Formation

by Ryan Leigh Dostie

  So when I see a shadow dart into one of the rooms at the far end of the hall, I think it must be my imagination. I freeze, clenching the rifle with one hand, breath held. I blink, rub my eyes, and lean forward, straining to hear, staring hard at the corner where I thought I had seen it. Did I hear footsteps? The stirring of debris?

  I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry. “Hello?” I call down the hall, very unofficial, very startled. I shake my head at the civilian-sounding attempt. I jump off the desk and pull the soldier on for size. “Halt! Who goes there?” Now I sound firm, professional.

  No response.

  I glance back at the doorway I’m guarding. Sergeant Lee and our Arabic linguist are inside the blocked-off office, working on our equipment. I can call out to them, pull one of them out here to back me, but if there’s nothing here but rocks and wind, will word get out that I’m afraid of shadows?

  Pulling my rifle to my shoulder, I take a few steps down the hall, breath caught in my throat. I must be imagining things. My heart is aflutter; I can’t tell if I’m terrified or excited. It tastes the same.

  I move close to the wall to make myself a smaller target and to better assess the space. Training has set my body to auto-control. Stay next to the wall but not close enough to brush it. Don’t give your position away.

  A doorway into a room.

  Had it been a room in any other building, I could’ve walked right past, heading straight to where the figure had darted. But in here, the walls are different, the stone and drywall destroyed. Nearly every room has holes wide enough to be doors and anyone could walk from the first room to the last simply by hopping through rubble.

  A wave of adrenaline rushes through me. Now I can see better, hear better. It’s a pinpoint existence—the world in Technicolor. I don’t have much training in military operations in urban terrain, but I know the basics, enough to make me dangerous. I meticulously walk a semicircle around the corner of the doorframe, scanning half the room from corner to corner. I quicken my pace as I pass the “fatal funnel,” where I am the most exposed. I swing to the other wall, making the last terrifying turn to make sure no one is right there, pressed against the wall in my blind spot.

  No one.

  Relief is short-lived. I’m not sure how serious to be, if this is part of my imagination and I’m a fool clearing rooms in which no one exists. I feel like I might be chasing shadows. But then I hear something. I know I hear something. Or at least, I know I think I hear something, and I move to the next room. I realize my rifle is still on SAFE and I thumb the little knob, reluctant to move the switch. A hundred scenarios race through my mind telling me not to switch from SAFE to SEMI. A soldier playing a very stupid joke? Sergeant Daniels testing me? Rifle tucked into my shoulder pocket, I recall the urban legend of the Iraqi woman who was said to have approached one of the gates, who supposedly didn’t stop when they screamed “Halt” and “Qiff! Qiff!,” who kept on moving until they shot her down in the street, the rifle fire cutting her in two, and the bundle that was in her hands, which spilled out onto the pavement, wasn’t explosives at all but instead cookies for the soldiers.

  I can’t shoot someone by accident. That I will not do.

  I hesitate by the next doorframe, presented with a new dilemma. If I continue down the hall, the person can dart through the walls, pass the room I cleared, and come up behind me. But if I go through the holes in the wall, they can do the same trick using the hall. This is a two-man job. But I don’t go back for help. Someone is here, maybe, and turning back would give them free access to the hall and rooms. I grit my teeth, furious I left the radio on the desk.

  I take the hall. It’s faster. I repeat the process, clearing half the next room, darting across the doorway, clearing the other side. The room is dark and empty.

  I turn from the doorway, glancing once over my shoulder to make sure no one is lurking behind me, and a man steps out from the next room, directly into my path.

  I halt instantly, but he’s so close I can see the dark hairs on his face, the fine dust on his dishdasha. I swing my M16 up, half gasping, but he’s too close. I register this even as I point the muzzle at his face, realizing all he has to do is bring up one hand and slap it away, wrestle it out of my grasp, turn it on me, pull the trigger, and unload the clip. I have a sudden epiphany, a moment of clarity as I realize he’s bigger than me.

