by David Abrams
DRAGUNOV SNIPER RIFLE (×3)
RPG (×12)
MILITARY-AGE MALES (7 DECEASED, 1 LIVING)
LOCAL NATIONALS (×2 MALE ADULTS—DECEASED, ×1 FEMALE ADULT—LIVING, ×1 MALE YOUTH—DECEASED)
C4 (×200 LBS)
MORTAR (×1 DOZ)
WIRE, SPOOLS OF (×4)
BALL BEARINGS (EST. 50 LBS)
BATTERIES, 9v (×24)
BATTERIES, CAR (×2)
AUTOMATIC GARAGE-DOOR OPENER (×5)
CELL PHONES, NOKIA (×14)
M67 GRENADE, CRATE OF (×6)
BEANIE BABY (×202)
34
Problem
It all seemed simple and clear, Arrow thinks. Steal a Humvee, go for a drive, pay our respects to Sergeant Morgan, then get back to Taji before too much shit was on the fan. But it had gone wrong almost from the start—spiraling out of whatever control he thought he had. He is ready to say to the hell with it and let someone else take charge of this soup sandwich.
Mostly, Arrow is pissed at how fucked up the situation is. This is on him. The rest of us can offer to share the blame (or, if things go in a different direction, the credit). But in the end, Arrow has to carry this weight. All these dead bodies. Casualties, corpses. He will carry them slung over his shoulders for the rest of his life.
When he walks past Rat Face out in the yard, Arrow takes one look at the shot-away face (he doesn’t want to, but it’s one of those things you can’t not look at) and that brings it down hard and heavy on him. He tells Drew to go inside the house and find some sheets to throw over the bodies in the yard.
The sun is higher and hotter now. We’re on full oven roast inside our Kevlars. We hear our brains gurgle to a boil. Some of us drink water; the rest complain about the motherfucking heat. For the thousandth time today.
It’s hotter inside the house. Fish says it’s all the blood. It’s raised the humidity level and that’s why we’re feeling it in here.
Cheever says if Fish doesn’t stop talking about blood, he’s gonna yurk up all the chicken he ate. He steps outside, just in case. But one look at the flies hovering like little black helicopters over what used to be Yellow Shirt’s head, and he goes ahead and does it anyway. Yurks.
Inside the house, Fish goes through a cardboard box. He holds up a pastel-pink Beanie Baby, a unicorn. There’s a knife-slit through its belly. “What do you suppose—?”
“Grenade delivery system,” Park says.
“What?”
“Here, kid. Here’s a present for you. Go show your mom and dad. They’ll be so surprised.”
“Oh.” Fish looks down at the box. “Shit. There must be two hundred of these things in here.”
He looks at the man who’s kneeling in the center of the room, wrists zip-tied behind his back. He has his head down and is muttering a bunch of hajji shit over and over. We hear “Allah” a couple of times, but nothing else makes sense.
Fish drops the stuffed animal back in the box. He looks at the man. “You goddamn fuckers,” Fish says low, like a growl.
Drew goes, “So now what?”
Arrow feels our eyes on him. He wants to say: How should I know? But instead he speaks like he was reading instructions on how to assemble a bookshelf from IKEA: “We move out and we take him with us. For now. Until the opportunity presents itself for us to hand him off.”
“Hand him off to who?” Drew says.
“Iraqi, American, I don’t give a rat’s ass,” Arrow answers. “As long as we dump him and continue on with the mission. You know, FOB Saro.”
FOB Saro. Shit. In all the excitement, we’d almost forgotten what we were doing out here. Now we think about Sergeant Morgan again. We picture the down-turned M4, the dog tags, and the boots on display at the front of the chapel and we are filled, once again, with rage and sorrow.
“You know what I think we should do?” Park asks.
“Not really,” Fish says.
“What?” Arrow says.
“We should leave him here,” Park says. “Walk away and be done with this.”
“And leave someone else to clean up our mess?”
“Why not?” Park says. “We were never here.”
“Ghost patrol.” Fish grins.
“You don’t think they’ll figure out this was no hajji-on-hajji Godfather shit?” Arrow says. “You don’t think they won’t trace it back to coalition forces with the rounds that are in these bodies? Trace it all the way back to us?”
