One September Morning

by Rosalind Noonan

  “Where’re the goddamned peanuts?” Hilliard digs into the care package from home, causing bags of bubble gum and chips to squeeze out and topple to the dusty floor. Hilliard likes his treats, and since Camp Despair is nearly fifty miles away from the small PX in Baghdad, he’s got to rely on packages from home. “She sends me Jelly Bellies, but no peanuts?”

  “Are those the jelly beans from the Harry Potter movies?” Gunnar McGee asks. He’s the only guy called by his first name, as the guys in the platoon enjoy the irony of a soldier whose name is Gunnar. “They taste like vomit and snot and poop and shit?”

  Lassiter smacks Gunnar’s shoulder with the back of one hand. “Idiot! Shit and poop are the same damned thing.”

  “Is that the kind?” Gunnar’s eyes twinkle at the prospect of a taste of home, even if it is a foul taste.

  “I don’t know.” Antoine Hilliard tosses a handful of foil packets to Gunnar. “Take ’em. Like I need to be popping jelly beans in the desert. I married the goddamned Easter Bunny.”

  Normally the men would laugh over a wisecrack like that, but the airless room is void of humor. Emjay sits on his cot and watches unobtrusively through his dark sunglasses as Noah sets his rifle aside and turns his attention to a pair of combat boots, which he begins to unlace. There’s a dark stain on the side that extends over the toe of the boot. Blood, most likely. John’s blood? It’s possible, though with Noah’s medical assignment, it could be any number of things.

  Still…as Noah rubs polish into the black leather, Emjay fights off a sickening chill at the thought of one brother cleaning off the blood of another. It seems to make this war too small and personal, and way too close. Beside the boots Noah has laid out his belongings—ammo, desert fatigues, a few canned rations and books, skivvies, and equipment like his rifle, a gas mask, and an NOD, a night operation device, goggles that clip over your helmet.

  “You getting everything in line for the trip back home?” Emjay asks Noah, who nods over one boot.

  Emjay shoots a look to the cot behind him, where John used to sleep. The floor beneath the metal frame is bare. John’s gear is gone.

  “Hey, what happened to John’s stuff?” Emjay shouts to the room at large.

  “Whaddaya think? Chenowith,” Lassiter says, venom on his tongue.

  Lieutenant Chenowith, a West Point graduate, views the army differently than these enlisted soldiers, many of whom came to this career by default. Lassiter worked in a shoe store, Gunnar McGee mowed lawns, Hilliard drove a beer truck till he fucked that up by getting a DUI. Most of the guys in the platoon are here because they have no direction and they need to get out of debt, while Chenowith’s direction has always been to rise up the ranks in the U.S. Army, just like his old man, who was some hotshot in another war.

  “The lieutenant confiscated all of John’s gear,” Doc explains. “Pending investigation. He wouldn’t even let Noah here go through and take out some personal items for John’s wife.”

  “Goddamned army,” Hilliard grumbles over a mouthful of licorice. “They fuckin’ own you, even when you’re dead.”

  Unresponsive, Noah briskly swipes a stiff brush over the toe of one boot.

  Weary to the bone, Emjay shakes his head and stares at the NOD lined up with Noah’s stuff. What the hell happened to his today? Last time he used the night operation device it was working just fine, but today when he lowered the equipment over his eyes, he saw nothing—just blackness. He’d been complaining about it to John when the first shot rang out in the dark warehouse.

  Now he kicks himself for not having working equipment. If the device had worked, he would have seen the shooter. Maybe he would have seen the gunman taking aim, closing in on John. Maybe, he might have saved John’s life.

  His heartbeat picks up, thumping in his ears as he pictures the scene. After the two shots, Emjay had grabbed John’s NOD and soaked up everything around them. That was when he saw the soldier—one of them—walking away.

  A goddamned soldier.

  But John must have seen the guy. That’s why he was yelling that he was a friendly, that he was John Stanton, U.S. Army. John knew who shot him, and it wasn’t some Iraqi insurgent.

  Had the raid of the warehouse been a staged mission? A way for Lieutenant Chenowith to get rid of John so that the media would stop dogging his platoon?

