Fire and Forget

by Matt Gallagher

  She jumped at the hollow metal banging against her barracks door. She found Kavanagh outside, a twelve pack of beer hanging from her hand.

  “Heard you were staying in,” Kavanagh said as she walked into the room. “Why were you sitting in the dark?”

  “I was starting to fall asleep.”

  “Do you want me to leave?” But Kavanagh had already cracked open two beers and was throwing the rest into the fridge.

  “No, it’s OK.” She took the beer and sat on the corner of her bed. “Don’t you usually go up to L.A. on the weekends?”

  “Yeah,” Kavanagh sat in a chair, “but I’ve gotten a little sick of it. Besides, you said you wouldn’t go.”

  She nodded and drank from her beer. The large window reflected her face and Kavanagh’s profile in gray casts, a charcoal-and-ink sketch of the two of them in the room, waiting.

  She turned back to Kavanagh, “Are you scared?”

  Kavanagh didn’t answer, only looked at her feet.

  “I mean about Iraq.”

  “I know what you mean,” she ran the back of her hand across her chin where a drop of beer slid down her skin. “That’s just not a question you ask.” She looked at her reflection in the plate glass.

  And even then, sitting in that room with Kavanagh and talking about everything but Iraq, the questions kept circling. The room filled with a heaviness that constricted her lungs, constricted her brain, and the mere thought of seven months nearly drove her insane. And she hadn’t even gotten there yet. Seven months in the desert filled her with such unease, such giddiness that she spun between the two, orbiting between the two thoughts until she was caught, and Iraq and everything that followed her stepping onto the tarmac on al-Taqaddum sunk away into a black hole that pulled her down and through her own life.

  In that moment she wanted to be held by her mother. When Kavanagh ignored her first question, making her wonder if her corporal really was scared, and growing scared at the thought, all she wanted was to hug her mother. Whisper to her that she was scared and that she wasn’t sure she could do it. Wasn’t sure she would come home. Her mom’s voice whispered back to her, “I don’t know how to—” What? she asked back. What don’t you know how to do? Be strong for me? Watch me go away? I want to know, too.

  Kavanagh kept talking and laughing and opening more beers until almost the whole pack was finished and the two of them had fallen asleep. Kavanagh never mentioned Iraq again. Not even when they were on the plane bound for that fucking place and sitting next to each other as the plane crept farther across the arc of the earth. Kavanagh calm and bored enough with the idea of a second tour to sleep most of the trip. She could still see Kavanagh sitting on her rack reading magazines, or dressed in her gear and smoking a cigarette. But thinking about Kavanagh always ended with her on her back and bleeding out into the sand. The gray clouds reflected in her open eyes. Kavanagh lying in the sand, and now Warren would be lying in Kavanagh’s bed. She grew angrier with each item Warren placed on the bed, wanted to shout at her that she would be sleeping in a dead woman’s bed. Instead, she turned up the volume on her music and turned to the wall.

  On the final night of her bed rest she couldn’t sleep. Sometime in the very early morning she shuffled slowly out to the burn barrel on the outskirts of the compound, carrying her bloodied cammies, clutching them to her chest like she had the Iraqi girl. When the flames burned hot and tall, she threw in her uniform and boots. She crept as close to the flames as possible, feeling the sharp heat on her face, neck, and chest. She wanted to get even closer, to climb into the flames and curl up at the corners into ash the way her cammies did, feel the flames eat into her skin in widening holes until she was consumed like her boots, melt away into the embers of the fire, feel her bones flake and rise up on the heat of the flames into the empty black sky where their last sparks would drift like spinning stars.

