The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

Later, when he’s seated in the den, something occurs to Hickson, and what occurs to him is that he has been here before. That was another time, another country, and it was the last occasion he remembers feeling well. He remembers looking out the open door of the helo, seeing the scrolling layers of sand dune, the red sand desert, and something about the wind on his face, his friends at either side of him, his hand palming the grip of an M4 rifle—all of this seemed like life. Karen would write him three times a week, and they were in a forward position, and in the afternoons they’d go to Sawbuck’s tent and play games of checkers and chess. They bet socks, C-rations, dog tags, pictures of girlfriends, pictures of their wives.

  He knew the officers above him, the enlisted men below, and he was a weapons sergeant, and he felt he had a place. A function. What they were doing was right. A lot of people said otherwise, but they didn’t say that to him. At night he’d rendezvous with several troops from Marine recon, and they and three other Rangers would slip through the minefield, then across the border, navigate by GPS and the stars. The constellations seemed brighter there. The sky a little lower to the ground.

  Hickson was tasked with walking point. He’d walk ahead ten or twelve meters, and every half klick they’d take a new bearing. They walked single file. To hide their numbers. To lessen the possibility of stepping on a mine. And it was even better, this walking at night. The silence and the stars. A short line of buddies behind him. His lungs big inside his chest.

  Hickson thinks about this. He looks out the window and into the backyard sky. After he came home from the desert, it was like walking through mud. The air felt like mud. He slept too late in the morning and not well enough at night. Karen began to worry about him, and she said, one evening, he wasn’t the same.

  She was right. He was not. He couldn’t ever remember feeling like he was. His sleep grew nightmare-fractured and his daytime, a haze. A fog of something. He’d sit at the table with her and it would be like seeing through mist. Walking through a mist. She seemed to go farther and farther, or he seemed to be dropping back, and then the distance was too much, and then she was gone.

  Things were really bad then. He had to take it by the day. Sometimes, the hour. Parks came back from a furlough in Germany, bought the house behind him, and it was better, but it was still making do.

  Hickson sits there. It doesn’t feel like that now. He feels alert and watchful. Very awake. His thoughts now are different thoughts. Some other kind of thinking. It feels to him, suddenly, as if he is going to make it. There’s just such a feeling. He can’t even say.

  They will be looking for him, thinks Hickson.

  Let them fucking look.

  He stands from the chair and walks to the window. He leans against it a moment, but he’s having difficulty keeping still. He walks up the hall to the bedroom, and then he walks down the hall to the garage. He goes back and forth, pacing.

  In the desert one night, they crossed the border and found a hide. Used their entrenching tools to dig in. They were to stay until evening of the following day, make their way back through the dark. It was a highway they were watching. Highway 80 linking Basra and Kuwait. Operations had just begun and Saddam was amassing troops at the border. Their orders were report on movement, count artillery, count vehicles and tanks. They set up at two in the morning, began digging their holes. One hundred and fifty miles inside enemy territory. February the twenty-third.

  Pit Bull was their team leader. He was a large man and wore a size-sixteen boot. Hickson could remember following him. He’d step in the man’s footprints and it was like a child placing his foot in his father’s slipper. When they’d made their burrow that night, Pit Bull passed the other men and came back down the line. Hickson was lying on his stomach, watching the highway through his NVGs. Green and black and any light smeared with tracers. Pit Bull didn’t like it. He didn’t trust the coordinates. He thought they’d be too close to the highway, and there was a soccer goal about fifty yards across the dunes. It was their position, Pit Bull said, their orders, but he asked Hickson what he thought. Hickson had looked at the highway, and then back at his team leader. He glanced at the com officer, who was seated a few feet away from him, fetching at his dials. He asked Pit Bull what there was to like.

  Dawn came like a fire on the horizon. You’d look up at the sky and hear the F-16s passing, making their runs, and sometimes the ground would quiver. Grains of sand dislodged and slid in front of him. The man next to Hickson, the com officer called Goddie, he lay there shaking his head. He’d been in Grenada, and then he’d been in Panama. He told Hickson he’d grown up as a Christian and he’d never planned on killing folks. Said when you first shot a man, it was a traumatic event, and Hickson had wondered why you would do it. He’d not killed anyone then, and he thought it would be just like the training. He thought Goddie had snuck past his superiors, that he was hiding something, that secretly he couldn’t hack.

