Mike removed a rosary from his uniform pocket and began. Above them, the talking heads on Fox News, silenced by the mute button, felt both comical and profane. While they debated whether this or that multimillionaire Republican candidate was sufficiently conservative, kids like Cody Carter were still dying in a place most Americans couldn’t find on a map. The world had moved on to a new movie.

As Mike finished, I opened up my dossier and explained the protocol for their son’s homecoming.

I have delivered casualty notifications to parents to whom the Army meant nothing at all—people whose sons had joined up because of the GI Bill, or because they played too much Call of Duty on the Xbox, or because they thought it might be fun to get paid instead of arrested for shooting at brown people or just wanted out of their shitty circumstances and away from the very folks to whom I was delivering the news of their death. Some, like me, joined up in the vain belief that the service would afford them the chance to atone for past sins—or, at least, to flee the scenes of our crimes. This was not the case with the parents of PFC Cody Carter. For the Carters, the Army was a calling. I knew without asking that they would go to Fort Campbell, and then to Dover, or anywhere else, to greet the remains of their son. They would leave that very second if they could. The Carters were True Believers.

“As part of the Dignified Transfer,” I said, dutifully reciting the script of the CNO Module, “Cody will arrive in a coffin draped with the flag of the United States of America.”

Dignified Transfer. The sound of it made me feel like a vacuum cleaner salesman. But I knew when I recited those words the Carters could hear the twenty-one-gun salute and see the honor guard folding the flag into a tight triangle and presenting it to Mrs. Carter with the thanks of a grateful nation. Who was I to say or even to think otherwise? So I did my duty.

My eyes drifted over to a wall decorated with family photos. Beneath the pictures stood a bookshelf full of trophies and medals and photographs of Private Carter and his brothers and sisters—the boys in wrestling singlets and baseball uniforms; the girls in choir robes, Sunday dresses, one posing in a pink leotard, another holding a violin. I recognized Cody Carter from his class A uniform portrait. He was the youngest.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I’ll contact your Casualty Assistance Officer and make the arrangements for you.”