Carthage (16 page)

Arlette spoke haltingly. It was a terrible thing for a mother to so betray her daughter, to strangers!

A swift vision of Cressida’s pale furious face, lifting to Arlette.

“Mrs. Mayfield, apart from Kincaid and his friends, one of the last people who saw your daughter that night is this girl ‘Marcy Meyer.’ How close are they?”

“They’ve been friends since grade school. But not really—from Cressida’s perspective, certainly—
close.
”

“And you would know that, Mrs. Mayfield, how? Exactly how would you know that?”

How did Arlette know anything about her daughter! The detective’s questions were unanswerable.

“From remarks Cressida has made. From the fact that Cressida seems to forget Marcy for periods of time. It’s Marcy who has to contact
her
.”

“And if they were in contact now—just assuming, for a moment, that your daughter is alive, somewhere”—how frankly Detective Silber spoke, how matter-of-fact the leverage of
if
—“is it possible that Marcy Meyer would keep this contact secret? If Cressida asked her not to, she wouldn’t tell
you
?”

Arlette and Zeno turned to each other, confounded.

No idea how to reply.

ENTERING CRESSIDA’S ROOM.
She’d knocked—but too lightly for Cressida to hear, evidently. Which was a mistake. And there was Cressida in flannel pajamas half-lying/half-sitting on her bed with her back against the headboard and her knees awkwardly apart, and raised; and a notebook—more precisely a journal with a marbled cover, which Arlette hadn’t ever seen before—positioned in such a way, against Cressida’s knees, so that she could write in it. And Cressida glared at Arlette, and dropped the journal onto the bed, partly hiding it with a comforter; in that instant, Cressida was furious, saying rudely: “Go away! You’re not welcome here! No snooping here!”

Cressida had been eleven or twelve at the time.

Arlette had retreated, stung.

She’d never seen the hard-covered journal again. She’d rarely entered Cressida’s room again. And this was so embarrassing to her, like the accusation of snooping, the rudeness of her own daughter for which (she believed) she was herself to blame, she’d never told anyone: not a woman friend, not her sister Katie, not her husband Zeno.

NINE WEEKS, TWO DAYS
after her disappearance it was revealed: in the afternoon of July 9, a physical therapist at the Carthage Rehabilitation Clinic named Seth Seager, who’d worked with Brett Kincaid at the clinic for several months and was on friendly terms with him, happened to see Cressida Mayfield in the Carthage CVS on Main Street. Cressida didn’t know Seth Seager but he knew her, or knew something of her, as
the smart one
of Zeno Mayfield’s two daughters. He called out hello to her—she seemed suspicious of him at first—but then, when he identified himself as a new friend of Brett Kincaid’s, from the rehab clinic, her manner changed.

“There was something about Cressida—I really liked her. She reminded me of a cousin of mine, a girl, kind of a tomboy-type, but smart—and smart-mouthed. And that’s a kind of girl I like. I mean, a kind of girl that’s cool. Like, she isn’t waiting for you to compliment her or say nice things to her—she knows a guy isn’t going to do that. Most guys are not going to do that. ’Cause she isn’t the kind of girl a guy would be attracted to, in that way. But I liked Cressida a lot, and I think she liked me. And I told her, Brett Kincaid plans on going out that night, to the Roebuck Inn with some friends, he’d invited me and I told him no thanks, that scene wasn’t for me. (Sure, I’d told Brett it wasn’t a great idea, drinking while he was taking those meds, but Brett just shrugged and laughed, ‘What the hell. I’ll be OK. And if not—what the hell.’) And Cressida asked this funny question—if Brett was ‘celebrating’—and I said I didn’t know, what would he be ‘celebrating’?—and Cressida said, ‘He’s not getting married.’ Well, I’d heard about this, but not from Brett; Brett would not ever talk to anybody at the clinic about any personal thing, so I didn’t know what to say. And Cressida said, like she’d had a change of heart, and was sorry what she’d said to me, ‘I didn’t mean it, I know Brett must feel bad—both of them must feel bad. I’m sorry what I said.’ And she was looking like she’d start to cry, which is not what you expect from such a cool girl, the kind that never cries, or anyway not when you can see her. ‘He wouldn’t do harm to himself, would he?’ she asked me, which was a weird thing to ask, something we don’t talk about, like, y’know, you don’t talk about guys who kill themselves after they start to get better, lost their legs, or have to wear a colonoscopy bag, or brain-damaged so they can’t speak a sentence anyone can comprehend, and once they get a little more in control of their lives they kill themselves, or have an ‘overdose’ or a ‘fatal accident’—so I said, ‘Hell, no. Not Corporal Kincaid, no way.’ And she said, ‘So he will get through it, you think?’—she wasn’t being sarcastic, or joking, but looking at me like I could really answer this question for her; and I said what we all say in rehab, ‘Sure he will! One day at a time.’ ”