  In an hour the sun was four hands off the horizon and trucks began to go past. Goddie was transmitting back to headquarters. Hickson and three others were keeping the count. The rest of them lay there sweating. Out on the road, trucks would stop and men would gather, some with black turbans and AK-47s and bandoliers of banana clips and grenades. Armed militia and townsfolk, readying themselves for a fight. Around noon, a bus stopped and an entire group of children in white garments unloaded and began to run about. They headed for the soccer goal and Hickson looked through his binoculars and someone had produced a ball. He looked down the line past the other men. He looked to Pit Bull. The man was shaking his head.

  They lay watching the trucks. Some pulling tanks loaded on flatbeds. Some pulling trailers of light artillery. Hickson counted and watched the children. He knew what was going to happen. One errant kick and the ball would roll toward them and one of the boys would go chasing after it. He had a .380 with a threaded barrel and he’d just pulled it and screwed in the suppressor when the soccer ball lobbed into the air and came within twelve meters of their hide. And then three of the boys in their white robes and scarves. They were twenty meters away and then they were fifteen meters and then one of the children broke off, came down the slope of a dune, then up the rise below which Hickson and the men were hidden. The child stopped and looked back. The soccer ball was retrieved, the other two went back toward the field. Go, thought Hickson, turn around, go. The child ascended the rise and came walking toward them.

  It was quiet. There was no breeze. All he could hear was a pair of sandals moving through sand. Hickson backed farther into the ground. Beside him, Goddie had flipped off the radio and unsheathed his knife. One scream from the child and it would be their eight rifles against a hundred.

  Hickson flipped off the safety. He couldn’t hear anything for a few moments. Then he glanced up and the child was standing right over him. Eyes wide. Mouth open. It was a young girl, maybe ten or eleven, and just as her chest expanded to release a shriek, Hickson grabbed her ankles and pulled her into the hide.

  He cupped a hand over her mouth. He put the silencer against her left temple. He’d knocked the wind out of her and she was trying to recover her breath. Her arms were thin. She weighed almost nothing. She felt like some kind of bird. How he must have looked to her with his face streaked in muted colors of camo, all his gear and his weapons. The other men dug in beside him. Like monsters in the earth.

  Hickson lay there, pinning her down. She had brown skin and dark features and one day, thought Hickson, she’d be very lovely. He wanted like hell not to have to shoot her. He looked down the line past Goddie, past the other men. He looked at Pit Bull. The man was blinking and looking back. In the middle was Roscoe, staff sergeant, Marine recon. The man was staring at Hickson. He kept tapping his temple and drawing an index finger across his throat. Hickson looked down at the girl. He tightened his hand against her mouth. He could feel the heat of breath from her nostrils, gasping for air. He was thinking of tying and gagging her when Goddie slapped him on the shoulder and pointed
toward the road.

  There was an irrigation ditch between their hide and the soccer goal. The children now were gone. They’d moved back to the bus. Hickson stuck the pistol in his belt, propped himself up, and looked through the binoculars. About a dozen of the men had left the main detachment and were walking right for them. Gesturing. Hickson stared a few moments and then looked back at the girl. He thought of Karen. What she’d say. He decided that, whatever happened, the girl would be all right. He would have to make sure.

  F-16s were rocketing overhead. It was constant. Somewhere, up in the ether, was a plane designated to provide support. They’d not yet dropped their payload. They’d have plenty could help them out. Goddie was radioing. He was apprising headquarters of the dilemma. He’d send up the prayer and the gods would rain oblivion. Fire everywhere. The desert would erupt with it.

  He looked down at the girl and he just had looked when a patch of sand popped in front of Roscoe and the shot echoed through the space back behind. Hickson hunkered. He took his hand off the girl’s mouth and unslung his rifle. He glanced over and saw Roscoe elbow-walk forward, prop himself up, and take his first shot. Then Sawbuck fired. Then two more of the men. Hickson looked downrange and saw that a couple of the Iraqis had fallen. He stared through his scope, caught a man in his cross hairs, flipped off the safety. He squeezed the trigger and a splash of red flew from behind the man he’d sighted and the man went backward as if kicked. Hickson felt his adrenaline go. He gritted his back teeth. He looked over at Roscoe and saw the man smiling.

