http://www.vqronline.org/vqr-portfolio/life-and-lonely-death-noah-pierce The Life and Lonely Death
of Noah Pierce
By Ashley Gilbertson
Fall 2008
Noah Pierces headstone gives his date of death as
July 26, 2007, though his family feels certain he died
the night before, when, at age twenty-three, he took a
handgun and shot himself in the head. No one is sure what
pushed him to it. He said in his suicide note it was
impotencea common side effect of post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD). It was the snowflake that
toppled the iceberg, he wrote. But it could have
been the memory of the Iraqi child he crushed under his
Bradley. It must have been a dog, he told his
commanders. It could have been the unarmed man he shot
point-blank in the forehead during a house-to-house raid,
or the friend he tried madly to gather into a plastic bag
after he had been blown to bits by a roadside bomb,
oras the fragments of Noahs poetry might lead
you to believeit could have been the doctor he
killed at a checkpoint.
Noah Pierce grew up in
Sparta, Minnesota, a town of fewer than one thousand on
the outskirts of the Quad CitiesMountain Iron,
Virginia, Eveleth, and Gilberton the Mesabi Iron
Range. Discovered on the heels of the Civil War, the
ranges ore deposit is the largest in the United
States. These were the mines that made the Second
Industrial Revolution. Range steel became the tracks of
railroads, the wires of suspension bridges, the girders
of skyscrapers. It became the weapons and artillery of
the World Wars. WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN IRON, THE TACONITE
CAPITAL OF THE WORLD reads a sign greeting visitors along
the highway. There are so many open pit mines that the
cities seem perched on tiny outcrops, overlooking gaping
holes ready to engulf them. Around the clock, deep
metallic groans come out of the ground, and freight
trains barrel through, horns screeching. Blasting takes
place so close to peoples houses, residents open
their front doors so the pressure doesnt blow out
their windows. Locals are proud of their hardworking,
hard-drinking heritage. There are more than twenty bars
on Eveleths half-mile-long main street. On a
typical night last May, when I was there, loudspeakers
affixed to lampposts blared John Denvers Take
Me Home, Country Roads, and Harleys thundered
through town. One bar closed early, when a drunk got
thrown through the front window.
Right from the start, Noah had seemed ill-equipped for
life on the range. He was a quiet, sensitive kid. He kept
a tight circle of friends and passed time with them
building tree forts and playing army in the woods.
Noahs biological father, Dale Pierce, a deep-sea
diver who worked on oil rigs, separated from Noahs
mother shortly after she became pregnant, but Tom
Softich, Noahs stepfather, treated the thin-skinned
boy as his own. When Noah turned six, Tommy began taking
him hunting, and by thirteen Noah had his own
high-powered rifle. For practice, they went rabbit
shooting together at a small clearing a mile from their
house. It became such a regular place to find Noah that
his family and friends began referring to the clearing
simply as the spot.
When Noah went missing in July 2007, after a harrowing
year adjusting to home following two tours in Iraq,
police ordered a countywide search. His friend Ryan
Nelson thought he might know where to look. When he
pulled up to the spot, he immediately recognized
Noahs truck. Inside, Ryan found his friend slumped
over the bench seat, his head blown apart, the gun in his
right hand. Half a bottle of Jack Daniels Special
Blend lay on the passenger seat, and beer cans were
strewn about. On the dash lay his photo IDs; he had
stabbed each photo through the face. And on the
floorboard was the scrawled, rambling suicide note. It
was his final attempt to explain the horrors he had
seenand committed.
Noah Pierce was not the only veteran wrestling with
depression and PTSD. This April, Ira R. Katz, Deputy
Chief Patient Care Services Officer for Mental Health at
the Department of Veterans Affairs, became embroiled in
scandal when a memo surfaced in which he instructed
members of his staff to suppress the results of an
internal VA investigation into the number of veterans
attempting suicide. Based on their surveys and
tabulations from the NCHSs National Death Index and
the CDCs National Violent Death Reporting System,
Katz estimated that between 550 and 650 veterans are
committing suicide each month. It is possible that the
number of suicide deaths among veterans in 2008 alone
will double the combined combat deaths in Iraq and
Afghanistan since 2002. It pains Noahs family and
friends that the Pentagon will never add himnor the
thousands like himto the official tally of
4,000-plus war dead.
