We Come to Our Senses

by Odie Lindsey

  “Y’all don’t date black girls in y’alls fraternity?” Davis asked.

  “Probably not,” I said. “But I’m not against it.”

  “You sayin’ you have dated a black girl?”

  “Well, no. But I’ve thought about it.”

  “I bet you have.” She laughed, then coughed.

  She and I both knew a liaison would follow. She had overnight guard duty, alone, at the far corner of the berm. She said she needed company. I needed company.

  Diesel will now and again race like gasoline. This happened as I was stirring a tub: a flame shot straight up the two-by-four, which I flung out of panic. It hit PFC Davis across the chest, smearing on her desert camo blouse.

  “What tha hell was that, you?” she yelled.

  “Sorry, sorry. Fire just jumped.”

  “You out of your goddamn mind?” She wiped her hands on me, then peeled off her soiled blouse and wiped that on me too. She was not wearing her required t-shirt and her breasts bulged from the top of her olive-green bra.

  “Reaction,” I said. “I—”

  “What kinda man throws a flaming sticka shit at a woman?”

  Both women cursed me and left for other fires. Though I tried to apologize several times, and soon bartered them both to the Frogs, neither spoke to me again.

  This, in slow motion: the soiled board, twirling like a helicopter blade, aflame.

  I strung up a large piece of cardboard across the tent wall behind my cot. I pinned photos on it of women I’d slept with, or whose pictures with me indicated that I might’ve. Drunken hugs at fraternity parties, suggestive poses, kisses on my cheek. These weren’t the only photos I brought to combat. But after word got out that I’d spent a week on suicide watch in the medical tent, it became vital that I not be seen as a weak-ass, a Tetley.

  Not pictured: Charlotte, in a royal-blue armchair near the window, dressed only in a white cotton shirt that was unbuttoned at the top. Sleeves gently rolled, her tan legs tucked under her on the wide chair cushion. I lay on the motel bed, naked except for dog tags. The windows were open, the transparent curtains billowed. She said we should look forward to being married when I got back. I did.

  THEY dragged rank prisoners down the dirt road beside camp, like a slave march. They had stains on their pant asses and dust in their mustaches, and they begged us for the chewing gum and the salt packets from our MREs. Who knows where they went? Rumor was that they were nobodies, just a bunch of haji towelhead farmers, and we had better forget about them and get focused for the ground assault.

  There was nothing happening. It was all outside the compound walls, staggering by, exploding in the distance.

  MY grandmother wrote a letter in scrabbled blue ink. It was the first she had written since World War II, when my grandfather had done tours both in Europe and the Pacific. I do not know why she didn’t send word to my father, in Vietnam.

  When I was very young, going through a drawer I found an old black-and-white centerfold. Opening the trifolded paper, I was floored by this first glorious vision of sex. So much so that I did not recognize the subject. My mother walked in and caught me ogling, then nervously explained that she’d had her face superimposed on the body as a joke for my father when he was in combat.

  Every day, every war, everybody waits for mail call.

  AT some point, reborn from a psych eval down in Riyadh, I came to realize that war was more about dividends than killing. I needed a product. I started to make wine.

  This old Choctaw cook had deep gulleys in his cheeks and when he spoke he emitted a soft whistle over the letter s: sholdier, bishcuit, misshile. He gave me a few packets of yeast, and taught me how to make applejack. Soon after, I was trading liters of it, alongside grapejack, orange-juice-jack and whatever-fruit-juice-I-could-get-jack, for fresh chicken and near-beer and battery-powered speakers.

  One morning, a couple of French troops appeared. Not because they’d heard of my work as vintner, but because they needed a translator, and because one of the mechanics suspected that I might know a little French, being a college faggot and all. I cannot remember what the Frenchmen officially sought, but the next morning, in exchange for five gallons of my two-week-old applejack, an entire pallet of French rations was delivered to our tent. Tetley was angry. I told him to get ready for the Perrier.

  The French meals came in tins, not brown plastic sacks. You didn’t heat them by dropping floppy packets into warm water, you set the entire tin on Tetley’s propane flame, then let the food baste in its own juices and herbs. Instead of dehydrated pork patty, this was lapin avec haricots verts.

