by Harry Parker
And then his foot caught, he teetered for a second and fell forward. His sticks rattled against his metal legs as he landed face down into me.
She laughed, bending over with her hands on her knees. ‘You look like Scott of the Antarctic now,’ she said.
He grinned, lifted himself onto his elbows and caught his breath.
‘Do you need help getting up?’ She walked over to him.
‘No, I’ll be fine. Just give me a moment.’
He started to pull me together in his hands until I was formed.
‘I can see what you’re doing,’ she said.
‘What? I’m just getting up.’ He grinned as he pressed me into a ball. Then he forced himself up with a grunt, staggered to get his balance and threw me with his free hand. I was airborne.
‘That wasn’t even close,’ she said as I sailed past her.
The man wheeled around with the impetus of the throw, overbalanced and fell again, laughing. I rolled in the snow and slabs of me broke away before I came to a stop.
She reached down, pulled snow together and made a ball of her own. She stood over the man, who was still laughing on his back as he swept his arms up and down to make the shape of an angel.
‘You can’t throw that at me, Kat. I’m a defenceless amputee,’ he said, ‘and it would be against the physio’s code of conduct, not to mention the Geneva Convention.’
‘You started it, Captain Scott,’ she said and threw the snowball into his face.
They both laughed and he spluttered snow from his mouth.
He slowly stood again, she handed him the sticks and they walked off, now getting smaller. He was grunting with effort but still smiled as she followed behind him.
‘Push through your glutes, squeeze that bum. That’s better.’
Soon they left me. It was warmer the next day and I melted.
35
I was on my side among the low branches of a bush. An explosion had blown me there.
It was night and they were black against the rubble they clambered over. One of them turned on a torch and a cone of light illuminated fragments of wall and stone. The beam jumped across the jagged remains and was lowered into a gap and made the debris glow from within. It flicked off.
They didn’t talk much but the sound of bricks and mud being pushed away and rolling off the pile continued all night. A few times they joined one another, working frantically, and then they dragged another dark shape from the rubble and carried it down onto the field. Once they stopped and sobbed together. But they kept going and dawn slowly saturated the landscape.
There were three bodies lined up at the edge of the wheat field. The man and woman still worked on the mound, her bright blue shawl hanging low and her hands grey with dust. He called her over and she stumbled across and hysterically pulled rocks away and reached in and wailed.
They pulled the final body out and laid it with the others. She knelt by its head and reared back and forth and then curled her face down into her hands and stayed bent over the body.
He stood over her and looked at the horizontal parade of bodies and then up across the field and saw me. He walked through the wheat that pulled at his long white shirt, now marked with chalky dirt. His arms were covered with scratches and blood smeared his hands. His face was hollow and eyes glassy above the wisps of grey that snaked from his cheeks into his beard. He pulled me from the bush and flipped me up onto my wheel. I was badly dented but I still worked.
The green shoots brushed against the frame that held my wheel as the man pushed me back across the field and I left a line where I flattened the crop. He dropped me on my leg supports and crouched down by one of the bodies. He put his arms under its shoulders and dragged it towards me. It was stiff and awkward and the corpse knocked into me and I fell over.
She looked up and asked him what he was doing and they argued. She tearfully pleaded with him not to go – it was too dangerous. He ignored her and tugged me back up. He tried to pull the body into me again but it flopped out. The man clamped his teeth in frustration as he pushed the front of my tray forward across the ground, trying to scrape the body up. But it sagged and folded and wetness filled the man’s eyes at the indignity of it all.
The corpse was half in me, with my front end under it and my handles sticking up in the air. He managed to pull it farther into me and the distended head bounced off my metal side. Dried blood showed around its ears and nose and was red in its mouth. And then he pushed my handles down and I scooped it all up and the body squashed back into me and hissed air from its buttocks. Its limbs were bent unnaturally over my edge and a foot was turned back on itself.
