Carthage - Joyce Carol Oates

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months you were gone from us—“deployed.” It was a dangerous time and an exciting time and (I understand) a secret time for you, we could know nothing of in Carthage.

      Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those words!

      We tried to follow in the news. On the Internet. We prayed for you.

      Daddy would remove from the newspaper things he didn’t want me to see. Particularly the New York Times, he gets on Sundays mostly.

      Photos of soldiers who have died in the war—the wars. Since 2001.

      I have seen some of them of course. Couldn’t help but look for women among the rows of men looking young as boys.

      There are not many female soldiers. But it is shocking to see them, their pictures with all the men.

      And always smiling. Like high school girls.

      In Carthage, there are some people who do not “support” the war—the wars. But they support our troops, they make that clear.

      Daddy has always made that clear.

      Daddy respects you. Daddy is just awkward now, he doesn’t know how to talk to you but that’s how some men are. He was never a soldier himself and has strong feelings about the Vietnam War which was the war when he was growing up. But Daddy does not mean anything personal.

      You have said It’s a toss of the dice. You have said Who gives a shit who lives, who dies. A toss of the dice.

      I know you don’t mean this. This is not Brett speaking but the other.

      You must not despair. Life is a gift. Our lives are gifts. Our love for each other.

      It was surprising, my mother is not very religious but while you were gone—she came to church with me, almost every Sunday. She prayed.

      All of the congregation prayed for you. For you and the others in the war—the wars.

      So many have died in the wars, it is hard for me to remember the numbers—more than one thousand?

      Most of them soldiers like you, not officers. And all beloved of God, you’d wish to think.

      For all are beloved of God. Even the enemy.

      Just so, we must defend ourselves. A Christian must defend himself against the enemies of Christ.

      This war against terror. It is a war against the enemies of Christ.

      I know you did not want to kill anyone. I know you, my darling Brett, and I know this—you did not want to kill the enemy, or—anyone. But you were a soldier, this was your duty.

      You were promoted because you were a good soldier. We were so proud of you then.

      Your mother is proud of you, I wish she could show it better.

      I wish she did not seem to blame me.

      I am not sure why she would wish to blame me.

      Maybe she thought I was—pregnant. Maybe she thought that was why we wanted to get married. And maybe she thought that was why you enlisted in the army—to get away.

      I wish that I could speak with your mother but I—I have tried . . . I have tried and failed. Your mother does not like me.

      My mother says We’ll keep trying! Mrs. Kincaid is fearful of losing her son.

      I know that you don’t like me to talk about your mother—I am sorry, I will try not to. Only just sometimes, I feel so hurt.

      I know, the war is a terrible thing for you to remember. When you start classes at Plattsburgh in September, or maybe—maybe it will be January—you will have other things to think about . . . By then, we will be married and things will be easier, in just one place.

      I will take courses at Plattsburgh, too. I think I will. Part-time graduate school, in the M.A. in education program.

      With a master’s degree I could teach high school English. I would be qualified for “administration”—Daddy thinks I should be a principal, one day.

      Daddy has such plans for us! Both of us.

      I WISH YOU would speak of it to me, dear Brett.

      I’ve seen documentaries on TV. I think I know what it was like—in a way.

      I know it was a “high” for you—I’ve heard you say to your friends. Search missions in the Iraqi homes when you didn’t know what would happen to you, or what you would do.

      What you’d never say to me or to your mother you would say to Rod Halifax and “Stump”—or maybe you would say it to a stranger you met in a bar.

      Another vet, you would speak with. Someone who didn’t know Corporal Brett Kincaid as he’d used to be.

      There is no “high” like that in Carthage. Tossing your life like dice.

      Our lives since high school—it’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, I guess—so small.

      Those sad little cardboard houses beneath a Christmas tree, houses and a church and fake snow like frosting. Small.

      EVEN OUR WOUNDS here are small.

      IN CARTHAGE, your life is waiting for you. It is not a thrilling life like the other. It is not a life to serve Democracy like the other. You said such a strange thing when you saw us waiting for you by the baggage claim, we were thrilled you were walking unassisted and this look came in your face I had not ever seen before and it was like you were afraid of us for just a moment you said Oh Christ are you all still alive? I was thinking you were all dead. I’d been to the other place, and I saw you all there.

       The Father

      OH DADDY WHY’D YOU call me such a name—Cressida.

      Because it’s an unusual name, honey. And it’s a beautiful name.

      FIRE SHONE INTO the father’s face. His eyes were sockets of fire.

      He hadn’t the strength to open his eyes. Or the courage.

      The doe’s torso had been torn open, its bloody interior crawling with flies, maggots. Yet the eyes were still beautiful—“doe’s eyes.”

      He’d seen his daughter there, on the ground. He was certain.

      The sick-sliding sensation in his gut wasn’t unfamiliar. In that place, again. The place of dread, horror. Guilt. His fault.

      And how: how was it his fault?

      Lying on his back and his arms flung wide across the bed—(he remembered now: they’d brought him home, to his deep mortification and shame)—that sagged beneath his weight. (Last time he’d weighed himself he’d been, dear Christ, 212 pounds. Heavy and graceless as wet cement.)

      A memory came to him of a long-ago trampoline in a neighbor’s backyard when he’d been a child. Throwing himself down onto the coarse taut canvas that he might be sprung into the air—clumsily, thrillingly—flying up, losing his balance and falling back, flat on his back and arms sprung, the breath knocked out of him.

      On the trampoline, Zeno had been the most reckless of kids. Other boys had to marvel at him.

      Years later when his own kids were young it had become common knowledge that trampolines are dangerous for children. You can break your neck, or your back—you can fall into the springs and slice yourself. But if he’d known, as a kid, Zeno wouldn’t have cared—it was a risk worth taking.

      Nothing in his childhood had been so magical as springing up from the trampoline—up, up—arms outflung like the wings of a bird.

      Now, he’d come to earth. Hard.

      HE’D

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