by Nico Walker
After having my heart broken by email, typically what I’d do was drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. If there was a card game going, I’d play and I’d lose some money. Mostly I had bad luck at cards. But early in the morning there was often no card game. There was often nothing worth reading. No one awake. So what I’d do was I’d look at the IKEA catalog. I had copied and pasted a lot of shit about IKEA furniture into a Word document and I’d look through it and think about what kind of furniture Emily and I would buy when we went to live together. I thought if I did this shit in Iraq and I lived through it and I saved some money, it would be enough for me and Emily to start a life together. And we would have a savings and she would have a degree and I could go to school and it would be okay because it wouldn’t be just something given to me. I’d need to be smart like Emily. And she would become something and I would become something, a librarian maybe, and we would have enough money and be middle-class and want for nothing and we would be independent of everyone and no old bastards who voted for wars could tell me anything because I’d done what they’d wanted. So I used to smoke Miamis and drink coffee and be tense after being out all night lying in the fields north of the FOB. I didn’t actually watch much porn, you know. I mean I’d seen some, I’d seen a few Fuck Vans and all that, but mostly I didn’t fuck with it. It felt like cheating. And when I’d jerk off in the porta-shitters, I didn’t think of other girls. I’m not ashamed of this. I tried to be good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
One of my jobs was to get the pus out of the abscess on Sergeant Bautista’s ass. He was a big guy and he had a big ass. He was from New York City. Neither one of us was wild about the arrangement but it couldn’t be helped. I’d go see him in his room around 20:00. He’d be playing Madden, and he’d lie on his stomach with his pants down past his ass and I’d take yesterday’s sterile gauze out of the abscess on his ass and clean the pus out of the abscess.
“It doesn’t smell as bad as it did yesterday,” I’d say.
“That’s good,” he’d say.
I’d say, “Yeah, that’s a good sign.”
Then I’d put some sterile gauze in the abscess, folding the strip of gauze triangularly and poking it down into the hole with tweezers.
I’d say, “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
And I’d go and hand out the shit pills.
Also sometimes guys got crotch rot.
Mostly this was all I ever did.
I was not a hero.
A month before he was immolated on Route Polk, Sergeant Caves found a haji dog wandering around the company area. The haji dog was just a few weeks old. He could fit in the palm of your hand. He needed food and Caves gave him food and adopted him as his own and called him Sonny.
After Caves got killed, First Platoon took care of Sonny, and Sonny got to stick around. Sonny was well liked because he was a very good dog, courageous yet of a gentle nature. And when our company’s dismount patrols left the wire in the daytime it wasn’t out of the ordinary to see Sonny going along up and down the line.
Then one morning some POG from Foxtrot Company, name of Sergeant Teague, was out taking her walking exercise around the perimeter of the FOB and it took her past our company area. We’d just as soon as she didn’t come around; she looked a lot like a fucking gargoyle. Anyway. Sonny barked at her and she got so traumatized from it that she went to the battalion TOC to complain about Sonny. And it followed that two heroes from HHC (officers) volunteered to come down to Echo Company and shoot Sonny. When they got there they found him resting on his favorite spot, beneath the shade trees by the horseshoe pit. They walked right up on him. Sonny didn’t try and run because he wasn’t afraid of soldiers. Maybe he thought they had come to give him something to eat, perhaps a cheeseburger. Instead they shot him in the snout. He got away and tried to hide himself under some boards. The two officers had to drop down into the prone to finish him off. They were wearing their ballistic eye protection so it was all on the level.
I don’t remember exactly what I was doing when this happened. But I wasn’t there. Probably I was kicking some doors in somewhere. Nothing dramatic or whatever. Just doors. I’d kicked a hundred doors in. More like two hundred doors. Nothing ever came of it. Not once. And I didn’t get killed. The next day I was playing poker with the poker players. I’d been out on a patrol all the night before and I should have been sleeping but I wasn’t because I could only sleep when I was on a patrol; that was the only time it appealed to me. So I didn’t get much sleep and I was burned out and I was pissed about the dog when Arnold came in from radio guard to get me. He said, “Get your stuff. QRF just got called out.”
I wasn’t on QRF that day.
I could have gone anyway. But I didn’t feel like it.
I said, “Sarr Garcia from HHC is on QRF. He’s covering for Sarr Shoo while Shoo’s on midtour leave. Sarr Garcia will be in the aid station. You can find him there.”
“But—”
“Fuck you, Arnold! Fuck you, you goddamn motherfucker! You fucking bitch! You don’t ever leave the goddamn wire. That’s why you love this goddamn shit. Well fuck you, Arnold. I’m not on the fucking thing and I’m not going.”
Arnold left and got Garcia. Garcia went out with QRF. I stayed at the FOB and played poker. That’s how I missed the big battle, the one when the battalion sent forty hajis to the garden with the rivers underneath it. And I’m glad I missed the battle because it was probably bullshit and the Army just murdered your dog anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Specialist Grace looked like Jean-Michel Basquiat and he was a Bradley gunner. His friend Carranza drove the Bradley. I hadn’t seen much of either Grace or Carranza since Fort Hood. They were in Delta Company. We had different AOs. But sometimes I’d see them on the FOB, and when I’d see them I’d say hi and they’d say hi. They were good people.
