.”

“You were wrong,” she said at last. “He wasn't lucky to have me.”

“He didn't think that.”

“How would you know?”

Casey did not know. He couldn't know. He just wanted to keep her from slipping back to wherever she'd been. Questions that had
earlier run through Casey's mind surfaced. He wasn't sure he could handle a confession. But he opened his mouth and there it was.

“Did he, Robbie, leave a note or anything . . . anything that would explain?”

Instead of answering him, Ruth pushed herself up from the bed, went to the duffel, and unzipped it. He saw the usual crap as she peeled it open: blue jeans, shirts rolled up and wedged in, a pair of running shoes, barely used. Ruth picked up one of the white T-shirts, shook it out. The front was printed with a face of Osama bin Laden in the center of red rings meant to look like a target. She reached in again. A camouflage hat, an iPod, a faded camouflage jacket splotched with bleach.

Ruth had stopped rummaging. She held a notebook in her hands.

“He wrote in this,” she said to Casey. “The things he did, had to do . . . I didn't know. I just didn't know. He came home, and I was so glad to see him, but then there was this emergency at work. He wanted to see me and I told him to wait. He had all this inside him and I told him I would see him later. As if we had all the time in the world.”

He didn't want to open it, but Ruth seemed to expect him to. As he read, Ruth picked up the stained jacket and pulled it to her chest. She wrapped both arms around it and bowed her head.

. . . u call em haji, enemy, bad guy, target got 13 kills first guy stayed alive even after his whole face was gone—Sarge says corpsman can't help just finish him—he watches me—guy's body jumps like a fish on the ground—hear a click and Hanny's takin the guy's picture on his fuckin phone—

feel like a freak. kicked the soccer ball with Justy in the front yard and suddenly i see the kid, all the kids, chasing the humvee looking for fuck all peterson pisses in a water bottle and tosses it—we r laughin—saw myself laugh and laugh like it was the funniest thing i ever saw to see the kid stop in the middle of the street all covered in piss—made sense then—you could at least understand why you hated the little fuckers sometimes—you never
knew who they really were or if it was their brothers or fathers or uncles trying to kill you

its like a movie that won't stop—think about one thing and the rest of it all starts up. gun makes no difference—wrong vehicle wrong time is all it takes—one night, Garcia is pissing and moaning about his skanky girlfriend cheating on him and the next his guts and brains are smeared on ur uniform u try to put him back together but u can't—u wonder why it wasn't u—you wonder when its gonna be ur turn—

get scared enuff long enuff and the real u comes out

The sound of the rain receded. If Ruth moved, Casey didn't hear her. As he continued to read, he felt like a witness to an accident he couldn't prevent.

we're all standing aiming guns i yell at the driver to go back—we r yelling in english—he can't understand—keeps coming he screams shit we cant understand—Hanny drags him out of the car i pull Hanny off the guy—I yell go home go home but there's an old lady in there, a woman and baby plus the girl—and i see girls bleeding shes bleeding out into the car—we try to stop it—we call the corpsman—but she's dying and there's nothing we can do—the mother's crying and screaming at us and all we understand is that she hates us—the girl lying across the other woman's lap. eyes open. the eyes are always open

chaplain says we don't get to choose who dies bullshit—kords and me, after the others died, we fired on 2 guys diggin—they were carrying shovels—they had cell phones—they were burying an IED we decided—we got commendations for that—you aim a gun and fire and that makes you the decider right? u can wrap it in a reason but fact is we were angry and someone had to pay but im lookin back now and i can't feel that any more—i don't understand why they died and i got to live when i was no different from them—no better than any of em—good guys or bad guys—

don't fit anymore—don't deserve to be here. don't deserve the corps. im deciding now.

wanna see ruthie first. gonna tell her I love her—always loved her even when I fucked up—even when she fucked up don't blame her—look what she had to work with.

need to see my mom. one more time. just want to see her, sit down with her and be with her a little. no other people. no fancy stuff. just sit with her just breathe the same air for a little.

like Hanny said when it's your time, it's your time—ok then, it's my time. one more night—wanna sleep here in my bed with my rods and my flies. then I'll be ready. almost.

Casey read the last line through a blur of tears.
need to see my mom one more time then I'll be ready.

“I'm sorry, Ruth,” Casey said without looking up. All he got in reply was the thrum of rain on the cabin roof. He stood to seek her out in the gloom of the cabin, not sure what to say or what to do, hoping the right words would come to him. But Ruth was gone.

She couldn't have taken the car. The keys were still on the table next to her computer.

