by Chuck Dixon
Hector dropped the tailgate to slide his arms into the straps of a backpack.
“You sure we’ll be welcome, brother?” Hector said. He slipped the combat sling of his rifle to hang from his shoulder.
“Bazît’s a kind of folk hero to these people. All we need to do is find him.”
“If he’s still alive.”
“He’s a hard man to kill.”
Levon poured water into cups and mugs held out to him by women anxious for water for their thirsty children. Hector heard him offering words of comfort to the mothers and even saw the man smiling. They ducked their heads in thanks, smiling and giving thanks. Hector stepped up onto the tailgate to dig into a sack of MREs. Joining the party Levon started to wing them over the heads of the crowd. Men snagged them out of the air while Hector called color commentary.
“That’s an easy out! Good catch there, Sammy! Look at this guy! Magic hands!”
Levon moved along the line offering water from the jugs held under his arms. He moved through the crush to approach a young woman in a khimar shawl. She carried a baby bundled in her arms. She turned from him, fear plain in her eyes.
“For your baby,” he said in Farsi then in Kurd.
She lowered her head and moved along the line away from him into a clutch of men waiting along the edge of the crowd. Holding the jugs over his head, Levon waded after her. The women pressed closer, imploring him to share the water. He handed the jugs off to hands outstretched toward him and shoved his way toward the young woman and baby.
The woman saw him and broke into a run. She raced, head down, for the place where the line became constricted to enter the HESCO barrier maze. People waiting for entry crowded there in a dense pack. Levon held his M4 over his head to squeeze out three rounds. The crowd around him collapsed to the ground. Up at the checkpoint voices shouted back and forth. The loud metallic clack of bolts drawn back on the Ma Deuces up atop the towers. Levon shrugged off his pack and sprinted forward after the young woman. She stumbled as a sandal flew from one foot. She clutched the bundle closer to her to run headlong into the packed queue of refugees crouched in the chokepoint. Levon slammed into her back, driving her hard against a wall of HESCOs.
The world went white in that instant then deepest black.
23
Most of the morning of her first day of school was spent in the school office. A picture was taken for her student ID card. A form to sign giving the school permission to retrieve her school records from Huntsville. Questions about her medical history. And about her two-year absence from school. She was assigned a locker. The rest of the morning was spent waiting on benches outside offices until they had a neat little file made up on her and a class schedule worked out.
It was decided that she be set back a year, making her the tallest girl in her class. She didn’t think this was fair. They didn’t even test her.
It was near the end of the third period by the time Merry was sent to a classroom. The lesson was almost over when she entered the room. She handed a note to the teacher who pointed out an empty chair near the back of the room. The class was Environmental Science. The teacher read in a droning voice from a notebook open on his desk. Most of the kids ignored him to play with their phones. Games and texting. One kid, a few seats up in the next row, looked like he was taking notes. Merry craned to see the page of his notebook. He was absorbed in drawing a picture of a superhero fighting a robot.
For the rest of the day, except by her teachers, Merry was largely ignored. The other kids disregarded her, absorbed in their own friendships and cliques. Otherwise it was just another day at Calhoun Middle School.
School seemed so boring now. Or maybe it was always boring and she never noticed before, distracted by her own friends and cliques. Her routine had been broken when she went on the run with her father. There had been no regimentation to her life. Every day was different with her daddy. Back in school again, everything was routine and rote. Roll calls, assigned seats, changing classes and every moment of the day scheduled to the minute.
Lunch came around and she was starved. Mrs. Knox had not given her money for lunch or packed anything for her. Sitting in the cafeteria watching the other kids eat was torture. She walked out onto an asphalt courtyard in the elbow of the long L-shaped building. She could still hear the rise and fall of the buzzing conversation from the cafeteria. But she was alone and enjoying the solitude.
She walked around outside, hugging her arms to her. It was a warm day for the time of year but still she was chilled. There was no coat for her at the house. Out in the school back lot there was a pair of basketball stanchions, the chain nets tinkling in the breeze. Some concrete benches and sickly evergreen trees. Beyond them was a pre-fab building set up on blocks with wooden steps and a broad deck leading to a double doorway. Above the doors was a sign informing her that this was the school library.
Inside was warm and dry. The white noise of the central heating unit on the roof closed out the sounds from outside. There were long empty tables, with chairs pulled in. Rows of steel shelves were lined with books of all sizes with colorful spines. The smell of old paper and glue everywhere. And another scent that made Merry’s mouth water. Cooked onions and something sweet. She stepped around a row of spin racks, pockets sagging with old magazines, to find a long counter of blond wood.
“Oh,” the woman behind the counter said. A petite woman in a Calhoun sweatshirt. She looked bird-like with angled glasses set atop a long nose. Her black hair, fringed with gray above the ears, was pulled back into an untidy braid. A pair of pencils poked from the bundle.
“I’m sorry,” Merry said. She backed away.
“Are you with a class?” the woman said.
“No. Just me.”
“Where’s your class?”
“At lunch.”
“Hungry for knowledge instead of PB and J?” The woman smiled at her own joke, encouraging Merry to share it. It was an open smile that made her eyes crinkle.