She pleaded with him again but he said her husband should be here soon and would help her. He held my handles at the end of straight arms and walked me across the field. At the edge my tyre dropped into a hollow and was stuck and he couldn’t push me forward. He rocked me back and forth, the body jolting inside me, until I finally bounced through it. He leant forward as he heaved me up the bank and onto the flat road.
The corpse’s eyes had opened from the jolting and looked up at him. He looked down into them, at his son’s face and the blue lips and purple blotching across his cheeks and he knew he had already accepted the loss. He lowered my handles and smoothed the eyelids shut again.
He pushed me down the road. The rising sun grew out of the horizon, bathing his face in orange. He was staring at the body in me, in front of him and his knees that brushed its hair with each step. His son was lifeless and inert now – was gone, was dead.
Death was familiar and simple for him. He had lost children and a wife before, but somehow this seemed more unjust. He felt the loss as a missing part of himself, wrenched from him. His arms ached from the weight of me. His son had become a man and was heavy, no longer a boy, but he’d hardly noticed the change and now he was gone. He kept walking and ignored the pain growing in his shoulders.
He wheeled me over a bridge. To his right down a short slope stood the deserted buildings ruined by the fighting. He knew the names of all the families who’d abandoned them, who’d come to him to ask what they should do about the fighting and explosions. He had no answer but continued to support the foreigners and told the families they must too. Up on the hill to his left and dark in the low sun was the cemetery; he didn’t want to look at it yet.
He plodded on. He knew there might be bombs under the road, that my wheel might trigger one and he would be sent after his son, but he didn’t care. Maybe it would be for the best. He knew it was his fault. He’d made his people support them. He’d let the foreigners into his house – given them tea – and now look what they’d done. No tears came but the anger seared through him.
Why had he sent his son to work near their base? His own pride, he thought, and his promise to the families who’d lived here that they could move back soon. And his arrogance, of course, that his people were bigger than this war and all the foreigners. He’d thought his son should share that belief, but he’d sent him to his death.
He looked down between my handles and the lolling head, at the ground passing beneath his sandals. Send me after him, he pleaded, explode around me and bear me away. But the packed mud was flat and hard and he walked on until he saw their base, its high perimeter wall a flat diamond in the landscape with aerials and a flag at its centre. The watchtowers were dark, thin eyes at each corner draped in camouflage nets.
He pushed on and I vibrated over the surface, the body trembling in my tray. The watchtower rose above us as we approached and he glanced up at the dark slit and knew a weapon would have pointed at him since he’d come into sight. He thought how different this was from the last time he’d been here, when they’d invited him in as an honoured guest and served him their disgusting foreign tea.
A voice called to him from the watchtower and he bent down to lower me onto my legs. He stared back up at the black slit and then the heavily accented voice said again that he should come no closer. He waited and gazed at his
son. The first mirages of the day puddled on the road and he looked along the wall of their camp to the entrance. An unarmed figure walked out. It was one of their interpreters. A soldier appeared next to him.
They made him open his shirt. He lifted it up and anger flared through him at the lack of trust, the lack of respect, and suddenly his eyes weren’t dry any more. But he controlled himself and explained with as much dignity as he could that one of their bombs had killed his son. His voice nearly faltered but he didn’t want them to see any weakness. Instead, he pointed at the body in me and said it was his son, Faridun.
They made him leave me in the middle of the road with the body. He walked away towards them and they took him into the camp. Before he disappeared he pointed back at me but they ushered him through the gate.
I waited, holding the body of his son that had stiffened below the watchtower as flies weaved above me and then landed on its face.
36
I was printed and strapped to ninety-nine identical others in a bundle of a thousand. My bundle was one of four in the brick that was shrinkwrapped with many more onto a wooden pallet. Together, we were worth millions. On one side of me is printed the image of a man; he died in 1845. On the other a Palladian building with white columns and a country’s name in a scroll above.
