War Flower

by Brooke King

  For me, this wasn’t the measure of glory or honor but that of a job done too well. So, I give out the only number that gives weight or meaning to my time at war—the number of lives I chose to spare—and it is this number that I gave the old man when he asked me how many people I’ve killed: 250. I told him 250. He replied that the number seemed a bit high and did I really kill that many, but I replied that the number represented not how many I killed but how many I chose to let live. He looked at me strangely. Ashamed of the lowball number, I looked down at my black Converse sneakers as I told the old man that the number was not nearly high enough. He lifted an eyebrow at me and then nodded his head. The nurse called his name. He stood up and slapped me on the shoulder, which startled me. I flinched a little. The old man stepped back, thanked me for my service, and told me to take care. I looked at him bewildered. No smile. No handshake. I told him that I was just doing what they told me to do. He nodded his head and thanked me anyway before disappearing with the nurse through the double doors.

  Years later I was driving my kids to school when I realized there was something in the road. It had been eight years since Iraq, but still my training, instinct, muscle memory, or maybe just my PTSD made me stop ten feet short of the object. It moved. I clinched the steering wheel. Was it worth getting out of the Jeep to investigate? I contemplated turning around until one of my boys in the backseat pointed to the object.

  “Look, Mom, a duck.”

  Duck.

  Duck.

  I thought it over and over again until it registered that the duck was the quacking, flapping kind.

  “Is he hurt?”

  I looked closer, leaning over the steering wheel. There was blood on the pavement; the duck had been hit by a car, no doubt from some asshole driving too fast while texting on their phone. I knew I couldn’t leave it there to die, and the voices in the backseat insisted that I help. I put on my flashers, got out of the Jeep, and walked toward it. It tried to get up, making me jump. Startled by its attempt to get away, I moved back, not wanting to injure it further, but I couldn’t assess its injuries from far away. I slowly inched closer. By this time, two cars are backed up behind my Jeep, all interested as to why my vehicle had stopped in the middle of the road. A man walking his dog came up on the sidewalk.

  “Is it hurt?”

  I gave him my stupid face and told him, no, it’s just sleeping.

  The man muttered “fuck you” under his breath and handed me a section of his newspaper.

  I gave him the stupid face again as I looked down at the newspaper section, at an advertisement from Ashley Furniture about a china cabinet and dinner set marked down for a heinously low price for the Presidents’ Day sale. “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday” scrolled across the top of the ad in canary yellow bold lettering.

  “To pick him up with,” the man said.

  “Why me? Because I stopped to see if it was all right or because my Jeep has an Iraq vet sticker plastered on the back window?”

  “Both,” he said, as he handed me an extra leaflet. “Just in case,” he said, as he walked away with his dog in tow.

  No chivalry these days, I guess.

  The lady stopped directly behind my Jeep ran out, asked me if it was okay, and if there was a vet nearby. I almost gave her my stupid face, but then it occurred to me that New Tampa Animal Hospital was on the corner right before the school. I gave her my stupid face for good measure. I replied back to her that there’s a vet down the street and to give it a call while I tend to the duck. She called. I stared at the duck the way my father, with no plumbing skills, used to stare at the kitchen sink when it was broken, trying to figure out the best way to fix it without fucking it up even more. I had been a Combat Lifesaver in Iraq, knew how to stitch a wound, stop bleeding, and check for fractures on a human. I guessed that a duck would be no different. I bent down to look at the duck, to see how bad it was. I felt its ribcage. Nothing but mush. I shook my head and looked back at the lady calling on the phone.

  “Don’t bother.”

  She hung up and asked what I was going to do.

  “The only right thing to do. Kill it.”

  The lady looked back at her car. Her son was in the backseat playing on some gaming device. I looked over at the Jeep. The back window was rolled down; both boys had their heads out it, looking at me.

  “Do me a favor,” I said, nodding in the direction of the Jeep. “Keep them occupied.”

  She nodded at me, walked over to the Jeep on the other side, and asked the boys to roll up the window and come talk to her.

  I heard one of my boys yell, “Stranger danger!”

  I laughed and said it was okay that they talk to her.

  With the boys occupied, I used the newspaper to pick the duck up. Walking over to the side of the road near a hedge, I set the duck down. Its mouth was open, panting; its tongue sticking out. I looked into its eyes. The brown surrounding its irises faded as its pupils got bigger. I sighed. Now or never. I put my hands around its neck. I hesitated. I tightened my grip around its neck harder. I froze.

