Youngblood

by Matt Gallagher

  The patrol there had been simple enough. The target house given to us by the Rangers was at the southeastern edge of town, in a quiet Sunni enclave. I gave a short brief and we moved out on foot, telling the soldiers that if—if—we came across armed insurgents, we’d turn their lives Jurassic.

  Night patrols always sent my body into sensory overload, like all the turbo buttons of my brain were being mashed at once. Everything was more. I smelled the smoke from burning tires around town, rubber and sulfur blending together. I heard the insurgency of wild dogs and their damn starlight barks revealing our location. I tasted cool, bracing water from my CamelBak and chewed the mouthpiece with sand bits in it. I felt the terrorist hole rise up from below and seize my ankle, bringing my top-heavy armored body to the ground. I saw the night vision lasers crawl across any shadow that dared move, little green hieroglyphs that always spelled k-i-l-l.

  We moved through Sahwa checkpoints without a word. Only some were in the right locations, and none had the required number of guards. Even in the mad heat of August, they huddled around their fires and idled. Snoop whispered to them that we’d slit their throats if they gave away our position. We took silence as acquiescence.

  We arrived from the west and stacked against the building’s side in stunted grunts. I took a breath of hot, honeyed air and checked the map one last time.

  A hand motion made its way back, one shape at a time. First squad was ready. I turned around. So was second squad. Batule stood behind me, panting like an asthmatic. Behind him, another soldier chewed a wad of bubblegum. Stealthy we were. Delta Force we weren’t.

  I pointed forward, index finger extended.

  First squad swooped in, the only noise a swinging door and the soft steps of boots on packed dirt. A flash of light washed out my night vision, then two shots rang out. I moved forward into the numb.

  As I pushed aside the thick wool blanket hanging from the inside of the doorway, the smell of cordite filled the room. American bodies piled into the three corners away from the doorway, while another body lay splayed out in the center of the room on top of a mat.

  “Clear!”

  “Room clear.”

  “Sir, the hut’s clear! One enemy target down!”

  I could see all this my fucking self, since only eight of us could fit into the hut, and the flashlights on our rifles had lit the room like a flare. I called for Doc Cork to check the body, told a fireteam to stay inside to search for intel, and pushed the others outside to do the same.

  Doc Cork turned over the body. “Gone, baby, gone,” he said.

  The man looked too old to be Dead Tooth, his skin sallow and lined. Too old and too small. Two scarlet pennies swelled through his shirt. The shooter had put the rounds through the chest three inches apart—a shitty target group, considering, but it had done its job, tearing through flesh and muscle and bone in spinning, raging angles to minimize the marginal effects and maximize the lethal one.

  “Only thing we found is a bottle of cheap Iraqi whiskey.” It was one of the soldiers. “Still looking for a weapon.”

  I nodded, the faintest pangs of what no weapon meant tapping at my soul. I looked back to the body. It wore an oversized soccer jersey, green, like the Iraqi national team’s. A cherry fluid trickled out of the mouth, a ribbon of blood with nothing left to circulate. Its jaw hung open, loosing a thin purple tongue and a set of jagged teeth the color of rot.

  “Oh God,” I said. “Haitham.”

  I took off my helmet in the now-swaying heat and rubbed my hands through my short hair. I took a knee and asked very calmly and very particularly who’d shot and why.

  “It was me, sir,” Hog said. “I—I got stuck in the blanket, and when I pushed it away, I thought the bottle was a gun. He had it up like he was gonna shoot or something.” Hog fell against the far wall, sliding down in a heap. His rifle lay flat on the ground, and he covered his head with his forearms, grabbing the top of his helmet with his hands. When he spoke again, it sounded like a small candy was lodged in his windpipe. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck, this is bad, huh? Fuck me. Sir? I didn’t mean to, I swear to God, I fucking swear to God, sir. How bad is this? Talk to me. What now? What now, sir?”

  “Everyone out.” Chambers stood in the doorway. “Everyone out but Hog and Lieutenant Porter.”

  I felt seasick. I stayed on one knee as Doc Cork grasped Haitham’s little dead fingers with his own and then left with the others. I knew what was going to happen before it did, but I just stayed there in the middle of the room, looking at Haitham’s face forever etched in dirty sweat.

