by Weston Ochse
Damned phones.
What’s he saying?
Got Milk?
Got Eggs?
Got Boom?
You crash back into the seat as Crazy Eyes slams down the accelerator again. You feel like the ass-end of a bullet in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. We jerk left. We jerk right. Accelerate. Slow. Accelerate again. You’re on the Afghan Fun Ride.
By now you’re giggling nervously.
“Car right.”
“Group of men on left.”
“Trash pile on left.”
“Motorcycle. See it?”
“Got it.”
You remember the movie Twister and their exclamation of cow as it flies by in the grasp of a tornado. You half expect for them to say that next, but of course they don’t.
Then we hit the traffic circle. Dear Great God of Roundabouts, what have you done? It’s a traffic circle in geometry only. Cars and trucks and bikes and horses pulling carts go around it in both directions. They don’t yield. They don’t slow. It’s sheer chaos and we’re all going to freaking die.
Only we don’t.
Tech Sergeant Crazy Eyes shoots through three scant openings, slips past a donkey cart, and next thing you know we’re roaring down another street, barely avoiding being T-boned by a bus. Like the Incredible Hulk through the eye of a needle, we somehow make it through.
“Car. Right.”
“Truck. Left.”
Accelerate to seventy miles per hour.
And finally, no shit, he says, “cow!”
The SUV bites hard with the breaking in an effort to keep the haggard beast off our hood. We slide by, clipping its tail which snaps nattily back to remove a fly from a lazy eyelid as if we mere American’s hadn’t almost turned it into Afghan burger patties.
Then the school children.
We stop.
Tech Sergeant Crazy Eyes turns down the music until all we hear are the sounds of the city.
Like emperor penguins the children waddle across the road in their white and black school uniforms. What can we do? We can’t ram them. We can’t go around.
Suddenly you’re hyper aware of everything around you. You can feel the ticking of the engine like knocks on your heart.
I thought you weren’t scared?
A child laughs.
Another screams.
The sounds of their childhood are like heat rounds shooting towards you.
A car honks behind you.
“I don’t like this,” says Crazy Eyes.
You think to yourself, Damn, if he’s worried then I should be too.
But the sergeant major calms you. “Easy now.” He reaches down and turns the music to eleven.
The music changes to Nickelback’s Animals and you get to the line where the devil needs a ride, you see the children are gone, and you’re accelerating and the song might be about anything at all, even sex inside a car, but you don’t care because the beat matches the speed you’re going and the way the people and trees whip past the SUV makes you feel like you’re moving even faster and faster and faster, while your right hand is on the ‘oh shit’ handle, your left is tapping to the beat on your left leg and you discover that you’re two parts of the same being, one scared, one not.
You breathe and notice the increased presence of police in gray uniforms carrying AKs. You feel safe.
“See those guys with the AKs?” the Sergeant Major yells.
“Yes,” you yell back to be heard over the music.
“They don’t like us. Watch out for them,” he says.
Watch out for them? Like now? Seriously? Those police right there with the AKs?
Then we pass a building under construction. It’s going to be big whatever it is.
“They’re building a Hilton there,” the Sergeant Major says, playing tour guide, not having to yell anymore because the song is changing.
“Shit’s going to get blowed the fuck up,” Crazy Eyes says, channeling the love child of Nostradamus and Sam Kinison.
You can’t help but laugh. Not at the idea of a hotel getting blown up. Never that. Instead, you’re laughing at the casualness such a thing can be called. Like when someone sees a professed redneck pouring moonshine onto a lit BBQ grill and saying, watch this. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what’s going to happen. Or like when a hotel chain builds a hotel near the site of where the last one was destroyed and with less than twenty four months of America pulling out of Afghanistan.
Shit’s going to get blowed the fuck up.
Priceless.
“We’re here,” says Crazy Eyes.
Sergeant Major leans across the seat and turns to you. “Welcome to the Green Zone.”
You feel giddy. You feel sad. The ride is over. Part of you is happy and part of you wants to do it again. And part of you wants to fling open the car door and throw yourself to the ground thanking the Great God of Cannonball Runs that your shit didn’t get blowed up.
