"That's somethin',” Sean remarked. “How come you don't wear it?"
Ibrahim drew a forefinger across his throat and grimaced in answer.
"I guess,” Colquitt said uneasily, casting a glance into Hooterville.
Sean, for the first time, thought of the boy making his way home to the Christian sector each night. “Big ones,” he muttered.
That night, it was Colquitt's turn.
* * * *
The evening had begun with the usual desultory and inaccurate bursts of fire from the ‘ville. It appeared that the marines’ determined response over the past few weeks had taken its toll on the militiamen, and for some time now, they appeared content to simply harass the Americans. Colquitt had just zeroed in on a fighter who foolishly kept returning to the same window when an uncharacteristically accurate burst of automatic fire from the street level tumbled him back down into the hole. Just like that, he was dead.
If Sean had been numb over the great slaughter that had befallen his fellow marines and miraculously spared him at the battalion command post, he was no longer. He did not weep for Colquitt, though the pain and grief he felt for the young man, whom he had known only a few short weeks, was a more piercing hurt than anything he had ever felt. In the loss of Colquitt he at last experienced the anguish of all that had gone before—the great hole in the earth that had swallowed the young men he had sweated with, cursed at, trained with, fought with, complained about, shared both boredom and terror with, now lay in his heart. The Corps did not have enough bullets for all he hoped to do.
The following night Sean returned to CP 69 with a powerful searchlight that he had stolen from one of the airport's warehouses. Friends in the motor pool had helped him rig it to a jeep battery that they had enthusiastically, and secretly, donated in support of his scheme, with the promise of more as needed.
Surprisingly, to Sean, his squad sergeant gave him a reluctant go-ahead, but promised to shut down this new enterprise the minute it went wrong. Sean assured him it would not.
Ibrahim was fascinated with the whole idea and could not stay away from the contraption, so Sean put him to work. “It's like this—” he explained to the excited youngster. “I'm gonna place the searchlight on top of the berm. You stay down in the hole with the battery. When I give you the word, you take this,” and here he held up a cable with an alligator clamp on the end—"and attach it to this,” and pointed to the positive terminal on the battery. “Got it?"
Ibrahim nodded his head and grinned. “Got it,” he promised.
Sean waited until it was completely dark and the flashes of the AK-47 muzzles could be clearly seen before he put things into action. Selecting a particularly persistent nest of snipers, he swiveled the light until he felt he had a pretty good line on the shooters, then called down to Ibrahim, “Do it!"
The brilliance of the beam threw the entire side of the building it was aimed at into relief, each brick suddenly separate from the others in detail. The shooters were caught like moths pinned to velvet, their hands flying up to their eyes with a cry, their weapons clattering to the rubble-strewn floor of their position. Sean, situated well away from the light, wasted no time; he took both out with a controlled burst of fire, and then launched a grenade from his M-203 that finished whoever remained hidden within the room. “Kill the light,” he called out to Ibrahim. The building returned to darkness as the members of Sean's squad scuttled up to slap him on the back and offer their heartfelt congratulations. Sean ruffled Ibrahim's tousled head affectionately. “We got some,” he said to the boy.
"Get some more,” Ibrahim responded, his white teeth visible even in the gloom of the bunker, though it did not look like a smile.
The rest of the night was more of the same, and Sean's body-count was becoming the stuff of marine legend. It seemed to Sean that the militiamen were slow learners.
The next evening proved otherwise.
Sean and his section had no sooner relieved the combat post when they came under intense and accurate fire. It seemed that as quickly as they shifted from one fighting position and began to return fire, they would be driven to another. Neither camouflage nor darkness proved a deterrent, and Sean was unable to place his search lamp on the berm for fear of the enemy's newfound marksmanship. He wondered morosely if the Syrian Army had directly entered the fray at last. They lost one killed and two wounded.
At dawn, after the Shiite fighters had melted away and Sean's unit was being relieved in its place, Ibrahim bid his farewells and glided warily away to wherever it was that he called home. Sean glared resentfully at the destroyed buildings that grinned back like a mouthful of broken teeth, and cursed. Something had changed, just when things were going his way, and he couldn't understand why. He shouldered his weapon and turned to leave, then noticed something about twenty yards out.
