The Road Ahead

by Adrian Bonenberger

  Tabby entered behind Amy. After a cautious greeting, Tabby took a seat in the corner and watched the three of them as if she’d been sent to chaperone the visit. She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, Dave thought, tall and skinny, with dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses that worked with her face. Looking closer, he noticed that the glasses magnified her eyes unnaturally, and he turned away from her unblinking gaze. Amy saw the shelf.

  “What is this stuff? Can I look at it?” she asked. The shelf, she was going right for it. Dave felt a flash of anxiety, but it passed when he saw that the statements were well-hidden under the plates, invisible.

  “Just military gear and paperwork. Knock yourself out,” Dave said, and he felt a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Just to be safe, he covered the plates with a set of folded fatigues, pretending that his purpose was to uncover a few small chunks of cuneiform for Amy.

  “These are from the ruins of Babylon,” Dave said, picking one up. “Or, at least, that’s what the guy told me.” Dave laughed in a forced, nervous way, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tabby watching him. His hand started shaking, and he put the piece of clay down before anyone noticed.

  “I’ll get us some champagne,” Skeet said, rolling his eyes at Dave’s joke. “You girls drink champagne, right?” Skeet asked, trying to be charming.

  “Yes, please,” Tabby said. “Should I call you Skeet?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s what my army buddies call me,” Skeet said as he walked into the kitchen. “Aaron, Skeet, whatever.”

  Amy picked up one of the photographs from the shelf. It was the one showing the three of them, Dave, Skeet, and Blake, standing next to the camel and smiling.

  “I have a print of this same picture on my own little shrine at home,” she said. “It makes it look like you guys were on a safari.”

  “Yeah, this is kind of a shrine,” Dave said. He checked to see that Skeet was out of earshot and pointed at the black heart patch. “I really like this. It stands for the good stuff and the bad stuff at the same time. The love and the pain.”

  “It does,” Amy said, into the idea. Their easy way of understanding each other relieved Dave’s tremors and sweating. She picked up a rusty knife, another trinket from the bazaars, and she turned it around in her hands, looking at its pitted surface as if it held some kind of answer or revelation. Dave knew how it was. Trying to remember Iraq was like trying to remember a vivid dream that fades away before you get a chance to jot down the details. It was as if Blake died in the dream, but when they woke up he was really dead. These objects came from the dream world, the place where they left him.

  On the way to the bar, Tabby’s eyes darted around nervously. “Is this neighborhood safe?” she asked.

  “Hell of a lot safer than Iraq,” Dave said. Now he was being the angry vet who couldn’t let go, and he wished he hadn’t said it.

  “We’re safe with these guys,” Amy said. As they walked into Jon’s Tavern, Dave saw that Carl was there as usual.

  “At last, some pretty girls,” Carl said.

  “Shut up, you,” Jon said, then nodded at Amy and Tabby with deadpan seriousness. “You know what, he’s right, ladies. At last. What can I get you?”

  Dave heard Tabby laugh for the first time, and her posture, normally taught and attentive toward Amy, uncoiled. Skeet was being a good wingman by talking to Tabby and getting those giant eyes off of Amy.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” Dave asked Amy.

  “Please. I’m a mess.” Music came on from the jukebox as Dave sipped his drink, feeling a gentle warmth radiating from Amy.

  “You’re not a mess,” Dave said. Amy smiled and scooted her stool closer to his.

  “Thanks for everything, this weekend, the fishing trip,” she said. “I really needed to get away from home. It’s almost as if . . .” she said and paused. Dave leaned closer, noticing the distance between their lips.

  “Yeah?” he said, staring into her soft brown eyes. She pulled back and started crying quietly.

  “As if Blake were still protecting me, being here with his two friends from Iraq,” she said between sobs.

  Dave looked away, embarrassed and disappointed. I’m a pale shadow, a substitute, he thought. A rivulet of sweat trickled down his back as he wondered whether Elaine was still up. Amy noticed his distracted thoughts and wiped her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Amy asked.