But then all those parts become one and you realize you’ve done something no one back home can ever appreciate. No essay or book or story or late night yarn will ever be able to convey the sheer joy and fear you felt simultaneously. It’s something where you just have to be there to know. It’s something that you survive, and in the surviving, you become a part of the club that understands such things.
Welcome to the war zone, sucker.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I wrote this on 24 March 2013 after my first drive through Kabul, Afghanistan. I should have been more scared. By the essay, you can probably feel my pulse-pounding elation. I’d been in dangerous places before. I’ve faced off with Papua New Guinea irregulars carrying machetes intent on removing one or more of my body parts. I’ve been shot at. I’ve been chased. I was scared on all those occasions, but I also knew I’d be leaving soon. I decided before I took a tour of duty in Afghanistan, as it says in the article, that I wouldn’t be scared. It was an emotion to which I could easily fall victim. Not that I had the ultra-dangerous job as a combat soldier serving at a forward operating base (FOB) in the provinces. Let’s face it, I was a staff officer working at NATO HQ. I was probably one of the best protected guys in the war zone. That is until I went off FOB – which means leaving the protection of the base with guards, T-walls, and various impervious blast-proof barriers. I knew plenty of folks who never left the FOB. We called them FOBBITs. For whatever reason, they didn’t want to leave. I’m not here to judge. But I for sure wasn’t going to be a FOBBIT. I wanted to experience the war zone. I wanted to see Afghanistan. I left FOB every chance I could and traveled to many places around Afghanistan, including most of the bases in and around Kabul, Kandahar where I was rocketed, Camp Bastion, Camp Leatherneck, Masr-I-Sharif, Herat, Khost, and Fob Shank. Every ride was like the one I described in this essay. Every ride was fraught with danger and electric with excitement. But every ride had to be done. Salute to Sergeant Major Scott Marshall for promising my wife he’d take care of me and doing it.
When I Knew Baseball
I’m back in California working in the avocado fields. I’m dreaming of playing baseball with my father. California doesn’t have any teams so we follow Detroit. My uncle moved there to build Fords, so Hank Greenberg is our man. Hammerin’ Hank had 183 RBIs last year, a record for right-handers and a feat unimaginable to a million kids wearing gloves in clover fields dreaming of big night lights. And like us he’s a Jew, someone to look up to even as he refuses to play baseball on Yom Kippur. You gotta admire someone who refuses something everyone wants you to do. Sometimes you have to do things for yourself. I’ve understood that all along. I’ve been called kike enough times to know that there is a universe of knowledge that is assumed.
December 21, 1942
Guadalcanal, Solomon Island
Battle of Mount Austin
I wish I was back in basic training getting shredded by my drill sergeant. I wish I was back in Luzon getting the shit shot out of me by the Japanese. Really, I wish I was anywhere except where I am, deep in the middle of the Guadalcanal jungle, staring at the most recent victim of our special mission – and like the last seven victims, who’d already been medevac’d, this one is of our own doing.
In fact, I wish I could stop looking at Frankie. His face is slack. His eyes are as wide as they are empty. Drool laces his chin. Frankie is so fucked up. He’s a far cry from the laugh-out-loud-funny-wanna-be Frank Sinatra he was just an hour ago. One minute he’s smoking and joking with the rest of us as we try to convince ourselves that we’re anyplace other than this sweat-hole, the next minute Lieutenant Chalmers is calling him over and letting him know that it’s his turn.
We knew it was coming. The damned thooloo hadn’t fed on any Japs in more than two weeks and its specially-trained handler, some pretty boy with a pencil-thin mustache named Reed, had been taken out by a sniper’s bullet. Chalmers had to feed it something. I guess because we’re from a conscript battalion we don’t have much say in the matter and it was Frankie’s dumb luck to be the lowest ranking private in a company full of privates.
“Private Cupcake! Stop staring at the wounded and get your ass on water detail,” yells Staff Sergeant Olson.
