Neurologically impaired-"retrograde amnesia"-incapable of remembering with any degree of clarity, accuracy, confidence what had/had not happened in the early evening of December 11, 2004, at the northern edge of rubble-strewn Kirkuk, Iraq.

Not even who'd taken the knife, sliced the girl's cheeks. No-face and no-name.

Wouldn't need a lawyer.

Wouldn't need to travel-to be "shipped"-to D.C.

Wouldn't need an attendant to accompany him on the plane, in taxis and to the hearings in the Pentagon. Help him walk, count out his meds, keep him from alcohol and from killing himself in a hotel bathroom, wipe his leaky ass.

NOR DID HE NEED to beg Juliet to take him back so that she could accompany him to D.C.-help him walk, count out his meds, keep him from alcohol he'd lap like a dog if he could, wipe his sad sick leaky hemorrhoidal ass insisting she loved him, would always love him, sickness and in health and in the life to come if only he'd let her.

WHAT DID I tell them honey I told the truth-it was an accident.

Slipped and fell and struck the door-so silly.

At the ER they took an X-ray. My jaw is not dislocated.

It's sore, it's hard to swallow but the bruises will fade.

I know, you did not mean it.

I am sorry to upset you.

I am not crying, truly!

We will look back on this time of trial and we will say-It was a test of our love. We did not weaken.

HE'D SAID NO. He didn't think so.

Grinning-clown face so close to her, she was spared seeing it.

SERIOUS CHARGES. BETTER be certain what you are claiming, Corporal.

Your safety and security can't be guaranteed if you pursue these charges.

Lieutenant C_ staring at Corporal Kincaid as if a bad smell were leaking from him.

THE JEEP WRANGLER had been impounded by police immediately. Every inch of the vehicle was examined. Only Jake Pedersen's persistence resulted in the Jeep being returned to its owner who after all hadn't (yet) been arrested.

Gathering evidence. Ongoing investigation.

Now it wasn't clear that Brett Kincaid should have been driving. Or should drive now.

His therapist-friend Seth had said he thought it might be OK. If someone else was always in the vehicle with him.

Vision corrected to twenty-forty in the right eye. In the left eye . Which met the minimum state requirement for a driver's license.

Left leg wasn't strong but right leg OK-the crucial leg: foot, gas, brake.

It was (possibly) true: the corporal's reflexes were not so coordinated as they'd once been. Peripheral vision you could say frankly shot to hell.

Still, he could drive a vehicle. Had the right to drive a vehicle.

Wasn't going to beg. Ethel would beg for him.

Saying You can't take my son's driver's license from him, too!

All that you already took from him, his health, his life-the rest of his life-capit'list bastards can't take that, too.

MUST'VE BEEN A DREAM he had buried her alive.

Mouth filled with earth but trying to scream.

He woke screaming in terror struck at her with the shovel.

Threw rocks onto her until she was still. Then more rocks, pebbles, clumps of mud carried in his two hands and dumped onto the little body until it was still and the face covered.

OR MAYBE IT WAS STUMP fooling around. You had to laugh at Stumpf-Stump. One day in ninth-grade civics which was on the second floor of the school they looked out the windows-across a concrete walkway-and there, on the roof, was Stumpf! He'd climbed some stairs only the custodian was supposed to use. Found a way out onto the school roof where he was walking kind of stooped-over so he wouldn't be detected, or detected too quickly. "Hey! Look!"-Rod nudged Brett.

At the front of the room Mrs. Nichols was talking. Or some girl was giving a presentation at the blackboard. And out the window, and on the tar paper roof across the way, there was Duane Stumpf and what does the crazy fuckhead do, crouched behind a brick chimney it looks like he's pissing down the side of the building.

Before he got to high school, Stumpf-"Stump"-was famous.

Senior yearbook he'd be voted class clown.

Sometimes Stump wasn't so funny. But sure, Stump was fun-ny!

The guy with the sewer-mouth. The guy who farts in class.

Dead maggoty squirrel he'd carried on a shovel, dumped in the front seat of Mr. Langley's car behind the wheel.

Things he did to girls. Female teachers.

Some of it Stump did with other guys but mostly alone.

Some of it was never revealed. No one ever knew.

One of the stuck-up girls in their class. Good-looking, cheerleader, beautiful face, fluffy angora sweaters. Her daddy owned the Cadillac dealership. They lived up on Cumberland Avenue near the fancy limestone church. Valentine's Day Stump left for "Debbie" a clump of actual dog shit in a velvet wrapping tied to her locker.

Mrs. Gordiner, tight little drum of a (pregnant) belly clearly visible through her clothing they'd tried not to stare at, and some of them resented, some of the guys resented, but also some of the girls. So anyway-lots of jokes about Mrs. Gordiner who taught junior-senior English and advised the Drama Club. Crazy Stumpf downloaded a photo of an actual human fetus in formaldehyde he'd found on the Internet and this, in a pink envelope, also a quasi-Valentine, he'd left on Gordiner's desk on Valentine's Day.

Pictures of girl classmates-girls' faces on nude female bodies-some of the bodies really fat, really nude-Stump emailed, posted on the Web. Still, Stumpf had girlfriends, later in high school. And later, after high school. Mostly pigs, he called them. Sluts.

Brett didn't think Stump was so very funny. Didn't think "Coyote" was funny.

Once, they were alone together, Duane Stumpf told Brett something he'd never told anyone else, he said.

