Chapter Twenty-three
You ramble down the mountain dodging RPGs and strings of bullets and thinking hard about land mines and realizing that you left the M-16 in the HUMVEE and you jump back in the truck with a real road trip feel to the whole thing and you start it up and get it in gear and haul ass down the mountain, switching back and forth down the brown hillsides and the dry grass and the rocks that look like someone’s backbone up out of the earth, and then you hit a long highway and drive on that for a while with the tires humming and the wind whipping and the dry air sucking the water out of your body, and then finally you hit the checkpoint just south of Zakho and the Marine tells you to run up to the gate and you drive up past trucks and tractors and horses and wagons all loaded to the brim and above with furniture and clothes and all kinds of shit and you hit the checkpoint and get waved through and then you drive down the road and into the town of Zakho.
And the buildings are low and sandy-colored and there are kids on every street corner shouting Hey Joe at you and waving and running alongside of your HUMVEE and you slow down and the Marine says speed up cause if you slow down they’ll be all over you and there are men in those raghead scarves and they are standing outside of coffee shops and they are looking at you with dark expecting eyes and they make you feel a little scared, and you turn right and up a street alongside a river and the Marine taps you on the shoulder and yells that’s the Tigris River and you can remember that name from Sunday School.
And then you see a huge fort with machine guns on the walls against the setting sun and the Marine says pull in here and you do and you run through the gate and go inside and Mr. Holden sets up shop and starts selling while you go find a place to sleep that night.
And you run into a guy from Marine S-3, the supply guys, and they say you can catch a rack with them tonight and you go back to the HUMVEE and start to unload your gear and you can see that Mr. Holden is about sold out and there is one big pimple red faced Marine standing there and he says where’s the fuck books and Mr. Holden says we don’t stock them anymore and he says why the hell not and Mr. Holden says the Navy stopped selling them and he says oh fuck sure we can haul our asses thousands of fucking miles and sit in these godforsaking holes in the motherfucking desert and we got nothing to whack off with and Mr. Holden kind of smiles and says don’t blame me I got nothing to do with it and another Marine a big white guy says you whack off too much anyhow like you need a fuck book and the pimple faced guy says it’s my dick and I can wash it as fast as I want bitch and they all laugh and Mr. Holden laughs too, just a little.
And you hit the chow tent starving, with the steam tables steaming and a long line of Marines sliding up and getting their food and sitting down and eating all dirty and tired looking and then you rack out in a cold cement room that was an Iraqi barracks not too long ago and you lay there on your rack and Mr. Holden is just across the room on his rack and you finally say to him why did they cut off the porno sir and he says oh the born-agains are all over that shit and they got to the secnav and he wrote some instruction banning all porno from ships stores and you say that’s fucked up and he says I don’t give two shits the guys can just buy that shit ashore and you say I guess so and then you roll over and stare at the concrete wall with the shadows dancing and someone’s name or something dragged deep into the stone in Arabic.
You Are Free Page 23