Cans. Ordinarily, he would have paid no attention to any of the debris or garbage that lay strewn between CP 69 and Hooterville, but one can in particular had caught his attention. It appeared to be a gallon paint container that lay empty on its side, an errant bullet having punched through it and rolled it over. One side was coated with a greenish fluorescent paint. The paint reminded Sean of the kind the Americans used to dot tent pegs and other small, necessary objects so they could find them in the dark. He began walking towards it into no-man's land. Several voices were raised in alarm at his back and he called out over his shoulder, “Cover me.” Even the bad guys had to sleep, Sean thought, though he really didn't care.
Looking down at the battered can, he was sure it was the same kind of paint they kept stored within the marine compound. He lifted his gaze to CP 69. From the can to the spot where he had placed the searchlight the previous night was a straight line. He looked from right to left. A series of cans, of all sizes and roughly aligned, stretched away in both directions, and seen from this side, each was painted a fluorescent green. Sean strode to each can, turned, and looked back at the marines’ bunker complex. Each marked a prepared fighting position that could easily be targeted with the use of these glow-in-the-dark aiming stakes. Sean heard his sergeant bellowing for him to get back behind the line.
Turning his back to Hooterville, he selected a smallish can that had possibly contained soup in gentler times, and tipped it over. Being careful to keep his actions from being seen by interested eyes in the ‘ville, he slipped a hand grenade from his vest, pulled the pin while keeping pressure on the spoon, and slid it cautiously into the empty can. It was a good fit. He left that can on its side and walked away, kicking over a few others at random before returning to his unit. Sean was satisfied that whoever had set them up would be convinced that their disarray was the natural result of the previous evening's firefight. Undoubtedly, he would want to repair his handiwork.
* * * *
Sean had briefed his squad on his discovery, and when they returned that night they were in a high state of excitement. They quickly settled in to await the unfolding of events.
Less than an hour into their vigil, the word came down the line that someone was moving out front and to the right of their position. Every head swiveled in that direction, eyes and ears straining. Sean thought he heard the scrape of metal against a rough surface, but could see nothing. Based on the noise, he calculated that their visitor was roughly two overturned cans away from Sean's surprise. A few moments passed in deathly silence. It seemed the marines were holding their breath as one. Then, another faint scrape of metal. Silence returned, and held this time even longer than the last.
"Sonofabitch,” Sean said under his breath. “Get on with it!"
At last, Sean was rewarded with a repetition of the previous sound. Obviously, their visitor was checking each of his ad hoc aiming stakes with great diligence. He was one cool customer, Sean thought.
Then nothing. Minutes of nothing. Sean began to become alarmed that somehow his invisible antagonist had gotten wise to the booby trap that lay next in line. Sweat was running freely now beneath the collar of his
flak jacket. Still there was nothing. No sound, no scrape of metal followed closely by an explosion. Nothing.
He looked wildly about for Ibrahim, but couldn't locate him in the trenches. Instead, he grabbed one of his fellow squad members and told him to stand by the battery. Sean hoisted the searchlight up on top of the sandbags. “We can't wait,” Sean whispered harshly to the squad. “When I hit the light, fire ‘em up!"
Sean brought his own rifle up to his shoulder, then called softly to the man on the battery, “On three. One, two...” He adjusted his aim to where he remembered the rigged can to be. “Three!"
Ibrahim was revealed as a chalky statue, frozen in the act of betrayal. Even as his arm flew up to shield his eyes, the can he was holding dumped its deadly contents onto the earth at his feet, the spoon flying away and setting in motion the three seconds remaining that he had to live. In those moments, an eternity to Sean, the little militiaman had just time to recognize his peril before looking straight into the faces of the marines. In the unforgiving illumination his eyes were as black as obsidian and glittering with defiant malice. He thrust his thin arm into the air, but did not have time to complete his signature salute.
