At five thousand feet, Charlie pressed his face against the acrylic window and saw Chicago in miniature. The gray quills of the glowing skyline, the tangled intestines of the highways and exit ramps, the jutting bend of the light-flickered coast. Behind it all, the sun sank into its fishbowl, and Lake Michigan turned into a wide plain of slate. Charlie shook his gin and tonic—only ice remained. He tossed it in his mouth anyway, crunching, hoping something strong had been absorbed. At four thousand feet, the plane descended toward O’Hare, heading west, and all the skyscrapers began to light up—the Sears Tower’s spires glowed bright ivory, while the rim around the Hancock flashed red and blue, supporting the middling efforts of Cubs baseball. At three thousand feet, the dying sun bloomed ink into the starless sky, and the lake retracted into blackness. Then the city was out of sight, and it was the low-hanging spread of the suburbs—Oak Park and Des Plaines and Elmhurst and Addison. The arterial flickers of headlights crisscrossed each other in the thousands. Charlie closed his eyes and waited for the whump of wheels touching runway, the rush that was actually time slowing down, brakes turning on, ears crackling and popping, everything far away becoming close.
It hadn’t been long ago that the same plane had taken him away from this city—same plane, different person, anyway. Into the mountains. God, he remembered how panicked he had been, freaked out by his own apathy. He wasn’t too young, like a lot of the enlisted. Not in trouble with the law, not too slow for college, not patriotic, not violent, not anything but bored with having everything his way, all the time. That constant, nagging thought, this is all there is, stinging his mind like sewing needles. Burning him as he went from bar to bar, girl to girl, training program to corporate job. And that first experience, that first contact with something beyond the fuzz he’d felt his entire life—that’s where the change had begun. And even as he thought it, the plane swinging low, the ice crunching against his molars and sending pulses of tinnitus into his ears, the memory was clear.
Halfway through basic training, Charlie felt the baby fat—whatever remained, anyway—falling off him the way butter slides off a pancake. His cheekbones were pointed and visible, his pectorals taut and molded, instead of just there, as they’d been before. And while he’d always been skinny, now when he lifted up his shirt, he imagined a chiseled lifeguard emerging from the surf. His abs looked like rolling pins. He found himself enjoying the brutal early mornings and the smell of cut grass, the inhibition of the showers, the steady drills, and the ever-present white noise of boot soles: thudding and marching and scuffing and skidding. Barkley, his younger brother, couldn’t have handled the regimen. Even Dad, who was an athlete in his time, would have had issues. Dad gave orders—didn’t take them. And he wouldn’t have understood the purpose or style of the drill sergeants. But Charlie liked it all. He liked the yelling and the assholes in charge and knew not to take it personally. What people didn’t understand was that they weren’t actually yelling at you, they were yelling at their idea of you, the image of the soldier. They were yelling at the idea of green recruits who didn’t know shit and had to be told, sometimes very loudly, sometimes until flecks of spit were on their cheeks, what the score was. And Charlie let it all slide off, let it slide until he was cut and muscled and well trained and even dangerous, as easy as butter down the side of a pancake.
He’d turned twenty-six during that March—2010, then. Incredible. The fifteen months since had chugged by like a decade. And what had spurred him to enlist? To leave a management position with Lucent Technologies? To leave behind his degree in finance at Augustana, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Karen, his fucked-up but tolerable family, and his Wicker Park condo overlooking the Chicago skyline? It all came down to a feeling. Charlie had woken up one day and the feeling was there. Urgent. Necessary. And the specifics of it—the tightness in his chest, the icy worm that seemed lodged inside his intestines, the dreams of needing to do something good—none of it went away until he signed up.
His family didn’t understand. Not really. He gave speeches, sure—speeches about being an American and the need to serve and the idea of duty. But in truth it all came down to a feeling. And the army was a surrogate family for him, a family that stayed together. He knew part of his love for the drill sergeants was that his own father was not a yeller, and enduring the screams of his superiors was like being a tourist in a childhood he had never been privy to. Being pushed, disciplined, shouted at—there were benefits, sure. But it was also quaint and ironic, a part of the world Charlie had thought didn’t exist anymore.
In the airplane, the lights of the runway burned ahead, and Charlie remembered meeting up with his old high school buddy during his first month overseas. He remembered how he’d sat with Eddie Campo and the rest of the company one July afternoon in 2010, outside another godforsaken mountain village that smelled like dirt and shit. Hell, all of Afghanistan smelled like dirt. There was no other way to explain it. Iraq, Campo said, had smelled like burning garbage. But Afghanistan rarely had that scent, only once in a long while. Most of the time it was dirt. Mountains and ramshackle villages and bearded, sandal-wearing hajjis and the constant, unending smell of dirt.
Charlie had sat with Campo on the side of the road while the bomb squad checked the mottled outpost across the bridge. This town, like all the others, was filled with flat, squat, hollowed-out homes the color of earthy clay. No electricity for most. And the mountains were all around them, towering, snowcapped, beautiful, even—if it wasn’t for the Taliban. The mountainous border of Afghanistan and Pakistan could have been the best ski resort in the world, Charlie thought, under different circumstances. They were at seven thousand feet already, but higher up, farther outside the wire and around the COPs, at altitudes of nine thousand feet, those fuckers were waiting, planning, living in dirt and mud, praying for the death and destruction of the Army and the United States.
