Our deployment came to an end relatively soon after that. Our time in Syria was over. They say the two worst units in the Marine Corps are the unit you replace and the unit that replaces you. In our case, the saying proved true. A new company of marines arrived by convoy on a warm spring day, their cammies fresh and clean. They strode about camp with a zealous energy about them, an unearned enthusiasm. I could see it in their eyes—a burning energy, an eager expectation. They had about them the look of children.
I had thought that when we returned to North Carolina we would have some time to decompress, to spend time with one another outside the bounds of deployment. But the unit more or less disbanded upon our return. A quarter of the marines left the Corps. Others transferred units, often to California or Okinawa. Within a few months, a tipping point was reached, a critical mass having moved on and new marines brought in to replace them, such that the company felt entirely new, with no real shared memories to draw from. Not long after that, we were already preparing for our next deployment.
I don’t recall when or how Lanier departed—all I know is that he left. I can’t even place the timing of his departure with any specificity, nor did I know whether he had transferred units or left active duty entirely. It’s possible that I didn’t notice his absence until well after he had gone. In those early days, I assumed we would keep in touch, or that I would run into him in a commissary or at a training exercise. It’s a small Marine Corps, as they say, and the infantry smaller still. It seemed wherever I went, I always ran into a marine from the Syria days. If time allowed, we’d head to the enlisted club for a beer, swapping stories of the busted showers or the soft-serve ice cream machine or the freakish hail storm. But I never ran into Lanier. He’d disappeared. And in truth, something in me was afraid to run into him, as if such a meeting would be a test I could only fail. On several occasions, I thought I spotted him—once in the exchange at Camp Pendleton, once at an exercise in Twentynine Palms. On each occasion, I found myself shrinking into the periphery, studying the supposed figure, unwilling to be seen before I had confirmed it was him. And though neither turned out to be Lanier, each false sighting left me ill at ease, a fading adrenaline in my veins.
So by the time I finally saw him again, the shrinking had become instinctive. I was on leave from my unit in North Carolina, driving west for a solitary hike in the mountains. Such solitude was not abnormal for me—I had never married, and although it is true that from time to time I tracked my girlfriend online, she never reached out to me, and I never reached out to her. On the outskirts of Asheville, I stopped in the evening at a Food Lion. Only after I’d spent some time walking the aisles did I notice him tending the register, in a blue apron, with that longish beard and small fro, and the little pooch around his midsection. I froze when I saw him. Then I pulled the cart back into the aisle. I stood there motionless, suddenly short of breath. I had no idea if he had seen me. If he had, he’d not said hello, and I thought about that while I slowed my breathing. It’s just Lanier, I told myself. Your old friend. Your old bunkmate. But when at last I emerged from the aisle and fell in line at his register, he seemed not to notice—not in the sense of avoiding me, or of refusing to acknowledge my presence, but rather as if he didn’t recognize me. As if we’d never known each other. There must have been no more than two or three feet between us as I loaded my groceries onto the conveyor belt. The proximity felt surreal. Only when he began scanning my items did I manage to catch his eye. I gave a little laugh. “No more dry shaves, eh?”
He looked at me oddly. “Excuse me?” he said. His voice was lower than I remembered it.
I gestured to my own face and attempted another laugh. “No more dry shaves.” But he just gave me that odd look, like he had no idea who I was, before casually scanning my groceries with the same indifference, the same heedless disregard, which struck me now as not just cold and passive but as insolent and haughty. As if none of us merited his regard.
“What,” I said. “You’re still mad about me taking the bottom rack?”
That was an hour or two ago. The road out to the mountains is narrow and winding, dropping down into the hollows with such little notice that the bottom seems to fall out at the crest of each rise. I’ve been turning these events over in my mind, casting myself back to the old days, when we were young and anxious to go to war, and the only conclusion I have come to is that for some of us, the walls of the Iron Maiden were just too strong. When you first see it out there on the horizon, the fob is just a speck, a disturbance in the sand. But time passes, and somehow that disturbance becomes your world. And maybe that’s the way it was for Lanier. Maybe a part of him is still crouched in that guardpost, weary, gaunt, willing to risk everything on the flip of a card. At least, that’s the only explanation I can muster as I make my way into the mountains. The narrow country road cuts back and forth across the slope, and I scan the sector of fire ahead of me—right to left, near to far. I take comfort in the scent of the cabin, in the vaguely metallic tang. Behind me, the road recedes, disappears behind the hairpin turns. I adjust the rearview mirror. If I turn it just so, a portion of my reflection comes into view, almost as if I’m missing half my face, and I turn the mirror back to capture the disappearing past. I relax my grip on the rifle. Then I wipe the sweat from my face, and I head on into the night.