Youngblood

by Matt Gallagher

I walked through the entryway, and a heavy middle-aged woman emerged from the smoke, coughing, and pushed past me. Hers was a face I’d not forgotten: the mother who’d lost her son at Sayonara Station all those months ago. I smelled overdone meat. I turned a corner and saw why. Three dog carcasses were splayed across the parallel room, orange and blue flames dancing on their far side.

  The locals are using the fire to cook, I realized. I checked to ensure each dog was already dead, then got out.

  “Gnarly in there.” Doc Cork stood outside as I came back into clean air, breathing deep, his thick silhouette a stain against the night. “There’s poor. Then there’s this.”

  The crowd around Snoop had doubled, growing louder and more agitated. Chambers stood nearby, keeping an eye on the terp, pushing back a group of angry, shouting women. “These bitches are getting truculent,” he said as I passed. “Might need an exit strategy.” I ignored him.

  Young men ran past carrying buckets of water. As I approached the crowd, Snoop’s eyes widened in relief. “LT! They say the fire is spreading fast. They need help or they will lose their homes.”

  They were right, cinder trails were pushing east and west now, little tentacles of fire shooting out. I said not to worry, that I’d already radioed for help, and that I’d go check to see how much longer it’d be.

  I called the outpost. Captain Vrettos answered.

  “Hotspur Six, you need to proceed to Camp Independence, time now,” he said. “We’ve been tasked with escorting a supply convoy to the north gate of Baghdad.”

  “Roger, sir,” I said. “Quick update: house was clear, totally abandoned. But it’s getting bad down here. There’s a fire, and it’s spreading fast.”

  “I understand that.” Even through the radio static, his irritation punched through like jabs. “We’ve notified the Iraqis, they’re on it. Remember, this is their country.”

  “Sir, this one is on us. We need to stay.”

  “Negative. Proceed to Camp Independence, time now.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Did I stutter?” The uppercut stunned from miles away, using my own sardonic language. “This is a direct order. Gather your men and report to Camp Independence for your mission. Now.”

  I chucked the hand mic into the bowels of the Stryker, ripping it off the radio body. I walked back to Snoop and the locals, giving any soldiers I met along the way the mount-up motion, a halfhearted twirl of my left index finger. The blaze had savaged the house, dragon snorts engulfing it room by room. More young men were moving buckets from the other houses, having established an assembly line that passed full buckets down and empty ones back. A strong wind stirred from the west and pushed east, bringing sparks with it.

  “Tell them we’re leaving, Snoop,” I said.

  He did. The Iraqis yelled even louder, and Snoop backed into me, and I raised my rifle to keep them away. Somewhere behind us, Chambers laughed.

  Once we got inside the Strykers, all four surrounded by clamoring Iraqis, I ordered the men to throw down all the jugs and bottles of water they could find. There were some objections about what we’d drink if we got thirsty, but I repeated Captain Vrettos’ direct order to me and dared them to challenge it.

  “Do what he says,” Chambers said across the platoon net, from his Stryker. “So we can get the fuck out of here.”

  I opened my hatch and climbed out to unstrap a plastic jug we’d been keeping for emergencies. I handed it down to the short Iraqi mother with wide shoulders. Under a dark red head scarf, she shouted at me, the hard eyes of poverty never blinking. Beneath the guilt and the shame, I felt a curious sort of release. Then we left.

  As we pulled onto Route Madison and pushed east, I turned around and looked back at what we’d wrought. Under sad yellow stars, billows of smoke swirled in the wind, and a sheet of wildfire tore through what had been the field of poppies. Flakes of ash drifted through the air. I stuck out my tongue and caught one.

  We met the supply convoy at Camp Independence and escorted them south. We dispersed the herd of fobbit vehicles between us: one Stryker, then the fuel tanker; another Stryker, then the cargo truck and a water trailer; then our last two Strykers. The irony of the full, lumbering water trailer only miles away from a burning Ashuriyah proved too much. Not even the joes mentioned it.

  I remembered how back in the early days of our tour we’d pretend to see IEDs and RPG launchers just to scare supply soldiers making a rare trip out of the wire. I didn’t feel like doing that anymore. Neither did anyone else. The hour-long drive passed in silence. Black dogs barked and barked in my mind, but I ignored them, or tried to.