  “No shit, Tetley. It’s rabbit, man. Bunny.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. And we got tons of bunny, man. Half yours too. You can bitch-bath in Perrier if you want.”

  This was, indeed, a moment. A fine moment. Cluster bombs, tracer rounds, intestinal parasites—avec haricots verts.

  A five-gallon jug of bad wine was only worth a pallet of rabbit. The Perrier was traded for information about the location of the female sleeping quarters, when and where to cross over the berm, whether the women drank, if they were easy, etc. My French was better than I thought, and my answers worth an ocean of bubbling water.

  The next morning we were ordered to a meeting with our CO. He informed us that a bunch of drunk Frogs had spent the night in the women’s tent. He said this was a war, not an orgy. Guard duty was redoubled. I was again ordered to latrine detail.

  CHARLOTTE wrote that she was pregnant, that we were. Then she never wrote again. I burned shit in the desert and watched A-10s rip the sky.

  The battalion colonel briefed us by saying that Intel had lost an Iraqi Special Forces unit in our area—So stay sharp, dogs. That night, I left my guard post, climbed over the berm and walked into the void. The red lens cover was on my flashlight; I aimed it forward and followed the circle. Day-bursts of missiles hit just up the road, briefly illuminating the blackness. I prayed for someone to fire on me as I neared the front. Nobody did. Darkness swallowed me, though the rocks and sand in the red circle of the flashlight vibrated with the missile strikes. I lay on the ground for a while to feel this, then put my ear against a large rock to listen to the sound. I got up and wandered for an hour or so, scouring that landscape. At some point I found a cluster of three tiny white flowers—the only living nature I’d seen for weeks. I yanked them, then went back to the tent and wrote Charlotte for the last time. I asked her to remember no matter what. To please make a list of details about me from back home, from before the war. I put the flowers in the envelope and was done.

  ONE sunset, some general helicoptered in, gave us a ten-minute speech about victory, then left. He had a slight gut but strong posture, and he walked back and forth in his beige cammies as the red sun melted down behind him. We never saw him again, but he made clear that we would lead the invasion, would spearhead a 155-mile thrust into Baghdad, “crushing any rag-wrapped cunt” who got in our way.

  Every vehicle was armored. We sandbagged the Deuce-and-a-Half truck beds; we welded metal plates on the dozers and dumps. We jury-rigged a .50-cal mount on a pickup cab and pretended to know how to use it.

  They said, Go.

  For a mute instant there was no gender. We charged north, trucks and guns, past missile craters, charred vehicles and burned trash. It was apocalyptic and eerie, abandoned, but we scanned the desert eagerly, looking back and forth to find the enemy at last.

  We located a collection of goatskin-covered foxholes, and exited the trucks. Our rifles set on three-round semiautomatic burst, we stalked up with gun stocks to our cheeks. The holes were empty save for Arab pinups and empty water bottles and cigarette butts. The airplanes had done all the killing. We pushed on, north, so very much in search of death.

  The convoy drove for hours on the same scab of earth, no enemy in sight, our own tracks disappearing behind us in sand drift. At some point the combat-support vehicles just stopped.

  They radioe
d us and said to turn around. The war was over.

  We got out of the trucks in the middle of Iraq and took our helmets off. We yelled and unloaded our rifles, ejaculating brass casings all over the desert. Yet the silence was unbreakable.

  THE next day, Tetley and I were ordered to make a supply run and find a victory feast. We cruised the desert highway, a crisp gray seam of asphalt through the beige landscape. Out of nowhere, an enormous cloud of sand rose ahead of us. Tetley drove us straight toward it, an oncoming, massive armament convoy. Flitting strips of red, white and blue nylon tied to tank antennae against the grainy Arabian sky.

  On the shoulder to our right I saw a camel. She sat there, buckled down on all fours, groaning. To our left, soldiers stood up in the beds of transport trucks, whooping and dancing and grabbing their crotches. Pop music blared, brakes squealed. The convoy trucks were sluggish and clumped together, billowing the enormous sand cloud. Armed Forces Radio announced total victory; President Bush declared an end to the Vietnam era.

  A thin film of sand coated the camel’s black eyes and crusted her eyelashes. The troops, many shirtless, their silver dog tags wagging, yelled and waved, and danced, the exhaust stacks spewing and horns blaring, the music cranked from boom boxes. All of it, us, charging east-west in a horde along an unmarked two-lane in the desert.