Campo, fair-haired and a little chunky, lit a cigarette. “Another day in paradise, my friend.”
Charlie grunted. “Reminds me of Cabo. No. Puerto Vallarta. Pool bar around the corner, right?”
“Nice try. And hey—it’ll be your first full month over here tomorrow, won’t it? Thirty days in the Stan?”
“Yeah.”
“Any questions?”
Charlie hated asking questions, because over here, it was like poking a beehive. Once you asked one, a hundred more buzzed forth, and all the answers stung.
“Yo, Brunson.”
“No questions, no questions—” and then, hearing movement, he pointed to a group of casually jogging Afghanis carrying AK-47s and wearing ragged blue uniforms. “Actually, yeah. Who the hell are those guys again? Recruits?”
“Christ,” Campo said. “Afghan Local Police. What a waste of space.”
“Who pays for them? Government?”
Campo shook his head. “NATO. Another one of their bright ideas. Guess how many times they’ve failed?”
“Fuck if I know,” Charlie said. He watched them line up against a half-collapsing stone wall littered with white rocks. A commanding officer was yelling something in another language.
“Five times. Five motherfucking times. These are hajjis with big guns and big egos and no backbone—always unpredictable.”
“Invertebrate fucking hajjis.”
“It’s serious, man. I was here in ’08, and they weren’t the Afghan Local Police, they were the Afghan National Auxiliary Police. They got disbanded that year for constantly fucking up.”
“Horrible in battle?”
“Not even. Part of it’s NATO’s fault. They give local hajjis guns and power but only pay them seventy dollars a month. Seventy bucks. So of course they’re going to be loyal, right? Who wouldn’t be loyal for seventy bucks a month?”
Charlie raised his hand.
“Exactly,” Campo said. “So some of these fuckers start squeezing Afghan civilians for extra cash. Leaning on them like goddamn Chicago mobsters. Others start cozying up to the bad guys. Now, I’m not saying they wouldn’t have done it anyway, but if NATO didn’t pay them like sweatshop day laborers, maybe they’d show some loyalty.”
“Maybe.”
“And then you get reports that they’re not even loyal to the Afghan government, period. Some are helping out local warlords, passing along information, and again, taking extra cash under the table. Selling sensitive information to the Taliban, for Christ’s sake.”
Charlie watched the blue-uniformed men reorganize into two lines and, led by their commanding officer, march over the bridge and into town. “Jesus,” he said, “they look like heavily armed Cub Scouts.”
“But,” Campo said, raising a dirt-caked finger, “it’s important to note that this time it’s supposed to be ‘different.’ They’ve got a new plan this time. The sixth edition will be a winner.”
“A winner,” Charlie repeated, lowering his sunglasses as the clouds parted and the Afghan sun opened up on them, turning all the sand and dirt and rocks a shade of white.
“This time the Local Police were initiated by the Afghan government and not NATO. So this time, NATO trains them and pays them for a while, and then the local government kicks in and takes over.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re buying it.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Campo put out his cigarette.
“Not to change the subject, but I really need to find myself some strange ass.”
“Truth.”
“Humping it wouldn’t be so bad if we got a hold of some college students. Any good-size colleges around here?”
“You’re fucking nuts, man.”
“Although,” Charlie said, “Girls Gone Wild Kabul would just be hajjis flashing their faces and then covering them back up. Seeing an exposed eyebrow isn’t as titillating as I’d hoped.”
“Yeah. Fucking noses and chins.”
The sound of bells filled the air, and Charlie turned, half expecting to see a slew of shaggy Clydesdales towing a Budweiser sleigh. But instead it was yet another jingle truck. This one was medium-size, bouncing up the dirt road with tassels and chimes swinging like hippie beads from the bumpers, banging together and making an enormous racket. On the sides of the truck were colorful murals—the only color Afghanistan seemed to have—with painted depictions of inland lakes and rolling hills and white-pillared buildings, and, in the blur of its passing, Charlie saw the aqua blue of fresh water and the emerald green of sloping countryside and the bold lemon of a faraway sun. And then, just as quickly and loudly as it had appeared, the jingle truck was gone, the color faded, only dirt clouds and the desolate, rock-strewn village around them.
“Did you see those eyes on the back of that truck?” Campo asked.
“Eyes?”
“Painted, gypsy-looking eyes. They’re on all the jingle trucks. I’ve been trying to figure out what they mean.”
Charlie stared into the distance, at the back of the truck as it faded around the bend. It did look like there might be a pair of eyes painted on the back.
“You think it’s some voodoo shit?” Charlie asked.
“Don’t know. All these guys are nut jobs, anyway. I mean, have you smelled them?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “What the fuck? Not to be a dick about it, but damn. They all smell bad.”
Campo pulled out his second cigarette, flicked on his lighter, cupped his hands, and lit it. “No running water in half these villages, man. Well water. And no need to be coy—they smell like pigs. It’s a fact. There’s a reason for it, but it’s also a fact.”
