by David Abrams
But these girls didn’t know any better. They were really into it.
Closed eyes. Glitter-dusted hair sparkling in the spotlight. Harmony. Patriotism. Sincerity. The girl with the big hair opened her lips and started to sing.
Park wanted to puke. When one of the Bumpkins pushed his hand holding the microphone to his mouth during the chorus, he thought he’d be better off belting out Barry Manilow’s greatest hits than he would the most hated song in the military. But the girls had stepped aside, leaving him center stage with the microphone. Park looked over. Were they—? Oh my God, yes they were. The Bumpkins were marching in place and saluting him like he was some hero in a small-town parade.
When he didn’t start singing, the band petered out and looped back to the beginning of the chorus.
Park shook his head.
“He needs some encouragement, y’all,” one of the Bumpkins called to the crowd. “Come on, let’s make some noise for Private Park!”
Some joker hooted out from the crowd, “Yo, he can’t get it up! You’re in a no parking zone!” That set off a wave of laughter—from everybody but our small squad standing at the front edge of the crowd, all of us now sorry we’d crowd surfed him onto the stage.
Drew turned and shouted back into the crowd: “Shut the fuck up!”
Park thought: Here’s your loss of dignity, Grandfather.
The band looped back for a third try at the chorus. One of the Bumpkins, getting exasperated with him, began to softly sing. She raised her eyebrows and rolled her hand in encouragement. “Come on, we’ll help you with the words.”
Park shook his head again and dropped the microphone, which landed with a mortar-loud boom. Then he walked to the front of the stage and jumped back into our arms. We tried to pat him on the shoulder, tell him sorry, but he threw us off. There was a look in his eyes that made us step back from him.
Rage. Sure, Park has pent-up anger. It lurks in him like a hissing, wheezing forty-year-old boiler in the basement, bolts corroded with rust, seams leaking water, gauges no longer reliable, ready to blow any minute. Evacuate the house, everyone!
Park comes by his pissed-off nature honestly. It’s in the DNA passed to him by his grandfather, who never quite got over the wrongs he suffered in the cold wastelands of the 1950s. That beautiful, finger-curled hand was the worst thing I ever saw. Park learned to hate America at the knee of his grandfather—even as he was filling his lungs with American oxygen, buying American video games at American malls, absorbing American cartoons, and gorging on American burgers with cheese, fries, and strawberry milkshakes. The more of America he took in, the greater his rage grew—gas to the rickety boiler.
But all this anger had nowhere to go. Park knew he had three options: he could stuff it inside and close the lid, he could let it go, or he could channel it. He chose the first option.
Unlike Fish, who expressed his feelings by plunging a knife into another man’s body, Park did not resort to violence. At least not toward anyone else. But the landscape inside him was barren and black: scorched earth and smoldering tree stumps.
Park walks quiet among us. We don’t hear him screaming and sweeping his flamethrower across the path in front of him.
24
Bride
We’ve gone another half mile when an unseen dog takes up a broken-record bark. One yip after another after another after another. Almost like it’s saying, “Hark! Hark! Hark!” We think of James Bond and some of us—the more superstitious ones—wonder if it’s a canine ghost warning us away from the neighborhood we’re about to enter.
We pass a soccer field: open ground, a vacant lot choked with weeds and paper trash on one side, low-lying buildings on the other. Ahead of us, the street curves past mosque turrets. Farther still, on a small rise in the distance, a stone arch, dating back to ancient Persia, shoulders through a forest of billboards and glassy buildings, defying its centuries of crumble. It’s all more of the same Baghdad beige we’ve seen for six months. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except that dog.
We enter the business district and spread ourselves along the street. We get our distance, not bunching up. We hug the walls of the stores, slipping into the shade with sighs, but not allowing the ten-degree difference to distract us. We walk with our rifles at the ready, trigger fingers poised for action. We stir a haze of dust as we advance through the thickening crowd of Iraqis. The market is black with abayas, white with dishdashas. The air gurgles with tongues, voices that sound more like singing than talking. Behind us, the dog has stopped barking. Or maybe we just can’t hear it anymore.
“Jesus,” says Drew. “Look at all of them. There’s too many.”
