Youngblood

by Matt Gallagher

  My charms had little effect. She kept yelling, and her husband kept glaring. Fat Mukhtar tried yelling back, which just angered her more.

  “Azhar!” I said, trying another approach. “Azzzz-harrrr.”

  That flipped a switch. She bowed her head and spoke to Snoop. I strained to understand, but quickly gave up.

  “What news do you bring of their son?” he translated.

  Neither of us had much to share. The husband confirmed what Fat Mukhtar had said about their disowning Dead Tooth, though that decision seemed to be a source of marital tension. I asked about the older brother, and he said he was at his Sahwa post. He asked if Azhar was to be killed. I said capturing their son alive was our goal, so if they knew anything at all, it’d be wise to tell us. They said nothing. I asked how their dead cousin’s mother was doing, remembering her wails and pleas. They said she was grieving, but Insha’Allah, she would find peace soon. The husband asked if we’d stay for chai after the search. Ibrahim appeared in the doorway, ducking under the frame. He asked me to follow him inside.

  “Wait until you see this,” he said.

  We walked through a living room covered in sleeping mats and blankets; during the summer, Iraqis sleep in large, airy rooms or on the roof. A ceiling fan spun creakily from above. Over a kitchen of stainless steel, a staircase rose, angling into wooden beams that held the balcony. Upstairs, there was a small bureau in the hallway. Next to it hung a religious streamer, green with a yellow rim. On the bureau was a picture frame. I picked it up. Two Iraqi boys smiled for the camera, dirt field and palm trees behind them. They both had long faces and mop-tops, their resemblance to one another uncanny, arms draped around each other’s shoulders to show they were good brothers. They wore matching jerseys, and the elder held a soccer ball. The younger stuck out his bottom row of teeth like a mule to show off a recently displaced tooth: Dead Tooth when he’d been Baby Tooth. I set down the photo and followed Ibrahim into a corner room that smelled of ammonia.

  One step in, a smirking Dominguez handed me a placard. A crease ran down its center like a fault line. “A jundi found it,” he said. “Folded up in the family Koran.”

  Opening it, I was greeted by an oversized face of an imam frothing orders. The artist had even added the spit coming from his mouth, which was a nice touch. The imam wore a white dishdasha and a black headband, and his chin fell off the image in a cascade of beard. Behind him, toy men in masks held rockets and guns, facing an unseen, encroaching enemy. A hollow sun marked the top of the placard, jagged Arabic slicing through it.

  Back downstairs, Snoop explained that the face belonged to a Wahhabi, the most radical of Sunnis, who called on true Muslims to destroy Shi’a and American dogs alike.

  “It doesn’t say al-Qaeda on this,” Snoop said, holding it up. “But it’s theirs.”

  The family swore they’d no idea where the placard had come from. One of the little girls started crying when she saw it, and the husband insisted it must’ve been Azhar’s. Without any way to disprove that, I left them the outpost’s phone number, saying to call if they heard from their son and wanted him to live.

  I put my helmet back on, then my gloves, then my lenses. As we turned to leave the courtyard, Dead Tooth’s mother spoke, to no one and everyone at once. After a long silence, Snoop translated. “She say this is our fault,” he said. “Azhar was a good boy before the Collapse.”

  •  •  •

  We walked back into the simoom. I watched a dust cyclone of plastic bags whip around a pair of soldiers, who poked at it with their rifles. As we moved west down the Strip, I asked Fat Mukhtar why the family had been so hostile.

  He shrugged and adjusted his headdress in the wind, a world-weary blueberry in a tracksuit.

  “It’s not easy seeing your country occupied by foreigners,” Snoop translated. “The mukhtar has a good point.”

  I wanted to ask Fat Mukhtar about Shaba again, or if he knew anything about civilian murders in the past, but Chambers was only steps behind. The two men hadn’t seemed to recognize each other, or have any interest in each other, for that matter. One had seen plenty of brawny American sergeants before, while the other had met plenty of outlandish Arab chieftains.

  “Tell me how this ends,” I muttered.

  No one else knew, either.