Likewise, PTSD and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are
excluded from the count of 50,000 severe combat
woundseven though PTSD and TBI often have far
greater long-term health effects than bullet wounds or
even lost limbs. A recent study by the RAND Corporation
found that one in five (approximately 300,000) Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans suffer from depression or stress
disorders and another 320,000 suffer from TBIs that place
them at a higher risk for depression and stress
disorders.
Noahs mother, Cheryl, believes her sons death
could have been avoided had he received counseling.
Statistically, veterans outside the VA system are four
times more likely to attempt suicide than those within
the system. Now Cheryls mission is to have a clause
inserted into every standard military contract that would
require veterans to visit a therapist every two weeks of
the first year after a combat deployment. Soldiers
are taught to follow orders, she told me. It
needs to be mandatory. Noah was an excellent soldier, and
if it was mandatory, he would have gone faithfully to
every appointment. But it wasnt.
Cheryl Softich is a slight, chain-smoking woman of fifty,
whose disarmingly direct approach to conversation could
easily be mistaken as brusque by an outsider. She sank
into the oversize leather couch in her living room,
recounting her twelve-hour labor, two days before
Christmas 1983. She remembered the blinding pain of each
contraction and smiled when she recalled the doctor
asking permission for a group of twenty medical students
to observe. As long as you get this baby out of me,
I dont care who watches, she said. But then
Cheryls smile faded. As soon as they put him
in my arms, this feeling washed over me, and I knew
instantly that I was going to outlive this child. Did not
know how or why, but I was going to outlive this
child.
The feeling returned the
day, not long after 9/11, that Noah came home with
enlistment papers. He was a few months shy of eighteen
and needed a parental signature. He kind of put me
between a rock and a hard place, Cheryl said.
Either sign these papers and show you support me
and my decision, or Im signing them in a couple of
months without your support. Well, no child of mine is
going off to war thinking I dont support him. Did I
try to talk him out of it? Hell, yes. Did I finally give
up trying to talk him out of it? Yes, because it was what
he was going to do, so I accepted it, and I was proud of
him for his decision.
Not everybody was as understanding. When he joined
the army, my heart sank, said Sally Galbraith, a
family friend who was virtually a second mother to
Cheryls children. I thought, Noah,
youre too sensitive, youre too caring; how
are you ever going to get through this?
In June 2002, Noah went to boot camp in Fort Stewart,
Georgia, and began regularly writing letters home. He
expressed surprise at seeing fellow soldiers break down
in tears, homesick and scared, but admitted to feeling a
little that way himself. During practice we had to
yell stupid stuff, Noah wrote in August. The
Drill sergeant would ask, What makes the green
grass grow? We would yell, blood, blood,
blood makes the green grass grow.
The Iraq invasion began in March 2003. Noahs
unitFirst Platoon, Bravo Battery, First Battalion,
Third Air Defense Artillerywas assigned to the
front line. He rolled northward in a Bradley Linebacker,
a heavily armored infantry track vehicle equipped with
surface-to-air Stinger missiles, but Saddams army
had virtually no helicopters or jets, so Noahs
platoon was changed to infantry and tasked with kicking
in doors and searching houses. By early April, American
troops had reached Baghdad, and the airwaves were filled
with images of Saddams statue toppling in Firdos
Square and the troops being hailed as conquering heroes.
Noah was outraged. War is horrible, he
scrawled in enormous letters across the back of the
envelope of his first letter home from Iraq. It
fucking sucks here, he wrote. It sounds like
you guys in the states are for the war. All the soldiers
I know including me think it is a bunch of bullshit. We
came in and invaded this country and murdered a lot of
innocent people. So tell me how we are heros.
Barely a month into the invasion, Noah already felt beset
by the moral ambiguity of house-to-house raids. I
wish I would have been a driver during the war, he
wrote from Baghdad. They didnt have to see
near as much shit as I had to go through. Plus you never
had to shoot people in the drivers hatch. Even the gunner
has it better. All they ever shot were vehicles, so they
didnt have to see the affects. Unlike when you
shoot someone in the head at point blank range. Did they
show that shit on T.V.? The violation of bursting
into someones home and the consequences of any
errors haunted him. What would you do if you were
forced to clear buildings where they know there are enemy
soldiers (keep in mind youre not infantry and
havent been trained for it) and you enter a room
and you run into a soldier less than 6 inches from the
end of your barrel? Plus, hes on his knees with his
hands on his head but you are scared out of your mind.
