Fobbit

by David Abrams

  “Yes, sir.” Meekly.

  “And while we’re on the subject, I’m still waiting on that Comprehensive Analysis Report on how our press releases have been faring in the Iraqi media.”

  “Yes, sir. You’ll have it today, sir.” Harkleroad slumped farther into his seat as the chief of staff moved on to his next target, G-4 Logistics. The beans-and-bullets clowns had just misdirected a shipment of MREs, supposedly bound for FOB Weathervane but which ended up at a remote village of camel herders who, reports claimed, had found the dried beef patty with mushroom sauce surprisingly tasty.

  Later, on the phone with the reporters, Harkleroad’s voice was as gentle as could be. He tried to let them down easy. “Look—first of all, there’s no guarantee you’ll be with a unit that will have a casualty, nor do we even know if the two thousandth casualty will come from our task force. It’s not like we can produce a death on demand. Second, we’re not particularly fond of the idea of the media making a big deal out of Number Two Thousand. What about Number 556 or 1,998? Have you stopped to think about them? They were just as significant to us, they had fellow soldiers who agonized over their deaths, they had families back home who will forever feel the gaping loss of their loved one. And now you tell me you want to put this family—the loved ones of Number Two Thousand—through even more pain and trauma by making a big deal out of it in front of the cameras for all of America to watch? I understand what this will mean to your ratings and, yes, I know the producers back in New York are breathing down your neck, and, trust me, I have taken your request under serious advisement. I have done due diligence and run it all the way to the top of the chain here at headquarters. But I’m afraid the answer is most definitely No.”

  Okay, he hadn’t said exactly all that. Speeches like that never came easy for Eustace, he was a man of stutter and fumble. What he’d actually said was, “Hi, um, this is Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad over at Task Force Baghdad and I, uh, have a bit of bad news to report. Remember that, uh, embed request you sent over our way? We-ell . . . I ran it up the flagpole here at headquarters, and . . .” Et cetera, et cetera.

  When Eustace did run it up the flagpole all the way to the Old Man trimming his toenails in his penthouse office overlooking the SMOG floor, the chief of staff accompanied Harkleroad and did his talking for him.

  General Bright’s hunched back was to them; he was intent on making sure the nail slivers made it to the garbage can. They fell like white rice kernels and plinked against the metal.

  “Sir, PAO here is asking for permission to put the New York Times with 4-23, to let the reporter spend a week with the unit, twenty-four/seven, get to know the soldiers, touchy-feely shit like that.”

  “Hmm.” Snick plink snick plink snick plink. “Well, isn’t that what we pay PAO for—to engage the media in telling the Army story?”

  “Yes, sir, sure. But this one has a little different spin on it.”

  “Oh?”

  “PAO here says the New York Times is primarily interested in 4-23 because of their mortality rate.”

  “And?”

  “And they want to be there on the scene when Number Two Thousand’s luck runs out.” Colonel Belcher grinned lopsidedly at the CG’s back. “Apparently, these dickwad reporters have got a crystal ball and they know, without a doubt, that our two thousandth KIA will come from 4-23.”

  “Is that so?” Snick plink snick plink. The CG raised his head and half-turned toward his two officers.

  “That’s what PAO here says they say. I haven’t personally seen any evidence of said crystal ball.”

  “Well, I’d sure as shit like to get my hands on their crystal balls,” the CG said gruffly, catching and sharing the chief’s grin.

  “Squeeze ’em till they break, right, sir?”

  “Pulverize ’em into little itty-bitty shards.”

  The two men laughed as Harkleroad stood there, hands clasped behind his back, endlessly wringing his fingers.

  “So, sir,” the chief said, bringing his laughter to a sudden halt. “About this request from the New York Fucking Times . . .”

  The CG resumed his toenail clipping and stared at a blank spot of air, furrowing his brow and giving the matter his deepest attention. Colonel Belcher looked sideways at Harkleroad and couldn’t stop grinning.

  . . . snick snick snick SNICK (a particularly troublesome cuticle) . . .

  The CG looked up, as if surprised to see the two men still standing in his office.

  “Hm. Yes,” he said. “Well . . .”