  A vast gold dome marked the north gate of Baghdad. We passed under a sandstone tower with wooden scaffolding and parked on the side of the highway; now we waited for the landowning unit’s escort to show up and take the supply convoy to the airport. Wanting to get some air and stretch my legs, I stepped onto the ink-black pavement. The supply soldiers’ leader, a sergeant first class with short, braided cornrows and an eye patch, did the same.

  “Going home?” I asked. “Good for you all.”

  “We’ve done our time,” she said. I hadn’t thought my question hostile, but she’d taken it as such.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to call you out.”

  “Uh-huh. Tough-guy infantry. All we hear is fobbit this, fobbit that.” She pointed to her left eye. “I didn’t get this raking leaves.”

  Maybe there had been undertones laced into my words after all. I didn’t know how to interact with people anymore, just infantrymen. I asked whom she was going home to. She just shook her head.

  Their escort didn’t arrive for another hour. With the joes getting tired from the tedium, I had them switch up the vehicle crews for the return trip. Hog climbed into the back of our Stryker and slapped Doc Cork on the back. “Hey, sir,” he said, all canted-eyed affection. “Like old times.”

  On the way back, we passed Route Pluto, a thin artery that pushed southeast past the Tigris and through the insurgency’s heartbeat of Sadr City. So many soldiers had died on that three-mile stretch of blacktop, I thought. Too many crevices and curves to hide away small boxes wired to blow. I wasn’t sure wars like ours got monuments, but if it did, it belonged on that road.

  The sky had darkened into black knots of clouds. Our iPod played tangy hipster music. There were still no signs of the fire, which meant they’d put it out, somehow. Near Checkpoint 38, the radio squawked. It was the outpost.

  “This is the CP. Be advised of a large gathering of locals at the entrance to Ashuriyah. Orders are to disperse it, by any means necessary.”

  “Roger,” I said. “Any more info? Like why they’re gathering?”

  “Negative. Captain Vrettos is still at the mukhtar’s funeral. His patrol radioed us saying that the gathering started there before moving east to Ashuriyah. Our guards on the roof report they’ve started a bonfire near the arch.”

  “So be ready for anything, pretty much.”

  “Roger that.”

  My head was throbbing again. Doc Cork and Hog laughed bitterly. I couldn’t help but join them.

  “Go there and figure it out when you arrive,” Doc Cork said. “Improvise. If it goes well, higher gets credit for planning it. If it goes poorly, we morons on the ground fucked it up.”

  No different than any mission we’ve done over here, I thought. Probably no different than any mission anyone’s done.

  A tall orange flame marked the entrance to Ashuriyah, perpendicular to the stone arch. The bonfire had been built on a dry meadow, a halo of rocks controlling the burn. Dozens of Iraqis lined the road, with another group circling a crooked utility pole to the side. Judging from the loud chants and large banners, it seemed we’d been ordered to disperse a protest, not a gathering. We pulled over to the shoulder of the highway.

  “This is retarded.” Chambers’ voice cut across the platoon net like a saw. “This has ambush written all over it. We need to drive through and come back wi
th more men. Like a battalion of fucking SEALs.”

  “Hear that,” I said. “Wait one.”

  I pushed back against the CP, calmly explaining just how crazy their order was. They referred me to the operations center at Camp Independence. I repeated my request to push through and wait for the protest to fizzle out from a distance.

  “Hotspur Six.” It was one of the majors. “Do you sleep with a night-light?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “But even if I did, I still wouldn’t send us out into this.”

  “Sir, this is Hotspur Seven,” Chambers interrupted, and I was glad for it. “My platoon leader ain’t exaggerating. It’s chaos out here. In my experience, waiting this one out is the only option.”

  “You all are a platoon of infantrymen, correct?” The major’s question sounded rhetorical, so no one answered it. “I’ve been wondering why Ashuriyah is the only place in Iraq that’s still a disaster. Now I know why.”

  “Sir—” I said.

  “Do your fucking job,” the major said. “Disperse the gathering. Report back when mission complete. Out.”

  “You heard the man,” I said over the platoon net. I was scared but knew I needed to hide it. “De Oppresso Liber.”

