Washington got a medal for valor under enemy fire. Dominguez got a medal for valor under enemy fire. I got a medal for valor under enemy fire that was really for being an officer under enemy fire. Chambers got a medal for saving the life of an officer under enemy fire.
We drove to Camp Independence for the ceremony. It was held in a quad of yellow grass behind headquarters. Old Glory and the battalion flag hung from a pole in the quad center, flapping indolently under light clouds. Battalion staff walked through the ranks, shaking the men’s hands. The soldiers saluted their faces and laughed at their backs, calling them fobbits and rear-echelon motherfuckers, holding the ethical high ground of the grunt because it was all they had.
Meanwhile, I watched Sergeant Chambers and his intel girlfriend, Sergeant Griffin, talk in excited whispers. They’d snuck behind a storage trailer where they thought no one could see them. She smiled and squeezed his hand, and while he didn’t smile, he did squeeze her hand back.
The ceremony was short and mundane. The Big Man called us to attention and told us we’d lived up to the scorpion name. “This is what Clear-Hold-Build is all about,” he said. Then he gave a speech about honor and freedom and wished us a happy Fourth of July. He concluded by reading a passage from the Bible, Numbers 31:
Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.
And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.
Being a Gospels man, I wasn’t sure what to make of that. The Yahweh of the Old Testament always seemed like a petulant maniac to me, though the selected passage didn’t sound so bad. It sure fired up the Big Man, who finished the reading by pounding a fist into his palm and saying, “Now you’re in camp! And you’re staying here, for the night at least.”
He expected the soldiers to cheer, and when they didn’t, he stopped talking and started pinning on medals. He should’ve known the last thing my men wanted was to stay at Camp Independence. We’d gone feral. It was no place for us.
When the Big Man got to me, he said he’d always known I had it in me and that I’d lived up to my brother’s name. He thanked me for my service to country, and I saluted. I’d never hated another man more.
Afterward, soldiers milled around in groups. I spotted Sergeant Griffin standing underneath a building ledge, and walked over to her. “We’re all really excited for you guys,” she said, beads of clear sweat rolling down her face. “Everyone thinks you’re one of the best platoon leaders in the whole battalion, even the brigade now. You did great out there.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Couldn’t have done it without my platoon sergeant. Wouldn’t even be here without him.”
She nodded knowingly. We spent the next five minutes talking about her son, who’d just graduated kindergarten back in Hawaii. She was very proud of him.
In the middle of the yellow grass, the Big Man yelled at Captain Vrettos for not making the violence go away in Ashuriyah. It was fucking things up all over, from Baghdad to DC. It was awkward, considering everyone in the quad could hear, so I dismissed the platoon and told them to behave themselves and not get used to the luxuries of base life.
The confusion on their faces said I didn’t need to worry about that.
We’d been assigned to the temporary living quarters on the other side of the base, a large tent with cots. I began walking that way, not sure what I wanted to do with my freedom, but certain I wanted to be somewhere else while doing it.
Ibrahim caught me at the edge of the yellow grass and said the intel officer wanted to see me. I asked what he had planned for the day.
“They got Skype here, so I’ll call my parents,” he said. “And tonight is Salsa Night at the club—all the fobbits go, it’s supposed to be crazy. Me and the guys are gonna give the females some scorpion dick!”
I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but wished him luck.
• • •
I walked across the quad to the intelligence office, a long, low-roofed building made of concrete. It was topped with a row of satellite dishes and barricaded with wire mesh. Like all the headquarters buildings, chipping paint of crossed rifles and infantry blue trim adorned its walls. A dull American flag sticker marked the doorway like a heliograph, though the stripes had been blanched pink and gray in the sun. A corner of the blue peeled out, and I ripped at it, taking a handful of stars inside with me.
The din of keyboards and laser printers came from every direction, multicolored PowerPoint slides and diagrams of insurgent cells covering the walls. Despite the yellow sunshine coming through the windows, every light in the room blasted bright. I posted myself in front of a corner air conditioner, lifting my uniform top to bathe in air. I heard voices complaining, but didn’t move.