  Harkleroad’s fingers turned acrobatic flips as he leaned forward on his toes. He did not want to go back to the Times with bad news one more time.

  The commanding general looked at the chief of staff and said, “You tell PAO I think it’s a brilliant idea, putting a reporter with 4-23.”

  Belcher choked on a string of saliva. “Sir?”

  “Sure,” Bright said, “let the reporter have at it—full access, talk to anyone he wants, show him all the maps, get him involved in the whole planning process, throw our arms wide open, and give him an honorary Classified clearance.”

  Now the chief was starting to grin big time. His lips were loose rubber across his face.

  “If he says Victim Number Two Thousand is gonna come from 4-23, then I think we should respect his powers of psychic observation,” the CG continued. “While we’re at it, have Harkleroad here personally escort the New York Times when they go out on patrol. I’ve even got a special flak vest he can wear.”

  “You do, sir?” The chief was barely keeping it in at this point.

  “Sure, I do. It’s got a big ole red bull’s-eye painted on the back—makes it easier for Johnny Terrorist to see when he’s aiming at Number Two Thousand. This way, we can be assured the reporter can be right there on the spot when the blessed event happens.”

  “Brilliant, sir! Brilly-fucking-int!”

  Harkleroad’s face throbbed with shame.

  The general’s face rippled downward, all humor gone from his eyes and mouth. “Now get the fuck out of my office, both of you!”

  The chief herded Harkleroad ahead of him out the door, turning once to give the Old Man an unanswered wink before leaving.

  When Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad learned the identity of Soldier Number Two Thousand, his guts torqued and blood predictably seeped from his nostrils. This was not how he’d expected it to play out, not in the least little dilly-dink bit. From Number 1990 onward, he’d been keeping track with tick marks on the dry-erase board mounted on the wall next to his desk.

  Private Ralph J. Egbert, KIA, Salman Pak. Tick.

  Sergeant First Class Israel Munoz, KIA, Sadr City. Tick.

  Specialist James D. Apgar, KIA, Sadr City. Tick.

  Private Ellis Wheeler Jr., KIA, Mosul. Tick.

  Private First Class Andrew C. Mount, KIA, Mosul. Tick.

  Second Lieutenant Erika Sheridan, KIA, Adhamiya. Tick.

  Specialist Isaiah D. Washington, KIA, Ramadi. Tick.

  Specialist Aaron L. Karst, KIA, Ramadi. Tick.

  Private Jamie Rosen, KIA, Ramadi. Tick.

  For days, he’d stared at that next blank spot, playing guessing games with gender, rank, location. If he had his druthers, who would he, Eustace L. Harkleroad, prefer the two thousandth American casualty to be? A Hispanic sergeant who leaves behind a wife and eight children in El Paso when his too-fast Humvee hits a bad bump in the road and flips into a canal? A milk-fed Midwestern boy, so quickly promoted to captain, barely five years out of West Point, who burns to a crisp in the back of an armored personnel carrier? A black female medic stabbed to death by one of her patients, a crazed Local National whose bandages she’d been so lovingly, tenderly, heroically changing as he lay on a cot in the Combat Support Hospital when, with a sudden crescendoing growl, he reared up, whipped out a box cutter, and sliced her jugular (investigation still pending)? He prayed to God that Number Two Thousand wouldn’t be just another bland, run-of-the-mill death—blah-blah patrol stru
ck an IED in the neighborhood of blah-blah, killing Private Joe Blah-Blah. When it finally came, Harkleroad hoped the last tick mark would have the punch of patriotism, a heart-tugging story that would bring a misty tear to the eye of even the most callous, hard-drinking reporter in the Associated Press. America deserved a grand, glorious death to mark this most ignoble of occasions (he could never use that phrase, of course, but he sure liked the sound of it).

  “Where are you?” he asked the blank spot on his dry-erase board. “Who are you?”

  When he finally got his answer, late in the evening after the evening BUB and just before he was about to leave the palace for his hooch, he was stunned into disbelief. And nosebleeds.

  “Are you sure?” he asked the major from G-1 who had just set the fresh-printed file on his desk. After reading the contents—three pieces of paper: a SMOG report and the personnel file—he closed the folder and asked again, “Are we absolutely certain he’s the one?”