  Crazy theories from a crazy man, but Emjay can’t think who else would have wanted to kill John. He removes his helmet and presses two fingers into each temple. Wish I had an NOD in that warehouse, a way to see the shooter.

  Who was it? One of you?

  Did one of you fuck with my NOD? Screw it up so I wouldn’t see your face when you took out my friend?

  His eyes obscured by shades, Emjay studies the faces of the men in quarters. Hard to believe it could be one of your own. Noah and John are brothers, and Doc played football with John back in college, so those three are pretty tight. Antoine Hilliard isn’t the aggressive type. He’s been goldbricking the army since they got here, claiming a back injury so he could stay behind the wire to do paperwork—until a mortar round came through and took out an Alpha Company soldier while he was asleep in quarters. But Hilliard, he and John got on okay. Gunnar McGee is too much of a pansy, which leaves Lassiter, who was obviously jealous of John’s popularity. It could have been Lassiter, but Emjay would have trouble buying that, given Lassiter’s lack of follow-through. The guy is a big talker, but Emjay suspects he’s all talk.

  So who else was in that dark warehouse? Who hated John that much?

  Emjay removes his helmet and sits down on the edge of his cot. There will be no sleep for tonight. No rest. No escape.

  “Just a tip, Brown,” Doc says, one blue eye squinting in half a wink. “You can lose the shades at night. Especially in this pit.”

  Emjay stows his helmet and flak jacket but makes no move to remove his sunglasses. “Didn’t you know?” he says as he leans back on his bunk, hands crossed over his chest like a corpse. “I’m legally blind.”

  Doc and the guys chuckle for a moment, but their attention quickly shifts to the poker game. Hilliard is munching through a can of macadamia nuts as Noah Stanton methodically laces his combat boots.

  Through the dark shield of his shades, Emjay watches them all. It’s a damn shame the sunglasses can’t cover everything, can’t hide the shaking of his hands or the sour pucker of lips on the verge of sobbing. If only he could be alone, walk into the cocoon of nightfall, the dark wrapping around him like a forgiving blanket. You never get to be alone in the army. In that way, it’s like a prison.

  He misses the privacy of home, the freedom to fly out the door and walk the farm, any time of the day or night, without getting his ass shot at. Sometimes he walked to the back acres of the farm, past the chicken coops, the thicket and the pond, night opening to him like a dark blossom. Walking to get away from his old man, to escape the arguments, the drunken fits, the smell of the stale beer and chicken shit and malice. Truth was, nobody enjoyed culling dead chicks or sucking in the ammonia smell, so acidic in the chicken houses it burned right through your sinuses into your brain. Emjay signed up to get away from that chicken farm on the Maryland shore, and damned if he didn’t trade one hell for another. Only, this new nightmare was bigger and more twisted than anything he could have imagined.

  Without turning his head, Emjay can see Noah Stanton pulling on his boots. He doesn’t bother to lace them, but strides out of the bungalow without his helmet or flak jacket or rifle, defying regulations.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” Lassiter asks, scowling toward the slamming door.

  “Living dangerously,” Gunnar agrees, “but, really, what are the chances? Taking down two brothers in one day? Odds are against it, I’d say.”

  “Sometimes grief will make a person act recklessly.” Doc picks up his helmet and removes the gold medal he keeps tucked into the camouflage mesh for good luck. It’s a replica of a Purple Heart he got in Afghanistan, and Doc’s so proud of it he w
ears it like a fishing hook in his hat, even when they go out on missions. Doc’s sort of a dick that way. “And I have to say, I get it. I still can’t believe he’s gone. Goddamned sniper. Goddamn them all.”

  Emjay’s mouth goes dry as silence pervades the room. Usually he resents Doc’s declarations of pop psychology—the nuggets of mental health tips Doc tosses off each day in his role as what the army calls field counselor, which they all know means head shrinker. But this time Doc seems sincere, and rightly so. Before he was Dr. Charles Jump, Doc played football with John back in college. This had to cut deep, even for a cat like Doc. They were old friends, but then John was a friend to everyone. He was that kind of guy.