  Next to the camel was her calf. It had tire tracks on its belly and a bunch of bloody black gut-ropes shooting out its ass. I was amazed at how precisely indented the tread grooves were on the tiny rib cage. Tetley never saw this. I looked over and watched him pump his fist at the soldiers, and I didn’t say anything. We passed the camels, the female’s head cocked upwards, her eyes staring at me, her mouth open, bleating.

  WHEN we started to break camp, Saudi farmers loitered outside the compound, lured by our discarded plywood and burlap and such. Given their gestures and keyword English, we determined that they wanted to use the scraps to repair animal hutches, make sheds and so forth. Do whatever it is farmers do with wood and corrugated metal. Hour after hour, days in the sun, the men stood there, white robes and red-checked headscarves. They grinned and mock-saluted, standing just beyond the compound wall next to their tiny white Datsun trucks.

  We were ordered to give them nothing. Haji bastards are tricky, our commanders said. You never know what kind of weapon can be fashioned from canvas or particleboard.

  After a few days, the farmers brought their daughters out to greet us. Not kids, not sons, but daughters, head to foot in black robes, bearing the wind like polluted ghosts. Waving at us. When this had no effect, the daughters were made to remove their veils. They prostituted smeary lipstick smiles. (One of the guys who talked to them swore it was house paint, not makeup.) Still, we hauled all of the usable materials out, passing them by, diesel exhaust and catcalls from truck cabs, en route to the burn site.

  Tremendous pyres dotted the desert expanse in all directions. Streaks of black smoke rose into the sky. Tents, tarps, plywood scraps; Meals Ready to Eat, water jugs, candy wrappers, tires, extra uniforms . . . All of it was stacked into large pyramids and set on fire.

  The farmers still stood there, waiting. We tried to run them off. Their enthusiasm waned but they still smiled, smiled and waved when you took stuff to be burned, and we couldn’t look at them anymore, and we yelled at them, or just waved and smiled and said, “Hi, haji fuckface,” or whatever, or swerved the truck at them just a little bit, just enough to get them to jump back. We flicked our tongues at their daughters. We spat.

  Alongside the order to burn, we had orders that every single grain of sand be removed from every single piece of equipment: dozers, pans, back-end loaders, trucks, etc. By no means would we be bringing home any Holy Land. They built a massive parking lot in the middle of the desert, then parked hundreds of vehicles there, in rows. With the pyres littering the landscape around us, we washed sand off of things.

  Evie Mundleson and I were ordered to scour the ambulance with power sprayers. The vehicle had never been used, so the detail was a joke. We opened the bay doors and sprayed the metal walls and the metal bunks and the open metal shelving. Sandy water poured onto the ground, alongside three black scorpions.

  I walked over, kicked the scorpions around for a minute. Laughed while they pinched at my boot.

  “Come on, man,” she said, then stomped on them.

  I asked her if she was excited to go home.

  “No way. You?”

  “Nope.”

  LAST stop was Khobar Towers, a residential building complex outside Riyadh. In the courtyard between the high-rises the Army leashed up a camel. You could pay $5 for a Polaroid with it. They set up vending, bad pepperoni pizza and nonalcoholic beer, and kiosks sold cheap Saudi souvenirs, prayer rugs and t-shirts. There was a pool.

  Amid the thousands in that sober Araby I ran across D. Garcia, this skinny Mexican I’d grown tight with during Basic Training at Fort Jackson. An Army truck driver, D. Garcia had logged over a million miles in theater. I told him I only wanted to be back in that sand. He said he just wanted to be back on that highway.

  That night—the last time I would ever see him—D. Garcia and I falsified a requisition for a transport truck, a Deuce-and-a-Half, and stole into some immigrant area of the city, Filipino, where he’d discovered you could buy black market rotgut. It was nasty and clear and came in plastic water bottles. We got drunk and skidded all over back-alley Riyadh, screaming out of the open windows of the truck cab.

  Back at Khobar we staggered through the hallways, playing commando. We gave hand signals like in the movies, and then snuck into rooms. There, Garcia aimed his fingers at sleeping troops, mock-fired several rounds, then stepped back into the hall and on to clear the next quarters.