  “Certain to the nth degree,” the major said wearily. He’d just come on shift, but this already looked like it would be a long one. “He’s the only U.S. casualty in all of Iraq today. Hard to believe, I know, but we’ve been on the phone with Basra and Taji for the last two hours and they’ve confirmed they have no kills in their sector, which never happens but apparently it did today. Blue moons are on the rise.”

  “But—”

  “I’m afraid there are no buts, sir. We’ve done the arithmetic five times and this—” he craned his neck to read the file label “—Captain Shrinkle is the one. He’s Number Two Thousand.”

  Harkleroad read the SMOG report again and shook his head. “Are we absolutely certain of the circumstances? We’ve confirmed it was the Australian pool and there were no other Americans present?”

  “Check, check, and triple check.”

  “And this affadavit from the Australian officer about the alleged false identity. You’ve confirmed with the British em—”

  “Ad nauseam, sir.” The major sighed. “Like I said, we’ve done the math, we’ve made the calls, we’ve eliminated any doubt. Now, if you’ve got nothing more for me, sir, I need to get back—”

  “Yes, yes, go ahead.” Harkleroad leaned back in his chair and clutched the file folder to his chest. When the major had gone, whisking out with a grating officiousness, Eustace started muttering, “No, no, no, NO!”

  After another five minutes of rocking and moaning, stanching his nostrils, and failing to deny the undeniable, he got himself together and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He knew what he had to do, where he had to go, who he had to face.

  The chief of staff was sitting behind his desk, clicking his mouse and scowling at the screen. The overhead fluorescent lights winked off his polished head like a warning beacon. He’d been called back to the palace before he’d had a chance to finish his dinner. It was Italian night at the dining facility and there was a dime-sized spot of spaghetti sauce on his cheek, dried and forgotten.

  “PAO!” he barked, not even looking up from the report scrolling across his screen. Somehow, he’d sensed Harkleroad was standing there in his doorway. Perhaps snuffling back the still-prickling nosebleed had given him away; or maybe he just oozed fear like a pheromone. Eustace advanced a few feet inside the carpeted room.

  “Sir?”

  “You’ve seen this shit-doggle I’m looking at right now?”

  “The casualty report on Captain Shrinkle, sir?”

  “Of course the casualty report on Shrinkle—what the fuck else would I be doing back here in my office at this hour? What I want to know is, what are we going to do about it? What plan have you come up with for addressing this little problem of ours in the media? I’m assuming you’ve got a plan and the reason it’s not sitting at the top of my in-box right now is only because you haven’t had time to print it out and carry it up to me.” He pulled his eyes away from the computer screen and looked at Harkleroad’s empty hands.

  “Of course, sir. That’s exactly it.” Harkleroad had no plan. His mind had been stunned into temporary stasis and he had no clue what he would do about Shrinkle, the disgraced American officer (murderer! towel jockey!) who had been masquerading (deception!) as a British national (international complications!) while carousing (drinking! bikinis! swimming!) with the Australians (polynational complications!). It was a scandal on so many levels he couldn’t even begin to count. Oh, good gravy! Even if Shrinkle had not been Number Two Thousand, this would still be a problem, most certainly a whopping migraine for the PAO staff. But now that he’d drawn the winning lottery number—

  “So . . . ?”

  “Sir?”

  “The plan, PAO, the plan! In less than ten minutes, I’ll have the Old Man on the horn wanting to know how we’re going to approach this in the media and I’ve got to have at least one little fucking bone I can throw his way. What have you got for me? Sum it up now and you can turn in the written report later tonight.” The lights blinked cruelly off the chief’s dome.

  Think, think, think. Like a dog emerging from a frigid lake, Harkleroad shook off the paralysis. A plan. A bone. A doorway out of this mess. “What if . . .”

  The chief cocked his head, light bouncing all about the room. “Ye-es . . . ?”

  Just as certainly, light trickled into Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad’s mind. “What if, sir, what if this KIA wasn’t one of ours?”

  “Come again?” Colonel Belcher shoved a pinkie into his ear and comically wriggled it. “I think my hearing’s gone on the fritz.”

