Price of Duty Read online

  “You know what that means,” Skitballs muttered near me.

  “Ahhh! Ahhh! It hurts!” Morpiss’s screams pierced like hot, rusty needles.

  “Get another tourniquet out!” That would be the third.

  Brad ordered the rest of us back down the hill. “Only step in footprints someone else has made! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  He was rushing us. Any locals who’d heard the blast would know that we were there. Humping down from the rise, we were exposed and easy targets. A triggerman’s dream.

  But I wondered if there wasn’t another reason Brad wanted to get us off the terrace. The medic had called for three tourniquets. You only needed one per limb. Was Brad moving us out because he didn’t want us to see what that meant?

  We gathered around the vehicles. Morpiss wasn’t screaming anymore. They must have had a morphine drip going. Someone put a purple smoke out for the dust-off.

  We weren’t going anywhere until the medevac chopper arrived. We had to provide cover in case a bad guy took a shot at it. For the first time since I’d arrived at FOB Choke Point, I half wished someone would take a shot. I was filled with fury and despair. Morpiss and Skitballs were the first friends I’d made on active duty. They were both honest, up-front guys. Never shirked their duties or tried to find an easy way out. The three of us had arrived at FOB Choke Point in the same chopper and had been assigned to the same squad. From day one we’d been best buds and rarely out of each other’s sight.

  Only now Morpiss was severely WIA. For his sake, I wanted to fight, kill. Beat the enemy bloody with my bare hands. Those bastards had just blowed up my buddy and I wanted to make them pay.

  * * *

  “Dabble Corners!” the bus driver calls out.

  I open my eyes and look out the window. There’s no town. Just a crossroads with a general store, a church, and a bar. Waiting in a banged-up old pickup truck is a woman with long gray hair and tired eyes. She looks about twenty years too old to be Morpiss’s mom.

  “I didn’t know y’all was hurt,” she says after I clamber into the truck.

  “I’m on the mend, ma’am.”

  “Happened over there?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “James is mighty excited to see you. He don’t hear much from the others.”

  It appears that Morpiss hasn’t told his mom why that might be the case.

  Soon we’re on a narrow paved road, passing farms and houses with livestock wandering in the yards. Here and there is a lawn covered with scattered farm equipment, old furniture, or abandoned cars. Scrawny dogs chained to stakes. Chickens pecking around. Real rural America.

  Some guys enlisted because they felt it was their duty. Some because it was the only paying job they could find. For Morpiss it was all those things. Plus it was probably the only chance he had of getting out of the sticks.

  “Y’all ready to do some fishin’?” Mrs. Morris asks in the truck.

  I give her a puzzled look. We’ve left the pavement and are bouncing down a backwoods dirt road. It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to live this far away from everything. Just before I got into the pickup, I checked my cell phone. No bars.

  “You’ll see,” she says. “He’s got himself a setup. Just don’t let him smoke the whole time, okay?”

  So she knows. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

  The dirt road is no longer a road, just a long, long driveway. We come to a clearing where a small rickety house sits. The outside walls are patched where the siding has been replaced. The roof shingles are different colors where leaks have been patched. A wooden ramp leads up to the front door. The entire house could fit in the General’s living room.

  “Y’all ready?” Mrs. Morris asks.

  I nod, even though I have a feeling I’m not.

  “He’s real happy to see you, but it ain’t good.”

  “I understand, ma’am.”

  She gives me a sideways look as if asking, “Can you really?”

  * * *

  A big light-brown dog bounds toward me. I just have time to brace myself before his paws are on my shoulders and he’s licking my face.

  “Git down, Bandit!” Morpiss follows. He’s belted into a wheelchair that he steers by joystick with his right hand.

  Don’t stare, I tell myself. Do Not Stare.

  The lower half of his body is gone. Not just his legs, but the bottom part of his abdomen. Morpiss got his nickname because he had a bladder like a camel. He could drink for hours without going, but when he went, it sounded like Niagara Falls. He probably hit the pisser once a day, and you could get in a short nap before he came out. Now I’m not even sure he has a bladder.

