Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Guthrie said, “You know what it was like? It was like attacking St. Louis. It’s right on the river. It’s about the same size, and St. Louis has a lot of churches. Well, Fallujah has a lot of mosques. And they were all full of weapons. Not much happened there during the invasion itself, so the insurgents had plenty of time to get ready.”

Felicity’s mom had told her that Guthrie would be different when he got home. No really bad things had happened to him, like getting shot or driving over a bomb (an “improvised explosive device”—Felicity mouthed the words), but every war was full of things that you didn’t want to see unless you had to, and Guthrie had seen plenty of them. He came home more serious, more jumpy. But he did want to go back.

“I mean, we kicked them out once, but that didn’t work. There was this old Baathist resort nearby. Kind of like that casino outside of St. Louis, in St. Charles. So they weren’t going to let it go easy.”

“What was the scariest thing?”

Felicity saw that she was fiddling with her hair, winding it around her finger over and over. She unwound it, put her hand in her lap. Guthrie didn’t say anything for a moment. The dark-red oak floorboards of the porch were cool and smooth, and one of the windows rattled in the breeze. She imagined either Guthrie or Perky noticing the crack in the doorway and discovering her, but just then Guthrie said: “I don’t know. It’s scariest before you go in. It’s scary to imagine the IEDs and the booby traps and the insurgents around every corner. Then you do go in, and something happens, and you’re so jacked up you don’t take it in at the time. You just keep going. I mean, this guy in my unit who was behind me got hit by a rocket. Just blew him up. We saw it, but no one said anything. There was nothing to say.”

Felicity rested her palm on her forehead. She was suddenly feeling a little dizzy. She knew that there were women soldiers in Iraq, who wore camo and everything.

Guthrie said, “It’s fucking hot. You’re covered from top to toe and wearing boots and carrying, carrying like a hundred pounds of shit. If you’re in a tank, it’s boiling. A guy passes out, you just shake him and hydrate him, and he’s got to get it together.” Then he said, “I mean, there were almost twenty thousand troops. That seems like a lot, and it was way more than when they went in there the first time, a year ago, and fucking lost. But they learned their lesson. Forty thousand would have been better, in a way. Or bombing the place flat with NE — you know, novel explosives. Those are scary. The marines did some of that. That’s what the IDF would do.”

Felicity knew that the IDF was the Israelis. They had talked about it in school.

“What about the white phosphorus?”

“Who said anything about that?”

“I read about it.”

“I’m not saying you can’t use it. You got to use what you got to use.”

Now there was a long pause, so long that Felicity had to extend her legs, very slowly, and she made a noise, because the rug shifted. Outside, in the top of the apple tree, two squirrels started running along a big branch, as if they were playing tag. Finally, Guthrie said, “Well, we saw some stuff. I’m not saying that our guys aimed it at anyone. Stuff goes up, stuff comes down. You flush them out and then shoot them. Maybe that’s putting them out of their misery.”

Perky said, “Yeah.” Dully, agreeing.

Then Guthrie said, “The skin just gets burned off where the crap lands, then it keeps burning into the flesh as long as there is any of it. I mean, you fucking took chemistry.”

Felicity stared at her pale, cold knees and shins, imagining this.

Suddenly the door opened, and Guthrie stepped onto the porch. She thought he was going to yell at her, but he didn’t even notice her. He went over to one of the windows, opened it, lit a cigarette. Felicity pulled her knees up again and sat quietly. He was wearing briefs and a T-shirt, even though it was cold. She hadn’t seen him in briefs for a long time — in their house, everyone was very modest. His legs were hairy, all the way down to his ankles. His tattoo was a little covered up, but she knew he would shave his head again when he was ready to be sent back. He was all muscle; that was another way he had changed. He stared out the window long enough to smoke the whole cigarette, then stab the butt into an ashtray that she hadn’t seen on the windowsill. He turned around and saw her. “Hey, kiddo. What are you doing?”

She was brave. She said, “Eavesdropping.”

He smiled his usual old smile and said, “Well, I guess someone has to.” He came over and held out his hand to her. She took his and stood up. He said, “I hear you learned how to make popovers.”

“Grandma taught me.”

“Well, let’s have some.”

She said, “Have you killed anyone?”

He said, “No one I know.”

“Do you care if I ask?”

“No. Because I think about it.”

She got a little closer to him, and put her hand in his. He squeezed it. When they made the popovers, he separated the eggs.

—

IT TURNED OUT that Jessica Montana was really Jessica MacKenna, or would have been if her ancestors had not moved from County Cork to Butte, Montana, in the early twentieth century. This was what Henry found interesting about her. Otherwise, she seemed like a good match for Richie. Riley, however, found the name change highly suspicious. Jessica was sitting at the table, with her back to the kitchen door, saying to Henry that she herself had never been back to Inishannon, or anywhere in Ireland, though her sister, Aileen Montana, had rented a car and driven from Dublin to Galway to Limerick to Cork to Waterford and back to Dublin. Henry was saying, “I would love to do that,” but even so he heard Riley snort. Richie turned his head in Riley’s direction, but Jessica paid her no mind. Jessica seemed like the type who went blithely forward, eternally surprised but not daunted by impediments. There were Calhouns from Ireland, and plenty of Rileys, but when Henry prodded her, Riley said that her Riley grandmother was English and her Calhouns were Scottish. She said nothing about her Menominee side.

Henry knew he tended to go on at boring length about all sorts of origins, and it had taken Richie months to agree to this little supper, so he made himself shut up. Alexis, who was almost three, about as big as a minute, and had Riley’s dark, penetrating eyes, said, “Do you like tofu?” in a serious voice, and looked at Jessica. Riley had been trying to get Alexis to eat tofu for a couple of weeks now, with no success. Alexis was a good talker and a good passive resister. One of her ploys was to solicit opinions on those things that her mother was trying to foist upon her.

Jessica said, “Not really. Grilled, maybe.” She answered as if she were talking to an adult.

Riley came in, set the eggplant Parmesan on the table, and said, “So — you’re a meat eater? How many times a week?”

“Every day, I suppose,” said Jessica. “I don’t really think about it. I have a big appetite.”

She looked as though she did, thought Henry.

“We’ve been vegetarian for a long time. Alexis has never had meat.”

Except for those bits of hot dog Henry had given her.

“But she doesn’t like tofu, I’m sorry to say.”

“Yuck,” said Alexis, but with an alluring smile on her face.

“My grandfather was a butcher,” said Jessica. “You can’t imagine the offal that my father and his brothers ate. Kidneys were just the beginning.” She helped herself to the eggplant, ate with pleasure. It took Riley about a minute to say, “What’s the difference, really?”

Jessica let this go by.

After Richie and Jessica left and Alexis was put to bed, Henry helped with the dishes.