  They fired more rounds. More rounds came back. A detachment of actual Iraqi troops had stopped at the roadside and one of the militiamen was talking with the driver and pointing in their direction. Three more trucks pulled in behind. Iraqi army. Hussein’s Royal Guard. Pit Bull was staring through his binoculars and he shook his head and motioned for them to fall back.

  Hickson jerked the girl to her feet and began walking her backward, using her as a shield. The air was hot. The sky so blue it looked washed. Gunshots all around, ricochets. He went back twenty yards, dropped to a knee, held position waiting for Goddie. He was wiring the radio with C-4. They’d leave it behind, blow it. They wouldn’t have to hump it out. They were only a recon mission and they were carrying light ammo—M4s, sidearms, a few RPGs. Roscoe had an MP5 he’d gotten God knew how. Hickson knelt there, pressing the girl to the sand, holding the rifle upright on a knee.

  They fell back a hundred yards and then they fell back a hundred more. A few men topped the rise next to where they’d dug themselves in. The recon team fired and those men dropped as though weighted with brass. Goddie was fetching around for another radio. He’d lost the antennas on the spare in the rush to destroy equipment. All they had was a PRC-90. Goddie triggered it, crawled to Hickson, and began yelling.

  They fired again and moved back. Fired and moved. The girl would huff breathlessly as they scooted and then, when they took position, begin hysterically to scream. Hickson smoothed his hand over the back of her head to calm her, but this only made it worse. Roscoe kept looking at him. He’d pop a few rounds and cast Hickson a glare. Hickson would shake his head. Idea was, if they lived through it, he’d leave the girl and maybe radio her position. He didn’t know. “Shhhhhhhh,” he told her, but the girl couldn’t hear. They were firing like mad. Pockets of dust rose where rounds from the AKs would strike. They fell back farther, took posture on a rise, and that’s when Goddie got through. He gave the pilots their coordinates and then the coordinates of their combatants. A minute later there was a streak in the sky, a loud crack, and then a line of concussions. Two hundred yards away, where the men came toward them, all that sector went up in flame. Hickson watched it through his scope. Iraqis were knocked prone. Some of them ablaze. Some disintegrated from the blast. Pit Bull gestured. They got back on the move.

  They reached a kind of corridor, a bluff they’d come down the previous night. They’d have to make their way along a wall of rock, then across a dune in the open. They knelt down and set perimeter. Goddie was still on the radio. Hickson watched. The girl just sat with her eyes glazed, out of breath. Hickson looked over to Sawbuck and right then a pink mist erupted from his throat and he crumpled onto his face. He lay there like you’d bow for a prayer. Hickson moved toward him, but then they were taking fire. Roscoe was hit. Johnson was hit. He thought Pit Bull was hit, but he didn’t know where. He pressed the girl to the ground and lay beside her, looking through his scope. Another detachment of troops were coming through the dunes.

  It was the first time Hickson could remember being afraid. He knew he would die. Goddie was calling coordinates. The next set of fighters did a flyover and the man on the other end of the radio said they didn’t have precision weaponry. They were carrying cluster bombs and the pilots couldn’t guarantee the explosions wouldn’t take Hickson’s team as well. Hickson watched Goddie sit there. He turned around and told Pit Bull. You could see he was trying to think. Roscoe was backed to the wall of rock, one hand pressed to his side, bleeding through his fingers. The other holding his pistol. He was out of ammunition for his MP5. When he heard what Goddie told them he shook his head and swore. He struggled onto his feet and walked over to Hickson, and Hickson was about to tell him to get down, what was he doing, when the man bent and placed the barrel of his weapon to the girl’s forehead and fired. She’d just turned to look behind her. And Roscoe took her away.

  It was confusion. The men were bleeding and taking fire and Pit Bull gave the order for the 16s to drop ordnance. The enemy was close, you could see them crossing out there, maybe three hundred yards. They were firing and Goddie yelled for them to take cover. Hickson was still beside the girl, and he shouldered down into the sand and the first wave of bombs hit and it was like the earth would break.