  “Fine,” Dave said curtly, and he took a sip of his drink. If he went to Elaine’s, she’d probably ask him how college was going while he counted out his money, as if they had some kind of real, transgenerational friendship. Fuck Elaine, he thought as he put the glass down on the bar. He patted Amy on the shoulder in a way he thought was brotherly, supportive but not intimate.

  On the TV behind the bar, a news channel showed an update from Iraq.

  “Geez, you just can’t get away from that place,” Skeet said.

  “You want me to turn it off?” Jon asked.

  “Could you?” Tabby asked.

  “No, leave it on, please. I like knowing what’s going on over there,” Amy said.

  “I just don’t know what to think of the war,” Tabby said in a circumspect manner, cocking her head. Dave could tell that she was trying to be polite—Amy had probably asked her not to get into politics over the weekend. He remembered her saying in Kentucky how horrible it was that all of them, the poor soldiers, had to go fight over there as part of a longer anti-establishment lecture.

  “If I had to go back and do it again, I would sign up, no question,” Dave said, glaring at Tabby. “Whatever happens, I’m just proud I was there with the other guys.”

  As images of violence played out on the TV screen, Dave noticed Tabby’s worried glance toward Amy, and he again wished that he had kept his mouth shut. She was just looking out for her friend. What would he do if he could go back? Maybe it would be him who died instead of Blake, and Amy could have her real husband beside her instead of his junkie friend who happened to survive. Or, maybe no one would get blown up or have his head replaced with a dog’s. It could be just the pictures with camels this time around.

  Back at the house, Amy sat down on the couch and leaned forward.

  “Any champagne left?” she asked.

  “I gotta turn in. See you girls in the morning. We’ll leave at ten?” Dave said, heading up the stairs. Skeet noticed a tiny frown on Amy’s face as she got up and walked into the kitchen. He followed Dave up the staircase and stopped him in the hallway.

  “What are you doing, jackass?” Skeet whispered.

  “Going to bed.”

  “No way, you’re doing great, buddy,” Skeet said. “Even you can’t fuck this up.”

  “It’s over,” Dave said. “Besides, she’s Blake’s girl.”

  “He’d want her to be happy. And I’ve been talking to Tabby for hours. It’s torture,” Skeet said. Dave noticed that he wasn’t sweating or shaking. It seemed like the worst of the withdrawal was over.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been a drag,” Dave said.

  “You remember how fucked up I was when we got back. You were there for me.”

  “Alright,” Dave said, smoothing out his shirt. “Here goes.” He turned around and walked back down toward the living room.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Dave froze. Tabby was standing by the shelf, and she had the original report on Blake’s death in her hands. She flipped through a few pages, then adjusted her glasses and flipped back to the start.

  Amy walked out of the kitchen holding a glass of champagne, and she smiled when she saw that Dave had come back downstairs. She looked like she did in the picture at Blake’s memorial service, lighter than air. Oh boy, Dave thought, her night’s about to get ruined. For him, it was like the moment of limbo after you stub your toe, when you know that you screwed up but the pain hasn’t hit yet.

  “What is this?” Tabby asked, waving the packet. “I think it’s about Blake,” she said, cocking her head and staring at Dave with h
er giant, questioning eyes. Then she went back to flipping through the statements as Amy peered over her shoulder.

  Dave tried to stay calm as he assessed the situation. He was certain that Tabby would make a big stink about “the truth.” Amy would be dragged through a new investigation into Blake’s death, and it would be his fault for having kept the statements. There certainly wasn’t going to be a fishing trip tomorrow. Amy might never speak to him again. Skeet was probably going to kick his ass. Dave clenched his fists and braced himself for the storm he was sure was coming.

  Tabby tossed the packet aside with an air of frustration. “It’s all acronyms and jargon. Tell me what it says,” she said.

  Dave unclenched his fists.

  “Come on, Dave,” Amy said, taking a sip from her glass of champagne. “It’s like it’s written in Babylonian. What does it say?”

