Nathan hears Red Platoon going through radio checks. RG2 is having coms trouble. There hasn’t been a day when all coms have been up and working.
“Buffalo, this is Red Six, radio check, over.”
“Red Six, this is Buffalo, over.”
West rips off his headset and steps out of the truck.
“It looks like this is going to be another exciting day, guys,” he says.
“I wish I had today off,” Stanton says, and coughs.
“I got tomorrow off. I plan on spanking my monkey all day.”
“Where’d you get a monkey?”
They drive a stretch of road on the border of the Sunni and Shiite muhallas. Open fields to the right, scattered shacks and a cluster of buildings to the left. The road is lined with freshly painted curbs. They roll through an old dusty blast crater. The street is empty. Soon they close in on a checkpoint—a few cement barriers and two unlucky IA (Iraqi Army) soldiers sitting out in the middle of a battlefield. They drive through the checkpoint and down Route Amsterdam, nearly the end of the patrol. For the fourth straight day they come up on what looks to be another hoax IED.
“Red Six, this is White One, they’re watching our TTPs, over,” West says.
“Roger that, One.”
Tactics, techniques, and procedures: TTPs. That’s what these hoax IEDs have been about, but you never know for sure. This one is a duct-taped box on the side of the road, under an overpass. Whoever put it there is watching. They watch how the entire patrol stops. They look at which vehicles scan which sectors, how the Buffalo moves up through the formation to approach the IED. They can’t push through until it’s safe. There’s a window of time for them to take on fire, or be hit by a real IED hidden along the road where they have halted.
The giant steels on the Buffalo hack open the box and a bunch of bricks fall out.
“Red Six, this is One, it’s just a bunch of bricks, over.”
“Roger that, One, Charlie Mike, over.”
Most of the platoon lives for typical night patrols, where the risk is high and you never know what’s coming. But Nathan thinks it’s better to know you’re going to see action than not to know. The not knowing is the hardest part. Patches of idle time are not good for soldiers. Nathan tries to keep his focus. The rumbling of the RG motor acts like a metronome, and suddenly he remembers playing hello by squeezing the rolls of his belly together in the mirror when he was a boy. He laughs at that boy now. He had been chubby, in an almost womanly way—skin soft and hairless. The older kids in grade school moved like wolves from behind the trees in the woods behind the playground, holding branches to use as whips. They struck his thighs and butt and legs. After the beatings, he had picked at his scabs in class and tasted the blood. He put the scabs in his locker along with candy bars, PE clothes, and posters drawn on with Magic Markers. He sniffed the tips of the markers. He ate everything his mother put in front of him. Remember the little chocolates she hid in your coat pocket? He cried, but his mother held him. She had said he was handsome. “You’ll see.” He had begun each day with a careless optimism. At the bus stop one day, when he was eleven, he shared a chocolate with the slow girl. She was bigger than he was but had a small head. She said she wanted to be a pilot. She would never be a pilot. She pretended to fly down the street after she put her hand down Nathan’s pants and pulled on his thing. He ran and sweated and lifted and sweated. He climbed the bleachers every morning. He could still hear the metal echo of his footsteps over the birdsongs at dawn. He ate and grew and ran faster. By the age of sixteen, Nathan had grown a foot taller than most of the other kids in school. He made the football team and played the line. “Don’t let them move you back,” Coach had said. He wore his jersey to school and fingered the best-looking girls. He drank in the same woods where he’d been whipped years ago. He whipped younger, chubby boys, who had soft, womanly skin. Sometimes they screamed and he struck them harder.
Waves of chatter from the radio, gravel crunching beneath the treads, the inner acoustics echoing in the hollowness of his stomach. He’s so in tune with these codas, he barely recognizes the sudden blast of horns and drums in a collapse of symphonic symmetry that brings the entire ensemble of sound to a stop. He only hears the percussive beating against his eardrums, and for a moment the darkness ahead explodes into beautiful light.
The next he knows the PL is yelling, “RG One!”
“Are they okay?” Nathan shouts.