The detectives to whom he’d made this statement asked Seth Seager why he’d waited so long to contact them.

Shamefaced he said, he didn’t know.

He said, well maybe—he hadn’t wanted to “make things worse” for Brett Kincaid who’d already been fucked-over in Iraq.

He said: “Then I was always thinking, telling myself—Cressida would come back. She’d have been away somewhere, and she’d come back. And she’d explain what had happened. And Brett wouldn’t be blamed, or arrested. And I wouldn’t have to get involved, myself.”

Detectives asked Seager how he thought Cressida had gotten to the Roebuck Inn from Fremont Street in Carthage, a distance of approximately nine miles. He’d laughed saying, “If she’s anything like my cousin Dorrie she’d have stuck out her thumb and hitched a ride on Route 33. Seems like everybody’s going out to the lake, Saturday night in July.”

September 15, 2005. Caught amid rocks and rusted iron pipes beneath a bridge in Sackets Harbor, thirty miles west of Carthage where the Nautauga River emptied into Lake Erie, a curious mummified object was found by a twelve-year-old boy who hauled it to shore with a pole: it would turn out to be a girl’s sweater, mud-colored, stiff as a board. The boy brought the mummified sweater home to show his mother—he’d known about the
missing girl
and the twenty-thousand-dollar reward.

Next day, one of the Beechum County detectives called the Mayfields and asked them to please come to headquarters. An article of clothing had been found in Sackets Harbor, on a bank of the Nautauga River, they hoped the Mayfields might examine, to see if it might have belonged to Cressida Mayfield.

In Zeno’s Land Rover they drove to the building on Axel Road: Zeno, Arlette, Juliet.

Zeno said: “It’s too far away—Sackets Harbor. That isn’t likely.”

When Arlette didn’t respond Zeno said: “Sackets Harbor is too far away. This is a waste of time.”

In the backseat of the Land Rover Juliet sat with her arms folded tight across her chest, shivering, yet uncomplaining, in the blast of air-conditioning Zeno had released.

It had been weeks since the Mayfields had entered the Beechum County Sheriff’s Department. Detective Clement Lewiston was waiting for them, to escort them into a room where, on a table, the mummified sweater had been placed. Whatever its original color had been, the sweater was the color of dried mud now. It was too small for an adult woman—too small, Arlette saw with relief, to have belonged to Cressida. Zeno peered at it, frowning: he’d never seen it before, he was sure. Arlette touched it with a forefinger, undecided. It wasn’t a woolen sweater—hardly a “sweater” at all—only just something with sleeves, a cardigan, of some synthetic material like nylon, Orlon. It scarcely had stitching. It was obviously very cheap. Only two little broken buttons remained and its buttonholes were caked with mud. Arlette said, relief in her voice: “No. This is nothing of Cressida’s.”

But Juliet, who’d removed her dark glasses when she stepped into the windowless room, leaned over the mummified sweater for some seconds, staring. Since her younger sister’s disappearance, Juliet had lost weight: her cheeks were thinner, her eyes were ringed with strain. In an undertone Zeno was speaking with Detective Clement Lewiston, words Arlette couldn’t hear. She’d been feeling faint since entering the room and decided it was the brackish river-smell of the mummified sweater that was making her sick.