“Easy, easy,” says Arrow. “Let’s play it cool here. We’re just another law-and-order patrol. They see this all the time.”
“We’re cool,” says Drew.
Park goes, “We real cool.”
Men, women, and children watch our approach. The air dust sparkles and makes the locals look fuzzy, out of focus. The older Iraqis, those who spent decades in Saddam’s “correctional” facilities, smile at us with stumps of rotten teeth. They sip their bitter coffee and sweet chai and nudge each other. When they wave, we notice many of the hands (if they aren’t outright missing) have only three or four fingers. The women keep their eyes averted and go on with their shopping, chatter-singing at the men selling meat and vegetables, bargaining for the best price. The younger men—military-age males, the MAMs we’re always targeting—stare with undisguised hatred at us, the intruding infidels. This is Sunni territory and most of them have grown weary of the American presence and, in the cases where relatives have been killed by soldiers firing at cars that approached checkpoints too quickly, have lately felt the slow simmer of anger come to a boil. The children, as usual, skip along beside us chanting, “Mister! Mister!” Waiting for that happy moment when one of us reaches into his ammo pouch and comes out with a ziplock baggie of Jolly Ranchers.
That’s us. We’re jolly ranchers, herding the bleating kids along the street. Baa-baa, la-laa, Mister, Mister! All we need are dogs like James Bond and Jinx nipping their heels to keep the rug rats in line.
Then we’re all sad and shit because we have no candy and because we’ve remembered the dogs. And the dogs lead us back to Sergeant Morgan.
We shake it off. We ignore the wavers, the haters, the beggars. For all they know, we’re just a bunch of dudes on patrol. They see this all the time. We sweep our eyes over the crowd, darting into every nook and cranny and rolling upward to the top-floor windows, a visual circle that clicks like a checklist inside our heads. We are focused, laser intent on the mission. Get through the marketplace like a shaft launched from a bowstring. We’re all arrows.
Out of our way, motherfuckers. We’re coming through! America Big Boots will stomp you flat if you get in our way. We wait for no kid. We pause for no mister.
We pass a beauty salon. Some of us, our knees go weak when we slow long enough to stare through the plate glass window. There, under Hollywood-bright fluorescent lights, stands a bride being primped for her wedding. Her veil, her dress, her gloves—they’re so dazzling, some of us have to squint to keep from going blind. The salon is brighter than the sun on the street.
This bride, this vision, stands in the middle of the beauty salon, surrounded by a half dozen other women in black abayas. These ladies-in-waiting, these dark bridesmaids, they’re moving around the bride—checking the hem of the dress, fluffing the veil, nipping, tucking, smoothing. They are ravens pecking for seeds around a radiant dove.
We can’t hear anything through the window, but we guess the beauty salon is full of chatter, and the hiss of a hair dryer, and the rhythmic scratch of a fan in the corner. We know one thing for certain: the bride is laughing. We see that, plain as day. In our minds, we hear the coin jingle of her throat. We feel the warm breath coming from her lipsticked mouth, the cherry-red lips we want to press against ours, the mouth we want to taste and by which, in turn, we want to be
swallowed. It is beauty, it is light, and we are stunned right down to our rubber knees.
And on this day, in this month, this year, this too-long slog of days upon days filled with dust and death, the routine of numb and dumb, the spikes of adrenaline, the scattered parts of Sergeant Morgan, the heat, the iron scent of blood, the grime coating our faces—all of it—on this day, we need this bride, this razzle-dazzle of light behind plate glass, this singular hope.
We remember something Hoover, the chaplain’s assistant, said not too long ago: “Did you know the number of marriage licenses issued in Baghdad is double this year over what it was last year?”
“No shit?” we said (we always took every opportunity to swear around chaplain’s assistants—though they usually gave as good as they got).
“It’s all due to the collapse of the Ba’ath Party,” Hoover said. “For years, they controlled who did and didn’t get married, but now that they’re gone …” He made a crumbling motion with his hand. “It’s a free-for-all out there. A real fucking party of joy.”
We don’t have time to do much more than crane our necks, slow to a giddy wobble, before pushing past the beauty salon. Arrow is moving out at a rapid pace. He hasn’t seen—or hasn’t wanted to see—the bride. His neck is stiff; his eyes are fixed on a point ahead of us.
