questions straight; he owed her that much. She’d stop blaming him for being gone. Stop being coy as he tried to find his way back into routines each trip home. That was three years ago. Now it’s 2009, and he’s four tours into this mess. No one would guess that he stockpiles pills just in case he can’t hack it anymore. That the letters are already printed—one for Cissy to read when she’s older, and one for Tenley that, he hopes, explains losing Sergeant Mercer and why everything changed afterward. This tour is Miller’s final chance to find his cool again, forget he ever drafted a suicide note, and land softly back home, back into marriage, composed and capable as ever.
Blind spots. That’s what Miller heard someone call those unforgivable missteps from the past once. Like thinking you can see the folds of your own asshole simply by turning on the high beams. But nothing works that way this tour, what with his National Guard unit attached to a bro-bra army division that has bigger things on its mind. Nothing ever works—not night vision goggles, not spark plugs, not good luck charms, and certainly not high beams. Even the interpreters supplied by an on-base branch of the Afghan National Army seem to come up short—if the Spartans are lucky enough to get one for a mission. Miller simply hasn’t found a way to fully see what’s coming yet, and today’s headlines about US funds are just one more example. Abdul-Bari Gawri, the Oruzgan district chief Miller’s negotiated with for the past six months, has been rolling in US dough all along. Now, Miller knows Gawri’s cash supply directly correlates with the unending stream of trucks delivering to Forward Operating Base Copperhead. The soldiers on base have clean water, electricity, PlayStations—freaking Facebook out here—and all of that is because no one’s blowing up Afghan supply trucks contracted by the US Department of Defense. Yet anytime Miller’s platoon tries to bring aid to people in need, they’re at risk of getting shredded by a roadside bomb. This week will bring what Miller likes to think of as final harvest: a trip to the remote village of Imar and back—Spartan’s last mission outside the wire. Then, blind spots or not, Miller can call it done. In the bag. Trimmed and tied. All of the Spartans can. Every last one of them rip-roaring ready for home, alive and lusting for the long legs of the women who love them.
“Hey, hey, hey,” somebody shouts. “Chill out, Folson.”
Miller closes the distance on the huddle of shirtless bodies centered around Folson and the linebacker. The heat of the day almost immediately suffocates him, the sun pinking his skin into a perma-burn. It’s as though he’s a lobster, the light a buttery condiment of death. Is there any relief on this tour? Miller would be hard-pressed to say yes. Except, perhaps, in moments like this next one, where he’ll get a read on Folson and try to help fend off the quake. This is what he does best. All of them, even the opposing Alphas, would give him that. He elbows his way into the middle of the pack.
“The hell?” the linebacker says. His voice squeezes through blocky muscle and bone.
“You heard me,” Folson says and slams the ball into the ground. It bounces off the dirt and pings into someone’s shins. “Tackle me around the neck like that one more time, and I’ll stuff your nutsack down your throat!”
“Dude, it was a fair tackle. All shoulders,” one of the Alphas offers.
“Just drop it, Folson, would ya?” Specialist Rachmann says. He’s with Spartan, a know-it-all. The kind of guardsman that makes it easy for army fuck-sticks to poke fun at Miller’s unit. If it were possible, Miller would have duct-taped Rachmann’s mouth shut for the duration of their tour.
“Hey, Folson?” Miller says. He gives Rachmann a stay-out-of-this look. “PFC FOLSON!”
And there it is—that brash confidence, that heady bellow. Miller’s voice makes for an odd pairing with his creaseless skin and boyish, button nose. He would have laughed out loud if someone played a recording of this to his teenaged self ten years back. Now, it’s a voice that upholds his standing, embodying the dependability everyone counts on. “PFC Folson, you’ll respond when I address you.”
“Yes, LT. However, I’ve got a problem here,” Folson waves his hand in the direction of the linebacker, as if shooing a fly. For a moment, the sun catches the glint of his wedding band, though everyone has warned Folson he’s better off noosing it around his neck with his tags.
“We do too. We’d like to keep playing,” Miller says. “So cool down or walk off.”
“And what problem is that?” the linebacker asks. He squares his hips and shoulders to face Folson, a pit bull reflex.
“The problem is, I’ve promised to stuff your nutsack down your throat, but studying you now…” Folson scans the linebacker one more time, “it’s not clear you really have one.”
The linebacker lunges, and the two momentarily vault, then hit the ground.
“Tackle low enough for you, shitbag?” the linebacker asks. They grapple chest to chest, and he pins Folson into the dirt with admirable efficiency.
“Get off of me, you faggot. Get off!” Folson bucks in useless defense. Pressed into the ground, he appears utterly small and flailing, his sunburned face reminiscent of a newborn’s—scrunched, helpless. In one humph and exhale, the linebacker rises to his feet. Both teams stare for a moment as Folson writhes in the dirt.
“Who’s the faggot now, Spartan?”
Miller moves in, offering Folson a hand up. Face-to-face, they could be sunburned siblings at a beach party, matching brown buzz cuts and blistered ears, the booze and heat getting the better of them. But, of course, there’s rank. There’s experience. Miller has both. He’s also got bad news to deliver to Folson, and there’s no more putting it off. “My office,” he spits. “1900 hours.”
“Yes, Sir,” Folson responds. His affirmative sounds like defeat. Typical, for this half-bro-bra/half-teddy-bear soldier whose personnel file reads nothing like Miller’s three years in the army after high school, including two deployments. When Miller got out, he joined the National Guard to pay for college—not that he graduated—and now, with tour three under his belt and number four almost wrapped up, he’s the 2LT every grunt dreams will take him outside the wire. More experience than his rank suggests, without the ego, which is why he knows it’s best to give Folson the letter from the divorce attorney privately, sparing him the humiliation at mail call.
But there’s more to Miller’s confidence than experience. Back in his room, showered and shaved, he thinks about the locked filing cabinet in his office. The bottom drawer of pills. Six bottles of Ritalin. Another two of Percocet. It’s comforting, knowing they’re there, like a rich man who never spends a dime. Mercer would have understood that—the dignity in death over failure. Trying to lead the Spartans has felt like reaching for something dropped into a pool, then watching how quickly it sinks away. Knowing how easily he could down those pills, Miller thinks—or how he could mishandle his own weapon or put himself in harm’s way outside the wire to end it quickly—gives him more than confidence. It gives him permission to do whatever it takes to keep his men alive and his sense of pride, at least outwardly, intact. During his third tour—the Korengals, Mercer shot dead while Miller targeted the wrong man—Rachmann served on the same fire team. Now, Miller is superior to the one person who saw just how clearly he failed.
If he stayed true to his promise, Tenley would know all of that. But how could she understand? He hasn’t been able to tell her. Can’t even give her the chance to love him the way he needs it most, and perhaps that, more than anything, is what makes him consider ending it all. He’d seen ground zero on a debate team trip in high school. He’d visited the Grand Canyon, the old growth forests out West. He’s a father, a husband. He’d held his daughter the day she was born. A lot for one life, if you considered the big scheme of things. Can he say he’s lived well? Would Tenley say as much? He likes to think so, and if Rachmann dares to suggest otherwise, dares to even mention Mercer, that locked drawer is within arm’s reach.
Strange to realize the last time Miller felt such desperation, he’d been falling in love with Tenley, now his wife of six years. It was a different kind of desperation, but the core of it—the burning hot middle of wanting something so badly you’d hurt yourself