Again, I try to explain. “You were there when I told Sergeant Guzman about that. Don’t you remember, Sergeant Oli—”
“Shut the fuck up, Durrant,” Sergeant Oliphant says. “If I have to tell you again, I’ll put you in restraints and gag you.”
Lopez then tells them about his suspicions regarding the IED and my dash into the toy factory immediately afterward. I notice both the lieutenant and Sergeant Oliphant perk up at his mention of the factory. Lopez thinks this is a dead drop where I leave information for the insurgents. He believes I’ve been directing the mortar fire during the past week, that I allowed a small group of insurgents to enter the base in order to blow up the Humvees, then helped them to escape. Somehow, he isn’t sure how, he admits, since I didn’t leave the base during this time, I signaled our intent to mount a movement-to-contact mission into the Noses. The list goes on. Many of the things he tells them are so insignificant as to be laughable, but no one in the room is laughing. Throughout it all, I grit my teeth and bunch my fists. It takes every bit of self-control I have left to keep from running across the room and pounding him. Then he adds that Ahmed came to him unbidden and said he also suspected me of trafficking with the enemy. Ahmed told him I went off into the desert after our burn details, somewhere in the direction of the toy factory, and also that I’d spoken in secret with the boy prisoner. In a somewhat melodramatic conclusion, Lopez tells them I probably have a pirate radio stashed away somewhere in my tent. This, he says with an odd flourish of his hand, is his best guess as to how I’ve been directing mortar fire and leaking mission intel.
I don’t know whether to shout, shit, or go blind. There’s no way they can take this seriously. No way. But when I look around the tent, I see Lopez’s little speech has made quite an impact. The lieutenant looks absolutely furious. Sergeant Oliphant’s face has turned the color of Tabasco sauce.
I’m fucked.
“Excuse me, sir,” I say to the lieutenant after a moment. “May I defend myself against these ridiculous charges?”
“No,” Sergeant Oliphant barks, “you had your chance.”
My chance? I think. What chance?
“Let him talk,” the captain says in a hoarse voice. He coughs a couple times and clears his throat, as though he intends to say something more.
We all turn to look at him, waiting for him to go on, but he doesn’t. Finally, the lieutenant nods, but from the way he clenches his jaw, I can tell he’d just as soon I shut up.
I go through Lopez’s accusations point by point, explaining how he’s held a grudge against me since the moment I arrived. I tell them the story of how I punched his half-brother, Sergeant Reyes. That he has a motive. The captain laughs at this, masking it with a cough. Sergeant Oliphant gives Lopez a puzzled look. I explain that Ahmed is only trying to cover his ass, that this whole thing has been turned upside down. It doesn’t make any sense. What motive would I have for giving up my friends? I even volunteered to go on the probe mission. The lieutenant stirs uncomfortably after this comment, so I push it a bit further. Then I mention the door in the wall. But only in passing. I know it doesn’t sound very reasonable after the snafu last night. Finally, I urge them to search my tent. I tell them they won’t find any contraband items. No girlie mags, no liquor, and especially no pirate radio. Christ, I hope nothing’s been planted.
“We do not need permission to search your tent, Private,” Sergeant Oliphant says.
“If you’re looking for a reason for all this, the obvious person to speak to is Ahmed, Sergeant. It seems—” I almost say insane. “—like he has a motive and a means for doing all of this. I’ve been trying to tell you about him for a long—”
The lieutenant holds up his hand. “All right, you’ve said your piece.” He looks at the inner flap of the tent. “Sergeant Guzman, bring him in.”
Sergeant Guzman and Ahmed duck through the flap. They’ve been just outside. Ahmed heard my entire speech, I’m sure of it. He catches my eye and holds it until he passes me where I stand at attention. At least he has the balls to face me.
“Guzman,” the lieutenant says, pointing at me. “I want you to take this man to his tent and go through all of his belongings in his presence. Search everything. If it has a lock, make him produce the key. Pay careful attention to anything that looks like a radio or looks like it could store one. Police the surrounding area for recently disturbed ground.”
“Sir,” he says and salutes.
The lieutenant and I look at each other. He’s making a decision. That much is obvious. About what isn’t quite so clear. Maybe it’s only a matter of degree. How severely he’s going to punish me
“We’ll discuss this further, Durrant.” The lieutenant crosses his legs, making sure not to spoil the sharp crease of his pants. “This isn’t over. Not even close. If you do anything, and I mean anything, that could be considered suspicious, I will put you in a cell until I can have you shipped back to HQ for a court-martial. Do not leave the base. Do not use the telephone. Do not even go near the perimeter. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed,” Sergeant Oliphant shouts.
I salute.
The captain folds his arms and snorts.
67
Sergeant Guzman puts on purple latex gloves and searches my tent. He works slowly and methodically. Rankin and I watch from outside, silent, along with the two newbies Howley and McCrae, who had arrived on a helicopter earlier in the morning. We ignore their questions. They make a wager about whether the sergeant will find booze or spank mags. I can see this task makes the sergeant uncomfortable. His mouth is grim. I’m sure something has been planted in the tent. The only question is what. When Sergeant Guzman emerges with a hard look in his eyes, I’m certain he’s found something.