  The only other time I could remember freezing like that was a few months after I had gotten to Iraq. After a recovery run, on our way back to base with a 5-ton on the HET semitruck trailer, the fire that we had put out in the bed of the 5-ton broke out again. We pulled over on the side of Route Irish five minutes from Camp Liberty, got out, climbed on top of the trailer. Sergeant Lippert handed me up water bottles as I stood on one of the 5-ton truck tires and started dousing the flames. I was halfway into the third bottle of water when a bullet whizzed past my head and ricocheted off the quarter panel next to me. Sergeant Lippert hit the dirt and scooted underneath the HET trailer. I jumped off the 5-ton and onto the trailer bed, scooting underneath the axle and behind the tire I had just been standing on. In a low, prone position, I waited. With no weapon and the backup security a half mile down the road, I heard Sergeant Lippert tell me to get off the trailer and get to the ground. I went to move. Another bullet pinged off metal. And then again and again. Seconds of enemy fire turned into minutes until our convoy security came back for us. They laid down suppressive fire. I ran for it, jumping from the rig and toward the cab of the HET. I grabbed my M4 and jumped down next to Sergeant Lippert, who had only his side pistol. I started laying it down thick in the direction everyone else was shooting. Then it happened; an insurgent lifted his head just enough for me to get a shot at him. I was sure one of the .50 cal gunners from the security detail would pick him off, but he went back down. Then lifted his head again. Through my front sight, I could tell I had a clean shot. Sergeant Lippert spotted him.

  “Shoot him.”

  I looked through my front sight again, gripped down on the front plastic handle of my M4, and waited for him to pop back up. He did seconds later, with an AK in his hand, shooting wildly in the direction of our convoy security. Sergeant Lippert looked at me and yelled in my ear to shoot him.

  I gripped harder down on the plastic handle, lowered my head down to see through the front sight, and waited for him to show his head. He did. I froze again, but this time I watched through the front sight as his head snapped back, the bullet entered his forehead, and he disappeared entirely.

  Looking down at the duck now, it was the same feeling—that out of everyone present, this job had fallen on me. I was the only one there in the right position who was qualified to do it. This time I did not freeze. I gripped down on the duck’s neck harder. Snap. The body flapped a bit and then went limp, but I didn’t let go until the panting stopped. Setting it down on the grass, I saw feathers fly out of my hands from where I had squeezed down too hard on its neck. I went over to the nearby retention pond and washed my hands of the blood and remaining feathers. As I stood up and walked back toward the Jeep, I nodded at the lady. She mouthed a “thank you.” I half smiled. I opened the Jeep door, hopped in, put on my seat belt, turned off the flashers, and put the truck in drive. On the road again headed toward school, and the boys finally worked
up the nerve to ask me what happened to the duck. I told them I killed it. From my rearview mirror, I watched as their eyes widened. I had said the wrong thing. The mother in me was kicking myself, but the soldier in me knew it was the right thing to say. A barrage of questions followed: Why did you kill it? What will happen to it now? Will it go to heaven? Can ducks go to heaven?

  I listened to the questions all the way to the school drop-off line. I answered them all like a mother should, which meant that I lied: It was for the best. Yes, it will go to heaven. Yes, ducks can go to heaven. Up next for drop-off, I said my goodbyes, told them I loved them, listened to the door slam shut, and watched them scurry away before I drove off. I left the school and drove down the road toward where the duck lay, but as I got closer I thought about what I should have told the children about the duck instead of my blatant, motherly lies. I wanted to answer them with the truth: I put it out of its misery. It was better to have a quick death than a long painful one, like a sunken bullet wound to the chest that makes your lungs fill with blood until you choke to death. The duck will most likely decompose, rotting from the inside out until its bowels swell with gas and the internal organs putrefy enough that the smell attracts the vultures, a process that of course will take several hours, depending on how hot it is in the sun. Then the vultures will take their time picking the carcass apart, fighting over the best organs, the scraps with the most meat on them, until the duck’s body is nothing but a pile of leftover flesh, sinew, and bone that will continue to rot, splayed out in the grass until the rest of the beasts and bugs devour it. And no, dear, it is not going to heaven.

  As I passed the duck’s carcass on the side of the road, a blur of feathers and blood, I thought about my number, the number of lives I chose to save in Iraq. I thought about how my number hadn’t changed since I left, but now, after today, it had. And though I wasn’t in Iraq anymore and the duck was not human, I decided to subtract one. 249.

