Bob Shacochis - The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Flicker, flare, gone.

Love, understanding, happiness.

He thinks, as he will always think, I can bring you close: an image, our time — but he will not and cannot do it, because it is too much to bear, her closeness, now that she is gone. I can remember, he tells himself, but he won’t.

Why would he want to keep telling himself their story when it felt better, saner, to have no story at all?

Mom, it’s late, he said that quiet unholy night, go to bed. And he kissed her cheek and she went to her room and he kissed her again on Christmas Day under the mistletoe and he kissed her after they finished dancing at the American Legion on New Year’s Eve and then once more the following day when she dropped him at the airport in Missoula, a free and independent woman, his mother, her beloved eldest son like his own beloved father, off somewhere in the hinterlands of the world when in her loneliness she most desired their company and they most desired a higher cause, which she both acknowledged and despised with a buried impotent fury.

Back inside the Wall at Fayetteville he reported for duty and was told that the lieutenant colonel wanted a word with him and there in his office was McCall, half-hidden at his desk, the poor bastard barricaded behind dung heaps of paperwork. The lieutenant colonel scratched his brush cut and selected a folder from one of the mounds, using it to fan the air. Top, he said, a salutation Burnette hadn’t heard in ages. With apologies for a nonsensical policy now defunct, the colonel informed him that his original pre-Delta selection rank had been restored. That ain’t the end of it, said Lieutenant Colonel McCall. Burn, you still want to go mustang?

Yes, sir.

The major shuffled the dung heap and extracted another document that had him shaking his head. Man, Burnette, your file is one fucked-up bitch, I have to say. This piece of paper here tells me your direct commission as a captain has continued to mature. Your entire career path has been highly unorthodox, wouldn’t you say?

I’d say so, sir.

Want to try to explain it?

I can’t, sir.

I have the orders right here to put you in school — the Command and General Staff College out at Fort Leavenworth. Yes or no, partner. Choose your poison. You’re eligible for a bump up the ranks.

School sounds pretty good, sir, said Burnette.

And so that winter of ’99 he found himself in Kansas, sitting in Bell Hall, the schoolhouse at Leavenworth, scheduled for promotion to major off a special, never published list of candidates, a zebra dropped into the horse show, learning how to write operations orders to scale for a battalion or brigade, his classmates and especially his instructors mostly people who look down and see the top of their stomachs, guys with more degrees than a thermometer. For a while Leavenworth seemed like the right choice to Burnette, an idyllic respite from the regimens of killing (practice, practice, practice) and the adrenaline stream of the field, the blood drama, the screech of chaos and precision, the eerie calm, the hideous thrill. The classroom was a powerful antidote to his season on the warpath, a dismount into a restorative interlude, breaking the bad habit of not thinking beyond the absoluteness of the moment, not thinking deeper, deep enough to separate his life from its lethal existence before it became impossible to have a life beyond war that amounted to much. But after a few months, alone at night in his rented room, the episodes of doubt began — he was being shown an army he had never truly seen, the one worried about PowerPoint presentations, fonts on slides, men who can’t climb the stairs without being out of breath. His workouts became fiendish as the classes struck him as increasingly worthless.

And it was there at the college that spring, after a heated morning’s seminar in international humanitarian policy (topic: war as philanthropy), that he was pulled aside by an adjutant as he left the classroom and told that the head of the department wished to see him. In line with his scholastic immunity, he hadn’t been paged or summoned to action in months, nor had he had any contact with Steven Chambers since the undersecretary’s heartless dismissal in the Landstuhl chapel. When everything’s that fucked up you don’t ask questions, you walk away, you don’t look back, you move on, you forget because forgetting is the only positive thing you can do. He took the stairs to the third floor, his footsteps echoing on the tiles past the long line of doors on both sides of the hallway, the length of a football field. He reported to the secretary in the front room of the administrative section, who gestured toward an inner door. He knocked and walked in; the colonel, bland as any civilian dean, stood away from his desk, forgoing a salute, waiting to greet him with a handshake. Burnette, he said, do you own a suit and tie? I mean a black suit, wool, formal? And a tie? Not any old hippie tie with flowers and polka dots.

No sir. Just a blazer.

All right then, said the colonel. When you leave here my adjutant will take you to the clothier in Kansas City.

Got it. What’s up, sir?

You’re on a Title 22 request for the next four days, he said, and Burnette, with a look of perplexity, admitted he couldn’t recall ever hearing mention of Title 22.

It’s State Department, said the colonel. They requested you, specifically. There’s a funeral in Europe. They’ve asked that you head up the security detail for our people.

Why would they do that? State operates its own muscle-heads, sir.

What’s the problem, Burnette?

Why me? Is there some reason?

I can tell you what I know, said the colonel. One, we’re talking the Balkans. Two, State has received credible threats on the life of one of its dignitaries. Three, you seem to be acquainted with the chief of the host country’s security service, some general named Vasich.

Vasich? A Croatian?

Yes, said the colonel. I think that’s right.

With all respect, Colonel. Please advise State I’m unavailable for the assignment.

Not going to happen, Burnette. Given the possibility of your refusal, my orders are to ask you to pick up the phone on my desk and dial the number I read out to you.

Who am I calling, sir?

The Pentagon.

Who am I speaking to?

I can’t tell you that, son, because I don’t know. You getting the picture here?

He dialed the number, whoever picked up asked his name and rank and transferred the call to another person who asked again for Burnette to identify himself and he was transferred once more to a secure line and after a moment’s clicking someone answered saying, Ev, how the hell are you? How’s school? and he played along, answering politely, letting the guy talk, recognizing the voice but unable to place it until the voice said, We miss you out there on the links, buddy, and Eville said Ben? This is Ben, right? What’s this all about?

You got a few minutes? asked Ben sardonically and Burnette said I don’t know, sir, but Ben kept talking and Burnette tried to explain his reluctance to participate in the mission but didn’t get very far. Ben euphemistically described the undersecretary’s medical crisis, and then mentioned The Hague, ongoing investigations, potential legal complications. If Steve starts running his mouth, shoot him, said Ben, letting the silence on the line resonate before amending his directive. Hey, Ev, I’m joking, but you get the point. And one more thing. This guy from The Hague snooping around, an American lawyer. I think you might know him.

Everything settled? asked the colonel.

Oh, man, said Burnette. Fuck me, sir. Yes, sir.

Then the adjutant was there to take him downtown and then to his apartment and then to the airport for a flight to Andrews where he boarded a plane with Scarecrow and the team at sundown for a sunrise landing in Zagreb, Vasich a lone sentinel on the wet tarmac, dressed in winter-blue camo fatigues, a brass star pinned to each epaulette, bareheaded, his baldness aglow with pluvial mist, greeting Burnette with a bear hug and a happy growl, My fucking brother, ready to begin the advance work, two days hence, for the funeral of Davor Starevica, a man the general described to the Americans as the father of Croatian independence.