  Behind one door we found the women, splayed out on cots, sleeping in Army-green panties, a thin layer of sweat on their exposed skin. Evie Mundleson was among them, asleep on her chest, shirtless, her breasts all smushed out. D. Garcia cocked his eyebrow at me, raised the barrel of his finger-gun to the roof, motioned for me to go inside. I nodded. He pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then at me, and then disappeared forever. I saw myself stumble over to Evie; I heard the moan that would erupt as I yanked down her battlefield panties and shoved it all straight up her ass.

  I still don’t know what stopped me. Really, there was no barrier left. No ethic, no cause. Yet I’m pretty sure I just went back to my bunk, jerked off in silence.

  FAMILIES and cameras on the tarmac at Bragg. It was hot and humid, and Charlotte was not there, though I couldn’t stop looking for her. People hugged people, hugged children, hugged reporters. Every hand waved those little American flags you find in the cemetery. Someone handed out Southwest Asia Service Medals.

  That night we put a bunch of bottles together, tequila, Jägermeister, Jack, what have you. It was guys-only. Everyone brought a fifth of the liquor they’d missed most. We drank violently, sitting on the patio outside the barracks, our dog barks reverberating off the concrete into the warm southern evening. We piled in a minivan cab and went to town. The driver didn’t even ask, “Where to?” He just dumped us on a busy, soldiered street full of bars. We wandered among hundreds of redeployed troops, amid loud music and vendors and neon. A barker talked us into one of the endless nasty clubs.

  Cigarettes and air freshener and terrible music. A brown-skinned woman in a denim miniskirt and halter top marched up, and I asked her for a beer. She said nothing, only yanked me to the back of the room as the guys howled. She pulled me behind a partition, lifted her halter, placed my hands on her large breasts, then put her own hands over mine and began rubbing us in circles. It made me think of a Laundromat.

  “You like these tits?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I answered. She might have been Mexican. She walked me into a small room with a lamp and an olive-colored military cot. I had to put both hands on the wall to hold myself up as she undid my pants and put a condom over me. She sat on the cot and started to work me over like a
machine, licking my anus for a few seconds, mouthing my testicles, fellating me just enough to promote erection. Straight-up checklist: hike miniskirt, panties to ankles, bend over. Enfranchise me with hard statements about my masculinity as I penetrate. I finished instantly but tried to keep going, accidentally lodging the condom inside her after I went limp. I handed her all my money, then stumbled into a bathroom stall and wept.

  IN Tuscaloosa I borrowed a pair of eyeglasses from a friend, pulled a Crimson Tide ball cap low on my brow, and went to see Charlotte, unannounced. I had never worn glasses, so everything was blurry. My clothes felt borrowed and dated, and were musty from a year in the drawer. She answered the door and we stood there, silently, until finally she said she was glad to see me. She was sorry how things had worked out.

  It had just rained and was July-hot. There was no baby. You could smell that the box hedges outside her apartment had just been clipped. I had not reacclimated to southern humidity and a constellation of zits had erupted on my face. I asked if she wanted to go to the zoo or something. I cannot remember if we went. I really have no idea.

  I am positive, however, that the next time I saw her it was twelve years later, far from Alabama. We ran into each other at the edge of the frozen fish section at Costco Wholesale, in Chicago, Illinois. Another George Bush was President, and a new war in the same desert was cracking wide open. And there she was.

  Only, I wasn’t nineteen. I was a grown man. One of thousands who’d been slowly drawn away. Away from fathers who fought in better wars, from male friends whose only interest was whether or not these men had killed anyone. From churches in small southern towns where they were made to stand on Veterans Day. Instead of the VFW or the VA, this crybaby diaspora sought out spaces both alien and familiar: exurb, highway, divorce court, Costco. These were grown men who shopped for discount liquor in bulk. Grown men whose doctors could not explain the sensation of fire beneath the skin. Men who could not pin their failed relationships on anything quantifiable, who obsessed over the inability to recover the lives they saw on TV. A grown man in a beige suede jacket that had lost its nap, and who had spent the many previous days on the floor of his efficiency apartment, watching a new invasion unfold on a small television. Missile strikes at remove, rabbit ears adjusted, a rerun that somehow eclipsed the original. He showered and sobbed and masturbated.