Almost, it was time to depart. Arlette would have liked to grab at her husband’s arm, to pull him to the door. And she’d have liked to haul Juliet away, too.

“Yes. This is it. This is Cressida’s sweater—the one with the black-and-white stripes.” Juliet spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “If you look close enough you can see the stripes. It used to be my sweater—I gave it to Cressida. Or, Cressida took it from me. It was too small for me. So I’m sure. This is Cressida’s. There’s no doubt about it, Detective—this is my sister’s sweater, she was wearing the night she was taken from us.”

SIX

The Corporal in the Land of the Dead

July 2005–October 2005

J
ESUS! WHAT THEY’D DONE.

What they’d done
was
.

Held her down. Jammed a rag into her screaming mouth.

Taking turns with her. Grunting, yelping like dogs.

Then afterward one of them sliced her face.

Sliced halfway up her face on both sides. Corners of her mouth he’d sawed-at with a Swiss Army knife.

So she was grinning. Like a crazy clown.

And her eyes open, staring.

THEY WERE ASKING
What had he done to her. Had he hurt her, and where had he left her.

They were saying
If you were provoked. If you confess now, and lead us to her. Where you left her, Corporal.

DIDN’T WANT
A
LAWYER.
A lawyer meant guilt.

A lawyer meant shame, and a lawyer meant guilt.

His mouth tasted of vomit, he’d tried to rinse the sour taste away. And where he’d bitten his tongue, or maybe it was a mouth ulcer. In Iraq he’d had them—mouth ulcers. Staring in the mirror seeing the tiny white dots thinking it was cancer.

A terrible death by cancer, eaten alive. From the mouth outward.

It was a worse death because slower, than the other.

He’d heard—felt—the explosion. Heard screams, and then curses.

In their combat outpost, a deserted school. Battered and the windows like gouged-out eyes and behind it a bomb inside a drainage pipe that’d exploded blowing off the hands of Private Hardy and killing Private Quinn outright.

He’d run to them. Blindly running, thinking he could help.

What he saw was—

When it came to be his turn to die later and in another place. Shouldn’t have been so totally surprised but fact is, he was.

For always you think, can’t help but think
God would not let that happen to me. Jesus would not. I am a good person, I will be spared.

He’d been a good person, Corporal Kincaid. All his life tried.

Boy Scout for Jesus the Sergeant called him sneering with one-half his face like a side of beef grinning.

This was in Salah ad Din province. Dusty, sandy, nasty.

Daily patrols were fifteen, sixteen hours—the record was eighteen hours. Your brain turned off, legs and feet continued like a windup zombie-toy. Boots so damn heavy like lifting weights or leg shackles and the socks not thick enough to prevent the skin scraping off his heels or a sharp toenail cutting into an adjacent toe feeling like a shard of glass driven into the toe.
Infantrymen are particularly warned to be careful of infections which can happen easily in a combat zone and which can be life-threatening.
The object was to protect the army base—(but why the hell was the base in such a dusty sandy nasty place requiring protection)—from fragmentation grenades, sniper fire, insurgent assault.

Move! No matter how exhausted if you stand still for more than four seconds—you’re a candidate for a Ziploc bag, kid.

Fucking snipers never slept.

Or maybe it had been somewhere else—the names were strange and dreamlike riddles you can’t be sure you’ve heard right, you feel a pressure inside your head not wanting to fuck up and be laughed-at.

In emails home he’d tried to be accurate. As a student he’d tried to be accurate. It was the least you could do, he’d thought, to prevent things from being more fucked-up than they were, yet still he couldn’t have sworn it had been Salah ah-Din and not Diyala or As Sadah. And there was Kirkuk.

They’d shoveled him up in pieces there—Kirkuk.

Guys joked about
donor organs
. Like for instance,
cock, testicles.

There was a rumor, wealthy Saudis bought kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts, eyes, bone marrow on the black market. Their own kind—“Arabs”—“Muslims”—were cheap to be harvested.

In the U.S. that was illegal. In the U.S. you could not sell or purchase any body part or organ, this was against U.S. standards of morality.