“That’s Kupchak, Staff Sergeant.” I pull myself to my feet and tear my gaze away from Frankie. I’ll be happy if that’s the last time I see him. Poor fucking Frankie.
“Don’t care what it is. Get off your ass and on your feet.”
“Moving, Staff Sergeant.”
I’m glad to be doing something other than staring at poor Frankie. He has me by two weeks and Sully by two days, with two other privates in between. In a unit full of privates, it is just damned unlucky to be the lowest ranking guy.
As I hustle toward the pile of buckets, I can’t help but glance at the dark, looming doorway to the bunker. I’ve never seen the thing inside they call the thooloo. I don’t know what it looks like. But sometimes there’s a twisted mass that slithers through my dreams and I know it’s coming from what lives down there. I shudder as I grab two buckets and follow Staff Sergeant Olson towards the spring. We all walk slowly, trying to make the drudgery last as long as possible. After all, the longer we’re away from it, the longer we have before it sucks out our minds.
I didn’t always used to be a conscript. I used to be a corporal with responsibilities and a future. But two girls, a month’s pay and a case of whiskey in Australia turned a three-day pass into seventeen days of sex, booze, and the MPs hot on my tail. Next thing you know my money ran out, the booze ran out, the girls ran out, and I ran right into the MPs. After a concise and unceremonious defrocking, I became Private Kupchak and was assigned to the 17th Special Services Company. It wasn’t until we were all afloat that we discovered the company was part of an experimental military intelligence unit with a very specialized and dangerous mission.
“Taking odds that we’ll get the go ahead on the Japs,” Booth says, leaning in close and talking low. “You in it for a fin?”
The idea of betting on one’s own life is morbid as hell. “Yeah, count me in for Christmas,” I say. But then being morbid is all part of being a soldier. The only difference between us and death row inmates is that we run towards death.
“But that’s four days away and you’re…” Booth let the rest of the thought fall hard to the ground.
“Fourth on the list. No shit, Sherlock.”
“Then why are you betting –”
“Because I know my luck.”
Staff Sergeant Olson shoots me a look meant to shut me up. I let it as we trudge down the trail. From the top of Sea Horse Ridge to the spring is about a kilometer, but it takes forty-five minutes on foot. The lush jungle is still thick with branches, undergrowth, and ankle-thick vines. Here and there the jungle becomes a chaotic tangle of everything trying to grow at once, but every once in a while I encounter open spaces – remnants of the U.S. ship bombardments back when the Japanese had a firm grip on the island. Although the Japs have been pretty well subdued, there’s still the occasional sniper or stubborn squad of fighters. Two weeks ago a small group of Japs infiltrated Henderson Field and destroyed four P39s, and that after the airfield commander had declared the island 100% secure. Right now, an unknown number are hunkered in the bunker system known as Giri. When it comes time, destroying those within will be assigned to our company. They say the thooloo will go in and steal their minds. If you ask me, it can’t be soon enough.
I keep my eyes on the jungle as it keeps its eyes on me. We sweat together as we both try to ignore the bugs that live on our surfaces. When we finally reach the spring, we deploy in line to fill the buckets while Olson stands over watch.
Alphabet, the Albanian with too many letters in his name to pronounce, scoots beside me. “Three of us are leaving tonight. You in?”
I don’t answer. Instead I look to Olson, who is watching Booth, who is in turn watching me. We are so interlinked it’s pathetic.
Alphabet nudges me. “Listen, Kupchak, I’m giving you a chance because you’ve been good to me.”
Alphabet had been sick aboard the ship. I’d fed him bread and broth for two days because no one else would. It wasn’t that I cared about him. I just felt that it wouldn’t be right for no one to take care of him.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say, picking up my bucket and lining back up on the trail.
He stares at me and shakes his head. I know what he wants, but I don’t want to be given something for doing what’s right. It was my choice to do it. I could have easily ignored him and counted on someone else to step up. All I want to do is serve out my penance and get back to the real army… that is, if we make it past Christmas. It occurs to me that I’m betting a lot if I don’t take Alphabet up on his offer.