Would you pull the trigger? Say you just shoot out of
instinct like hunting, like when you suddenly flush a
grouse (dad should know what I mean). Then, after, you
realize what you did. Is that considered murder?
The questions read as oblique confession, and Noah
admitted that there were some things I cant
even get myself to write about. For some of those
things, he had taken photographsthough he was
uncertain what he would ever do with the images, whom he
could show them to. I will probably destroy the
camera, he wrote.
His unit was positioned near the airport, close to some
of Saddams palaces. Noah was impressed by their
scale; he liked the palm trees, and he enjoyed the sweet
tea. But his units turf was the Abu Ghraib
neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdadhome to the
infamous prison and the last main road before Fallujah,
the cradle of the insurgency. One night, Noahs
platoon went out on a mission to guard buildings against
looters. While he was in the turret of his Bradley, a van
drove toward him and someone started shooting. I
just grabbed my M16 and put it on 3 round burst and led
the tracers into the drivers window, Noah wrote in
a letter a few days later. Right away the van
stopped. I just finished the magazine. I watched it for a
minute and someone ran around from the passenger side and
dragged (I assume the body) into the back seat. I
didnt shoot anymore and just let them leave. The
gunner and track commander were asleep in the truck and
didnt wake up so I never mentioned it to anybody. I
cant wait until I get out of here and I hope I
never have to do something like this again.
The letter ended: Its definitely been an
experience Ill never forget, hopefully I will be
able to forget most of it someday, but I doubt it.
Everything good Noah got from Tommy. From me he
inherited an overly sensitive heart, Cheryl said
one afternoon, her voice quavering as she spoke. She
wanted me to understand that, no matter the terrible
things her son may have done, he was a good person. It
was his sensitivityher sensitivitythat
burrowed under his skin, that would come to make him edgy
and aggressive. By summer 2003, he was suffering constant
nightmares and couldnt sleep. They are pretty
much like the shit I went through, he wrote his
mother, only my dreams are always weird, so they
are kind of fucked up. To blow off steam, he
admitted, he and other members of his platoon had taken
to abusing suspects. Whatever theyd do for
stress relief, Cheryl explained, hit a
prisonerbecause youre so frustrated that you
haul him off and slug himwell, Noah did those
things along with the rest of them. The difference is, he
suffered from it. He felt guilty afterwards.
But with each passing day in the desert, Noahs
guilt was turning to anger, confusion, and, finally,
despair. Im so pissed off right now, he
wrote in July. Beatin a sandnigger
unconscious would help but we will get in serious trouble
if it happens again. But soon the letters his
parents received were stuffed with Iraqi dinars, stolen
from civilians his unit had beaten and robbed.
Well staying here has had one good impact on
me, Noah wrote. I no longer regret what I did
during the war. I have so much hatred in me I could go
murder more sandniggers and I would just smile. That goes
for almost everyone here. We had sympathy for them after
the war but now we have absolutely nothing but hatred for
them. We should have killed more during the war. I let
all kinds of innocent people go when I should
have just mowed them down.
By August, as their deployment drew to a close,
Noahs platoon was under a magnifying glass, so he
and some of his friends found a new way to
ventstoning chickens. Close to Noahs camp,
two hens were kept in a hole deep enough that they
couldnt escape. Soldiers regularly pelted the hens
with rocks until they were near death. One day, a
sergeant caught them. It was funny as hell,
Noah wrote. He stood there watching in total
disbelief for a good five minutes. Then he asked if we
needed to talk to a chaplain. We told him we already
talked to a psychiatrist and a chaplain and that it
doesnt help. He continued to watch like we were
crazy then told us to quit. Then, as a casual
codaalmost an afterthoughtNoah added:
Oh yeah, one of my friends that I do this with
accidentally killed a 3 year old kid. He was shooting a
SAW (fully automatic machine gun) at a car and a stray
bullet caught this kid in the head. Oh well one less
motherfucker that wont grow up and continue this
shit. Luckily he is not in any trouble. They are keeping
it quiet though. Well fuck this place and I am going to
vent some stress on the chickens and hopefully hoadjis
later. I love you guys. Love, Noah.