  Fat Mukhtar stopped at a tin shack. It bore the message YOUSEF’S: BEST FALAFEL IN ALL IRAK! in English on a doorway sign, a gift from some previous American unit. At Fat Mukhtar’s suggestion, we ordered a late lunch. A young shop boy ran into the shack to deliver our order. While we waited, the mukhtar told us he was getting a bear from Syria for his zoo.

  I laughed. “A bear in the Middle East? Sure.”

  “He say it’s true, LT. The Syrian brown bear. A cousin of your grizzly.”

  I pulled out my pad and made a note to google this later, to prove Fat Mukhtar wrong. Bears didn’t come from Syria. They needed trees.

  The sense of being observed returned. I looked around. Inside the falafel shop, behind a thick screen door, stood an old man with crossed arms. I recognized him, but couldn’t place from where, and that bothered me. I didn’t forget people. I waved, long and wide. He waved back.

  “Yousef,” Fat Mukhtar said through Snoop. “Just a falafel man, but a good falafel man. Many morals.”

  A group of children delivered the falafels to our patrol. Soldiers and jundis strewn across the Sunni Strip greeted the children with pats on the head and shiny coins as tips. My falafel was handed over by a girl in a purple head scarf who had black gemstones for eyes and a gaping red void for a nose. I looked closer and realized it was actually two red voids, one for each missing nostril. Burns covered much of her upper body. The skin on her arms was like paper, and when she cupped her hands to ask for a tip, I could see the bones in her fingers flexing. I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and folded it into her tiny palms. Her smile burned through us all.

  I swallowed away the lump in my throat while Fat Mukhtar bit his bottom lip. Only Snoop found words. “Allah protect her,” he said. “If you’re up there, fuckclown, You protect her.”

  I wasn’t really hungry anymore, but forced myself to eat. The falafel tasted like desert—dry dough, chickpea, and tangy yogurt, all soaked in cucumber juice and olive oil. Fat Mukhtar said we should try Yousef’s lamb, too, but through chewed food I said we needed to go.

  “One more thing, LT,” Snoop said, listening to Fat Mukhtar. “He asks about Haitham. He say they are old friends, and the mukhtar has a gift for him.”

  Before I could respond, another voice spoke behind us.

  “Why do you talk to that guy so much? He’s just a damn drunk. Always has been.” It was Chambers. I didn’t know how to answer either of them, so I did the most outrageous thing possible. I told the truth.

  “We don’t know,” I said. “We don’t know where Haitham is.”

  •  •  •

  The patrol pushed south into Shi’a territory. The muezzin escorted us there, the afternoon prayer chanting gloomily at our backs. I had too much to think about, so I didn’t think about any of it. The simoom found renewed life, blowing us kisses of hot sand and flying trash. I grabbed the hand mic from Batule’s back and told the outpost we were heading in. As I hooked the mic back to the radio, the day ruptured in gunfire.

  “Contact to the rear!”

  I ran that way with Batule and Snoop on my heels, passing bodies in the prone behind whatever cover they could find, eyes and rifles out. At the tail of our staggered column, in front of an appliance store, I found Chambers standing over a body, bent slightly at the waist, legs on each side of the torso, a cage fighter about to finish off a dazed opponent. His rifle was slung.

  “What happened?” I asked, trying to limit my panting. Washington and two jundis were there, too, all on one knee. Washington took a long, slow drink from his CamelBak tube. Hog stood to the side, his squished face bewildered, holding his rifle like it had soiled itself.

  “
Barbie Kid,” Washington said, pointing to the mass underneath Chambers.

  “Sergeant,” I said. He didn’t respond, and I noticed the dull shine of a sai dagger in his right hand. “Sergeant Chambers.”

  “Fucker just tried to stab me,” he said. His voice was hard and flexing. He tossed away the dagger and straightened his back, moving his boot to the Barbie Kid’s chest. He pushed down with his foot, evoking a sharp cry from his captive.

  “Easy now,” I said, walking next to the pair. “Talk me through this. Who was firing?”

  “Hog,” he said. He kept his face down, lensed eyes staring through the ground. “Shot out a window.”

  I looked across the street. Glass shards decorated the ground below an empty window frame.

  “Negligent discharge,” Washington said. “No good.”

  I looked at Hog, who shook his head and gripped his rifle tight. “I—I don’t know what happened, sir. I heard shouting and I turned around, thinking it was Dead Tooth, and it just—it just happened.”

