Into the Sun Page 11

  Justin, his mother said. She knelt next to him and put her fingers in his hair, and he turned his face to her chest and cried.

  Later, he and his parents went to an impromptu church service. His father invited Elle, but she declined, and as he drove, he briefly ruminated on her lack of gratitude. Attacking our country, he said through gritted teeth.

  The pastor talked about choice, the freedom God gives man to determine his salvation. Justin used to think about the pastor’s words the way he might an insight his English teacher made about a poem, but now he felt himself needing the pastor’s clarity and saw that he wasn’t alone. The air conditioning was off, and as the pastor paced, there were flecks of sweat on his cheeks. The future of America, he cried out, is your reward for faith. We are facing terrorists who believe they are right, but in the name of God, we must be the righteous ones.

  Each day after school Justin worked out as he never had, impatient for the week of mourning to end and football practice to resume. He began coming home after his parents, and after Elle had gone back to the carriage house. He became part of the core team, scoring frequently, though he was resentful that boys a year older were enlisting.

  That Friday night, his team won the home game, and the crowd surged onto the field, parents and friends patting each other, hugging or shaking hands. In the glare of floodlights, girls turned, smiling in his direction.

  Andrea stopped him as he left the locker room, her palm on his shoulder.

  Drive me home, she said. She wore a tank top, her midriff visible, a silver cross in her cleavage. She touched her lips to his chin and whispered, Please. He put his hands on her waist, her skin hot under his fingers. A passing boy hooted. Tear up that trim, Falker. You earned it!

  Justin held her until the boy was out of earshot. I can’t, he mumbled and hurried away, moving his shoulders as if striking, angling through the floodlight shadows between people. He got in his car and clutched the wheel. He’d renewed his vows each Sunday, praying for Christ to reveal his purpose since he was missing the most significant war of his lifetime.

  He drove home, passed his driveway, parked on another street, and jogged back. Only Elle’s bathroom was lit, and in the space next to the hedges, he knocked.

  She stood, a thin weaving current shimmering over her abdomen. He raised the window, climbed in, and undressed. The bed was too loud, and he pulled her to the floor. They made love hard and fast until his parents’ car pulled into the driveway.

  After they finished, he dressed in the bathroom and climbed out the window. Leaves drifted to the sidewalk beneath the cooling trees, cracking under his sneakers.

  Later, praying for forgiveness, he envisioned the islands off the coast and himself there with a woman as pure as the place.

  That Saturday evening, when his parents went out, he crossed the yard to end it.

  When the door opened, a man stood silhouetted, a short beard on the bone of his jaw, his black T-shirt torn at the collar. Clay was all angles, sunken eyes, crow’s-feet. He caught Justin’s shoulders and jerked him forward, hugging him.

  Clay seemed to have returned from another era, with the jutting bones of a tramp, fibrous muscles, and cancroid bulges where he should have had biceps. Though the police spoke with him, he told Justin only that he’d been with his father.

  Weeks passed, but they didn’t see each other often. Justin spent time at football practice and Clay went back to work at the docks. Clay quickly put on weight, but the few boyish traits he’d had never returned. The school held him back a grade, and he was as standoffish with the other students as when he’d first shown up.

  One morning, when Justin went out, Clay was on the carriage house porch and invited him on a run. Justin agreed. He took a carton of juice from the fridge and two bananas, and washed down mouthfuls as he hurried to his room and changed.

  Right away, Clay set a hard pace. Justin wasn’t warm and gulped air, having eaten too fast, and when Clay asked if he was okay, Justin said it was his recovery period.

  Try the docks, Clay told him. Football training is nothing.

  Justin kept quiet. The boy who’d disappeared had been quietly respectful, if calculating, but Clay now acted as if he’d been locked in a box. He ran, shooting quick, unfriendly glances like jabs. He hadn’t said anything about Justin’s visit to the carriage house, but maybe Elle had.

  Justin asked what had happened with Melody, and Clay told him she’d had an abortion, that her parents were hard-core Christians but made her do it to protect their reputation.