“Worst-case scenario,” Park says.
Arrow shakes his head. “Certain-case scenario.”
O goes, “Sorry, Arrow. I think I’m with Park on this one.” He’s still breathing hard and heavy from the blow to his flak vest.
“We need to take him to FOB Saro,” Arrow insists.
Leftover Hajji has kept his head bowed. He hasn’t looked at us once, nor has he stopped praying.
“I think we should take him out to the front yard and stake him out like a starfish,” Fish says. “Let him bake to death. I saw something like that in a Western.”
Arrow goes, “You know what, Fish? I’ve had just about enough—”
“That’s a little extreme, man,” O says. He’s digging in the hole on his flak vest, with his pinkie.
“It worked for Clint Eastwood,” Fish says. “Got his attention real quick.”
Arrow goes, “Fish, why don’t you shut the fuck up, okay? Starting now.”
Drew says, “He’ll slow us down, you know. Whatever we do, we need to make up our minds and get going.”
“Yeah,” O says. “Yeah, I’m— We should …” He trails off.
“O,” Arrow says. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute? You’re looking kind of pale.”
“I’m all right. Like I said, got the stuffing knocked out is all.” He looks around at the rest of us. “Really. I’m fine, but we should stop shooting the shit and get back on course.”
A trickle of blood runs down the small of O’s back. It feels like a bead of sweat. O doesn’t give it a second thought.
Arrow opens his mouth to say something else, but what we hear instead is a scream. A woman’s scream. We turn and look.
The pregnant woman stands in the doorway, swaying. She’s slipped past us while we were doing our rock-paper-scissors thing. Maybe she is drawn to the front door by the sound of flies buzzing over Yellow Shirt. Maybe the noise, shock, and confusion are wearing off and she’s wondering where her husband is. Whatever the reasons, she’s standing in the doorway and she’s screaming and screaming without taking a breath. She’s seen what’s out there—who’s out there. She stares at the shrouded bodies laid out in the yard. She sees the flowers of blood blooming on the sheets and she screams and screams and screams.
35
In This Way, It Was Decided
Everyone has followed the woman out to the yard.
Everyone except Fish. He’s remained inside with Leftover Hajji.
Fish is crouched down in front of the muttering zip-tied man. He stares at the Iraqi as if he were a zoo animal.
Fish has one of the Beanie Babies in his hand. Not the unicorn—a seal.
A seal is slick and sleek. A seal is tapered at one end. A seal can get shoved into a mouth quick as you please.
Fish grabs the back of the bomb maker’s head, gets a good grip of hair, then yanks back hard. The mouth falls open, the Beanie Baby goes in. The prayers to Allah stop.
Fish stands up and the man’s eyes go wide, then flinch shut as Fish’s boot slams into his belly.
After a couple more of these, Fish grabs the back of the man’s collar, hauls him to his feet. He has to yank up a couple more times on the collar to get him to stay on his feet. He taps the man on the shoulder then points to the back of the house, to the rubble-strewn yard beyond. The bomb maker goes forward, hunched at the belly. Something in the man’s face makes Fish think he knew this was coming, that it was inevitable from the start. That it was only a matter of time until he and Fish were able to have a moment alon
e to talk things over.
He pushes the man out the back door. Leftover Hajji stumbles over a clutter of bricks, falls flat on his face.
This is not good enough for Fish. He grabs the collar and hauls him to his feet again, pushes him toward the back of the yard.
“Here.” Fish stops him. “Right here.”
The man goes to his knees without any more shoving from Fish. They both know this conclusion is foregone. Casualties of war, collateral damage, battle tally—whatever words the fobbits in headquarters want to tape over this to make it sound better, easier to swallow. Fish could give two shits. He’s doing this and he’s doing it now. The rock’s rolling downhill. He couldn’t hold it back anymore, so he just stepped out of the way and let the boulder crash down the slope.
Like O said, we need to stop shooting the breeze and get on with it. Continue mission.
The Iraqi’s back is to Fish. He bows his head. Fish sees his throat working, trying to push more words against the gag. As if a prayer would make any difference at this point.