  Then, finally, with a concussive exhale, the train comes to the end of the line. She rises calmly and crosses the gap with ease. Walks beneath the sign: Times Sq–42nd St. Feels her feet move easily across the platform and her body move in and out and around the people on the platform. The dead bird, her mother’s words, coming forward in her thoughts and mixing with the people, with her movement. She should’ve died with Kavanagh. She shouldn’t be walking across the platform trying to reach the escalator. She shouldn’t be in the city at all. She had tried to forget everything; had tried to sink into drunkenness, into meds, tried to stay awake in fear of the dreams, burrow into some dark place that would give her a break from the memories, from the ECP that would come when she inevitably fell asleep. The pain of self-abuse still felt better than the guilt. Guilt drove it all. Anger that things had gone so wrong. “I don’t know how to let you go,” she thinks her mother wanted to say. She understands her mother, understands the need to hold on to whatever you can of a person who leaves, who is gone, the fear of the gaping hole that person creates and the way pain seems to fill it. She carries Kavanagh with her. Always the still and bloody Kavanagh that didn’t fly home with her. Rarely the quiet sketch of her in California. And she tries to change the ending. Tries to make it so Kavanagh walked away from the ECP and Warren never moved in. Tries to make it so she shouted sooner or squeezed, squeezed the trigger until she felt her weapon buck into her shoulder; pink mist clouding from the dead hajji. But even if she changes things in her mind, they were still the same in reality. So she rides the train.

  She steps onto the escalator. Her shoulders rock back with the first motion upwards. She’ll get out of the subway, she thinks, find a bench or someplace to sit and call her mom to tell her to not expect her. She’s not sure exactly what she’ll say to her mom or whether she’ll make any sense when she tries to describe this need, this understanding inside her that she shouldn’t go to Vermont, not right now. But she knows that if she takes her time now that there would be more time in the future. No more calling at the last minute to cancel coffee or dinner plans. She could see her in a little while, sometime soon maybe, calling and saying that she was coming up to the summer house. She imagines sitting next to her mom and rocking back and forth in the old wicker rocking chairs and watching the thunderheads building and the energy rippling through the air. She smells ozone. The beer sweaty in her hand. She watches the opaque gray clouds darken the summer sky prematurely into a false twilight, the overcast sky looking so much like the one over the ECP. And she looks at her mother. Her mother looks with heavy lids at the distant Green Mountains and is just rocking, rocking. Then the wind picks up and blows through the screened porch and she feels herself lifting, rising buoyant on the heat rising into the air and swirling into the clouds.

  And she is rising, climbing the escalator up from underground, going up and up and seeking out the sun, seeking out the open air, a place where she can sit down and call her mom. She pushes through the turnstile, steps quickly up the steps in choppy, scuffing steps to the street. She blinks in the sunlight in such contrast with the artificial glow underground. She looks at the small crowd gathering on the sidewalks, walking and chatting and ignoring her. She flips her long hair away from her neck to let fresh air breathe along her skin.

  There is a second flash of hair flipped away from a twin neck. She turns to face her reflection in a shop window, pale and colorless in the sunlight, but still there. So different from the solid gray lines of her image in the barracks window beside Kavanagh’s. This one barely draws a figure in the smoky shape of loose jeans and T-shirt, greasy hair hanging over one shoulder, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. She wasn’t always like this, lost and hurt and wanting nothing else. She used to want more for herself. She used to want bigger things.

  “Oh, whatever, you know I’m doing the best I can!” A second vague shadow appears at the far end of the window joining the loud, nasal voice. A tallish woman, slim through the hips, in big sunglasses. She’s dressed neatly, but the low cut of her tank says she wants to be looked at. She runs fingers through her hair. �
�I can only do so much until things are out of my control, you know,” she snaps into her cell phone.

  Cute shoes. She looks at the sandals on the other woman’s feet. Strappy with a faint gold sheen. She could see herself wearing those shoes with a light sundress.

  The woman sighs dramatically and leans in to check her lip gloss. “Fine, yeah, I know. I’ll try. I love you, too, mom.” The woman flips her phone closed and struts away.

  Just that simple: I love you, mom. She could say those words and calm her mom and reassure her that she’d be OK on her own for one more summer. She’ll explain why she’s not on the downtown train, why she won’t be on the train with her to Vermont. But she will also say that she will be here in the city in a month when she gets back. She knows that she’ll be ready to try then. She will promise coffee or lunch. They will talk. Maybe Iraq will come up, but she won’t talk about it. Not until she’s ready. She turns left without choosing to. Thinks only of finding a bench. She walks in a calm way, a certain way, one foot in front of the other.