In September 2003, Noahs fifteen months were up,
and he was sent back to Fort Stewart. He took a two-week
leave to go home. Cheryl was enormously proud of her son
and told him often. Hed get mad because he
didnt think there was anything to be proud
of.
Its kind of like the devil followed him home
and wouldnt let him be, Tom Softich told me.
He was standing in ankle-deep water by Lake Vermilion,
not far from the Canadian border, where he used to come
with Noah to a tiny shack theyd built for hunting
and fishing. He was starting to say Satan had more
power than God, right before he shot himself, but I told
him thats not true, its only if you let him.
Noah was starting to think Satan was in control of
everything, and I guess he is, if you let him.
I dont have the answer, Tommy said, his
voice growing softer. I know I feel that we failed
him somehow. Who knows if you could have made a
difference or not. I mean Cheryl feels that way more than
anybody, being his mother. She probably tried her hardest
to get help for him
But you know, everybody comes
away feeling like a failure somehow, that you
couldnt, or didnt, do anything about it.
I tried to get his mind into other places. Id
do things with him that he liked to do. He didnt
talk about the war a whole lot. Hed talk to me
about some of the equipment and stuff, and Id just
talk about hunting and fishing and stuff. Trying to get
his mind away from it.
For the first time in our days together, Tommys
emotions got the better of him. He rasped an apology
before starting to sob.
In February 2005, Noah returned to Iraq. He was assigned
to a new unitBravo Troop, Fifth Battalion, Seventh
Cavalry Regimentand sent to Balad, a city of
100,000, forty miles north of Baghdad. Insurgent activity
was at record levels, and immediately the unit began
making contact with their elusive enemy. On one of their
first patrols, Noahs platoon found two IEDs. They
disarmed them, arrested a man they suspected was
responsible, and used the captured bombs to blow up the
suspects house.
The carnage on all sides far surpassed anything Noah had
seen six months earlier.
On February 27, Noah sent
an anguished e-mail home. Well I had a really bad
day mom, it began. First I totaled a hoadjies
car, but I did that on purpose. but then we had to go
back out for a second mission and i ran over a little boy
on accident. I was the last vehicle and i ran him over on
the left side so my crew didnt see it. i told them
later i must have hit a dog. the kid was between 8-10
years old only. hopefully the family doesnt try and
do anything because the army might think it was weird i
total a car and kill a kid in a matter of a couple of
hours. i feel really bad but i thought he would get out
of my way.
Noah wrote in his journal about the fear he had of
roadside bombs, about friends whod shot Iraqis and
been put on suicide watch (makes a person not even
want to shoot back at a person), and about his
growing sense of isolation. We have a lot of down
time without much to do, so I do a lot of thinking. I
have been realizing something. I have never had a true
friend. He kept a small graduation photograph of
his sister, Sarah, with him, and would look at it during
dark moments. He told her later it kept him alive. At
just twenty-one years, Noah felt he could trust almost no
one. Lately I have been thinking I dont even
want to come back alive, Noah wrote on March 15.
Granted I would never kill myself, but I hate life.
If I died here, I would be young and it would be an
honorable way to go. Lets face it, I have no future
when I get back.
Violence in Balad increased, and the unit started losing
men. The constant mortar fire coming into their camp
killed a soldier, and roadside bombs were exploding
virtually every time they crossed the wire. Twice, Noah
was riding in the gun turret when they were hit; twice he
escaped apparently unharmed. He said privately, however,
that he was certain he had some traumatic brain
injuryalthough later, back home, he would skip
appointments to test for it, afraid of what they might
confirm. He didnt want people looking at him
like there was something wrong with him, Cheryl
told me. His journal entries and e-mails home became
darker as he struggled with the guilt and anger: I
hate all Iraqis except for the women (most), and the
Iraqi national guard. The kids too.
Noah felt alone, and other soldiers were struggling, too.
At the end of April, he had to clear out of his living
quarters when a medic became suicidal. If this shit
keeps up I will snap, he wrote in his journal.
If I do, Im just going to start killing
mother-fuckers. Either Iraqis or soldiers, whatever sets
me off. I doubt I will, but this is gonna be a stressful
8 months.