  “Corporal. Calm down. Every Iraqi household has an AK-47. It’s allowed by law.” Ever certain. Ever clear. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and look at the doorway, so I focused on a speckle shaped like a leaf on the far wall. “That AK’s got to be around here somewhere. I bet one of the other guys already grabbed it, and it’s outside waiting for us. These things happen all the time. To good soldiers and good men. Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

  Isn’t that right. Such a funny phrase, when I thought about it.

  “Haitham was a wanted man.” I stood up. “A good kill. Stand up, Hog. Let’s get some air.”

  Hog looked up and laughed, full-throated. His amber eyes were fixed on something far away, and his mouth kept drooping as he tried to speak. He stood up and pulled out a cigarette. I lit it for him. As he followed me through the door, Chambers whistled in the back corner, low and without melody.

  “All right.” I gathered the soldiers together, near the entrance. The swinging door had fallen from its hinges and now lay in the dirt. A ring of cigarette cherries surrounded me, their orange eyes seeing through the blackness of my words. I found a crate and stood above them. “So we got the Cleric,” I announced. “A good kill. No question. But you need to always remember the rules of engagement—don’t shoot unless they’re armed. You can’t shoot unless they’re armed. We’re American soldiers. We’re the good guys.” My voice was shaking. “You fucking hear me?”

  They all said Yes, sir, we hear you.

  By the time I walked back into the hut, someone had found an AK-47. They took a photo of Haitham’s body next to it. I stood in the back corner and radioed the outpost while the men pulled a body bag out of a backpack. As they unfolded the bundle, an olive-green sack designed to hold leaking carcasses, a camel spider jumped from one of its inner flaps. It was a hairy, ugly thing, the size of a baseball, primed up on its legs like they were ladders. It crawled across the ground and onto the dead man’s face.

  The soldiers assigned to body bag duty jumped back. I told the outpost to wait one. The spider burst under the heel of my boot, leaving guts, fur, and green juice splattered across Haitham’s forehead.

  “Clean that off before you zip him up,” I said. When they didn’t move quickly enough, I did it myself.

  “Be easy, habibi,” I said, closing his jaw and eyelids. Then I got back on the radio while the soldiers bagged him.

  30

  * * *

  Saif came the next morning to the patio, where I was watching the pink-and-purple light of the seven o’clock hour blink out. The Sultan was rising again, a new day. I hadn’t slept, and held a cigarette that wouldn’t stop quivering.

  “She’s here,” he said, handing me a photocopied map with a red circle on it. “Can you hear me, Loo-tenant Porter? This is where she is.”

  We went to her. I needed to do something with the day.

  She lived in a hamlet west of the Villages, just across the Anbar border. I coordinated with the marines, since they were the landowners there, which suddenly sounded like such a ridiculous term.

  Captain Vrettos commended me for my initiative when I said I needed to talk to a source outside our area. He looked almost healthy for once, even had color in his face. The news of the Cleric’s death had already ricocheted up the command—we’d received congratulatory messages from the Big Man and brigade commander, and were expecting one from the division commander. Ca
ptain Vrettos thanked me again for what we’d done the night before.

  I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t. He asked if I was okay. I said I was. He said he was always there if I needed to talk about the rigors of war and leadership. I said that was cool to know.

  “One more thing,” he said.

  “Oh?” I said.

  “It’s the first day of Ramadan,” he said. “Just so you know.”

  •  •  •

  We left Ashuriyah. I saw the Barbie Kid on the roadside, alone near the northern fringe of the market. He leaned against a crooked utility pole and his pink sweats shined in the morning like a fallen star. He still didn’t have any shoes on his feet. I waved, but he just watched us and texted on a cell phone. We passed under the stone arch. Though I didn’t turn around to face the dead cleric and his beard of snow, I felt his glasses on my back. Somehow, I thought, he knows I’m off to find his daughter.

  We drove west, the countryside melting into shades of dun. Berms rose and fell like ocean swells. This is the desert, I thought, free and true. I took a gulp of Rip It from the back hatch and breathed in baked air and laughed because it didn’t feel so strange anymore. None of it did. The soldiers asked what was wrong, and I brought up Ramadan.