  Doc goes to a calendar on the wall, grimaces at the breathtaking photo of a huge potato-head rock in the surf, and marks off a square with a felt pen. “One more down,” he says, and for a moment Emjay thinks he’s referring to a man down instead of a day to mark off on the calendar.

  “You gonna take on the calendar now?” Lassiter asks.

  “Guess I’ll have to,” Doc says, capping the pen.

  John was the one who had hung the calendar with photos of the Pacific Northwest on the wall, the one who’d kept their spirits up, counting down the days until their deployment ended, crunching the numbers in countless different ways. Three months is ninety-one days. Less than a dollar in pennies. Less than eight dozen eggs for the son of a chicken farmer like Emjay.

  Spinelli rolls up one pant leg and lifts a fat bandage to press at a raw cut underneath.

  “You get that sewn up?” Doc asks.

  “Noah gave me two stitches,” he says flatly. When Spinelli fell outside the building and sliced into his knee, he’d been sure it was a serious injury. “Look at all that blood,” Spinelli had said, awed by his gruesome knee. “You’ll probably have to medevac me to Germany.”

  “I don’t think so,” Noah answered solemnly as he pressed gauze to the wound. “See? It’s deep enough for stitches, but no tendon damage. I can sew you up right here, if you want.”

  Chenowith tipped his head to the side, obviously put out by Spinelli’s latest injury. “All right, okay. We’ll pull you two from the operation.”

  Which left Doc partnering with Hilliard, who couldn’t tell his ass from his elbow under the best of circumstances.

  Now Emjay bites into the licorice strand and wonders what it all adds up to. It must be the eighth time he’s gone through the details of this day, but he can’t seem to piece it together.

  “I’d love to take down the bastard that got John,” Gunnar says, extending one arm and pretending to stare through the scope of a rifle. “I wish they’d let me go out of the wire and track him down. I would.”

  “Who the hell did fire at him?” Hilliard asks, his jaw working on a handful of nuts. “Did anybody ever find the sniper?”

  “Hell, no.” Lassiter reaches toward Hilliard and grabs some macadamia nuts for himself. “Alpha Company searched the perimeters after it happened, never located the insurgent. But let me ask you, Hilliard, did you see us nabbing the sniper? Where the hell were you, anyway?”

  “I guarded the door, like Doc told me to do,” Hilliard says defensively. “You know I don’t want to be doing that crap.”

  “Yeah, we know, Hillbilly,” Lassiter says. The platoon is well aware of Hilliard’s reticence to do the patrols.

  Hilliard stops chewing. “You gotta wonder, what the hell were we doing in that warehouse in the first place?”

  “The mission objective was to detain suspected insurgents and search for rocket-propelled grenades,” Doc says succinctly. Sometimes he acts as if he’s keeping everyone in line, though Emjay thinks it’s mostly an act. Without rank, nobody gives a shit.

  “Anybody find RPGs?” Gunnar asks.

  Lassiter shakes his head. “Chenowith said there were reports of insurgents taking back some buildings in the warehouse district.” He wipes his palms against each other, brushing off salt. “I’d love to know how we got that intelligence. From the goddamned sniper, probably. And some officer believed it, some boss with his head up his ass.”

  For once, Emjay suspects Lassiter’s got something right.

  Chapter 3

  Fort Lewis

  Jim Stanton

  He is going to be late for work.

  Checking for cars, Jim Stanton jogs across the street and onto a path that cuts through a densely treed park bordering the army base.

  You cannot report for duty late in the army without repercussions, and this fact has been so ingrained in Jim in the fifty or so years since he entered West Point that he still feels guilty calling in a bit late now that he has retired and moved over to the civilian side of the armed services.

  “No worries,” Teresa told him when he called in to the office at I-Corps, the elite Army Division here in Fort Lewis where he now taught at the Joint Readiness Training Center. “A retirement job,” Sharice called it, knowing that he’d go stir-crazy if he totally detached from the military after thirty-some years with Uncle Sam.

  “Wait…” Teresa paused, and he heard her shuffling through some papers. “Your classes don’t even meet until this afternoon? Easy does it, Jim. You don’t need to come in this morning if it’s not convenient.”

