Private Thomas
“He isn’t dead.”
“Who isn’t dead?”
“Private Thomas.”
“What do you mean? We just sent word to his family. ‘We regret to inform you…’ The usual sad routine.”
“He’s alive. Take a look at this.”
“Jesus. He’s alive….So who died?”
“I don’t know if anyone died. Someone probably put Private Thomas’s name on the list of the dead when he should have been on the list of the wounded.”
“But he isn’t even wounded.”
“Well, he probably was supposed to be on some other list.”
“His family’s about to be pleasantly surprised.”
“We can’t tell his family.”
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine his family thinking he’s dead and now he’s alive.”
“Well, it’s better than thinking he’s alive and finding out he’s dead.”
“They’ll go to the media. It’ll be a big story. National. ‘Family traumatized by false report of son’s death. Other families of fallen soldiers hopeful their loved ones live. Military scrambles to assure them they’re dead.’ It’ll be keystone cops in olive drab. This isn’t the best time for bad p.r. Two never-ending wars and who knows what’s on the horizon in North Korea and Iran. I don’t need to tell you: We need soldiers. What young man is going to sign up if he thinks there’s a chance we’ll be telling his family he’s dead even before he runs over an IED or is strafed with friendly fire?”
“We could talk to Private Thomas, inform him about the mix up. We could have him tell his family he was part of a secret mission which could only be carried out if everyone—and especially his family—thought he was dead.”
“So we would be asking a soldier to lie on our behalf?”
“Wouldn’t a lie be preferable to bad p.r.?”
“We ask these young men—and young women—to trust us. We send them into harm’s way—hell, sometimes we ask them to storm the very gates of hell—and if we can’t outfit them with anything but low-bid body armor that might as well be the emperor’s new clothes, we can at least offer them the comfort that our word is as straight as the governments we’re propping up are crooked. We may send them off to die, but—repeat after me—we don’t lie.”
“We don’t lie.”
“Most of the time.”
“Maybe we could have Private Thomas explain the situation to his family, ask everyone to keep it quiet. No media, please. Maybe even—I don’t know—tell him that ifeverything happens on the QT, there’s a reassignment in his future to somewhere sunny and calm, like Costa Rica.”
“Do you think we can trust a soldier? These days, they sign up only because they can’t pay for college any other way. They’re mercenaries dreaming of a cap and gown. They don’t sign up because they want a crewcut or feel any particular desire to kill in the name of the red, the white, and the blue. They’re all thinking of their civilian futures, a job, a house, hell, a family even. Believe me, if we come to Private Thomas with a deal, he’s going to up the ante. Costa Rica? Por favor! He’ll want a promotion and a desk job in Washington. He’ll be hitting us up for a full ride to graduate school. And word will get around. Soldiers will start faking their deaths left and right so they can score the same damn deal. It isn’t a slippery slope we would find ourselves on. It’s a cliff we’d be running off.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“There’s only one thing to do.”
“Send the decision upstairs?”
“And have us court-martialed for possessing 20/20 vision but being unable to see when a dead man is alive and plotting his happy, war-free future?”
“So…You’re suggesting…”
“In the eyes of his family—in the eyes of the world—Private Thomas is already dead. The paperwork is complete. It’s in the system. All we’re missing is the body.”
“But…”
“Private Thomas is a hero. We wouldn’t want to take that away from him, would we?”
Mark Brazaitis is the author of six books of fiction, including The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Incurables: Stories, winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, and Julia & Rodrigo, winner of the 2012 Gival Press Novel Award. His latest book, Truth Poker: Stories, won the 2014 Autumn House Press Fiction Competition.