  6

  RAID

  Ted Janis

  I NEEDED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF THE COMMUNITY. Bin Laden was fish food, but we were still chasing targets, hunting down low-level pipe swingers in the name of GWOT, an acronym and a concept that belonged to last decade. Two deployments ago, I drank the Kool-Aid—drank it like it was the blood of Christ.

  Two deployments was a long time ago.

  Now it was all about the ritual. Just like back home, sitting in pews, doing call and response. I’d hoped to find something new here, but it was just another church and just another creed, and I never was believer material. At least I get to jump out of planes. The Mormon Elders might look into that as a recruitment tool.

  Meanwhile, Sergeant Deke was getting all up in my business: “Doc, you fuck up your brief one more time I’m gonna smoke the ever-loving shit out of you. That was amateur hour.”

  This idiot. I turned and stared at him. Same ol’ square jaw, same ol’ beady eyes. I didn’t know who I felt worse for, his dog or his wife.

  “Roger, Sergeant. Won’t happen again.”

  “It better not. As much as you think this whole gig is beneath your precious fucking intellect, MEDEVAC HLZs matter.”

  “Understood, Sergeant.”

  I walked out of the briefing tent, flicked on my headlamp, and aimed for the ready room. My eyes were still adjusting when I stumbled into Omar.

  “How’s my favorite Afghan?” I asked. “Ready to go murder some of your countrymen or what?”

  “That’s funny, Doc. You know Afghanistan’s not really a country, right? It’s just a hole where other countries send their retards to die.”

  “Whatever you tell yourself to get to sleep, rock star.”

  “I told you, Doc, I just translate. You’re with the trigger-pullers.”

  “Hah. Sure. That’s why I carry all these Band-Aids.”

  “So who’s the target tonight?”

  “That Jaweed guy again. Objective Charon 7. Seventh time’s the charm and all that.”

  “I hope you’re right. It’d be good to finally get that bastard.”

  “Whatever. He’s just another dude making a buck. Just like you.”

  “Doc!”

  Ah, shit. Sergeant Deke again. He’d had it out for me ever since he found my spice stash back at Fort Lewis. The only bastard who checked pillowcases.

  “Stop polluting the locals’ heads, Doc. Get to the ready room.”

  “Roger, Sergeant.”

  The terp and I followed him to the ready room tent, a temple of light surrounded by deep, black still. The golden glow emanating from the doorway revealed outlines of devotees entering and exiting, donning armor, priming their souls, weapons in hand. I was one of these men, I reminded myself. I was a Ranger.

  Sergeant Deke veered off to the side to join the other squad leaders and the lieutenant. With them out of earshot, I went on.

  “You gotta understand, Omar, in our country, no one ever thinks about death. It’s completely removed from our lives. At worst, it only registers as a slight speed bump before an even more perfect afterlife. But then we come over here and it’s in our faces. Over here, death is life. So you see these big mother-fuckers like Sergeant Deke coming over seven, eight, nine times, you better believe they dig it. They love it. They worship it. Death.”

  Omar frowned and shook his head. Even he didn’t buy my bullshit.

  “You’ve been deployed a couple times, too, Doc, haven’t you?”

  We walked on, the crunch of gravel underfoot providing cover.

  “I re-upped back when I believed. These days we create more insurgents than we kill. I’m done. As soon as my contract is up, I’m out. Goodbye and good riddance.”

  “That’s a pretty story, Doc. You know, my people have been at war for thirty years. Thirty years. One thing you learn is some motherfuckers kill, and some motherfuckers die. You Rangers are on the killing side, most days. That’s not bad.”

  I had no answer to that. We got to the ready room, where all doubts were replaced by hustling, sweaty bodies and the metallic thud of magazines being slapped into place. The mission would continue with or without my approval. Omar just smiled and shook his head. I lost myself in the ritual of preparation.

