The Watch (27 page)

Mother picked up the telephone when I called you today. I called at the usual time, so it took me aback to hear her at the other end. I braced myself for her slurred yet genteel I’m-trying-hard-not-to-sound-drunk voice, but she seemed peculiarly controlled somehow. We’d barely exchanged a few words when she said: Your father would like to speak to you.

You came on the line. You said: Is this St. Catherine of Siena?

I said: Dad? It’s me.

You said: I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number. I was trying the hospital.

I said: Dad? What’s going on? It’s me, Nick.

You said: Forgive me. I misdialed.

Then I heard you say to Mother: Becky, this isn’t the hospital.

She took the phone from you.

I said: Mother …?

I’m sorry, Nick. He isn’t doing too well.

My voice rose: How long has this been going on?

He’s been slipping up for a few months now. He lost his way in the city last week, and I had to drive down and fetch him. We went to the doctor after that. And now it’s worse, as you can tell.

I had no idea!

He still seems to recognize a few things, though. Your letters, for instance.

My letters. Really?

Keep writing. The doctor says it might help.

What else does the doctor say? How bad is it?

Well, we have good days and bad days. Yesterday was bad. He couldn’t recognize himself in the mirror and was alarmed at this stranger in the house.

Does he know who you are, Mother?

Keep writing to him, Nick. Don’t worry about me. I’m okay.

N
IGHT
.

Night brings it all back.

How could I have been so blind? How could I have been so oblivious to my father’s decline? Or my mother’s alcoholism?

I go online and read up everything I can about Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. I read for hours without a break. I fall asleep still reading.

You wake me up. I start and stare at you.

Dad …?

You say: Emily stopped by today, Nick. I told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was wrong to leave you.

She came over all the way from St. Louis?

She must have, or, at least, the woman I spoke to looked like her. But maybe it was someone else. I don’t know what’s happened to people these days, Nick. I don’t recognize them. I walk down the street and I don’t recognize their faces. I don’t recognize faces anymore.

Don’t worry about it, Dad. I’ll take care of everything as soon as I’m home.

I told her: I have my standards, and maybe I am a bit old-fashioned, but I do not, as a rule, revise my grades. Your paper on
Antigone
was below par. I was disappointed.

Emily didn’t study with you, Dad. She went to Vassar. That’s where we met, remember? In Vassar, not Bennington.

Then why did she come to me about her grade? I don’t understand.

It doesn’t matter, Dad. I’ll talk to her about it. You just relax.

D
AY
.

Could have. Should have.

I could have spent more time with you the last time I was home. I should have asked you how you were coping with retirement—you,
who loved more than anything else to stand before your students and talk about Herodotus, Thucydides, Pericles.

I remember your telling me that my decisions affected everyone. At the time I thought you had Emily in mind; now I wonder if you were trying to warn me about your own condition. You said: Your attention is given too often elsewhere, Nick. I answered: We all walk alone.

It sounds so glib on hindsight. How could I have known?

Who’s going to read this journal now, Dad? Who am I going to write to?

Not to Emily, though I still turn toward her in my sleep.

And not to little Jack—though in my dreams I’ve heard the sounds of a playground fading.

Must I write for myself? Am I well and truly alone now? Is this what you were cautioning me about?

I’ll write for myself. I’ll walk alone.

N
IGHT
.

Four swings in a clearing below an old oak tree. Stands of oak and chestnut on all sides. The sky is dark, but I can’t tell if it’s day or night. Three of the swings are painted white; one is black. The ground below each swing has deep grooves worn into it. A bright cone of light shines through the clearing straight into my eyes. Mist swirls through the trees, blurring their branches. Where it touches the mist, the light appears diffused, as if filtered through a screen of dust. A paper kite drifts through the clearing and draws my attention to the stream on the far side. My family sits on the banks of the stream—Dad, Mother, and my little sister, Eve—but their complexions are yellow, and they’re unnaturally still. I want to run up to them, but the searchlight tracks my every movement, and I can’t seem to reach them. The mist clings to the stream; the kite glides again through the clearing. My family continues to sit motionless, oblivious of my
attempts to get to them. Is this scene a memory from my childhood, or is it an invention of my mind? I can’t remember, nor can I understand why I am kept so firmly apart. In the end, my distress at my separation gets the better of me, and I wake up unable to move or speak.

