"Cargo"

This is not the typical thing I usually post on Substack, as it’s not a topical or historical piece but a personal one from several years back that someone encouraged me to dust off. These events occurred in late 2005 and early 2006. Most of the names have been changed.

I.

I got up before sunrise, showered, and got in my Air Force dress blues. It’s probably the most care I’d given my uniform since basic training. Got every scrap of lint. Carefully lined up my few pins and medals. My roommate drove me to the funeral home and dropped me off. I was by myself when I went there to pick up the body. The Lieutenant traveling with me was going to meet me later at the airport.

The sun was just barely starting to stream out over the horizon when I got there. The place wasn’t even open yet. I remember feeling like the building was in the middle of nowhere. I walked around it looking for a side door and eventually found the funeral director waiting outside in the back.

He offered me some cheap, shitty coffee while he got me the packet of paperwork I’d have to eventually turn over to the funeral home in Nevada. I carried it with me the rest of the trip. Then he had me help him wheel Murphey’s body into the back of the hearse. The coffin was packed in a huge, white shipping box. On the side it read, “IF ANY PROBLEMS ARE EXPERIENCED WITH THIS SHIPMENT CONTACT SRA ERIC KRUG.” On the top of the box, at one end, the word “HEAD” was stenciled in big, black letters.

I soon met up with the L.T. at the San Antonio airport and we got out of Texas without any hassle. Our flight to Las Vegas had a layover in Atlanta, and we had a little time between flights, so I separated from the Lieutenant, got some food, and then went to the airport’s smoking room to have a cigarette. Atlanta was a big deployment hub for the military. A lot of soldiers coming in and out from Iraq and Afghanistan. Although this was at the very start of 2006, so it was primarily Iraq at the time.

I was sitting at the back of the room, glancing over at a group of Marines in battle fatigues sitting around their duffel bags. Just then, a pretty girl walked into the room. I could sense that the Marines, like myself, were assessing her. She glanced around the room, trying to decide where she would sit. From the corner of our eyes, we all watched to see what her decision would be.

She walked over and took the chair just two seats down from me, then lit up a cigarette. I took notice of her, but made it a point not to be too obvious. After a few drags, I could see in my peripheral vision that she was looking for a place to ash. The ashtrays were on these metal stands scattered throughout the room, and the only one nearby was the one I had set right at my feet. So I started to use my foot to push it in her direction so we could share it, but before I could, she got up and jumped into the seat next to me.

She looked at my uniform, “So what are you exactly?”

“What am I?” I said smiling. Then I realized what she meant, “Oh, I’m Air Force. The Air Force wears blue.”

“I thought Marines wore blue,” she said.

“Well, yeah, the Marines full dress uniform is blue too. And the Navy has some blue uniforms as well. So I guess just about everybody wears blue. Ignore what I said before.”

“So why do you get the nice, fancy uniform?” she asked, apparently noticing the contrast in my attire with the camo fatigues the Marines had on.

I hesitated, “I’m, uh, transporting a body home to the family.”

“Oh,” I think she felt bad for asking. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Did he die in Iraq?”

“No, much worse than that,” I said, “Texas.”

I hesitated a moment, “He actually committed suicide. We worked together at a base in San Antonio.” That quickly put a stop to the banter. But I was quick to shrug it off, “It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

I actually think it helped us to connect a little quicker than we would have otherwise. Allowed us to have a real conversation. And I’m sure it didn’t hurt that not only did I have the “man in uniform” thing going for me, but now I was also a tragic figure that she wanted to comfort — and sexual pathos is my bread and butter.

I’d love to continue replaying the scene for you, but other than the fact that she was a college student from Florida I really don’t remember the specifics of what we talked about. But I remember it was a nice break on that otherwise morose day. A chance to unburden some of my pent-up inner thoughts with a caring stranger. And I won’t lie, it’s always nice when the stranger is an attractive woman.

We walked and talked throughout the terminal until she finally had to board her flight. Before she left, she ran over to the counter and wrote her info down on one of those luggage tags and gave it to me. I contacted her after my trip, but it didn’t take long for us to lose touch. She was in Florida, I was in Texas, and we just never managed to make it happen before she eventually got herself tied up with a serious boyfriend.

That actually happened to me a lot back in the day. I was particularly lucky with women I met while traveling. On trains and planes; in airports and stations. We’d always exchange info, but it’d be impossible to follow up. Just my luck that the one place I finally found myself good at picking up ladies was the one place where I could be sure they would live nowhere near me.

After I parted ways with my smoking partner, I met up with Lieutenant Novak to go get Murphey’s body loaded up for the flight to Las Vegas. The L.T. took me downstairs so we could meet up with one of the Delta ramp workers who was there to escort us onto the flightline. As he drove us to the cargo hold on his little cart, he regaled us with stories of his time in the military.

He was apparently in the Air Force too and did the same job as me during Vietnam (working the flightline/terminal as an “Air Transportation Operations Specialist”). He told us a story about two guys who’d just finished their tour in ‘Nam and were waiting for their flight home when they got blown apart by a mortar that hit the passenger building. Neither him nor I ever saw combat, but we did swap a couple stories about being mortared on base. His were better than mine, but that’s just because Vietnam was a more exciting war than Iraq. At one point, he started ranting about how many drugs he took during the war. Told us one story about how the base got mortared very heavily right after he’d just smoked a ton of weed.

“I swear I couldn’t even tell where I was, or what was happening. I just watched the whole thing like it was this big fireworks show,” he said, “I had this big, shit-eatin’ grin on my face!”

I loved it, especially because Lieutenant Novak was squirming the whole time. He was a very devout Christian, and a bit of a goody-two-shoes honestly. He actually used to be an Air Force chaplain before he switched his AFSC (job classification) to Supply; and he only switched because he needed an assignment in Lackland where they had the proper medical facilities to treat his twins’ muscular dystrophy.

I really bonded with Lt. Novak during that trip. He was a very open-minded, intelligent, and kind person. We had some great conversations. In fact, I remember he was going back to school and was writing a thesis comparing previous generations with this new generation coming up that were called “Millenials” (he was the first person to introduce me to that term). Even though Novak was my escort, and my superior, he let me off the leash so I could spend time with Murphey’s family on my own terms. I was very fortunate that he was the one they chose to be my liaison for that duty. All that being said, it was a lot of fun watching this ramp worker’s uncensored Vietnam stories make him super uncomfortable.

The cargo hold where they kept Murphey’s body was located under the terminal buildings, tucked out of sight, but still in the open-air of the tarmac. So the roof above us was actually the floor of the terminal, where people were still scurrying off to their respective flights. The ramp worker drove us into a section of the cargo hold that was basically just for dead bodies. There were endless rows and rows of these large, white boxes as far as the eye could see. Each exactly the same as the one Murphey was in. Many were soldiers, since Atlanta was a common transit area for fallen vets being flown home; but of course, there were also a bunch of boring, regular dead guys who weren’t even heroes.

