Memphis: A Novel(13)

Miriam was quiet, watchful. What daycare was Mazz talking about? How many of Jax’s secrets would she have to find out in a twenty-four-hour span?

“The Gulf was hell, Miriam. War really is. And it was scary. Shit, I was fucking scared. I’d never seen someone get shot before. Stabbed? Sure. That’s Chicago. But I can tell you I grew to know fear like a sister when the shots rang out and Jenkins got hit.” Mazz was staring, unseeing, at a distant spot on the table. The orchestra was playing an upbeat melody, some couples swaying together on the dance floor.

“And we were all so young, Meer. That’s the thing. None of them boys over the age of thirty. Not a one. When Jenkins got shot, you know who he screamed for? His mother. Over and over. Mama! Mama! Had to stop calling mine ‘Mama’ for a while. How the hell you explain that to a sixty-five-year-old woman who refuses, to this day, to speak English? In bocca al lupo.”

Miriam could see Jax across the room, throwing his head back in laughter at something another Marine had said.

“We rode out that day, Jax in command,” Mazz continued. He had always been a natural storyteller, born out of his sense of ease with other people and himself. Right now, though, he seemed nearly unaware of his surroundings, in a state different from his usual one, in which he catered to his listeners and drew belly laughs. Miriam understood: He wasn’t telling this story for her.

“He had just made captain. I was his first lieutenant at the time. We’d been sent in to save this army unit that was pinned down and taking heavy fire. We knew because we could hear the shells from inside the Humvee. A bullet from an AK makes a kind of whizzing sound. But then it’s gone, the whizzing, and it gets replaced by a dull, droning horsefly sound. The truck lurches, right? Imagine this pile of Marines in a heap, all tangled up and cursing. Then more shots. Gunfire. Closer and closer. Funny. I remember it made me think of throwing Chinese firecrackers at the sidewalk as a kid.

“Jax could tell we needed a joke,” Mazz went on. “He gave us one. Something about if this made us pussies, we couldn’t have lasted a day on the streets of Chicago’s South Side. I can’t tell you how much we needed that laugh. Then he spreads a map across his knees, shows us what we’re gonna do, and we ride out.”

Miriam was looking at the table now, too—neither of them seeing it. Mazz’s voice had dropped, both in pitch and volume. She would have had a hard time hearing him if it weren’t for the fact that she seemed to hear nothing in the room but him now. Neither Mazz nor Jax had ever talked about the specifics of what they’d done and seen. She was no longer in the ballroom, dressed in gold, surrounded by the rustling of gowns and the clink of glasses. She was in that truck in the Gulf, hearing the pop and crack of gunshots.

“The truck came to a full stop, and now we’re not individuals; we’re a coordinated tactical weapon of destruction. We’re on foot, snaking the neighborhood, see the two army Humvees ablaze in the street. I’m looking left and right, seeing that the city of Khafji is just that, a fucking city. Filled with apartment buildings, cafés, human beings. Who would send a tank through an occupied city, tall apartment buildings lining the street? The United States Army.”

Mazz shook his head. “Only branch worse is the fucking Air Force. Anyway, I follow Jax, and we got twelve Marines behind us, all trailing Jax. The building we enter is low, single story, and in the dark night it’s the same color as bone. Windows on the north side of the building all blown out. Bullet holes peppering the east entrance.

“We’re all behind Jax, clustered like a fucking bomb. Then we start clearing rooms. There’s a long, narrow hallway with a series of side rooms sprouting out like veins. Patient rooms maybe, I don’t know. All I was thinking was Il mio dio, we’ve got to clear each fucking one. We did. M-Sixteen first, body second. Bang. Another door blasted open. A swirl of M-Sixteen laser lights. A few seconds of silence. Repeat.

“But the fourth and final door would not open.

“We’re exhausted by this point. Sweating. Jenkins, this young gunner—didn’t look like he had ever been inside a woman, peach fuzz above his lip—moves back to take a wider stance, swings his right arm back with the ram and hits the door. All five foot ten, two hundred pounds of force, and the damn door still does not fucking open.

“Jax hollers out at this point: ‘This is the United States Marine Corps! Open the fucking door!’ Nothing. But we can feel the sons of bitches in there, hiding. Breathing. I swear, I hear a gun click. It was so hot in that fucking hallway it felt like I was in a womb. The men getting real restless now, crowded in that dark hallway, the perfect storm for senseless death.

“Then a pop. From within the room. Quick. Subtle almost. Everybody starts screaming, ‘We’re taking fire. We’re taking fire!’ We crouched like spiders. Look at each other. Quick glances to make sure no Marine was down. But one was. Jenkins. Closest to the door at that point. The bullet sent him careening backward. He begins to moan. Low, steady. ‘Mama.’ That’s what he’s moaning. Cazzo. I can still hear it.

“So, we tell him to shut the fuck up. We don’t want to give away our position, and Jenkins’s screaming is like a homing beacon for the enemy. We were all kind of losing it at that point. Jenkins on his back, crying out for his mama, his God.

“I don’t know if it was then when Jax noticed that the door didn’t reach the ceiling. That there was a slap of window right on top. But that Jax did what he had to do. Grabs a grenade from his belt. Throws that son of a bitch in a perfect upward arc through that top window above the door into that fucking room, shouting, ‘Ukhrug barra! Ukhrug barra!’ and to the rest of us, ‘Get back, get back!’ I remember thinking he’d thrown it just like Fergie Jenkins—it was that well aimed. In the aftermath of the explosion, we saw movement from inside the room and shot.”