The Wide Night Sky

by Matt Dean

  Chapter 23

  The air was still, hazy, as cool and dry as a mausoleum. Even after he patted his utilities and brushed himself off, he was coated in white dust, as if someone had dipped him in talc. Gently, he tipped Bello’s helmet and shook the dust from the bag.

  Crouching, he peered through the gaps among the thorny trees. He saw, just beyond them, the pale and rutted surface of the wadi. And on the other side of that, more trees, thicker and more tangled. They looked like illustrations of witches’ hands in an old fairy tale.

  Passing through the grove, he turned to his right and followed the wadi-bed until it curved and began to rise. He paused for a moment, just to get his bearings, and when he did, he heard movement across the wadi. His heart seized like a bad engine. In about a week’s time, he was supposed to be home, but he’d get there a lot quicker if he got himself killed today.

  Backing into the thicket, he hid Bello’s helmet and the little bag of remains at the foot of a squat-trunked tree. With his knife he blazed the tree’s bark—not a proper blaze, just a hasty X about six inches above the top of the grass, just enough to find the helmet again.

  He lay still and watched the trees on the other side. All was still.

  He drew his pistol, checked the magazine, flipped the safety. He patted both his shoulder pockets, looking for his earplugs. A dumb habit—he was right-handed, and the plugs were always on the left. Yellow side in, so that he could fire his weapon without going deaf, but he wouldn’t miss the next rustle in the underbrush. Still on his belly, he crawled forward to the edge of the thicket and squinted through the haze.

  There was movement. Something brown, then something white: the colors of an Afghan’s robe and headdress. And then he heard the report of a firearm. There was nothing else it could be. Littlefield was sure of it. He aimed and fired.

  He heard a bleat of pain, not a human cry. He’d shot a goat. He’d shot someone’s goat.

  A man emerged from the trees, an ancient-as-fuck Afghan man, grizzled and stooped and limping, with craggy, pockmarked skin and a long beard hennaed to the shade of cherry Kool-Aid. Howling in Pashto, he made a beeline for Littlefield and, taking him by the sleeve, dragged him to his feet and across the sand of the wadi.

  Yes. He’d shot a goat. The animal’s twitching body lay in a covert, surrounded by blood-spattered trees. It had been a pitiful creature—so skinny, so mangy—and now it was straight-up fucking tragic. The single shot had shattered its jaw without actually killing it. Littlefield’s belly grumbled and clenched. He wished he could have five minutes alone in the woods, so that he could either puke or shit.

  The first thing he had to do, though, was end the goat’s misery. He motioned for the Afghan to plug his ears. Whether he understood or not—and apparently he didn’t—the old man kept ranting and waving his arms. The goat’s feet scrabbled in the dust. Holding his breath, Littlefield shot the animal in the side of the head. The twitching stopped. Briefly, the air was heavy with quiet. Even the old man was, for once, silent.

  Littlefield holstered his weapon and plucked out his earplugs. He heard distant yelling and the barking of a dog. Cocking his head, he listened. It was Pittman, calling his name: “Littlefield. Do you hear me? Littlefield. Are you okay?”

  “Here,” he called back. “Unharmed. All clear.”

  “Loud and clear.”

  The air had not moved within the space of Littlefield’s memory, and he swam in his own sweat. It was as if the world above had sucked all the air out of this tiny cleft in the earth. The dog was still barking. It must be Mary. Littlefield worried that, at the sound of his voice, she’d come barreling down the hill to find him.

  He began backing away, checking behind him every couple of steps so that he didn’t trip over a branch or a hump of earth or his own damn feet. The old man stood pat and watched him. When he reached the trees on the other side, Littlefield fetched Bello’s helmet and remains. He didn’t even need his half-assed blaze to find them. When he looked up again, the old man had gone out of sight. Littlefield hustled through the thicket and followed the line of trees.

  A hundred meters on, the thicket petered out. Ahead of him lay a tract of moon dust, pocked in places by goat tracks. Beyond that, he saw, at fucking last, the spindle trees where Bello and Punk had eaten their lunch. Mary, spotting him from afar, leapt and spun and trotted out to meet him.

  Evans had everything bagged and tagged, and he was cleaning his fingernails with the point of a penknife. When Littlefield got closer, Evans said, “Heard a couple of shots. You okay, Littledick? I was worried sick, thinking I might never again get to watch you finger your bunghole.”

  “I’m intact, bunghole and all.”

  “Who’s your buddy?”

  Before he turned to look, Littlefield knew what he’d see. And yes, sure enough: There, maybe a little less than a klick away, was the old-timer, the old Afghan with his crazy red hair. He was carrying his dead goat draped across his shoulders. The gore oozing out of its head had darkened one sleeve of his garment.

  Littlefield’s shoulders slumped. “I shot his goat.”

  “Why in the everlasting fuck would would you do that?” Evans said.

  “It was an accident, you fucking idiot.”