  If that was a personal dig, Harkleroad chose to ignore it. He brazenly picked up the personnel file from the chief’s desk. “This may be the worst idea in the history of man, but what if the deceased person in this SMOG report wasn’t Captain Shrinkle? What if somebody got it wrong? What if the deceased really was a British national named—” he flipped open the folder “—Richard Belmouth and we incorrectly identified him as our Captain Shrinkle?”

  “PAO, it seems to me you’re still suffering from cranial-anal dislodgement.” He looked back at his computer screen. “The report I’m looking at here says it was Shrinkle—”

  “According to whom, sir?” His voice was winding up to a higher pitch as the plan flooded every crevice of his brain. “According to the Australians at the pool? According to the ones who knew him as a Brit named Belmouth? According to a bunch of beer-swilling Aussies who never met our Captain Abe Shrinkle?” He was on a roll now. His mother would be so proud if she were standing here watching his mind unfolding like a flower. “I say we stick with the fiction that the deceased is an unfortunate British archaeologist. We’ll figure out what to do with Captain Shrinkle later.”

  The chief’s jaw had long ago dropped open and stayed there. “Ho-ly shit, PAO. When you come up with a whopper, you really deliver a big one, don’t you?”

  Harkleroad couldn’t stop himself—he was rolling uphill at full speed now. “As for forensics, sir—well, from what I’ve been able to gather, nothing remained of Richard Belmouth other than an arm. No dental, no dog tags, not even any swim trunks. He was completely and totally vaporized by the mortar.”

  “That arm have any fingerprints?”

  “Sir, if you look at the report, you’ll see the fingers were burned down to nothing but nubs, every last one of them. You couldn’t really call it an arm anymore, for all intents and purposes.” He sniffed and swallowed a snot-gob of blood. “Lucky for us, if I do say so myself.”

  The chief sat back in his chair and jiggled his mouse a few times. “You’re right . . . obliterated. Wiped off the face of the earth. Well, I’ll be fucked . . .” The chief of staff sank into deep, troubled thought. Then he started to growl. “That’s all well and good but the fact remains we still have Shrinkle to deal with. The gym will be calling before long, wanting to know why he’s not there to hand out towels.”

  “Oh. Errr . . . ummm . . .” Harkleroad’s brain clicked and whirred.

  “We can call him whoever we want, but he
’ll still be a hot poker up our ass.”

  “That’s true, sir, and to be honest . . .” His nose started to retingle. “To be honest, I haven’t thought it all the way through. That—that aspect. But, um, I have faith a solution will eventually come along and we’ll know how to handle Captain Shrinkle.” He pressed forward valiantly. (Good gravy, his mother would be proud!) “The most important thing at the moment is denial of identification. If we say the body isn’t ours, then it isn’t, is it, sir?”

  The chief was still growling but the growls were starting to die down to mere grunts. “Denial of identification, huh? I don’t know if the Old Man will buy off on it.”

  “He doesn’t have to, sir. In fact, he shouldn’t. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, et cetera. In fact,” here he allowed himself a small smile, “in fact, I’m starting to believe in Richard Belmouth myself, sir. I don’t know why we’re even bringing Captain Shrinkle into the conversation.”

  The chief glared at him. “Don’t get cheeky, PAO.”

  “Yes, sir.” Meekly, but still thumping with excitement. “Let me also respectfully remind you, sir, we’re talking about Number Two Thousand here. Do we really want the media to grab hold of this scandal-plagued officer who died in an equally horrific-but-scandalous manner and blow it all out of portion, like we know they will? If we don’t deny this body was ours, then we’ll be spinning until we’re dizzy, sir. I suggest we wait for the next casualty to come along—hopefully, a more noble death, sir—and make that soldier America’s two thousandth. Take the spotlight shine off Captain Shrinkle.”

  “Let me think about this.” The chief swiveled around and looked out on the SMOG floor. Only the peak of his polished skull could be seen over the back of the chair. The seconds passed like metronome clicks. Harkleroad’s heart skipped and tripped, caught itself, then came back thudding harder than before. It had been years since he’d put his mind to such compressed, tremendous exertion and now he was feeling a little faint. Plus, he had to pee.