The Things That Carried Him
We often forget that war has a human cost. This essay traces the way home for an American serviceman killed in Iraq.It is a stark reminder that its a mad world out there.
There was Joey, carefully dressed in his Class-A uniform with white gloves and polished boots, his badges and cords in place, and his face serene. It was mostly unmarked, and the two men agreed that even though the Port Mortuary in Dover, Delaware — where every soldier killed in action is prepared for burial — had advised against a family viewing, Joey looked good enough for the Montgomerys to see him if they would like.
“I needed to do that to believe it was him,” Gail said. She, Missie, and Micah stood over Joey for a long time that Tuesday evening. They touched him and spoke to him gently. Gail and Missie hadn’t seen him in months, and war had changed him, or maybe it was their memories of him that had changed, and now their eyes took him in, every inch of him, as though he’d been long lost.
It was Micah who noticed that his ring was missing. Joey was a Mason, and the ring was a chunk of steel that he wore on the middle finger of his right hand, a gift from Gail that last Christmas to replace the one that had been cut off him before he deployed, his finger swollen with infection. Now Micah took off his own Mason’s ring, and he leaned down to slip it onto Joey’s right middle finger, over his white glove. That’s when Gail began to shake; the gloved finger folded in on itself, empty but for cotton and carefully rolled strips of gauze.