"Both, I guess," Merry said. She returned the smile.
“Well, as usual, I brought too much from home.” The woman held up a pair of chopsticks, a pea pod expertly grasped between them.
“I don’t want to bother anyone,” Merry said. She took another step back, her eyes fixed with longing on the shiny green wedge.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll wind up throwing half of this out anyhow.” The woman gestured for Merry to join her behind the counter.
Merry had never had Chinese food before and certainly had never eaten with anything other than a fork and spoon. Ms. Booth, that was her name, showed Merry how to position the sticks between her fingers and thumb. After a few near misses, and one disc of water chestnut sent flying into the book returns, she got the hang of it. She dug into a delicious mix of rice, chicken and some veggies that she was tasting for the first time in her life.
As grateful as she was for lunch, she enjoyed the conversation even more. Ms. Booth insisted that Merry call her ‘Coco.’ This forced a giggle from Merry. She sprayed rice onto the carpet. The giggle only deepened as Ms. Booth insisted that Coco was indeed the name her parents had given her.
“People always think I’m kidding them,” Coco said.
“I’m sorry I laughed,” Merry said.
“It’s okay. I grew up with all the jokes. ‘Coo-coo for Coco Puffs!’ ”
Merry snorted.
Coco didn’t ask her any questions beyond school and books and things like that. Merry only told her that she was new and this was her first day. She told herself that the story of how she wound up in foster care was too complicated to share. What she really felt was a shame she couldn’t understand. This was the worst time in her short life so far, worse even than losing her mother to cancer. Worse even than the peculiar and uncertain life she lived with her father. At least, in the middle of all the chaos, her father was a constant. And now all constancy was gone and somehow, she felt it might be her fault.
But Merry was happy to forget all
of that for the moment. The library was always her favorite place at school and today it was a refuge.
It was the librarian’s turn to laugh when Merry told her that Mickey Spillane was her favorite writer. Merry told her about her uncle’s vast library of paperback mysteries and Marine Corps histories.
“Not exactly Harry Potter,” Coco said.
“That magic stuff’s okay but I like the private eye stuff more,” Merry said.
“Nothing wrong with Mike Hammer. You might like Raymond Chandler too.”
“Who’s that? Do you have any here?”
“Sadly, no. A little above the required public school reading list for junior high. But I have some at home I’d be glad to let you borrow.”
“That would be great. I think I heard the bell. I’d better get back. Thank you for lunch, Coco,” Merry said, beaming. She set down her bowl and slid from the stool.
“Well, thank you for the company. It’s not every day a student comes into the library of their own free will,” Coco said, returning Merry’s farewell wave.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“If you’re hurtin’ you’re alive.”
24
He could hear but not see.
There were voices speaking somewhere. The ambient sounds of a room, wind rustling through shifting cloth. The clink of a glass. Someone coughing. Far away the thump of a generator.
The smell of rubbing alcohol and something else, something corrupt, beneath it.
He opened his lids to gray darkness.
There was pressure across the bridge of his nose. His face was wrapped in cloth from his upper lip to above his brow. He made to touch the bandages. His elbows would not bend. Restraints.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder and told him to relax, to place his fate in God’s hands. The voice was feminine. The language was English with the trace of an accent.
“My eyes,” he said. His voice an arid croak.
“They are intact. Your sight is not damaged.”
The woman's fingertips remained on his shoulder while she turned to speak to someone, a man — an exchange in Kurdish.
“You will sleep now,” she said when she turned back to him.
He made to respond but his mouth filled with cotton. The gray field before his eyes turned to speckles of yellow. A warm tide washed over him until his head was submerged and he was gone from all care.
“Wake up, you crazy fucker.”
Levon came around to find himself in a double row of bunks in a long tent structure. Men in various stages of consciousness filled the ward. More were lying on the ground between bunks. Hector Ortiz was standing at the foot of his bunk.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Hector said. He was grinning but his eyes looked tired.
“Am I?”
“Lucky?”
“Alive.”
“Well, you managed to fuck yourself up. But, yeah, you’re a lucky one. That bitch only managed to set off her detonator. The full charge didn’t blow.”
The restraints were off Levon's arms. He could touch his face. One side of his head was shaved and there were fresh sutures around one ear and over one eye. His eyes burned and felt gritty. The vision was blurred — more in the left eye than the right. His torso was wrapped tight in stretch gauze.
“The haji chick took most of the blast. You broke some ribs and nearly lost that ear.”
“My eyes.”
“Chemical burns. No permanent scarring, they tell me. Some Aussie missionary doctors patched you up. One of them is hot.”
The accented voice. The gentle fingertips.
With an effort Levon sat up and swung his bare feet to the floor.
“Hold on there, brother. You’re in no shape to deploy,” Hector said. He reached out to press Levon back onto the bunk. Levon shoved him away.
“I won’t get better laying here,” he said. He levered up, using his arms, standing, shaky at first.
Hector looked down at the man lying on the floor between Levon’s and the next bunk. The guy had blood-caked tubes running under stained bandages. His eyes and mouth were wide open. Hector watched an ant crawl over the guy’s tongue and out onto his chin.