D
AY
.

Top guidelines to myself at Tarsândan:

Always attend one hundred percent to the task at hand; always separate personal sentiments from professional decision making; remember never to let my exhaustion show in front of my men; encourage positive and negative feedback throughout the chain of command; use spare time to study and memorize human and physical terrain (i.e., master the local lingo and always carry a map).

N
IGHT
.

So here’s what I have within reach of my folding table, in no particular order. Laptop, M-4 rifle, M-9 pistol, magazines of 9 mm and 5.56 mm ammo, fleece jacket, first aid kit, GPS receiver, body armor, advanced combat helmet, red lens flashlight, night vision goggles, colored flares, hand grenades, smoke grenades, three radios, four flashlights, a packet of MRE crackers, ajar of Nutella, a buzz saw, an RR82 mm recoil rifle (a gift from an ANA commander in Kandahar), a samurai sword, a rain jacket, grease pencils, lead pencils, two pairs of gloves, a 1976 Michelin map of Kandahar province, sunglasses, wraparound shades, a black-and-white checkered headscarf, a fleece blanket, battle dressing, a two-liter bottle of water, Styrofoam cups for coffee, booney hat, a set of English-Pashto and English-Dari dictionaries and phrasebooks, earplugs, two digital cameras, a folded American flag, MP3 player, and, finally, a framed picture of Emily with Jack. These are the things that help me carry on from day to day.

I check my watch. It’s 11:21 p.m. Kandahar time, which means
1:51 in the afternoon in St. Louis. Emily’s going to be taking a break from work to pick up Jack from nursery school and drop him off at the babysitter’s. She’s got it down to a twenty-minute commute while listening to NPR on the radio. Usually it’s All Things Considered at this time of the day, but sometimes they have her favorite gardening programs. She likes to drive fast: she always has. Slow down, Em, slow down, you always drive too fast. What’s the rush, girl? You’re always on my mind, especially when I’m here. I love you very much, despite everything.

I love you both very much.

In that part of the world, at least, thankfully little has changed.

That’s why I’m here, to make sure it stays that way.

And that’s why I make it a point to tell everyone back home that I’m at the epicenter of the place where the forces of fascism—of religious fundamentalism, societal repression, and violent hatred—must be contained. When I’m challenged about the consequences of my actions, I ask the person to look me in the eye and ask if he or she truly believes that peace would return and the condition of the women and children, especially, would improve if we decided to leave this place. You see, I can no longer go through the motions of conversation for the sake of conversation, or that of argument for its own sake.

Not when I’ve been face-to-face with the consequences of unimaginable barbarism.

I may not be a free agent, but I am an agent for freedom, the freedom to assume the responsibility of ensuring that a devastated society is repaired. That’s why I can use words like “integrity” and “honor” without cynicism. If we allow this country to slide back into the darkness, we will all be accessories to the genocide that will follow our departure as inevitably as night follows day.

Do you understand?

You who owe your blissful ignorance to our sacrifices.

No one back home gives a damn about us. No one gives a shit. Fact.

D
AY
.

The last time I was home, Emily woke me up one night and told me I was grinding my teeth so loudly it had jolted her awake. She said that at first she hadn’t known where the noise was coming from, and then she realized I was lying beside her with my body taut and my hands clenched into fists and my jaw working away like a piston. I switched on the light and we sat up together. I was drenched in sweat; the mattress on my side of the bed was soaked. She drew me close and held me in her arms.

She said: Baby, what are they doing to you?

And that was a full week before the night I woke up screaming that we were being overrun by the enemy and began to throttle her, thinking she was about to kill me.

