The Outside Lands

by Hannah Kohler

  I look toward Esposito; but he’s gone, obliterated by deep-suck blackness. Shea’s gone too. I look for my own body, my boots, knees, hands, but they’re snuffed out. I squeeze my fingers, feel them press against my damp palm, stretch my wet toes in their boots, the creak of leather carrying loud. I lean my foot, tilting it to feel the nub of Esposito’s boot next to mine. He’s there; I think I feel him, feel him maybe press his boot back against mine. And it’s starting to freak me, I’m starting to wonder if the dark is inside me or outside of me, if I’m staring into my own brain or gazing out at a darkness that’s thick as meat in front of my eyes.

  The silence is breathing sick and hot in my ears. I’m blacked up and lush with bullets, but I feel so naked and skinless, I could be wearing my guts outside my body. My heart’s banging so hard I can feel it bulging at my chest, like a rat in a bag. And those Fear-fingers grip me; and I remember what my dad told me when I was waiting to bat at a Little League game when we were down five to six in the bottom of the sixth and it was all on me: “It’s easy. Just breathe, in and out. Nothing to it.” And I breathe. In, out. In, out. In, out. And Fear loosens its grip, just a little, the tips of its fingers cold on my skin.

  That’s when I hear something, hiding under the silence, stretching its skin. My ears reach to hear it, my cells huddled and crouched and Shhhh—

  A soft, prickling noise. Growing louder.

  Something moving toward us.

  It’s getting closer, rolling from a prickle to a crunch: the scrunch, scrunch of twigs and leaves underfoot. A shiver lifts all the way up my spine. My finger stiffens against the trigger of my rifle.

  “Hey,” somebody whispers, so quiet it’s just a breath, like I might not have heard it at all, and I wonder if it came from me.

  Sweat rolls into my eyes, carrying the sting of war paint. I blink, and steady my rifle toward the sound.

  The sound stops.

  I let sweat slide into my eyes, afraid to blink, afraid that the sound of my eyelids slapping together might ricochet across the forest and send bullets flying back.

  Scrunch, scrunch. Scrunch, scrunch.

  It’s getting quieter, moving away. I blink. A snuffling sound rolls across the quiet. Scrunch-snuffle. Scrunch-snuffle.

  Scrunch-snuffle.

  A bear.

  We hear them every night in the firebase, hear them sniffing at the perimeter wire, nosing for the beef and gravy they can smell warming over heat tablets.

  I hear a blow of breath beside me, and I smile and shake out my trigger-hand, pulling it across my forehead to wipe the sweat. Just a fucking bear. I sit back on my heels and listen. Now my ears are primed I can hear them all, all of God’s creatures moving among the trees: the snap-splash-quiet of a monkey; the rustle of a snake; the fuck you of a lizard. And all the while the darkness is getting deeper, richer, and I can see the colors inside it, red and purple.

  Something scampers past—a cat, or a mouse—and then, quiet. The animals have stopped noising through the forest and are setting up for another game. We wait, one breath at a time, and we must have been here for hours; but the darkness is still muck thick, and there’s no sign of dawn yet. I am mind-tracing the shapes of the others when I hear another noise, this time right in front of me, only meters away.

  “Shh.”

  Scrunch-scrunch. Another moon bear, looking for food.

  Scrunch-scrunch.

  Scrunch-scrunch.

  And then it happens.

  A new sound.

  Not a bear, a mouse, a squirrel or a bat. A sound I know as well as the bang of my own heart—and when it comes, it floods my cells with a bright white light and there’s no fucking doubt I’m alive now because—

  Tink.

  The sound of hardware: a carbine or a knife or a tin-can grenade. A suck-blow of breath—me, or Shea, or Esposito—whoever it is has picked the wrong fucking moment to get hot and heavy. And here it comes, all of a sudden near and naked—

  Tink. Tink.

  Esposito’s knee swivels against mine like he’s looking in the dark, staring for whatever it is that’s moving closer, closer. And I feel it more than hear it, the crunch of gook feet on the earth, and Shea’s elbow moves against my ribs, and I hear the untacking of electrician’s tape and it comes to me in that hot-zone, slow-fast way that the dumb motherfucker’s really going to do it, he’s really going to light us up. And Esposito gets it too because I feel that inch of knee that’s touching mine tense, and he must be reaching to stop Shea, because he falls against me and we thud together on the ground.

