Spiral

She took it in, nodding. “That’s more or less what Pop-pop said. Why he joined during World War Two. The Irish hated the British, had been under their thumb for eight hundred years. Some people called him a traitor.” She glanced at him. “What was it like?”

“The Gulf War? The thing I remember most is the sand. It got in everything, in your hair, in your bed, in the guns, in the food. You got used to the grind of it between your teeth.

“We spent six months in the desert, waiting, in the sand. I was a combat engineer. In the Forty-sixth Battalion. We were in support of the First Infantry Division. We made the bridges. The camps. The roads. We had it best, the engineers. We had something to do. We were always at work, putting up new forward compounds, improving the roads, clearing them after the sandstorms would sweep through. The combat grunts had it worse. They just sat. Waiting to fight. Digging foxholes, the sand filling them, digging them again. It was hell on them, you could tell. They got crazier, weirder.”

“How long were you there?”

“Almost six months. It was so damned hot, and as the invasion got close, every couple of days the bioweapons sirens would go off and we’d have to suit up. Everybody was sure Saddam had anthrax weapons, God knows what else. So we’d put on these full-body suits, gas masks, and sweat it out. You wanted to rip the damned thing off and at the same time you worried that some little microbe was going to sneak through a faulty seal and kill you.

“Then, boom, the orders come down. We’re on the move, going in, crossing the border into Kuwait. Our orders are to blast forward, destroying everything in our path. But the Iraqis have all these trenches dug, these bunkers of sand pushed up. It was a total pain in the ass. You could blow them up, but there weren’t enough bombs to do the whole thing. So the plan was send in the armored bulldozers, create a breach, then we’d send in mechanized units to get in behind them, then attack from the rear.

“But then someone had an idea. Use bulldozers.”

Jake looked up. “It was one of those ideas that had a kind of rough elegance. Why the hell not? Who needs to kill them with bullets when you can bury them in sand? All you need is a big shovel. The idea floated up through the chain of command, then came back down again. Get your bulldozers ready.”

Jake shook his head. “You know, we engineers, we’re one step away. We just built the roads. It’s different, building the roads.”

“It sounds terrible.”

“It was. The Iraqis didn’t have a chance in hell. Some saw us coming and ran. Others stayed, just disappeared as the sand swept over them, like a crab on the shore when the tide pushed in. The worst were the ones halfway between. They’d finally get what was about to happen, and they’d pop up, maybe thirty yards in front of the blade. But it was too late. Our orders were clear. Keep plowing.

“One guy I’ll always remember. He charged me. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. He had this stupid sidearm, he was running at the bulldozer, firing into the blade. He wasn’t even trying to hit me. He just kept firing into the blade. He was screaming. You couldn’t hear it, not for the engines, all the other crazy shit happening, but he was screaming, yelling, charging. Then he went under, like all the rest. He was gone.” Jake shook his head. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sorry. Of course.”

But they didn’t talk about anything. They just watched the night, listened to the bits of conversation drifting in from the kitchen.

Out in the darkness, the slap of a closing door. Dylan emerged from the greenhouse, Turtle at his side. Jake watched closely as the boy crossed the distance to the house. “How are the tomatoes doing?” Maggie asked as he stepped up on the porch.

“Almost ready. I think I can pick them pretty soon.”

She pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead. “Good. Now go get ready for bed.”

Dylan turned to face Jake. He held out a hand. “Good night.”

The two shook formally. Dylan ducked his head and disappeared inside. Maggie watched her son go, took a breath, and looked gratefully at Jake before glancing away, suddenly embarrassed.

Jake smiled. “A question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“The spreading-of-the-breaths thing. How long does it take for the gas molecules all around the world to mix? How long until a breath makes it to, say, China?”

“Ten years. It takes about a decade for the air on the planet to get stirred completely.” She looked down at the deck, put her arms around herself. “So right now, Liam’s last breath is still mostly right here. Right around us.”

Jake nodded. “But less so with each day.”

They were silent after that, watching the darkness. Jake glanced over, catching her in profile, the slight subtle motion of her hair in the breeze. When someone died, all the relationships surrounding that person were shaken, had to be rebuilt in new ways to help fill the void. That’s what grief helped you do.