Via Dolorosa(78)
Nick said, “Two days before your son died, our squad was attacked going into Fallujah. We crossed through the village square and were setting up camp inside one of the gutted huts along the street. Everything was quiet. But we didn’t trust the quiet. You never trust the quiet.”
They must have thought him dead. He heard Oris Hidenfelter order the men up against the crumbling wall. Through the smoke, Nick could see them scrambling to their feet and nosing their rifles through the shattered meshwork of the building’s degenerating fa?ade. The smoke burned his eyes and seared his throat. They began firing.
“A group of Muslim insurgents were hidden in a mosque across the street. They had remained silent when the Marines came through, waiting and watching and hiding. They saw us and saw that we were few, and that’s when the explosion hit, and that’s when it all started.”
One by one, the men rose. They hustled to the doorway. Some filed out. Nick watched them disappear through the smoke. A million tiny diodes of debris floated, swirled in the light.
“It wasn’t until the smoke cleared and daylight carved a path through the doorway that I realized I was still in the building, and my men were out fighting in the street. I could see them all crouched down and pressed flat to the earth. I watched their rifles buck and fire at the mosque. I could see smoke streaming from windows. I could see your son, too, low in the dirt beside another soldier, Victor Karuptka, and Karuptka had his fingers looped in the belt around your son’s waist, keeping him flat to the ground. I could see that, could see all of it. And I couldn’t move. I was frozen. The men outside, they needed me, needed my direction, counted on me, entrusted me with their lives without question or hesitation—and I couldn’t move.”
Granger watched him from the edge of the bed, his eyes unblinking, the handgun very obvious resting against one meaty thigh.
“Then something clicked inside me and I could move. It was like I felt my brain snap back into place. But I didn’t get up and I didn’t rush out into the street with my men. I was scared. I could feel the explosions reverberating through my chest, vibrating all my organs…and it occurred to me that if I just lay down close to the floor, no one would see me. And if they did see me, they would probably think I was dead. And so that’s what I did.”
And he could see them all through the doorway from where he lay on the floor. His cheek smashed against the stone floor, he watched the exchange of gunfire out in the streets. And he saw Oris Hidenfelter go down. He was the first of his men to get hit. Nick saw something soar by Hidenfelter trailing a flag of smoke, and he saw it bite into Hidenfelter’s hip and rip a piece out of him. He watched Hidenfelter crumble to the ground and die. He saw an explosion shake Angelino and Bowerman off their feet. He saw Bowerman go down, heavy, and not get up again. He saw a grenade explode near Victor Karuptka and Myles Granger…and he saw how the force of the grenade tore through Granger’s legs, blowing the bottom half of his uniform off and flagging the shreds of fabric in the wind. Suddenly, there was blood everywhere. Karuptka attempted to roll Granger over and drag him to safety down a nearby alley. But Karuptka was shot in the chest, in the face.
“I don’t know how long it lasted,” he told the bell captain…and it was the same thing—the truth—that he had told his superiors as well as the medical review board, “it could have been under a minute or it could have been two hours. I don’t know. But I watched them all die and I pretended to be dead, too. A rocket hit too close to the building I was in and the wall and part of the roof finally surrendered and rained down all around me. A section of the wall fell on my hand, crushing it…”
And it was like something in him blinked and shorted out. His mind summoned the image of a television just as it is turned off, and the way the screen flares to darkness leaving only that residual speck of blue fading light at its center.
Still standing in the doorway, Nick said, “I was knocked unconscious. Either by the concussion of the explosion or by sheer pain, I passed out. And when I awoke again, everything was silent. For a long while I thought I was dead. I couldn’t fully recall what had happened and I couldn’t feel any more pain, even though I could see the way the wall had fallen on my hand and knew it had been destroyed.”
“What happened?” Granger said, and that was good.
“I managed to get the pieces of wall off my hand. That’s when the pain struck me and I knew I was still alive—still alive or now in hell, because the pain was so severe. I think I passed out twice while trying to free my hand because of the pain. I remember throwing up once, too. And I remember looking at the sections of wall as I removed them—really looking at them, as if just seeing them for the first time, with all the pores in the cement and the cracks and whiteness of dust—and I thought about the man who must have made that wall, and how he probably never thought the wall would fall on the hand of an American soldier who would come in to decimate his city. That my blood was on his wall. And then I wondered where that man was. Had he fled the city? Had he been killed? Was he an innocent or had he been plotting to destroy the United States since the days of his adolescence? Anyway, that’s what I thought…”
“And my son?” Granger said.
“I finally managed to free my hand. I wrapped a strip of cloth from my shirtsleeve into a makeshift sling then bound it against my chest. Then I waited. I didn’t know what I was waiting for at the time but, in hindsight, I suppose I was just hoping I’d pass out again, maybe this time permanently, and that I wouldn’t have to go outside into the streets to see all those dead boys. But that never happened. And maybe that was the cruelest part—or perhaps the most just thing in the world.”