  PAWNS

  by Kristen L. Rouse

  Nasir turned up the radio. Somehow the rapid-fire Bollywood drumbeat made the dusty, jaw-rattling roads of eastern Afghanistan more tolerable. He bobbed his head in rhythm, glanced at his side mirrors to back his road-battered Hino flatbed straight against the base’s wall, then reached his hand to the console, engaging the parking brake. His black turban was soaked with sweat, and he gently set it on the seat next to him, dusting away the layers of grey powder accumulated from his day of driving. He placed a clean, white skullcap, trimmed in blue and gold, atop his sweaty, bald crown. A man sang in high and nasal Urdu of sadness and despair. Nasir sat transfixed, gazing out at the familiar, rugged brown mountains until the song ended. His midday prayer was nearly two hours late, but God knew he’d been driving. God also knew that this truckload had brought Nasir to Gardez for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. Make haste, but—he thought with a wag of his head—let God make the timing right.

  Nasir picked up a pitcher of water and rolled-up prayer rug from the front seat, then hopped out of his truck.

  “Come to prayer,” he sang to himself. “God is the most high. There is no god but God.”

  Nasir waved and smiled at an old man sitting cross-legged on a dust-caked Persian rug. The rug was spread beneath the shadow of the old man’s ancient Bedford cargo truck, its rounded, rusty hood and grill reminding Nasir of the colorfully painted trucks that fascinated him as a boy. A rough-looking teenager sat near the old man at the edge of the rug, gazing listlessly. The boy was barely tall enough to reach his truck’s pedals, Nasir thought.

  The holding yard of the base at Gardez was surrounded by a wall of barriers, metal wire baskets filled with rocks and sand—an open buffer between the large base of American and Afghan soldiers and its outer wall. Trucks carrying full loads were parked in rows, waiting to be brought into the base to unload. The Americans contracted with Afghan truck companies to ship tons of cargo continuously between their bases, yet never seemed in a hurry to receive it. Nasir knew the old man from the many times they had waited together outside of bases, sometimes for hours, sometimes days. How quickly they got through the holding process seemed like a matter of luck and chance. He left this to God. When his wife Farzana would ask on the phone whether he’d be home soon, he would say simply: “Insha’Allah.”

  He walked to the back of his loaded truck. Two large, twenty-foot-long shipping containers were secured to his flatbed by chains, and he habitually tugged at the chains to check their tautness. He squatted beside the tail bumper of his truck, unrolled a green, patterned prayer rug, slipped off his worn leather sandals, then stepped onto the rug. He gently poured warm water from the plastic pitcher onto his hands and then washed it onto his face, his trimmed black-and-grey beard, his ears, his hands and arms down to the elbows, then his bare feet, rinsing away the dust of the day. He closed his eyes and exhaled, shutting out the six hours he’d spent on narrow, pitted roads since early morning. He placed his hands behind his ears and recited in a low voice, “God is the most high.” He knelt and bowed, saying each prayer and verse in sequence, just as he had five times every day since he was a small boy.

  He tightened the rope belt of his baggy white trousers and straightened the dark brown waistcoat he wore over his long collared shirt. His clothes were salty and wet with sweat from the glaring heat, and he felt his breath shortened by the high altitude. He stood for a moment, contemplating his prayers as he scanned the brown mountaintops in the distance. His eyes traced the familiar silhouette of ridges against the hazy blue sky and he allowed the old memories of Gardez to seep into his mind—that black-dark morning when he was last here, piled into the hulking Soviet helicopter with his platoon of young, Afghan soldiers, terrified and eager to attack the mujahideen base high in the mountains. He drew in his breath slowly and looked up at the cloudless blue sky, giving thanks to God that he could remember those days of death, yet still live. Nasir shook out the stiffness in his neck and shoulders, but his chest felt hard and tight. He took deep breaths as he made his way to the Persian rug.

  “So good to see you Akaa,” he said, taking the old man’s frail hand in both of his. The old man beamed, broad and toothless beneath his thick white beard, holding his left hand to his chest. Nasir reached out to shake hands and greet the teenager seated next to him on the carpet, smiling and touching his hand to his heart as he wished him peace and hello. The boy offered a limp, lifeless hand. Nasir lowered himself down onto the carpet, legs crossed beneath him, next to the old man he called akaa, uncle.

