xaara

I was up all night last night writing a play to turn in today (a play that I will post once I'm satisfied that it doesn't totally suck), so I was not ready to stumble downstairs this morning, one hand groping for the coffee and the other for the newspaper, and find on the front page of the Washington Post a picture of a U.S. soldier cradling a blood-covered dead Iraqi child.

The photo literally made me sick to my stomach--the way the soldier is curled around the child, the way he's buried his face in the child's neck, the way the grief radiates from his body. I can't help but remember the hundreds of sailors I've met over the years, the hundreds of young men--boys--who made a joke at my expense and laughed when I teased back, the hundreds of enlisted men whose ability to feel outstripped that of many of the mothers I've encountered.

After seeing the picture, and crying unashamedly over my coffee, I recalled an incident in Ramstein that took place about two years ago. We were at the military airport and had been for two days, as we were waiting for a space-available flight. As a result, I'd gotten to know the men and women who worked there, but I'd become especially good friends with Airman First Class Fishbourne, an 18-year-old on his first tour of duty away from home. We talked at length on several occasions, mostly about trivial things; he helped me with my crossword puzzles and I helped him make photocopies and file.

On the afternoon of our second day, a tiny brown sparrow somehow found its way into the airport terminal and tweeted its way among the rafters before swooping back down and perching on a bannister. Fishbourne and I watched it for a moment before he sprang into action, grabbing a poster and a trash can in the hopes that he could herd it out of the building. I braced the door open while he approached the bird, but before he reached the area anywhere near it, it took off from the bannister and crashed at full speed into a window with a heart-stopping thunk. For a moment, I was sure it was dead, but then it raised its head and gave a pitiful chirp, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

Fishbourne rushed to the bird, producing a towel from nowhere and using it to wrap the sparrow in a secure grip before taking it outside. He set the bird down at the base of a tree, sheltered from the wind and the slight misty rain, stepped back to eye his work, and then came back inside. After a short discussion of the strangeness of the event, we didn't talk about the sparrow, though once I came back from the cafeteria to see him outside, carefully breaking part of his sandwich bread into crumbs and sprinkling them where he had left the sparrow.

The bird must have survived for at least a few hours, because Fishbourne checked on it every half-hour after lunch with a religious precision that almost worried me. Finally, I insisted that it was my turn to check on the sparrow, since it was partially my responsibility. When Fishbourne at last released the duty to me, I trekked out through the intensifying drizzle to find the bird dead, its feathers puffed against the cold, its beak tucked under a stiff wing. I walked back into the terminal in a daze, fully intending to tell Fishbourne that the bird had died, but he looked so worried about its well-being, so concerned that it might become too cold or too hungry or too thirsty, that I could not bring myself to say the words. "It's doing well," I said, hating myself for putting it off.

A half-hour later, I watched, huddled in a chair inside the terminal, as Fishbourne sloshed through the waterlogged mulch to reach the bird. I half-expected him to yell, or to back away, but instead he dropped to his knees in the rain and picked up the bird and cupped it in his hands as though the warmth from his palms might restore it to life. After a long moment, he set the bird down, gently, and stood, brushing off his hands. His trip back to the terminal took what seemed like forever, but once he arrived, he found a shovel and, with almost frightening efficiency, buried our sparrow beneath the tree. We said a little silent prayer over it, and I pushed a small stick into the ground as a marker.

Fishbourne and I did not talk again that day; in fact, he disappeared and eluded me despite my best efforts to find him. He did not appear on the morning of the next day, either; when our plane was called, I searched for him without luck. Finally, just before we were scheduled to board, I caught a glimpse of him standing outside, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his gaze focused on the mound of earth that covered our bird. By that time, of course, it was too late to say goodbye, so I had to settle for waving. I don't think he saw me.

These are the boys we're sending to war.