“No, they’re not okay.”
Nathan pushes the heavy armored door open and jumps out, along with the medic. It’s quiet. So eerily quiet. And dark. Nathan hears the armored latch moving from inside RG1. Someone’s trying to get out. When he wrenches the lock open, black smoke flumes out from inside the RG. The first person he sees is Rodrigo slumped over in the backseat across from the radio. The medic pulls Rodrigo out and slings him over his shoulder.
Rodrigo moans.
“That’s a good thing,” the medic says. “He’s feeling pain. He’s alive.”
Nathan helps the medic lower Rodrigo to the ground. They run back to the Humvee. Nathan wraps his arms around the next body, Silk’s. His leg is hanging on by a few strings of ACU material just above the knee. And when he picks him up, he sees Everitt facedown beneath him. He drags Silk to the cold pavement, unconscious, unmoving. Then Nathan jumps back in to get Everitt, but Everitt’s legs are wedged between the rear seat and the smoldering radio—he can’t move.
“Get me the fuck out of here,” Everitt says. He still has a big wad of chew hanging in his bottom lip.
“I’ll get you out,” Nathan says. “Don’t worry. I got you. I promise.”
In the flume of smoke, Nathan sees how it happened, how Everitt fell from the turret and the shrapnel must have taken out his legs. Nathan turns to the door to get some air and clear his eyes. That’s when he sees Stanton and West.
“Fucking help me,” he yells.
Stanton climbs up through the smoke and comes back with a fire extinguisher. He hands it to Nathan, who sprays down the radio. The smoke intensifies. He jumps out of the truck. When he hits the ground he hears his ankle pop, that fucking ankle, and he falls beside Rodrigo. Rodrigo’s been peppered with shrapnel; his face is bloodied and his left eye is swollen shut. His right leg continues to spit dark purple blood.
“Rodrigo, hey, you’re going to be all right. Okay?” Nathan says.
Rodrigo’s eyes rove around almost majestically, as Stanton and the medic pull him up into the RG.
Nathan grabs a roll of duct tape from his pack and wraps it around his heavy combat boot and treads where the ball of his ankle has begun to push against the cattle hide. On the other side of the Humvee, Nathan sees Silk, one arm bent behind his back, the other folded under his chin as if trying to pick his hand up off the ground.
“I can’t breathe,” he gasps.
“Medic!” Stanton yells.
“No, right here,” Nathan says. “I can help him right here.”
It’s an open space, on a hard surface, and he can work under the spotlights from the other trucks.
“You best wait for the medic,” Stanton says.
There’s no time to argue. Stanton is his superior and Nathan has to follow orders. They put Silk on the orange plastic spine board and load him into RG3. Rodrigo is still slumped over on the rear right seat. There’s just enough room for Nathan to crouch inside where it’s dark. The only light they have to work under is from the lighter they found in Rodrigo’s pocket.
Silk starts to slide off the spine board. Nathan pushes his shoulder against his side to hold him in place while the medic fumbles through his aid bag and pulls out an IV set.
“Come on, Doc,” Nathan says, as the pie-faced kid spikes the IV bag and primes the line.
He hangs the bag from the ceiling of the RG and opens up an 18-gauge catheter, then puts a restricting band on Silk’s arm and feels for a vein.
“I’m going to have to fish around,” the medic says.
“The fuck you mean?” Stanton says. “This unit’s got no use for a medic who can’t save nobody.”
“Okay,” the medic says, cowering in the faint light. “Here.” He opens his bag and takes out another kit with a longer needle and wider tubes.
“I got to penetrate the sternum in order to infuse fluids through the bone.”
“Come on, Doc,” Nathan says.
The medic sets up the Fast1 and plunges it into Silk’s sternum.
“Listen for a pop,” the medic says, and pushes down as hard as he can.
There’s no pop, no drip. The medic squeezes the bag to force fluids in. The drip chamber fills up but the fluids don’t flow. Silk reaches over toward Nathan. He’s trying to speak, but he can’t. Then he’s dead.