"When I was a little kid, my father taught me words like shit-cocksucker-motherfucker-to make people laugh. He'd take me with him drinking, like we'd go to Herreton Mills and get some things for the house or the yard and afterward he'd drive out to Wolf's Head and he'd lay me out in the backseat of the car so I could sleep, sometimes he'd forget me-wouldn't get home till way after dark. My mother didn't know where the fuck we were, she'd be real upset. The summer before I started school they'd had a fight and Pa walked out and took me with him-like he'd just thought of it and hadn't made any plans. He'd call her, he hadn't kidnapped me exactly, but we didn't get home much. I cried a lot at first then it got so I really dug it, surprising people and making them laugh. I mean-really shocking them, like. And women, too. Girls. They'd call over other people to hear me, a crowd would gather around us at the bar, Pa was really into it, like somebody on TV, and I felt so-it was so-great . . . A little kid saying these 'dirty' words like he didn't know what he was saying, that's really funny. There was a joke we did together kind of-forget how it went but I was 'little cocksucker'-people laughed like hell. Pa said, my little cocksucker's gonna be on TV someday, you wait.

"'Course other times, Pa would get drunk and just kind of forget me out in the car. And forget to feed me, too. And this was the opposite of that."

ASKING WHAT HE'D DONE with her. What he'd done with her body.

And he'd said what was true: he didn't remember.

Some things he remembered, a swirl of things like dirty water rushing down a drain, but it was not possible to attach names to these; and it was not possible to shape the words, the sounds of the words, with his mouth.

Between somewhere in his brain and his mouth/tongue there was slippage.

. . . make things easier for us, and for you. The judge would be lenient considering your service to the country. And the girl's family you would allow them to bury the body it's the only decent thing and you are a decent person corporal and still young-out on parole in eight, nine years.

What do you say, son?

Here was a surprise: they released the corporal.

Could not comprehend this! Had to be a mistake.

For now, there was a lawyer-"representing" Brett Kincaid.

He'd been adamant: he hadn't wanted a lawyer. Thinking if his father knew, if Staff Sergeant Graham Kincaid found out, that his son had a lawyer, required a lawyer, in this situation he was in, his father would be disgusted. He believed that retaining a lawyer is an admission of guilt and so was ashamed to have a lawyer "representing" him-like a criminal.

Shaver, Muksie, Broca, Mahan, Ramirez-all had legal counsel.

Army prosecutors had negotiated with Ramirez, only nineteen and the youngest of the men: plead guilty, inform on the others, sentence will be less than twenty years.

Ethel had been furious claiming her disabled hero-son was being railroaded into prison-to Death Row.

She'd made arrangements. There were many who supported Corporal Kincaid. Not a public defender but a first-rate private lawyer.

See what Zeno thinks now. Trying to destroy us!

Brett refused to speak with what's-his-name-Pedersen. His brain just shut off.

The guys were staying away from him now. His old friends. Maybe they were anxious-he'd inform on them.

Fuckhead snitch. Got what he deserved.

It was astonishing, he'd been released by the Beechum County police. Allowed to leave the building, make his way outside leaning on Ethel and what's-his-name-Pedersen.

Photographers, TV camera crews outside in the parking lot. Nothing to be ashamed of, Ethel said. In the TV lights, Ethel's eyes flared like cat's eyes.

It was an indeterminate time he was sick part-collapsed on the soiled old sofa in Ethel's living room. Days now, a week couldn't move his bowels like concrete. Screamed with pain. Screams like hyena laughter.

"Coyote" laughter-Muksie sawing at the girl's face with the knife.

Sergeant Shaver had cut off the little finger, with the trauma shears.

Broca took pictures. Little cell phone flash in the shadows.

A smell of oil pervading everything here. Oil, heat and sand.

The corporal hadn't seen, really. Hadn't been within twenty feet was the estimate.

Yes but-he could not swear. Under oath you must swear.

Under oath you could not speak vaguely. You could not speak emotionally.

It was an open secret it would happen to him: Kincaid.

His friends warned him. His friends were anxious for him. One of his friends sent emails home to his father, retired navy officer, telling him of the situation in Kirkuk.

He'd been a fuckhead snitch. Motherfucker snitch. They'd warned him, he hadn't listened.

Well, he'd listened-he'd told the chaplain. Turned out to have been a mistake maybe.

But he had not known how otherwise to behave.

Later, after the explosion, after the hospitalizations, when he hadn't been paying attention they'd released him from military service-"honorably discharged."

Purple Heart. Iraq War Campaign medal. And the beautiful Infantry Combat Badge that was the special sign of his bravery and his sacrifice.

Proudly Ethel displayed these in the living room. Giving interviews to the press and to TV, Ethel held these in cupped hands for the camera.

The investigating committee wouldn't be subpoenaing the corporal.

His testimony was inconsistent. His testimony was impaired.

Strange to him now, he was being released again. During his days in custody at sheriff's headquarters he'd considered If I reach for a gun. One of their guns. They will shoot me point-blank, put me out of my misery.

For the plainclothes detectives wore their revolvers, inside their coats. On duty, a man must never be without his firearm.

He'd lost his rifle somewhere-that was a painful fact. All his gear, sixty pounds-seemed to have been lost. Where?

In a sweat awaiting the drill sergeant's infuriated voice.

Kincaid. What the fuck have you been doing.

You little shit Kincaid what the fuck d'you mean letting the army down. You disgust me.

His lawyer had negotiated the terms of his release which was that Brett Kincaid could not leave Beechum County without notifying law enforcement officials. The corporal hadn't been arrested on charges of homicide, kidnapping, unlawful disposal of a body, obstruction of justice-yet.

Detectives were circumspect, how close they were to making an arrest. It was known that they were investigating the Adirondack Hells Angels bikers, too.

In the house on Potsdam Street he had time to think about these matters except his brain was awash with debris as in a muddy inlet of the Nautauga River after a heavy rainstorm.

Ethel's relatives came to visit. A few of Brett's father's relatives whom he hadn't seen in years.

They spoke together incensed of how "shitty" was the treatment of a war hero in Carthage.