by Gregg Braden
Ernesto shook his head. “Man, that’s a mess. It’s an honor in my family. They were thrilled—I’m the first one, too, but that’s because I’m the first generation who’s been a citizen.”
Ernesto lit another cigarette. Charlie looked out at the horizon—mountainous terrain as far as he could see. “My brother was the worst,” he said softly.
“Really?” Ernesto said.
Charlie nodded his head. “I never realized so many people were interested in my future.”
“Yeah,” Ernesto laughed and inhaled smoke, then let it out through his nose.
Jack fully entered Charlie’s mind then, as he did several times a day. Charlie looked at his watch and translated the hour into California time, which he still thought of as the “real” time, as absurd as this was.
Where was Jack, and what was he doing now? It was painful not to know. It was 10 P.M. at home, which meant that he was probably off partying somewhere. It seemed to Charlie that Jack had been getting high and drinking even more than usual; if he talked to him after nine o’clock at night now, his speech was slurred and his reactions hyper. Charlie couldn’t help worrying about him.
He’d woken up last night, his heart slamming in his chest, unable to remember where he was … then he heard Ernesto snoring beside him and slowly started to put the jigsaw puzzle together. But why did he feel so anxious? He thought of all the obvious hazards at hand—bombs and snipers—but that wasn’t what was causing his panic. It was the thought of Jack, who he’d dreamed was sinking in a pit of quicksand, just like in the Tarzan movies they used to watch together as boys. Charlie was too far away to pull his brother out of whatever trouble he might get into—his deployment meant he’d had to let go of whatever rescue rope he’d used in the past.
Charlie’s unit set up this outpost after climbing for hours, scrambling through creek beds and over crumbling rocks. By the time they’d arrived, Charlie had blood on his face from the thorn trees that snagged his skin as he blundered along. He’d been exhausted, but there was no one to complain to, nothing to be done. They were all in the same boat, laboring under heavy body armor, struggling to breathe in heat that would hit 120 by afternoon and only drop ten or so degrees at night.
And what were they doing exactly?
Looking for IEDs—according to Ernesto. What else? This seemed to be, more or less, his full-time job so far. The enemy had realized that full-out assaults were less effective than these deadly, nerve-racking explosions.
Charlie saw evidence of them everywhere—in the blackened metal piles that once were jeeps abandoned on the side of the road; in crippled villagers whose legs had been torn off, or their arms mangled.
In the first few months, he had already engaged in the most strenuous physical activities of his life—climbing mountains, walking in obscene heat, toting weight on his back like a burro. But what else physical had he ever done? Phys ed in high school? Handball at his gym?
Everything Jack had said about the service turned out to be true: Charlie wasn’t cut out for the Marines or for desert life, though this was irrelevant now. He had signed up for the long haul. Except for going AWOL, which he would never do, there was no way out. He’d signed papers, as if in blood.
So far, this was the most dramatic instance of Charlie actively rebelling against his brother’s opinion and venturing out completely on his own. Now he felt that he was paying for this folly daily.
He’d not only undergone a physical transformation but a mental one. He experienced fierce new emotions every hour that he spent here. Almost every minute, he was afraid—terrified, really—of some unseen danger or threat that it was hard to put his finger on but that followed him everywhere.
Life had become deadly serious. Each day, there were situations that required him to reach inside himself and come up with pockets of strength and fortitude that he’d never known he had.
He held an assault rifle to cover Ernesto while he went into a crumbling stone building that could be booby-trapped; he looked into the bloody face of an old woman who had gotten caught in the line of fire while she was standing in line to buy bread. He took into his arms a mongrel dog that had been hit by a military transport—a mutt with a slender snout and white spots reminiscent of their childhood dog, Joey. Could Charlie really pick him up, clean his wounds, and eventually bury him? Yes, yes, he could.
Dying wasn’t an abstraction here but an everyday occurrence, as common as taking a breath. Any moment a sniper’s bullet could travel through the air or an IED could explode, and you’d be gone, forever—all of you, every nickname and fondest dream, every fingerprint and strand of hair that had once been yours alone.
He tried not to show Jack how unnerved he felt when they talked on Skype. This usually was easy enough, particularly because the connection was so lousy; it was hard to see or speak to him in any extended, meaningful way. The service cut off or froze every few minutes.
Frankly, Jack seemed terrified about being so far away from him; Charlie could see it in his eyes and in the frequency of his calls. He had the impression that Jack would have preferred to keep Skype on indefinitely, just so he could experience some fragment of what his twin was enduring.
When it got too intense, Charlie fobbed him off on Ernesto, who found it easier to joke about the weather and the bad food. No one else called, because no one else knew how.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
That night Charlie fell asleep as soon as he got off patrol, only to be awakened what felt like minutes later. He’d been in the middle of a deep and complex dream when Ernesto shone a light in his eyes and shook him.
“Time to head out, dude.”
Charlie rolled over with a groan, shielding his eyes. “What? You mean now?”
“Yeah, just got a call. Some big doings west of here—up and out.”
“Aw, man.” He rolled over, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What kind of doings?”
“Not sure—some kind of massacre in a village is what I hear.”