He swore, yanked first the right crutch, then the left, and tumbled toward the door. He stood in the opening and called, but the rain drowned out his words. He squinted into the gloom. It was only midafternoon but the gray light and the rain made it seem later. Then he thought he saw her at the river's edge.

“Ruth!” He started down the path. His eyes were getting used to the murk, but he lost sight of the figure. He slipped and fell in the mud but used the crutches to push himself up. His fingers were slippery with rain and mud; time was slipping through them too. He could feel it. Calling Ruth's name, he advanced down the path, moving as fast as he could without falling.

He saw her now. A blurred form standing in the shallows of the river's edge.

“Ruth!”

She took a step and disappeared. Casey dropped to the ground and dragged himself and the crutches through the mud to the river's
edge. Her head rose again to the surface. She was swimming but her movements were awkward and slow, like she was trying to stop her arms and legs from doing what they instinctively wanted to do. He couldn't be sure she was trying to kill herself; if she was, she was going about it all wrong. But an accident could make the decision for her.

“Ruth! Look at me!”

Her head turned. He thought he could see her eyes but he wasn't sure.

“Come back, Ruth.”

He was not sure how much she could hear through the rain, with the river nearly in her ears. He kept talking into the wetness.

“That's right. Come back. It's not your fault. Don't you see? Not your fault. Don't let the fuckers take you both. Robbie doesn't want this.”

He was in the water himself now. Practically crawling. He held out one of the crutches toward Ruth. “Come on, Ruth. Take it. I need you to take it. I need you to come back here. You can't do this. Please don't do this.”

He saw her face bobbing pale and blurred in the water. A wave slapped the side of her head and for a moment he couldn't see her. Rage filled him.

“Ruth! Ruth, goddamn it. If you want to die, do it on someone else's watch. Don't do this to me.”

He held his breath. When she bobbed to the surface again, he felt a tug on the end of the crutch.

A few minutes later she was beside him, on all fours in the water. He latched onto her arm and did not let go even after they crawled out of the river into the mud on the bank. He held on while she rose to her feet and then helped him up. His breath spilled out of his lungs as he heaved in air. Ruth started to explain.

“I didn't mean to . . . I wasn't going to . . . Robbie loved fishing. He loved the river on the farm. I thought if I came here I'd feel him.
I almost thought I could. Then there was a hole or something . . . the current was stronger than I realized . . . I just wanted to feel him, close to me.”

“C'mon, Ruth,” Casey said. “Let's go home.”

One step at a time, they made their way back to the cabin.

—

Ruth heard the rain stop. One final burst and then nothing but the drip from the eaves. Casey was pressed next to her now. Skin to skin, his arm tight around her. The pillowcase under their heads was damp from their hair. Casey had made her take a shower with him. She'd let him guide her into the stall, then took the soap from him as he leaned for support against the fiberglass. They stayed together under the water until it began to lose its heat. He'd toweled her off as best he could before half leading, half pushing her to her bed and falling in next to her.

“You awake?” Casey's breath filled her ear when he spoke.

“Yes.”

“Are you hurting?”

Every thought hurt; every breath seemed a betrayal. She was alive and Robbie was dead. From those two facts flowed a river of pain she would never be able to crawl out of. But Casey meant her ribs, her eyes. The things he could see.

“I'm okay. I'd be better if you weren't squeezing me.”

He relaxed his grip. She rolled onto her back, felt his breath on her cheek. “You had some peanut butter, didn't you?”

“Had to. I needed strength in case you made another run for it.” He leaned up on one elbow. “You want some?”

“Robbie ate peanut butter for breakfast. And Coke. Like you.”

Casey ran his hand down her right arm, twined his fingers in hers. “You should eat something.”

“Not hungry.”

“A bite. I'll sleep better if you do.”

“Okay. But I'll get it.” She could see that his arm was red and tender around the clean bandage he'd put over his stitches. He needed help too. “Just tell me where it is,” Ruth said.

“On the table.”

Ruth moved as quickly as she could over the damp floor and grabbed the jar of peanut butter and a plastic knife lying next to it on the table. A flash of silver caught her eye; it was the drive with Terri's files protruding from the side of the computer. The screen was dark but it was only in sleep mode; she'd left it on.

“I read your e-mail,” Casey admitted.

“It doesn't matter now.”

She looked at Casey's face, peering at her from the rumpled bed. It would be like this for a long time, she knew. She would think of Robbie and someone or something would pull her back into the present. She would feel as she did now: resentful, grateful, lost.

