2.7 THIS IS GOING TO HURT
They had spent many hours crawling down the dusty canal roads. The monotony of it all, the slow pace, the lack of conversation, and the crash from the day’s earlier adrenaline rush nearly caused Levi to fall asleep. He stretched as well as he could in such a small space, and he complained about being bored.
His driver, Specialist Pete White, looked over at him and nodded in commiseration, but he had nothing to say.
After Levi saw his best friend’s Humvee disappear into a cloud of fire, dust, and gravel, both time and sound stopped, which left Tom Hooper flying through the air, suspended against a backdrop of smoke and flames, weightless and serene. His unbloused DCU-patterned pants were rumpled by the wind; his limbs were spread against the sky, one foot bootless but still covered by a green sock. Levi stared in wonder at his friend, who was not flying, but was simply the subject of a photograph, oblivious to his surroundings, or to gravity.
When Levi lurched forward because White had slammed on the brakes, time started again and Tom hit the gravel on the side of the road. Despite the height from which he fell, his form did not bounce, roll down the shallow embankment into the tall grass, or move in any way at all. He simply stopped when his body met resistance. Tom lay supine, staring up into the sky, one arm stretched out, the other seemingly twisted under his back. Levi looked left at White, but he only saw wide eyes and a moving mouth.
Levi turned to the side and fumbled with the steel handle of the heavy door. His gloved hand lifted and pulled on the lever, and he slammed his shoulder against the door. When his foot hit the ground, his ears opened again. He heard the blast wave echoing while something else whistled past his head. He set the other foot on the ground and Lieutenant Michaels appeared in front of him. Levi looked down and saw the lieutenant’s palm outstretched on his vest.
He heard the LT yell, “Contact. Get down,” and he watched helplessly as his own left hand thrust the officer’s arm from in front of him while his right fist struck a blow to the man’s chin, a blow that released the chinstrap on the LT’s Kevlar and knocked him to the ground. He did not hit the man out of anger, but because he stood as an obstacle, and Levi would not be stopped.
He ran toward the cloud and the Humvee wreckage, and because time does not exist in combat, and because his legs were heavy and slow, he had the time to gawk at the squat palm trees sitting on the side of the path like overgrown pineapples. Because there was no time, he was able to take the time to see that Tom Hooper’s eyes were wide open, his mouth was wide open, and he was dead. His arm was not twisted behind his back as Levi had thought, but instead, it was not there at all. He admired the orange horizon and the way the smoke went straight up into a shimmering column, the same way it had the night that he and Nick had graduated from high school.
With bottles of champagne and six-packs of Coors, Nick, Eris, and Levi spent the night at his dad’s hunting cabin toasting the end of four years of veritable prison. They celebrated the beginning of adulthood and a new adventure. They started the bonfire just before dusk. They drank and smoked and the boys played their acoustic guitars while the smoke drifted into that orange sky. Eris swooned, and later, when Nick fell asleep on one of the two couches, Levi claimed the lone single bed. Eris climbed under the covers with Levi, and between the champagne and the beer, Levi thought that even though he had been too chicken and confused since he had met her freshman year, he might finally have enough courage to make something happen before life changed for all of them. But she was asleep within seconds, and he spent the night unable to sleep, acutely aware of every accidental touch, of every innocent brush of one of her silk kneecaps against his leg as she moved in her slumber. He was afraid to embrace her and too timid to wake her, but he spent the night hoping she would rise and touch him on purpose. He was a fool for thinking such things.
And at such a time as that.
As his steps pounded the gravel, as his rifle clanged against his thigh, as he marveled at the pineapple palm trees and the sky, and as he ignored what was going on around him, he was oddly aware that he was doing it again: daydreaming, that is. He knew full well that his mind was not present with his body, as was so often the case.