This is what happened to them: they hit an IED up north of Checkpoint 9, during some big operation. I don’t remember which big operation. There were so many. All the big operations had names. They had names so you knew they were big operations but then nothing ever happened. Just IEDs. Just kicking doors. More IEDs. More doors.
Grace and Carranza hit an IED. Carranza was wounded. He was in the driver’s hatch and his face was fucked up and he was blind and the Bradley was on fire. Carranza’s fucking face was gone, but still he thought to drop the ramp so that the guys in the troop compartment could get out fast. Grace pulled Carranza out of the driver’s hatch. Grace had taken some shrapnel, but the shrapnel had hit one of the Kevlar wings that were Velcroed to the shoulders of his IBAS, so it hadn’t hurt him.
The battalion had had to reiterate the order about wearing the Kevlar wings since we didn’t want to wear them because they looked retarded. It was enough of a trick getting the hajis to take you seriously when you weren’t wearing the wings; if you were wearing them you might as well forget about it. They were a fucking disaster: they made it so you couldn’t shoulder your rifle right, they tangled with the straps of your assault pack. They made the days seem hotter than they would have seemed otherwise, and the days were hot enough already. But the lamest thing about the wings was they only stopped the kinds of bullshit that would send you home early and relatively unscathed. They were useless when it came to stopping the real shit. The only practical use I ever found for the wings was you could stack them on a Humvee seat and sit on them while you rode around because even trivial bits of shrapnel were crucial where your junk was concerned. But apart from that the wings were garbage. Most everybody would have been court-martialed rather than wear them. But Grace wore his wings. They’d told him to wear them and he did what he was told to do because he was pretty laid-back about shit. And he took the shrapnel on one of the wings. The shrapnel would have wounded him. Maybe he’d have gone to a hospital for a while and he’d have had a little rest and then been just fine. He might have even got to go home. But
the shrapnel didn’t wound him, because of the wings, and the pro-wing people made a big deal out of this.
The last time I saw Specialist Grace it was the day that all the enlisted on the FOB who weren’t busy doing something real important got called down to the DFAC to see the Sergeant Major of the Army. He had come to pay us a visit. I got caught up in it, and I was standing in line, waiting to get into the DFAC. The battalion sergeant major was out there chopping it up with Grace, and he wanted all of us to hear him talking. He said to Grace, “You had a close call, huh?”
Grace said, “Yes, Sarr Major.”
“It was a good thing that you were wearing all your body armor, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Sarr Major.”
“What about these prima donnas who don’t want to wear all their body armor because they like to style and profile?”
“I dunno, Sarr Major.”
At no point did the battalion sergeant major mention that the IED that had caught Grace ineffectually on the wings had also gone through however many inches of Bradley hull armor or that PFC Carranza didn’t have much in the way of his face anymore and his legs were fucked too.
When we were inside the DFAC, the Sergeant Major of the Army was introduced and he said a few words. The Sergeant Major of the Army was the highest ranking noncommissioned officer in the Army. So it was supposed to be a treat maybe. He was a real piece of shit. He thanked us all for our hard work, and then he told us about a change being made to the Army’s pension plan for retirees. He said the Army was going to defer pension payments to retirees until said retirees were retirement age, meaning in their sixties. He said the changes would affect only future enlistees, but that didn’t stop some of the old hands from giving the Sergeant Major of the Army a hard time.
One old hand stood up and said, “Now what exactly is going on here, Sarr Major?”
And the Sergeant Major of the Army said, “We looked at it and we saw that, since so many ex-military go on to be CEOs, that the pension payments could be deferred. But keep in mind that these changes don’t pertain to anyone in this room. Next question.”
“Are we going to get our pensions or not, Sarr Major?”
“Everybody will get his or her pension. This is guaranteed. We took a look at it and, since so many ex-military go on to be CEOs, these pension payments could be deferred.”
After the big meeting Sergeant Koljo buttonholed the Sergeant Major of the Army outside the DFAC and said he had to do something because the Army wasn’t letting us kill enough people.
“They’re not letting us do our jobs, Sarr Major,” he said.
You should have seen the look on the old motherfucker’s face. It was beautiful.
And then Grace was killed on a dismount patrol two weeks later. Another IED. He was wearing his wings but they didn’t do shit for him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Some days you couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. It was one of those days, but it came to be a very good day because there was a sandstorm. The sandstorms were wonderful; medevacs couldn’t fly in them, so all patrols got canceled. This one was a good one. The wind blew and blew and you couldn’t see shit.
Somebody said, “Look at this motherfucker go.”
And somebody said, “Yeah, it’s really going.”
Then somebody said, “It’s raining.”
“Raining!”
We all ran outside and sure enough there were raindrops.
The raindrops felt good on your face. You couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. You had come to want rain very much and here it was. You had it. Rain.
Everybody was coming out now.
“It’s raining!”
“It’s raining!”
“It’s fucking raining!”