“I need to take Robbie home,” she said. She'd known all along, she just hadn't been able to face it.

“Back to California?”

“No. To New Hampshire. I need to take him there. It's what he would have wanted.”

“What about San Diego?” Casey asked her. “What about your company?”

“What about them? The company let me go.” She wanted to go back to the silence they'd created earlier. She wanted to lie in this bed with his arms around her. She'd made her decision and now all there was to do was wait until the weather cleared. “That woman who e-mailed you,” Casey said. “Can you help her like she thinks you can?”

I don't know.
She was no crusader. For years she had told herself she was doing what she had to do. She'd told Robbie that her work was hard, important, and that she was doing it for him. Someday, she'd always said, they could do what they wanted to do. She didn't
know what that was anymore, if she ever did. She removed the thumb drive from her laptop and picked it up.

“Terri, my secretary, gave this to me. The night before I left San Diego, she told me that it had information on it that could help the people suing the company. She was right. It might help them. But it might not. At least not as much as she thought.”

“I don't follow.”

A sigh escaped her, born of nerves, or fatigue, or both. “I could call Marilyn Corning and tell her to connect me with the attorney for the contractor families. This has information on it that he would like to have.” Then she told him about the files, the insurance lapses, the lies.

“How can that not make any difference?” Casey asked. “If the lawyer has that, won't he have everything he needs to pin them to the wall?” His face, a map of righteous anger and confusion, would have once made her smile knowingly. Now all she saw was the slimmest of possibilities.

“If he's good and has a little luck, he might be able to use it to make trouble, force the resolution a little quicker. If he's really good, he could get his clients some money because the timing is right. My company, my former company, doesn't want anything to screw up a big deal they're trying to make. When it goes through, everyone gets a lot of money. On the other hand, Don, the man in the newspaper, doesn't like to be pushed around. He's fighting it.”

“Isn't this shit against the law?”

Casey's brow furrowed just as Terri's had that night when she'd first asked Ruth to help the contractors. When Ruth said
can't
, they heard
won't
. She tried to explain.

“It's against regulations. There's a difference. All they have to do is pay a fine and they can walk away, start all over again. Most of the time, the government doesn't have the resources to police them unless something like this forces the issue. Contractors like RyCom just build the fines into the cost of doing business.”

“But you're an insider,” Casey said. “If this information comes from you, it'll raise the stakes, won't it? If those people see you out there explaining how the system works, it'll do more than help those families get their money, it'll make these assholes sweat. It might even make the government do its job.”

Ruth shook her head.
No.
Passing the files to the lawyer was one thing; becoming a poster girl for whistleblowers was another. Even if she tried to give up the files anonymously, it would be easy for Gordon or Don to trace the files back to her, maybe even to Terri. The only way to protect her former secretary would be to step forward and attract all the attention herself. She saw Casey's eyes narrow. “What'll it cost you?”

Ruth sank into the chair without looking at him. She knew the answer to part of his question. Don would do everything he could to punish her. The millions coming to her from the deal would not materialize. She'd have to get a lawyer to defend herself against Don, maybe even to defend herself against the contractors—because, after all, she'd headed the division responsible for hiring them. She would be a pariah; no one in the industry would work with her again. The balloon payment on the house would come due. Even if she sold it, there would be nothing left.

Those were the things she could predict with confidence. What about the rest? She looked up then and searched Casey's face as if she'd see the answer there.
How do you start over when you are nearly fifty
, she wanted to ask him. She saw Casey's face shutter the way Terri's had.

“Sorry. Never mind,” he said. He got up and reached for his crutches. “I'm no one to judge you or anyone else.”

Ruth looked at the laptop. With one touch she could fill the blank screen with Marilyn's e-mail. One phone call could put it all in motion. Ruth averted her eyes. Her hands were in her lap now, fingers twined together as though she were playing the child's game her grandmother used to play with her and the one she'd then played with Robbie. Church, steeple, look inside . . .

“Do what you have to do, Ruth. I gotta take a leak.”

What you have to do.
She closed her eyes and watched Robbie move toward her on the deck that last morning, the newspaper in his hand. She saw the tattoos, the acne, the flicker of surprise when he scanned the headlines.
The paper's full of shit, right?

Of course
, she'd said.
Of course.

Ruth straightened and faced her laptop. She touched the keys. Marilyn Corning's e-mail appeared on the screen. Ruth read it through one more time. She looked over at the box of ashes resting on the bureau, waiting. She reached for the phone.