by David Abrams
“Okay, Buddha. But can we at least stop and catch our breath?”
They slow to a walk. They’re on a paved road and it’s baking them from the boots up.
Fish goes, “I get the feeling you didn’t even like him.”
“Are you kidding? Everybody loves O.”
“I meant Morgan. You were never chummy with him or anything.”
“He was my platoon sergeant. He wasn’t supposed to be my friend.”
“That’s not how everyone else sees it.”
Park takes up a light jog again, breaks away from Fish.
It doesn’t work. There’s no getting away from Fish and his mouth.
Park looks over and goes, “Why are you out here?”
“To pay my respects. What else?”
“Respect? You’re the fucking new guy, Fish. You didn’t know him.”
“I knew him well enough.”
“Not like the rest of us.”
“I knew him enough to come out here with the rest of you fucktards today, risking life and limb—”
“Save it for the eulogy, Fish.”
Park slows to a walk. Now he’s out of breath, too. This heat is squeezing him to a faint.
Fish is still nipping his heels. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which was?”
“Did you like Morgan?”
“I liked him well enough,” Park says, then clams up.
They keep their heads on a swivel, stay close to buildings, flinch at odd sounds. They sip water through the tubes of their Camelbaks.
“Stay hydrated,” Sergeant Morgan tells them. His voice is in their heads. It is loud and unbending.
They drink. The Camelbak water is warm and tastes like the inside of tires. Fish swishes his around, then spits it on the ground.
A dog dashes out from a yard to greet them. It sniffs the spat-out water, then licks the road.
Fish feints toward the dog. “Go on, scat!” For some reason, this dog licking his spit bothers him. He’d probably butt-stroke this dog if Park weren’t here.
Dogs bother Fish. They’re all slobber and mange and ball licking and leg humping when you’re visiting your girlfriend’s house for the first time. He had his way, he’d like to see every dog over here in Iraq roasting on a spit. Trying selling that in the marketplace. It’d probably be like goddamn caviar to hajji.
Fish makes another lunge toward this back-alley dog now and it scurries away with a yip.
They trot down the road and drink their rubber-flavored water.
“We’ve gotta be getting closer, right?” Fish says.
“I don’t know. Anything looking familiar to you?”
“Not really. You?”
“Maybe. But I don’t know.”
They tense when they hear the sound of motors. They step off the road. They pull their rifles flat against their chests. Their index fingers find the triggers.
Two cars approach, slow as they draw even with Park and Fish, then accelerate. The soldiers are left in a fog of dust.
“Fuck you very much,” Fish mutters.
The last vehicle’s brake lights flare—as if the driver heard Fish—but then blink off again and both cars are gone around the corner. It felt like a moment, or something that was about to be a moment, but in the end it was nothing more than two cars passing two men walking along the side of a road. Just another thing on an ordinary day.
Park and Fish unclench their sphincters.
Fish goes, “Shit.”
Park goes, “Close one.”
They look at each other. Something passes between them—an understanding, maybe. At the very least, an acknowledgment they just shared something.
They start walking again.
Eventually, things look familiar.
“I think we’re almost there,” Fish says.
“We take a left at the next corner,” Park says.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
Park smiles. “Your momma was home when you left—”
“You’re right!”
“Your girlfriend was home when you left—”
“You’re right!”
They pick up a rhythm and it feels like old times again. The two of them—no matter how they each feel about Rafe—wish their old platoon sergeant could be here with them, off to the left, barking cadence and making the walk bearable with his sing-song voice.
45
This Ain’t No Movie
Back at Olijandro Central, we have the patient stabilized and we’re scrubbing up at the sinks, talking about last weekend’s golf game.
We like to think we can crack jokes at a time like this. That’s how we roll.
The truth is, O seems to be doing better. The bleeding has slowed to a seep and some color is coming back to his face. He keeps asking for water, so that’s good, right?