  When that whole thing went down with you and Dylan, Justin said, what did you whisper in her ear?

  Just some stuff I made up. There’s only so much a guy can do to a girl in high school.

  They’d reached where the city limits abutted swampy forest, and Clay cut into it.

  Fuck running in the street, he called back. It doesn’t help us. It’s not real.

  We’re going to get covered in ticks, Justin shouted, mud splashing his legs as Clay leapt between hummocks and roots with a desperate animal haste.

  Justin forced himself to keep pace, his sneakers black, branches and thorns catching on his clothes and skin, but Clay charged ahead, oblivious to the blood on his arms.

  When they reached another road, Clay said he’d wanted this — I want to break through, to wake up and really feel the world.

  The disclosure surprised Justin. Like those islands? he asked, panting.

  What? Oh yeah — Clay laughed — those fucking islands.

  He kept running, his profile spare and angular, his wet hair bristling like a dog’s hackles.

  Anyway, he said, I’m going to enlist. There’s no point waiting. We have a war to fight, and I’ve already fucked high school.

  Justin’s envy made it hard to speak.

  When they reached their driveway, Justin told him that he was going to a prayer vigil for soldiers in Afghanistan. Clay declined his invitation.

  As Justin showered, he considered the notion of breaking through — but spiritually. In war, Justin would be an officer, sustaining his men with faith. He found himself mixing the ideas of his pastor and father: that the wealth other countries envied America was the result of spiritual merit, that America had to create peace in the Middle East with democracy and the free market.

  He toweled off at the window, watching the carriage house until Clay left. He dressed and went down, and knocked on the screen door.

  She came slowly into the reflection of the sky, her face a sketch in blue light, her threadbare jeans and tank top just beyond the panel of screen. She pushed the door open.

  He stepped inside, so close they almost touched.

  Clay’s back, he said. I think it’s a bad idea for us to keep doing this.

  She took a breath, her lips extended, full and suddenly pale, like the mouth of a fish. A tear gathered at the corner of each eye and descended, globular, as slow as beads of oil.

  What’s wrong?

  I feel so stupid. She folded her arms over her stomach as if she’d been hit.

  I’m just a kid, he told her, feeling frustrated. She didn’t have a right to be upset. He was meant for more.

  Then go home.

  He reached for her shoulder. I’m sorry.

  Go home, you fucking baby. Don’t waste my time.

  He hurried out. On its tired spring, the screen door bumped shut behind him.

  Inside the kitchen, he placed his palm to his ribs and tried to breathe. She was trash, and he had nothing to feel bad about, but he couldn’t ease his fear — it gripped the muscles of his chest — that Clay would find out.

  The next morning, at school, the violence he’d foreseen in Clay was all anyone talked about. He’d crashed a party and taken on three football players. One had joked with a friend who’d been held back a grade, saying, within earshot of Clay, You get k
idnapped too? Clay punched out his front teeth. It was so quick, everyone said, they hadn’t even seen him swing. The others jumped on him, but they were drunk — too slow and clumsy. Clay broke an arm, scattered more teeth, and ended up in the pool, where he beat his final opponent unconscious. The boy was left floating in the water. Like he was drowned, a girl told Justin. No one pressed charges because it was three to one, though Clay had only a few bruises and split knuckles. When Justin showed up to practice, two members of the starting lineup were still in the hospital. The coach called it a holocaust.

  We need to talk about Clay, Justin’s father told him after school. Keep your distance. That boy isn’t the same.

  He’s going to drop out and join the Marines.

  He should have joined yesterday. Then he’d be killing Arabs and not hurting our boys.

  A week passed and then another, but Clay no longer came around the carriage house. He never returned to school.

  The evening of the team’s final game, a gulf wind was blowing, drifting the lobbed football and making running feel like towing weight. Justin had gone to the Marines recruiting office that afternoon. He said he was graduating in seven months and wanted to join. He loved what he learned there — the merciless training, the unornamented uniforms. He wasn’t applying to college. His parents no longer argued about it. His mother recognized a losing battle and had also been different since 9/11.