  * * *

  The helicopters approached our waiting platoon, screaming their chorus of kill-kill-kill-kill through the darkness. I felt a surge of adrenaline shoot through my body. It was that time again.

  I flipped on my night vision and the world turned green. We filed to the birds one at a time, counted in by Sergeant Deke. The helicopter shuddered under our weight as it strained to pick up, then found its rhythm, and we were off into the Afghanistan night.

  Blood pulsed through my veins as we sped through the mountain passes to the HLZ. Tightly packed in on the floor of the Chinook, we looked to each other, energy passing from man to man. This moment was our one release. Together. I got the togetherness here. Once we got back things changed, but here, I got it. The mission. The only chance to leave the bullshit behind. Without women or alcohol, without cars or drugs, we had only this.

  The three-minute call started at the front with the lieutenant and was repeated down the line. I mouthed a prayer as my eyes stared past the rear ramp at the jagged, sinister mountains behind us, their peaks cutting into the heavens.

  “. . . the Power and the Glory, Forever and Ever, Amen.”

  * * *

  We finished the walk to the target compound. It must’ve been nearly eight kilometers, not an inch of it flat. We had left the highlands and entered a broad, tiered valley. In the distance, the ruins of an old fort rose on a faraway hill. Its weathered walls appeared like a sandcastle waiting for the tide to melt it back into the land.

  “This is 2–6, I copy: isolation set, moving to the breach.”

  The target house was on the near side of the village below. With disturbing speed and even more disturbing silence, the platoon separated into fire teams and set the trap—a standard point raid. Lasers danced on the walls of the compound, coming to rest on doorways and windows.

  From an adjacent grove, on overwatch with the lieutenant and the rest of his gaggle, I waited for the ambush to unfurl. I scanned the village, so mute and ignorant of the violence about to play out. I thought of the time in high school when that Jack Mormon dealer down the block got busted by the cops and we watched through the dining room window; my mom had been so upset. “His poor mother,” she kept saying. “His poor mother.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Omar lean against an ancient, gnarled tree and pick at his fingernails.

  The deafening crack of the earth being torn apart echoed into the night. An instant of hopeful silence followed. Then a shriek. Shouts reverberated from cluster to cluster back to us. Even before I could make out the words, I was in full sprint down the valley.

  “Doc!” “Medic!” “Man down!” “DOC!!!”

  I skidded to a halt at the group of huddled, ben
t bodies, pushing them aside.

  Just one, that was lucky. Most of his left leg was gone, the femur exposed. The right leg bled profusely. Must have been a pressure plate.

  Clearing space for my medical pack, I grabbed the nearest Ranger. I couldn’t tell who it was. Too many shadows, too many noises, too much going on. It didn’t matter who it was.

  “We need a tourniquet on the right leg too, have to stop that bleeding. Anybody working on the 9-line?”

  “I’m on it, Doc.”

  “Roger, sir.” When the hell had the lieutenant got here? “I think HLZ Rooster is closest.”

  “No. HLZ Rock. Sergeant Deke’s securing it now. Get him prepped for movement.”

  The wounded’s screams became moans and were accompanied by rifle fire and the shock of grenades from the compound. Third squad, bringing the fight to the enemy. Don’t look at his face, I reminded myself. Don’t look at his face. Don’t look at his face.

  “You lose him?”

  “He’s unconscious, sir, but still got a pulse.”

  Both of the tourniquets were secure. My hands caressed the wounded’s body, probing for tears, holes, lumps, any sign of further injury.

  “Looking good, Ranger, looking good. Got those legs to stop bleeding, everything should. . . . Shit, shit, shit. FUCK.”

  I felt a wet puddle just below his plate carrier. I pulled my hand away—my glove was completely red. Please God, I prayed, tell me it missed his organs.

  “Doc, let’s go! MEDEVAC’s in a holding pattern, just waiting for the target secure call. We gotta move him.”