  We clasp hands. “Yo, hero boy, glad you came,” he says. “Hope y’all don’t mind if I’m only half the man I used to be.”

  “How many times have you used that line?” I ask.

  “Not that much. Don’t get a lot of visitors out this way.” He rubs Bandit’s head and nods at my cast. “Don’t think I read about that. How’d that happen?”

  “Skiing accident.”

  “Yeah, I hear them enemy black diamonds are a real bitch.” He grins.

  After the long bus ride, I need to go myself. The bathroom shelves are filled with powders, salves, various skin-colored patches, and curled lengths of clear and brown tubing. A jar of lubricant. An enema bag. Oh jeez. With only one arm he probably can’t do that himself.

  Who takes care of him? Is it just his mom 24/7?

  Mrs. Morris serves us lunch. Fried bologna sandwiches, cold macaroni salad, glasses of Mountain Dew. Morpiss eats with his one hand. His left arm was severed by the blast. Both legs blown off at the knees. So why the extreme amputations? Because the explosion shattered both femurs, and the blast drove dirt and debris into his lower body, resulting in infections so severe that the tissue couldn’t be saved.

  Truth is, it’s a miracle he’s alive.

  “Let’s go fishin’,” he says as soon as lunch ends.

  Morpiss has rigged a rod carrier to the back of his wheelchair. Followed by Bandit, we go out the back door. The scent of burning wood is in the air. A long ramp behind the house leads to a small lake. At the end of the ramp is a platform with a low rail around it. I guess so Morpiss won’t accidentally get pulled off the edge while fighting Moby Dick.

  “Who built this?” I ask.

  “Folks around here. They know I like to fish.”

  He’s wearing a strap-on fishing rod holder that allows him to cast with one arm. He’s even got a small spring action vise that steadies the hook while he baits it with a minnow. Morpiss the geardo, always a resourceful guy. At FOB Choke Point he made us small fans from ice cream sticks, tape, soda bottles, and little electric motors that ran off the USB ports in our laptops.

  “Go on, set yerself up.” He points at another rod. “Don’t expect me to do it just because y’all broke your leg.”

  Even now he can joke. I bait a hook, cast it out, and ease myself into a rusty lawn chair. Bandit settles down beside the wheelchair. The wooden rail is covered with short dark cigarette burns. “People come out and fish with you?”

  “When they want to learn from the master. So, y’all bring what I asked for?”

  I wedge the butt of the fishing rod under my leg and take out a brand-new vape pen. Morpiss’s smile grows wide. “You are the man, PFC Jake Liddell.”

  “I don’t remember you smoking at Choke Point.”

  “Never did. It’s a dirty, disgusting habit that’ll take years off your life.”

  “So why’d you start?” I ask without thinking.

  Morpiss smirks. “You’re kiddin’, right?”

  Like it’s really going to make a difference now if he lives a few extra years or not. . . .

  Morpiss takes a deep drag and lets out a big satisfied white plume. “Oh man, life just got good!”

  And there we are. The triple amputee and the hero. Our situations could have so easily been switched. I could have stepped
on that mine. He could have been the hero. Go ahead and tell me there’s a reason things happen the way they do.

  Just don’t ask me to believe it.

  The red-and-white bobber on Morpiss’s line disappears under the surface. The tip of his fishing rod jiggles. There’s a fish on, but Morpiss doesn’t reel.

  “You gonna bring that monster in?” I ask.

  “Naw. It’s small fry. Ain’t a fish in this lake I ain’t caught five times. If I let it run around, maybe somethin’ bigger’ll come along and eat it.”

  “That really happens?”

  “Once in a while.”

  The conversation shifts to the war and our buddies. Magnet is always a good topic for all the times he nearly got hit and walked away unscratched. Talking about the other guys isn’t much fun.

  “Made many new pals?” Morpiss asks.

  “Didn’t want to.” No matter what the recruiters want you to believe, the Army is never ever going to be a big frat party. You go in, make a couple of friends, and then pray you’ll all make it out alive. All you have to lose is one buddy to discover the last thing you want to do is replace him with someone new. No point in getting close to anyone else you might lose the next day.