“Sure. Sure. Let’s get your ass out of here,” Hector said. He made to give Levon a supporting hand. His reward was to have his fingers brushed away. Levon found his BDUs, stiff with dried blood, and slid them on. There was no shirt and no shoes. His gear was gone.
A nurse half his size attempted to stop him. He waved her away. Hector shook his head at her. They made their way through the maze of bunks and makeshift nurse stations to the cold night outside. The medical tent was in a long row of similar structures along with some battered ready-made Conex huts. There were flat-roofed buildings beyond them backlit by green halogen lights along a fenced perimeter.
The place was on a war footing hustle. Vehicles of all kinds carried wounded to the med compound. Armed men were everywhere. Most were young men in uniform. Clean shaven but for a few older men wearing the brushy mustache favored by married Yazidi men. Others were civilian militia including women. A gaggle of children chased a goat among the wicket of guy wires strung from the tents. The goat nimbly jumped the lines as the children tripped and clambered, giggling, behind it.
“Is Bazît here in camp?” Levon said.
“Yeah. He heard about some crazy white guy jumping a suicide bomber and came to check you out,” Hector said.
“So, he is alive.”
“Yeah. And he thinks you’re the shit, Cade. Also thinks you’re as crazy as I do. They told me some stories that have to be half bullshit.”
The rich smell of cooked meat came between the tents. Levon’s stomach clenched tight as a fist.
“I need to eat,” he said.
“My treat,” Hector said. They followed the greasy scent of lamb and onions.
They were welcomed to share in a pair of sheep roasting on spits over an open fire. There were piles of unleavened bread and some kind of mashed squash. Strong coffee with sweet goat cream. Levon and Hector took a seat on the ground with some of the men.
Some kids were gathered around the electric glow of a television watching cartoons. A line of women in camo BDUs danced shoulder to shoulder in a rhythm to some Sufi dirge playing on a battered boombox set atop an oil drum. A slow desultory step with heads lowered and faces dour. A dance of mourning.
The men about the fire nodded to them and made gestures of greeting. There were no smiles but there was respect. Someone found Levon a uniform tunic in forest camo. He wore it draped over his shoulders.
One of the men, a few years older than Levon shared pictures with them on his mobile phone. A son about twenty. Three daughters ranging from pre-adolescent to teen. Pictures from a family wedding. From dinners and from school houses. Levon exchanged words with the man in Kurmanji. The firelight gleamed off tears in the man’s eyes. They looked out of place on his hard features.
“What’s the story?” Hector said. He waggled fingers at the bright images on the mobile screen.
“He’s from Sinjar. Islamic State came in the middle of the night. They killed the men. His son. Took his wife and daughters.” Levon handed the phone back to the man with a few words of sympathy.
“Where was he?”
“Away helping a cousin who was ill. He says he wishes he had been there, died there. He would have used any weapon to kill the Daesh. He will die killing as many of them as he can.”
“Jesus.”
“He says that he knows what has happened to his daughters but he will forgive them. He will welcome them back. The Yazidi faith used to be as unforgiving about rape as the Koran. But since all this happened the Yazidi sheiks have prayed to the angels and voted to change their religious laws.”
“Nice of them,” Hector said. He made a pfft sound with his lips.
“That’s a big accommodation for them. Any woman who escapes or is bought back from Daesh makes a pilgrimage to Lalish. That’s their sacred village. She can be
cleansed there. Made whole.”
“Does this guy know where his family is?”
“They could be anywhere. ISIS is selling off women to men all over in an open sex market. Syria. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Or they could have been forced into marriage with a Daesh fighter.”
“Fuckers.”
“And Yazidi women get a high price.”
"Some of them have light hair. I even saw some blondes with green eyes. What's the deal?" Hector glanced toward the line of dancing women. There were a few in the line, their hair sun-streaked and with long curls, that would have fit right in at a Kenny Chesney concert.
"Nobody's really sure where Yazidis are from originally. According to their faith they've always been here, direct from the seed of Adam after the fall of Eden," Levon said.
“So, they’re Christians?”
“No. They believe in the same god of the Bible. But they also believe that God left the Earth in trust to seven immortal beings to rule. They’re something like angels.”
“Seven Spanish angels in the valley of the gun.”
“You told me you don’t like country music.”
“Don’t. My dad’s a Willy Nelson fan. You two could hang. What’s the picture of the bird I see everywhere?”
“That’s the Peacock Angel, the head being who watches over mankind.”
“I never even heard of Yazidis until a week ago.”
“There’s less than a million of them in the world,” Levon said.
“And less than that now,” Hector said.
A trio of uniformed men crossed the open space around the fire on a direct line for Levon. They had weapons combat slung across their chests. Their faces were flickering masks of menace in the flame glow. Hector started to rise. Levon pressed a hand to his knee to keep him seated.
The shortest of the men stood over Levon, fixing him with a scowl. The guy looked like a pirate with a raised scar of puckered white flesh running down his face to his throat on one side. Close-cropped hair black with flecks of white. A badass biker’s goatee.