“Forget it,” LeAnne said.
“Forget what?”
“She can keep her veil on.” LeAnne raised her voice, although there was no reason for getting mad at Katie. Katie said something to the woman. She bowed her head and kept her veil in place. The woman with the ruined face spoke, just a whisper.
“Can that one put her veil back in place?” Katie said.
LeAnne nodded. It was cold in this house, maybe not even fifty degrees, but she was sweating inside her uniform. She scanned the faces of the other women, some old, some young. The youngest woman, perhaps twenty, wore a hint of green eye shadow. If there was intel to be gained about Wakil Razaq Salam or anything else, it would come from her, meaning this party had to be broken into smaller groups.
“Tell them I’ve got treats for the kids,” LeAnne said.
One of the kids—a sturdy-looking boy, ten or eleven—knew the word treat and started forward before Katie opened her mouth. The very oldest woman reached out and grabbed his shoulder, yelling something at him, but he shrugged her off.
“That the grandma?”
“Oh, no, the mom for sure,” Katie said.
“Should I give him something or not?”
“The kids love those Jolly Ranchers.”
“But what about the mom?”
“Pah,” said Katie.
The boy, runny-nosed—all the kids had runny noses—wore ragged trousers and a sweat shirt with “Hollywood High School” across the chest, a baggy sweatshirt with a pouch in front. He had his hands inside, the coldness in these village dwellings probably why all the kids had runny noses. LeAnne slung the M4 over her shoulder, muzzle down, and fished in her pockets for Jolly Ranchers. The boy stepped up and stopped in front of her.
“Here you go,” LeAnne said, “three Jolly Ranchers plus a Tootsie Roll for good luck.” She held out the candy, but the boy made no move to take it. He was muttering something and not looking her in the eyes, his gaze directed inward. Was there something wrong with him?
“What’s he saying, Katie?”
No response.
“Katie?”
LeAnne glanced to the side, didn’t see Katie. She looked out the open doorway, spotted silhouettes on the run, maybe twenty yards off, headed her way. Jamie was in the lead—she knew how he moved—with Corporal Crannack right behind.
“Sergeant!” he called. “You all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re shutting this down. Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir.”
At that moment, turning back to the room, she saw Katie, crouched outside against the mudbrick wall. “Katie? What’s wrong?”
“Be right there.”
LeAnne faced the room. She still had the candy in one hand and the boy in the sweatshirt still stood before her. “Here. Take it.”
The boy made no move to take the candy. LeAnne shot a quick look past him. The women were still, silent, tense, like spectators at some gripping performance. Then a horrible shudder passed through the boy and he began to sob.
LeAnne bent down. “Hey, buddy, what’s the matter?”
He looked up at her, his eyes streaming. She reached out to pat his head, comfort him in some way, but just as she did there was a furious shout from the far end of the room, where the two scarred women stood. The boy backed up and then his hands emerged from the pouch, not empty. Instead, they held a snub-nosed pistol: a little weapon, but it seemed big in the boy’s hands.
The boy’s action and LeAnne’s reaction were almost simultaneous. He was still tilting up the barrel of the pistol, tilting it up toward her face, when she knocked it away with the back of her hand. The pistol went off and pinwheeled across the room. A woman screamed. The boy fell against LeAnne, knocking the M4 loose and trapping it under his motionless body.
“Sergeant?” Jamie called, now much closer, maybe right outside the door.
LeAnne rose, tugging at the strap on her weapon, trying to free it. All the women dropped down and lay prone, all except the second scarred woman, the one who hadn’t shown her face. A hand emerged from under her burqa, a hairy hand, a big hand, a man’s hand. And in that hand: an M67 fragmentation grenade, US Army issue. Thumb on the safety lever, pin already pulled.
“Sergeant?”
“Down, Jamie, down!”