“Great. What time is it anyway?”
“Four.”
“Christ.” He sat up for a moment, then stood and began reaching for his clothes.
Charlie looked over at Ernesto, who was standing there watching him.
“You ready to go?”
“I ain’t going.”
“Why not?”
“They need someone to stay here and monitor the computers and shit.”
“Damn.” Charlie didn’t like going without Ernesto; somehow he considered him good luck.
“You’ll be all right—be back before you know it.”
Charlie was silent as he finished dressing.
They set out in a convoy in the fading darkness. In his Humvee were two blond, blue-eyed soldiers from the Midwest, Benjamin and Jim, and a young black guy from Brooklyn named JD. They all were laughing and smoking and drinking weak coffee with dried milk that someone had gotten at the last minute. Radio information kept filtering through. Ernesto was right: there’d been some kind of massacre.
They drove into the Afghan Valley, heading toward a village in the west. As the sun rose, terraced fields rose up before them. Charlie was only half awake, and he opened and closed his eyes at this dreamlike world—trees with gnarled apples on one side, a burned and twisted jeep on the margins of the road on the other. As they neared the village, the sun came up with a white ferocity, and a thin breeze blew a terrible scent their way.
“The village,” Charlie said. “We must be almost there.”
The platoon stopped, and they pulled up next to two other Humvees near an empty creek bed.
Oh, man, I don’t want to go in there, Charlie thought just as Benjamin said to him, “Charlie, you and Jim check out the graveyard over there for weapons caches, and keep an eye on that ridge. We’ll be back.”
Benjamin and JD climbed out and joined other troops, who cautiously approached the mud and stone village. In the distance, a fruit orchard sat in a small fertil
e crescent. The rest was mountainous rock. Two mangy dogs barked and ran their way, and then a small herd of children appeared out on the bumpy dirt road, all chattering at once.
Even though heavy guns were mounted to their vehicles, the dusty-faced children ran right over to greet them.
“Sir, candy?” a small boy in a cap cried.
“I thought they were supposed to be frightened of us,” Charlie said to Jim.
“Yeah.” Jim handed the boy a couple pieces of Bazooka gum—the familiar wrapping looked surreal to Charlie in this new and foreign land. “They’re scared of us, but they love us, too.”
Charlie knew it was dangerous to let his guard down, but the kids were so adorable. He hoisted up a little girl with a shattered hand and carried her around on his shoulders for a few minutes before Jim gave him a warning look.
”You have dollar?” the girl asked, and he put her down abruptly. She was older than he thought—maybe as old as ten.
“Ask her if the Taliban’s been here in the last days and if they harass them,” Jim said to him.
“No, they not here,” she answered without waiting for Charlie’s question. She took the quarter he handed her as if it were solid gold. “Thank you,” she said and ran off.
“She’s probably lying,” Jim said, giving him a rueful look as they watched the soles of her dirty feet recede into the distance.
The two soldiers walked through creek beds to a cemetery, where they found nothing but rock and thorny brush, not a weapon in sight.
All the while, Charlie kept studying the ridge that surrounded them. At one point he saw what looked like an auburn dog—perhaps a coyote—but the next second, it was gone.
They trudged back to the Humvee, over a punishing terrain of rocks and boulders. There was a buzzing menace in the air that Charlie could not ignore nor easily identify.
His feet hurt, he was starving, but even worse, he suddenly missed Jack with a ravening pain that took his breath away. Where are you, brother? How did we ever allow ourselves to get so far apart?
That morning, Charlie had heard Skype ring on his computer as he was getting ready to leave and get into the Humvee, but he ignored it—even though there was a chance it could be Jack. Charlie was trying to concentrate on the task at hand and didn’t want to be distracted by his brother, whose anxiety was often infectious. He found it disorienting to talk to Jack, then walk a few yards and find himself in the heart of the hostile desert again. He also found it hard to talk about anything neutral or upbeat. He couldn’t tell his brother what he was doing or even where he was doing it. Because of this, their conversations were often stilted and one-sided. Jack delivered news about their mutual friends—who’d lost a job or had broken up with a girlfriend. Or he talked about himself: he’d seen a movie or lost a filling; his car needed a new transmission.
Charlie often had trouble concentrating on all the facts and details, let alone even hearing them over the static. Sometimes he became exasperated with Jack’s petty problems. Who gives a shit about your transmission? he wanted to say. Do you realize where I am? The people he once knew didn’t even seem real to him in this world of sun and dust.
And he could never explain, even to Jack, how different it was here. Basic services that they had always taken for granted—hot showers, for example—were now luxuries. In the desert, water was liquid gold. The weather was no minor matter either; it was central to the day’s mission and outcome. And the members of his team had become more than minor sidekicks and partners—they were blood brothers, who could, and often did, save your life.
Young men like JD, who’d put himself on the line for his unit and Charlie so many times that he’d lost count, or Joe, the farmer’s son from Alabama, who was as right-wing as Charlie was liberal, yet told him after a recent firefight, “I love you, man—I really love you. We almost died together.”
This was the kind of bond that Jack would miss out on entirely. Not only that, but he would be fiercely jealous if he knew how close Charlie had grown to these other men.