His next entry is two weeks later: So far, this has
been the worst month of my life. With all this work I
have been ready to snap. I dont know how much I can
take. A car pissed me off last night. The fucker kept
flashing me and when he pulled off the road I almost ran
him over. I changed my mind though, I could have gotten
away with killing that mother-fucker though. My
transmission was going out and I could have blamed it on
that. I am just waiting for a good opportunity though. I
am just waiting for the chance where I know people will
die. I am not going to swerve at them, but I am not going
to avoid it like I have been. The only reason I have
avoided it so far is there have been women or kids in the
cars coming at me.
The entry closes, I am a bad person.
Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who has worked with combat
vets for twenty years and authored two books about
PTSDor psychological and moral injury, as he
insists it should be knowntold me by phone from his
Newton, Massachusetts, office, Its titanic
pain that these men live with. They dont feel that
they can get that across, in part because they feel they
deserve it, and in part because they dont feel
people will understand it.
Despair, this word thats so hard to get our
arms around, he said. Its despair that
rips people apart [who] feel theyve become
irredeemable.
I told Dr. Shay about Noahs experiences in Iraq, in
particular the killing, the loss of comrades, the
nightmares. He sounded saddened on the phone, but
unsurprised. The flip side of this fellows
despair was the murderous rages he experienced on his
second tour, he said. In combat, soldiers
become each others mothers. The rage, need for
revenge, and self-sacrificial commitment toward
protecting each other when comrades are killed [are] akin
to when a mothers offspring are put in danger or
killed.
Dr. Shay explained the nightmares and sleeplessness were
one of the major issues. The lack of sleep
contributed directly to a loss of control of his own
anger, a loss of control of things he felt morally
responsible for.
By July 2005, Cheryl now believes, Noah had become
desperate to kill. We were sitting in the kitchen,
smoking. Cheryl stood up and went to her bedroom. She
rifled through boxes of what looked like documents under
the bed. The walls were covered in photographs of her
son. An empty bottle of Jagermeister still sat on the
desk (Noah loved Jagbombs, she told me). His
polished Army boots stood at the ready. At last, she
found his journal and handed it to me. On July 4th
I went to kill a man that came too close to my
truck, he wrote. Consumed by paranoia and a lust
for revenge, Noah assumed the driver had to be a car
bomberand if he wasnt, he deserved a bullet
anyway. Well, my dumb ass forgot to chamber a
round, I got lucky because it was just a stupid driver,
and he got lucky from my mistake. Im pretty pissed
about it, I had him dead in my sights. I got to shoot at
some other people that day, but missed I guess. We
didnt actually stop to check.
That month, after writing about another IED attack and
his decision to become an alcoholic back
homeIf you dont give a shit about
anything, nothing can bother youNoah stopped
keeping his journal. He wrote letters only occasionally.
He seemed to be disappearing into silence and suspicion.
Near the end of his deployment, Noah was assigned guard
duty at a checkpoint. A man in a car failed to slow down,
and Noah killed him. Upon inspection, the murdered man
was discovered to be a doctor. That was the last
person that Noah killed, Cheryl told me, as if
unburdening herself of this final secret, but still she
defended him. It was on orders from his
commander, she said, and Noah shot the man. A
nice clean shot.
Noah took a picture of the grisly scene with his cell
phone, made it his wallpaper, uncertain whether it was a
trophy or evidence against him. We saw it,
Cheryl recalled, and said, You have it in
your head, you dont need to see it every time you
open your phone. So Tommy threatened he was going
to smash the phone or something, and Noah got rid of it.
He left his wallet lying around and I went through it one
day and I found a note, and the note was written to this
doctor. He was apologizing over and over, I am so
sorry. I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?
[That] type of thing. I took that note and threw it on
the stove and burned it. I figured it was something he
didnt need.
After his honorable discharge on June 26, 2006, Noah
moved back into his basement bedroom, which, in
Noahs absence, Tom had converted into a display
room for his antler collection. He said he
didnt mind, Tom told me. Noah had always
loved the antlers.
For the first week, he seemed happy to be among family
and friends, though many said that the light in his eyes
had gone. After that first week, Cheryl said,
I can honestly say he was nothing but a messed up,
confused little boyman, child, all wrapped into
one. Didnt know She paused, gathering
herself. Didnt know what to do. Couldnt
drive a car really, because driving he was constantly
worried about car bombs. Youre not the same after.
Youre not the same. He didnt laugh anymore,
he didnt smile anymore, and if he did, it was phony
and it never went to the eyes. He had absolutely no time,
no tolerance, no patience for .?.?. Cheryls
voice trailed off.
