Whitney Terrell - The Good Lieutenant

“All right, guys,” she says, crouching down into a squat. “Come here, gather in with me. Waldorf, where are you?” He’s off to the left, hunched over, at the far end of the line of faces, and she reaches a hand out to him and pulls him in closer, so that he has to squat beside her. She drapes an arm around his neck.

“I just met with Captain Hartz.” She looks up. “He told me specifically to relay to you his pride and gratitude for the bravery of your actions here, recovering the body of Sergeant Beale. The two guys we killed in that field were our enemies. I have the testimony here to prove it. They killed Carl Beale. They buried him in this field like an animal. They would have left him to rot here permanently.”

Dykstra snorts and shakes his head.

“All right, maybe he didn’t say that,” Fowler admits. “So fuck him, then, I did.”

When she glances over her shoulder, she sees the EOD lieutenant, his goggles flashing, waving with both hands like a priest for her to kneel.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?”

“I think he wants us to take cover, ma’am.”

“Oh, for chrissakes, we’re too far away. He can’t hurt anybody.”

“Fire in the hole, I need you to take cover, please!”

This time the lieutenant is pointing at her directly, and Fowler stands and waves him off and squats down again. The harsher instructions she’s given to Eggleston will be transmitted in their own way. Now what she wants is control. She will give them a story and they will accept it and she will drive away the laggards who attempt to tell it a different way. “Six more months,” she says. “That’s all we got left. You did what I trained you to do. The men who died here did not die because of you. They died for you, and it’s you who are going to bring the truth of what they did back.” She waits for an argument but there is none, and so they bow their heads, waiting for the blast.

Even in the worst circumstances, there’s usually something funny about a controlled detonation. Amusement at the power of the explosives, relief that the bombs were friendly and their power would not be directed at them. This time, though, when the charges rip, Fowler and her men pull in together, touching the brims of their helmets.

They stay there for a while longer, after the all-clear. Nobody’s saying anything. When she looks up, she can see everybody’s eyes. Who here will be the dissenter? Who will be her Judas? Who will dare report her murders? What breaks the tension, relieves the awful interrogation of her gaze, is the rain of dirt from the explosion, pouring down out of the sky. It rattles on their Kevlars. “Fucking typical,” Jimenez says.

Then she stands and leads them all into the wheat.

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. This book could not have been written without the help and advice of many soldiers who served in Iraq, especially members of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, and the 36th Engineer Brigade. A sincere thank-you to all of them. Specifically, I would like to mention these servicewomen and servicemen: Stacy Moore, Travis Parker, Angela Fitle, Nate Rawlings, John Sabia, Sam Karr, Edwin Melendez, Elizabeth Harmon-Craig, Sarah Apgar, David O’Donahue, Erin Kennedy, Sammy Sparger and Jennifer McDonough. Their kindness and expertise was invaluable. I would also like to thank Khaldoun Ahmad, who advised me on Iraqi life, and Flagg Miller, who consulted on the Arabic in this book. The following friends, writers, editors, and institutions provided crucial input and support: Andy Wright, Tom Shroder, Deborah Clark, June Thomas, Ed Quigley, Susi Cohen, Margot Livesey, Michael Knight, Michael Pritchett, Crosby Kemper III, Shannon Jackson, Daniel Woodrell, Frank and Sandy Terrell, the R&S Artspace, the Kansas City Public Library (thanks, H.F. and C.C.!), and UMKC. About halfway through this book, as I was wrestling with its reverse chronology, my colleague Michelle Boisseau recommended Charles Baxter’s marvelous novel First Light . I second her recommendation. Sarah Scire, Nora Barlow, and many other wonderful people at Farrar, Straus and Giroux have worked tirelessly to introduce this novel to the world. A final and enduring thanks goes to my agent, Warren Frazier, and my editor, Sean McDonald. They believed in this project at the most crucial moments, and without them, I wouldn’t be writing this.

Whitney Terrell is the author of The Huntsman , a New York Times notable book, and The King of Kings County . He is the recipient of a James A. Michener — Copernicus Society Award and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. He was an embedded reporter in Iraq during 2006 and 2010 and covered the war for The Washington Post Magazine, Slate , and NPR. His nonfiction has also appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Observer, The Kansas City Star , and other publications. He teaches creative writing at the University of Missouri — Kansas City and lives nearby with his family. You can sign up for email updates here.