* * * *
When the tall man in the baseball cap reentered the store, Sean's head snapped up from his chest, and he realized that he had been caught napping. His head felt swollen with woolly, disparate images; his limbs heavy and spellbound. There were three of them now. Obviously, they had just entered the store, as they stood close together at the doorway looking back at him. They could have been posing for a family photograph, Sean mused, even as he fumbled clumsily for the stock of the gun and switched off the lamp that shone down on him. They were not what he had expected.
He reached for the switch on the spotlight, then hesitated. The man and his bedraggled mate appeared to be urging the boy to approach Sean, whispering in his ear and gently shoving him forward. Sean was reminded of himself at that age, reluctant, yet eager, his parents coaxing him to sit on the mall Santa's lap.
The boy began his hesitant approach, his eyes on his dirty, scuffed sneakers. His parents, if that's what they were, drifted into the aisles on either side, peering anxiously over the display cases as they barely pretended to be shopping. Sean watched mesmerized as the child shuffled forward. Was he being sent to beg, Sean wondered? His finger rested on the double trigger.
At last, the boy reached the counter, the top of his shaggy head barely on a level with it. Sean glanced quickly around the store at the man and woman, who continued to play their bizarre and obvious game of peekaboo. The boy remained immobile, looking down at his shoes, even as he tugged at something in the pocket of his shabby hooded pullover.
Sean felt the unreality of his situation, even as he debated inwardly the reality of the events unfolding before him. He determined that he must speak, say something to break the spell. “Mister,” he croaked, his throat choked with sleep, “is there somethin’ your boy..."
The gun the boy brought forth from his parka was a .25-caliber, just as Sergeant Fullerton had said, a ladies’ gun that fit just as well in the hand of a child. As the boy's arm extended to its full length, Sean understood that the bullet that would issue from it would exactly duplicate the trajectory the good sergeant had so graphically demonstrated.
Sean knew that if he pulled the triggers his finger lay curled around, he would unleash a deadly hail of buckshot that would surely pierce the thin plywood partition that separated the boy from this world and the next. He hesitated only long enough to look into the boy's eyes, eyes that danced and sparked with triumphant, inexplicable hatred—Ibrahim's eyes; then, with a tired sigh, he relaxed his grip on the triggers.
©2007 by David Dean
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AN INTERNAL COMPLAINT by Art Taylor
A writer who was first published in our Department of First Stories, Art Taylor has gone on to sell fiction to the North Carolina Literary Review, and the North American Review (where he was a finalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize). He's an assistant professor of English at George Mason University and an occasional reviewer for the Washington Post.
Art by Allen Davis
* * * *
And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see Gurov in Moscow. Once in two or three months she left S—, telling her husband that she was going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint—and her husband believed her, and didn't believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
—Anton Chekhov, “The Lady With the Dog"
* * * *
Philip turned tired eyes once more to his notebook: passages from Chekhov's story copied verbatim in his own handwriting, notes penned in red ink all around the margins. What had begun as an exercise (hone craft by analyzing the master, reading is writing) had gradually sparked a passion in him, something he hadn't quite felt with the stories he'd tried to write before, had never felt in front of a classroom of dull gazes. In only one sentence Chekhov hints at husband's point of view, Philip had written early on, "believed her, didn't believe her," and then the words that had set the whole process in motion: A story of its own there? Throughout, the red ink threatened to overwhelm the black, staining his skin when the pen had bled on his fingers.
An entire page of clues and conjectures about the husband: Surname p. 574 is Von Diderits.... First name not given: perhaps Aloysha, Evgeniy (nickname Zhenya), Gavril, Piotr.... Crown Department or Provincial Government? Anna does not know. Check Britannica for background.... How large is their house? How many servants? Elsewhere he'd jotted, Anna's “internal complaint” intended as double entendre? And on another page, a chron-ology of the story's scenes: Yalta where Anna and Gurov meet; the city of S—where The Geisha premieres; Moscow where the affair continues....
As he stared at the words and figures, Philip's mind raced to pull the pieces, the possibilities, together. He could write this. This was the one, he knew it.
"So, how are things with the Russians?"