“I can’t believe it!”
“I can’t fucking believe it’s fucking raining!”
Then somebody said, “It’s not rain.”
“It’s not rain?”
They said:
“It’s not rain!”
“It’s not rain!”
“It’s not rain?”
“No,” he said. “All the fucking porta-shitters are knocked over.”
“Fuck.”
“It’s not rain.”
“It’s the fucking porta-shitters.”
“Fuck.”
* * *
—
THEN CAME another hot bullshit day. The heat and the light made your brain skip when you tried to hold a thought. Thoughts wouldn’t come in a straight line, and you saw translucent red stars. It was bullshit that I was on this patrol to begin with. I’d been out on an IED ambush all the night before and I was spent. Plus Koljo had shot a dog on our way back at dawn and I like dogs.
Shoo found me in the morning after I came in.
“Bad news,” he said. “You’ve got to go out again in an hour.”
I stared at him.
“I’ve been out ten times already this fucking week. What the fuck day is it? These motherfuckers are gonna work me to death, you know that?”
He suppressed a smile. “Sorry, dude. They put you on the patrol roster. I didn’t even know till a minute ago. It’ll be easy though. It’s just a census patrol. I spoke with Lieutenant Evans already and he knows your situation. All you’ll have to do is stay with the vehicles on the road.”
I nodded to say I’d make it.
The census patrol left around nine. By noon the dismounts would be suffering. I was glad I wouldn’t be with them. I’d be sleeping in one of the trucks instead. Then I’d come back. Maybe play a little cards. Maybe go to the haji shop and buy some bootleg DVDs, some Miamis. Maybe a little Wild Tiger. Go and get some dinner. The three-Humvee convoy went real slow up Route Martha; we were past OP2, the last OP on Martha, and there was no telling what might be on the road. The convoy stopped. The dismounts got out and assembled on the road. I stayed where I was in the back of Evans’s truck and I kept quiet. I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself.
I started to believe I’d really make it alright. Then Private Dallas knocked on the window: “The lieutenant wants you.”
“Wants me?”
“Yeah. He says bring your stuff. We’re moving out.”
“No. I’m supposed to stay here with the vehicles.”
“The lieutenant says you’re going.”
I had a special dislike for census patrols. Whenever we’d come to a house where there was somebody sick or ailing or in any way injured, the patrol leader would tell all the hajis that I was a doctor who had medicine. And he’d have me examine everyone. It didn’t matter that I had no medicine, no antibiotics, no drugs except ibuprofen and the two kinds of shit pills and the morphine autoinjectors. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a doctor. It didn’t matter if the haji had a brain tumor. I was supposed to pretend to be some kind of great healer.
The first household of the day brought out an old haji who had some variety of advanced rheumatism, I think. I took a look at him. His knees were his chief complaint. He took a seat and gathered his man dress up high so that his testicles featured prominently.
Dallas said, “I think he wants you to suck his balls, doc.”
I gave the old haji a three-day supply of ibuprofen and told him to go to a hospital.
The patrol continued.
Lieutenant Evans had the sort of intentions with which you can pave a road to hell. But I loathed him. And I loathed his patrol. The sun was blazing away on us, blazing away on the scenery. After some hours of getting our brains cooked and dragging all the stupid fucking gear around and knowing it was all useless, we were worn out. Some of the guys didn’t look like they were up to it anymore.
I said, “Sir, it’s really hot and these guys are beat and we’re not accomplishing anything out here. We might want to
think about heading back.”
“No.”
“Sir—”
“I said no.”
“Okay…yeah, okay. You’re right, sir. Let’s keep going. Ask all these fucking hajis how many fuckin goats they fuckin own till one of your guys has a fuckin heatstroke out here.”
The lieutenant was surprised.
I realized I had just done something insane. But I was already going, so I didn’t stop. “How many fuckin times are you gonna ignore me when I try to tell you something you need to know? I don’t tell you these things cuz I like to hear myself talk. I tell you these things cuz I want to help you. I’m trying to help you, Lieutenant. You remember when I told you not to drive in that shit cuz we were gonna get stuck? What happened? We got stuck, didn’t we? And four guys got killed. You killed my friends.”
This last part was a bit much. He hadn’t killed them and they weren’t my friends. They were more like acquaintances really. And then there was one other thing: if he hadn’t got us stuck we’d have been the ones who got killed that day. But you didn’t say these things.
I didn’t hear what he was saying. I couldn’t hear anything. I flipped him the bird and I said, “Fuck you and fuck your patrol.”
I walked away. I went back to the road. When I got there I went to Evans’s truck. Specialist Sullivan was up in the turret. He was monitoring the radio. He said, “The lieutenant says you need to come back.”
“Tell him to get fucked.”
“Really?”
“Tell Lieutenant Evans to get fucked.”
Sullivan keyed the radio: “Um…he says he’s not coming.”
Evans said that would also be fine.
Ten minutes later the dismounts came back to the road. I’d calmed down some and I was ready for something bad to happen to me. Evans waved me over to him and I went over and we walked a ways down from everybody else. He said, “That wasn’t a good thing you did.”