They have to leave him there and turn their attention to Rodrigo. Why is there only one medic anyway? Nathan thinks. He checks Rodrigo’s dressings, then cuts off some of his boot to get a look at his foot. It’s bloodied but superficial.
“So?” Nathan asks.
“He’s going to be fine. The shrapnel’s all in his face and legs.”
“That doesn’t sound fine.”
The medic shrugs.
“One for two,” Stanton says. “That’s not a very good percentage.”
It feels like hours before the medevac arrives. The medevac hovers between the telephone poles and low-hanging wires, and lands a hundred yards north of their patrol. West slings Rodrigo over his shoulder. Nathan and Stanton carry Silk out on the spine board, then go back for Quinton and Everitt, who are also dead.
In RG3, Nathan sits in the rear seat and leans his head against the cold bulletproof glass. They spend the rest of the night sitting on that road watching RG1 burn. At one point the medic says something about remembering to breathe. Nathan can’t stop it. He breaks his hand on the medic’s face. The medic takes it like a boxer. He snaps his nose back in place and breaks open an ice pack and hands it to Nathan. While he sleeps that night, the sound of pathetic whistling, like a child trying to play the flute, fills the campsite.
* * *
Memories are detonators.
Nathan needs to stamp out the fire in his head.
Iraq, Afghanistan, the heat, the cold, it all runs together now. He never meant to be a lifer. He never quite felt he was in the right place. He was killing time waiting for the bigger purpose. Then he was killing people. Now he’s killing time again. But he gets a check from the government, free medical, no dental, now that he’s out.
The wind picks up. Cones of dust look to be dancing on their points. The lingering taste of beer and cigarettes coats Nathan’s mouth. A quarter mile down the road is the bungalow where Mason has been living ever since he got his toes blown off in Afghanistan. He wears a special boot that causes him to limp and makes a loud, clomping noise like a horse hoof. He says he’s known in Kabul as the medicine man.
Before Nathan reaches the door, Mason hobbles out in his underwear, glasses crooked on his nose, holding a smoldering roach in a pair of tweezers.
“Okay, okay,” Mason says, as though expecting this visit. “Let’s get you figured out.”
Mason is in that rare state where he seems to have lost all concept of time. He has a serene glow about him. Maybe it’s the pot and pills, but in this moment Mason appears to Nathan to be unburdened, living without a past.
Stretching out on a worn green couch and turning a fan toward his face, Mason gestures with his hand for Nathan to sit.
“So?” he says. “How do you feel? Specifically, I mean.”
“I feel like my skull is breaking apart,” Nathan says. “I see all things all at once.”
“I have just the dose for you,” Mason says excitedly, plucking a bottle from a group of bottles on the coffee table, then opening a metal tackle box.
Nathan hitches his shoulder. He doesn’t like sudden movements.
“Oh,” Mason says. “You’ve been diseased.”
He tosses the bottle to Nathan.
“What’s this?”
“That,” Mason says. “That will take you to the calm.”
Nathan twists the cap, plucks a round yellow pill from the bottle, and places it on his tongue, waiting for a bit of saliva to gather in his mouth in order to swallow it down.
“And these, too,” Mason says, tossing another bottle, and another. “Might as well.”
He proceeds to give Nathan blue ones and muted green ones and, “What’s this color,” he asks. “Cantaloupe?”
“Listen, Nathan,” Mason’s voice like a warning, “picture the mind as a hotel. In this hotel, there are endless rooms and floors, and elevators ascending and descending to different times in one’s life, to dreams and faces, wants and projections, scenes, smells, small chocolate candies melted in your coat pockets, fears. And sometimes further back, beyond your life. Into distant lives of others that are part of you because you have shared the same blood, the same world.”
Nathan knows the hotel well: the place where he visits all the people remembered and imagined, a retreat of sorts, a comfort, yet, like hotels often are, mysterious, full of despair. The long, carpeted hallway one walks at two in the morning when the front desk clerk is half-asleep and the lone bellhop is smoking outside near the valet stand. Soft, recognizable music plays in the lobby. This is the slow, seemingly endless moment before everything changes.