  “How’s it feel to be a hero?” Morpiss asks.

  “About what you’d expect.”

  “A lot of beautiful young honeys throwin’ themselves at you?”

  “Only in the movies.”

  An osprey sweeps low over the lake, then banks upward and settles on a tree branch. Morpiss once told me he was a virgin when he enlisted. And now? Obviously, he’s missing the essential equipment. Why? Because some higher-up thought it would be good PR if we cleared out some mines where kids wanted to play. The same kids who in a few years will be taught how to kill coalition troops.

  The voice in my head says, Let it go, Jake.

  Bandit yawns and rolls over. I didn’t come just to see Morpiss. I came to talk. If there’s one soldier in this world I can share my thoughts with, it’s him. “I feel like we got railroaded, man. From the moment we started playing Call of Duty. And saw those Army ads about honor and leadership. Army Strong, right? The Army’ll make you stronger, wiser, and more respected. Not a word about how it can also make you more wounded and more dead. Cigarette ads have health warnings. Every bottle of booze has a health warning. Everyone’s freaked out about football players getting TBI. What about all the soldiers with TBI? How come they never put health warnings on Army recruitment ads? Warning: Enlistment in the United States Army may lead to traumatic and post-traumatic stress, brain injury, inability to function in normal society, loss of limbs, loss of life, suicide.”

  The little fish on Morpiss’s line is zigging and zagging frantically, doing everything it can to shake the hook. Meanwhile, any second now something bigger may come along and devour it.

  “Someone’s got to take it to the enemy,” Morpiss says.

  “I know. I just think these kids who enlist should be given a better idea of what they’re in for.”

  “Do that and no one’ll enlist. The bad guys’ll love you for it.”

  This is where the argument always ends. We have to fight because they want to fight. Even if it’s true that sometimes the reason they want to fight is because we’re the big bad USA claiming there are WMDs here and terrorists there. But what does that matter to grunts like Morpiss and me?

  That little fish, still struggling for its life, is getting on my nerves. “Could you do something about that? It’s starting to bug me.”

  Morpiss reels the little guy in. It’s a bluegill, maybe four inches long. With a jerk of his arm, Morpiss deftly unhooks the fish and sends it splashing back to freedom.

  My friend savors another hit of vape. “Ever consider the idea that what you’re feelin’ could be natural given what y’all have been through?”

  He’s asking me? If anyone should feel angry and resentful about what they’ve been through . . .

  “I think I’m seeing it pretty clearly,” I tell him.

  He baits his hook again, casts it back out. Ripples spread when the bobber splashes into the surface, but then the lake goes glassy flat again. Birds call and frogs croak. A dragonfly zips past and then hovers over a lily pad. There’s peace here. I’m starting to get a sense of why some people would want to be this far away.

  “Still got about half a year on your deployment, right?” Morpiss says as if he can feel where our conversation might be going.

  “Maybe.”

  There it is. First time I’ve said it out loud to anyone other than Lori.

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “Serious? Even with a big ol’ medal comin’ your way?”

  The degree of my seriousness comes and goes. But when it goes, I suspect it’s because I’m feeling scared. Scared to take a stand and do what deep down in my heart I believe is right. Scared of the disgrace it’ll bring to the General. The liberal media would have a field day with it. No doubt they’d dig up the fact that Dad’s uncle David was a Vietnam War draft dodger. And now there’d be me, the war hero who refused his medal, who refused to return to active duty, who told anyone who’d listen that war is immoral. That it is nothing more than mass murder. That enlistment bonuses make us hired killers. That any politician who thinks American troops should be sent to war must be forced to make his or her own children lead the fight.

  Then we’ll see how many politicians want their country to go to war.

  “What if I was serious?” I ask.

  A pair of mallards glides overhead and lands on the water.

  “Your family . . . ,” Morpiss begins, then goes quiet. On the lake, the mallards do that thing where their heads go down and their feathery butts point up in the air.

  So he knows about my family.

  Morpiss must feel the need to explain because he adds, “Y’all can’t open a book about Iraq without readin’ about General Windy Granger. He’s right there in Wikipedia, too.”