The fight against terror is a fight against the enemies of U.S. morality—Christian faith. Somewhere in this God-forsaken place were the
imams
of the Al Qaeda terrorists who’d blown up the World Trade Center. Out of a pure hateful wish to destroy the Christian American democracy like the pagans of antiquity had hoped to do, centuries before. Ancient imperial Rome in the time of the gladiators—you would be required to die for your faith. It had been explained to them by their chaplain—this is a crusade to save Christianity. General Powell had declared there can be no choice, the U.S. has been forced to react militarily. The U.S. will never compromise with evil. No choice but to send in troops before the
weapons of mass destruction
are loosed by the crazed dictator Saddam—nuclear bombs, gas and germ warfare.

Only a very foolish and cowardly country would “wait and see” what developed. In the chapel the minister told them, Our ancestors are those brave enough to take the pre-emptive strike.

The insurgents were terrorist-enemies. The other Iraqis—“civilians”—were friends of the U.S., dependent upon the U.S. military to protect them.

Some were Kurds, not Iraqis. Kirkuk was the site of a vast oil field.

Some of this the guys knew, or had known at one time.

Soon, you began to forget. Following orders you forget what was the day before.

Names of places were easy to forget. Drifted in sand. And sand in eyes, nostrils, mouth. Sand inhaled in lungs so each breath you took, you drew the desert deeper into you.

Later in the hospital he’d tasted the sand-grit in his mouth. In his lungs. Coughing-choking trying to clear his lungs and what came up was a thick syrupy mucus tinged with blood.

In his brains, something squirming and teeming like—maggots?

A titanium implant, to secure the broken skull.

In his mangled left eye and the soft-matter (brains) behind the eye a minuscule intraocular lens (guaranteed to withstand melting at temperatures below 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) was implanted.

Vision is in the brain. The “eye” is the lens of the brain.

From one of the (dead, blasted) insurgents they’d taken trophies: eyes, thumbs, ears. Entire faces sliced off though rarely in one piece.

Wrapped in gauze and secured then in hand-sized Ziploc bags.

You figure why not. Fucking earned it.

Not Kincaid the Boy Scout. But others.

Private Muksie was the Jokester of the platoon.

“Coyote” Muksie who was Sergeant Shaver’s right-hand man.

Insurgents. Insurgent snipers
. These were an army of shadows, no way to fight shadows except to obliterate them in waves like flame.

There were
counterinsurgency measures
since before Corporal Kincaid had arrived. Yet, the memory of an earlier strategy issued by the brigade commander Colonel T___ remained fresh and was preferred: KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT.

He’d lost his meds. These were antibiotics to keep the death-bacteria from eating him alive.

Begin in the blood, then soft-tissue. Then, the brain.

He was prone to seeing things
not-there
and hearing things
not-there
since the explosion inside his head.

Problem is, you can’t distinguish.

Telling them he didn’t know. The girl—he’d forgotten her name.

Never knew her name. Any of their names. Civilians.

The interrogation continued through the night. He’d been one of the younger men assigned to the detail. It was thrilling to enter the little houses of the Iraqi civilians in which insurgents were suspected of hiding. Ducking your head to step through one of the dwarf-doorways next thing you know you might be shot—your head might explode. That could happen.

Later, he’d been sick with shame. At the time, there was no high like it.

Sure he’d smoked dope. He’d never tried cocaine, heroin. He’d never (yet) tried crystal meth. But he knew, there could be no high like this
because it was a natural high.

“Kill board”—Sergeant Shaver was the overseer.

Muksie was the expeditor.

They hadn’t asked him. Hadn’t invited him. Knowing he’d snitch on them. Fucking Boy Scout Kincaid should’ve shot
him.

Fragmentation grenade. Should’ve fragged
him.

It wasn’t a secret. “Coyote” told lots of people.

Anything that is done by one in the company, is done by all.

An army is
ants
. Essentially.

He’d been sick for two, three days. He’d felt his brain soften and drift bobbing like an embryo in formaldehyde, in a glass jug.