The battalion’s wanted list lay on a corkboard above, ten insurgents who operated as far south as the Baghdad gate, as far east as the Tigris, as far north as the canal, and as far west as Anbar. Most of the names and faces were unfamiliar, other companies’ banes, but the gaping face of Dead Tooth had been pinned on the top row with the words WHEREABOUTS: UNKNOWN written underneath. Scanning the rest of the list, I double-taked near the bottom. A black-and-white mug shot of Haitham, his straw hair pushed back and sticking up like an electrocuted cartoon, sat above an index card with the word CLERIC written on it. Stupid fobbits, I thought. How could they mistake a source for the sniper?
“Happy America Day, Lieutenant Porter.” I looked across the office. The intelligence officer, a captain, stood at his cubicle, arms crossed and lips pursed.
“Sir. You wanted to see me?”
He pointed to his cubicle. I took a seat on a metal foldout perpendicular to it. Wayward stacks of PowerPoint slides and maps covered his desk. A framed Duke degree hung on a cubicle wall.
So it’s true, I thought. He’d brought his diploma to war.
“Thanks for coming to my office, Jack.” I’d thought offices required doors, so I waited for him to smile, but one never came. “Wanted to talk to you about the targets you can’t find.”
Something sour laced his words. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like how he looked down from his padded spinny chair and I especially didn’t like the way he’d inflected the words “you” and “can’t.”
I pointed to the chair’s wheels. “Cool lifts.”
“Why the hell can’t you find one teenage kid?” he asked, leaning toward me. He’d kept his words measured and low, but flaring nostrils betrayed him. “Brigade is busting my balls while your platoon is gallivanting around like a bunch of amateurs.”
“ ‘Gallivanting.’ ” I arched my eyebrows and smirked my smirkiest smirk. “Didn’t hear that word in the quad today. Sir.”
The captain didn’t respond for many seconds. I concentrated on not blinking and listened to the shuffling papers and typing from surrounding cubicles. I thought of Sergeant Griffin in one of those cubicles, working so she could get home and walk her son to school. They were soldiers, too, I remembered. They’d volunteered, the same as us.
“Look, you have your job to do,” he eventually said, leaning back in his chair. “I have mine.”
“I apologize, sir,” I said. “We have the same goals. Which is why you should know that photo for the Cleric is wrong.” I pointed toward the corkboard. “That’s a source named Haitham.”
It was his turn to smirk. “That’s why I called you in here, Lieutenant. I don’t know how you gather intel, but it’s not being done correctly. Haitham is the Cleric. Verified it with spec ops yesterday.”
I fidgeted, causing my slung rifle to strike the metal legs of my chair. It gonged through the office.
“That doesn’t make any sense. He was there when Alphabet got shot. Right there. Even if he was in on it, someone else pulled the trigger.”
The captain rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. He’d regained whatever cerebral authority sustained him. “Doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. We’re after big fish, because we’re almost done here. Let me repeat that: America. Is. Almost. Done. Here. Spec ops says Haitham is the big fish. You know better than them?”
“Spec ops isn’t stationed there. I’m stationed there. I’m the landowner. And Haitham is not the Cleric. Hell, he wants to go to Camp Bucca.”
“Then bring him in. He’s not a ghost. Go kick down some doors.” He shrugged. “Wish I could join you.”
I was too confused to respond. There’s no way Haitham is the Cleric, I thought. Then I thought about his ghoulish tendency to arrive just before tragedy, and his gift for disappearing just after tragedy, and decided maybe there was a way. Maybe this was why he’d shown up the other morning, filling my brain with a crazy Shakespearean tale from the past.
I thanked the intel captain and rose, turning a half step and considering. Since the firefight, I hadn’t thought much about the kill team or First Cav. And despite his throbbing, insatiable douchebaggery, he was probably the right man to ask about that.
“Something on your mind?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. Shaba and Rana seemed like fragments from a morning dream floating away. I thumbed the Hawaiian bracelet on my wrist. The past doesn’t matter the way the present does, I decided. Not right now, at least.