The man in the burqa threw the grenade. It flew right past LeAnne’s head—she felt its tiny breeze—and out the door. Then came the blast, followed by cries and moans from outside and wild screaming from within. LeAnne wrenched the M4 out from under the boy, wheeled around. The man in the burqa was in throwing position, had another grenade all set. He let it go. LeAnne shot him right in the forehead, dead center. The second-last image she absorbed was the tiny red hole she’d made. The very last image was the fringed hems of the jeans he wore under the burqa, exposed as he toppled over. There was no time for anything else on account of the M67’s detonation delay being only four seconds.
A sign passed by: Welcome to Arizona. LeAnne, on a winding two-laner all by herself, sagebrush covered hills to the north, rocky plain to the south, slowed down, backed up, got out, and took a closer look at the sign. A very old sign in a bygone style, faded by the sun and pitted by wind-driven sand, with a tall pine on the left, a saguaro cactus on the right, and a distant mesa in the middle. There was also a bullet hole through the middle of the triangle in the first A. LeAnne gazed at the sign until she felt herself being transported into it, entering this old and bygone Arizona like a kid into a storybook. She got a little dizzy, staggered back, almost fainted. LeAnne put her head between her knees, took a few deep breaths. Much better, except for getting a whiff of her own smell. But it was good to be home.
She drove on and came to a small town, her mood rising for the first time since . . . when? Something or other with Marci? The good mood topped out right there, but it didn’t sink back down very far. LeAnne realized she was hungry. When had she last eaten? No data input on that. She removed her sunglasses, took a very quick glance in the mirror. Cheekbones at last, but not in a good way. There was nothing whatsoever good about her face now.
She passed an Indian souvenir shop, closed, and an RV campground, deserted, and came to a high school, just a single low brick building with Go Red Buffaloes on a portable sign out front. Beyond the school lay a grassless baseball diamond, and after that an oval track. Inside the oval was a jumping pit. Two girls stood at the top of the runway, one stretching, the other making little movements with a pole. LeAnne stopped the car.
The track was cinder with weeds growing through and no markings. The girl with the pole started her run-up. They had the bar at eight feet two, which LeAnne could tell just from looking. The girl, a bit on the heavy side, wasn’t fast and barely got her lead leg into position on time, but the plant was clean. The pole, too soft for her, bent beyond the optimal launch angle, and there were problems with her grip and her trailing leg. Up she rose, the twist rushed, her chest skimming the bar. It quivered but stayed in place. LeAnne clapped her hands softly.
“This seems not very possible,” Katie said.
“How do you mean?” said LeAnne setting up the equipment that had finally arrived, after weeks of messaging, paperwork, bureaucracy, obstruction.
Katie stood watching, arms folded across her chest, and made no move to help. Manual labor was beneath her, as though she were some sort of aristocrat, which was how LeAnne had come to see her.
“We are not ready.”
“For Christ sake,” LeAnne said, dragging the landing pads into position, just so. “Why not?”
“I wish you wouldn’t say Christ like that. It mocks your religion.”
“I’m not religious,” LeAnne said.
“Neither am I, but all the same.”
“You’re not religious? You pray five times a day.”
“And that makes me religious?”
LeAnne looked up at her. Katie wore a short, form-fitting suede coat and a crimson silk head scarf that looked e
xpensive, like something from Paris. Behind her stood the school, small, dun-colored, none of its right angles quite right, and in the distance rose bare dun-colored mountains. The crimson stood out, almost like a flag. “Well, yeah,” LeAnne said, “doesn’t it?”
“How can you ask such a thing?” Katie said. “But right there is the proof, if you like. We are not ready.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Because to reach this sort of . . . play”—Katie gestured at the equipment: the two standards, the bar, the mats, the box, the pole—“you must pass through a long history.”
“Why make it such a big deal?” LeAnne said. “It’s just the pole vault.”
“Plus,” said Katie, counting on her leather-gloved fingers, “baseball, football, basketball, two—at least—kinds of hockey, lacrossticks—”
“Lacrosse.”
“—and who knows what else? Water skiing, snow skiing, boards for this and that—it is endless.”