  I jump backward, boots sliding on the rubble, screaming, “Get back! Back the fuck up!” It doesn’t sound like my voice; it’s deep, hard. Masculine. “I said back the fuck up!”

  But he’s rooted in place, staring at the end of my rifle.

  My brain freezes up, too. I back up, putting more space between him and me so that he can’t reach out and touch the muzzle. But I don’t know what to do. He’s not listening to me as I scream and for one terrorizing second I realize I might have to do it, really, actually do it, but my rifle is still on SAFE. I take in a short breath, but it’s not to steady the rifle.

  And then an American soldier trudges out from the room behind him, glancing from my rifle to the Iraqi with a dull, almost bored expression. “Hey,” he grumbles in greeting. “He’s with me.”

  Hey? Hey? With all the adrenaline pumping through my system, for a second I can’t process what he’s saying. The relief is abrupt enough to make my knees weak. But in place of all that emotion, rage fills the void.

  “Yeah, we were just up here looking for—”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you!” I scream, dropping my weapon, and suddenly I’m very close to his face. I invade his space. His head pulls back in surprise but I can’t stop. Rage vibrates through me and pours out of my mouth. “Didn’t you hear me asking who was there? Are you too dumb to read? You can’t see all the TOP SECRET, DO NOT ENTER signs everywhere?”

  He blinks dumbly at me, a short kid from the First Cavalry unit that just rolled in. “I just thought—”

  “I could’ve shot him because you’re a fucking idiot!” I want to hit him for being so stupid. I want to smash the butt of my rifle into his oversize nose, again and again, simply for putting me in that position. I’m suddenly enraged at his inexperience, his newness to the war and Iraq, his youth. “Get off my floor! Get the fuck off my floor!” I order him and he stumbles back, quick to turn back the way he came. He doesn’t run, and I almost wish he would. “And don’t you dare come up here again,” I call after the both of them.

  I can’t stop shaking. My hands tremble, my knees are wobbly. I feel it in my teeth; they ache, my gums throbbing. I can’t breathe; I’m being suffocated by my own anger. It squeezes my chest tight and I’m not having a panic attack, I’m having a rage attack.

  The door to the work office swings open. “What’s going on?”

  It’s our Arabic linguist. I wave him away. “Nothing. I got it.” But I’m hyped up all day, stalking the halls, tense, trembling, brimming with rage.

  And I don’t really know why.

  But with every day it grows.

  Monster in a Box

  Female King and I are on guard duty the day the Red Cross is blown up. It’s a day shift, and even though it’s now autumn, my undershirt is saturated and my boots are filled with sweat. My gear weighs on my shoulders. I lean against the wall, resting the edge of my flak vest on the concrete ledge of the window cutout, relieving some of the pressure in my muscles—but my neck is already tight. We aren’t allowed to sit, and by the second hour my knees are sore. I lift one foot at a time, trying to shake away the pain in my ankles and at the arches.

  King mirrors this dance and though she’s even more weighted down with her M203 grenade launcher and ammo, she bears it without complaint. The bright sun washes over her profile as she watches the streets. “I don’t get why anyone would feel ashamed for being raped,” she is saying. She might have shrugged her shoulders but it’s hard to see under the gear. “It’s not like it’s her fault.”

  We are talking about it in a roundabout way, saying neither I nor you. I will lear
n later that she didn’t actually know. She came to Fort Polk after my assault, and I’m inserting subtext that was never there.

  It’s not that easy, I’m about to say when King perks up, straightening her posture. “Hey, look.” She points below. I pull my gear off the lip of the window and lean forward to see the street.

  At the base of the tower, standing several feet from the glinting rolls of concertina wire, a woman stands. She’s young and pretty, her face tilted up toward us. King waves and the woman smiles, tentatively, her cheeks round, flushed from the heat. By her side and tightly gripping her hand, a small girl buries her face against the black folds of the woman’s chador. The woman leans down and whispers something to the girl, who peeks out. Her face is dominated by large, dark eyes. The woman points at us and I can hear the lyrical rise and fall of her voice. The girl purses her lips, as if in disbelief.