My screams woke Jack, sleeping in his crib at the foot of our bed. Em spent the rest of the night trying to lull him back to sleep. Meanwhile I paced up and down outside the apartment trying to calm down.

N
IGHT
.

So. Emily. Exit ex-wife stage left.

I think I’ve finally come to terms with the pain. I really think I have.

At least I’ve stopped believing in illusions like love and marriage. I’ve become a realist—if that is the word I’m looking for—when it comes to these things. I look back at my broken marriage and don’t know what to say of this thing that I made with another person—this hope I invested—that suddenly shattered into fucking smithereens. This hope, this bright, beautiful summer dream, transformed overnight into a fucking nightmare, heavy with grief, with silence. Like blood that spills from a body and alters it. The light’s corrosion …

I don’t think I hate her. I’d like to believe that one day I can simply be indifferent.

N
IGHT
.

I don’t want to know your reasons for leaving me. Love has no place for logic.

Only, I beg you, don’t go, please. Stay with me a little longer until I can come back home and make this work for us again. That’s all I ask. Hold on to the rails of our baby’s crib—if that’s what it takes—and remember that we both created him, believing in our future together as a family.

I’m still the same Nick, Em; I’ve just been in some very dark places.

So don’t go, please. Don’t repeat your mother’s mistake. Remember your father’s grief.

Hold on tight to the home we share, to the memories, to our child, our child …

Don’t leave me.

D
AY
.

We took our first casualties today. It was a complete catastrophe. It all began a couple of weeks ago when a delegation of tribal elders from one of the nearby mountain valleys visited us. It was our first breakthrough with the locals, so we were thrilled. The elders sat around in a circle explaining their situation while we served them tea. They said they were being harassed by “bad men” who regularly crossed over from sanctuaries on the other side of the border with Pakistan. In desperation, they had decided to reach out to us as the sole representatives of law and order in a region where the Afghan government is nonexistent. Connolly promised to help, and we set up a rendezvous with the elders in the mountains. He called Lieutenant-Colonel Mark
Lautenschlager, the Battalion commander, and they both agreed that this was the perfect opportunity to establish our first foothold in the mountains, a combat outpost manned by a couple of squads stationed within a five-mile radius of Tarsândan. Then Connolly had Lieutenant Hendricks and me, as the two platoon leaders, draw straws to decide whose unit would go, and Hendricks won.

Early this morning, Dave Hendricks led Second Platoon on Humvees up the steep mountain paths as far as they could go, and then they walked the rest of the distance to the rendezvous. It was a trap. The local Taliban had found out about the meeting and, instead of the tribal elders meeting the platoon, there were forty heavily armed insurgents. Hendricks radioed Tarsândan, and Connolly called in air support and dispatched First Platoon. The Apaches and medevacs reached before I arrived with my platoon, but they were held off by sustained fire from RPGs and mortars. I can still hear Hendricks screaming into his radio: We’re surrounded! Get something up or we’re not gonna make it!

By the time we managed to link up with them, both Lieutenant Hendricks and Sergeant Brian Castro had been hit. Then an F-15 dropped a JDAM where the enemy concentration was thickest, and that effectively ended the battle. The insurgents lost sixteen men before they retreated. The medevacs evacuated Dave and Brian, but neither of them survived surgery. They were our first casualties since our deployment in Kandahar province. In my SitRep I wrote: 16X INS KIA (CONFIRMED) & 24X INS FLEEING NE ACROSS THE BORDER.

Connolly came to my hut this evening and blamed himself for not having sent Second Platoon in with air support. He said: I can’t believe Dave’s gone. I just don’t want to believe they’re gone.

I took a walk around the perimeter at 2200. I overheard one of the men on watch—I think it was Pfc. Spitz—telling another: I don’t want to be a hero; I just want to make it back home alive. The other man asked: You scared, Spitty? Spitz said: Isn’t everyone?

N
IGHT
.