“Nope,” I said. “All good.” Then I walked out, flipping off the black-and-white photograph of Haitham, a man who’d lied about the kill team, and lied about Chambers, and helped kill one of my soldiers.
I decided to shower, stopping first at the base exchange for shampoo and a bar of soap. It was a hot walk, the afternoon sun banking low, miles of military might spread across rolling dust lands. At a water station in front of a graveyard of Saddam-era tanks, I stopped and watched a pair of air force females run by in shorts and tees. They looked up as they passed. My eyes dropped to the ground like loose change.
I drank a bottled water and kept moving. The tank graveyard simmered behind me, the skeletons and bones of vehicles long ago destroyed, long ago scavenged for parts, serving no purpose now but to sit in the sun and melt.
The base’s shopping center was located in the core of Camp Independence, in a dry gulch. Big-screen televisions blared from shops’ front windows. Signs displayed pictures of new trucks, and instructions on how to ship vehicles home, tax-free. Vendors hawked local antiques and pirated DVDs with fervor. If I hadn’t been concentrating so much on the people bumping my back and scanning the crowd for suicide vests, I’d have appreciated the surreality of it all.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! The base exchange greeted me with a scrolling digital sign, above automatic doors that ushered me into chilled aisles of surplus goods. I found soap and shampoo quickly, but lingered in the refrigerated section, grabbing a Coke and sticking my head between two bags of frozen green peas.
The peas kept an emerging headache at bay, so I stood like that for ten minutes, shopping items at my feet, rifle slung, leg twitching from the crowd outside. I put the bags back only when the stares of strangers mattered more than the relief. Then I added a bottle of painkillers to my haul, paid, and left.
After a long, hot shower, I massaged my feet and collarbone and put the uniform back on. I’d thought about things in the stall and knew what I needed to do next. In one part of my life, at least, I wanted clarity.
• • •
I got lucky. She was online and responded quickly to the Skype invitation. I set up my webcam and headset and waited for her to come to life on the screen. I’d chosen a corner stall, away from prying ears and curious eyes. I sat up tall, shoulders back, and took a deep breath, smiling for the camera.
The feed was grainy. She wore a pair of thin, rimless glasses and had her hair up in a ponytail, though a few loose brown strands swept across her forehead. She wore a long-sleeved shirt I recognized and a pair of conch earrings shaped like moons that I didn’t. I studied the apartment wall behind her, looking for clues, but it was blank and empty.
“Shaku maku, Marissa,” I said. “How goes it?”
“Jackson,” she said. “What time is it there?”
“Almost dinnertime. Pretty early there?”
“Yeah,” she said, somewhere between sass and insolence. I’d always adored her temper, except when it was directed my way. “Got up for a run.”
“It’s nice to look at you,” I said, because it was. I wanted her to smile, but instead she blinked twice and frowned.
“You look thin,” she said. Her voice was raspier than usual. I wondered if she was smoking again. “Your face, especially. You eating? You and your bird belly.”
“If I wanted to be mothered . . .” I began, trailing off. That last word reminded me of the shot-up civilians, and the dead driver’s mom on the side of the road, but I didn’t know how to begin to tell Marissa about that. I wanted to tell her about the firefight, too, and the medal, but that all felt foul suddenly, as I realized I was just hoping to impress her. So instead I said, “I’ll be eating as soon as we’re done. Thought I’d take this rare break from war to talk to my girlfriend. That okay?”
She groaned and put her head in her hands. I watched her fingers tap her temples like little drum sticks. She’d always had such soft skin. Sometimes, on those lazy California afternoons on her front patio, I’d stroke her arms until she asked me to leave her alone so she could read. Her voice didn’t have the playful lilt to it that it had then.
“Don’t call me that, Jackson. Do not call me that. You’re the one trying to push me away. This was your idea, too, remember? To avoid becoming a cliché?”
“Push you away?” I felt red coursing through my veins and knew I should stop, but wouldn’t. “Are you retarded? You’re the one who barely answers my e-mails.”
“I just did!”