Anything, Sarah finished for her. She lay on
the couch, eyes closed, nursing a hangover. From her
shoulder, a tattooed portrait of Noah stared out at the
room, the dates of his birth and death printed below the
neckline of his T-shirt.
Solely to ensure his benefits, Noah attended the
armys mandatory thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-day
counseling programmocked by returning soldiers who
fake their way through sessions to keep their records
clean. The veterans lie to the therapists, because
they dont want to appear weak, Cheryl said.
Its a stigma. Its not like if Noah had
of come home with his arm blown off. They would have
fixed it with an artificial arm, and he would have gone
through therapy to learn how to use it and therapy to
accept the loss of the arm. And nobody would have looked
down on him for that. They would have patted him on the
back and told him how proud they were. But once people
hear he has PTSD, then hes a person with leprosy.
Hes got a disease and hes looked down upon
and frowned on, and not trustworthy. Its just not
right.
Noah visited the Veterans Affairs clinic in nearby
Hibbing and talked about his nightmares. A therapist
prescribed a bottle of Ambien and told him to come back
in a couple of months. The sleeping pills didnt
help, and he started drinking more heavilyto sleep
at first, then to numb the pain, too. He quit his job as
a janitor at Minntac, the US Steel plant where Tommy
worked, after some men ridiculed him for having PTSD.
Noah pissed into a mop bucket, soaked a cloth in it, and
wiped down their lunch table before leaving. He tried
attending group counseling to cope with the anger, but
found himself in a room of Vietnam vets and had
difficulty relating.
Theres a lot of Vietnam veterans whove
been suffering a lot of the same stuff for thirty years
now, said Tom, and he knew some of them, saw
the suffering theyre going through, and I think he
said, I aint gonna deal with this for thirty
years.
A few months after he returned, Noah became violent. One
day, he was sitting with his mother in the living room,
chatting, when Sarah walked in. Noah leapt to his feet
and threw Sarah across the room. He would snap and
go into another world, his Iraq world, Cheryl said.
Sarah was sitting in the same living room, listening to
her mother talk, her arms crossed and her legs drawn
close to her chest. She gazed out a large window
overlooking the front yard and some kids playing on the
street, as she and Noah had done ten years ago. She
hadnt said much until now.
Im feisty and I got right back in his
face, Sarah said. I wasnt thinking. All
Im thinking is, Oh my God, my brother just
threw me, hes never done that. Their
mother split them up, but not before Sarah watched her
brother realize what had happened. It took him a
couple of minutes to click that Oh my God, wait a
minute, this is my sister.
I dont like to
tell people that he hit me, Sarah said, looking
back out the window, because I dont want
people to think that thats my brother; that was not
him. It was him when he got back from Iraq. She
remembered the story Noah told her, how one day he
watched his best friend in Iraq blown up by a roadside
bomb, how he went around with a plastic bag picking up
body parts to send home. When he left the room, I
cried after that. I just cried, Sarah told me.
I couldnt even imagine. I wouldnt even
want to. But even if Sarah felt she understood the
source of Noahs rage, she never understood what set
it off.
At the end of November 2006, Noah was sitting on the
couch with Sarah, channel surfing, when he attacked her,
began to throttle her. It was just from out of
nowhere, I dont know if it was something on the tv
that triggered him, Sarah said. I seriously
couldnt breathe because he was choking my life out
of me. I mean, I could not breathe, my face was turning
blue, and he was beating me with the phone. We had a
house phone, a cordless phone, and it was next to me for
some reason, and he started hitting me with it. You could
see the evil in his eye, you could see it. It was very
scary, just straight evil came over his face. It was
horrible. When he finally realized what he was doing,
thats when I got up and ran.
I knew at that point, Sarah said, when
I saw the look in Noahs eyes after he realized he
was choking his sister. At that point, I gave him maybe a
year. I didnt know when, I didnt know how,
and I didnt know where. My grandmother knew, my
mother knew, Noah knew.
Days later, Sarah came home early from work and found
Noah packing his things. He was moving in with his friend
Tyler Nuberg, who had a spare room. I think he was
worried he was going to hurt one of us, Cheryl
said. We were sitting together one day, and out of
the blue, matter-of-fact, he said, I could kill
every one of you in the house, not give it a second
thought, and go to sleep.