As often as Charlie wished that he had never come, he also wished that Jack could have accompanied him. As it was, there would always be a central event that he could never share with his twin—maybe the crucial event of his life. He felt guilty about this, as if Jack were being cheated, instead of him.
CHAPTER 6
* * *
It took more than half an hour for the traffic caused by the accident to clear so that Jack could finally move again. He couldn’t stand to think of all the time he’d lost—more than 40 minutes. He shook himself alert and began driving again through the late-night streets. Traffic was sparse now, except for a few taxis. He had his laptop open on the passenger seat and reached over to click the wireless icon; the computer searched for a signal as he drove. He moved into the right lane and slowed down in front of various establishments, hoping to pirate an open-access Wi-Fi network.
Jenny’s Cafe on the corner of Main and Summit had a network, but it was password-protected, as was the Creamery Ice Cream Shoppe and the Dixie Coffee Spot. He tried the hardware store, two insurance companies, and even a funeral home. All were locked.
Jack quietly cursed and pressed down the gas to leave downtown. Desperate for a connection, he decided to steer his car through a series of residential areas. He drove farther afield, out of the city center. His car, nearly alone on the sleepy, rain-soaked streets, emitted an otherworldly glow.
Various networks popped up on his laptop. Most were simply last names: the Sandy family, the Conners, Le Compte. All were locked. They appeared and disappeared in seconds. Then a new unlocked network appeared: the Tankian family. The signal was strong.
“Yes!” Jack said and pulled over to the curb.
Opening a browser, he sent Charlie an e-mail, typing like a machine gun.
are you ok? i need 2 talk to u!!
He hit SEND.
But even this didn’t seem enough.
Next he opened a Skype window; he and Charlie had talked on Skype numerous times since he’d enlisted. Jack still couldn’t get over the power of seeing his brother’s living, breathing face, talking and laughing in real time, on another continent, with the sound of mortar exploding behind him.
Once he’d asked Charlie just to leave Skype on, even if he couldn’t stay on it himself, and for an hour or so, Jack sat listening to the sounds of a marine’s life halfway around the world. It sounded completely different from his California existence. There were coughs and laughs and snippets of unintelligible conversation. There was an alarm, then a distant explosion; there was the beeping of Skype alerts and cell phone rings. He found it all fascinating—listening in to the most exotic and distant locale—a place where his brother was bound to remain without him.
On Skype tonight, Charlie’s name was grayed out; he wasn’t online. Jack smacked his hand against the steering wheel. He scrolled through other names on the Skype list, and found Ernesto Olveiros, one of Charlie’s closest friends. Jack and Ernesto had talked several times before when he couldn’t get ahold of Charlie. He was frequently on Skype, trying to call his family in Missouri. Besides that, he was friendly and eager to talk to Jack about Charlie—or anything else.
Jack was glad to find anyone who was in close proximity to his brother.
He clicked on Ernesto’s name, and in a moment, his face appeared on the screen. The connection wasn’t great; the image kept freezing, but Jack was still thrilled.
“Hey, hippie. How’s slacker-ass commie life treating you?” Ernesto wore desert fatigues, a T-shirt, and sunglasses pushed back on his head. Charlie had told him that Ernesto had his own family, with two small kids, but he looked like a kid himself to Jack.
“Where’s Charlie?”
“Made any hemp blankets lately?”
“C’mon, man, where is he? Where are you guys?”
“I can’t tell you that, dude. You know that.”
The connection suddenly dropped. Ernesto’s face froze.
The rain pounded against the hood of the car. The Wi-Fi bars indicated a weak signal, and Jack tried holding the laptop up in the air toward the house. The connection became only a little stronger. Jack quickly slapped the car into gear and coasted forward a bit, to get more in line with the house.
“Ernesto? Can you hear me?”
Ernesto’s face became unfrozen, and Jack barely heard him say, “I can’t hear you. It’s not a very …” He faded out again.
“Is Charlie there? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine … call back.”
The words and images were skipping, then settling.
“Are you guys still in Kandahar? Is his unit out on a mission right now?”
Ernesto shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. See, I shouldn’t have even told you that. What’s with the third degree, dog?”
“Ernesto, please, it’s important.”
“Well, he’s not anywhere where he can have a conversation right now. But they gotta be back by 1500 hours, 2:30 A.M. on your side. If you wanna wait up—”
“Tell him to Skype me the second he’s back, okay? I’m going to try to stay online.”
“Can’t hear you.”
“Tell him to call me!” Jack rubbed his temple.
“What’s up with you, man?”
Even across the world, it must have been apparent that he was overwrought.
“I’m going to try to wait online, all right? I’ll try to stay on Skype until he’s back.”
Ernesto leaned closer to the camera. “You in a car?”
Jack ignored the question. “If he gets back sooner, make sure he talks to me.”
Ernesto’s words and image skipped, then settled.
Jack put his hand to his head; something was happening again. He looked up at the rearview mirror into his own eyes. They glowed, and a strange halo of sparkling lights appeared around his head. Like hundreds of dancing stars, they grew steadily brighter.