  “The Muslim fasting month,” I said. “We should do it with them.”

  We hit an IED. One of the tire-popping kind that rattle the brain cage but fail to actually pop tires. A few months before, it would’ve caused an uproar, stirring the bantam energy of men yet untested. The vehicle’s emergency system was the only one who spoke. “Exit the vehicle immediately,” she said. We got out, checked our ears for blood, and made sure the Stryker still worked. Then we kept going.

  At a dried-out reservoir bed, we turned south onto a thin road made of silt. Everyone seemed nervous, the radios clear of chatter, limbs taut and stiff. No one liked unfamiliar areas this late into a deployment, and before the mission I’d overheard some of the joes bitching about me “glory hunting.”

  I was surprised by how little I cared what they thought.

  A herd of one-humped camels wandered onto the road, and we stopped. The men asked if we could drive through them, because it could be a delay tactic for ambushers, and who cared if we ran over a camel or two? I told them to shut up and wait, because they were just camels. The shepherd, a teenage boy wearing a Guns N’ Roses concert tee, frowned as we passed, even though we’d waited for him and his herd.

  About a mile down the dirt road, we spotted a half moon of five small mud huts. We parked there. I dismounted, tapping Snoop and Batule to follow. There was a small, square garden of green shrubs and dandelions in the middle of the houses, marked by two strands of barbwire and four wooden poles at each corner. The air was windless and smelled of wildflowers.

  The three of us walked by the huts. Nothing stirred, and the only sound I could make out was our own strained breathing. I searched the windows for peeking eyes or fingertips holding back curtains. Thoughts of an ambush flitted through my mind. I took off my helmet, grabbed the hand mic on Batule’s back, closed my eyes, and waited for the sniper’s shot I’d never hear, let alone see.

  I counted to ten and thought of a train ride with Will when we were boys, all infinite hopes and forever dreams, play-fighting with our hands around each other’s shoulders. We were pretending to be antiheroes like good postmodern American boys, he Batman, me Wolverine, watching the sleepy coastal towns of California blur by, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker until we couldn’t even make out the names of the towns being passed, let alone the streets or mailboxes.

  I’d worshipped my brother my entire life, though it sometimes came out wrong, like as resentment. Five and a half years’ difference in age could do that. He’d been a tough act to follow, and I figured the last thing he needed was more people telling him how smart and capable he was. I knew everyone thought I’d joined up because he had, even our parents. Maybe he felt that way, too. But that hadn’t been it, not exactly. It wasn’t to be him, or to be like him. It’d been to believe in something the way he had. To know idealism as something more than a word. That had been what I wanted.

  He’d lost that belief somewhere along the line, somehow. I doubted I’d ever had it.

  Now he was learning to be a goddamn businessman. And me? I didn’t even know anymore.

  I opened my eyes, took in a deep breath of dust, and cursed. Ignoring Snoop and Batule, I walked to the center garden and studied the dandelions.

  The sound of kicked pebbles brought my eyes up from the garden. A small woman in an ankle-length gray dress walked across the half moon spinning an umbrella above her. She wore a shawl but no veil, and hair fell from her head in black waves. Her complexion was fair for an Iraqi. A coffee stain of a mark splashed across her left cheek, and an arrow nose pierced out at us. I lapped her up like water, lingering at the curves of her hips and again at the small dip in her neckline. It wasn’t until I made it to her eyes, though, two jade ovals shining defiantly, that I knew we’d found her.

  “Well-come,” she said. Behind her, two boys wearing matching striped shirts clutched her dress. Neither stood taller than her knees. A small pink scar the width of Silly String ran down the elder’s left earlobe to the top of his neck. He scowled at us while his little brother stared.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name’s Jack Porter.”

  “Hello.”

  I pointed to the black umbrella and switched to Arabic. “What’s with that?”

  She smiled, revealing a set of blocky teeth stained light brown. A dimple sank into her cheek, under the birthmark.

  “It seldom rains here,” she said. Her English was awkward and slow, but clear. “But we need many umbrellas.”