As Levi neared the truck, he heard a tumultuous crash. A great crack stung his ears and he felt the peal rumble through his stomach. He wondered why it would be thundering when there were no clouds in the sky. It was only after the second crack of thunder shook his head and nearly knocked him over that he realized it was not thunder at all; but rather, it was the warheads of rocket-propelled grenades exploding near the left side of the truck. With this realization came other realizations. The smaller cracks he had been ignoring were bullets snapping past him. The more sporadic and lower-pitched pops were rounds burning and exploding like popcorn in the rear of the Humvee. As he heard his own rapid panting and the hollow drumming of his heart inside his chest, he realized he wasn’t bored anymore.
When he reached the truck and climbed up onto its side and looked down in the passenger’s door to view the gruesome scene within, he realized that the wailing he heard was not coming from within the wreckage at all, but from Brody Gassner lying in the road in front of the Humvee. Gassner was stranded and he was pushing himself up with an elbow trying to sit up, but his left leg was shredded near the knee. He kept falling back. Blood pooled beneath him.
Levi glanced up and saw two bearded men prone in the long grasses nearly fifty meters away. They were firing AK-47s while a third man knelt a few feet from them, aiming what appeared to be his final rocket-propelled grenade. Levi jumped down the seven feet to the road. His legs buckled beneath him and he fell back onto his butt. He leaned his back against the flat bottom of the Humvee. He tried to get up again, to go get someone, but as soon as he was up, he dropped down again as he remembered that his reason for jumping down in the first place was because he needed cover. The RPG whooshed harmlessly over the Humvee with an arch too high for contact. It traveled into a grove of palm trees and disappeared without exploding. Levi closed his eyes and took three deep breaths to steel himself.
One of the front tires still burned. It poured a black column into the sky, but every few moments the wind shifted and sent the thick smoke down the road toward Gassner. Levi crawled toward the front of the Humvee and the burning tire, and he waited for another shift in the wind. The smoke wouldn’t provide much of a screen, but it was all he had.
When he felt the early evening air blow against the sweat on the back of his neck, he waited three seconds for the smoke to move out ahead of him; then he ran toward his wounded comrade. Gassner drew in his breath, choked down his screams, widened his eyes, and held out his hands like an infant waiting to be picked up. Without a word, Levi ran behind him and pushed his own rifle to his side and underneath his armpit. He tucked his hands beneath the shoulders of Gassner’s body armor and spun him around, watching the bone and shredded skin and muscle scrape against the gravel as he turned his torso. Levi pulled as hard as he could. He shuffled backward in a crouch toward the cover of the Humvee.
The collar of Gassner’s body armor pulled up into his throat and all he could manage were a few gulping whimpers as he was pulled violently across the gravel. A crater bigger than any foxhole Levi had ever dug in training spread across the north side of the road. Levi aimed for this hole in the earth, which had been created by the blast that had blown the Humvee on its side. When they reached the blast crater, Levi dragged Gassner down into it. He let go of his vest, and Gassner’s head dropped onto the dirt.
He climbed out and hustled to the back of the Humvee. He took a knee in a position where he could look up the road for his platoon while also looking around the truck’s rear corner to survey the enemy. One gunner up the road engaged the enemy in the opposite direction. The other two fired in the direction of the three men Levi had spotted in the grass.
After looking up the road, Levi peered around the truck. His breathing was shallow and rapid, his heart soared, h
e could not articulate a thought, and he could not name which cardinal direction was which. From his low vantage point, Levi could see dirt kicking up in the grass from the firing of the heavy fifties. He scanned the field, trying to pinpoint where he had last seen the men.
As he scanned left, a man dressed in a black salwar kameez popped up and ran through the grass toward him. Levi brought his rifle to his shoulder, closed his left eye, and peered through his ACOG with his right. At first, he could see nothing through his scope but the grass field shaking. He opened both eyes and looked over his scope again and pointed it toward the man. Through the magnification of his optics, he could see the look of terror on the man’s face. Although he was bearded, giving him the appearance of age from a distance, Levi’s scope revealed his soft skin and delicate neck. Levi squeezed his trigger. After he had fired his third round, he realized his eyes were closed.