  Nasir smiled warmly and exchanged news with his friend—the old man’s wives and grown sons were healthy, Nasir’s two sons and two daughters were well, his wife was missing him, but happy. Nasir was pleased to see his old friend, impossible as their friendship would have been years ago. The old man was a Tajik from a village in the Panjshir valley and known as a fighter in the long-ago mujahideen; Nasir was Pashtun, and from a quiet, flat district of farms and orchards in Paktika. Nasir had enlisted as a young man to become an Afghan commando, trained and outfitted by the Russians to fight the American-backed mujahideen. Yet after these decades of turmoil among his countrymen and foreigners, and the long distances they now both traveled to make a living—they greeted each other in peace.

  Nasir thought of the verse that had come to him again and again in recent years:

  It may be that God will grant friendship between you and those who you now hold as enemies. For God has power over all things. God is forgiving, and most merciful.

  Nasir placed his hand warmly on the old man’s shoulder. “How is the security line today, my friend?” Nasir asked.

  “The Americans stopped the line going in. Many soldiers came out with their guns and long metal tools, searching under the trucks—more than usual,” the old man explained. “Maybe there is a threat today, or maybe we will make our deliveries to the base this afternoon, insha’Allah,” he said.

  “Insha’Allah,” Nasir repeated with a nod. He reached his fingers inside the pocket of his waistcoat, pulling out a chrome pocket watch. He folded back the worn, smooth cover to reveal a yellowing watch face with bold, scripted numbers. A tiny star and Cyrillic print arced across the bottom of the watch face: CAENAHO B CCCP. Made in the USSR. He’d carried it in his waistcoat pocket for decades, a touchstone of the history that shaped him, and that he’d managed to escape. He dutifully wound the watch every night after his evening prayers before he went to sleep. He rubbed his fingers slowly through his beard.

  “It’s two o’clock now. We may be spending the night outside, Akaa,” Nasir said.

  The old man smiled and gave a small wag of his head. “I will stay hopeful,” he said, opening his mouth in a toothless grin.

  Nasir smiled and took off his white skullcap for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He relaxed his shoulders and breathed deeply, reminding himself that this was in God’s hands, that the timing of all things is decided by God, not men.

  The old man’s emerald-green eyes were watery with age, reminding Nasir of the shimmering water of the Panjshir river, a place he knew
intimately in its astounding beauty—and a scene appearing in his many nightmares. Nasir’s first campaign as a young soldier was in Panjshir, where hardened mujahideen lay in wait, dug into their mountain positions—then pounced like lions upon his division of newly trained commandos. Nasir’s dreams dredged up the bodies of his comrades, thrashing them downriver, battering them onto rocks, dragging them under in the current. His sleep replayed these scenes through the darkness of night, but he wiped them away each morning before his first prayers.

  Nasir remembered his first conversation with the old Tajik when they had waited at an American base in the north several years earlier. They’d exchanged memories of the green river and its valley, and the brutal battles that had turned grassland into barren waste. The old man’s eyes brimmed with tears as he told Nasir that his family was thriving, and that peaceful farms had begun retaking the old battlefields. This was the first time Nasir had spoken with an old enemy as a friend. Nasir spent years feeding his rage, nursing it more than his own hungry children. Yet the word came from his mouth: masha’Allah. God has willed it. May all of our families stay safe and healthy for a lifetime, he found himself saying aloud, and he meant it. This was a new era, a time to dust off the soot and residues of long-ago battles. One day he had been a soldier fighting alongside the Russians, the next, one of millions of refugees piling their families onto flatbed trucks heading to Pakistan. No Afghan in those days had escaped suffering and hardship. They were pawns in a conflict that was never truly theirs.

  The old man touched Nasir on the arm, stirring him from his ruminations. “Shall we have a game, my son?” the old man challenged with a grin. “The Americans are giving us time for play today,” the old man said gently. Nasir was glad to retrieve the game board from his truck.