Only the Dead
Every day now he flies over the forest, heading for the mine, where he begins his search. He hates starting there and seeing the children slaving in the raw earth. It upsets him when he begins every shift. The waves of guilt and shame still sweep through him. They are worse when he sees these children digging in the earth and carrying the bags up the muddy slopes. If he zooms in close he can see their dark, suffering eyes, like holes in their faces.
He tries not to think about them as he flies the Predator. He thinks of how the teddy bears made Brett and McKenzie happy, but then he remembers that Carrie was angry about his buying them.
‘You shouldn’t be spending our money on junk like that,’ she said when the kids had gone to bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and reached for the remote to turn on the TV. His hand shook as he pressed the buttons, and he could feel the fear and the anger swirling inside him.
‘Turn that thing off please,’ Carrie said quietly.
He ignored her and sat for a few minutes watching Fox news. It was the only news he liked. It was the only news that was not full of the liberal garbage that the other networks ran. Why, if it was left to them, the country would have been taken over by terrorists years ago.
‘I asked you to turn it off,’ she repeated. ‘I need to speak to you.’
His stomach flip-flopped, and he could feel the sweat rising at his temples. The last thing he wanted to do was speak to her. He decided on a compromise. He muted the sound, so that only the pictures flashed across the screen. It reminded him of work, silent images, trapped behind glass. There were some shots of the White House, and the president walking out onto the South Lawn. Then it cut to Afghanistan, and marines in the brown, dry mountainsides. He had lost count of how many of the same slopes he had seen on his own screen, while he had been flying the Predator in support of the boys on the ground. At times, he had even circled overhead, keeping watch for terrorists, while they slept safe down below. Then the screen shifted to a young reporter who was at one of the bases. She was talking into the camera while the wind blew her hair to and fro across her face.
‘What’s going on?’ Carrie asked.
He kept staring at the screen for a few moments; he couldn’t believe how pretty the blonde reporter was. His heart pounded as he shifted his gaze back to Carrie.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing to do with you. I’m just working hard, that’s all.’
She looked at him for a few moments and then got up and went into the bedroom.
He turned the sound back on, but the girl was gone. The president was speaking from a podium in the garden. ‘We will fight terrorists wherever we find them,’ he was saying. ‘They should know they will never be safe. We will hunt them down and find them. They should know that America is resolute, that we never sleep.’
He liked hearing the president say that. This is what he is committed to doing; if only Carrie understood that, he thought. But then, he knew he had been wrong to speak to her that way. He felt guilty, but there was nothing he could do to explain it to her. Doing that would be too much of a risk. He has to keep his thoughts to himself. It’s his duty. He tried to watch TV a bit longer, but it was no good – he couldn’t concentrate. He lifted the remote again and shut off the TV. He stood up and turned off the light in the living room. The rest of the house was already dark, which meant that Carrie had gone to bed.
He stood alone at the door of the living room, staring down the unlit corridor, as the fear and the guilt, and now the shame, at the way he was treating his wife came rushing at him through the darkness.
The greenness of the forest canopy rushes by, thousands of miles away, and his chest is burning with pain as he checks his position with the GPS. It won’t be long before he reaches the mine. What happened last night at home with Carrie has really upset both of them. She told him at breakfast this morning, when the kids were in the living room watching TV and eating their cereal, that she was going to leave him if he carries on this way. She’s never said that to him before, but he knows her well enough to know that she means it.
‘What’s happening to you?’ she said.
He shook his head, and said nothing.
‘Please tell me,’ she asked, ‘before it’s too late.’
He couldn’t find anything to say to her. He wondered how much she guessed about the child, but he dared not tell her anything about that. He mumbled about work and long hours while she watched him through her lovely blue eyes and said nothing more.