We want to call out, “Hey, Arrow, wait up, will ya?” But our voices die to a croak on the “hey.”
It’s no good. Arrow won’t wait. This is no party of joy for him today.
25
Wedding
There was that wedding reception we’d attended not too long ago. We were late, uninvited. Wedding crashers. By the time we arrived, things were a mess.
As we walked through the rubble, the craters, and the splashes of blood, Hamid reconstructed the scene for us, based on what he’d gathered from the neighbors and kids on bikes who still hung around the scene even after we arrived in our Humvees.
“The groom was a law student at university,” Hamid said, voice husky from the smoke—or sorrow. It was hard to tell. “The bride, she was the only daughter of the president of a furniture company. Very wealthy man. Made big money in desks and chairs in the 1970s and kept it, even through the Saddam years. Now, he’s doing—was doing—big, big business selling to US Army headquarters coming in to Baghdad, setting up their offices.”
Sergeant Morgan looked at him, frowning. “Those kids told you all this?”
“Yes—but, no, I also know the man,” Hamid said. “Know him through newspaper stories. Like I said: very, very rich. This wedding was—as you Americans say—a really big deal.”
Sergeant Morgan knelt beside an overturned metal platter of food, a spill of rice coming from beneath in a delta. He touched the plate—as if to turn it over—but yelped and jumped to his feet, shaking his fingers. The tray was still hot, long after it had been seared by flame.
“So how did we get from ‘I do’ to this?” he asked Hamid, sucking his fingertips.
“Wedding was this morning. They start early because it lasts all day. It was all very happy, all very good. Cheerful—laughing, singing, some dancing. Then they all came back here to the house of the bride’s family for the walima. Feast. You know ‘feast’? Is that the right word?”
“Yeah, like a reception,” Sergeant Morgan said. “I get it.”
“In our country, men and women they don’t eat together,” Hamid said. “Men eat first, tell stories about the bridegroom, laugh some more, maybe drink too much. Then the women eat, indoors, away from their husbands and fathers. Not as much drinking, but still lots of stories. That is how I think this one went today, how I see it in my head.” Hamid, the fool, was getting all misty-eyed and choked up.
He and Sergeant Morgan stepped around a body part as he continued to narrate the scene. “Then, after the proper time has passed, the groom comes to the women’s feast—he is shy and maybe embarrassed—and everyone toasts the couple with orange soda.”
“Orange soda?” Rafe asked. “That’s the tradition?”
Hamid shrugged. “Maybe they drank Diet Coke here. I don’t know. At my cousin’s wedding, it was orange soda.”
“Go on,” Rafe said. “Then what happened?”
“Then there was more dancing. Everyone’s together now. Men, wives, children. The very rich father, he’s hired a band, so musicians are playing loud and with happy excitement. Drums, trumpets, cymbals. The bride and groom are in the street, holding hands, swinging each other around and around in circles.” Yep, no doubt about it: Hamid was crying. We could see that from where we were doing our work—pulling security, measuring craters, and marking the groom’s body parts with circles of spray paint.
Hamid pulled a once-white handkerchief from his flak vest. He wiped his face. “This goes on into the night, all the way to dawn. Finally, a neighbor gets tired of all the trumpets. He comes out yelling, firing his rifle straight into the air. Nobody stops. They hear him, but nobody stops. The joy, it is too great. The neighbor, he’s still mad, but he goes back inside. Or maybe he gives up and joins them in the street. The kids I asked weren’t too sure about this. About an hour later, a mortar—maybe two, maybe three—lands here in the street and—and—” He can’t finish. Hamid is done. The handkerchief is flying like a flag from his face.
“Three, by the looks of it,” Rafe said. And damn if there isn’t a catch in his throat now, too.
The rest of us, we look away. Sergeant Morgan would shit a brick if he caught us watching him when we should be watching the streets, scanning the sky.
Hamid and Rafe walked over to the bride, who was hunched over, sobbing. She sat on the steps of her father’s house in her bespattered wedding dress, which was no longer white. Rafe and Hamid both placed hands on her shoulders. Consoling the inconsolable.