Nathan feels a strange sense of gratitude for Mason’s attentiveness. The same as when his father would ask him about this or that grown-up matter when he was a kid: What do you think of the new homes I’m building up on Shootflying Hill Road? Who would you put your money on in the Oilers versus Packers matchup? Don’t you agree the government should issue a flat tax and be done with it?
Mason places his hand on Nathan’s knee.
Nathan flinches.
“It’s okay,” Mason says. “No one is going to hurt you.”
Bright light envelops the room. The sun is supposed to be a healing force, but the light stabs him like a lance to the chest.
“You poor thing,” Mason says.
* * *
The next day, Nathan wakes still dressed in his army-issue service uniform, what’s referred to by his fellow defenders of the flag as a bag of smashed asshole. Even though he’s been out of the army for a few years now, his uniform affords him free drinks, appetizers, and the occasional piece of trim. There’s a girl beside him, snoring noisily, her lips dry and cracked from too many cigarettes. Nathan vaguely remembers her, the way she hooked her leg around his at the Rambler, a bar just down the street, and her breath on his ear, and her pinky finger wriggling around his ass.
His phone is ringing somewhere. There, just under her left breast. He presses two fingers up into her tit and levers the phone to look at the screen. Then he pulls the phone out and answers.
“Andrew?” he says. “What time is it?”
“Six in the morning, where you are.”
“That’s right.”
“I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t something important.”
“I’m sort of busy,” Nathan says, and looks at the girl, flat out on her belly with her legs spread, a tattoo of a spider on her rear.
“Mom’s sick.”
“She’s been sick.”
“She’s worse. They found tumors in her brain.”
“Plural?”
“It doesn’t look good.”
“No, I wouldn’t think tumors in your brain would look good at all.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not nearly.”
“There’s nothing they can do for her in the hospital anymore. Now she’s home.”
“And so are you?”
“Yes, for a little while.”
Andrew’s voice sounds shaky in the way it used to get when he was uncertain.
“Do we have an ETD?”
“A what?”
“How long until—?”
“Oh, man.”
“What?”
“Wee
ks, months. She’s asking for you. What more do you want?”
“I don’t have much dough.”
“I can spot you for now.”
“I’ll need to settle my affairs here, first.”
“Can you try and make it? I’ll have your ticket paid for.”
“I can try.”
After he hangs up, Nathan sits still for a few moments, or seemingly still (his right leg has twitched involuntarily since his first tour), trying to understand why he feels so close to nothing. He should cry, or throw something, or do both at the same time. But he feels fine. He has a craving for pancakes.
The girl stirs and turns over on her side, revealing a pearl white, stat-graph scar along her belly—the shaky hand of an old country doctor who had just run out of whiskey.
“What’s going on?” she asks, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.
“My mom’s dying.”
“That sucks. Can you pass me a smoke?”
Nathan hands her the open pack. She sits up and pulls the sheet around her like a cloak, takes out a cigarette, which Nathan lights for her. She blows out a stream of smoke, while appearing to be thinking of something worthwhile, eyes squinting slightly, maybe just a stray lash in her pupil.
“I think I lost a contact last night,” she says. “Did I lose a contact last night?”
Nathan stands and pulls up his jeans and buckles his belt. It almost doesn’t seem right to leave this one here alone.
“Check out’s at eleven,” he says, as he pulls on a black T-shirt. “If you don’t mind.”
“Whatevs,” the girl says.
That’s a new one, Nathan thinks. Then he remembers the pancakes, and he grabs his wallet and smokes and keys.
“Take care,” he says, and lets the door slam shut behind him.
TWENTY-THREE
Andrew is waiting outside his car in the visitor parking lot at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution in central Pennsylvania. He has driven most of the way in the rain, and the cloud cover, darkening the daylight, has made him feel doubly confined. He crosses his arms, then stuffs his hands in his pockets. He guesses there’s no specific way to stand to greet your father after he’s been released from prison.
The Outer Cape Page 17
