The Survivor Read Online Free PDF Page B

feet in his lap, the Lorax lifting himself up, up, and away by the seat of his pants.
    He tells Janie immediately, of course, but they wait for the weekend for him to break the news to Cielle. At bedtime she shifts beneath the covers and fixes her serious gaze on him. “I wanna go with you.”
    He forces a smile, though it feels plastic across his face. “It’s a long flight, honey.”
    “Will there be snacks?”
    Nate swallows around the bulge in his throat. “I’ll miss you.”
    “If I go with you, you won’t hafta miss me.”
    He stays with her until she falls asleep, and when he slips from her room, he finds Janie just outside, sitting in the hall. He offers a hand, and she wipes her nose and rises like a lady, and they head back to their bedroom.
    *   *   *
    The battalion is deposited on an air base in the middle of nowhere, positioned for missions into rural towns. In the Sandbox heat dominates every waking minute. The thermometer regularly creeps to 120; some days Nate pictures it making a cartoon bulge. The soldiers hump an unreasonable amount of gear—ammo and water, flak jackets and helmets, M16s and Beretta M9s coated with PVD film to withstand the sand, which rises into yellow-orange dust storms at the slightest provocation. Grit gets in their guns, their sweat; it turns the collars of their green-and-khaki ACUs to sandpaper. Nate’s rucksack frame digs into his shoulder above the flak jacket, buffing the skin to an angry red. The moisture-wicking socks don’t wick. No matter how much he drinks, he still pisses bright yellow.
    A few weeks in, while sweeping a house, they come upon a retarded man-boy shackled to an outhouse. The weathered soldiers joke and laugh, and Nate, who has lost his breath at the sight, realizes that he will need to navigate a steep learning curve to make it here.
    Somehow, despite it all, Charles’s optimism remains undiminished. He is one of the rare few for whom war is not hell. On patrol he is laid back, deals easily with the locals, and has a sixth sense for snipers.
    The months blend into a single sun-baked episode. They get shot at and do some shooting, mostly returning fire at sand dunes and heaps of rubble. They play policeman and janitor and try to avoid getting blown up by IEDs, car bombs, and booby-trapped corpses.
    During morning formation one day, it is announced that their eighteen-month deployment has been extended to twenty-two months. That night Nate takes a very long shower. He buys an AT&T card at the PX and heads to the phone center. The booths are lined wall to wall, as in a prison, with hard wooden chairs. In the stall he is assigned for his ten-minute allotment, someone has scrawled, IF THE ARMY WANTED YOU TO HAVE A WIFE, THEY WOULD’VE ISSUED YOU ONE.
    Janie’s voice trembles when she hears him, as it always does. “Still alive?”
    “I think so.”
    “Cielle keeps calling you on her play phone, having conversations with you. She sits there dialing and dialing.”
    His mouth is too dry to swallow. “Can I talk to her?”
    “Of course. Hang on.”
    Some rustling, then Cielle says, “Knock-knock.”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Smell mop.”
    Nate smiles. “I won’t do it. I shall not. I shall not be fooled.”
    Cielle giggles. Then her tone shifts. “Why can’t I ever call you ?”
    “It’s hard to get through here, baby. I have to call you.”
    “That’s not fair.”
    “No. It’s not.”
    “Zachary C called me Thunderthighs when I went up to write on the board, and everyone laughed. He had to say it all loud .”
    According to Janie, Cielle has been eating at a steady pace in the seventeen months since Nate’s deployment. His guilt mixes with rage. He wants to cut off Zachary C’s head and feed it to jackals, but all he can do here, in a prison-size phone booth on the far side of the world, is say, “I’m sorry, baby.”
    “That’s okay. I drew you a picture at school. Come home and see it?” A pause. “Daddy?”
    “I