There, in the slow relief of the setting sun, the bride’s dress turned orange then red. They stood there like that for the longest time, heads bowed as if in prayer.
Nobody said anything.
Everyone had run out of words.
26
Drew
Drew keeps his flaw tucked away, folded and stained, under the webbing of his Kevlar helmet. It is a photo of a woman not his wife. She is turned toward the camera, a smile starting but not yet all the way there. She wears sunglasses that darken her face, but if you could see behind them, you’d find green eyes that also have the tease of joy. Joy is about to break full across her face. She is seeing the ocean for the first time. The wind has taken her black hair and thrown it around her like scarves. Strands are caught in the hinge of her sunglasses, stuck in the corner of her mouth. Drew often untucks and unfolds this photo in order to remember the time three years ago when he and this girl who is not his wife stood on a cliff overlooking the sea at Bandon, Oregon, the wind twisting her hair into knots, her hair flipping his heart into knots. Her name was Tessa and at that moment he was—even as his wife Jacy was at home four hundred miles away nursing their newborn son—falling in love with her. Was already in love with her, had been in love with her for years—since high school. They’d dated briefly and passionately and he carried her in his heart after they went their diverging ways—Tessa to Bryn Mawr and Drew to the Army—and did their separate things. Tessa got a degree in poli-sci and Drew got married to another girl, Jacy, who he truly did love, cleaving his heart in half and finding he had enough love left over for both women, neither of whom knew the other existed. Alex Drew married Jacy Ramirez in a ceremony bursting with chiffon and lace, tacos made with pork slow simmered in adobo sauce, a polka band, and flower girls dancing ring-around-the-rosy and singing like a record with a scratch and skip, always collapsing in giggles. Alex took Jacy to bed that night never once thinking of his high school flame, putting all his thought and desire and fervor into Jacy’s face, her shoulders, her breasts, her generous, embracing thighs. And so it went for three years—“Alex and Jacy, For-evah!” he wrote on one Hallmark card—until the night he stayed up after she went to bed and t
here in a room glowing with light from his computer screen, he received and accepted a Facebook friend request from Tessa Dunlap of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Drew was surprised—but pleased!—to see she’d retained the same last name, never marrying in the six years since he’d last seen her. Tessa was interning for a Republican senator from Pennsylvania and, weakened by a fit of nostalgia, she’d decided to reach out to some of her best friends from high school, Alex being the third she’d found. Hey, remember Cathy Hunderman and Marina Swift? They’re still stuck in Nebraska. They never left—can u believe it?!! And how the heck was he, anyway? Glancing over his shoulder and ready to minimize the window on his screen should he hear his wife’s footfall in the hallway, Drew had written back to Tessa with a string of lies and half-truths, never once mentioning his marriage, the son that was soon to come from his wife’s womb, or even the fact that he was an infantry scout in the US Army (lies easy to maintain since he never posted anything personal on his Facebook wall, had hardly used it until this moment—no photos of Jacy, their wedding, her ripened belly). He did mention he was living in Seattle—a truth since he was then stationed at Fort Lewis—and he still thought of her often and fondly. Tessa had not written back right away—it was 2:00 a.m. her time and she’d gone to bed after messaging Drew, though he didn’t know this. He waited at the computer screen, staring at his near-empty Facebook page and second-guessing that word “fondly” (was he insane?). His heart pounded so hard he got dizzy. When he heard his wife waddle down the hall to pee, her pregnant weight creaking the floorboards, he slammed shut the laptop and leapt from his chair as if electrocuted. He gave Jacy a tender backrub that night and though as she drifted back to sleep she wondered why he was doing this right now, it felt so good she didn’t question it. The next morning, Drew was up a half hour earlier than usual so he could check his Facebook messages before dressing for zero dark early PT with his unit. There it was: Hey Alex, so good to hear from you! Seattle, eh? I always wanted to visit there—in fact, have wanted to see the West Coast, which I’ve heard is the Best Coast, is that true? Can you believe I’ve never actually seen the ocean—either one? I guess you can take the girl out of Nebraska but you can’t take Nebraska out of the girl. LOL! And on she went for couple of paragraphs of classmate catch-ups. Never any mention of his word “fondly.”