When he opened them and looked over the barrel of his rifle, he saw that the man was still running toward him. He held an AK-47 in one hand at his side, both his arms flailing as he ran. He kept looking up the road at the heavy machine guns that fired into the field at him. The young man hadn’t even seen Levi yet, and with everything else going on, he hadn’t noticed that Levi had fired at him and missed. Levi took a deep breath, exhaled, and held it. He looked through his optic once more and aimed for center mass. He pulled the trigger with just the pad of his index finger, slowly, not allowing himself to be surprised by the shot. He remembered his fundamentals. The shot went high and Levi saw the man’s head pop back as if he had just taken a jab to the nose. As the man fell and turned, Levi saw the gaping hole in the back of his head. He let his breath explode out of his mouth in a rush, astonished. A sudden wave of euphoria consumed him and he looked around, wondering if anyone had seen his shot.
He did another quick scan of the field. Then he unclipped his rifle and leaned it against the Humvee. He grabbed one of the heavy cargo rings on its bumper. He wanted to take advantage of the covering fire from the gun trucks as he once again began scaling the Humvee to enter through the passenger door in case maybe, just maybe, someone in that mess of blood and limbs was still alive. He hadn’t gotten halfway up when Gassner caught his eye, and he noticed the blood still leaking from his leg.
He dropped down and ran back to him, sliding down into the crater on his bottom. He cursed himself for wasting valuable time with indecision. He looked at Gassner’s right shoulder and didn’t see the combat action tourniquet that was supposed to be there according to their unit SOP. “Gassner,” he yelled. “Where’s your CAT?”
The only response was a wide-eyed stare accompanied by Gassner’s incessant bawling.
“Your CAT, Gassner. Your tourniquet. Where is it?”
He rolled Gassner onto his side so he could access the first aid kit attached to the side of his vest. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the tourniquet inside. It meant he would not have to use his own, which he very well may have needed sooner rather than later. He ripped open the plastic, undid the Velcro, and loosened it enough to slide it to the middle of Gassner’s thigh. Levi had to lift a piece of mangled muscle to get the tourniquet up the leg. He was not as much surprised at the slickness of the mangled flesh as he was by how cold and lifeless it already felt. When he had the tourniquet a few inches up onto what remained of Gassner’s leg, he stopped.
Before he started tightening, he thought back to their pre-deployment time at Great Plains Joint Training Center in Salina, Kansas. While going through Combat Lifesaver class, Levi, Nick, White, Hooper, Gassner, and even the LT played a game with their devices. They had each cranked their own tourniquets onto their legs as tightly as they could until they could no longer bear the pain, the twisting of their skin, the pulling of their body hair, and the total occlusion of their blood vessels. The first person to say Uncle lost and had to buy drinks that night. Levi did not lose, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. He had a deep cherry bruise for weeks, which made him wish that he had lost.
In the crater he told Gassner, “This is going to hurt,” and as he cranked the windlass, he realized how stupid he sounded telling a man without a leg that a tourniquet would hurt. He twisted until he could twist no more and until the stream of blood turned into a trickle and then an ooze, before finally, it stopped.
Gassner screamed. It was shrill and it was loud. He only stopped to take a breath so he could continue screaming.
Levi stood and grabbed Gassner under his shoulders. “Shut up,” he said. He propped Gassner’s back up against the side of the crater so he nearly sat upright while still enjoying the scant cover provided by the hole and the Humvee behind it. “Quit screaming, okay?” He looked down at Gassner’s nine mil holster, but was not surprised to see that the weapon was no longer there. He climbed up out of the hole and scooted over to grab his own rifle, which was still leaning against the Humvee. He thought to himself as he moved to grab it, I’m an idiot. God, why am I such an idiot? He jumped back down and unholstered his own pistol for Gassner. He looked up at the Humvee and changed his mind. He placed his rifle in Gassner’s lap instead, taking his hand and forcing it around the grip for him. “Shut up and take this,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Gassner shook his head with wide eyes. “I don’t wanna go out like this. Not like this,” he screamed.
