The document that most immediately connects Hayes to the famous photograph — the photograph itself — will outlast everyone who appears in it by centuries, at minimum.

The photograph is permanent.

The man was not.

That asymmetry — between the enduring image and the brief human life — is something that the photograph cannot acknowledge from within itself.

It is something that requires the story behind the photograph to tell.

He was found in the desert.

He was buried at Arlington.

The country that buried him with honors had not solved the problems that had shaped his life.