0630, Wednesday, October 27, 2004. Almawt Lilkifaar, Iraq.
Corporal Toby Almaraz told another joke as the packed Bradley lumbered down the street in one of the two secured sectors in the ancient city. Other than Toby, everyone was as quiet as the street outside. Too quiet. Toby said something about three hookers and a pimp, but I didn’t catch the punchline. I was too distracted by a presence I’d felt many times before. He was close, and that was never a good sign.
This wasn’t my first ride in a Bradley, but the heat and rancid smells made it more claustrophobic. I cracked a shaky grin at Travis, my cameraman. He glanced at my hands and fingers that were tapping away. Travis nodded back. No smile. Just his customary let’s-get-this-done look as his camera rolled, catching anything he could edit for this week’s episode of Berets. Sweat trickled down his cheek. A stream ran down mine.
Packed inside the mobile oven were four Army Rangers who were like brothers to us. Besides Toby, John the Giant, Kyle, and my good friend, Ryan, were along for the ride. The rest of Ryan’s unit (or chalk as they say in Ranger lingo) was in front of us, split between two Bradleys mixed with Marines. Our three heavy vehicles led the convoy to the target.
The eyes around me were focused, intense, but strangely relaxed as sweat dripped like rain from the hair poking out from my helmet. I wiped my forehead and took a deep breath. Something didn’t feel right.
What was I worried about? Stay calm, I told myself and took another breath. General Cornelius Adamson assured me the hospital would be a cakewalk while Travis’s camera caught everything. What viewers wouldn’t know was that the mission was orchestrated for maximum ratings. But I did, and it gnawed at me. Chewed at me. Uncle Frank would’ve been so ashamed.
The entire episode was the General’s idea to salvage the show that rumor mills whispered wouldn’t be renewed for another season due to the war’s waning popularity. The truth is, it was shameless hubris for a photo-op to raise the General’s star higher and maybe add another to his uniform. The premise was simple. Ryan’s men would capture the hospital containing an enemy stronghold towering over the Bridge of Death. It would be an iconic moment for General Adamson.
A year earlier, the bridge was a scene of unbridled carnage during General George Levinson’s retreat across the Euphrates during a rout of U.S. forces. The city’s inhabitants savagely tore apart wounded soldiers, decapitating four. The insurgents displayed their severed heads on bobbing AK47s to cries of “Allahu Akbar!”
After throwing their heads in the river, the decapitated bodies were dangled from meat hooks from the bridge and left to rot while repeatedly shown for several months on Al Qaeda-sponsored websites. The images, colored in a dull rainbow of death and decay, were tattooed in my head. Ryan Mender and the rest of the guys smelled revenge. Sweet revenge. But none knew the mission was unnecessary, except Travis and me.
The night before, Captain Martin Rice and his SEAL team had cleared the hospital, leaving a few Wahabi insurgents trapped inside. Still, much could go wrong for Adamson’s photo-op in an unsecured city, for which I had incrementally sold my soul for more riches and fame. Travis knew it, and it was killing him.
But it was more than that. I’d seen too many people die in this hellish place the year before, and I was close to Ryan and his men. Too close and I had lost my objectivity. They had made it this far without any life-threatening or life-altering wounds, and, like I said before, they were the brothers that neither Travis nor I ever had. If I could pull strings to bring them home alive and whole, then that’s what I would do. I pushed aside anxious thoughts and focused on the episode about to unfold.
Â
Let me pause and rewind. This was only the start of my downward spiral that led to the pinnacle of success and excess and drove me to suicide and an interview with Death. There was much that led to that day of infamy in 2004, but it began with my first encounter with the Man in Black when I was thirteen. No―it was before then. The path to that spiral began the day I was born, because of where I was born. And then there were forces that shaped my destiny that no mortal could’ve comprehended before my one on one with the Reaper.
I’m not writing this to excuse my actions or shift blame for the pain I have caused so many. I will eternally live with the bloodstains and bear the burden, like I do with the job I accepted as penance. I do not ask forgiveness for things that can never be made right. I only ask that you hear me out as I start from the beginning.
Â
I entered my reality on June 13, 1960, in Oak Park, Illinois, the hometown of Ernest Miller Hemingway. If not for the location of my birth, I wonder if I’d have ever become a writer. I was an only child and have few memories in Oak Park besides playing with army men at the park near my house and trips to the Lake Michigan boardwalk to get ice cream. Pink Bubblegum with the little blue gummy pieces was my favorite. There was also the Ackerman Tower Massacre, which created my early boogie man. My father, Jonathan Leslie Miller, worked for Lester Ackerman and was in the building when the massacre occurred. The event is something I won’t speak of now. Its significance will become clear later. But few living then or born in my reality since haven’t heard of or seen Ackerman’s murderous extravaganza that played out on live black and white TV on Christmas Day in 1964. My father sheltered me as best he could, but that wasn’t easy since he lost his job.
The following February, my family moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where my grandfather, Milton Leslie Miller, worked as a manager for a small aircraft engine company. Grandpa Milton lived in a yellow Victorian home where my father and uncle Frank grew up. By then, it was a lonely home and had been since Grandma Dorine passed away before I could remember her. My father tried to find a new job in the defense industry but after months without success, he settled for a job working with Grandpa Milton alongside his brother.
Shortly after we moved, Frank was drafted into the Army. Once enlisted, he volunteered for the Seventy-Fifth Airborne Regiment and became a Green Beret before shipping off to Vietnam. That year while Frank was overseas, Grandpa Milton died of a massive heart attack and my father replaced him as manager.