Before I can say anything, a shot rings out.
Everyone spins towards the sound and sees Olson aiming his rifle at a fleeing soldier. I follow the trajectory of the rifle in time to see the back of Smittie’s head blow apart on Olson’s second shot. The Staff Sergeant grins and turns towards us. His grin is anything but pleasant. But then he folds in on himself as another shot rings out, this one from elsewhere. He cries out once, then falls.
“Sniper!” someone yells.
I drop my bucket and charge towards Olson. I fall next to him and grab his rifle. Another shot and I roll towards the sound, aligning the iron sight as I stare down the barrel in search of a target. But there’s nothing. The sniper fired twice, then moved. It’d happened before. It’ll happen again.
I check Olson for a heartbeat, but it’s clear from his Heaven-staring eyes that he’s dead. I shoulder his rifle and stand.
“Come on, boys. Let’s go back.”
Some of the privates head towards their buckets, but several stand their ground. They glare at me holding the gun as if I am the new Staff Sergeant Olson.
“What? Why not take off?” Booth asks. He’s the highest ranking of us all, so he isn’t in any hurry to leave.
But Sullivan, who’s the next in line, chimes in. “Yeah. Why not just take off?”
“Look at Smittie,” I say.
“But that’s different. The sniper is gone. Now there’s no one here to shoot him.”
“Won’t always be the case,” I say. “Come on, let’s get back.”
“Fuck that!” Sullivan and three others take off into the woods. I raise the gun and trace their backs with the iron sights. I could shoot them. Part of me wants to, especially since I know that Sullivan’s departure will make me that much closer to meeting the thooloo in the bunker. My finger even brushes against the trigger as they push through the chest-high flora. But in the end, I can’t. Killing them would put me in the same position I’m going to find myself in when I get back. They did what they h
ad to do, just as I will do what I have to do.
I turn back towards the camp. Half of our numbers are gone. I tell those who are left to bring what buckets they can carry and we make our way back.
I joined the army in 1941 intent on fighting Hitler, but ten days after I joined the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and I’ve been on the other side of the world since. Three of us joined at the same time, all of us best friends and graduates of Santa Cruz High School. Bennie Bernstein, Saul Barrows and I were subjected to army basic training at Fort Ord. We learned to hate the sand that we’d so previously adored. What kept us going was the knowledge that we’d soon be in old world forest, the crunch of leaves beneath our feet competing with the overwhelming smell of evergreen as we brought our considerable warrior skills against the Jew-hating asshole leading the Third Reich. Of course that’s not the way it happened.
Lt. Chalmers screams at me for a full fifteen minutes before he calms down. He relieves me of my weapon, rounds up his soldiers, conducts an inventory of us conscripts and determines that there are only twenty-one of us left. Worse for me, those who had stood before me are either gone or dead. It’s my turn now.
They come for me at eleven. The moon sends shards of light through the spikey fronds of the trees. An occasional shot is all we hear except for a lone bird somewhere towards the sea. The other privates stare at me, both relief and fear in their expressions.
“It feeds on memories,” Chalmers said, when he was preparing me several hours ago. “You can either give them all, or you can give it one.” Seeing my expression he added, “It only needs to have a little to sustain it.”
“How do I only give it one memory?”
“Whatever you’re thinking at the moment is what it takes. If you give into the fear and you lose concentration, it takes everything.”
The bunker is a series of rooms which go deeper and deeper into the mountain. I’m led to the last and final room. Chalmers uses a skeleton key to open a stout metal door. Inside, the darkness is incomplete and layered. As the thing unfurls, terror spreads like heat through my limbs. I’m quaking and nothing can stop it except to run, but the gun barrel pressed to the back of my head pins me to the spot. It doesn’t crawl, or walk, or slither, but instead moves in starts and stops. Pieces of it appear and disappear, leaving trails of black motes that float a moment before coalescing back into its skin. I can see my reflection in places, but I can’t make out a face or any semblance of eyes. Its very existence is so wrong it makes me nauseous to look at it.
