Redeployment(17)

“I guess so, Staff Sergeant.”

“Shit. There’s explosions in this city every f*cking day. There’s firefights in this city every f*cking day. That’s her home. That’s in the streets where she plays. This girl is probably f*cked up in ways we can’t even imagine. She’s not your sister. She’s just not. She’s seen it before.”

“Still,” I said. “It’s her brother. And every little bit hurts.”

He shrugged. “Until you’re numb.”





? ? ?


In the can the next night, after about thirty minutes of me staring at the ceiling while Timhead played Pokémon, I tried to bring it up again. I wanted to talk about what Staff Sergeant had said, but Timhead stopped me.

“Look,” he said, “I’m over it.”

“Yeah?”

He put both his hands in the air, like he was surrendering.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m over it.”





? ? ?


A week later a sniper shot Harvey in the neck. It was crazy, because he wasn’t even hurt bad. The bullet barely grazed him. A quarter inch to the right, he’d be dead.

Nobody got positive ID. We kept driving, primed and ready to kill, but no targets.

As we moved down the road, my hands jittery with adrenaline, I wanted to scream, “Fuck!” as loud as I could, and keep screaming it through the whole convoy until I got to let off a round in someone. I started gripping the sides of the .50. When my hands were white, I would let go. I did that for a half hour, and then the rage left me and I felt exhausted.

The road kept turning under our wheels, and my eyes kept scanning automatically for anything out of place, signs of digging or suspicious piles of trash. It doesn’t stop. Tomorrow we would do this again. Maybe get blown up, or get injured, or die, or kill somebody. We couldn’t know.

At the chow hall later that day, Harvey pulled the bandage back and showed everyone his wound.

He said, “Purple f*cking Heart, bitches! You know how much * I’m gonna get back home?”

My mind was whirling, and I made it stop.

“This is gonna be a badass scar,” he said. “Girls’ll ask and I’ll be like, ‘Whatever, I just got shot one time in Iraq, it’s cool.’”





? ? ?


When we got back to the can that night, Timhead didn’t even pull out his Nintendo DS.

“Harvey’s so full of shit,” he said. “Mr. Tough Guy.”

I ignored him and started pulling off my cammies.

“I thought he was dead,” said Timhead. “Shit. He probably thought he was dead.”

“Timhead,” I said, “we got a convoy in five hours.”

He scowled down at his bed. “Yeah. So?”

“So let it go,” I said.

“He’s full of shit,” he said.

I got under the covers and closed my eyes. Timhead was right, but it wouldn’t do either of us any good to think about it. “Fine,” I said. I heard him moving around the room, and then he turned off the light.

“Hey,” he said, quiet, “do you think—”

That did it. I sat up straight. “What do you want him to say?” I said. “He got shot in the neck and he’s going out tomorrow, same as us. Let him say what he wants.”

I could hear Timhead breathing in the dark. “Yeah,” he said. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”





BODIES




For a long time I was angry. I didn’t want to talk about Iraq, so I wouldn’t tell anybody I’d been. And if people knew, if they pressed, I’d tell them lies.

“There was this hajji corpse,” I’d say, “lying in the sun. It’d been there for days. It was swollen with gases. The eyes were sockets. And we had to clean it off the streets.”

Then I’d look at my audience and size them up, see if they wanted me to keep going. You’d be surprised how many do.

“That’s what I did,” I’d say. “I collected remains. U.S. forces, mostly, but sometimes Iraqis, even insurgents.”

There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin on your face when you get to the end. Girls like it sad, with a thousand-yard stare out to the distance as you gaze upon the horrors of war they can’t quite see. Either way, it’s the same story. This lieutenant colonel who’s visiting the Government Center rolls up, sees two Marines maneuvering around a body bag, and decides he’ll go show what a regular guy he is and help.