Frank returned in 1970, right before Nixon began covert operations in Cambodia. The Army begged him to stay, but he was done fighting a war no one would allow him to win, if it could be won at all. What followed his return was a nightmare for his wife, Dorothy, as much as it was for himself. Frank told me years later that my father and mother tried to help, but something had broken inside him. He couldn’t get the faces of the dead out of his head, whether they were friends or enemies or collateral damage. So, Frank drank until he blacked out to make the faces disappear. When he opened up years later and told me his stories, he admitted to hitting Dorothy. But she stuck it out because she believed in old-school marriage, up to a point.
One morning, Uncle Frank awoke to find Dorothy crying on the porch steps of the Victorian home willed to him by Grandpa Milton. Her right eye was black and swollen. When he reached to console her, she pulled away and told him she was leaving. Frank ran inside, grabbed every bottle, and smashed them on the sidewalk in front of Dorothy. He said he’d get help for his drinking and what would soon be called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, not that Frank was one to blame what he did on anyone or anything but himself. He was made of tougher stuff than that and always said, “You own it when you do it, no excuses. You’re responsible for what your hands do and what your mouth says. Don’t matter if you’re drunk or anything else. And you’re responsible for making it right or carrying that burden to your grave.”
Frank swore he would do anything for Dorothy if she wouldn’t leave. She reluctantly agreed to stay. And unlike most abusive husbands, he owned it and made it right. He never drank again or raised his voice or hand to Dorothy. While her broken heart didn’t mend overnight, in time, they found tranquility in their eternal love. I’m glad my parents never told me any of this. Kids need heroes to give them something to strive toward, and I wasn’t ready to know the real Uncle Frank back then.
On October 15, 1972, four months after my twelfth birthday, my parents were killed by a drunk driver who veered into their lane. They were diehard Eagles fans returning from Philadelphia after a short trip to celebrate their thirteenth anniversary. The Eagles lost big to the LA Rams like they did to the Cowboys a month before, which was the last thing we did together. I wanted to go to the Rams game, but Uncle Frank and Aunt Dorothy insisted I stay with them so my parents could have a rare date. After midnight, I learned my parents wouldn’t be picking me up in the morning.
In their living will, my parents gave custody of me to Frank and Dorothy. Other than that, my parents had little of value other than a heart-shaped pearl locket, wedding rings, and a watch Grandpa Milton gave my father.
Who knows what would’ve become of me if not for Uncle Frank and Aunt Dorothy taking me in after the third offense drunk driver killed my parents and stole my innocence. I still remember their faces at the funeral, all made up to give the impression of life, but their foreheads were cold to my warm lips. Frank and Dorothy held me up when my legs were too weak to stand.
For several months after the funeral, I rarely left my upstairs bedroom that had belonged to my father. Frank and Dorothy always told me they loved me and that Grandpa Milton and Grandma Dorine’s house was too big without me. Once, they’d hoped for children, but Dorothy was barren, so they considered adoption. Then Frank got drafted. When he got out, sobered up, and they considered adopting again, my parents were dead, and I was dumped in their laps.
Six months passed before I started coming downstairs for more than meals and school. I seldom spoke unless spoken to, and my responses were no more than a word or two. During those first difficult months of our life together, Frank and Dorothy tried to crack my heart’s stone-casing. They wanted to see their happy, carefree nephew again, but I felt immune to joy. Every waking moment oscillated between tears and anger toward the man who stole my parents. I hoped for nothing more than to find him one day and end his life.
The loneliness was unbearable, and the nights were worse. I dreamed about my parents as if they were alive, only to have them taken away again in the morning. But Frank had lost his only brother and much more in Vietnam, and soon, Dorothy and Frank’s love softened my heart. I learned to smile and laugh again when the waves of grief weren’t crashing down on me.
For my thirteenth birthday, Frank and Dorothy twisted my arm into going to the Harrisburg County Summer Fair. It was a sunny day, and I remember eating blue cotton candy and too many chili dogs. I felt sick, but we were finally happy. It was as if I had forgotten my parents were gone.
After the belly cramps passed, I told Frank and Dorothy I wanted to go on some rides. I rode every single one twice. My favorite was the Enterprise. It was a spoked disk with two-person pods attached around the wheel. It rose to ninety degrees, spinning at eye blurring speeds, making me dizzy.
Shortly before closing, I asked to ride the Enterprise one more time. After I got in line, a soft breeze blew, and the ride to my left caught my eye. It was called The Loop and looked like a single loop of a loop-de-loop roller coaster. I eyed the Enterprise again and then The Loop. The breeze picked up, and the wind seemed to whisper, “Ride that one instead.” I listened.
I bumped into a hazel-eyed girl behind me as I exited the line. She had short blonde hair and looked a little older than me. I said, “Excuse me.” She smiled sweetly enough to make me blush and look away.
Before snaking through the crowd to my destination, I brushed by the man behind the girl. He was old and wore a fancy black cowboy hat. He had wild silver hair poking out from underneath. Hard etched lines aged his face further. He looked out of place, dressed in his black trench coat, matching shirt, slacks, and cowboy boots. It was night, and it was dark, but his blue eyes were luminous when they met mine. He solemnly grinned like a mortician. I shook my head as a chill danced along my spine and moved swiftly through the crowd to The Loop’s shorter line.
To this day, I can’t remember being on that ride. I only remember hearing the screams when I got off. I ran toward the crowd to see what happened and pushed through. In the center was a crumpled pod that had broken off a poorly maintained ride. Crimson dripped from the cobalt metal pod into a red puddle. A candied apple floated in the middle next to the lifeless face of one of the four victims. It was the hazel-eyed girl. I wondered if the old man was among the dead until I saw him look my way with fathomless sorrow. He turned and disappeared into the crowd. I never forgot him, though it would be many years before I saw him again.
