The Book of Jonas (23 page)

He sees himself as though from the outside, detached, as though it is someone else doing it. And from this place, this disembodied vantage, he sees himself, now a flash, darting across the open space, now merging with the figure prone on the ground, now springing up to stand over him, taut and ready.

And he is surprised by how easy it is, how quiet, how neatly the knife’s sharp edge slits his sleeping throat, how simple, like a stone plopping into water.

O
ne year the group rents out the Carlisle Auditorium in Pittsburgh. The next, they are booked into the Bethel Park Recreation Center. The following year they are given an anonymous donation, which allows them to rent out a portion of the convention center. The group calling itself Military Families for Truth grows, changes, adapts. Other groups take root, sprout up in other parts of the country. The fertile soil of the Southeast, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, others in the rocks and scrub of Arizona, Utah, still others under the Northwest rain.

Rose leads a delegation to Capitol Hill, to talk with the representatives in Congress. A member from Michigan introduces himself. He has heard of Rose, and asks her to speak with his colleagues. Loss has come to his state, he tells her, and who is Rose if not loss’s spokesperson?

She develops bureaucratic skill. She familiarizes herself with grant applications and donor forums and aid requests. She learns how to advocate for or against legislation, how to
submit requests under the Freedom of Information Act, learns who makes the decisions at particular government agencies, and how to most effectively apply pressure to them.

The groups grow, change, merge. Local groups combine into regional groups, which then become national collectives. An umbrella organization is formed, called the Associated Families of Veterans, and Rose is elected its first president.

And yet, despite her tireless efforts, the meticulous attention to detail, it is so often the role of chance or luck that brings her any form of comfort, any sense of closure. An e-mail message, which she now sends and receives proficiently, arrives one day as though from a cloud, or a chance encounter at a meeting or conference, someone who seeks her out, happens across her path.

So it is that Rose finds herself walking across the cavernous expanse of yet another convention center, this one in Denver or Chicago or Albuquerque, her great plume of red hair now streaked liberally with white, walking quickly, purposefully, because she is late to be somewhere else and the place is so big that it takes forever to get anywhere. She sees him from the corner of her eye, peripherally, before she hears his voice.

“Excuse me,” he says, and she does not want to be rude, does not want to appear uninterested, but she is late and the appointment is important and…

“Excuse me,” says the man again, and now Rose sees no way out. She turns to look at him, make contact with him.

“Are you Rose Henderson?” he says as he approaches.

Rose tilts her head back to look up at him. He is balding, his hair cut short in an attempt to cover the fact. He looks to
be approaching middle age. He has powerfully built shoulders and arms, but is developing a paunch around his middle.

“I am,” says Rose, concentrating on him, now that she has been stopped, giving him her full attention.

“I thought so,” says the man. “I’ve seen your picture. You don’t know me, but I served with Christopher.”

“Oh,” says Rose. “I see. Well, let’s … let’s step over here.”

Jonas walks down the fluorescent corridor. Travelers rush past him pulling wheeled suitcases or hunched under weighty backpacks. The small sack he carries over his shoulder has floated through security with ease, and his stuffed duffel lies, perhaps already, in the hold of the plane. Despite this, he is convinced that the policemen have been looking at him, regarding him closely. He does not know what Paul has said, whom he has contacted, or even whether, in fact, he has said anything, but he is convinced that it is only a matter of time. A young woman hurries ahead of him, gripping her child’s hand.

“Come on,” says the woman to the unconcerned boy. “They’re already boarding.”

He steps onto the swift conveyor, adjusting his balance as the belt takes over. He is being pulled along now, set in motion, no longer entirely under his own power.

He finds the bathroom at the far end of the corridor, conveniently located just across from the gate. Inside, past the row
of sinks, the faucets of which are hooked to motion sensors and seem to flow randomly, as though ghosts are washing their hands, he spots the trash can, stainless steel and set into the wall. He pauses, has a thought. He waits for everyone to leave, for the bathroom to empty, a lull, and then he walks over to the trash can. He reaches into it, rummages around.

There is nothing, no nylon straps, no vest, just a trash bag half-filled with damp paper towels. A man walks in and looks at him askance, looks at him with his arm stuck shoulder-deep into the rubbish bin, and he feels foolish. It all comes down to this, he thinks. A choice. The difference between two realities, each of them real, balanced on a knife edge in time.

A voice, commanding and feminine, announces his flight over the public address system, echoing from the tiled walls. The bathroom has filled with people, and he is momentarily confused, unable to find the exit. When at last he does, he joins the throng of travelers, of fathers and mothers and aunts and brothers struggling under the weight of luggage and worry, or buoyed by excitement and anticipation, or driven by determined focus.

When he gets to the gate, he finds that his flight has been delayed. There is some sort of last-minute equipment problem. The irritated crowd, which had just been preparing to board the plane, lets out a collective breath. With nothing else to do, he finds a seat in the waiting area and watches as the passengers huddle around the gate, waiting in the limbo of the airline terminal for time to restart.