  He resisted the urge to accuse her of colluding with his doctor and assured her he would be there, his voice tight from lack of sleep. The damned dream was back, and though he spent the night fighting it, the pattern persisted: He would fall asleep, fall victim to the dream, wake up in a panic, then spend the next few hours trying to relax and clear his head. By the time he finally fell asleep, the sun would be rising, a spiteful orange ball bouncing in through the tall round window of the master bedroom.

  The goddamned dream.

  It had returned, a monster scuttling out of hibernation and roaring in the night.

  He lengthens his stride, trying not to favor his left leg as he cuts off to the right on the path that turns into the woods. As he jogs, he is vigilant, his eyes darting quickly from side to side, watching for movement in the trees. The slightest movement of a branch, the smallest jangle of leaves can mean danger.

  The enemy.

  An ambush.

  Well…he does not expect to find those things here but these are things that he teaches his soldiers, survival skills he learned by doing.

  Odd that the same memories that lend credibility to his days now haunt his nights. Sometimes he wonders why the dream has returned after having been gone for so many years. And how did he chase it away after his return from ’Nam? He can’t even remember, though he’s damned sure he didn’t employ the help of a head shrinker. Don’t need those guys to interfere and start telling him what to do.

  A man’s got to make his own decisions.

  Some of it’s obvious, of course: that the dream returned when American soldiers were once again dispatched to combat duty. Not to mention the kick in the butt that came when his own two sons dropped their career paths and enlisted in a Special Forces unit three years ago. If the act of packing up your sons and sending them off to basic training doesn’t send you rewinding back through your military career, nothing will.

  As he jogs, he notices movement in a lone tree standing in a clearing. His eyes dart over to catch a squirrel leaping off a leafy branch and somersaulting to a limb below. Rodent trapeze. Just a squirrel.

  Another lone tree appears in his mind, the last tree standing after B-52s came through the night before and dropped bombs in an attempt to clear the area of Viet Cong. His platoon had been sweeping through in search of the enemy when they came across the single tree. They paused there, curious that the tree had survived the holocaust of fire, and that it was occupied by a monkey who kept scrambling up and down.

  “Very entertaining,” said Riley. “Hey, Amitrano, you got peanuts to go with the show?”

  No one laughed. They didn’t do much laughing on forward patrol.

  “Weird,” Shroeder said, scanning the barren landscape scrape
d out by last night’s bombs. Eighteen and freckle faced, Shroeder was a kid from Wisconsin who should have been home scooping ice cream and polishing his car for his date at the drive-in with Betty Sue. “How’d that monkey survive?” When no one answered, he added, “You think any of those bombs hit Charlie?”

  “Bombing the jungle at night’s like shooting into a pickle barrel,” Jim said. “The chances of hitting your target are one in a million.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes you get lucky, right?” Shroeder asked.

  Don’t count on it, Jim thought, taking a last look at the eerie tree swaying in the early morning mist. The poor monkey was probably scared out of its gourd, traumatized by the fire-storm of the night before, only to awaken at dawn to find itself islanded in this tree. Isolated. Alone.

  Like the last one on earth.

  Don’t go there, Jim warns himself as he pushes past the pain in his left leg, pushes on, as always. “I see no reason why you can’t do some running, if the pain is tolerable,” the orthopedic surgeon had told him when his physical therapy was ending back in 1970. “Light running—no marathons for you.” Jim had taken a bullet in the upper leg and one in the chest during an ambush outside Lai Ke in 1967. Serious injuries, but he counts himself lucky to be alive. His company lost more than half their ranks in that disaster.

  By the time he rounds the corner and sprints toward home, sweat drips down his back, drenching the collar of his T-shirt. His bad leg throbs, but the pain is tolerable, no more than a persistent reminder of where he’s been. As he closes the distance, his mind races ahead to a quick shower, coffee at 7-Eleven, then a beeline to the office.

  But the person waiting at his front door sounds an alarm in his brain. Jim breaks stride and slows his pace to see that it’s someone in uniform, who is turning away from the doorbell to shoot him a glance.

  “You looking for me?” Jim calls out, checking his watch. “I may be AWOL, but not by that much.” He smiles at the kid, but as he grows closer he’s able to see that the young man does not return his smile.