Or maybe we’re kidding ourselves, desperate to make sure this day has a happy ending—as happy as things can be over here.
“Hey,” O says in a frog croak.
We go up to him, kneel, lean in closer.
“If I don’t make it, tell my ex-wife—”
“Naw, none of that, man!” Arrow says. He places his hand tenderly on O’s forehead and keeps it there.
“Save that bullshit for the movies,” Drew says.
“I’m serious,” O says. “If I don’t make it, you gotta tell her—”
“Private Olijandro,” Arrow says. “We’re not listening.”
Cheever holds a canteen to O’s mouth. “Drink up and shut up.”
He takes several gulps, nods at Cheever to stop. “I love you, babe.”
Cheever, Arrow, and Drew look at each other.
“That’s all I wanted to say to Melinda. Four words. Think you can remember them?”
Arrow moves his hand to O’s shoulder. “We’ll remember. We’ll remember to make sure you tell her yourself, you asshole.” Arrow smiles at him. We all smile down at O.
“Hey,” he says. His voice is weaker, foggier, and we have to lean in to hear. “You guys have to tell her those were my very last words. Just like in the movies.”
We fall silent, not knowing if we should laugh or cry.
“How ’bout them Yankees?” Drew says after a moment.
“Best season ever,” Arrow says.
Wind rolls down the street, spirals up a cone of dust on the other side of the road, then passes on, like a tan ghost here and gone.
“How long since they left?” Cheever asks.
Arrow checks his watch. “Thirty-five.”
“Feels like three hours.”
“Everything’s longer when you’re waiting.”
We fall silent again, scanning our sectors of fire though we seem to be the only ones out here.
Cheever goes, “What if they don’t make it back?”
“They’ll be back,” Arrow says. “That’s how this movie is gonna end. They’ll be back and everything will be okay. Happy endings for everyone.”
“Might I remind you that you yourself said this ain’t no movie not too long ago.”
46
Wheels
It’s all good. None of the tires are flat and there’s no bristle of weeds poking from the grille. One of the windows in the back is broken out, but other than that it looks drivable. They’ve misremembered the condition of the van—to their relief—and, best of all, Fish thinks he can get it going.
When he and Park open the driver’s door, the van exhales hot breath that smells of:
Honey.
Lavender.
Earth bloom.
Rose petal.
The van is full of flowers. Heaps and heaps of them: careless bouquets tossed in the back, long overdue for delivery. A bench seat runs the length of the interior, but other than that, it’s nothing but flowers, flowers, flowers. The smell is potent, sweet, overpowering.
Fish thinks of his grandmother and the times she’d pack him into a church pew filled with all her old lady friends,
each of them in proud ownership of a special bottle of Sunday-go-to-meeting perfume, each of those lady smells colliding and pounding against little Fish’s nose.
Park remembers gardens he and his grandfather once visited in Seoul.
If the rest of us had been there with them, we’d have each been overwhelmed by our own memories. One or two of us might have gotten choked up, thinking about the places those flowers took us.
Armed with nothing more than his Leatherman pocket knife, Fish goes to work under the dashboard, sweating and grunting.
Behind Fish and Park, the bodies of the men and the goat fester in the midafternoon heat. Flies still scribble a dance in the air above what used to be Yellow Shirt’s head.
Park and Fish keep their backs turned as they work on the van. They can’t deal with that shit right now. The yard is quiet except for the fly buzz.
Fish works on the wires, snipping, stripping, striking, sparking. The engine coughs once, twice, then turns over. He crawls out from beneath the dashboard and looks at Park, wiggles his eyebrows.
Park is impressed enough to give him a high-five.
Fish could savor the moment—the engine rumbling, Park almost smiling, the flies briefly startled away from the bloodmess—but there’s work to do. They have to get going. Continue mission.
“I’ll drive,” Fish says.
“I call shotgun.”
“Good one, Park.”