Charlie looked into the distance at the steel-colored mountains and a swath of migrating birds, opened his mouth to respond, but then there was a hot wind on his face and he felt his body lift up in the air and move backward. There was no thought as he lifted, only scenery, blue sky and mountain tips and the white stone wall and, as he spun, a plume of ashen smoke. But then his body wheeled and the dirt road came forward like a jagged fist, and instantly he felt his nose break against the tiny white rocks and felt the heat of fire and the warmth of blood coming down the sides of his cheek, gurgling into his ear. There was no sound. There was only a reverberation—a wavering, inverted cymbal being smacked, and the dull scrape of dirt against his forehead. Was that really blood? It could be water. Had to be water because there was so much of it. The ringing became louder, and behind the ringing was muffled yelling, muffled from all around, as if he were inside a phone booth. He heard Campo groaning and murmuring fuck, fuck, fuck and then realized that some of the fucks were coming from him, maybe all of them, and then he rolled over and one eye opened and he saw blue sky and a shaking, dirty, blistered hand in front of that sky that had to be his own.
And then, as quickly as the other sounds had disappeared, as tremendously prevalent as that inverted, buzzing, perpetual cymbal crash had been, rearing up and taking him over, it disappeared and the shouting of men and the blowing of wind and the crackling burning of fire was all around him. He heard the trucks moving, could tell by the sound of the engines that one of them was an MRAP, one of those big, khaki-colored juggernauts, built to withstand mines and deflect the blasts—
“Jesus Christ, get these guys back,” somebody yelled. “Back!” He felt himself being lifted up.
Charlie groaned. Heard himself groan. All of it was still very far away, although he could hear better now and was aware of the fire on his side of the bridge, the side that was supposed to be safe.
“You okay, pal?” a voice asked. “You okay? You need a stretcher? Give the word, Brunson. Can you talk?”
“Campo,” Charlie said. “Where’s Campo?”
The voice shouted something Charlie couldn’t understand, he was getting only bits and pieces now, garbled words snaking in and out of his eardrums, drowned out by the thundering of automatic weapons and the passing of a Chinook helicopter, and then, then—“Assholes used a decoy to conceal the real IED. Brunson, hold tight—we’re getting you out of here.”
Charlie lifted a hand but felt it drop back down, and then time disappeared and consciousness wavered like he was half in half out of a pond, and through a dream he felt himself lifted again, and he worried that he was distracting the men, needing to be carried like this, that he was a hindrance, that he needed to walk, that he was being a pussy, but Charlie felt so tired and so far deep into that rippling pond that he couldn’t help it, no amount of fighting could stop it, so he sank into the pond and the feeling of the hot flames vanished and everything became cool darkness, everything cold black silk, shadows, gone.
The plane shuddered, thumped, and screeched, and Charlie started, leaned forward, gasping. He must have said something out loud, or made some kind of awkward moan, judging by the way the flight attendant was looking at him. God, he thought, it was right out of a movie, the former soldier haunted by his daydreams. Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan, he’d seen them all, even written a movie blog in that other life within Chicago. But he wasn’t haunted. It wasn’t even possible to be haunted anymore, not when every human emotion was televised and twice-cliché, when every scrap of nuance was meta, steeped in a self-awareness that came with its own sound track. The brakes in the plane powered up, and everyone lurched forward. Charlie saw that he had dropped his cup. The last bit of ice rolled away from his feet. As the plane slowed, he felt the absurd urge to pick the ice up, to conserve it. He laughed at himself.
He and Campo had both survived the IED blast, recovered quickly enough, and Charlie’s expectations had been turned on their head yet again. Instead of being sent home as a mangled mess or in a body bag, he’d been handed back his M4 with months of tour ahead, and been told to play the game again. And the IED had merely been his formal introduction—his opening ceremony for the storm of shit that was to come.
They were taxiing. The illuminated FASTEN SEAT BELT sign blinked off, and a collective unbuckling rippled through the cabin. Outside, Charlie saw the illumination of other runways, of O’Hare’s many darkened gates, and the fluorescent lights within. He thought about the cube of ice, melting out of sight. Under someone else’s seat. He bent down to reach for it.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the lead flight attendant said—and without looking up, Charlie could sense her beaming—“I want to be the first to welcome you…”
He kept reaching under his seat. It was only one ice cube. His fingertips grazed the rough fabric of the airplane carpeting, the steel strut supporting the chair in front of him, the wrapper of a discarded snack. Fucking ice cube, he thought, gritting his teeth.
“Well, I’ll just say it,” the flight attendant said. “Welcome home to the United States of America!”
Charlie punched himself in the leg, then leaned back hard in his seat. Some people in the cabin were cheering. He looked through the window, at the gate that extended into a bridge, connecting with the cabin. His mother was out there, waiting to take him home. There was more applause, more shouting, America! Fuck yeah! Get it! Portillo’s, bitch, Italian beef in twenty minutes! Charlie wondered, feeling the tears on his cheeks, if any part of this was found in a movie.