  “Shi—” whispers somebody, but he doesn’t get the curse out before there’s a noise so loud it’s like the air ripping apart, and the trees turn red and we are lit.

  The forest slows, the canopy lit pink like a postcard of a Hawaiian sunset, and in the neon-spoiled shadow I see a gook gazing with stupid wonder at the sky. His chin drops and I point my rifle and his arms move and there we are, eyes laid on eyes, weapons trained, and my finger squeezes and my blood roars and before my rifle punches my shoulder, the gook nods—vâng, vâng—and stagger-falls, and the bullet flies from my weapon.

  “Got him,” says Esposito, and my body is hot and wet like I’ve been hit or I’ve pissed myself and my eyes and ears are reaching to see if there is anybody else, but there are no bullets and no bangs and there is nobody.

  And then it comes. Looping through the trees, like a swarm of hornets, rounds spiraling down through the canopy. The fucking cavalry. My mind flashes to Captain Vance, standing at the howitzer at the firebase, gripping it like a big metal dick and firing his hot load all over us. We hug the ground and there’s a phlunk and Shea jerks, and truth be told that motherfucker deserves it, stupid damn fuck-ass motherfucker. And I hear the rounds bury themselves around me; and Esposito rolls over me and I think he’s been hit too, he’s lying on me and groping over Shea and I hear a rip and a whoosh and the sky turns green and Esposito screams and the rounds slow and they slow and they slow and they slow and it’s stopped, it’s stopped and it is quiet and it is dark.

  I wait, wait for the pain after the stun, but there isn’t any, only the deep, slow ache of crouching in the boonies for hours, and the bone-crush of a musclehead Italian lying on top of me.

  Esposito makes a straining noise.

  “Jesus,” he says. “Got me in the ass.”

  I pitch him onto the ground. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Behind me somebody is gasping, high and tight.

  “Carter? Hey!”

  And in the gasping there’s a note and a sigh and it takes a beat for me to hear that it is laughter.

  “Got shot in the butt,” manages Carter, broken-voiced.

  “Aw, fuck you, dick-breath.”

  “Shea got hit,” I say. I push his body, but he doesn’t move. “You all right, Carter?”

  Carter sniffs and sighs. “Yeah.”

  “Dopfer?”

  Nothing.

  “Jesus, Dopfer, now’s the time to fucking talk!”

  “Here.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What about Shea?”

  “He ain’t moving.”

  “Shea?”

  “We got to go.”

  “Who did that?”

  “What?”

  “That noise—that Shea?”

  “Here.” Esposito handles his way over me to Shea. I hear a sound like palms beating a pillow. “Shit, there’s blood everywhere.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Shea got wasted?”

  “I can’t hear him breathing.”

  “Oh, man, this is bad.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” says Carter.

  “We got to carry him,” I say.

  Esposito sucks his breath. “I can’t do it. Can barely fucking walk myself.”

  “Marines don’t leave their dead,” says Carter, and I c
an’t tell if he’s being straight or being an asshole.

  “I’ll take his legs.” It’s Dopfer, with the most words I’ve ever heard him say at once. “Jackson and Carter take his arms.”

  “Which fucking way?” says Carter.

  “As long as we go uphill, we’ll be okay,” I say. I imagine those big, wide-spaced trees at the edge of the forest, try to place them in the darkness.

  “Come on,” says Dopfer, and there’s a dance as he takes the legs and me and Carter take the arms, and I think I hear a tiny sigh puff out of Shea’s body; but he’s got the drag-limb heaviness of that deer Bobby killed with his car on Highway One.

  We are still blind, root-tripping and tree-bumping as we drag Shea through thorns and bushes up the hill. As we stumble, I run my spare hand over the trees, feeling for the thinning of the trunks and bushes, for the stumps and cuts where the grunts hacked back the undergrowth closest to the firebase. And it’s only a few hundred meters through the forest, but each meter costs dear, paid in full then-and-there, in sweat and pain and heartbeats. I’m feeling my arm begin to tremble with Shea’s weight when the darkness thins and I see a space in the trees. We made it.