“With pointless bullshit. You’re the one pushing away. Even now, when I need you more than I’ve ever needed anyone.”
That made her cry. Even though that’d probably been my intent, something about the tears sneaking down her face filled me with regret and self-disgust. I apologized for calling the things that made up her days pointless, but that just made it worse.
“What am I supposed to say?” she asked, daggers in her voice now. She wiped her eyes and held my gaze through the screen. She’d always been tougher than me, always been able to cut through my reckless parrying to get to what mattered. “I don’t say anything because everything I say is wrong. I don’t reply because I don’t know how to.”
“Well, try. I’m trying.”
“Bull,” she said. “You never communicate with anyone until you explode. I can’t read your mind. I won’t let you blame me for that. You know your mom had to tell me what happened to your soldiers? I’m so sorry for that, Jack. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Don’t bring them up,” I said. “You’ve no right.” I shook my head and leaned back, sneering at the camera. “This was a mistake. To hell with it.” After a few moments of silence, I pointed to my bracelet. “Remember this?”
She smiled sadly, the gap in her teeth finally showing. She tugged at one of the moons in her ears. “Of course,” she said. “That week meant a lot.”
“Where’s yours?”
“It’s here. Somewhere. I wear it, just not running.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure.”
Her eyes filled with tears again but she blinked them away. The feed was so bad I couldn’t make out the deep blue of her eyes. I wished I could reach through the connection and seize those irises and keep them as stones in my pockets, to hold anytime I wanted.
“Why did you order my boyfriend a box of elephant dung, Jack? How do you even find something like that? It was gross. And so immature.”
I asked her to repeat herself so I could think of something.
“No idea what you’re talking about.” I sat on my hands to keep them from moving. “I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend.” I clenched my molars together, and my heart pounded against its cage. “But if it’s who I think, he’s a fucking tool. Thought you were better than that.”
Marissa closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead. I shouldn’t have snapped at her for mentioning Alphabet and Ortiz, I thought. She’d been trying, just as I’d asked. When she opened her eyes she leaned in and kissed the screen. There it is, I thought. Two stubborn souls raised on too much reality television, our fights always ending as quickly as they began. And even though we were arguing, we were talking now. That seemed important.
I was about to return the kiss when she said, “I’m sorry, Jack. I love you. But I can’t do this. Please don’t write, don’t call. Not until you get back and become you again. I’m sorry I’m not strong enough. But I didn’t volunteer for this.”
The connection winked out and went dead. She’d logged off. As I sat there staring at a black hole of a screen, the creeping sense that something irreplaceable, something matchless, had just broken within. I realized she hadn’t asked how I was.
I hadn’t asked her, either.
Stumbling out of the cybercafé, I passed a joe Skyping with a kohl-eyed goth lady holding a toddler. The two adults were laughing together at the child’s burps. I paid the Kuwaiti employee in the front, walked outside, and found a Porta John to dry-heave into.
• • •
It was twilight when I came out. My hands were shaking and everything seemed fuzzy and distant, and I decided I needed something to do, like eat. I walked through the gray dusk to the chow hall, passing tents and warehouses and clusters of soldiers in workout clothes talking softly. A dark melody had filled the desert, a blend of finches, seething air, and helos slicing through the sky.
The chow hall was a big white magnet north of the shopping gulch, a massive canopy that seemed to hover over the pale sands. Part circus tent, part martial pretense, it was ringed by blast walls and protected by counterbattery radar. It could serve over a thousand soldiers at a time and up to fifteen thousand a day, not including the ones who gorged at the nearby fast-food shacks.
As I replayed my conversation with Marissa over and over again, the shock and hurt wore off. My steps turned to strides. I pushed up my patrol cap high so the back was on the crown of my head and the brim pointed to dull stars. It was more comfortable this way, and it identified me as a field officer who didn’t give a fuck. I held my rifle from the rails, not bothering with the sling. In the land of fobbits, I was king. No one approached or even gave me a sideways look, which made me angrier. More than anything, I wanted a fight. I needed a fight.
I found one at the chow hall entrance.