  On the field, Justin dodged tackles and flattened a few oncoming players, driving them to the ground. He ran in for two touchdowns, and then a third — the last of the game.

  In the locker room, a linebacker gave the location for the party, a construction site fifteen minutes outside town, where his father had poured a foundation. The players pooled money for a keg, and as they went through the crowd, they spread the word.

  The loose convoy of cars and trucks exited the highway, followed a back road, and pulled onto a freshly graveled drive between rice fields, to a forested rise with a bulldozed lot. They parked in a circle around the concrete slab, leaving their low beams on. The concentrated luminance made the air around their legs palpable, as if they were walking through molten steel.

  Justin had never been to a party this big before. There were more than a hundred people, and a second circle of cars around the first. Couples kissed in the dark or fucked in backseats. All around, the embers of cigarettes and joints flared like sparks from a fire.

  Justin held a beer but didn’t drink as kids patted his back or inflicted bear hugs. Then Andrea was there, her strawberry hair down.

  Justin! She hugged his waist. I’m so proud of you. I was right there cheering.

  She pushed him against a truck and stood on her toes to kiss him, a hint of alcohol on her breath and her tongue tasting of Pepsi. She slid a hand to his crotch.

  Promise you’ll never ditch me again.

  Okay, he said, knowing he couldn’t promise, but she was already unzipping his pants, and he had to get the exultation and impatience out of his body.

  Nearby, in the circle, the talking grew louder until it became shouting and the music stopped.

  Clay spoke loudly. You still itching from those chiggers you got hiding in the woods?

  Willard replied, Get kidnapped, psycho.

  People laughed nervously as Clay said something Justin couldn’t hear.

  Oh? You don’t even know how to throw a pigskin, Willard told him.

  Justin moved away from Andrea, toward the circle. The team had gathered behind Willard. Clay wore camo pants and a black long-sleeve T-shirt that held a sheen of sweat. A duffel hung from his shoulder, and when he put it on the concrete, metal clinked.

  Your pigskin’s not going to help us in Afghanistan, he said.

  I thought the army wanted recruits with diplomas.

  Boys guffawed, and a few girls covered their mouths.

  Nah, Clay told him, they don’t want recruits who can’t back up their words.

  There was more laughter, and Willard said, All right, Clay, what’s the game this time?

  Clay asked for the five best shots, and young men were pushed forward: Brandon and Aaron and Chuck.

  Don’t forget Justin, Clay said. He’s the one who helped me bag Willard.

  Hands prodded Justin forward, though he didn’t want to compete against his teammates and said he wasn’t that good.

  You’re one of the best, Clay told him. You’ll make a better marine than anyone here.

  Clay unzipped the duffel on six air rifles. No one appeared bothered. Most of the young men had had air rifles since they were boys.

  Clay slid a silver CO2 canister from a pack and plugged it into the forestock, just below the barrel. He told them that the air rifles were semi-automatic and fully loaded. He then took a white box from the duffel and opened it to reveal Christmas tree ornaments — rows of shiny bulbs, each pair a different color.

  Justin, Clay said, and waved him over. He slid the wire of a white bulb through Justin’s shirt, at the heart, and twisted it. He stepped behind him and did the same on his back.

  If you’re a marksman, he said, you take out the heart.

  He handed Justin a rifle and then shoved a second rifle at Willard, the metal slapping his palms. He gave Willard two silver bulbs to put on his shirt and did the same for the others: green for Brandon, yellow for Aaron, orange for Chuck.

  Go where you want, Clay said, but don’t cross the paved road. If someone shoots you in the heart from either side, you’re out. You shout your name and walk back into the circle with the gun over your head. If a bulb accidentally breaks, you come back and get another one at your own risk.

  He attached a red bulb to his shirt and had Justin hook one to his back. Then he turned to take in the crowd, the seriousness of his gaze diminishing the absurdity of the ornaments.

