Redeployment(15)

“Sir?”

“What’s your first name?”

“You don’t know?” I said. I wasn’t sure why, but I was angry about that. “You didn’t, I don’t know, look me up before you came over here?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Sure I did,” he said. “I even know your nickname, Ozzie. And I know how you got it.”

That stopped me. “Ozzie” came from a bet Harvey made after Mac’s lizard died in a fight with Jobrani’s scorpion. Fifty bucks that I wouldn’t bite its head off. Stupid. Harvey still hadn’t paid me.

“Paul,” I said.

“Like the apostle.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, Paul. How are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. How was Timhead doing? That was what he was really about, even though he didn’t know it. “I usually don’t feel like talking to anyone about it.”

“Yeah,” said the Chaps, “that’s pretty normal.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure,” he said. “You’re a Catholic, right?”

That’s what’s listed on my dog tags. I wondered what Timhead was. Apathetic Protestant? I couldn’t tell him that. “Yeah, Father,” I said. “I’m Catholic.”

“You don’t have to talk to me about it, but you can talk to God.”

“Sure,” I said, polite. “Okay, Father.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “Prayer does a lot.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded like a joke.

“Look, Father,” I said. “I’m not that much for praying.”

“Maybe you should be.”

“Father, I don’t even know if it’s that kid that’s messing with me.”

“What else is there?”

I looked out at the row of cans, the little trailers they give us to sleep in. What else was there? I knew how I was feeling. I wasn’t sure about Timhead. I decided to speak for myself. “Every time I hear an explosion, I’m like, That could be one of my friends. And when I’m on a convoy, every time I see a pile of trash or rocks or dirt, I’m like, That could be me. I don’t want to go out anymore. But it’s all there is. And I’m supposed to pray?”

“Yes.” He sounded so confident.

“MacClelland wore a rosary wrapped into his flak, Father. He prayed more than you.”

“Okay. What does that have to do with it?”

He stared at me. I started laughing.

“Why not?” I said. “Sure, Father, I’ll pray. You’re right. What else is there? Keep my fingers crossed? Get a rabbit’s foot, like Garza? I don’t even believe in that stuff, but I’m going crazy.”

“How so?”

I stopped smiling. “Like, I was on a convoy, stretched my arms out wide, and a minute later a bomb went off. Not in the convoy. Somewhere in the city. But I don’t stretch out like that anymore. And I patted the fifty, once, like a dog. And nothing happened that day. So now I do it every day. So, yeah, why not?”

“That’s not what prayer is for.”

“What?”

“It will not protect you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Oh,” I said.

“It’s about your relationship with God.”

I looked at the dirt. “Oh,” I said again.

“It will not protect you. It will help your soul. It’s for while you’re alive.” He paused. “It’s for while you’re dead, too, I guess.”





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We took different routes all the time. Don’t be predictable. It’s up to the convoy commander, and they’re all lieutenants, but most of them are pretty good. There’s one who can’t give an Op Order for shit but tends not to f*ck up too bad on the road. And there’s one female lieutenant who’s tiny and real cute but tough as balls and knows her shit cold, so it evens out. Still, there’s only so many routes, and you got to use one.

It was at night and I was in the lead vehicle when I spotted two hajjis, looked like they were digging in the road. I said, “Hajjis digging,” to Garza. They saw us and started running.

This was just getting into Fallujah. There were buildings on the left side of the road, but they must have been spooked stupid because they ran the other way, across a field.