To the side of the snaking line stood three of my soldiers, Washington, Batule, and Doc Cork. Washington was arguing with a soldier whose back was to me, his face contorted. He took a step back and started to raise his fist before Doc Cork grabbed it with both hands and held it down. In response, the unknown soldier shot a wagging finger into Washington’s face, cursing. I moved between the bodies like mercury.
“Corporal Washington! Chill.” Doc Cork squeezed Washington’s forearm and whispered “The LT” in his ear. Washington exhaled slowly and his shoulders drooped.
“Sir,” he said. “Me and the chief here was just discussing what he meant by ‘you people.’ As in ‘You people never know who’s boss.’ ”
Everyone separated, and we stood in a tight circle. The chief warrant officer was built for a parade, every corner crisp, his boots unsoiled. His face exuded the pink shine of a daily high-and-tight.
“We’re supposed to be postracial now, Chief,” I said. “I’m sure you were just about to explain that.”
“It has nothing to do with him being black!” The chief shook his finger again. “I meant young soldiers who have been promoted too quickly and have no discipline. He in your platoon, Lieutenant?”
“Then you can tell me what the hell that scorpion is.” He pointed to Washington’s patch, but his eyes were all over my lopsided cap. “I don’t care what medal he got today, he’s still a soldier. Their uniforms are un-sat. Yours, too. This isn’t the bush.”
I smiled goofily. “You a regs man, then? Regulations are important.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw uncertainty cross my soldiers’ faces. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” So certain. So smug. “That’s why I stopped him.”
“Then why the fuck aren’t you at attention when addressing a commissioned officer of the United States Army?”
It was like I’d backhanded him. He snapped to attention, unleashing a sarcastic salute and yelling, “Sir, yes, sir!” Every eyeball in the chow line was now on us. I had two options: escalate the spectacle or end it.
“Your service to country tonight is noted, Chief.” I leaned down into the man’s face, our noses touching, his stunted seafood breath tickling my chin. “You’re dismissed.”
“Lieutenant.” He spoke low now so only I could hear him. “Do that again, you’ll spend the rest of your life drinking through a straw.” I was going to call his bluff, but he continued. “You think you know me? You know shit. Just ’cause I don’t wear it, don’t mean I don’t have it—I’ve been blown up more times than years you’ve been alive. Your boys are out of control. So are you. Rein it in. Be a leader. Respect the uniform. Respect yourself.” With a salute, he was gone into the dirty night, just another shape drifting through the camouflage sea.
“Show’s over!” I shouted to the line, where heads ogled and voices jeered. The madness had passed. Now I was just embarrassed. “Enjoy your meal, vote Republican.”
“Holy shit, sir.” I turned to the soldiers. It was Doc Cork. “That was awesome.”
“Thanks, LT,” Washington said as we exchanged knuckles. “Owe you one.”
The three soldiers moved away while I got in line. Then something gloomy pricked at me and I called them back. I asked Washington and Batule to remove their scorpions until we returned to the outpost. They balked.
“That guy was a racist,” Washington said. “Why you taking his side?”
“I don’t doubt that. But he’s right about the patches. Tell the same to anyone rocking the scorpion at Salsa Night. We’ll be back soon.”
“But, sir—”
“Did I stutter? Move out.”
Whatever goodwill I’d earned was lost. They walked off grumbling about power-tripping officers, but replacing one another’s patches. I envied them for their solidarity.
“Lonely,” I sang to myself, not ironically, not cheerfully, watching the three soldiers fade away. “I’m Mister Lonely. I have nobody . . . for my own.”
They served surf and turf for the holiday. The cooks wished me a happy Fourth, and a thickset female with a dreary smile told me she’d been up twenty hours preparing food, and I felt bad for every mean, nasty thought I’d ever had about fobbits, because the truth was we needed them more than they needed us.
I ate in a back corner. On a nearby television, I watched Cleveland sports fans burn the jersey of some basketball player, a self-proclaimed messiah who’d left because winning was hard there and it’d be easier in Florida. After a tenth jersey burned, the howling of proletarian pride and pain broadcast across the globe, I went outside and bummed a cigarette from a contractor. We tried small talk, but his English proved rudimentary and my Korean nonexistent, so we smoked next to each other in quiet, observing the night.