The pallet was forklifted onto an aircraft and I was flown to another place and unloaded. The plastic film was pulled away and all the bundles were removed and sent across a country where there were no Palladian buildings.
I was placed in a brown envelope and delivered to a small room in an isolated patrol base, where BA5799 unwrapped me and put me on a shelf next to a notebook labelled Claims Record.
*
BA5799 entered the room now, yawning, his greasy hair sticking up. ‘Hi, Dan,’ he said to one of the men sitting at the table.
‘Hey, Tom.’
They were on a bench in front of stacked radios and headsets, an open logbook and empty mugs ringed with caffeine stains.
‘Get much sleep?’ the man said as he stood from the bench and pushed a headset away.
‘A few hours.’ BA5799 placed a book on the table. ‘Anything happening?’
‘Not much. We changed the encryption on the radios at midnight and they all seem to be working. It’s been quiet at both checkpoints. The first patrol’s due out at six from Mark’s lot. Just a quick area defensive.’
‘Great, thanks. And when are you back?’
‘I’m due back on at eight.’
‘See you then, sleep well,’ BA5799 said.
They swapped positions in the room and BA5799 sat on the bench, looked at the log and entered his name and the time.
‘Morning, Signaller Williams,’ he said to the man sitting next to him.
‘Morning, sir,’ the signaller said. ‘It’s dead. Nothing doing.’
‘What time did you get on?’
‘Just after midnight. It was a bit of a nightmare changing the radios but it’s all done now. Do you want a brew?’
‘I’ll make it,’ BA5799 said.
‘No need, I want a stretch. I’m getting the two-hour itch.’ The signaller stood and took a couple of tea bags from a tin on the shelf I was on and left the room.
BA5799 opened a book and started to read.
‘What have you got there?’ the signaller said when he came back. He placed the mug in front of BA5799.
‘Just some crap I found in my room. The last lot must’ve left it.’
‘Looks pretty highbrow to me, sir.’
He put the book down and picked up the mug and studied the map in front of them with the flags pinned to it and callsign stickers lined up along one side. He located the building they had destroyed yesterday evening.
He looked over at the signaller. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I was writing home,’ he said, pushing a blue envelope out of the way. ‘But I don’t know what to say, so I’m drawing a tattoo.’ He slid a piece of paper over the desk.
‘Hey, that’s cool,’ BA5799 said.
‘If you think it’s cool, boss, I might have to start again.’
‘Probably not a good sign. Where would you have it?’
‘On my back, I think. But I’ll have to clear it with the missus. They’re expensive but I’ve got a mate in my town.’
They talked for a while but fell silent and then one of the radios transmitted through a speaker. The signaller put on a headset and told them he could hear them. Other voices, heavy with the boredom of keeping watch, sounded through the speaker, testing their radios. He replied to them all and then told BA5799 that the three o’clock check was complete. BA5799 jotted this in the log and then asked if he’d like a coffee. He went out and the signaller doodled on his design with a black biro.
BA5799 came back, put the man’s mug next to him and sat on the bench, blowing on his own mug. ‘Do you know the service station near our barracks back home, Signaller Williams, on the motorway?’ he asked.
‘Know it well, boss.’ The signaller put his pen down and pursed his lips to his coffee.
‘If you could go in there now, what would you order?’
‘Now you’re talking. It’s got everything, that one, hasn’t it?’
‘Yup, any fast food you could possibly wish for.’
‘How much have I got to spend?’
‘I’ll give you a tenner,’ BA5799 said, staring into space over the mug.
‘Is that all?’
‘How much do you need? Our bellies are so small.’
‘I could eat for a week, sir,’ the signaller said and started to doodle again.
‘So what would you go for?’
‘Well, I’d have a burger from the King.’
‘Obviously.’
‘And chips from Mr Mac.’
BA5799 smiled. ‘Controversial. So you’d mix it up a bit?’
‘Of course. Then I’d get a side of chicken from the Colonel.’