Catherine's voice, behind him. How long had she been in the room? Philip detected a floral scent and hints of fruit—pears, perhaps? Grapes? She couldn't have been standing there long, or he would have noticed it—unlike his wife to wear perfume. She usually smelled of finger paints and crayons, carried home from the art classes she taught at Ligon. He hooked his pen through the top of the clipboard, closed his eyes, and inhaled slowly. Grapes, definitely.
"It's so dark in here,” she said, and he felt her hands on his shoulders. “But I'll bet you haven't even noticed."
"I hadn't really.” He opened his eyes again. Except for the glow of the computer screen—Britannica.com—the only light came from the mica-shade lamp on the desk, shining down on the open copy of Chekhov. Through the window, he saw that the sun had gone down and the night was pitch black, and he was reminded of Chekhov's counsel: Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass. The window sill was steeped in shadows from the streetlight. A blur of buds bloomed on the bush beyond. Still, no moon. The CD had run out as well—how long before, he didn't know. Monk, he'd been listening to. “In Walked Bud,” “'Round Midnight,” “Evidence."
"But the Russians are good.” He leaned his head forward as she kneaded his shoulders. “Or at least the one I'm working with. It'll be a good story when I'm done, I just feel it. But I'm really still just making notes. Looking for the key into the whole thing."
"But you've been in here for hours."
"Oh, it couldn't have been that long,” he said. “After all, what time did we have dinner?"
She laughed. "I ate some leftover pizza about a half-hour ago,” she said. “But unless you have a stash of food in here...” And she was right. He couldn't remember having eaten.
"Oh, well,” he shrugged. She stopped touching him.
"Well, try to eat something. I'm going out for a while."
"Anyplace special?” he asked, turning in his chair to see her. She wore a bandana print skirt, sleeveless denim top. Black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Scant light came from elsewhere in the house through the open doorway behind her, falling lightly on the edge of the bookcase, a pile of mail, the guest bed that shared this room. Catherine herself was caught half-in, half-out of the mica-tinted glow, and he tried to think what word she might be: not luminous, not scintillant ... evanescent?
"I don't know,” she said. “Target, maybe? We don't really need anything, but I'm just feeling a little restless tonight. Just want to get out.” The top edge of her face was shadowed (he knew this word: chiaroscuro; she had been captured in chiaroscuro), but from the turn of her chin, he imagined that her brow must have furrowed. “I may stop by Borders afterwards, flip through some magazines, get a cup of coffee. Maybe pick up a new book for the kids at school. They stay open pretty late, right?"
He nodded. “New perfume?"
"It's French,” she said. “Annick Goutal. It's called ‘Ce Soir Ou Jamais.’ The woman at Belk's described it as Turkish rose gardens, wildflowers, and black currants. You like?"
Black currants. He hadn't been far off with grapes.
"I feel ... enthralled," he said, grinning. “Fragrance is a seductive thing."
She leaned over to kiss his forehead. “I left a couple of pieces of that pizza for you in the microwave,” she whispered. “Don't forget them.” And then she was gone.
Her scent lingered in the air as he picked up his pen, and for a moment he was unable to remember where he had been in his notes. Then, turning a new thought over in his mind, turning the key he had found, he once more began to write: Fragrance is a significant thing.
* * * *
Evgeniy von Diderits enjoyed his breakfasts with enthusiasm. He savored the smell of frying dough almost as much as the vareniki themselves, plump with eggs and cheese or tucked tight with minced mutton—the latter his own twist on tradition. He liked dipping his curly sausages in black currant jam, and after he finished his meal, he liked to swirl a dollop of that same jam into his tea as well. As the cup cooled, he stroked his small side-whiskers or caressed the tips of his nostril hair, reading yesterday's edition of the Kiev Telegraph and thinking eagerly about the meetings scheduled for the day ahead. In the shadow of a good breakfast, with his wife seated just across the table and the servants bustling through their morning duties, Evgeniy believed briefly, firmly, that little could disturb the world he had created for himself and his wife—indeed, for the entire village of S—.
EQMM, June 2007 Page 16