I had to fill out more paperwork before we could load up for our connecting flight. I filled out so much paperwork on that trip. At every stop we made, on arrival and departure, there was always more paperwork. And that didn’t even include the paperwork I was carrying with me during the entire trip. And every time I did more paperwork they would say things like, “This form verifies that you assume responsibility for the cargo,” or, “The cargo will be delivered to the aircraft 40 minutes prior to departure.” They always referred to Murphey as the “cargo.” Even the funeral director in Texas had called him “cargo.” That always stuck with me.

Even though that Delta ramp worker in Atlanta might have seemed a tad “eccentric,” he actually was a lifesaver for me and the L.T. when it came to performing the proper ceremonial duties for Murphey’s body. We were just standing there like idiots while the body was being rolled up the conveyor belt, until he told us we were supposed to stand at attention and salute. For whatever reason, we had not been trained in any of that stuff by anyone before we left. The squadron just kind of sprung this “escort duty” on the both of us at the last minute without preparing us at all. I myself was only selected to go because I was the only one in the terminal who had developed any kind of relationship with Murphey (and the only one who wanted to go). Novak wasn’t even from the same unit as me and Murphey. But thankfully, the ramp worker had seen plenty of dead soldiers come through his airport, so he had the routine down pat.

When we boarded the plane, the crew of the flight informed me and Lieutenant Novak that they would make an announcement when we landed in Las Vegas to have the other passengers stay in their seats so we could deplane first. That way we could get out to the tarmac before Murphey’s body was unloaded and perform the duties we were now aware of. I slept through most of the flight. The L.T. woke me up as soon as we hit the deck in Vegas so that we could get our things together quickly and not delay the other passengers. When the plane started pulling up to the gate, the Captain made his announcement.

“We’d like to thank you all for choosing to fly with us today. And we’d like to ask all passengers to remain in their seats momentarily when we reach the gate. We have two members of our armed forces that are traveling home with the remains of a fallen servicemen on our aircraft. They will be taking him home to his family today, and we’d ask that you please remain seated to permit them to exit the aircraft first so they can make their way down to the ramp area to carry out their duties. Thank you very much for your cooperation.”

The plane came to a stop, the seatbelt sign went off, and everyone remained still except for me and the L.T. We got up and began collecting our things from the overhead compartment. Everything was so still and everyone was so dead-quiet that it started making me uncomfortable. I threw my bag over my shoulder and tried to act casual as I headed down the aisle. That was when someone started clapping. And then bit by bit, the other passengers started joining in. Pretty soon, the entire plane was applauding for me and the L.T. as we walked towards the exit.

I felt sick to my stomach, and I know that Novak could sense it. Because I knew the passengers must have assumed that Murphey had been killed in combat. They had no way of knowing the truth. And I knew that if they did, they wouldn’t be clapping. They would have stayed quiet and kept looking at the ground uncomfortably.

I just wanted to get off that plane as fast as I could.

II.

Chris Murphey died on New Year’s Eve 2005-2006. I was on leave in New York City when it happened. I didn’t find out about it until three days later when my friend, Smitty, called me while I was eating a blueberry yogurt at the Houston airport waiting on my delayed connecting flight. Smitty had been a Staff Sergeant at the same terminal with me and Murph, but had recently been medically discharged. He had surgery the previous year to remove a golf-ball sized tumor in his brain, just behind his right eye. He eventually made a full recovery, but he was a little slow for a while after he got out of the hospital. Plus he had to do chemotherapy to keep it from relapsing and it often made him shit himself at work, so they let him retire. I was pretty bummed when he left because he was my closest buddy at the terminal, plus I loved messing with him while his brain was broken. Like when he asked for help spelling while he was trying to search online for the nearest Schlotzsky’s, and I got him to google “schlong” instead.

Smitty wasn’t supposed to tell me what happened to Murphey. The higher-up’s wanted to wait to tell me themselves in an “official” fashion, but Smitty figured I would rather hear it from him. He asked me if I’d heard from Tech Sergeant Ayala, our immediate supervisor, and I mentioned that he had called me a day earlier. He had only asked me when I was returning from leave and then ended the conversation. I assumed he was just being his usual annoying self and keeping tabs on me even while I was on vacation, but apparently he had an actual reason for harassing me this time. When Smitty heard that Ayala had called he said, “So you already heard what happened to Murphey?”

When he said that, I immediately assumed Murphey had gotten himself in some serious trouble again. Maybe even got himself kicked out of the Air Force or something. Not that Murphey was a bad Airman, or even a bad kid. He was a hard worker actually, but he hated the bullshit tasks we had to do at Lackland during downtime (and Lackland’s airfield was 95% downtime). He also didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. At his previous assignment in Ramstein, Germany, there was a lot of work to be done, and he was among a large group of young Airmen like himself. In Lackland, he was alone in a tiny terminal of older Sergeants who lived off-base, and he was restless there. Not one person in our terminal disliked him, but almost everyone rode his ass. And always because of something minor like failing dorm inspections, showing up a little late, or forgetting to file some personnel paperwork. Little things. But it’s the little things the military takes very seriously (especially when there’s nothing else important going on).

Murphey was the favorite punching bag for Ayala in particular, a title I had held myself until Murphey showed up. Ayala was one of those guys who liked to assert his authority “just because.” He was always creating “busy work,” and then taking that busy work far too seriously. Plus he was very insecure and often got vindictive whenever he perceived that he was being disrespected, whether rightly or wrongly. I remember one time Ayala yelled at Murphey for “looking him in the eye” while he spoke, then the very next day he told him angrily “look me in the eyes when I’m speaking with you.” And instead of saying, “Yes, Sir,” and living to fight another day, Murphey said, “You just told me yesterday not to look you in the eyes!” And, of course, when the rest of us heard Murph snap at him like that, we all hung our heads because we knew that he was definitely going to be written up again.

“Murphey killed himself a couple days ago,” Smitty told me over the phone.

I was shocked. It made my stomach turn. Totally ruined my blueberry yogurt. I asked him how Murphey did it and Smitty said he wasn’t sure, but he knew they found him in his bathtub so he thought it was pills and booze. I remember my first thought after hearing that was, “Oh what the hell, Murph? If you’re gonna kill yourself at least leave them a mess to clean up. Don’t go out like some failed actress.” If he’d asked for my advice, I would have told him to eat a bunch of burritos, take a few laxatives, and then shoot himself in Ayala’s office.

But even though Smitty was right about Murphey being found in the tub, he was incorrect about the way he died. Murph’s roommate had discovered him on the morning of January 2nd. In the room, they found an empty bottle of tequila, purchased on New Years Eve according to the receipt, and a note that said, “I leave everything to my brother and best friend, Tyler.” Murph had also written a message on his chest that said, “I Love Myself – Bye.” Then he got in the tub, plugged in his portable DVD player, and dropped it into the water.

