Cruz smiled. “It’s not real, Shutter.”
“What?”
“I made it up.” He shrugged. “My mother died of breast cancer when I was twelve. My father is in prison. It was a blessing. He used to get drunk and beat me and my brothers. I didn’t get drafted. I volunteered at seventeen to get out of there, and I reupped ’cause there’s no place for me to go. There is no home. This is home now. The marines are my home.”
I was trying to process this, trying to understand it, but I couldn’t, not with the battle raging.
“What about the senoritas?” I asked. “What about dancing until dawn?”
“I can’t go home, Shutter. If I go home, the gangs will kill me. I’ll be unemployed. I’ll have to deal drugs and I’ll end up in prison like my father, if not a grave.”
“You can come to New Jersey,” I said. “My mother will cook for us and we’ll go to the clubs in New York.”
Cruz smiled. “I got to go up that hill, Shutter. I’m a marine. I have to bust through.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“No,” Cruz said. “You have a family. You have a home. You have a mother and father who care. That’s why I made up all that stuff, so you didn’t lose sight of going home.”
“I’m coming,” I said.
I turned for my rifle and helmet, and Cruz hit me in the back of the head with the stock of his M-16. At least that’s what I later deduced. By the time I came to, he’d gone up the hill.
By dawn the NVA had evaporated back into the bush. We found thousands of spent rounds but we didn’t find a single NVA body. Not one. Alpha Company went up that hill with 137 men. Seventy-six died. Forty-three were seriously wounded. Most of the dead were shot in the head at close range. Ears were missing. Eyes had been gouged out. Ring fingers had been severed. Charlie Company lost seven men and had another ten wounded.
Those of us still alive crawled out of our foxholes stunned and dazed. The jungle looked like a huge blaze had burned through it. The foliage had evaporated, and ash blew in the breeze and fluttered to the ground like dirty snowflakes. It was hard to breathe; the air was toxic. Bodies lay scattered everywhere. Marines were putting them in body bags and lining them up for transport.
I looked for Cruz. The soot and dirt and sweat had changed their faces; I didn’t recognize anyone. I wondered if I was somehow in the wrong place, if a bomb had blown me to another hilltop. I had to stop and look each marine in the eye, try to put a name with a face. I had to ask, “Cruz?”
They shook their heads.
I moved on.
When I couldn’t find Cruz among the living, I searched the dead. I searched the bodies being put in body bags. Cruz was not among them.
The top of the hill was barren. No buildings. No bunkers. No foliage. Charcoal sticks and craters remained from the many bombings over the many months. Just one marine lay atop the mountain. Just one marine reached the top. Just one had punched through.
Victor Cruz.
His eyes were closed. He looked at peace, like he had lain down to sleep. He had all his limbs. I didn’t see bullet holes in his body. I thought maybe he wasn’t dead. I hoped he’d just been knocked out, that the bombing knocked him out. I patted his cheek, at first just a tap. Then harder.
“Wake up,” I pled. “Wake up or they’re going to ship you home with the dead.”
But Cruz didn’t wake up. He didn’t open his eyes.
Marines grabbed my arm to stop me from hitting him. I broke free and I sat down beside him.
Cruz took the hill.
He made it to the top.
And that’s where he died.
I removed his dog tag and the contents of his vest, and I put them in a plastic bag that I taped to his wrist. For who? I don’t know. I helped put him in a body bag and I whispered, “I hope you’re home, at a party, that you eat until you puke, and you dance until the sun comes up. And I hope you do it again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.”
Then I zipped the bag closed.
I looked up from William’s journal entry into the darkness of the room, and I wiped the tears from my eyes. I thought of William, of the story he told me that final day at the remodel. He told me he chose not to go up the hill with Cruz, and I had always thought that was why he felt guilt, why he could not leave the war behind. I thought of my son, at the Dodger game, telling me he thought he should have been in the car with Chris.
But now William had said that wasn’t what happened, and I was wondering, Did Cruz actually knock William out? Or was that just what William wanted me to believe, so I didn’t think poorly of him for not going up the hill?