Fish puts the muzzle of his M4 against the back of the man’s head.
Then he realizes he’s too close—don’t wanna get no filthy hajji blood spatter on me—so he readjusts, moves back a few feet.
He raises the rifle. He closes one eye, gets a good sight picture. “This is for the Beanie Babies,” he says.
36
Her
“But what about her?” Cheever asks.
We look at the woman. She clutches the corpse to her chest. The sheet has fallen away and now we can see all the damage in the man’s chest.
Cheever goes, “Oh, man.” He turns away, swallowing another yurk.
The woman’s wails rise and fall like a siren.
Arrow goes to her, kneels, takes her shoulders in his hands. He’s not trying to pull her away, just letting her know he’s there. An attempt at comfort. It’s what Sergeant Morgan would have done.
Park goes, “Don’t even think about it, Arrow.”
Arrow looks up at the four of us surrounding him. He lets go of the woman, stands to face us. “I’m not thinking anything.”
“Sure you aren’t,” Drew says.
“I’m not. Whatever you think I’m thinking, I’m not thinking it.”
“Continue mission, man,” O says.
“Of course,” Arrow says. “Of course. I was trying to show her some sympathy, that’s all.”
“Right,” says Park.
“Sympathy her all you want, but make it quick,” Drew says. He’s anxious to beat feet, get out of here. He wants to get away from this woman and her belly. Every time he looks at her, he feels the shame of his wife, Jacy, all over again. “Well?” he says. “What now? And don’t say ‘gimme time to think’ again because we have no more time. We’re outta time and we need to be outta here.”
Arrow does need time—and space and solitude. Everyone is crowding him, he can’t breathe, he can’t get this sorted out.
“Arrow—” O says.
“Shut up shut up shut up!” Arrow walks away from them.
Park looks at Drew. O looks at Cheever. Cheever looks at Arrow.
The woman wails and wails and wails.
No one makes a move in her direction. Arrow stands apart from us, hands clasped behind his neck.
The woman has her husband in her arms, his lolling head in the crook of her elbow, and she’s rocking him—not to soothe him to sleep, but to wake him from this terrible nap. She calls his name over and over, mixing it with the dying sirens still hiccuping from her throat.
Park goes, “I say we take care of that guy back inside and get the hell out of here.”
Drew goes, “Hey, who’s watching him anyway?”
Arrow whips around. He says, “Where’s Fish?”
That’s when the rifle shot cracks from the backyard.
37
No One Said Anything
When Fish was twelve, his uncle got colorectal cancer, stage 3. This gave the man the privilege of going around saying, “Cancer, my ass!”
Uncle Sean was only forty-two, but here he was, shitting away his life in bloody stools. He was hardcore, though. He kept smoking to the end. He’d picked up the habit when he did a few years in Joliet for smashing a biker’s skull with an iron bar. Aggravated assault, my ass!
As a boy, Fish always wondered if his uncle had been raped in the showers there, and that’s what gave him the cancer. He never dared ask because Uncle Sean flew off the handle whenever someone brought up the subject of what he called fudge packers. He was the kind of guy who’d hit his own nephew over the head with an iron bar if he dared insinuate he’d been fudge packed in a Joliet shower.
God, Fish loved that man with his candy-corn teeth, his eagle-and-flag tattoo spread between the wings of his shoulder blades, his stories of biker gangs and barroom fights, the chicks, the weed, the occasional mini-mart holdup. Uncle Sean was everything Fish wanted to be when he grew up. Untamed. Boundary breaker. Line crosser. A taker not a giver. Rebel yell. The kind of guy who went around cackling at his own joke—“Cancer, my ass!”—even as the joke rotted him from the inside out.
Now as we walk away from our unfortunate detour, Fish thinks of his uncle and smiles. “Baghdad, my ass!” he mutters under his breath, then laughs.
He’s the last in line. It may look like we’re trying to distance ourselves from him, outwalk him, but this is just the order we fell into as we left the house. Arrow is on point. Fish is rear.
Rear, my ass!
Fish laughs and laughs. No one else says anything.
