House on Fire

5

Sean Lenehan’s funeral was at Our Lady of Grace church in Westham. It was a long Catholic ceremony, and it was better attended than the wake. Most of Patty’s family was there: her dad and two of her brothers were lobstermen in town and had a lot of friends in the business. They mostly wore Windbreakers and Carhartt work jackets and Patriots jackets — not a lot of suits or blazers for the men — and drove pickup trucks with lobster traps in the back. Whereas Sean’s family all lived in South Carolina and weren’t that close, and I think his parents were dead.

I was one of the pallbearers, along with one of Patty’s brothers and a couple of nephews and the only other guy there from our Special Forces A-team, a guy we called Merlin. His real name was Walter McGeorge. He had been our communications sergeant. After he left the service, he’d become an expert in technical surveillance countermeasures — finding bugs and such. Merlin lived in Maryland, where he was a serious sport fisherman and kept a boat on the Chesapeake Bay. He looked the same as always — a small, compact guy who could have been a jockey. He’d shaved his mustache and was wearing a black suit and well-shined shoes. He didn’t give Patty a hug but extended his hand to shake. He was always formal, to the point of uncomfortable, around women. He wore a green blazer with a regimental tie, because he was a member of the Special Forces Association. I didn’t belong. I just wore a black suit. Patty asked me to say a few words, and so I did, about how he’d saved my life.

Then everyone drove to the veterans’ cemetery in the town of Bourne, half an hour away. It was a lushly landscaped nature preserve. There, they gave Sean a military burial. Four young army soldiers, in their dress blues, draped Sean’s casket with an American flag. As we carried the casket to the grave site, a few among the gathering saluted. Vets, they had to be.

One woman stood out from the other mourners. She was a hippieish woman in her thirties, wearing a busily colored fringed, crochet-knit shawl over a black dress. I’d noticed her before, at the church, sitting off by herself. I remembered the shawl. Now she was standing alone in the third ring of mourners around the grave. She didn’t look like she came from here. I couldn’t figure her out. My first thought was that she was a journalist, but then I ruled that out — she was dressed too nicely. I also had the strong feeling she’d been looking at me.

The brief burial service began, led by their local priest, who had silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Two servicemen, dressed in blues, took the flag off Sean’s casket and proceeded to fold it crisply and carefully. Each fold represented something. When they were finished, only the stars showed. One member of the honor guard presented the flag to Patty. He spoke the memorized line: “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”

Her eyes pooled with tears, which streamed down her face as she accepted the flag.

They fired three shots in the air. Then one of them pulled out a bugle and put it to his mouth. Taps issued from a boom box while he pretended to play the tune. Merlin and I and a couple of other guys saluted as the casket was lowered into the grave. I gave Patty a hug and then her kids, and then I backed away to let others greet her.

People drifted away. Merlin put a hand on my shoulder. “I thought he was in rehab.”

“He was for a while.”

Merlin fidgeted, then looked over at the grave site, where the casket had just been lowered into the ground. “What a great guy he was. Just — I mean, he never settled for the easy way out, did he? Always volunteered for the hard schools, wanted to be on point. The lead climber. The jumpmaster.”

“That was Sean,” I said. He’d always gravitated to the more dangerous jobs in training. Always volunteered to run the rifle range, which is a lousy job. When we did training jumps from the C-130, he was the guy who inspected the parachutes and the helmets and tugged at the straps before anyone could jump. It was a serious responsibility. Nobody wanted to do it but Sean.

“Sort of a badge-hunter,” Merlin said, “but he always wanted to be the number one guy in the stack.”

I nodded. In close-quarters battle, you didn’t want to be the first guy in.

The first guy in the stack was the one who got shot, if it was going to happen. When you’re walking through the mountains of Afghanistan, the first guy in line is the one who’s going to trigger a land mine. But Sean always volunteered to do it.

“Not to mention he saved my life,” I said.

“Yeah, there’s that.”

I sensed someone approaching, and I turned to see the hippie woman come up to me. “I liked what you said earlier,” she said.

“Are you a relative?” I asked. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Nick Heller.”

“Not a relative. And yeah, I know who you are.”

Up close her attire seemed less hippie, more boho — artsy, funky. Her shawl looked expensive. Designer, maybe. I noticed her unlined features, the irises that seemed to flicker between gray and brown. “Oh, yeah?” I said.

She gave me a long, measuring look as if she was making a decision. Finally, she said, “Can we talk?”