They pull out of the yard, more than ready to leave the house and its gory yard behind. It feels good to be off their feet, to be rolling on wheels again. Fresh air flows through the broken window and ripples through the flowers.
They’ve gone two blocks when Park puts a hand on Fish’s arm. “Hold up. Did you hear something?”
“Hear what? I didn’t hear any—”
But then he hears it, too.
A groan, a whimper, a cry that’s about to climb the scale to a scream.
Fish slows the van, pulls to the side of the road. The two of them turn in their seats, look at the back of the van. The mound of flowers is moving, rippling. Something is there, struggling to emerge.
Park and Fish reach for their rifles.
47
Scream
The van screams as it approaches.
Arrow, Cheever, and Drew get to their feet, grip their M4s.
“Is that them?” Cheever asks.
Arrow and Drew have their rifles raised. They aren’t ones for stupid questions. That van is coming at the kind of speed for which rules of engagement were written.
“That’s our ride, right?” Cheever asks again.
Neither Arrow nor Drew see the metal flower sprouting from the roof.
The van howls, cries, screams again: a primal human sound rising above the clatter-purr of the engine.
“Fucking A, fucking A,” Drew says as the vehicle comes at us fast. Too fast. It approaches in a cloud of dust, like Pigpen from a Peanuts comic strip.
Arrow has seen something. He shouts, “Hold fire! Hold fire!” But Drew’s finger is already on the trigger, halfway to commitment. Then, through the haze beyond his front sight post, he makes out Park’s face. It’s pressed close to the windshield. The glass is coated with dust and Park is out of focus, but now Drew can see it’s him, Park, and not some terrorist on the attack. His mouth is rounded in an o like he’s yelling, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Drew lowers his rifle. “Is Park screaming?”
“C’mon, Park?” Arrow says. “When was the last time you heard anything above a whisper from him?”
“Somebody’s screaming,” Cheever says.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Drew says.
“Guys—” O says behind them, but in all the noise and confusion of the van pulling up, he goes unheard.
Arrow slides open the side door.
Flowers. Jesus, all those flowers. Enough for ten funerals.
“Whoa!” Drew covers his nose and mouth with the crook of his elbow.
Cheever goes, “It’s like a greenhouse farted.”
This is no time for jokes.
Park is all up in our faces. “What the fuck, Drew! Were you really just about to pop some rounds at us?”
Drew goes, “Sorry, man. Mistaken identity.”
“C’mon, hurry up,” Fish says, turning in the driver’s seat. “Get O loaded. We need to keep moving.”
The van is still screaming.
We peer through the dark jungle inside the van. There, in the back, among dozens of rotted bouquets, a woman writhes like she’s at a high school wrestling meet and doing her best not to get pinned to the mat. It’s her—the pregnant woman from the bomb makers’ hideout. In a mind blink, we understand what’s going on—and we don’t like it. This wasn’t part of the plan. Not even close.
Park snaps, “Get in, get in.”
If Park is freaking out, that means this is some serious shit all right. As gently and quickly as we can, we load O into the back of the van beside the woman. His torso is slick with blood. Too much blood.
Cheever gathers the gear and leaps inside. The door slams shut behind him.
Arrow calls out, “We’re good, Fish.” He makes his way forward and tells Park to get in back. King Big Balls will ride shotgun now.
And then we’re off. We’re back in action. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here! This time in a legitimate motor vehicle. We’re back, ba-by!
Then Cheever is at it again: “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
Fish, Arrow, Drew, and Park all say it at the same time: “Shut up, Cheeve!”
The van jerks forward with a gear crunch and heads down the street, bringing FOB Saro closer.
Along the way, Park gives a sitrep. It’s more words than any of us have heard him say at one time, all strung together.
48
On the Road Again
With Arrow navigating, we take wrong turns, hit dead-end streets, and are forced to make three-point turnarounds. With every lurch and reverse, the frustration rises. This feels like that land nav course at Fort Drum all over again. We’re spinning compasses in a foggy forest.