Noah started working at Tylers family business, a
kayak factory, and every evening he would sit in his
chair next to a mini-fridge full of Michelob Golden Draft
Light and listen to music. Almost every night he played a
song by the band Smile Empty Soul called This Is
War. It describes kicking in doors and blowing
peoples heads off for my country. The
song is a favorite among many returning veterans. Noah
requested in his suicide note that it be played at his
funeral.
At some point, no one is
sure when, Noah began to write poems. Hed scribble
them down as they came to himlike his
dreamsin a notebook or on scraps of paper that were
lying around. One month before he died, Noah wrote
Two tours in Iraq in black marker on a
fishing map:
Two tours in Iraq,
was it right?,
was it wrong?,
I dont know,
My Anger,
destined me to hell,
now I drink,
now I drink & cry,
re-live my life when asleep,
so many dead,
so many killed,
Now I question god,
Is it dis-believe,
or is it fear,
I dont know,
Dont want to die,
Dont want to live,
but should be dead,
Im already in hell,
Two tours in Iraq.
Cheryl was dropping by Noahs place virtually every
day now, and each time she left his house in tears. He
was becoming angrier and would berate her in slurring,
drunken tirades. Noah drank to forget, Cheryl
told me, and he drank because he hated himself. I
think he was trying to drink himself to death, because he
wasnt going to commit suicide. He was going to
drink until his liver gave out. Noah was drinking
himself to sleep every night, but the alcohol no longer
stopped the nightmares as it once had. His dog, Dazzle, a
large black Labrador, licked tears from his face when he
awoke in the middle of the night, and then cuddled with
him until he could sleep again.
Cheryls grief is worsened by the fact she,
ironically, cant dream of Noah. I want to see
my son one more time, just one more time, just one
more, she said, rocking back and forth on the small
sofa in the sitting room. She had been crying for the
past hour, and now she was at a place beyond tears. Her
hands clutched at her neck and face. The pain wasnt
coming from her flesh; it was as though her own skin were
adding to her suffering. I realized I could always
see him in a dream. She struggled to continue.
But for some reason God wont let me have it.
I dont know if its because He knows Im
not emotionally ready for it, or if I will just never
dream about my son, ever again. But, every night I ask
God, Please, let this be the night Noah is in my
dreams, and I remember him. Every morning I wake
up, and it wasnt the night.
So I go to work and put a fake smile on my face,
and everybody tells me how strong I am and how well
Im doing, and how proud they are of me and how they
couldnt be as strong and blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. And like Noah, its all an act.
In the middle of July 2007, Sarah and Noah had planned to
meet for dinner. They were both looking forward to it,
but when the afternoon rolled around, Noah was having
problems and was already drinking. He sent a text to
Cheryl. Hey mom, it read, this aint
cool. im itching with the need to kill. no,
im twitching with it.
Before Cheryl could write back, Sarah called her, crying.
She said she couldnt go out with Noah when he was
that way, and Cheryl pleaded with her. I
wasnt thinking about the times he attacked
her, Cheryl said. All I knew at that point
was my son needed her, and she wasnt there for him.
And, I understand why she chose not to be there, but I
was so mad at her, so mad. I was so scared that whole
night that Noah was going to kill himself. I pissed Tommy
off because I couldnt sleep. I kept tossing and
turning and crying because I just knew Noah was dead, I
just knew it. Just knew it.
Cheryl texted Noah in the morning asking if she could
come over, not expecting an answer. He wrote back,
yeah. bring me a pack of cigarettes. Cheryl
arrived at the house, hugged Noah, and began crying.
He swore he wouldnt kill himself,
Cheryl said. That gave me a sense of peace. I knew
he had problems, but I knew he wasnt going to kill
himselfso there was hope. And that was the time he
lied to me.
On Monday, July 25, 2007, it was already hot when Noah
left for the kayak factory. He was in a good mood, and
there was nothing strange about his behavior, except that
for lunch he had only a beer, Tyler remembered later.
Noah left work early, and at about five oclock, his
mother, planning to drop off mail and see her son, drove
by his house and the factory looking for his truck. When
she couldnt find it, Cheryl assumed he was at the
recruiters office. He had been talking about
signing up again, but this time, hed told Sarah, he
planned on dying in Iraq.