  “No one was hurt,” I said. “Let’s be thankful for that.”

  Underneath Chambers’ boot, the Barbie Kid’s unibrow bent up and down, his good eye darting wildly. His arms shook like twigs on a branch, and he gasped for air, still recovering from the boot stomp.

  “How the hell did he get so close?” I asked.

  “Ran up from behind,” Chambers said. “I heard his steps and tossed him to the ground before he could take a swipe.”

  “Must still be mad about his goat,” Washington offered.

  While we pulled the Barbie Kid to his feet and zip-cuffed him, Chambers straightened his arms and balled his hands into fists over and over again. I looked up at the floaty orange dust. Back when I’d longed for excitement, sulky teenagers with self-designated nicknames and confusion over gender identity hadn’t been what I’d imagined. Our grandfathers had pushed back the onslaught of fascism. Just what the fuck were we doing?

  21

  * * *

  From: William Porter

  To: Jack Porter

  Re: Intel?

  July 1 9:05 PM

  Jack—

  Grant is dead. Killed himself a couple years back. He tried to testify at Winter Soldier a few days before, but the organizers deemed him too unreliable. Who blows their brains out in their childhood home for their parents to find? Jesus.

  A few of my classmates knew him from Fort Hood, said he was a good dude who never pulled it together post-deployment. Happens to a lot of guys, unfortunately. (We’ll talk about that when you get back—being a leader doesn’t end when the bullets stop flying.)

  Enough preaching from me.

  Found Tisdale—we have some mutual Facebook friends, but none are close enough for me to inquire about him. Got his email if you want to write him or something—KenDTisdale75@gmail.com.

  Any luck finding a local to write a statement? I’m telling you, that’s your ace in the hole.

  Nothing really new here. In San Fran for that summer internship. So many hot women in this city, it’s ridiculous. And my apartment is above a gourmet barbecue joint. I don’t even know what that means, but it smells delicious.

  Be safe, Jack. And be strong. Only a couple months left.

  Will

  P.S. CALL MOM AND DAD

  P.P.S. Grant was born and raised in Twain country. Hannibal, Missouri. Thought you’d appreciate.

  I stared at the screen in a trance. Grant was dead. By his own hand. I hadn’t known the guy beyond a name on some papers, but still.

  Maybe it was because his mud huts were now my mud huts. Maybe it was because he’d once been a junior officer overwhelmed by the ambiguities of the desert and I was now a junior officer overwhelmed by the ambiguities of the desert. Maybe it was the shared relationship with Chambers, or the vision of him trying to right his wrongs at Winter Soldier, seeking absolution.

  Maybe it was just the day, the moment, the headache.

  I promised myself I’d track down his family when I got home, the same way I would Alphabet’s and Ortiz’s. New Concord, Ohio. Hannibal, Missouri. Tucson, Arizona. I’d make a road trip of it.

  We had internet at the outpost now, in a third-floor guest room formerly for embedded reporters. Journalists didn’t come to Ashuriyah anymore. First Sergeant said they were all in Afghanistan. A green fly buzzed around my head. I waved it away, and it landed on the computer. Walls of plywood formed small cubbies, each soldier tucked into a station like a lunch box.

  My watch said I was late. I refreshed my e-mail one last time, hoping for a note from Marissa. Still nothing, despite my last e-mail to her being titled S.O.S.! (JUST KIDDING). I’d wanted to know if she’d come visit Hawaii again when we redeployed. I resisted the urge to rip the bracelet from my wrist, and logged off. To calm down, I thought about partying with my brother in a city saturated with young women. It helped, a little bit.

  The hallways were filled with the dissonant sounds of men at war. From the ancient, guttural cadence of bullshitting to the iron poetry of machine gun bolts slamming into place, I breathed it in and told myself to value it, to cherish it, that someday it would be moments like this I’d miss, even if the moment itself wasn’t worth missing.

  On the second floor, pockets of huddled soldiers mumbled greetings as I passed. I smiled back, cracking jokes and slapping backs, presenting the image of the blithe lieutenant because I thought they needed that. Free until the next morning, most of my sergeants were playing poker in our room. I’d been invited, but said I couldn’t make it. I didn’t like gambling with my men much anymore. It wasn’t how I felt when I lost, either. It was how I felt when I won.

