A Soldier’s Goodbyes on the Road to Over There

Private Kane’s father, who has to leave for work soon, holds her tight and asks her, again and again, do you know how to clean your weapon?

“Yes, daddy,” she says.

March 4, 2007
This Land
By DAN BARRY

MOHAVE VALLEY, Ariz.

It is time. The fresh young soldier has a plane to catch.

People file out of the dimness of V.F.W. Post 404 and into the morning light. They chat and smoke and mill about on the parking lot gravel, then come together to form a ragged circle of support.

The dozen motorcyclists among them finalize plans to escort the soldier for most of the two-hour ride to the airport in Las Vegas. Just before raising voices and fists to a recording of the country-western anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.,” the crowd bows its collective head and asks God for another favor: to keep safe this soldier, just 10 months removed from her senior prom.

That night she wore a gown the color of valentines; this morning she wears fatigues the color of mud. The uniform has a name patch, KANE, for Pvt. Resha Kane. Eighteen years old and five feet tall. Of Needles High School, Class of 2006, and, lately, of the United States Army, Fourth Infantry Division.

Earlier this morning, Private Kane walked out of her family home in Needles, a small railroad city in California just across the Colorado River. Before her, the family van, packed with two Army duffel bags. Behind her, a living room decorated with family portraits and a large mock check from her current employer.

“Reserved in the name of Resha Kane,” the check reads, $37,200 from the Army College Fund and the Montgomery G.I. Bill. It represents her partial compensation for enlisting for three years and 22 weeks. She plans to study biochemistry someday.

At the moment, though, she stands outside this club for veterans of foreign wars, where a bar sign advertises Sunday bloody marys, a buck apiece, 10 to noon. Former soldiers tell her to keep her nose clean over there. Her father, Wesley Kane, has to leave soon for his job as a car dealership’s lot manager, but he holds her tight and asks, again and again, do you know how to clean your weapon?

“Yes, Daddy,” she says.

The motorcyclists, including some from a group called the Patriot Guard Riders, mount their bikes. Among them is Rich Poliska, a gray-bearded Air Force veteran who lives nearby, in Bullhead City. A Route 66 earring dangles from his left earlobe.

Several months ago Mr. Poliska and his daughter, Heather Ching, heard about a local soldier who had returned from Iraq to no welcome home. They decided to form the Bullhead Patriots, dedicated to honoring soldiers going off to war, or returning from it. This is the group’s first deployment effort, he says. “But I’ve done six funerals and two homecomings.”

The Bullhead Patriots had heard of Private Kane’s imminent deployment from a veteran who knows a woman who works at the Family Dollar store with the soldier’s mother, Patricia Kane. First a surprise potluck supper — the soldier left church on Sunday to find a limousine waiting to whisk her away to the V.F.W. — and now this: an escort to the airport.

Bike engines growl, signaling that it is time. Private Kane climbs into the family van, which features rear-window decals for Jesus and for the Army (“My Daughter Is Serving”). She sits in the back, surrounded by her three younger siblings and a sister’s boyfriend. Her quiet mother takes the driver’s seat.

Soon the caravan is crossing the Colorado River. It passes a man sitting on the back of a parked pickup, his fist raised in the air: the soldier’s father.

This mobile honor guard continues on, heading north on Highway 95, into a desolate, arid stretch of southern Nevada. Motorcycles in front, motorcycles behind, and in the middle, a white van containing a young soldier with just-polished fingernails.

She took care of her siblings while her parents worked, and learned to make a mean baked chicken. She graduated in the upper ranks in a class of about 60. She was honored for her grades and for her abstract artwork of flowers and butterflies. She has yet to learn to drive.

She enlisted in April, the same month as her prom, because she saw the military as a way to further her education. Right after graduation she went through boot camp and some extra training, before coming home a couple of weeks ago to talk up the Army at her alma mater. “Hometown recruiting,” the Army calls it.

“Everyone knows me there,” Private Kane says of Needles High School, home of the Mustangs.

Now, riding in the midst of this caravan of protection and respect, she is bound for Fort Hood in Texas to await deployment — probably to Iraq, she says.

“Nobody wants to go, but it’s our job,” she said the other day, her tone all business. “That’s what we’re trained for. We’ll go over, do our job and come back.”

The motorcade stops briefly in the old gold-mining town of Searchlight, and a few bikers say goodbye. Then it continues on, across the nothingness, through spits of rain, before stopping again in Railroad Pass, about 20 miles south of the airport. The Bullhead Patriots say farewell to Private Kane.

“Best of luck to you,” Mr. Poliska says.

A lone biker continues to lead the Kanes toward Las Vegas, a large American flag flapping from the rear of his motorcycle. He rumbles into the city of gamblers, past drivers oblivious to the now-common moment of a wartime soldier leaving home.

At the last moment the biker peels off. And the white family van follows the signs that say Departures.