It was a quarter to five or so, Cheryl told
me, and so I pick up the telephone, Hey
its me, wanna know if you want to have dinner with
me, see me, talk to me, but I guess not, and I hung
up the phone, didnt tell him I loved him or
nothing, just hung up the phone. Twenty-five
minutes later her phone buzzed with a text message from
Noah. I opened it up and it says, i love you
guys so much and im so sorry. I text him
back, you are my heart Noah, and then I went
to call him, and before I could call him Sarah called me.
She wanted to know if Id just got a text message
from Noah, and I said, Yes, and she started
screaming.
Noah was at the
spotwhere hed practiced his
marksmanship at thirteen with Tom and cut school to fish
with his friends. Hed parked his old, brick-red
Sonoma pickup in the clearing, between a small patch of
birch trees and a discarded, upturned boat seat. With his
knife he carved FREEDOM ISNT FREE in the
pickups dashboard. He took his photo IDs from his
wallet and stabbed his face out of each one. He punched
the rearview mirror, smashing the glass. It seemed that
Noah couldnt look at himself. But then he took a
picture of himself with his cell phone. It would be the
last photograph of Noah alive. And it is a portrait of
despair: his shirt is off and he looks as though
hes been crying. Between five and six that evening,
he sent a message to both Ryan Nelson and Tyler:
bam lifes a bitch im out.
Noah scrawled a suicide note on the back of an NRA
pistol-safety certificate, and then started drinking.
Times finally up, he wrote, I am
not a good person, I have done bad things. I have taken
lives, now its time to take mine.
Noah put his .38 Special to his right temple, wedged one
of his army dog tags between the muzzle and his skin, and
pulled the trigger.
On a bright afternoon in May, Tyler took me there. We
drove down an old bumpy track, miles from the nearest
paved road. He had a Glock 9 mm pistol stuffed down his
pants, and the only time he stopped chain-smoking
Marlboro Reds was to light a joint. This is Big
Swamp Road, our old stomping grounds, he said,
slowing for a deer that bounded across the road and
disappeared into the pine forest. Wed go into
the woods here, cut down trees, even though we
werent allowed, and strip the pine boughs for
Christmas wreaths. Wed fill the truck, like three
feet above the roof, and make forty or fifty bucks.
Its remote and depressingly desolate. Like most
dead-end roads on the Iron Range, locals use it as a
dump, and it overlooks a green pit lake at the end of
Enterprise Traila dirt road near the railroad,
colored a rusty shade of red by the ore. But over the
years, it took on a special meaning to Noah and his
friends. It was the place wed go to get away
from it all, Tyler said. They went there to hang
outcutting school, fishing over the cliff, pounding
beers, or passing a joint.
Today, Tyler was hoping to run into Ryan, but there was
no one there. Still, Tyler had a sense that someone was
going to arrive at any moment, or was already there,
watching from the silvery thickets of birch trees.
You always have a feeling theres something
watching you when youre out in the woods,
Tyler said, parking next to a small white cross for Noah.
Tyler reached up and carefully took a feather that had
been threaded into the cabs vinyl roof.
Its from a partridge, he said.
Actually its ruffed grouse, but everyone
calls them partridges. He put the feather next to
an American flag on the cross.
Tyler stared at the memorial for a while, smoking. I was
beginning to feel uneasy. The army does good with
brainwashing, teaching them to kill, make killers, but
then the guys do what theyve been trained to do,
and they come back and the army doesnt deal with
the aftermath, he said. And so, I guess this
is the aftermath.
A few weeks before
Memorial Day, fresh sod finally was laid over the loose
dirt covering Noah at the Cavalry Cemetery in Virginia, a
small graveyard that crested a gentle hill, opposite the
hospital. His mother and sister, who split their time
between here and the spot, had finished decorating
veterans graves with flags. They sat cross-legged
on Noahs plot, quietly talking. In the first months
after Noahs death, Cheryl had gotten interest from
Representatives Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Jim
Oberstar (D-Minnesota) and Senators Norm Coleman
(R-Minnesota) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) in her
proposal to mandate counseling for returning veterans.
But now months had passed since she had received word
from any of them. (None answered requests for
interviews.) Sarah ran a fingernail through the etched
letters on the headstone: I-r-a-q, she spelled aloud.
It doesnt need to say anything else,
Cheryl said.
Copyright ©2015 The Virginia Quarterly Review.
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