  She kept spinning the umbrella in circles, clockwise twice, counterclockwise once, again and again. I watched with my mouth agape until Snoop coughed.

  “Would you and your men like any water?” she asked.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “It’s Ramadan, you know.”

  31

  * * *

  From: Ken Tisdale

  To: Jack Porter

  Re: ? from Ashuriyah

  August 18, 10:17 PM

  LIEUTENANT PORTER—

  I WAS INTERESTED TO RECEIVE YOUR EMAIL. IT’S GOOD TO HEAR THE EFFORTS OF MY COMPANY IN ASHURIYAH ARE STILL HAVING A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE ESTABISHMENT OF A FREE AND DEMOCROTIC IRAQ.

  THERE WAS AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF STAFF SERGEANT RIOS. IF IT’S OF INTEREST TO YOU AND YOU BELIEVE IT CAN HELP YOUR UNIT’S EFFORTS, I RECOMMEND CONTACTING YOUR BRIGADE’S JAG OFFICE. THEY CAN LOCATE THE OFFICIAL REPORT. THOUGH I HAVENT READ IT FOR SOME YEARS, IT WAS FOUND THAT STAFF SERGEANT RIOS VIOLATED OUR UNIT’S PROCEDURES BY WALKING AWAY FROM THE OUTPOST UNAUTHORIZED.

  THERE WAS ALSO AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE SHOOTING OF THE INSURGENT ENGAGED BY LIEUTENANT GRANT IN CLOSE QUARTERS. IT WAS FOUND THAT MY COMPANY ACTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH ALL RULES OF ENGAGEMENT.

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORDS ABOUT LIEUTENANT GRANT. HIS DEATH WAS A TERRIBLE LOSS FOR ALL OF US WHO SERVED WITH HIM. WE TRIED TO GET HIM THE HELP HE NEEDED. HE’S WITH GOD NOW.

  PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT GIVEN THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF YOUR INQUIRY, AND THE IMPLICATIONS SUGGESTED IN YOUR EMAIL, I’VE ALERTED YOUR CHAIN-OF-COMMAND TO THIS EXCHANGE, SPECIFICALLY YOUR EXECUTIVE OFFICER, A FORMER WEST POINT CLASSMATE OF MINE. HE’S A GOOD OFFICER. ANY FUTURE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO HIM.

  YOURS IN SERVICE,

  KENNETH TISDALE

  MAJOR, INFANTRY

  U.S. ARMY

  32

  * * *

  FACEBOOK—NEW MESSAGE

  August 18

  Lieutenant Porter:

  Your name was mentioned in our hometown’s article as the officer who found Elijah so I am especially glad you contacted me. I had been wanting to say thank you for bringing closure to my family, especially my mom. We had another service for Elijah a couple weeks ago, this time with a proper buria
l.

  It’s strange to hear that my brother is still known in Iraq, but also good. To be honest, I don’t really know how to answer your questions. We weren’t close. When he joined the army, he stopped contacting us. He was very bitter—our father left when we were children, and he never stopped being angry about it. Hated school, hated Texas, hated us, hated himself. I didn’t even know he knew Arabic until your message. We didn’t know he’d been sent to Iraq until the army chaplain showed up on our porch to say he’d gone missing there.

  As for good stories, there’s this one, which is how I like to remember him. It was his junior year of high school, and he was working at the adventure park, saving up to buy a used car. Some friends and I went to the park after school, and a group of older boys started messing with us. They got on the log ride right after us, and kept taunting us from their log the entire time. They wouldn’t leave us alone. Elijah saw the whole thing. So he waited for our log to go down the big drop, and when their log was at the very top, he shut down the ride and walked away. They were up there for hours, screaming for help. It was funny. Elijah lost his job, but he didn’t care.

  Maybe not the greatest story, but it was a nice, older brother thing to do. Don’t have many memories like that.

  Hope this helps some and Thank You For Your Service.

  Sarah Rios

  33

  * * *

  15 March 2006

  Night Flower—

  I’m sorry I didn’t visit tonight. There was a mission on the other side of town and the Lieutenant insisted I go. I promise to make it up to you. We got some care packages today—would you prefer a Connect Four board game or a stuffed koala?