‘It’s making me hungry just thinking about it. Finishing with chicken’s a great shout.’
‘And I’d take it all back to the car park and sit in my car and listen to the football scores come in. Bliss. I hate sitting inside with all the horrid civis.’ He slurped his coffee. ‘I think I may have to make that trip on R and R now,’ he said.
‘You could take Mrs Williams.’
‘God, don’t. We’re not married yet, boss.’
*
They opened a melted pack of biscuits and prised them apart with a knife, chatting and laughing. Then they were quiet again and the signaller continued to draw while BA5799 read. First light showed dull in the doorway and the camouflage netting outside sighed with the first wind of the day.
One of the radios hissed on and they both looked up at the square speaker.
‘Zero, this is Sangar Five. Over,’ it emitted.
The signaller picked up a headset, pressed the switch and spoke into the microphone. ‘Zero, send. Over.’
‘I’ve got an unknown male walking towards the base from the east. He’s pushing a wheelbarrow. About five hundred metres away but looks like he’s heading for us. Over.’
The signaller turned to BA5799. ‘What do you reckon, boss?’
‘Give it here,’ he said and took the headset.
‘Hello, Sangar Five, this is Zero. Normal procedure. Stop him short, send out the guard commander and make sure he’s searched. Then take him to the holding area and see what he wants. Out to you. Front Gate, this is Zero. Over.’
‘Front Gate, yup, we’ve seen him,’ the microphone emitted a new voice. ‘Corporal Carr and the terp will go and intercept if he comes towards the base. We’ll wake the medic if needed. Over.’
‘Great, thanks. Let me know if you need any help. Over,’ BA5799 said and put the microphone down on the desk.
‘Roger. Out.’ The microphone clipped off.
BA5799 wrote in the log and then picked up his book again.
Moments later a man dressed in full combat kit stepped through
the doorway. ‘Boss, there’s an old dude here. Says his name’s Kushan Hhan—’
‘Kushan Hhan? Great, what’s he doing here?’ BA5799 said and shut his book.
‘Not so great, I’m afraid. You’d better come. And I’d bring the compensation pack if I were you.’ The man ducked back out of the door and was gone.
‘Oh shit,’ BA5799 said and stood, walked over to me and took the pile I was in.
‘You okay holding the fort, Signaller Williams? I won’t be long. I’ll be at the front gate if you need me.’
‘Tickety-boo, boss.’
BA5799 carried me out of the ops room. He picked his armour up from beside the door and dropped it over his head. With his helmet at his side, he walked out under the netting and across the flat open vehicle park to the front gate.
Next to the gate was a temporary lean-to. Rock-filled protective walls surrounded it, wooden slats were pushed together as a roof and a hessian cloth hung over the entrance. He held me in his hand with the notebook and approached the building. A soldier standing by the concertina wire that covered the gap out onto the road looked around.
‘Morning, sir,’ he said. ‘The man’s in there, we’ve searched him. Nothing on him but he’s not best pleased.’
‘Okay, thanks, Rifleman Dean,’ BA5799 said and pulled the hessian to one side and went into the small room. The old man was sitting in a white plastic garden chair, talking to the interpreter. He spoke quickly and the interpreter replied, his arms gesturing in the small space.
They ignored BA5799, who put me down on a little table with the notebook and his helmet and turned to the soldier. ‘What’s going on, Corporal Carr?’
‘I have no idea. I can’t get a word in edgeways. But neither seems to be very happy. The man brought a dead body in his wheelbarrow.’
‘Where is it now?’ BA5799 said.
‘We made him leave it below Sangar Five, he wasn’t too chuffed with that. We haven’t searched it yet, I didn’t want to get too close.’
BA5799 stepped forward and tried to interrupt. He rested a hand on the interpreter’s shoulder but it was brushed away and they kept talking. The old man looked up and recognised BA5799. He stopped talking.