  There are no teams, he said. We walk in different directions. Everyone count to thirty. May the best man win.

  Justin was stunned. The crowd’s count rumbled in his ears like a chant during a game. Hands guided him beyond the circle, as if his touchdowns meant nothing. They aimed him along the gravel road between fields, and at twenty-five, he realized how exposed he was.

  The moon was a few days from full, small clouds passing beneath, their shadows shuttling over the grass. At thirty, the crowd roared. He hid himself in a ditch of weeds.

  The drained field compressed beneath his feet, insects ticking all around him. A cloud briefly blotted the moon, the gravel road glowing like a silver bridge. Beyond the trees, the incandescence of combined headlights spilled upward in a burning pillar.

  Justin crawled toward the forest, his arms itching. If he waited for whoever survived to come for him, everyone would know he’d hidden until the end.

  I’m out, someone shouted. It’s me, Aaron!

  Justin hadn’t heard the shot, but the voice didn’t sound far away. The crowd had been quiet — mutters, the occasional cough or cackle — and now cheered.

  Willard got me, Aaron told them.

  Justin scanned the forest edge. Clay would survive until the end. It would be far better for Justin to get shot by someone else.

  The pop of the shattering bulb was clear this time.

  It’s me — Brandon. Clay got me.

  Breeze-blown tassels of wild grass brushed Justin’s cheeks, and briefly he saw the moon’s radiance, stars brightest at its perimeter all along the horizon — the light of God as subtle as the truth of existence, invisible to those in the circle of human combustion. His desire to be in Afghanistan pulled at him, to behold for himself the images he’d seen on TV: helicopters crossing the pale, ragged crests of mountains set against a vast starlit dome.

  Me, too — I’m out, Willard shouted. Chuck got me.

  Justin snapped out of his reverie. The game was unrolling quickly. The others had probably put themselves in the line of fire.
No one would leave the forest in favor of the field. He scuttled toward the trees, and as he reached them, a rifle clacked. At his shoulder, a chunk of bark flicked off one of the trunks. He scrambled behind a heap of brush.

  Almost got you, Chuck called, sounding drunk. He laughed. I’m gonna get you!

  Justin should have stayed exposed and let Chuck shoot him. He braced, taking a breath, and then put his face down and stepped back out.

  The sound of the rifle was off to the right this time, and a bulb shattered.

  Goddamn it, Chuck shouted. Coming out. Dead man walking!

  Justin dropped down, sweating hard. An insect scurried over his hand. Treetops glowed, gauzy paths visible through the forest. He wanted to call to Clay. This ending made no sense.

  The crowd was silent: the occasional beer crisply opened, bottles clinking. With his thumb to his cheekbone, his rifle leveled, Justin pivoted slowly, scanning the crosshatched forest, waiting for someone to shout in the circle of cars.

  A cloud eclipsed the moon, and Willard yelled, Hurry up and kill each other!

  With the laughter, Justin ran, dropped to a knee behind a tree, and spun. The static shapes of the forest dissolved against the dark earth. A rifle fired, and his gun hand convulsed, throbbing between his forefinger and thumb. A nerve flared along his arm. He steadied the rifle and swung it around.

  Clay crouched between two trees, his black shirt merging with the night, the rifle to his shoulder, the red bulb on his chest invisible but for a glint — Justin’s white and glowing. He aimed, closing his left eye.

  The flash of light.

  Part 4

  Kabul: February/April 2012

  }

  美智子

  After his death, people talked about Justin, the story growing until he seemed more like a lesson about the compulsive madness of the occupation than someone who’d lived among us. He was remembered as the Mullah, though his Christianity was given so much importance everyone believed he’d been killed for proselytizing. A rumor also spread that he’d been fucking the Afghan girls he taught, and it thrived alongside a parallel rumor, that during his brief liaison with Alexandra, he’d refused to have sex — “With her of all people!” everyone agreed — because he didn’t believe in intercourse before marriage.