shoulders sagging like a wet poncho over Folson’s frame, eyes half-lidded. Miller can’t help but think: Ativan? Klonopin? There’s a different air about Folson tonight, like static before a lazy summer story. They’ve all had to rely on an upper or downer before. There’s an unspoken protocol: do what needs doing, and keep it to yourself. Better yet, locked in a drawer. Whatever Folson has swallowed since he sulked off the field, it was too much of the wrong thing.
“All right, Folson. I’m tired. But I’m not too tired to walk you through this, so I need you to listen up.”
Folson keeps his gaze down, staring at his feet. He fingers his wedding band, turning it round and round. The shuffling of his boots across the concrete interrupts the quiet. “The heat got the better of me out there.”
“You think I care about a fight on the playground?” Miller says.
Folson has always responded to slight condescension. He raises his gaze, eyes settling on the letter. His lips part slightly, a wheezing intake of breath. Slow as sunrise, a look of disbelief dawns across his face.
“Sir?” he says. He reaches for the letter. “Sir, is that…?”
“Now, listen…” Miller swipes the letter from the top of his desk and looks at the label.
Folson withdraws his hand, and his eyes, suddenly tightening, finally meet Miller’s. “Sir, that letter says Esquire.”
“Yes, it does. This isn’t going to be easy.”
Miller hands Folson the envelope. “But I’ve seen you go through much worse in combat.”
“Lewis Fontineau, Esquire, & Sons, Divorce Attorneys at Law, Gatlinburg, Tennessee? Urgent response required?” Folson looks torn. “No,” he whispers. “Just—hell no.”
“Hold on a minute here because where I come from, this could mean there are still options.”
“She actually meant it!” he shouts and stands. “Can you believe this? Can you even fathom what kind of polar-fucking-vortex bullshit this is, coming from a woman living in a house I’m paying for by busting my ass against the hajis, while she’s streaming Netflix and painting her nails?”
“No, PFC, I can’t. Let me take it to the Echo Company lawyer. They’ve got him camped out at the TOC all day, twiddling his thumbs. He can at least translate the thing for you.”
“There’s nothing to translate,” Folson says. “I know Becca. She doesn’t do anything halfway. Jesus. And the girls. What about my girls?”
He kicks the metal wastebasket, and it slams into a corner with a loud, snare-drumming clap. Its contents spill out like guts.
“Look,” Miller says, “you’ll be stateside in no time. You two have made it this far, Folson. She’s got to know that.”
“You can’t see it, can you?” Folson shakes his head. “Just the same as you can’t see a cheap tackle on the field or the Band-Aid missions we’ve been sent on all month.”
Miller stands. “If you want to talk logistics with me, you can wait until you’re promoted, though you and I both know that’s a long way from the direction you’re headed now,” Miller shakes his head. “We can shout about this, or we can be civil. It’s your call. In either case, I won’t have you trashing my office.”
Folson retrieves the metal wastebasket as if to set it back in place, but instead, he throws it across the room.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Miller says. He moves from behind the desk, ready to scruff Folson by the collar.
That fast, Folson punches the dent in the wall where the wastebasket hit. The plaster gives way. A small cascade of chalky drywall lets loose, and Folson dashes out the door.
Seeing how quickly things can turn, Miller can only think of Cissy’s tantrums. Everyone has their own version. Folson punches. Cissy hits. With only two elementary schools in the county and Cissy already kicked out of one, could he and Tenley survive the stress of a move? When they shredded their divorce papers, the promises they made to eachother felt giddy but conditional, as if marriage was some sort of currency measured on the exchange. He certainly hasn’t kept his end of the bargain, and the more Cissy heads down this track of disruptive youth, the more Miller hates himself for the suffering his absence must cause her. It doesn’t exactly make him want to arrange a tell-all with his wife in which he’d have to confess that he failed at the one thing his job requires above all else—to keep his men alive—and besides, he’s 7,000 miles away. He’s here. Now. A soldier under his charge getting eaten alive by a woman equally far away. The trajectories his family and Folson’s family are on seem impossible; Miller can’t even touch them. Absence makes the heart grow something, but he’s not certain that it’s fonder.
Outside the trailer, daylight fades to a dim, orange belt that parallels the horizon. It’s the only hour during which FOB Copperhead could be called beautiful, and Folson appears determined to crap all over it. Miller scans a few alleys between trailers, then jogs toward the main pathway opening to the rest of the base and looks for something awry. The base unfolds in front of him like a gigantic Monopoly board—sandbag-lined barracks and coalition offices to one side, the infirmary and dumpsters dotting the opposite. Separate offices for the ANA, of course, who seem under constant harassment to “use their own assets” for Afghan troop casualties or wounded civilians. In the distance, the chow hall and PX sit near rows of Porta-Johns, their fecal-soup scent a nearly constant tickle under his nose. From there, it’s not difficult to spot Folson, what with a cluster of soldiers gathered around the flagpole next to the chow hall and a high-pitched holler hitting Miller’s ears the same moment his brain finally makes sense of what his eyes are showing him.
Miller arrives at the flagpole breathless, having sprinted the 100 yards full-bore, passing articles of Folson’s desert camis along the way. First the uniform blouse. Then one combat boot. Another. Impressive, considering the cumbersome laces. Folson’s ripstop pants and undershirt came off last in what looked like a tumble to the ground, though quickly recovered, and there he is, nearly thirty feet in the air, straddling the flagpole, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and white tube socks. The piercing sound hits Miller’s ears again, and he sees now that it’s coming from Folson, wailing like a baby. A handful of onlookers holler up at him, partly out of concern but mostly out of annoyance. They’ve come for the nightly flag lowering and instead discovered a crazy motherfucker flexing his muscles to the sky. Miller herds the soldiers aside, though most stay close to witness the reputed 2LT in action. Miller squints upward again, trying to draw a line of clarity. This may well be one of the strangest, most fitting sights produced by the war: a trained soldier sobbing in the dying light, the bold stars and stripes of the American flag thwapping him across the chest.
“Hey, man, let’s get you down from there!” Miller cups his hands around his mouth and shouts.
Folson looks down, and one of his legs slips free, causing him to nearly lose balance before latching on again.
“Just keep your gaze level,” Miller calls. “Just hold on up there.”
“Sir?” Folson yells. His voice is a mishmash of rebel teen and muscle man, teetering between tears and brawn.
“Yeah, PFC, I’m right here,” he edges closer to the bottom of the flagpole, though he knows any position he finds is futile. If Folson lets go, there’s no stopping the inevitable.
“Sir,