  “But my last name’s Liddell,” I remind him.

  “Google Liddell in Franklin and a Lieutenant Colonel Richard A. Liddell comes up. Follow it back a few pages and y’all get to a weddin’ announcement between him and a Miss Sutton S. Granger, daughter of old Windborne himself. Man, if I had that kind of brass hat in my family . . .” He trails off.

  My bobber goes under and I reel in a yellow perch. The fish’s color not lost on me.

  “If you had that kind of brass hat in your family . . . what?” I ask, throwing the fish back.

  “Guess I’d be feelin’ pretty darn conflicted too. Y’all been talkin’ to anyone else?”

  “Just my sister.” I can divide everyone else in my life into three categories: people I can’t tell; people I can’t trust; people I can’t burden.

  “War hero and grandson of famous Iraq War general rejects Silver Star and refuses to return to the fight,” Morpiss conjures a headline.

  I picture a tow truck hauling that new Jeep Wrangler straight back to the dealer.

  “There’s a boatload of books and movies about the horrors of war,” Morpiss points out. “It’s in the news all the time. You’d have to be livin’ under a rock not to know what war’s like.”

  “Didn’t stop you from signing up, did it?” I ask. “Didn’t stop me. Maybe it’s not real until it’s a hundred and twenty degrees, you’re humping eighty pounds of gear, there’s sand in your eyes and crotch, and your heart’s in your throat, staring down the barrel of an insurgent’s AK.”

  “Ain’t that the way it’s always been?”

  “People have always died of cancer. Doesn’t mean you don’t search for a cure.”

  “Well said.” With his remaining hand, Morpiss slaps the arm of his wheelchair—his version of clapping, I guess.

  Out in the lake, a fish jumps and splashes back down. The osprey takes flight, probably hoping the fish will jump again. You could argue that everyone in our country is safer because we’ve taken the fight over there instead of letting it come here.
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  Only, would it ever really come here? What country besides the United States has the ability to ship tens of thousands of troops anywhere in the world and keep them supplied?

  As if he’s read my thoughts, Morpiss says, “Here’s where I think I come down on it, Jake. If y’all quit and speak out against the way this country mans its armies, it’s gonna have a negative impact on a lot of people. A real hero makes sacrifices for his country. I ain’t sayin’ you ain’t already done that. But who’s to say where sacrifice ends?”

  Spoken by someone who truly knows what the word “sacrifice” means.

  * * *

  In the bus back to Franklin the next afternoon, on the hot seat with the diesel fumes again. Looking out the window. The lush green countryside is so starkly different from the sun-blasted, war-ravaged landscape over there. Those listing, pockmarked, bombed-out buildings. The rubble and twisted rebar. But far worse than the destruction of the land was the destruction of the lives. Every village had gangs of small, malnourished orphans. Some missing limbs. They’d followed us everywhere, wanting to sell us candy or shine our shoes. Of course, they’d grow up to be warriors. War was all they knew.

  I check my phone. We’re back in the world of bars, and there’s another text from Brandi saying she wants to see me again. I admire her persistence, but I’m surprised. I thought I made it clear that I’m not going to appear in her video.

  Of much more concern to me right now, there’s still no word from Aurora or Erin Rose. I’m running out of time. I need to take a cue from Brandi and start trying harder.

  BRAD

  Light purple smoke filled the air. From the distance came the faint whomp whomp of the medevac bird. The medic had Morpiss on a stretcher a hundred yards down the road. Brad was keeping us away from him. Twenty minutes before, when they were bringing Morpiss down from the terrace, we heard the voices. The medic was trying to keep Morpiss from sinking into shock. “So what do you want the story to be? Land mine or RPG? If it was up to me, I’d go with RPG. It sounds more badass. That’ll really impress the chicks.”

  It was the medic’s job to make jokes. Trying to keep Morpiss distracted, even while the morphine dulled everything. It’s what you were supposed to do. But they’d needed multiple tourniquets, so you had to hope there’d be a girl out there somewhere who would be impressed by a guy with no legs.