The sun burns a hole through the tops of our helmets and here’s Fish stumbling along laughing, laughing, laughing. Sooner or later, somebody—we guess it’ll be Arrow—will turn around and tell him to shut the fuck up, but for now we let him have the laugh.
The last laugh. Joke’s on us. We never should have left him alone with Leftover Hajji.
Regrets, we’ve had a few.
We move along, spring stepping with our legs, trying to work up a breeze, anything to cool our skin. Somewhere behind us, the woman still cups her husband’s head in her hand, still screams into the empty air around her house.
O walks slower than usual, breathes heavier. Man, he thinks, the wind really did get punched out of his sails back at the house, didn’t it?
We don’t see O list, or flounder, or start to sink. Not yet, not at that point.
Heat rises from the street. The street is empty. It’s us and the heat. Old pals. The bricks under our boots are volcano lava. We walk faster to stir the air against our faces.
We’re moving out. Lef-right-lef-right, hup-hup-hup! We’re leaving it behind us, the whole mess—the bodies of the good and the bad, the wailing widow, the complete fuckaroo we’ve made of this day.
Nobody says anything. Everybody says nothing.
Except for Cheever, who pipes up with one or two more gripes about his blisters. But that’s to be expected. Cheever being Cheever.
Ahead of us, a bird calls out in a rusty voice—once, twice, then it, too, falls silent.
We look up.
38
Rafe in the Belly of the Plane
Sergeant Morgan is moving away from us. “Raphael has left the building,” as they say.
We walk across Baghdad—knotted up in the day’s gone-wrong events, wondering how to get ourselves untangled—and there’s Rafe above us in the transport plane, hurtling through the air at 450 knots, 517 miles per hour. Not a care in the world. Carefree. Footloose and fancy-free. His feet are loose and his fancies are free.
We imagine what it’s like up there for Rafe. Maybe he’s looking out a window and waving at us.
No, that’s not right. He is prone in the belly of a C-17 bound for Dover Air Force Base. Death has made him deaf, dumb, and blind. He can’t see us to wave. He doesn’t even know we’re down here, deep in the shit now, all because of him.
Rafe has escaped Iraq.
This destination of ours? This m
emorial service? It’s nothing but theater, an official government play staged by officers to show: We really care. Rafe doesn’t care. Rafe could give a flying fuck. Literally.
He’s gone, gone, gone. He won’t be there at the service to hear all the bullshit nice things said about him—the profane jokes, the comforting words from Psalms, the lies, the half-truths, the flower-strewn eulogies, the script we follow in times like these.
Sergeant Morgan is on his way home right now. Mission complete for him. We’re down here sweating in this Baghdad sauna and Rafe is up there in his polished silver casket all cool and composed.
“You mean decomposed,” Cheever says.
Oh, did we say that out loud?
In spite of our sour mood, we laugh and say, “Good one, Cheeve.”
We walk on. The heat presses down. The dust rises from our boots.
“Well,” Drew says. “At least he’s resting in peace.”
“You mean ‘in pieces.’” Cheever again, the joker.
We laugh. It sticks in our throats, but we laugh.
We picture our sergeant, all twelve parts of him jigsaw puzzled back together again. Overhead lights in the C-17 blink red in the hold’s darkness. Rafe’s coffin winks on and off, on and off, like a neon sign: OPEN, CLOSED, OPEN, CLOSED. Near the front of the plane, the loadmaster stares at the three coffins strapped to the plane’s floor. Correction: not coffins—transfer cases. That’s what he’s been told to call them. Whatever. He’s made sure the transfer cases, the remains delivery systems, the fuckin’ coffins, aren’t going anywhere. Everything’s tight and aligned. Not a wrinkle in the Stars and Stripes. The by-the-regulation alignment of the transfer cases.
The loadmaster yawns.
When he started five months ago, he thought of this as a sacred duty. Back then, it was a solemn, straight-faced, tear-in-the-corner-of-one-eye honor to escort the fallen warrior from battle zone to the black-clad families at the airfield. Now, it’s just a job. Sure, he gets to leave Iraq for a little while, but it’s not all fun and games. To get stateside, he must first ride with the dead.