Arrow clenches his jaw, grits his teeth.
This should have been easy from here on out. The van should have been the solution.
The woman’s screams have died to a drip of moans. She rolls her head from side to side on her bed of flowers. Her body is soaked with sweat. Her eyes are closed. Like she’s praying.
We’re no doctors, but we’re guessing the contractions have died down or something. Don’t they come in waves?
Drew thinks if he’d been at the hospital with Jacy he might know about these things. He winces as that knife twists, digs deep into his gut.
The stowaay woman huffs like a boiling teakettle, but at least she’s stopped screaming for now.
O lies beside her on this floral mattress. His eyes are closed, too.
“How’s he doing back there?” Arrow calls over his shoulder.
“Holding steady,” we say.
But we’re lying. O is slipping, fading, falling away from us. His breath is shallow and he won’t open his eyes.
“O,” we say quietly, so Arrow can’t hear. “O, stay with us, man.”
“Hey,” he whispers. Or maybe it’s “okay.” It’s hard to hear him because the woman’s moans are on the rise again.
Drew goes, “You had to bring her?”
Park says, “Fish wanted to leave her. Said to dump her beside the road.”
“Jesus.”
“Said she was just another piece of useless baggage.”
From the back, we look at Fish. He turns the steering wheel left and right as Arrow guides him through the streets. He looks happy to be doing something useful.
“That’s cold—even for Fish,” Cheever says. He gets up from the bench seat and kneels beside the woman.
The woman senses the soldier next to her and opens her eyes. She looks right at Cheever—deep into his eyes—and, get this, she smiles. She sm
iles at Cheever, our suicidal jester who has been the cause of the day’s major wrong turns. She smiles at him and it stuns Cheever for a minute, this note of grace. He reaches out and takes her hand. He smiles back. “Hey there,” he says.
Up front, Arrow tells Fish: “Take a left at the next corner.”
“Are you sure?” Fish says.
“No. But it feels right. Take a left, Fish!”
The van veers and our bodies shift right.
We hear Arrow go, “Yesss!”
We look out through the windshield. “What?”
Arrow points. “There. Doesn’t that look like the mosque we used to see from Route Irish when we made our supply runs to Saro?”
We look and, though we can’t be sure, we tell Arrow we think it is.
If we can get to Route Irish, we can find FOB Saro.
We’re almost there.
49
Flowers
Almost there, almost there.
O is happy. He runs through a meadow hip-high with flowers. Roses everywhere. All colors: white, yellow, lavender, royal blue, and of course blood red. And get this: not a single one has thorns. O slips right through them as he sprints across the beautiful sea of flowers.
His wife—not his ex-wife, his wife—stands at the far end of the field. Melinda waves her arm, beckoning him. O bounds forward. She calls to him. She is backlit by a setting sun that’s turned the meadow a rich gold. It’s beautiful as a movie fade-out.
O thinks, Everything is going to be good from here on out, mi corazón. We’re golden.
O runs through the roses. His wife is bathed in light, she glows with sunset, and she wants him once again. O runs toward her and he is happy. The happiest he’s ever been.
50
Death
Shortly after 9:00 a.m., your platoon enters a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad—the section they’re now calling New Baghdad. As if the name, like a fresh coat of paint on a turd, could make a difference.
You are there to establish a checkpoint as part of a secure perimeter—a cordon, in military terms—while another unit from a different American brigade searches for a suspected IED somewhere inside the perimeter. You are the platoon sergeant, the big guy in charge (even though you’re not tall and you know to keep your head down—especially around bullying officers and senior NCOs). You go about the business of getting your men in place. You already went over this mission earlier back at Taji, drawing with arrows and squares in the dirt outside the motor pool, so now it’s just a matter of setting everything in motion. You love your men and they love you back, so things should go okay.