For my Magazine Writing and Editing class, I had to interview a writer about a story of his that I admired. I chose Chris Jones and his article “The Things That Carried Him” from Esquire. I actually didn’t include my favorite quote from Chris in the paper. (It had a curse word, and that’s bad apparently.)
His advice to journalists: “And make sure you care. Don’t listen to that bull shit about not caring. It’s just crap.”
So here’s the story behind Jones’ award-winning story.
When Chris Jones interviewed Gail Bond about her son who died in the Iraq War, he didn’t stand in front of her with a tape recorder in his hand and an indifferent look on his face. Instead, he sat at the kitchen table in her home in Scottsburg, Indiana. He watched her make pot roast and cherry pie. He watched her smoke cigarettes. And he listened. In the eight months it took Jones to write “The things that carried him” for Esquire, he would listen to 101 people. He used their stories to tell the journey of Gail’s son, Sgt. Joe Montgomery. He worked backwards, starting with Montgomery’s burial and ending with the battlefield where he fell.
Jones’ article won a 2009 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. His commitment to detail and veracity, and his poignant narrative writing make the article more than award-worthy. They make it the best article Jones’ ever written, and one of the best Esquire’s ever featured.
Before the award and the recognition, it was just an idea Jones’ had after seeing a story on CNN.com about life at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq. The story mentioned a soldier who had died. That soldier was Joey Montgomery.
“For whatever reason I just started thinking, ‘I wonder what happens next,’” Jones said. “Like what’s the next step? How do they get these bodies back?’” During a pitch session with his editors, Jones mentioned the idea. Unlike some sessions where he could go through 10 to 20 ideas, Jones got lucky. Both the editors looked at each other and immediately said yes. Now the real work began.
After doing some research on Joey, Jones’ next step was simple. “I wanted family approval,” he said. “It was one of those things where I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this unless the family was onboard.”
After an awkward conversation with Gail, she agreed to the story. Jones’ next step was to receive military approval. When he called the Port Mortuary in Dover, he was told he needed Pentagon approval.
“And that’s when I thought the story was dead,” Jones said. But he called anyway. After explaining his idea, the man from the Pentagon responded much like Jones’ editors. He agreed to it immediately. Jones got lucky again. Turns out getting Pentagon approval was the easiest.
“A lot of the work was finding the people,” Jones said. “In the military people tend to scatter. So there was a lot of straight up detective work trying to find out who exactly helped carried Joey’s body from this place to this place and who flew that plane and going in the flight records, things like that. Then once I found out who it was, it was meeting them.”
Jones’ desire to find every piece of the puzzle is made clear not only in the amount of reporting, but in his detail-oriented writing. From the leather case Gail kept her cigarettes in, to the young boys wearing Nine Inch Nails T-shirts, Jones’ captures every detail and creates vivid and at times raw and uncomfortable scenes that keep readers entranced. In Jones’ case, the typical structured interview wouldn’t work When doing a narrative story, it helps if you let people know you’re not looking for quotes but scenes, he said. Some details may seem insignificant, but in the end they can make a story, like the girl in the flowered dress the national guardsman stared at while carrying Joey’s casket.
When it came time to put those scenes to paper, Jones didn’t do it in order. The decision to tell the story backwards came from Peter Griffin, Jones’ editor. Once his editor put the idea in his head, Jones held on to it.
“I thought if you started with his death, you don’t know Joey at that point,” Jones said. “If you start with a soldier walking down a road and he steps on a bomb it might not seem that powerful because you don’t know who he is. By doing it backwards you get to know Joey and the family better.”
The structure of the story wasn’t all Griffin contributed. Jones said the great thing about writing for a magazine is the partnership you have with your editor. “In newspapers, you like your editor, but they don’t really edit because there’s no time. With magazine work, it’s more of a partnership. Half the reason my stories are anything is because Peter worked on them.”
The story was supposed to be 6,000 words, a typical Esquire feature. Jones’ ended up writing 22,000. After Esquire’s standard nine edits — including three on the page — the final copy was cut down to 17,000.
Although writers hate to “kill their darlings,” the most difficult part of the process for Jones was the nature of the story. Jones knew he couldn’t be the cold, disenfranchised journalist in the corner. One reason the story is so powerful is because you feel like Jones lived through these scenes. You as a reader become a part of the story.
“Out of the 101 people, if I had to guess, 75 of them were crying when I was talking to them. I don’t get numb to that. I often cried right with them. That’s the cost of a story like that,” Jones said. You have to make a decision: What am I willing to do, and what costs am I willing to pay? I think the more you’re willing to give, the more you’ll get.”