  I said I’d check things out quickly, asking for volunteers to join. Snoop and Doc Cork followed without a word, while Hog sighed heavily before doing the same. Four more emerged from the other Strykers, all joes on their first deployment. Iceberg Slim didn’t have the same wasta with the night soldiers, but he still had some.

  I drew everyone in tight and pointed across the knife of a road, reminding them to stay close and that no one was to cross the median. We were discussing fallback options when Chambers emerged from the shadows. He shook his head in disgust, but said he was coming, too.

  “Two minutes,” Chambers said. “We’re in, we’re out, we go home.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  We sank across the highway like stones, forming a wedge. The night lashed at our bare faces and wrists. I realized why there was a bonfire: the electricity in this area of town had gone off again. We stopped at the edge of our headlights’ reach.

  A small group had gathered in front of the crowd, under the eyes of the arch. They kept pointing to us and gesturing. After a minute or so, five of the men walked our way, carrying small torches and flashlights and assault rifles. The many locals behind them gathered around the bonfire and faced out, chanting with raised fists. I guessed them to be about four hundred meters or so away—definitely within distance of a decent shooter with a scope.

  “What they saying?” Doc Cork asked.

  “Not sure,” I said. I could make out “America” but nothing else. “Probably better that way.” Snoop stayed silent.

  I didn’t recognize any of the approaching men, though three wore the familiar khaki brown shirts of Fat Mukhtar’s Sahwa. A wiry middle-aged man took the lead. Looking beyond them, near the base of the fire, I caught a glimpse of a small woman with long black hair holding the hands of two small shapes. Or I thought I did. Why would she be here? I thought. Of all places, why here?

  “Go!” the lead Sahwa said, wiping his palms together. “America keel mukhtar!”

  “No,” I said, trying to keep my voice low and putting my hand on the Iraqi’s shoulder. He shrugged it off. “America no kill mukhtar. Yousef kill mukhtar.” I wiped my palms together, then drifted my fingers through the air like little kites. “Go home. Bayt.”

  He repeated his own words and pointed to the crowd at the arch. Banners displaying a jowly, grinning Fat Mukhtar were shaken at us by the larger group. I searched again for the shadow Rana and shadow boys, but couldn’t find them.

  Someone at the bonfire trumpeted with their voice. The larger group then started marching toward us, to the envoys’ dismay. Two ran that way in an attempt to stop them. Mob rule had taken the night.

  “Time to go, Lieutenant,” Chambers said through clenched teeth. “I see crowbars.” Some of the other soldiers began shuffling their feet and playing with the safety triggers of their rifles.

  I grabbed the wiry Sahwa by the collar and pulled him to me, smelling fire on his clothes. “Rana,” I said. I searched for the right Arabic words, then for any Arabic word. They fell through my mind like water through a fist. “Rana al-Badri. Where is she?”

  Wide black eyes brimming with incredulity looked back at me. “Majnun,” he called me. “No Rana Ashuriyah, majnun. No Rana Ashuriyah. Go!”

  Arms, the muscular, taut arms of soldiers, pried me from the Iraqi. Then he was gone, and I saw the advance of the mob clearly, some hundred meters away now, and closing fast. Some cable in my being snapped tight, and I shuddered, telling the men that I was good, they could let go, it was time to leave.

  That was when the Strykers on the highway shoulder began honking their horns.

  Another angry crowd of shadows and torches was approaching from our rear, moving along the highway, east to west. It was as if they’d materialized out of the sand berms, dozens and dozens of them, almost as large as the first group. They weren’t carrying the banners of the mukhtar but the beige water jugs of the U.S. Army. Our empty jugs, I realized, as a young man in blue jeans and a checkered turban began beating one against the side of a Stryker.

  The jaws of the mob closed on the highway shoulder, with us stuck in between. The vehicles’ machine gunners swiveled their turrets like spintops, unsure if they should shoot to save those of us on the ground, unsure where they’d even start shooting if so. I said, “Stop,” and raised my rifle, but no one listened. The soldiers who’d remained with the vehicles now prowled the top of the Strykers, pointing their rifles down at the crowd, shouting in English. I smelled the loose flesh of violence again, all hot sweat and young rage. The lead Stryker tried to drop its ramp for us, but Chambers made them stop for fear of the mob getting inside. The nine of us backed up against the side of that Stryker, shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by a hundred revolting locals.