But he says, “You’re clean. I knew that bit about the radio was bullshit.”
“Thanks,” I say. My relief is enormous.
Sergeant Guzman walks away without responding.
Rankin flicks my arm and points. A group of men have assembled near the mess tent. I immediately assume the worst. My eyeballs throb, as though someone is squeezing them between a thumb and finger. I follow Rankin across the parade ground and inside the tent. It’s only Hazel, passing out the mail that arrived on the helicopter. This is the first time I’ve heard him speak since the night Boyette died. He curls a finger at me as we enter the tent.
“Durrant.”
I trudge over, expecting him to fuck with me. Somehow the latrine bomb incident has gotten out. Rankin swears he didn’t say a word. I believe him. And this makes it all the more difficult to figure out who might have been involved. My eye was swollen at breakfast and so the whole base has taken to calling me Stink-Eye. Hazel’s lips make a sad, strange smile shape, and I get ready for whatever feeble joke Private Brokedick here has been working up in his head all morning. Instead, he tosses me an envelope. It’s pale blue and thin. Something small and heavy shifts inside when I shake it. I know what it is. I know who it’s from. I know without reading the address. Rankin questions me with a look. I wave it off and leave.
The sky is the color of skim milk and the air is still and hot. In the desert, diffuse light hurts your eyes more than bright sunlight. I squint behind my new designer sunglasses and look for a quiet place. The whole base shimmers in the early afternoon heat. I sit down in the shade of the motor-pool wall, turn the envelope in my hands, and smell it. I consider burning it. I’m not sure I want to read it. Not right now, not today. Maybe not at all. Shit. I tear it open anyway.
The engagement ring is wrapped in pink tissue paper and tied with white ribbon. I drop it in my shirt pocket and chew on my lip. What I really want to do is shout at the top of my lungs. I want to hit somebody. I want to level the whole base with a bulldozer. She sends the engagement ring here. Here. She couldn’t even wait a few months. Damn Clarissa. I roll a cigarette and light it. Something in the tobacco smells like burnt hair. Even so, I suck in as much smoke as my lu
ngs will hold. My fingers make damp marks on the thick violet stationery she likes to use. The paper has a very faint smell. Mandarin oranges. I unfold it. Two pages. Back and front. Big looping letters in green ink. Her handwriting makes me angry, and I haven’t even started to read the letter.
Dear Toby:
I hope you’re doing alright. I hope things are going OK. Ugh. I might as well get to it. I’ve tried to write this six times and the first few sentences always sound like bullshit. I hate starting letters. Especially this one. Look Toby, don’t get me wrong, I like you. I like you a lot. We had some good times. When I look at your picture, I still want to kiss you, make love to you. That’s all fine. That’s good. But it isn’t something to get married over. When I got knocked up, it seemed like we didn’t have any other choice. I mean, that’s what people do, right? You get knocked up and you get married. At least in Savannah. At least in my family. My parents hate you. You know that. And even they agreed we’d have to go through with it. But that’s not what this is all about. Not all of it.
When you left, everything changed. The whole thing seemed different. You know, US. Our relationship. It didn’t change right away, but pretty soon after. I started thinking about what getting married and having a baby meant. I haven’t had a chance to do shit with my life. If all this had happened later, then maybe it would have worked. Maybe if I was old, like 27 or 28. But right now I don’t know who the hell I am or what I want to do with my life, so how the hell could you? I’m not the same person you knew at all.
I know this will hurt you. It’s shitty, I know, to lay this kind of stuff on you while you’re off fighting a war. It’s all fucked up. But I can’t pretend like nothing’s wrong, that we’re all peachy. I tried to tell you on the phone, Toby, but it’s so hard to talk that way. Sometimes when we talk on the phone I’m thinking is that really him? Is that really his voice? Oh Toby, I really do miss you. I really do like you. I know I said I loved you before you left, but now I’ve been thinking about it, I’m not all that sure it’s true. But I do like you. I like you a hell of a lot. I just don’t love you. Not marriage love, not baby love. I know this is going to hurt you. You have every right to hate me. I probably would if I were in your place. I’m sorry. Please believe me. I can’t be a mom. I can’t. I really, really, really can’t. Can you understand that? Or are you too much of a man to get it? All you have to do is pay the dinner check, squirt and go to sleep. I’ve got to drag this thing around inside me for nine months and then squeeze it out like the biggest shit of my life. I’m not ready. I don’t want to be a mom. I don’t want to live in a crappy apartment and wait for you to come home from some shitty job you have to take because we have to have money for diapers and milk. I’m so sorry, Toby. I’m so sorry, but I just can’t keep the baby.
The other thing is I met somebody. He isn’t THE one, but he’s a nice guy and smart. I work with him. It’s probably hard for you to understand this too, but I can’t deal with all this shit alone. I have my friends, and Sarah, of course, but it’s not the same. I thought about keeping all this about the new guy to myself. It’ll just make Toby feel worse, I thought, but then, and maybe this is selfish, but then the guilty feeling I had kept coming up and up and up. It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t tell you. So I did, and now you can shout, Fuck You, and tear up the letter. I know I would.