After I got off the phone with Smitty, I went walking around the terminal listening to music, trying to collect my thoughts. Once it got close to departure time, I sat down near my gate and started people-watching. There was a group of teenagers waiting for a flight a few gates away. I think they were part of a dance team or something, because just as David Bowie’s Starman started playing in my headphones, a boy and girl took each other’s hand and went out to the middle of the terminal floor. There, they started ballroom dancing with each other, almost perfectly in tune with the music that was playing in my ears. It was a beautiful moment. I didn’t want it to end.

I’m sure it must have ended at some point, but when I go back into my memory banks, I can only remember the lights dimming as a spotlight went on them, and then they started working in more and more acrobatic maneuvers into their routine right as the song crescendoed. By the time I die, I’ll probably start remembering how the whole airport joined in, flash mob style, and then David Bowie himself showed up and played an impromptu concert wearing a sweet, sleeveless T that said “I Love Myself” on the front and “Bye” on the back.

III.

When I got back to work Tech Sergeant Ayala and Master Sergeant Lehman were waiting for me in Ayala’s office with the Chaplain. I went in there planning to pretend I didn’t know anything, just so they wouldn’t get upset with Smitty, but by the time I got in the office and sat down I realized I did not have the stomach to put on a performance for them. Smitty was already out of the Air Force anyway, so I knew he couldn’t get in any trouble.

“Look,” I said, “Smitty already told me what happened to Murphey.”

I left it at that, but then Ayala shot me a perturbed look. It seemed like he was waiting for me to say more.

“What?” I said.

“You don’t have anything else to say?”

He seemed indignant. As if he was insulted by the callous lack of emotion I was showing. I remember that made me fucking furious. Before I’d walked into that office, I half-expected Ayala to actually humble himself before me. Because Ayala could be a real prick, but like all pricks he still had genuine humanity in him. He had to know that all of us under him would resent him even more in the wake of Murphey’s suicide. He had to know that we all felt his constantly berating and punishing Murphey for every minor infraction or perceived insult could only have exacerbated whatever it was that drove him to this. There is no way he was unaware that we all blamed him to some extent for Murphey’s death.

In truth, I really had trouble feeling anything in that initial period. I was still far removed from it all. And there was so much going on with the official investigation, and the memorial services, and preparing to leave for the escort duties. Plus everyone is immediately trying to talk to you about it, and you don’t want to talk to them about it. Chaplains are offering counsel, and you don’t want their counsel. There’s bullshit briefings about how to deal with your grief that you don’t want to attend. The only thing I wanted to do was get out of San Antonio and go see his family.

I remember one day, Tech Sergeant Vargas came up to ask me a question and he accidentally called me “Murphey” instead of Krug. I could see he felt embarrassed about it, but the thing was — he did that all the time. Even before Murphey died. A lot of the guys there did. They’d always get the two of us mixed up. We didn’t exactly look alike, but if you had met us both at the time you would immediately get it. We had similar heights, similar builds, and we kind of had the same mannerisms. We just had a similar “aura” about us. I always thought of him as a younger me. I mean, okay, he was only four years younger than me (I was 26, he was 22), but I had certainly changed a lot in those four years. And at his age, I had been in the darkest place of my life — before or since. And even though I am not at liberty to go into all the details, I can assure you that the way I handled that chapter in my life was certainly no less self-destructive than the way Murphey handled his. I was just luckier than he was.

They had a memorial service at the base before I left for the actual funeral. They asked me to speak, but I wouldn’t do it. I basically made out like I was just in too emotional a place, but the truth was I just didn’t want to. So they had Ayala do it since he was his immediate supervisor. Some of the guys were pretty pissed off that Ayala would be doing the eulogizing, but I actually enjoyed it. It was a small amount of payback watching him squirm up there. And I didn’t put any stock in that particular memorial service anyway. It was for the squadron brass. It wasn’t for me, or for Murphey, or for his loved ones. That’s why I had no interest in it. I did not want to spend days crafting a speech where I had an obligation to be dishonest.

I remember Ayala called me when they were planning the service to ask about Murphey’s religious affiliations. His entry paperwork said “Christian,” but Ayala didn’t know exactly where he stood. I knew Murphey had since left the flock, even though his parents would have been pretty bummed to find that out. He was raised in a small town in rural Oregon, and it was very conservative and very Christian from what he told me. Murph was extremely open in our conversations about disliking religion, and he often railed against the way the military would force everyone to participate in Christian prayers at functions. You could tell it was a sore spot for him. I mean, I disliked it too, but I just took it all in stride.

I think he was at that stage in his life where he had tried to be a believer, but grew disillusioned with it, and then came to resent how it had been forced down his throat for so many years. Many of us in those circumstances go through a phase like that. I myself was like that for a time in my teens, but I eventually came to adopt a live and let live attitude instead. Nowadays, I care more about a person’s character than I do their religious beliefs, political views, or taste in movies. That being said, if you enjoyed the movie The Fifth Element — you are a genuinely bad person and I will see you in hell.

Despite relaying all of this information to Ayala, he told me that the Commander wanted a Christian service, so that’s probably what they would end up doing. I wondered why he had even called me in the first place. Sounded like they’d already made up their mind.

I remember sitting there during that service, ignoring the speeches, and imagining how if Murphey were alive he would have hated being forced to attend this thing as much as I did. And then I had this flashback to when we had to serve in the food line together at a Thanksgiving function for the squadron. Everyone tasked with serving had a big tray of food put down in front of them, and they were in charge of serving that particular dish to the more important people who passed by. I had something standard in my tray, like mashed potatoes or something, but Murphey was given a big tray of carrots and bacon.

“Hey, Krug,” Murph said, “What the fuck is this?”

I looked over at his tray, “I think that’s carrots and bacon.”

“Do those go together?” he asked.

“Apparently they do,” I said, “Because someone just did it.”

Then the people started filing through for their food. They got to me first and I’d ask them if they wanted any mashed potatoes. If they said yes, then I’d politely deal them a portion for their plate. Then they’d scoot down to Murphey and he’d shout at them, “WOULD YOU LIKE SOME CARROTS AND BACON?!”

They’d always jump back a bit, and most would decline the offer. But Murphey kept giving it the hard sell with each person that came through his line.

“CARROTS AND BACON! TOGETHER AT LAST!”

“CARROTS AND BACON! GET IT WHILE IT’S HOT! OR COLD! EITHER WAY IT’S GOING TO TASTE LIKE SOMETHING NEVER ONCE ASSOCIATED WITH THANKSGIVING DINNER!”

It kept cracking me up. Even the people in line started laughing. Some of them would end up trying the dish just because they had to see what all the fuss was about.

And that was the memory that just jumped into my head while the Commander was in the middle of speaking at the memorial service. I forgot where I was for a minute, and I had to bury my face into my hands to keep myself from laughing. I made it look like I was being overcome with emotion just so I wouldn’t get in trouble.

IV.

The Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) were actually pretty hardcore in their investigation of Murphey’s death. They ransacked his dorm room and wouldn’t even let his roommate back in to get his uniform. They also searched through every corner of the terminal we worked in. Even pulled all the hard drives from our computers.

I had actually applied to OSI just a few weeks before this all happened. At the same time, I was also starting to do open mics up in Austin, but I wasn’t certain if I was going to commit myself fully to stand-up comedy yet. I only knew that if I stayed in the Air Force I wanted to do something more fulfilling than just being a POG (personnel other than grunts) working three hours a day, two days a week. I liked the idea of working for OSI because, as they themselves put it, OSI was only interested in “real crimes.” Not just busting Airmen for smoking pot or drinking underage.

One of the OSI agents who interviewed me about Murphey’s death was actually the same one who’d taken my application. He said they would likely be pushing me through to the interview process if I was still interested, depending on whether or not I chose to reenlist. Honestly, I was a little surprised, because I didn’t have all that exemplary of a record. (Maybe he was just buttering me up for the interview.) Of course, I did not have any blotches on my record either (although I had barely gotten out of an earlier AWOL charge due to sheer luck), and I knew I would likely be good at the job. But even though I’d only been doing open mics for two months, I really knew I wanted to pursue stand-up. I remember the OSI agent was actually pep-talking me into it.

“Hey, if you got a dream you should go for it,” he said, “Don’t want to spend your life wondering ‘what if.’”

I was the last person in the terminal they interviewed. For a while, I thought they had forgotten about me, and I kind of hoped I wouldn’t have to do it. But eventually they called me in. The impression I got from the agents was that everyone else basically told them the same, basic stuff about Murphey. And that many of the guys had used it as an opportunity to criticize Ayala. I had decided I’d be honest if asked about Ayala, but that I’d make no effort to make this interview specifically about bashing him.

“Did Murphey have any financial troubles you knew of?” they asked.

“He never mentioned it to me,” I said, “but I’ve heard from others that he was in debt. Not sure to what extent.”

“Any enemies that you knew of?”

“No.”

“Girlfriends? Or relationship problems?”

“I think he had a girl back in Ramstein. Heard something about some girl from back home too, but I don’t know much about her.”

“Any drug abuse that you know of?”

“He said he smoked weed before he enlisted. That was it.”

“Did his appearance change at all in the past months or so? Did he go from being sharp and polished to looking more disheveled at work?”

“No, he was consistently disheveled.”

The agents laughed.

The interview was actually very open and comfortable. The agents seemed to get my sense of humor and it was the most honest talk about Murphey I’d had since he’d died. I remember them mentioning how everyone seemed so shocked by Murphey’s death. That he showed no signs, none of the classic indicators, no cries for help. He just did it.

“I was shocked when I first heard,” I said, “but I’ll admit I wasn’t really that surprised.”

The agent leaned in, “Why is that?”

I suddenly got hesitant. Because I was about to speak frankly about understanding how Murphey felt, and I realized that doing so might reveal a side of myself that I probably shouldn’t. I felt naked. Alone. Vulnerable. Like I was about to be seen as the freak I worried others might see me as. No matter how desperately you want to tell someone how you really feel, you know you shouldn’t. Because you’d just make everyone else uncomfortable. And once they know these things about you, they can use it against you if you ever start to rub them the wrong way. Even if they genuinely see themselves as an enlightened person who doesn’t judge, they can subconsciously end up doing it anyway. And you know that no respectable woman is going to want to take a chance on you. That no one is going to want to invite you to their parties anymore. No one is going to offer you a job in the OSI (because they don’t give those jobs to “headcases”).

People are fine talking about these things in the third person, but when you make it too up close and personal they get very uneasy. I learned that very quickly when putting together my first stand-up comedy sets. Sometimes I would make the bits a little too “real,” or too revealing, and the audience would get uncomfortable. There’s a fine line between a funny anecdote and “TMI.” I saw right away that presentation is everything. You have to know how to sell it so that they see you as delightfully self-deprecating, rather than whiny or pathetic — or just plain weird.

“I don’t know,” I told the OSI agents, “I guess I just knew him well enough to know that he was hurting. It just didn’t occur to me how bad it had gotten.”

“When did you first meet Chris?” the agent asked.

It was back in August of 2005 that Murphey got transferred over to us from Germany. I don’t really know how he ended up there. We certainly didn’t need him, and they almost never sent people to that terminal unless there were extenuating circumstances. For me, it was because I was married and my wife was stationed there, so they found me an assignment at the same base as her. Our terminal at Lackland had been all but shut down at that point. We had twelve active duty Air Force personnel working in the entire terminal (two or three of which would often be deployed overseas at any given time), and a few civilian government employees who did most of the flightline work for us. By comparison, the average Air Force terminal typically had hundreds of active duty personnel.

At Lackland, there were only two scheduled flights a week, both training missions that typically left our airfield completely empty (they sometimes later picked up crew and cargo at other bases on the coasts). So, other than boarding old retirees who used their military status to get free “space available” flights to Europe and Japan, we basically did nothing unless a medical evac mission popped up, or Fort Hood needed to send a deployment of soldiers to Iraq, or a hurricane named Katrina displaced a bunch of people in New Orleans. The rest of the time we just sat around and argued about 9/11 conspiracies. (I took the view that it was an outside job, which was actually the minority position.)

It was a bit of a shock for Murphey to have to switch to such a dead-end assignment. Ramstein was one of the most active airbases in the entire Air Force, especially since it had started becoming the main hub for missions out to Iraq. I had to school him on the way things worked at our terminal. I always had that “little brother” feeling towards him, and for whatever misguided reason, the higher-up’s made the mistake of having me “train” him on our “duties” at that “terminal.”

“All right, rookie,” I’d say, “you probably think you’re hot shit, don’t ya?”

He’d just stare at me, “Um… No?”

“Shut up. Now lesson number one, I cannot stand customer satisfaction. I do not ever want to see one of these old fuck retirees walking out of here with a smile on their face. Do you understand me?”

“Uhh…”

“I said shut up. Now if you see a customer walking out to that plane satisfied, you lose their luggage with a quickness, or so help me God I will have your stripes pulled.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Lesson number two: If someone calls here with a question about space available travel, put them on hold and go read a magazine. Eventually they will hang up. Understand?”

“Okay.”

“Good. You’re trained. Now go get me some coffee, rook. I gotta go piss on Sergeant Ayala’s plants.”

That last part is not a joke. Smitty and I actually did that. Most of the time we’d just pour soda and shit on them, but we’d always try to squeeze some urine in there whenever the opportunity presented itself. Ayala loved those plants, and we just thought it was hilarious that he could never understand why they kept dying on him.

“So you never saw any indicators in Airman Murphey that he might be contemplating suicide?” the OSI agent asked.

“Well,” I said, “he did shave his head a few weeks back. I guess that seemed a little bit ‘Taxi Driver’ of him.” The agent laughed. “But he told me he had just tried to give himself a haircut and botched it, so he shaved the whole thing. That explanation seemed perfectly plausible knowing Murphey.”