  Iraqis kept advancing. Pit Bull took a round through the leg. Sidney was shot three times in the chest. Roscoe was down beside Goddie helping him send through coordinates. They were calling in corrections and telling the pilots where to drop. Every time a wave of bombs came you’d have static and then the pilots asking, “Are you there?” Hickson couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t lie still. Couldn’t sit and stand it. He’d begun crying at some point but he hadn’t noticed when. There were the shots they were taking, and the spray of sand against his face, the earth trembling, Goddie screaming numbers into the receiver. Hickson lay there, preparing himself to die.

  He’d heard people talk like this. How they’d prepared themselves for death. How anyone could believe it, thought Hickson, even as joke. It wasn’t a joke now. It was something else entirely. It was like part of him separated and went trailing off. He sat with his eyes closed, watching. That part which places stake in the next moment, the moment after. To think, now, there wouldn’t be an after. Bombs were falling and sand was flaring up and there were great blasts that would suck oxygen out of the air and leave nothing it in its place. They couldn’t live through it. The enemy would shoot them or their own bombs, probably, would send them to hell. Hickson tried to concede, just lie and wait it out. There would be a flash and then darkness. An end to his thoughts.

  It was a hard thing for Hickson. He found he wasn’t ready. His heart was still so full. Rage and grief and love. It was like you had to let go of all that, and you could release it only once. He lay curled in on himself, and in his mind he was in his boat with his grandfather and they were on the pond. Fishing lines trailed into the water and at their ends, bait. Hickson had a knife and he glanced at the old man and began to cut the cord. That one was Parks and that one was Karen and that one was bringing Roscoe up for court-martial, killing the girl. He moved about, cutting them. They kept you tethered to the world. Love and fear and hatred. Hickson severed them all. He severed them and then nodded to himself that he was ready. His heart was empty and he was ready, finally, to pass.

  But he didn’t pass. The 16s kept dropping closer, and the recon team shot up their ammo, and just after dark two Black Hawks came in to evacuate. The
y loaded three dead Rangers onto the platform, and the remaining five climbed on aboard. In an hour they were back in cadre, and the next week Hickson was awarded the Silver Star. He and Pit Bull were given early release and he came home August of that year. He’d pull out the medal and look at it, and Karen, when she was here, she’d say she was proud.

  Karen isn’t here now. No one is but Hickson. And he knows what he needs. To be moving. Out there, on the streets, they’d catch up. He’ll be arrested. Mexico or Canada, not even an option. He’ll be fine, he thinks, as long as there’s movement. Parks’s body will be found, he wasn’t strong enough to lift it. Eventually, they’ll come hunting.

  He paces up the hallway and then paces back down. He walks into the bathroom and on through the guest bedroom and then he comes back and stands in the mirror, observing himself, twitching.

  It’s like Karen once told him, before things had gotten bad. They’d be seated at dinner, or maybe in a movie, and Hickson’s knee would begin to bounce. It would begin to quiver, begin trembling, and Hickson didn’t even notice. Karen would look at him. Clear her throat. He’d ask her what and she’d only shake her head. She’d shake her head and reach over, try and steady his leg. She said he was like a hummingbird. Said he was like a shark.

  Keep flapping your wings.

  Always keep swimming.

  Stop moving just a second, you sink forever down.

  FEBRUARY 2007

  Martin pulled into Parks’s driveway and turned off his lights. He sat there a moment, trying to think. His heart was going and he could feel his blood beginning to hum. He unholstered his revolver, flipped out the cylinder, rotated it, checking the shells. He didn’t know what he was checking for, but he did it regardless. He snapped the cylinder shut and studied the yard. The sagging gutters. Newspapers piled inside their miniature yellow sacks. He reckoned maybe sixty of them. Seventy. He shook his head and reholstered the weapon and stepped onto the pavement. Dusk was falling and he reached back inside and fetched up his flashlight, slid it in the metal ring on the back of his belt. Then he closed the door very quietly and stood in front of the house. There was a crow calling from down the street. The noise of a plane. Martin looked at the sky. Stars were just beginning to glint and then the sun dipped below the horizon. The heavens were a deep shade of purple. Martin walked across the lawn.