Most of all I’m sorry about the baby. By the time you get this, it will all be done with. I’ve already made an appointment at the clinic for next Tuesday. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone because I knew you’d try and talk me out of it and I just can’t deal with that right now. I just can’t. I’m really sorry Toby and I do like you even though it might not seem like it to you right now.
Keep your head down,
Clarissa
P.S. I sent a mix CD in another envelope.
68
I read the letter five times. Then I go inside the broken building and puke. That fucking bitch.
69
In the garage I wash my face and rinse my mouth with stale water from a CamelBak. Somewhere at the far end of the motor pool, a Humvee engine revs and revs. A mix CD? I think. What the hell? I stumble outside and lean my forehead against the wall, close my eyes, thump Clarissa’s letter against my thigh. My mind isn’t working right. I can’t even remember what my duties are this afternoon. I can barely remember my name. Someone crunches up behind me. I wipe the water off my face with a sleeve and turn around. It’s Lopez. He has an odd look on his face. Not smug. Confused maybe. I can’t read it. We square off and face each other. Lopez looks down at my hand. He points to the letter.
“Bad news?” he asks.
I hit him in the eye.
70
Sergeant Oliphant kicks my cot, and I jerk awake. He shines a flashlight in my face. I sit up, cover my eyes. Not a word from the sergeant, just the light. Rankin doesn’t wake up. It must be about 0430. Sergeant Oliphant looks me over with disgust, thumps my leg with the flashlight, and points to my fatigues. I get dressed and follow him outside. We walk toward the office trailers. Frozen condensation sparkles on tent flaps. A night’s worth of snoring, turned solid. My head feels muddled. I can’t stop shivering. When I ask where we’re going, he tells me to shut up. Somewhere in the direction of the village a jackal yips three times. Otherwise the night has no sound. The world looks clean and dry and cold in the antiseptic moonlight. A landscape of silver and brown. Sergeant Oliphant turns around when we reach the mess tent.
“You remember your old duties?” he asks.
“Yes, Sarge, I remember.” Sentry, traffic patrols, guard-tower rotations.
“Well, forget them.” He hands me a sheet of paper. “Here’s your new life.”
At the top of the list are three KP shifts—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nobody gets three shifts of fucking kitchen patrol. The first shift starts at 0500, which means I’ll have to report for duty at 0445. In the Army you always have to be fifteen minutes early, so you can stand around and wait.
“What are you waiting for, Private? Mommy to give you a kiss and a pat on the ass? Get moving,” Sergeant Oliphant shouts. “Your first shift starts in five mikes.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
71
Last KP shift of the day. I’m alone. My new commander, Private Foster Harrison, set me to work scrubbing pots and then went back to his tent to sleep. Before this, I’d hardly spoken to the guy. Everyone calls him Foss. Foss Harrison is a classic fobbit. Almost never leaves the base. Hates to be around weapons. Used to pay Boyette in tobacco to clean his M16. He’ll take any job, no matter how menial or dull, as long as he can remain on base. He’s short and plump and generally cheerful, with a round head about the size of a soccer ball and squinty eyes pressed back deep in his doughy face like raisins in an oatmeal cookie. So now Foss is giving me orders. The lieutenant has made his point very clear. I am officially at the bottom of the chain of command.
The kitchen tent has become my entire world. I come to work before the sun rises and I leave well past dark. It’s about the size of a two-car garage, but it’s packed end to end with cooking equipment and boxes of food. Big jute sacks of flour and rice and gallon jugs of ranch dressing and cheese sauce. Foss has created little pathways from sink to grill, to supplies area, to mess tent. It feels like a crowded little market.
The problem with dishwashing isn’t the nastiness of half-congealed food or the monotony of scrubbing what seems like the same dish over and over again: it’s the time it gives me to think. I can’t stop thinking about the mistakes I’ve made in the last week. If, if, if. There’s nothing here to distract me from myself. Not this Goddamn pan, anyway.
Whenever I’m not cursing Clarissa and worrying about what she might have done, my thoughts keep coming back to that lockbox, what it means, what will happen if the captain gets it, what kind of awful shit will fly out when he opens it. I’m stuck between him and the lieutenant, and they’re crushing me into goo. I tap a dirty spoon against the sink and tur
n all this over in my head, and then suddenly I see what I have to do: move the lockbox. That will delay things for a day or two. It’s not very long, but maybe it’ll be enough. I grab an empty plastic bleach bottle and head out. It only takes a few seconds to dig the box up again. The metal still retains the warmth of the day.
72
A single-vehicle night patrol rolls across the parade ground. The deep thump of a hip-hop bass line rumbles in my chest as it approaches. Someone on the passenger side is playing with the searchlight on the Humvee’s door, flashing it around the tents. An arm extends from the flap of one of the nearby tents and flips them the bird. The Humvee stops about ten yards away and then shines the light in my face. It’s bright enough to hurt. I cover my eyes with a hand.
The Sandbox Page 22