  We push out of the gap in the trees, and I see the dark shape of the firebase at the top of the hill, when all of a sudden Shea drops, and there’s a scream that crazies the birds from the trees.

  I weave for balance and try to keep moving, but there’s a dead weight tugging.

  “It’s Dopfer.”

  “What the hell?”

  A sag and drop as we set down Shea.

  Carter crouches to Dopfer. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Booby trap.”

  And Dopfer’s scream isn’t losing its steam like Skid’s did; it’s getting harder, and it doesn’t sound like a scream anymore—it’s a squawk, and it’s rising higher and higher above the trees.

  “Shut up, Dopfer,” says Carter, but the scream keeps going, and I half hear it, like a telephone ringing in another room. And in the moonlit clearing, the sky seems a thousand stories high, and it’s crammed with stars, and the trees are moving in the wind. And I’m just thinking that this unhappy country’s never been more beautiful when something changes—something unseen—and we freeze because we can all sense it, some big Devil’s eye swiveling to find us.

  Pop.

  Pop-pop.

  It found us.

  There must be a half-dozen carbines trained on us, because the pops become a crackle.

  “Shit,” says Esposito. We drop to the ground, inches apart, the noise of bullets slicing my eardrums. Carter’s wild-eyed, and I see his mouth move in a yell, but I can’t hear a word. I shake my head, and his lips keep working, then he throws his hand forward, and I read the shape of his mouth: Run.

  “What about them?” I yell, but I can’t hear my own voice. I tip my head toward Shea and Dopfer, lying on the ground, one still, one moving.

  Carter shrugs. On my other side, Esposito’s face is pale, and he’s staring at me like he wants an answer. A bullet rips the air between us and I duck my head. When I raise it again, Carter is crouch-running, Esposito limping behind him.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  I scoot backward and try to grab Dopfer, try to hoist him onto my back, but he’s struggling, and he’s so fucking heavy I fall to the ground, Dopfer writhing off me, bullets digging up the dust ahead of me. I grab Shea’s arms and pull him, drag him facedown two, five, ten meters. The rounds are coming thicker, so I huddle to the ground, gathering strength for another stretch. And I do it again, another ten meters; and again, the fibers in my arms ripping; but when I hoist up to pull Shea another stretch, the rounds swarm, and I hear one, two rounds phlunk into flesh, and I don’t know if it’s me or Shea that got hit, but I know that if I don’t beat feet, there’s going to be two corpses instead of one, so I drop Shea, and I run.

  I run, up the hill, stooping as low as I can, weaving through the brush, elephant grass cutting my hands, rocks rolling my ankles, over the dirt, and the dirt, and the dirt, eyes fixed on the ground a metre ahead of me, breath burning, praying for the coil of wire at the perimeter, for the leveling of the summit under my feet. And my lungs are empty and my heart’s punching and my legs are busted but I’m here, I’m at the perimeter, I made it, just behind Esposito, who’s shoving through a hole in the wire made by a blacked-up grunt. I push through the wire after him and propel myself forward, alongside Esposito, behind Carter, over the dead land, over the trench, till we are behind the lookout bunkers, and we can stop. As I hard-breathe and taste the sweat on my lips—there’s no sweeter taste than the taste that you’re still kicking—I see Sergeant Fugate, holding a flashlight.

  “What happened?” he says.

  “Got caught in enemy fire,” I manage, dragging out each word one at a time.

  “Right after the fucking friendly fire,” says Esposito, bent double, ass-clutching.

  “Shit, Esposito, you okay?”

  “He got shot in the ass,” says Carter.

  Fugate lifts his light to inspect Esposito’s butt. “Get a corpsman over here! You two all right?”

  “Yeah,” says Carter. I pat my hands over my body and nod.

  “Where are Shea and Dopfer?” says Fugate.

  I shake my head. “Shea got hit. At the listening post—” I spit. A tall figure is striding from the FDC, a smaller one scampering at its heels.

  “Dopfer?” asks Fugate.