Watching soldiers come and go through shadows, I longed for the other side of the wire. It didn’t always make sense out there, but sometimes it did. And it offered purpose. I forced myself to contemplate the sniper shot that’d almost turned me to pink mist, and I fantasized about what that would’ve done to Marissa. A sick pleasure took hold; I saw her weep and regret. Her life would’ve never been the same. It would’ve destroyed her. Then I saw what it would’ve done to my parents, to Will, and I remembered it would’ve destroyed me, too, in the most literal of ways. Chambers, I thought. Chambers saved me. He’d said to embrace the beast within, and now I knew he’d been right. He’d been right about everything.
I’d see Haitham and Azhar dead before we left, I promised myself, not because I hated them, but because that was what I was supposed to do. That was why we were here. I walked to Salsa Night, my patrol cap tilted up only slightly.
An empty warehouse on the southern rim of the base, the club lay at the end of a gravel path, next to the airfield, in a deep mire of Halliburton trailers. The generals intermittently tried to shut down the club, but like an obstinate weed, it kept returning. Higher had relented in order to maintain the perception of control. Officers weren’t supposed to go, but we weren’t banned from it, either.
I just needed something to do.
The walk was dark and quiet. At the airfield, I watched a group unload a cargo jet with neon ChemLights, little dancing birds of hallucinogen. The crates alongside the fence line were filled with machine gun ammunition and milk shake powder mix. There was no other activity on the tarmac. Cresting a small ridge, I heard the club rumbling well before I saw it, a shining boom box of a building. Blue and yellow lights flashed through partially boarded windows, and I asked myself if watching bored joes grind up on each other was really how I wanted to spend my evening.
A slobbering whistle filled the darkness, followed by the sounds of exploding air. I looked up for fireworks but instead saw mortars running down the cheeks of night. To the north, the noise of earth being punched from above echoed. The base alarm system shot to life. I ran forward for a bunker without knowing where one was.
At the intersection of the gravel path and a back gate of the airfield, I found a sandbag mound. I jumped into it headfirst, landing with my rifle under me. I groaned, having knocked the wind out of myself, failing to notice the large shape on the other end of the bunker.
“Sure,” I took a deep breath and spoke through gasps. “Forgot to tuck and roll.” I peered through the tunnel and rose to my knees, the brim of my cap brushing the ceiling of the bunker. “Ibrahim?”
“Yeah.” My eyes adjusted to the dim. He looked like a sad panda at the zoo, gnawing on a jerky stick like bamboo. His plastic-rimmed glasses kept slipping down the bridge of his nose as he chewed. “What’s going on?”
“Mortar attack. Shouldn’t last long.”
“Oh.”
I sighed and asked what was wrong. He said nothing. I said that was an obvious lie, and since we were going to be spending the foreseeable future together stuck in a bunker, he might as well tell the truth.
It wasn’t just one thing, he explained. It was everything. He’d Skyped his parents earlier, only to learn his sister was talking about dropping out of college. Even though Dominguez had said he was a good soldier and getting better every day, he didn’t think that was true. And ever since we’d made the other joes stop teasing him, they just ignored him, which was worse. That’d been what happened at the club that night. He’d heard them and some fobbit females laughing at his back as he left, minutes before the mortar strike, and he’d taken refuge in here to be alone.
“Good times,” he said, forcing a smile. “But how are you, sir? Enjoy your day off?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Was swell.”
The attack passed and, soon after, the strident “All clear” sound rang out. I told Ibrahim to get a good night’s rest and then tried to follow my own advice. I left him in the bunker with his jerky wrappers, knowing I should talk to him some more, but unable to summon the energy. We all had our personal tragedies to bitch about.
We left for Ashuriyah at dawn. I snapped my bracelet and dropped broken beads onto the desert road one at a time, like breadcrumbs. What had once led home now led nowhere.