“Shut up,” Levi screamed back. “Just shut up. You’re not going out. Do you understand me? Your leg is gone, but you’re not dying. Okay? Now take this. You can still shoot. Now shut up and watch this sector.” Levi leaned over him and placed his own face next to Gassner’s to see if he could see over the edge. He had a clear line of sight for twenty meters ahead, up until the tall grasses fanned out before the grove of palm trees.
“I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care what you want,” Levi hissed into his face. “You’re getting out of here today. Look out this way. Shoot anything that moves. Anything. You hear me?”
Levi ran around to the back side of the Humvee again and peered around. The gun trucks had shifted their fire farther east, but Levi didn’t see anyone in the field. He waited a moment to see if anyone would pop up again, and when he saw no one, he took the opportunity to heave himself back onto the truck.
He choked on the smoke pouring up out of the door. The overwhelming smell of burnt barbecue stung his nose. He covered his mouth with his shemagh, lay prone, and peered down inside. He saw Nick directly below him. He was crumpled against the driver’s door, a severed arm on his chest. His eyes were open, but they did not see. He opened and closed his mouth, like a fish, but slowly. He blinked. One leg was twisted under the radio and Duke, both of which had come detached from the mount. The other leg stuck nearly straight up, across the seat. The leg of his pants was black, charred, and still smoking.
An opening at the back hatch allowed visible flames to lick at the backseats. The popping of the extra ammunition had slowed, but each occasional burst made Levi wince and jump, hoping he would not get caught by fragments from the rounds. Chunks of deep red flesh and muscle stuck to the ceiling of the Humvee.
Two bodies huddled in the back against the rear door that now served as the vehicle’s floor. Their interpreter lay on top facing down. Private Weber, who hadn’t said a word until today, embraced Jellybean and stared up without blinking, his mouth agape, his flesh a sickly gray. Levi knew they were both dead, although how he knew, he could not then articulate. Nearly hyperventilating, and not sure what to do, he lay there in another moment of indecision. He straightened his helmet and pulled on a strap near the temple to tighten his chinstrap. He thought, Oh God, how do I do this? How do I do this God how do I do this God oh God how do I do this? He could not speak; he was breathing so fast and so hard.
2.8 IT WASN’T SO MUCH A CRISIS OF FAITH AS IT WAS A BAPTISM BY FIRE
The Sunday before Nick and Levi had left for their deployment, Uncle Thomas had asked them if they’d be willing to come to the front of his church to receive a blessing and a pra
yer before they went on their way. Levi excused himself by citing his integrity and his need to live an intellectually honest life, but Nick, of course, agreed.
Many of the faces in the church were the same faces he had left behind when he had joined, only now they were older, many of them sallow. There were very few new members, that is to say, young members. On his way in, Nick greeted the members of his old church family and politely smiled at the equivocal comments, noting just how much he had changed.
The night before the service, Uncle Thomas had given Nick the choice between several passages which invariably called down curses upon God’s enemies and called for victory and vengeance for His people. No doubt the preacher’s intentions were good with Nick going to war and all, but the crusading Psalms he had cited always made Nick uncomfortable; and though he had always believed such violent musings somehow fit into the larger plan of divine justice, retribution, et cetera, Nick preferred to leave the reconciliation between law and gospel to the theologians—or better yet, to the Judge himself. As an alternative, he requested something more uplifting and reassuring.
The next morning, he made his way to the front of the church and knelt under Uncle Thomas’s long shaking fingers. As a result of Nick’s discomfiture with the very book he professed, all 233 members in attendance at Immanuel Lutheran Church’s early service heard Uncle Thomas provide a divine promise of Nick’s safety with the words of Holy Scripture. He heard the old preacher intone the dismal and foreboding, yet strangely reassuring words from the ninety-first Psalm: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”
A Hard and Heavy Thing Page 15