The agent continued writing down something in his notes.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He was a bit different after he got back from visiting his family on Thanksgiving.”

“How so?” the agent said.

“It just seemed more despondent,” I replied. “He was less angry, and more just broken. I think that trip made him really hate his life here more.”

“Did he get in trouble a lot?” the agent asked.

I felt like this was the point where they were prying about Ayala. I did mention some instances of Ayala’s behavior. I was careful to give specific examples rather than just my own feelings on the matter. Let them decide for themselves. For instance, I mentioned how just before that Thanksgiving trip Ayala tried to cancel Murphey’s leave.

That came about because Murphey and I were talking at the terminal the day before his trip, and he told me that he was going to get on the road right at the stroke of midnight (the minute his leave began) because he was eager to get home to his family. Ayala just happened to overhear that and said that he wouldn’t allow it. He told him that regulations required he had to get enough sleep before driving long distances, and so he had to leave later in the morning.

I said, “Well what if he just sleeps immediately after work? That would give him a full 8 hours by midnight.”

Ayala shot me an angry look. Then he said that Murph couldn’t prove that he’d be sleeping during that time, so he wouldn’t allow it. And then he told Murph to call him before leaving at around 8:00am just to verify he didn’t try to leave earlier. That’s when Murphey lost it.

“You know when I’m on leave, that’s my time,” he said, “You can’t tell me where to be or when I can leave. That’s why it’s leave time.”

The rest of us standing around just hung our heads again. We knew Murphey had done it now. If he’d just kept his mouth shut he’d have been fine, but now Ayala was going to have to “prove a point.”

Ayala then said he would just have to cancel Murphey’s leave all together and stormed into his office. Sergeant Randolph followed him in there and was thankfully able to talk him out of it, but Ayala continued giving Murphey shit about the incident even after he got back.

I don’t really know what happened to Ayala after I left the Air Force. I heard later from Smitty that he got removed from his position after an inquiry was made following Murphey’s death, but then he was later reinstated and the whole thing was forgotten. Smitty said that Ayala even tried to friend him on social media at one point (which he did not accept). Honestly, Ayala wasn’t the worst person in the world. He even took pity on me one time when I showed up to work not just hungover but still blatantly drunk (everyone could smell it on me from ten feet away). I was going through a rough breakup with my (now ex) wife, and instead of getting me in serious trouble (which he definitely could have done), he let me sleep it off in the DV lounge. Still, he is the kind of person who should probably never have authority over people. At least, not until he deals with his own insecurities. But then again, you could probably say that about 90% of the bosses in the world.

I remember that I found out Ayala was gay while I was deployed in Iraq in 2004. To be honest, I had already pretty much guessed it, but it was confirmed while I was in Iraq. My wife at that time had a lot of gay friends, so she hung out at the gay clubs a lot. One night she saw Ayala making out with a guy there and emailed me immediately.

“Guess what? Somebody you work with is secretly gay,” she wrote, “I’ll give you 3 guesses.”

I replied, “Ayala, Ayala, and Ayala.”

“How did you know??” she wrote back.

I don’t know why, but I think everyone in the terminal kind of knew. We just didn’t really acknowledge it openly. Ayala wasn’t “flamboyant” or anything (or “camp” as the Brits would say), but you could still tell somehow. And some might try to claim that Ayala’s “secret life” tied into his character flaws, but it’s not like I haven’t met plenty of straight dudes who were just as insecure and petty as Ayala was. But still, you could tell Ayala was clearly worried about people finding out. He would often regale us with tales about all the “ladies” he hooked up with in an effort to prove he was straight as the day is long. And keep in mind, this was also happening before “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was repealed, so he had to worry about losing his job as well.

I never told anyone about what my wife said, but everyone in the terminal found out later when someone else got the scoop and spread it around. I remember there was a moment where the guys in the terminal had a discussion about whether we should report Ayala’s homosexuality and get him kicked out of the military. It seemed like it might be the only way we might actually get rid of him, since the military cared far more about how gay you were rather than how good a leader you were. Ultimately, we all voted the idea down, and I for one was very relieved. I felt that if Ayala was to ever get his comeuppance, it should be for being a douche not a homosexual — and I was pleased that the rest of the guys agreed.

After the OSI agent finished his questions, he closed up his notebook and said the last thing I wanted to hear.

“Well, it would appear that you were the only person in San Antonio that Murphey ever really opened up to.”

I didn’t like the way everyone kept talking about the two of us as if we were such great friends. It just felt like that narrative was put out there to make themselves feel better, but it made me feel guiltier. Because if we were such great friends, wouldn’t I have done a better job reading the signs? Wouldn’t he have been more willing to open up to me? Wouldn’t I have made a greater effort to hang out with him and cheer him up?

Don’t get me wrong, we were friends. When two people spend eight hours together day after day (including after-hours missions) in a small space doing nothing but hanging out, they do get to know each other very well. But we’d only started becoming friends outside of work in the weeks before he died. The last time I saw him was when I had him to my house for Christmas before leaving for New York. It was just a small gathering for a few friends that were unable to make it home for the holidays, including my ex-wife (we were still trying to remain friends).

After he died, my roommate said Murph had seemed upbeat that night, but he could also tell that he was lonely. I felt bad about it myself, because at the end of the evening my ex-wife was hinting that she wanted to talk to me alone, and I thought that was code for the two of us ending up back at her place (because that was what had happened the last time she “wanted to talk”). In truth, I still wanted her back at that time. So I basically shoved Murphey out the door in a hurry toward the end of the evening, and I felt pretty rude about it afterward. Especially when I found out the only reason my ex wanted to talk to me was to tell me that she was now seeing someone else.

I asked Murphey to get a drink with me before I left for my New Years trip, but he kept saying he was broke. And then while I was in New York I actually started to miss the turd. I had started to worry about him more. Especially because my main distraction in life had been that I was still hung up on my ex, and during that trip it really sunk in how that was all over now. So with my mind freed up, I remember deciding that when I got back I would spend that last week (Murphey was due to be deployed to Iraq) hanging out with Murphey as much as possible, and I’d buy. Because I kind of figured that if he just made it through the week, and then got shipped out, he’d actually be okay. He would have other people around, no Ayala riding his ass, a real job to do, and it would keep him busy for a while. I know it sounds odd to say that going to Iraq would actually cheer him up, but if you’ve ever lived in San Antonio you’d understand.

But of course, that all ended up being too little, too late.

A day or two after the OSI interview I had started thinking about these poems Murph wrote. It was about a month or so before, maybe more, that I saw him printing some stuff out at the terminal.

“What is that?” I asked him.

He shrugged, “Just some poems.”

“You write poems?” I asked. Then I turned back to my computer and said, “Gaaaaaay!”

When they printed up he started to take them into the back office, but I called out to him.

“Hey, Murph,” I said, “Let me read that.”

