Fire and Forget Read Free

Veterans Charitable Service Trust. Thanksalso to the many mentors and role models who came through and gave so generously of their time and advice: Kevin Buckley, Bruce Weigl, our own Brian Turner, Yusef Komunyakaa, E. L. Doctorow, David Lipsky, Joseph McElroy, Megan O’Rourke, Breten Breytenbach, and of course, Colum McCann. We’ve been honored and privileged to share in their wisdom and craft.
    Our thanks to our tireless agent, E. J. McCarthy, and to our editor at Da Capo, Robert Pigeon, will be never-ending, and even so we’ll never do justice to the great boon and opportunity they’ve given us. Thanks to them both for believing in the work. Thanks also to Lori Hobkirk at the Book Factory, who saw this book through production.
    We all have our personal thanks as well—to those who brought us home, to those who helped us along—and our personal remembrances—to those who didn’t come back—or to those who did, but found themselves so weighed down by what happened that they couldn’t make the transition. In a sense, this entire volume is dedicated to every soldier and Marine who found coming back to the Mall of America stranger, even, than their first time under fire. We thank our fellow veterans, the ones we leaned on, the ones who carried us.
    Finally, a word about the title. We tossed around several ideas, including Did You Kill Anybody? and I Waged a War on Terror and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt , but stuck with Fire and Forget because it seemed to touch so aptly on the double-edged problem we face in figuring out what to do with our experience. On the one hand, we want to remind you, dear reader, of what happened. Some new danger is already arcing the horizon, but we tug at your sleeve to hold you fast, make you pause, and insist you recollect those men and women who fought, bled, and died in dangerous and far-away places. On the other hand, there’s nothing most of us would rather do than leave these wars behind.No matter what we do next, the soft tension of the trigger pull is something we’ll carry with us forever. We’ve assembled Fire and Forget to tell you, because we had to— remember .
    THE EDITORS:
    Roy Scranton
    Matt Gallagher
    Jacob Siegel
    Phil Klay
    Perry O’Brien

1
S MILE , T HERE A RE IED S E VERYWHERE
Jacob Siegel
    I GOT OFF THE SUBWAY AT THE PORT AUTHORITY and waited outside for the buses to arrive. The after-work rush still echoed in the half-empty streets but the city almost looked peaceful in the faded light of this in-between hour. You could stand still without feigning purpose.
    When I saw Cole, he just laughed. We had a long embrace, squeezing and clapping each other hard on the back. I was still thinking about the last time I’d seen him when it hit me that he was here, in front of me now.
    â€œWhat time’s Jimmy getting in?” he asked.
    â€œWe’ve got a while,” I said.
    After the Army released us, we rushed to find those we hoped had been waiting. All of us but Cole. He cut the other way, turning back in the airport with a plan he carried through the long hours in Iraq, and went rogue, all over the world.
    We had talked since he got back. He was applying to law schools and I asked how the applications were going.
    â€œI might end up here,” he said. “I’ll live with you and Annie. You got a couch, right, and plenty of time to loaf around? We could grow beards and walk around in our DCUs. Go to parties and stand next to girls and talk about the horror of it all.”
    â€œI sold my DCUs to a protester, or maybe it was an art student,” I said. “Anyway, I got more than I paid for them, and then I saw them on the news when those kids burned that effigy.”
    This was the rhythm we knew from overseas. With just the right amount of disinterested aggression you could talk about almost anything.
    I remembered that he used to talk about finding a government job when we got back.