  A Message in the Sand

  It seems as though every soldier is handcuffed to history, their lives made into the pages of a history textbook that years from now will mark the occasion of the invasion by a timeline, a ticker running off to the side reading, “Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom,” with the beginning date and a dash that is followed by nothing. There is no permanent death toll, no paragraph that tells the strategic battle plans that led to the end of the war, and no picture with a face that is labeled as the clear victor.

  The war is still raging on.

  The bombs still dropping.

  The bullets still firing.

  The people on both sides still dying.

  The Boy I Killed

  When the boys were seven, they asked me if I had killed anyone. The responsible mother that I was, I answered with “of course not.” Then I asked them why they thought I had killed someone. They told me that they knew I had been a soldier, that I had gone to war, and that it must be the reason why I get so upset, start crying, and turn off the TV whenever a war movie is on and someone gets killed. It was a rational explanation from two very curious small children, and for the most part they were right. I wanted so badly to tell them the truth, to let them know how spot on they were about me, about the war, about why I acted a certain way, but I knew they weren’t ready. And yet, I hope someday they will ask again, so that I can tell them this:

  On most days I sped past the dead, watching, shooting, or observing the bodies turn to corpses, their chest cavities rippled backwards from bullet impacts, their bodies hitting the pavement or dirt with a dull thud that absorbed the blood, which seeped out of their chest or head or limbs as though it were a sprung leak in a hose line, easily patched up with a piece of cloth, if only our convoy would’ve stopped or paused a moment to aid them. I sat there and listened to the last words they spoke, which mumbled inaudibly the request for family, or sometimes they rambled on about the afterlife. Some asked for a final kiss or cigarette. Some just wanted one last sip of water. Either way, I sat there perched in the turret or behind a steering wheel as their bodies heaved and seized from the loss of blood, a death rattle that shook the bones clean of sin and broke open their mouths as they inhaled their last breath and let their soul slither out from the creases of their lips.

  Or maybe this:

  On a good day outside the wire, through the back gate, and away from the FOB, no one would die. The mission would go according to plan, a straight shot, no fancy business, just there and back. On bad days, when the ravens circled overhead as the convoy moved slowly down narrow streets and through throngs of people, the hairs on the back of my neck would stand at attention, my eyes tracing the outlines of building tops and side streets. And on really bad days, the body count exceeded the number of body bags we had brought with us.

  But there’s no relative distinction between any of these days, except for one, and it is this one that I will tell my children when they ask again:

  He stood above me, two stories up on the edge of a building, with an AK-47 in his hand. Lightly, his finger pressed the trigger. He closed his eyes. Blat. Blat. Blat. The bullets whizzed past my head and into the concrete wall of the building behind me. He had missed shooting me in the head, the only part sticking out of the Humvee turret. I swiveled the turret around, pointing my .50 caliber machine gun to the right, glancing quickly from the sidewalk all the way up the building until my eyes met his—his weapon still pointed at me. The fear of uncertainty flickered in his eyes as we stared at each other. I couldn’t shoot, but everything inside, from my heart slamming against my chest to the ringing in my ears, made the adrenaline course through my veins harder, beating my pulse into my fingertips, which longed to pull the trigger.

  Visual contact. Rooftop. Three o’clock. A deep inhale and slow exhale. Waiting for the natural pause before the inhale again, I aimed in his direction and found him standing there trying to fix a weapons malfunction. Putting my gun at center mass, I wanted to mash the butterfly trigger down, let loose my fear, my anger, my will to live.

  I don’t remember now if he jumped or fell or even if I had shot him or someone else in the convoy had; those details are gone, lost by time and a well placed TBI. But he was shot, he flew through the air, he hit the ground, and I watched all of it. Of that much I am certain; the memory of his body is all I have left of that day.

  A few seconds passed before I watched his body topple over the edge. A hollow thud is the only thing that accompanied the sound of bones being splintered and broken from the impact of his body hitting the street.