“You want to read them?” He seemed genuinely surprised, but also pleased. He handed them over to me, and much to my surprise, I liked them.

Now, to be clear, I don’t know poetry. I would trust my opinion on a novel, a story, a script, a bit, a sketch — but I really can’t tell you what good poetry is. I’m sure most of Murph’s poems might seem corny to me if I read them today as an old man, but hey — give the kid a break. Nobody’s writing is perfect on the first try. And after all, Murph never got the chance to develop his skills.

I do remember that they were morose, but I clearly recognized and understood the feelings he was describing. Especially from when I was in my adolescence. Some were more lyrical than others, and a few were far too cynical for my tastes, but all of them were brutally honest. That much I appreciated. Although I remember he had one line where he tried to rhyme something with the word “probably” and it was so awful that I laughed out loud.

I walked back to the counter and handed them back to him, “I liked them.”

“Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah, except that part where you tried to make a rhyme with the word ‘probably’ on that second poem. That was fucking stupid. Change it.”

“Well, I am still working on them,” he said.

“Keep at it,” I said, “It’s not bad. And I don’t even really like poetry.”

I could tell he was genuinely pleased, and I appreciated that he seemed to respect my opinion. Because we spent a lot of time fighting (in a friendly but heated way) over movies, music, politics, the war, etc. Murphey was the only person I knew that loved to argue as much as I did. We had our most spirited exchanges over movies in particular, and I remember that near the end Murph was talking more and more about going to film school when he got out. He had opened up and told me he had some story ideas he wanted to bounce off me once I got back from New York. I suppose that made me drop my guard a little. That he seemed to be looking to the future. Beyond the crap situation he found himself in at the moment.

The night after I finished my interview with OSI, I had a moment where I started to panic. I wondered if Murphey had shown me those poems as a cry for help. One that I had simply ignored. I wanted to look at them again, so I drove down to the terminal at 10:00pm when no one else was there and let myself in. You’d be forgiven for assuming that a military airfield would be a tad more secure than that in the midst of a “war on terror” — but I guess you’ve never been in the U.S. military before.

I knew there was almost no chance the poems were still there. Like I said, OSI turned the place upside down, but I just had this impulse to check anyway. I went into Murphey’s mail slot but there was nothing there. Then I searched the front desk and found nothing. Then I stepped into the back office, and on the countertop, hiding in plain sight, I noticed a BDU hat sitting on top of a small stack of papers.

I walked over, picked up the hat, and flipped it over. Sure enough, right there in permanent marker on the bottom of the bill was the name “Murph.” I set it down and picked up the papers. It was all of his poems. The ones he’d printed out that day. Just sitting there out in the open like they were waiting to be found. I cannot explain how they had been sitting there a full week after OSI had searched the place and not a single person noticed them. Myself included. I suppose it should have given me the creeps, but really it just made me disappointed in myself. I mean, when I looked at them again and saw how dark they were, I felt like the kid had handed me the first draft of a suicide note and all I said was, “Keep working on it.”

What did that say about me? That I found nothing worrying, or even out of the ordinary, about the exact emotions that drove him to end his life? Is that because I’m exceptionally fucked up? Or is it because I just know that most people are fucked up, and it’s just that some of us will survive it and some of us won’t? No different than going off to war really. You know that you, or some of the guys with you, may not be coming home. But you can’t stress out about it. After all, that constant fear will only make it all the more likely that you’ll be the one who doesn’t make it. So you just put it out of your mind and do what you gotta do.

V.

The night we landed in Las Vegas we transferred the body over to the funeral director, Jay, who took it up to his funeral home near Tonopah, where the Air Force had booked us a hotel for the following night. But the first night we stayed in Vegas at the Aladdin casino. Lieutenant Novak said we’d meet up in the morning, then excused himself to admittedly go be a “tourist.” His twins obviously could not join him on such a trip, given their medical condition, but they really wanted to see the bright lights of Vegas so he was going to go make a video for them. I think I went down to the bar for a drink or two, but ultimately just spent most of the night in my room looking out the window at the cityscape.

The next day we traveled into the Nevada outback so we could officially sign over Murphey’s body to Jay’s funeral home (more paperwork). Jay was a nice guy. Far more chipper and sociable than you’d expect from a funeral director. He was very sociable. I mean, the guy could really fucking talk. But I didn’t mind it honestly. In that kind of situation, I’d rather him do all the talking so I don’t have to. I remember when we were leaving the funeral home, Jay showed us around what used to be the largest town in Nevada. It consisted of a gas station and a pile of bricks. The L.T. took pictures.

I remember there was one room in Jay’s funeral home, which I think was also Jay’s actual home, that was completely filled with taxidermy. I just sat there staring at all these stuffed, dead animals while Jay was getting Murphey’s paperwork together. Then he called us into the office.

Murphey’s coffin was out of its package now. Jay had it in the corner of the room. He told us that he would have to open it up and verify the body. Novak nudged me and said I didn’t have to stay for that part.

“No,” I said, “I’d like to see him if that’s okay.”

Jay opened up the coffin and Murphey was dressed in a dark blue sweater and jeans. When I saw that I remembered how I’d heard back at the base that when asked if he should be buried in his uniform, the family had said he wouldn’t want that. They told the squadron to just put him in a t-shirt and jeans. I actually thought that was cool of them.

I think that’s why I noticed specifically that he was in a long-sleeve sweater. They said it had something to do with what was done to his arms during the autopsy. Although I had thought maybe it could have been because of burns from the electrocution, where his skin met the water, but I wasn’t sure.

Jay noticed that Murph’s body had shifted around a bit from the trip. He carefully picked up Murph at the shoulders and moved him around to get him centered better in the coffin. His whole body moved like one solid piece that was frozen together from rigor mortis. His skin was pale and textured. He had not been made up at all yet. It reminded me of how a friend of mine described her father’s body after he died — she said the skin was like newspaper.

I just stared at him for a bit. And then after an extended silence, Jay and Novak finally looked to me to see if they could close it up.

I snapped out of it. “Yeah,” I said, “Go ahead.”

After that, we went into the other room, signed the forms, separated the copies, filed Jay’s papers in one envelope, mine in the other, everyone shook hands — and that was it. We said we’d see each other again on Saturday for the big event.

I wasn’t sure how things were going to work out once we got to Tonopah. I wanted to stay at the ranch with the family, but I didn’t know if the Air Force wanted me to do that, or even if the family wanted me to. Nor did I know if the L.T. would let me go there alone, or if he was obligated to be my chaperone. If he was, he didn’t show it. He was completely accommodating with whatever my wishes were. So when I found out the family wanted me to stay with them at the ranch, Novak said I could go there alone and that he would meet up with me later for the funeral.

I got a ride from the hotel to the ranch from “Robby,” a retired Air Force Major who had been in the Air Force since before it actually became the Air Force in 1947 (during WWII it was just known as the Army Air Corps). He worked at a place called “Base Camp” which had something to do with Area 51. For obvious reasons, Robby wasn't privy to talk about it with me. When I was on the phone with him before he came out to Tonopah, he told me that the ranch was “not far” from our hotel. Once we got on the road, I realized that “not far” out there meant 70 miles.