  I couldn’t see Yousef, but he was out there, somewhere, directing this horror show. I raised my rifle to my chest, barrel flat, and flipped the safety trigger to burst.

  “Sir, what are we doing?”

  “Lieutenant Porter, we need to move. Now.”

  “Sir!”

  As hands started reaching for us, trying to pull us into the mass of the riot, three simple words hung on my tongue like a scythe: light them up. To my right, I saw Chambers raise his rifle to do just that. Above me, I heard the soldiers on top of the Stryker doing the same. To my left, I saw Hog drop to a knee, head bowed. He wasn’t praying or renouncing himself, though. His eyes stayed open as he cupped his heart with his trigger hand, furiously, over and over again, while pointing to a banner deep in the crowd with his left hand. I looked that way. It showed the dead mukhtar with his arms around his Sahwa, smiling, fat fingers raised into peace signs.

  I heard a voice to the far left yelling, “Fire!” It was Chambers. “Fucking fire!”

  I shouted, “Hold! Hold!” as loud as I could and dropped to a knee, too, rifle draping my lap. A hand pawed at my shoulder. I took off my helmet and looked up at the bodies through the black of night, trying desperately to show neither fear nor aggression. Another hand yanked at my chest plate, but I remained firm. Some arms still reached for us, and one scratched at my ear, drawing a streak of blood across my face, but then, slowly, surely, the arms receded, and I wasn’t being grabbed at anymore. Through the yellow glare of the headlights, I saw human beings, mostly young, as confused and mad and foolish as we were.

  I heard Doc Cork curse at me, then at himself. Then he took a knee, too.

  Chambers yelled for us to hold our ground while voices in the mob answered, imploring the others forward. But the possibility of rampage had collapsed. One by one, American soldiers took off their helmets, some cupping their hearts, others saying “Salaam Aleichem” on repeat, still others flashing the peace sign as if to answer the banner of Fat Mukhtar. No one else took a knee, but they d
idn’t need to. I looked around to find soldiers still on top of the Stryker, the barrels of their rifles no longer pointing out.

  “Fucking cowards, stand up!” Chambers stood alone, facing us. “You’re soldiers! Soldiers don’t kneel.”

  “We’re not kneeling,” I said. “We’re taking a knee.”

  I looked to the black knots of clouds to thank Allah and Jesus and Yahweh. The gray silhouette of a keel-billed bird streaked across the sky. I blinked, and it was gone.

  As the Iraqis turned back, most walking to the bonfire, others moving down the highway, a thick man with a mangy beard in a black-and-white tracksuit pushed his way to the front, fists shaking, loud words spraying. As I stood to intervene, a narrow-shouldered Iraqi in a tight dress shirt and khakis appeared, whispering into the ear of his larger friend. He’d grown his flattop out some, but I still recognized the tidy mustache and flat berm of a face. Azhar’s brother led away the man in the tracksuit, before I could thank him for keeping the most fragile of peaces.

  No one said anything as the Stryker ramp dropped. We just got in and drove to the outpost, under the arch and through town, the desert falling into a clean sleep no one deserved.

  49

  * * *

  We met on the back patio as the night sounded its rale. I’d been sitting on a wooden picnic table in a long-sleeve shirt, trousers, and unlaced boots, smoking cigarettes. There’d been a steady rain through the early morning, and Ashuriyah smelled of wet dust. The burn pit had kept me warm in billows of thick smoke and soot; I’d fed it lithium batteries and Styrofoam and plastic bags through the hours, drenching it all in lighter fluid. Once the flame had reached my height and swollen out twice as wide, I tossed in the contents of our history. First the three sworn statements from 2006. Then the photograph of Shaba’s bloody vest. Then Haitham’s mug shot. Finally I burned the book itself, Lawrence’s tome folding in half and crumpling like a lost kingdom.

  It wasn’t my past to dredge up anymore, if it’d ever been. The smoke made me cough, but I stayed until I had nothing left to burn and the fire turned to ash.