“Your point?”
“My point? We are talking about girls. Afghan girls.”
Which was when the school door opened and six girls came out. They looked to be about twelve or thirteen, all dressed alike in loose-fitting ankle-length black dresses and long white head scarves. The girls approached LeAnne’s improvised pole vault pit, doubt and shyness reflected in every movement.
LeAnne turned to them and smiled. “Hi, kids.”
They looked up at her, their eyes checking out her uniform, her sidearm, her hair—worn in modified dreads at that time, courtesy of a rifleman in Captain Cray’s company who’d worked at a salon in civilian life.
Katie snapped at them in Pashto.
“Hello,” the girls said, tackling the word in several ways.
Katie snapped at them again.
“Hello, Sergeant Hogan.”
“Katie? How about they just call me LeAnne?”
Katie blew air between her lips, one of her many ways of showing disdain. “Very well,” she said, and passed the request on to the girls.
“LeAnne,” they said. They tried it out a few more times, then lapsed into a bit of giggling.
“And what are your names?” LeAnne said.
Before Katie could translate, one of the girls spoke up on her own. “Wrashmin,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Wrashmin.”
The rest of them followed up, LeAnne matching the face to every name: Laila, Durkhani, Hila, Muska, Laila.
“Two Lailas?” LeAnne said.
The girls laughed. “Two Lailas,” they said. “Two.” They all held up their right hands, two fingers raised. Those fingers—still unworn, childlike—made a surprise impression on LeAnne.
“Not so different from LeAnne,” she said. “Laila, LeAnne.”
The girls thought that over. Meanwhile, Katie was checking her watch. “Recess is twenty minutes, start to finish. Any plans to proceed to the actual pole vaulting?”
LeAnne picked up the pole, a short pole, eleven feet, and soft, and walked to the top of the imaginary runway.
“All right, kids, it’s like this.” In exaggerated slo-mo running steps, she moved toward the bar, counting her steps. “And right here we plant the pole in the box like so, hands up high, and driving off the back leg, then into the swing, and up, up, up, and over.” She turned to the girls. “Got all that? I know it’s complicated. Just feel the pole in the beginning, let it do the work.”
“You want me to tell them that?” said Katie. “To feel the pole?”
“Why not?”
“It sounds touchy-feely.”
“Where’d you learn an expression like that?”
“I am an interpreter,” Katie said. She spoke to the girls, an impatient-sounding flow in which LeAnne was pretty sure she heard the words “touchy-feely.” Then the taller of the Lailas asked a question.
“She wants to know if you’ll show us a real vault.”
“It’s been a long time,” LeAnne said; in fact, more than a decade.
“But isn’t it like riding a bicycle?”
“No.”
“Although in truth I myself have never been riding on a bicycle.”
“We’ll have to do something about that,” LeAnne said. She set the bar at nine feet—a laughable height, but she hadn’t vaulted in ten years, and she was wearing combat boots—and walked up the runway. She took a deep breath, rose up on her toes, and said, “Always run tall, kids.” Then she took off, and with that silly little pole and in her clunky boots, she soared over the bar, clearing it by so much it stunned her.
“Oh my goodness,” said Katie. And all the girls started clapping.
“Well, enough of that,” LeAnne said. “But right there’s the fun of it.” She moved the bar down to four feet, handed the pole to the taller Laila, walked her to the starting position, showed her the grips, slo-moed her down the runway and into the plant, behind her all the time, holding the pole with her. “Okay, Laila, all set?”
The girl nodded, just a little scared nod.
“Let’s see what you can do.”
Laila went to the top of the runway. She took a deep breath, rose up on her toes, raised the pole, and started running. The deep breath and rising up part was perfect, and then came a messy series of mistakes, and LeAnne was preparing for total failure, but somehow the pole got planted perfectly square in the back of the box, and it bent and launched Laila up and over the bar, her appearance in that voluminous black dress and streaming white scarf more like that of a soaring fish or dolphin than a human.