Robby also told me that the family had just returned from the wake they had back in Oregon, and that as they were driving back they hit a cow on the road near their ranch. He casually told me how the head of the cow had come off, gone through the windshield, and landed in the lap of Murphey’s mom. I just sat there thinking, “What the hell am I getting myself into?” Then Robby mentioned that they also found the family dog dead when they got home.

This was all that I knew about the situation I was walking into as we were swerving all over those backroads at what seemed to be an alarming speed. We may not have been going as fast as I imagined, but it felt like we were flying. Because it was pitch black out there, none of the roads were paved, and everything was covered in snow and ice. Every time we hit the slightest bump I felt like Robby was about to lose control of the truck. So I just clung to my door for my dear life as Robby told me to be on “cow watch.” He said that out there if you hit a cow you’re expected to pay for it, so you have to keep your eyes peeled.

We got in late, and Chris’s parents, Mike and Sally, greeted me outside the house. I was still in my Air Force dress blues, and I remember when I got inside I started to take off my shoes and they just laughed at me. They said I needn’t bother. They were used to the mud.

As part of my briefing at Lackland I was told that I was not allowed to divulge any details to the family due to the ongoing investigation. Basically, I was supposed to censor myself and only give the basic pleasantries: “Sorry for your loss.” “We offer our deepest condolences.” So on, and so forth. I don’t really think the Air Force expected me to abide by that rule any more than I actually intended to. I felt if anybody had a right to know it was them. I even mentioned to Mike and Sally what I had been told, and Mike told me that anything I said would never leave the room. But I told him I wasn’t worried about it. I was about to get my discharge papers in a few months anyways.

Chris’s parents gave me some food and we talked for an hour or so. You could tell Chris took after his mom, Sally. The resemblance was notable, and she had the exact same chatty, hyperactive style of talking as him. The whole family kind of hit home because the dynamic they had reminded me of my own family. Sally was the talker, the feisty yet compassionate one. His dad, Mike, was very mellow and chill, didn’t betray much emotion. And Chris’s brother Tyler was the more level-headed, responsible brother who seemed to be more like his dad, while Chris was more like his mom.

I remember that whenever Chris talked about his brother I got the impression Tyler was the older one. So when I found out he was only 20, I was surprised.

“So you’re his younger brother then?” I asked.

He laughed. “Well, technically,” he said, “but I think I was more like the older brother.”

“Yeah, I could see that.”

It didn’t take long for me to feel comfortable with Mike and Sally. They were refreshingly real with me too. I laughed when his father said that Chris was “a very smart kid, but he was also really stupid.” I immediately understood exactly what he meant by that.

After I got relaxed and started to loosen up, I began talking in my more enthusiastic, hyperactive way. I’m always thought to be the “quiet one” when people first meet me, but anyone who knows me knows that I get real wound up once I start to let my guard down (particularly back in my youth). I speak a little faster, a little louder, and I like to talk with my hands a lot. Murphey was the exact same way. After his death, all the officers would say to me, “He was a quiet kid wasn’t he?” and I’d just laugh.

I remember in the middle of my conversation with Mike and Sally, I would look up once in a while and see them looking at me funny. They wouldn’t say anything. They just looked at me in an odd way. I kept thinking to myself, “Why are they looking at me like that?”

Then at one point, during a lull, they apologized to me for staring. They said it was just that when I started talking like that, and going off with the hand gestures, they would swear they were looking at Chris. They said I reminded them of him. Then they asked me if anyone had ever told me that before. I couldn’t help but smirk.

The next morning, Mike got me up early and lent me some boots and a jacket so I could join him in making the rounds of the 750,000 acres of the ranch. (Much of that is actually federal land but the Murpheys tended to all of it.) Mostly it was just checking on the cattle, making sure they had water, looking for coyotes, and driving around in his pickup while he told me about the different kinds of grass they had out there. Which I’m sure sounds dull as hell, but I really enjoyed it.

At one point, he stopped the truck and told me to close my eyes. He led me up a long hill and when we got to the top he told me to open them. I found myself at the edge of a gigantic lunar crater that was fucking breath-taking. They have a lot of those lunar craters out there, and they are worth sight-seeing if you ever find yourself in the Nevada outback. Honestly, you could spend years exploring the whole area. Mike showed me the places where the ground had visibly dropped by a few feet along a vast perimeter due to the underground nuclear bomb tests they had done there back in the day. Sally showed me an area where you can sometimes find old Indian arrowheads lying around. I also spent one day by myself hiking through all the different terrains with one of their border collies, Pinky, as my guide. They had several border collies out there for herding, and they were amazing dogs and easily my favorite part of the ranch. When I set out to begin my hike, Pinky broke from the rest of the pack and just started tagging along with me. He ended up staying with me the whole day.

I don’t think I met Ethan until just before the funeral. Ethan was Chris’s best friend from Oregon, and he and Tyler were very close as well. When I met him he was preparing to join the Peace Corps. I saw him a couple years later in Austin, when he was passing through during a road trip and had come to see one of my stand-up shows. This was just after he’d finished his stint in the Peace Corps, where he served out his time in Nigeria. Although his term there was cut short when it was decided that the threat from local Islamic militants (Boko Haram I assume) was getting to be too dangerous.

I got along very well with Ethan and Tyler, and remain friends with them to this day. It sounds a little odd to say it (and it certainly makes me feel guilty to say it), but I had fun on that trip. I suppose it’s a lot like the feeling I had just after 9/11, when I spent a week and a half traveling with strangers on planes, trains, and automobiles as I was trying to get back to New York after being stranded in Arizona by the attacks. That “Post 9/11 Feeling” is something a lot of us who lived through it remember. That odd moment after a horrible tragedy where random people all find themselves bonding very quickly in a way they never would have under normal circumstances. It creates a feeling that you cannot help but miss when it’s gone, even though it’s associated with something tragic.

I loved hanging out with Tyler and Ethan, and their cousins, and the assorted grandparents, and the various other friends and family. Getting drunk, telling stories, attempting (and failing) to ride Tyler’s little “50” dirt bike, listening to Ethan and Tyler talk shit about Chris’s ex-girlfriend (who was at the funeral much to their chagrin), swapping military stories with the uncles, spontaneously deciding to make everyone bacon and eggs at midnight (which everyone seemed to find random and hilarious even though it’s standard operating procedure for me), and afterwards having Sally explain to me that you don’t wash a cast-iron skillet. Which still blows my mind. I’m a bit of a clean-freak, and despite the fact that I have used a cast-iron skillet several times since then — I still cannot get over the idea of just using and reusing a pan without ever washing it with actual soap.