  I turned down the stairwell and found Captain Vrettos coming up it, a poncho liner wrapped around his shoulders and head.

  “Jack!” he said, grabbing my forearm with both his hands. “Was looking for you. About to start a movie. The new Civil War one.”

  His eyes were cracked and bloodshot. My eyes had been red like that before, back in high school when I’d smoked too much and needed Visine before I went home to face my mom’s inquisition. Captain Vrettos looked like he could use some weed.

  “Sir? You need to sleep. The runners will wake you if anything pops.”

  He shook his head, telling me he was fine, he could sleep when he was dead. After explaining that I had a meeting with Saif scheduled, I pressed once more, asking what the point of delegation was if not for sleep. He straightened the hunch in his back and said to remember my rank. I nodded and said I’d left Caesar’s memoirs on his desk like he’d asked, in case he got bored with the movie. The Mother Hajj and Pedo bin Laden escorted me down the stairs. She was looking more despondent than I remembered; he, more manic.

  The foyer was warm, and the evening air was wet. As I moved into the Iraqi Army quarters, I stroked my slung rifle. I had three full magazines in my cargo pockets. There had been a rash of green-on-blue attacks in the past month, all out of our sector, sudden moments when jundis or Iraqi policemen turned their weapons on their Coalition allies. I wondered if I should have brought Tool or Dominguez with me, but figured it was too late.

  A wine-red curtain spread across the entry of the first room in the hallway. I heard hip-hop blaring, so I knocked on the open door and poked my head inside.

  “Molazim Saif?”

  Four jundis were watching MTV Middle East on the couch. I smelled dirty laundry and sour body odor. On the screen, an Egyptian clone of Notorious B.I.G. rapped in hoarse Arabic, pointing at the gold chains around his neck and to the luxury sedans behind him. The room was dingy, splashed with bright colors from the television. None of the Iraqis turned around, but one pointed silently to the room across the hall.

  “Shukran,” I said, and removed myself.

  Saif was in the next room, a narrow nook he occupied alone. He wore a dull black undershirt shoved into cargo pants. Under the yellow ceiling light, the folds in his forehead were more pronounced, the clipped hair on the sides of his head highlight
ing the baldness on top. Built like a pear, he was somewhere between stocky and fat—Hog would’ve called him “country strong.” His skin, darker than that of most of the local Iraqis, was the color of an old penny.

  His quarters were sparse, the Sheetrock walls bare. Three pressed uniforms hung in his dresser, the Iraqi flag shoulder patches facing out, green Arabic scrawl darting and cold. Taped to the side of the dresser was a picture of his daughter, a bucktoothed girl with a sunflower in her ponytail. Below that was a hand-colored engraving of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. A plastic trunk sat in a corner, locked, a rifle-cleaning kit on top of it. A pullout couch was in the adjacent corner. I accepted his invitation to sit across from him on the floor, my back against the near wall and legs out, his legs tucked under him and his back straight.

  He began by chiding me for my tardiness. I told him I didn’t think Arabs cared about time. He laughed, shaking his head. I complimented his digs and asked if he ever got lonely.

  “We are different, Loo-tenant Porter.” I asked him how so. “We keep separate from the soldiers. Better for discipline.” I waited for more. He pointed to my rifle. “A soldier’s weapon, not an officer’s weapon.” He patted the semiautomatic pistol in its holster on his leg, the Glock’s metal rattling.

  “My M-Nine is upstairs.” I didn’t carry my pistol much, but felt it necessary to point out that I had one. “But yeah, we’re big on equality. All for one, one for all sort of thing. Goes back to George Washington, I think.”

  “George Washington?” Saif raised an eyebrow. “One of your slave-owner presidents, yes?”

  He stood to go brew the tea in his makeshift kitchen, a wooden counter mounted between his couch and dresser. He seemed embarrassed to be using an electric kettle, and spoke of how seriously his father took chai.

  “Begin with springwater,” he said, twisting the cap off a plastic water bottle. “Not tap, never distilled. The more oxygen your water has, the better the chai.” He poured the contents of the bottle into the kettle and pressed a green button. The kettle rumbled to life as he sat down again.