The girls cheered and so did LeAnne. It was actually one of the happiest moments of her life. She turned to Katie. “What were you saying about history?” she said.
But Katie didn’t hear. She was gazing at a rooftop beyond the schoolyard wall and across the street, her face dark and frowning. A man in traditional dress stood watching from the rooftop. At that distance, his face was just a smudge. All LeAnne could really make out were his prominent ears.
“Katie? Something wrong?”
She shook her head, then checked her watch again. “Recess is over.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LeAnne opened her . . .
Eye.
The two girls were gone, the oval track and jumping pit deserted. High above, a hawk was drifting on an air current. Somehow the sight reminded her of Jamie, and at that moment she heard his voice, as clear as if he were sitting with her, over on the blind side where she couldn’t see him anyway.
Cork blew off.
“One way of putting it,” she said aloud. Then it was Jamie’s turn to speak, but he did not. Was he searching for the exact right words?
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Say anything. Anything at all will do.”
But Jamie was silent. So strange, to have been granted that brief prequel in Qatar, a prequel to a future that was not going to happen, two nights of living life . . . TO THE MAX, for sure. She thought of the popping cork tattooed on the back of Marci’s shoulder. The pop of a champagne cork: a jolly little explosion.
“There are explosions, and then there are explosions, Jamie.”
The hawk began spiraling up and up, until it was nothing but a black dot in the blue. LeAnne turned the key.
In the next town, she stopped at a drugstore and bought a family-size bottle of ibuprofen. LeAnne took four to get things started, swallowing them dry in the parking lot. Across the street, she spotted a bar called Rooster Red’s. A carved rooster, red combed and pissed off, hung over the entrance. When had she last had a drink? With Marci. She glanced down at her red shoes, got the feeling that she was somehow not living up to them, and therefore failing Marci. “Fuck you, Marci,” she said in a low voice, to herself alone, although a woman in curlers emerging from a car a dozen spaces away seemed to be listening.
LeAnne gave her a look and the nosy bitch turned away. If Marci were with her, she’d have snapped out some nasty and funny remark, making everything right, and then they’d have sauntered into Rooster Red’s and
downed a couple. Red shoes and Rooster Red’s: life was full of clues and messages. You had to pay attention. She hadn’t known Marci long, but she’d known Marci deep. They’d been comrades, not while they’d been in arms, more like comrades out of arms. Red was the clue, and comrades was the message. LeAnne crossed the street and walked into Rooster Red’s.
It was dark inside Rooster Red’s, long bar on the left, a few tables on the right, the décor all about wagon wheels and steer horns. A man wearing a Stetson occupied a spot halfway down the bar, and an old couple sat at one of the tables. LeAnne took the very last seat at the bar, meaning the entrance was on her left and nobody could be on her right—a comfortable situation, like having the higher ground. The bartender—middle-aged, his face dominated by bushy sideburns, although it was the kind of face that could have been dominated by just about anything—came over.
“Hi, there,” he said, “what can I getcha?”
“Beer,” she said. “Beer and a shot. And ice. Ice in a glass.”
“Any special kind of beer?”
“Negra Modelo.”
“Negra Modelo, shot, ice, glass—coming up.”
He moved off. LeAnne saw herself in the mirror behind the bar. She was mostly oversized dark sunglasses, messy hair, a streak of dirt on her chin. Cruella De Vil on a bad day.
“Here you go,” said the bartender, sliding things into place. “Anything else I can do you for?”
Go away. Stop being an asshole. “Napkin,” LeAnne said.
He laid a napkin on the bar and withdrew. She wrapped a few ice cubes in the napkin, held it to her head—where a weird thing was going on inside, like metal getting sheared, real slow—and drank the shot. It turned into a small fire that flowed in and woke her up. The head pain started backing off. She washed down two or three more ibuprofens with beer to get that head pain on the run. Negra Modelo: a beer she’d never heard of before Qatar and now her fave for life.
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