I had to be back in uniform for the funeral, since me and the Lieutenant were still the official representatives of the Air Force at this function. I remember sitting in the house with Tyler and Ethan before everyone else had arrived. There was still an hour or two to go before the ceremony, and I kept thinking about how much I wanted to have a drink. Feeling that it might be inappropriate, I just sat there patiently and suppressed the urge. Then Tyler said, “Would it be bad if I just cracked open a beer right now?”

“I don’t have any desire to be sober today,” I replied. “So if you do it, I’ll do it.”

Ethan then thirded the motion, and the motion carried. We all started drinking at noon and kept it going throughout the night. Although we made sure not to be completely hammered for the funeral (that came later). Just a little something to take the edge off at first.

Chris was buried in a plot on the ranch itself. Just up the hill from the house. I stood at the back with the L.T. during the ceremony. As I listened to the sermon, I would look around at everyone’s faces, and I could see that I was the only one not crying. Even Lieutenant Novak was crying. So was Jay, the funeral director, who I assumed had gone through this routine a million times in his life. But not me. I even tried to focus my mind on the sadness of it all just to muster up some tears, because I felt it was so wrong of me to be standing there stoically. But it just wouldn’t happen.

After the ceremony, as we walked back toward the house, Ethan came up alongside me.

“You gotta take that uniform off,” he said. “Every time I see you in the corner of my eye I keep thinking it’s Chris.”

I changed as soon as we got back.

At the reception, we drank a little more (of course). I remember seeing Chris’s ex there. She was a very pretty girl. Had a bit of an emo-ish look to her. Wore all black. The kind of emotionally damaged hottie that I would have probably been hung up on in my early twenties as well. I didn’t really make it a point to pry into the story of what happened between them, but I gathered that it hadn’t ended well. Tyler and Ethan seemed to resent her for the pain the relationship had caused Chris. I’m sure they had their reasons, but I try not to be too quick to place the blame all on one person. I myself have had some pretty horrendous breakups, and I’ve never found anyone to be completely blameless (and some of those breakups still managed to end in forgiveness and close friendships). Besides, everyone is messed up at that age. I consider it a rite of passage to go through at least one stupid relationship in your life that devastates you emotionally (or several, if you want to be an overachiever like myself).

At the reception, there was a prayer led by the grandma. They didn’t call her “the grandma” of course. She had one of those catchy grandma nicknames — like Nana or Mi-Ma — but I cannot recall exactly what it was. Tyler and Ethan also put together a photo slideshow as tribute for Chris, set to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “When The Man Comes Around” (this preceded its similar use in the HBO series Generation Kill). They later admitted that they were initially going to use Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”, but they realized that would have been way too morbid for that crowd (it certainly would have made me uncomfortable). Ethan and Tyler, like Chris before them, have always tended to be far more irreverent and willing to shirk decorum than myself — and I say that as someone who is incredibly irreverent in his own right (although I am a pretty strong respecter of decorum).

The reception took place in a big building that I remember being a part of an Air Force facility close to Base Camp. I think I remember playing shuffleboard at some point. And I remember telling funny stories about Chris to Ethan and Tyler (which I feel are a little too crass to recite here), and Ethan and Tyler then telling me about stuff that the three of them got up to when they were growing up (which I’ll also leave out here for the sake of decorum).

Everyone seemed so great and warm and fun. He had a fantastic family, and fantastic friends. In that moment, commiserating with those people, it made it impossible to understand why he felt the need to end his life like he did. Then again, I do know firsthand how that “Post 9/11 Feeling” can sometimes create a mirage. Once it fades away, all the troubles and conflicts that previously plagued a society – or a community, a family, an individual, etc. – tend to return with a vengeance. There is not always a happy ending to the story, or even an ending that you can make sense out of. Sometimes there isn’t even an ending at all. No moral to the story. It’s just some stuff that happened. It’s just life.

I took a break to go outside and smoke. It was extremely cold and very windy. There were snow flurries coming down and the sky was dark gray. I didn’t have a coat on, but I remember the cold didn’t bother me for some reason (probably because beer). I was the only one out there, and I stood at the corner of the building, away from the door. I just stared out at the open landscape, taking deep drags and then exhaling smoke that I couldn’t even see in the cold wind. That was when it happened. My eyes started to well up, and before I could even react to it I found myself crumpled over, crying uncontrollably. I don’t know what triggered it, but it hit me all at once. And there was nothing I could do about it.

There wasn’t anything dignified about it either. Not like the solitary tear running down one’s cheek that you wipe away wistfully. It was a constant flow. Painfully deep sobbing with snot coming out of my nose as fast as water came out of my eyes. Then the door opened and someone stepped outside. I scurried around the corner and out of sight. Then I slumped onto the ground and curled up in a ball. I wept until I was too exhausted to cry anymore.

I kept that moment to myself. After it passed, I collected myself and went back inside, hoping my face wasn’t too red and puffy for anyone to notice. I could always blame it on the cold I thought. But then later on that night, I got caught.

A bunch of us decided to get in our swim trunks and head up to the hot springs. We were all drunk (except the younger ones) and goofing around in the warm water, inside this little wooden cabin at the top of the hill near the house. Then I decided to again step outside for a cigarette, where I again found myself overcome with emotion. This time my crying was a little more refined than the previous time, but Tyler came around the corner and saw me. I couldn’t run for cover this time.

It’s been many years now, so I don’t remember exactly what all was said, but I remember he tried to comfort me. That made me laugh, which caused him to look at me funny.

“It’s your brother that died,” I explained, “Why are you consoling me?”

On the morning when it was time to go home, Mike drove me back to the hotel where Novak was staying. Actually, I think we met each other halfway at some restaurant or something, because I recall me and Mike sitting in the cab of his pickup truck talking for a long time while we waited on the L.T. to arrive.

“You know I think it’s really impressive the way you’re able to handle yourself equally well with everybody at the service,” Mike said. “You can talk and relate with the old folks like me, and also relate and have a good time with young ones as well.”

I remember thinking that was the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me.

“Thanks,” I said, “I genuinely appreciate that.”

“It’s a good way to be,” he said.

He then told me a story about Ethan speaking at Chris’s wake in Oregon. Ethan had given a speech about how when he was around fourteen he had contemplated suicide himself, and it was Chris who talked him down and helped him get through that time in his life. Mike said hearing that really helped him and Sally. To know that Chris’s life had served a purpose. To know about the good he’d done for others around him in the time he was here.

“You know I can’t help but think that it would be better if he had made it back to Iraq and died there instead,” Mike said, “Not that it would be any less painful, y’know, but at least I could understand what happened. Why it happened, I mean. But not—” he stopped. He had choked up. His eyes welled and he hid his face in the palm of his hand.

“But not like this,” he said. His voice trembled.

All I could do was put my arm around him and hug him while he wept.

“Not like this…”

The last memory I have from that trip is driving away in the rental car with Lieutenant Novak right after that happened. I just stared out the window as the sun was streaming out from between the mountains.

“They were really nice people weren’t they?” Novak said to me.

“Yeah,” I said, “They really were.”