  The boy lay dead on the ground five feet in front of me with six M2 Ball (706.7 grain) bullets from a .50 cal machine gun in his chest—the blood thin and shiny around the holes. The wounds gaping open resembled thrown-up hamburger meat—chunks of flesh resting on his abdomen. His neck was snapped sideways from his two-story swan dive from the roof where he’d stood with the AK-47, his finger mashed down on the trigger. He had missed his kill shot by fractions of a centimeter—his aim a little too left of center. His head was kinked up to the sky, his eyes open. His jawbone was touching his shoulder. His mouth lay shoved open from the weight of his head pushing against his shoulder. Crimson blood dripped off his tongue as it lay halfway out of his mouth, bit in half on one side with pieces of a broken tooth stained tar-brown lodged into the soft tissue. His forehead was covered by nappy black hair that swept sideways across it, and his cheeks were thin—his face square-shaped. The young boy’s arms were gangly—he had barely hit puberty. His brown flannel shirt had the top two buttons undone, exposing the bones of his clavicle. The blood from his chest drew a line down to his belly button, where it separated and trickled off his body onto the dust-covered ground. A congealed pool formed at the small of his back. He lay face up, arms twisted, legs canted off to each side, broken—a mangled pile of flesh, sinew, and bone dead on the side of the street next to a pothole filled with raw sewage. A frail young boy, he wore dark brown linen-type pants and hajji sandals and a muj talisman aroun
d his neck—Muhammad, the prophet, stamped on its face and some Arabic writing that was too faded to read, even if I could’ve deciphered it. His sandals had fallen off midair on his way down. One lay next to him, the other a few feet from his head. There were no thoughts about killing or how it happened, only the body that was left on the ground after the bullets stopped firing.

  He could have been born Jahir, but he could’ve just as easily been born a girl, Amira. Maybe he was the only son of Raheem Saeed Azar, a well-known businessman. Did Jahir, after school, go to his father’s warehouse to help pack and load large wooden crates full of produce bound for various Baghdad marketplaces? The scent of leeks, Zahdi dates, red onions, and Persian limes wafted from the open doors each time he stepped inside. What did the warehouse look like? Maybe it was a large warehouse that had been in Jahir’s family for several generations. Was his father proud like mine? Did he hound Jahir about needing to do something with his life? Or did his father have it all planned out for him already? I know my father had plans for me. College. PhD perhaps, a cushy job at one of the family friends’ companies. A position not too far up to be considered nepotism. I guess going to war ruined all that for him. My father always reminded me of what I gave up before I left for Iraq. Did his father walk him around the warehouse floor once a month, reminding him that someday the warehouse would be Jahir’s to run? When Saddam Hussein fell from power, had Jahir’s family stayed neutral? Maybe not taking sides was better for business. At least, that’s what my father would’ve done—not get involved with politics; too many hurt feelings, he would’ve said. Jahir didn’t look like the soldier type or even close to being a patriot for his religion, but maybe he had found that as the war in his country moved on with time, his religion forced on him a tradition of sacrifice for Allah. I imagined his father too proud to take sides like mine but behind closed doors to be a proclaimer of faith and country. It is the Shi’a way, he could have overheard his father say from the kitchen as he spoke to Jahir’s mother and grandmother. Every boy must learn the ways of Muhammad. Did Jahir want to be religious? Did he think his father was right, that in order to come of age he would have to serve? Our upbringing and our arrival in this place, was it so different? My father had pressured me constantly about getting into Stanford. I could imagine Jahir sitting on his bed as his father talked to him. We all endured the sacrifice for our families, his father could’ve said, but what sacrifice did his father mean and did it eat at Jahir when he dwelled on it too long, like college had for me? I bet it was hard for him to ignore the traditions of his religion. Three times a day it rang from the mosque loudspeaker—the adhān probably echoing off the warehouse floor, through the paper-thin walls of his father’s house, through the alleyways and marketplace streets of Baghdad. The call to prayer backed by zithers and a stern voice chanting. Did it beckon him to take his place among the ranks? Maybe Jahir had been taught as a child that a man’s honor lies in his family. His duty was to protect them. Did Jahir spend his days at the warehouse contemplating the war like I had done when I worked at a video store? Did he slip out the back door near his father’s office at lunchtime to sit down and smoke? He wore a talisman around his neck—the inscription on the face worn. I wonder if he looked down at the talisman around his neck and questioned if his father was right. Did he think about the duty he had to his family, to his religion, as I had thought about my duty to my country? Was he resigned to telling his father that he would become a man of faith until he had reserved the right to take over his father’s business? Did his voice waver like mine did when had I worked up the courage to tell my family my decision? Yet being a man of business didn’t suit Jahir, and I wondered if this was why his pious stance was strong enough to kill another human being. Did he do it because he felt the urge to bring honor to his family or was he just as scared as I was to pull the trigger?