  I grin and tug at the chin strap of my Kevlar. I’ve done this before, mostly only on request, when mothers hold up young girls to better see the “woman soldier,” or young boys and even men come to the towers and gesture for me to remove my Kevlar. I tug at my bun, releasing a long tail of black hair. It’s dirty with sweat and sand, sticking together in greasy strands, but the effect is the same. The little girl’s eyes widen, her mouth puckering into an O. The woman, perhaps her mother, grins, now crouched next to the girl. King turns her head so that her own blond tuft of hair is visible in the light. Eyes still wide, the girl waves, first a flash of one small fist, then more vibrantly, a grin brightening her face.

  We wave down to them, a wordless exchange of greetings, and I’ll never get tired of seeing this.

  I tug my hair back into its strict bun and quickly replace my Kevlar. The woman gives one last wave and has to tug at the hand of the little girl, who keeps throwing glances over her shoulder as her mother pulls her along.

  “I wonder if she’s ever seen a female soldier,” I muse as the two disappear down the road. “I saw a woman driving the other day. Like driving her own car. I started cheering.”

  King gives a short laugh. “Probably scared her half to death.”

  “When I was like fifteen or something, I went to Haiti on this missionary trip and I remember being on the street and seeing all these US soldiers drive by in tanks and Humvees. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know why they were there.” I pause for a moment to consider that. “In any event, we waved like crazy and I remember them all waving back and smiling.” It’s a fond memory, seeing those soldiers perched half exposed in their tanks, somehow bigger than life, almost mythical, part man, part metal beast. “They were really friendly.”

  King glances at me with a wry grin, blond brow raised. “Yeah. We are.”

  I turn to her, face blank in sudden realization. I bark out a loud, single syllable laugh. I’m no longer the civilian girl on the street. When had those tables turned? “I guess we are!”

  She is good-naturedly rolling her eyes when the explosion rocks our tower.

  The sound knocks the air from my lungs. Sudden. Deafening. The tower sways; my ears ring. The floor tilts and I wonder for a moment if the stones will hold—if it will all tumble to the side, dragging us down the twenty-five feet and burying us below, brick by brick. My teeth vibrate with the residual noise. I reach out, fingers brushing against the stone, then wrapping around metal. Once again my training kicks in, my body operating on reflex—a puppet I don’t need to control. I’m already at the ledge, hip pressed firmly against wall, M16 buttstock planted firmly into the pocket of my shoulder. I don’t remember moving.

  “What the fuck was that?” King yells. She has jumped into position, too. The radio squawks. The air tastes of metal and blood. I gulp down endorphins. We scan the skyline.

  A column of smoke twists like a black, uncoiling snake but the actual explosion site is blocked by rows of sandstone houses.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter through clenched teeth, trying to better fit my rifle into my shoulder. My cheek can’t reach the right spot on the buttstock, I can’t align my sights because the SAPI plates block the pocket, throwing off my hold. I had never touched a SAPI plate until my boots hit foreign soil. It’s an issue I noticed my first day on guard duty when I realized I had never shot my rifle from the standing position—only in a foxhole, training that was better suited for World War II than Iraq. Now my bun is caught between the collar of my vest and the lip of my Kevlar, forcing the front of the helmet to slide forward to block my vision. I yank at my hair tie, fingers ripping out hair by the roots, until I can slap the Kevlar up.

  I see a white Toyota pickup truck barreling down the road, nose pointed at the tower. It weaves wildly through the tight-knit traffic.

  “Fuck.” A single, soft expletive. My sloppy hold tightens.

  Silence. There is no yelling between King and me. This is no fast-paced movie scene. We stand in terse silence, our muzzles swung toward the vehicle as it draws to a halt just outside of the concertina wire. A man in a red-and-blue-plaid shirt jumps out from the back of the white Toyota.

  I flatten my cheek to my M16, as if pressure alone will improve my aim. The vehicle is too close to the tower. Perfect location for a suicide bomber.

