“Afternoon, sir,” I said.
“You boys drive over from Fort Campbell?” the old man asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Served there myself, a long time ago. Airborne,” he said, pointing to the patch on the shoulder of my uniform. “Hundred and first. ’Nam. Three tours.”
“My father was in ’Nam.”
“He must be proud of you.”
“He didn’t make it back, I’m afraid,” I said. “I never knew him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. All the same, I know he’s watching.”
The man tilted his head and pointed to the sky.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Is it Cody?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened?”
“I can’t say, sir.”
“Understood,” the man said. “How they holdin’ up?”
“As well as anyone could,” I said. “Better than most.”
“They’re good people,” the old man said. “Some of the best I know. Cody was a good boy. He’s a big deal to the kids around here. Wrestled over at Sacred Heart. State champ his senior year at one thirty. Little fireplug. He wasn’t the strongest or the fastest, but, boy, he just kept coming. Made the other guy want to quit. I bet he was a good soldier.”
Was Cody Carter a good soldier? For all I knew, he’d been an absolute shithead; unlikely, given what I’d seen of his life thus far, but, God knows, the Army was full of them. It didn’t really matter anymore. He was a hero now.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I need to take care of some arrangements for the Carters.”
“Beg your pardon.”
“No need to apologize,” I said. “Thank you for speaking with me, sir.”
“You tell Pete and Martha we’re here for them when they’re ready,” the old man said.
I nodded. The old man straightened his back as if standing at attention and held his hand out for me to shake. I knew what was coming.
“Thank you for your service,” he said.
These moments happened to all of us, everywhere. Walking through an airport concourse, we’d meet the wistful gazes of hundreds of well-meaning citizens, and we’d know they were wondering if we were headed home or instead back to one of those far-flung deadly lands, with parents and spouses and children—some still unborn—waiting for us on front porches and stoops in all the Bellevues of America. Men patted us on the shoulder or gave us a soulful nod or a solemn salute. Some wanted to tell us that they also served, that they, too, had done their part, that they were different from the hordes of civilians who did not understand the concept of valor.
I knew these people meant well—that their respect was genuine and their gratitude sincere. Nevertheless, every time this happened to me, I felt like I was going to fucking puke.
I took his hand and shook it.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, returning one of those sad smiles that Mike thought made me such a popular Casualty Notification Officer.
I held up my phone.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said.
“Remember,” the old man said. “You tell ’em we’re out here.”
He rejoined the others gathered under the hickory tree with the big yellow ribbon around it. After I called the CAO, I retreated into the house, where the Carters still sat on the couch beneath the silent television while Mike tried to act comforting.
“Mr. and Mrs. Carter,” I said, “Lieutenant Garrett will pick you up in the morning, at eight a.m. He will travel with you to Dover. We’ve reserved a room for you at the Courtyard Marriott near the airport. You’ll stay overnight and then accompany your son home to Fort Campbell the following morning. They’ve notified your eldest son as well. His CO will do what he can to get him home for a few days.”
“Will we be able to see Cody?” the mother asked.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “Not at Dover. But you’ll be with him, to bring him home.”
Mrs. Carter rose from the couch. Finally, she broke. Her husband lurched up and reached for her. I heard a muffled moan, high and keening. Her husband stroked her back.
“I’ll be damned,” Mike blurted.
He pointed at the television. The Carters turned toward the screen.
Because I had seen Arch Creigh’s face on the news so many times before, it took me a moment to grasp the reason why I was looking at it now.
“What happened?” the mother asked.
“The son of a bitch shot himself,” Mike said.
There they were—Arch and Vanessa, in old footage from the day Arch declared his Senate candidacy. The camera cut to a live image, in front of the house on the Boulevard, surrounded by men with cameras, Vanessa’s face pale and slack with shock and grief.
“Charlie,” Mike said.
Vanessa was giving a statement to the media, which we could not hear. Mr. Carter picked up the remote and turned on the sound. The police had found him out at the family hunting camp—I was sure I knew exactly where. There didn’t appear to be any doubt about how it had happened. He’d left a note.
“That’s a hell of a thing to do to your wife and kids,” Mr. Carter said.
“They don’t have any children,” I said.
The television vultures were feasting on what lay before them: Charismatic Southern Republican Senator commits suicide in the midst of a tight race. Potential for upset in the reddest of red states. Who would the party tap to replace him? What scandal would emerge? Could the Dems seize this moment of crisis to narrow the gap in the Senate? Who would fill Arch Creigh’s shoes in the eleventh hour? Would the grieving widow take up the mantel herself?
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Charlie?” Mike asked. “Are you all right?”
I was crying. The tears just came. I couldn’t stop.
“Charlie?” Mike repeated.
I looked away from the television and over at Mike and the Carters, who were staring at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Forgive me.”
Mr. Carter looked back toward the television. His wife glanced down at the floor.
“What on earth is wrong with you?” Mike whispered.
I wiped my eyes.
“I knew him,” I said.
“You knew Arch Creigh?” Mr. Carter asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Like, you knew him,” Mike said, “or you knew him?”
How could I even begin to answer such a question?
Part One
Princes in the Tower
one
When I learned what had happened to Arch, what he’d done—when I saw him there on the TV screen in the living room of a dead soldier’s family and wept—I thought not of what he’d become, but, rather, of a boy I once knew, with a mop of golden hair and a golden smile and a sense of certitude so strong it spilled onto everyone around him. And I thought of the boy I had once been, aimless and timid, and how when that magnificent boy turned his light toward me, I fed on that light, and in doing so, became transformed.
I was born in Nashville, but I got my start in the mountains of Western North Carolina, on the last day of the second session at Camp Hollyhock for Girls, August 1969, in the back seat of an old Buick parked on a deserted fire road above the camp lake. My mother, Bonnie, fifteen years old, between her sophomore and junior years of high school, had fallen for a handsome stable boy named Johnny Larue, recently drafted and bound for Basic Training. Her parents were strict Upstate South Carolina Presbyterians, who firmly believed that God hates liquor and sex and loves rich white people, so long as they at least pretend to hate liquor and sex. But my mother never listened in church.