  They waited while the old man approached, but he walked so slowly and unsteadily it seemed he’d never arrive. Littlefield gestured, and Evans nodded, and they set off to meet the old Afghan partway.

  “You got any cash?” Littlefield said.

  “The fuck for?” Evans said.

  “Thought I’d pay him for his goat. I’m guessing he followed me ‘cause he wants compensation.”

  Mary snuffled the ground, sniffed the air, went back to the ground again. When she came upon the trail of goat’s blood, she clawed at the dirt and thrust her nose into the hole she’d made.

  The old man shifted away from her. He’d been quiet, but now he started hollering. He leapt from foot to foot, trying to get away from Mary, or trying to get her away from him. In turn, the dog ran circles around him. She’d seen or smelled the goat. Its tail and one hind leg hung down almost within reach of her snout.

  “Shit,” Littlefield said.

  “Littlefield,” Evans said. The last syllable seemed to go on and on, until it shaded into a kind of low growl.

  No, that wasn’t right. The growling came from Mary. Littlefield called her name, whistled for her, slapped his thigh. She only seemed to become more fixated on the bloody goat. He stumbled forward and tried to grab for her. If she saw him or heard, she gave no sign. The Afghan’s ongoing stream of Pashto became louder and more frantic. Littlefield couldn’t understand a word of it, but it sounded to him like a lot of swearing. He was doing some swearing of his own. Mary barked in frustration.

  “Littlefield,” Evans said again. “Littlefield.”

  “I’m aware of the fucking issue,” Littlefield said. He paced out a half-circle around the dog, the goat, and the old man. “You planning to help at all, you fucking dick?”

  Evans stammered something or other—nothing that made any sense or helped even a little bit. Useless, Littlefield thought. Fucking useless.

  He moved in, closer to the dog, closer to the Afghan and his goat. The old man kept howling in warning or fear or rage. In another two seconds, Littlefield thought, all the yelling was going to make his head explode. He hurtled forward, driving Mary away from the old man. She leapt right, hopped left, dodged around him. He reached for a handful of ruff and got a fistful of loose fur instead. In her frenzy, she turned and snapped at him. He yanked his hand away. She bit at the air where his fingers had just been.

  Littlefield shrank back, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open. Had she tried, really tried, to bite him?

  Surely not. She wanted the goat, and Littlefield was merely in her way. Racing back to the old man and his blood-soaked burden, she jumped up and grabbed for the goat’s haunch. The Afghan’s sandaled foot shot out and landed squarely in the center of Ma
ry’s chest.

  With a yelp, she flew backward and twisted in the air and landed hard on her shoulder. For a moment she lay in the dust, stunned and immobile. Evans took a few steps toward her. He was calling her name. The Afghan got to her first and delivered another kick, this time to the side of her head. She cried out and kept crying. Crying like sixty. Her feet twitched against the dust.

  Evans crouched down beside her. Except for Mary’s wheezy, panicky squealing, all was quiet. Evans touched her, and she flinched at the touch. She bared her teeth as if to bite him, but she didn’t, or couldn’t, lift her head.

  “Littlefield,” Evans said. “I think—” He couldn’t bring himself to say more.

  Once more, Littlefield drew his sidearm and flipped the safety. This time, he aimed it squarely at the old man’s forehead. “You motherfucking cunt,” he said.

  Evans was on his feet. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. In a second, he was at Littlefield’s side. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Don’t do this, dumb fuck. Don’t do this.”

  Trembling now, the old man began murmuring in Pashto. Scrawny as it was, the goat must weigh as much as a person—as much as a child, at least—and the old man had already been carrying it for nearly thirty minutes. He buckled under the weight, took a step back, stumbled, nearly righted himself, and finally fell hard on his ass. A spray of blood issued from the goat’s carcass and soaked the ground. The old geezer scrambled to tuck his feet under him.

  “Eight fuckin’ days, motherfucker,” said Evans. “Eight days till you’re back with hot sis. Eight days till you see your ma and pa and— What the fuck do you call him? Spuds? Your little brother, Spuds?”

  “Tater.” Littlefield could barely hear himself talk. The buzzing in his ears, the whine of blood speeding through his veins, was that loud. “We call him Tater.”

  Mary lay still. Even from a hundred paces away, it was clear that she couldn’t move. The old fucker had probably broken her spine. In return, Littlefield thought, he ought to have his own miserable neck wrung for him. Littlefield had never hated another human being more than this. His heart was a hard, tiny, jagged thing.

  His guts, though. His bowels felt like liquid. A lake in flood. He feared that, if he fired his weapon, the force of the recoil would make him shit himself.

  “Do not do this,” Evans was saying. “Put the weapon down. Walk away. No one but us’ll ever know what went down. Holster your motherfucking weapon, corporal.”

  The sun had been hidden all day in a dusty bright haze, but now both the sun and the haze had dimmed. Above the far ridge, the sky had faded to yellow and green, like an old bruise. Night birds or bats fluttered upward into the air. Littlefield watched them fly and fly until they seemed to evaporate into the ambient dust. He holstered his weapon.