There were camps for when you were going in, and camps for when you were coming out. You’d go through one at the beginning of a deployment, the other at the end of one.
They were basically the same place. Sprawling tracts of land in the Kuwaiti desert, cordoned off with walls, inside each one a momentary city of tents and temporary buildings and trailer-sized mock-ups of fast-food joints and prefab Americana, with gravel poured among the spaces.
The difference was that one type of camp was filled with people contemplating their mortality while they waited for word that it was their unit’s turn to move forward to Iraq or Afghanistan. The other was filled with people enjoying the pleasant surprise of being still alive and wondering what to do with the rest of their lives.
This one was the camp for people coming out. It was a place to spend a couple days eating free chow, showering, visiting the telephone bank or Internet café, and staring out at the desert as you waited to be called for the flight home. Most of the people on this camp were on their way from Iraq, which suited him just fine.
Few paid him much notice. This was a place of jostling anonymity where many traveled alone, and where as a rule no one’s business was anyone’s business. No one except the proprietors of this particular camp’s Green Beans Coffee trailer noticed that he had been roaming its avenues and byways for three weeks and change, which was much longer than the usual stay.
He hung a towel over the bar of his bunk, the lower one at the far end of a long row. It was one of the standard grab-a-rack units they sent you to when you arrived at the camp.
The morning sun was already high as he emerged. He padded along in loafers, backpack slung over one shoulder, across the gravel toward what he thought of as the town square.
Up the steps to the coffee trailer, hello to the Green Beans guys, this crew from Bangladesh, then back out again with a steaming cup and across the way to the U.S.O. tent. He pulled open the door and paused just inside, as he always did, to give his eyes time to adjust to the dark. No boots or shoes allowed; you left them in cubbies just inside the entrance and went in your socks.
On the outside the Camp Alabama U.S.O. tent was your usual stark-white half-pipe semi-permanent FOB tent, maybe fifty feet high and a hundred long. On the inside was a bit of dimly lit deployment genius.
Table lamps sprawled next to leather couches across the carpeted floor. Soft cubby areas and carpeted platforms were built against the walls; soldiers snored away. In the center a raised platform housed a self-serve café with coffee and water, ringed by a black iron railing with streetlamps casting pools of light on the tables.
One far corner of the building was cordoned off with cubicle walls creating a miniature movie theater. Another contained banks of computer terminals. He took his coffee and headed for these.
He found a terminal situated such that his back would be to the corner and slumped down into the chair, dropping his pack to the floor by his feet and cracking his coffee lid open to take some of the scald off of it. He logged in and waited for his e-mail to bring him that morning’s entry in a running correspondence.
Re: RE: re: re: re: re: Stuff
Why didn’t you tell Sergeant Merrick about Billy?
He put the lid back on his cup and typed.
Billy didn’t deserve that.
He sipped his coffee and stared at the screen.
He knew what it was to be a ghost. Let his ghost rest where it belongs.
He sent the message and cracked his knuckles. He knew his correspondent was waiting, on the other side of the planet and many hours away, for his message and would write back. While he waited he reached into his backpack and came out with a paperback novel about a part-time Israeli assassin with too much baggage who just wants to quit and spend his time restoring the paintings of Christian Renaissance masters.
The reply came back a couple minutes later.
You don’t believe in ghosts. At least you don’t think you do.
Do you really think it’s your place to decide whether his parents deserve the truth? Didn’t you tell me once that you deserved the truth regardless of what it was? Isn’t that what you said to Dad?
His little sister had stopped seeming so little a long time ago. He stared at the screen deciding what to say in response when a follow-up message came in.
Sorry. Don’t answer that.
[Hold on, getting more coffee.]
Following her lead, he went and warmed up his own coffee at the streetlamp café and came back to see what else she had sent.
Do you really think Private Corelli might still be alive?
He hit REPLY and typed one sentence.
I will find out.
He hit SEND and went back to his book. In this installment of the Israeli spy’s adventures, he had managed to befriend a pope.
The mail flashed a reply.
Try to rest first, okay BB? The people who can look are looking.
“BB” stood for “big brother.” He hit REPLY.
I sent him out there.
He didn’t know what else to say, so he sent it. The reply came quickly.
Okay, BB, signing off for tonight. I wish you would talk to somebody else (I know, not my business) but I’m glad you’re telling me at least.
Are you sure you should be talking about this stuff over email?
—LS
“Little sister.” He punched a quick response.
No one’s listening. Have a good night.
—BB
He closed his e-mail and sat staring out at the dimly humming tent. In the movie theater enclosure next door a high-performance motorcycle screamed through the fourth or fifth installment of an action series featuring endless road chases and improbable kung fu.
He closed the novel and tossed it back into his backpack. He rose and took several steps toward the door before stopping, shaking his head at himself irritably.
His baby sister, he decided, not for the first time, was too wise for her own good.
He trudged back to the terminal, pack sloughing to the floor again, and went back online to his e-mail folder.
The old message was still in his inbox. The one from before he ever went to Vega.
He stared at the message for a long time before opening the folder where he kept his saved e-mail drafts. When he was recuperating at Charlie Med, he’d had Cousins wheel him to the S-1 shop so he could get on the computer and cancel the e-mail he’d set to automatically send if he hadn’t returned from COP Vega in ten days. The draft was still in the folder.
He read it over, then took the mouse and highlighted most of it. He hit DELETE and started typing from scratch.
I did get your note. I am safe. I’ve been away, but I should have told you before I went.
He punched a couple of ENTERs and typed
There is a lot to tell.
Then deleted it. Instead he typed
Don’t read too much into dreams.
He hit SEND, logged off, and slung his backpack.
He fetched his shoes and trudged across the camp to the chow hall. After he ate, he went back to the Green Beans for a fresh coffee and settled in for an afternoon with his book on the deck outside.
He was only a few pages in when he heard the puckish voice behind him.
“Mediocrates, I presume.”
It was the name his friend from Officer Candidate School had called him in the e-mail before he left Omaha for the Valley. The smartass. Camp Alabama was the last place on Earth Black would have expected to hear his voice. For a moment he thought he must be mistaken.
But when he turned and saw the figure of the Monk, clean-shaven and grinning wryly in civilian clothes, he knew he hadn’t been mistaken at all.
Danny stood with him, looking sheepish.