  “Booby-trapped, then it got too hot. We had to run,” says Carter.

  “Shit,” says Fugate.

  “Private Jackson. Report,” calls Vance, lit by the glare of Fugate’s flashlight, his face new with rest; Roper, dark-faced at his side.

  “Sir.” My breath is roaring up and down my throat. I try to swallow it back, but it bursts back through my mouth in a cough. “We heard the enemy approaching and Lance Corporal Shea set off the red flare.”

  “This was at twenty-three hundred hours?” Vance asks Roper.

  “Correct.”

  There’s rocket fuel running through my veins. I glance at Carter, hunched in the shadow, and I wonder if he has it too— that slow-time, bright-light feeling, the electricity of combat still rushing through him.

  “And then?”

  “We engaged and killed the enemy.”

  “What was the body count?”

  “One, sir.”

  The shadows on Vance’s face move in a frown.

  “We sustained friendly fire.” I listen to Vance’s boots as they creak on the ground, hear every piece of grit crunched under his soles, my senses burned superfine in the forest. “Lance Corporal Shea was hit—more than once. We think he’s killed, sir. Esposito’s wounded.”

  “Where’s Shea?” says Vance.

  “Still out there. I—we—tried to carry him back.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Dopfer. Stepped in a trap. Then we got caught in enemy fire and had to run.”

  “Leaving Shea and—”

  “Dopfer.”

  “Leaving Shea and Dopfer,” Vance says. He pauses, a long, brace-yourself, how-fucking-dare-you pause. He leans in close, his face cut with shadows, and I see his mouth twist in disgust. “You left two fellow Marines behind?” His voice is quiet, but I can hear the revulsion, hear it dripping from his words like fat from a patty.

  “You think I would leave you behind? You think Sergeant Fugate would leave you behind?” He’s yelling, right into my face; I can smell the meatballs he ate at chowtime.

  “No, sir.” I think of Shea and Dopfer, bleeding in the dirt, maybe dragged off by those fucking gooks, and shame spreads over me. And I think of the rounds flying and Esposito hurt and those last three hundred meters up the hill and I wonder if I had a choice—if Captain Vance, with his listening post and his howitzer and his Semper fi ever gave me a fucking choice. “But, sir—”

  “There are no goddamn buts! You never leave a Marine behind. I don’t care if he’s alive or dead. I don
’t care if he screwed your mother and murdered your father. I don’t care if it’s hot as a whorehouse on dollar night. That’s what makes us different. You understand?”

  “Sir.” I step back, away from his big voice and his anger. He steps back too, and shakes his head.

  “First drugs, now this—Jesus Christ, Jackson, what made you think you could be a Marine?”

  This slaps me so hard my eyes sting, and I drop my head and cough. Fugate must know I’ve had enough of a bitching, because he grasps Vance’s arm and says, “What next, sir?”

  “The same goes for the both of you,” says Vance to Carter and Esposito. “I don’t care if you’re hurt or not.”

  “Sir,” says Fugate.

  Vance turns to Fugate. “All right, Sergeant, take a patrol and get back out there.”

  “Sir.”

  “We got two Marines to pick up, and VC in the tree line. Engage the enemy, and go get the men. You—” He points at Carter, whose face is flared by the match at his cigarette. “You go with Sergeant Fugate.” I see the cigarette fall clean out of Carter’s mouth. “You—” Vance turns to me. “Show me your hands.” I raise them in front of him and Fugate spotlights them with his flashlight. I watch my hands shiver, hear my breath heave through my nostrils, feel my underwear stick wet against my ass. Vance’s eyes move over me and he reads something he doesn’t like. “Not you,” he says. “You’re not ready.” The flashlight glares my eyes and my heart pounds. Carter mutters something.

  “C’mon, sir,” I say, raising my voice over the blood that’s booming through my brain. “I’m good.”

  Vance laughs, a short, cold-metal laugh, and murmurs something, but I can’t hear it over the noise in my head.

  “Sir?” I say.

  “I said you’re not good, you’re a liability.” Vance is too loud now, his face half lit and ugly. “You’re a danger to yourself and a danger to my men.”