Went to the chaplain. His throat was so dry from the sand, almost he couldn’t speak.

Are you sure, son. Take your time, son.

What passes between us is confidential.

They’d asked: who did the shooting.

He was trying to remember: she’d run from him.

Couldn’t understand why—she’d run
from him
. He’d called after her but she’d run
from him.

Hadn’t wanted to hurt her. She’d said
I am the only one who understands you. No one else can know what we know, they are beloved of God.

His guts were like concrete. The only way for him to shit was if it turned to liquid, fiery liquid, scathing as it poured out of him.

Otherwise, it was concrete.

So fucking ashamed, pain in his bowels. Rocking with pain. Breaking out into sweat. And trying to piss, after the catheter. You have to learn how, it isn’t an instinct.

He was trying to tell them he hadn’t seen. Hadn’t been anywhere near.

Or maybe he’d been there and hadn’t seen—exactly—what the guys were doing, or had done. Maybe by then it was over. Maybe it was hours over. Days over.

Or maybe he’d blundered into it. Staff Sergeant Shaver calling him: KIN-CAID! CORP’L FUCKING KIN-CAID! like the surprise was for him.

Bring your cell phone, Kin-caid! Photo op!

THEY’D THOUGHT SHE
WAS OLDER
—for sure. Hadn’t known she was so
young
.

And the younger brother, eight or nine.

And the parents—so small they’d look like children back in the States.

And the old ones—grandparents . . .

After they’d dragged the girl out and were done with her Sergeant Shaver said disgusted
No witnesses! Wipe ’em.

It hadn’t been what they’d planned. None of it felt right. The girl was just a child not a teenaged girl like they’d been expecting, of which so many had been speaking
A girl! Sexy babe!
like it was MTV and rap music accompanying and if somebody was raped, or beaten bloody and dead, it wasn’t like MTV where they came back laughing. It wasn’t like any of that it was like—it was like a
sad, stupid mistake
. . . In the culvert they dragged her about one hundred feet from the end of the village road and tried to bury her beneath mud-chunks and rocks and slats of a broken fence. One more God-damned task to be done once the high was over.
Essentially it was hard to take the Iraqi civilians seriously. Hard to see why they cared if they lived or died. If one of their kids died, or some old people. Anyone.

Muksie, Broca, Mahan, Ramirez. Not Kincaid.

How many feet separated him from Shaver and his “kill crew” he’d be asked to estimate later. At the time in confusion and alarm he’d had no idea for he’d had no idea what the men were doing exactly.

Then, he’d seen Muksie with the shears. He’d heard the guys laughing kind of scared and breathless like kids in his high school daring to climb out onto the school roof and run stooped across the roof during school hours.
Wild!

He’d raised his voice to protest. But no sound came.

Sick to his stomach. Puking out his guts.

Photo op, dudes! Lookit!

HE’D BROUGHT IT
BACK
with him, that last time.

The new cell phone, a gift from his prospective in-laws.

The Mayfields are snooty people living up there on the hill. They will look down on you like a dog—trained little mongrel-puppy. Don’t come whining to me when you find out.

Fact is he was crazy for them. Zeno, Arlette.

Any resentment he’d had, his mother’s bitterness, something about how the mayor had treated her, or hadn’t treated her—it might have been that Ethel had wanted more attention from the mayor, as a reasonably good-looking woman (single) with a little kid (boy, needing a dad) might expect from a man like Zeno Mayfield giving off heat just entering a room—
Hel-lo! Ladies, good mornin’!

What he was, was a phony. God-damn phony politician.

She’d been a file clerk. Worked in the front office. High heels, lipstick. Never got promoted. Eleven years.

Took her revenge, brought home office supplies in her ShopRite bag.

Paper she had no use for, reams of paper. Ballpoint pens by the fistfuls. Even printer cartridges. (But she had to be careful: the cartridges were expensive. Didn’t dare take more than a single one every week or two.) Even rolls of toilet paper from the storage closet, unopened. So they had all the God-damn toilet paper they’d ever need.