  I know I should be shouting some kind of order but I can’t remember what, so I simply stare. My thumb pad rests against the metal safety switch. I hesitate.

  Back then, when I was more human than monster, I didn’t know if I could do it.

  Another man swings open the passenger-side door, half outside of the vehicle, hand planted on the doorframe. He yells something I can’t understand.

  The safety selector indents my fingertip, still pointed at SAFE.

  The man stops outside the wire, dark hands cupped around his mouth as he shouts up at me. I attempt to focus on center mass but my gaze keeps drifting up toward his eyes. “What is he saying?” King asks. She covers her side of the tower, leaving the yelling man my sole responsibility.

  I pull my cheek just slightly from my rifle. I don’t know what I’m doing. “What?” I yell down at the Iraqi.

  He waves both hands over his head now, urgently, body tense, fingers stretched wide and upward. “They bombed the Red Cross!” he yells in heavily accented English. “The Red Cross is on fire!” the man reiterates, then he spins and turns back to the car. The passenger is still shouting something in Arabic, his tone hard and fast.

  “Wait, should we let him leave? I don’t think we’re supposed to let him leave!” My own voice rises and I pull off the wall, glancing from King to the retreating car. The uncertainty burns like an ache in the back of my throat.

  King stands there, rifle hanging in her hands. The truck is already gone.

  I stare at her as the adrenaline trickles off. My knees are weak. The realization that we are safe is euphoric. I have to lean against the wall for support.

  King’s lips stretch slightly, the quick rise and fall of her shoulders the only indication of an outward emotion. “The fuck?”

  But I’m swollen with pride. Pride and exhilaration and relief as my skin buzzes and hums. I glance down at the rifle I still hold firm and grin. My body had moved with confidence. My M16 had found its way into my hands; I hadn’t cowered or hid. I had stood in position, in the window, in the eye of danger, and it hadn’t occurred to me to do anything otherwise.

  And yet my safety switch had never found its way from SAFE to SEMI.

  * * *

  I never quite considered myself a conscientious objector, but when I enlisted, the idea of war was an intangible one.

  “I don’t think I could ever kill anyone,” I confessed once, back in Fort Polk as we prepared for deployment. I was passing a cigarette back and forth with Andres as we sat in the motor pool on a muggy spring evening. I was mostly just twirling the smoke in my mouth before spitting it back out, because it felt like a situation in which I should smoke. As if not smoking would somehow be wrong.

  Andres took back the cigarette, his back pressed against the tire of
a deuce and a half, one of the trucks in the motor pool bay waiting for inspection. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see his face but I knew his profile by heart.

  “I can,” he said, the white smoke shifting in the fluorescent light from the inspection bay. We should be inside, but I didn’t know if Kevin Hale might be in there—this was where I saw him last—so I preferred this, hiding underneath the huge truck, out of sight and, theoretically, out of mind. “What are you going to do, wait for them to shoot you?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Who says I deserve to live any more than someone else? I mean, what makes me better than them? They’re just another soldier but on the other side.” I was overthinking it. Or perhaps everyone else was thinking too little.

  “That’s just dumb,” someone said. I craned my neck around the side of the massive tire and watched the two soldiers from Supply sauntering up. They folded themselves down onto the pavement that was still smoldering from the hot April sun.

  They grinned. “I can’t wait to get there and blow me up some sand niggers,” one laughed, gesturing with an imagined rifle at his shoulder. He closed one eye and squeezed the air trigger, savoring his fantasy kill.

  I looked down at the concrete and flicked a small stone out from the treads of one of my boots.

  “I heard,” started the other soldier, clearly savoring an anecdote that was possibly true, but just as plausibly not, “from one of my guys already there that they were shooting off the .50-cal at this guy, and they missed. But the velocity of the bullet was so strong, it ripped off his leg. Bam. Just like that. Guy just stood there for a second, totally confused. Then, plop. Fell over.”

  “That’s fucking awesome!” the other roared. I imagined a man staring down at his bloody stump, baffled.