He decides he will conduct an experiment. A clean-cut young Indian man wearing a starched dress shirt, the sleeves
rolled up to the elbows, gestures urgently as he converses with a disengaged airline representative behind the counter. Jonas was told about it, this experiment, something a monk he once met did whenever he was in public. An overweight couple arrives pushing an overweight toddler in a fragile-looking stroller. Jonas calms his breath, concentrating on nothing more than inhaling and exhaling. He will look each person he encounters in the eyes. To each of them, to every person who meets his gaze, he will wish peace. A tall, thin, elderly gentleman wearing a cowboy hat leans over toward a gray-haired woman who barely comes to his chest, their heads nearly touching, their arms entwined, as they converse in hushed tones. He watches them all as they mill about, or rush to the snack bar to get something to drink, or stare at their laptop screens.

He is unhurried, the swirl of activity surrounding him but not touching him. A dark-skinned gentleman wearing a tan fedora arrives late, carrying a leather briefcase, and approaches the counter, confident, as though it is him for whom everyone has assembled. Jonas regards them inclusively, looking at each as they stand or pass by, male, female, young, old, infirm, healthy, offering to each his attention. Jonas spots a girl about his age, tall, with dark hair and graceful legs, and he stops for a moment, because he thinks that she looks striking and familiar.

Many of them don’t see him, are too busy or preoccupied. Some of them see that he is looking at them and look away, at the floor, or at something that has become suddenly interesting. Some of them look up at him and smile.

Mostly, it is the elderly and the children who notice.

Through the brightly lit corridors they move, and the cavernous meeting halls, and the convention centers, the high school gymnasiums, the temples, synagogues, and churches. They bustle about or sit and talk among themselves, the wives and children and parents and classmates and friends and girlfriends and comrades. They ask questions, and they provide answers. They mill about, or they rush frenetically. They talk about both the future and the past, starting their conversations with, “What we will do…” and “I remember when…”

At one of these places, at one of these times, two of them stand temporarily still, apart from the movement and energy around them, and they talk, allowing it all to pass them by, like a river roaring over the rocks.

He is telling Rose about her son, about the strength he drew from him, about how much he meant, about the comfort of his presence, about the last time he was seen alive.

“I remember when,” he is saying. “I remember when we were on that rise above the village, before we went in. I looked up, and he was on the hill right there above me. I had just transferred in. It was my first time in combat. The other guys, they were itching for a fight. There was a lot of talk. Talk about payback, revenge. They had lost some guys before I got there. I tried to sympathize, talk a good game, but really I was just scared out of my wits.

“And there he was up above me on the rise, looking out at the valley, at that village in front of us in the moonlight. He was quiet, calm. I think he was always like that. He turned around to look at me. They were all getting themselves angry, worked up. But not him. He didn’t think that way. My face must have been so white it shone like that moon. He must have noticed, because he looked down at me with the calm look he had, the one that told you everything was going to be okay, and he patted me on the helmet, smiled a little, like he was resigned to something. It was just one of those moments, one of those things that pass by at the time and you barely even notice it, but then you remember it for the rest of your life.

“That’s what I want to tell you. That’s why I came here. I remember when I looked at him up on that hill, and the moon was low in the sky behind him, and he reached down and patted me on the helmet, and he nodded at me. And then the radio squawked through our earpieces, and the order came down, and just that fast he was up and over the rise.

“Just that fast. A silhouette, and then he was gone.”

H
e changes his name on the airplane. Somewhere over a distant sea, he resumes his old identity. He prints his name—Y-O-U-N-I-S—in the spaces demarcated on the landing card he has been given. In his mind, the landing card increases in significance, becomes something more, a part of the trail of evidence. All this paper, he thinks. All these little ways of telling him who he is.

He goes back. This is the point. As he has done obsessively the entire trip, he shoves his hand into his pants pocket to make sure he still has the scrap of paper, now creased and torn, with Rose’s address printed neatly on one side.

And then he imagines himself descending from the bright airplane and into a dry, desert wind that envelops him like a wave. The peaks of the far southern mountains are jagged saw teeth in the distance. Everything is returned to the way it was.

Someone will be there to greet him, a cousin, because his father was unable to make the trip, suddenly called away on some pressing business. But someone will be sent, someone
who is happy to see him, and they will drive in a battered white truck up into the hills. They will drive beside the river, the raging torrent in the middle seemingly unconnected to the calm shallows at the edge, but he will know that this is an illusion, that in fact the shallows and the torrent are one.

Despite its inner turmoil, even the river will be happy to see him there, returned.

He will find everything the same. He will see things that are familiar, comforting. The colors, for example, will feel familiar, the red ochre rocks of the foothills, the bleached walls of the houses lining the road. He will be reminded of things he forgot he ever knew. The smells in particular will trigger lucid memories. He will recognize faces, see old friends, be returned to his former self, play in the courtyard with his sister, gratefully receive his mother’s tea. He will traverse the upturned sod, wander the low pastures with the flock and the dogs. All that which maintains a hold upon him will lose its grip.