Sand Queen

by Helen Benedict

  So here she is, standing in front of this house she’s dreamed of for months, her heart stuck halfway up her throat and her knees quivering so badly she’s afraid she’ll fall down.

  What if she’s making a terrible mistake?

  [ KATE ]

  THEY WON’T LET me out of the Warhorse field hospital till the morning after the mortar attack, and only then once they’ve doped me up with tranquilizers, washed the worst of the blood off of me and given me some dead soldier’s helmet, since I lost mine. I walk out of there feeling like air jets are shooting from the soles of my boots. People’s voices are echoing strangely, too, like I’m in an indoor pool and my ears are filled with water.

  They order me to take the return convoy to Bucca right away, so the next thing I know I’m back in my go-cart with salami-faced Nielsen.

  “I see you and me are still here,” he says when I clamber in. “That was a bastard of a night, huh?”

  I don’t react.

  “Your buddy turned out to be okay, though, I hope?”

  “How long till we move?” is all I say.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Breaking down my rifle, I wipe it clean of moondust, give the magazine spring a light lube and snap it back together, making sure the action is good and smooth. Then I slide on another condom to keep out the sand. This baby can shoot seven hundred rounds a minute if I want. I stick it out the window and turn my back to Nielsen. Even that lamebrain knows not to say another word.

  Off we go again, although with fewer trucks this time. I wonder what the hell we delivered. They never tell us. Could be weapons. Could be toilet paper. Could be nothing at all. Some of those trucks really are empty—I’ve seen them. We suckers are dying out here, getting our legs and faces sheared off, just to deliver trucks full of air.

  The convoy rumbles out of the base, back the way it came, predictable as a fucking pendulum. What a good idea. Let’s send those camel jockeys a time-table, telling them exactly where and when to kill us. We might as well hang signs around our necks: Shoot Me Here.

  I clean off my sun goggles, fit my rifle on my shoulder and look through its sights. I’m still floating on Ativan and Valium, or whatever the hell those medics pumped into me, but I’m wound tight as a hair trigger anyway. There are way too many people on the road for my liking, and there’s way too much garbage too. Anything can hold an IED. Cardboard box. Mound of rags. Plastic bag. Anything.

  Soon we’re out of Camp Mortarhorse (as I’ve found out too late Warhorse is called) and back on the same highway we took to get to this dump. The same shit is all around us, too: the desert, the tire shreds, the bits of artillery sticking like weird sculptures out of the sand. The stranded families, confused civilians, the camels and carts and crumpled old cars getting in our way. I practice aiming at all of them. Just in case.

  “Hey, Brady, pull your fuckin’ weapon inside. No need to go crazy here,” Nielsen barks. I ignore him.

  Then I spot this skinny little boy, about seven or so, walking beside the road. He’s leading a donkey harnessed to a rickety two-wheel cart. I stare at him, hard. You can hide a cannon in a cart. You can hide the biggest damn IED you ever saw in a cart. You can hide enough RPGs and ammo in a cart to blow up a whole frickin’ convoy and every sorry sucker inside of it.

  I train my sights on him. One swerve, you fucking miniature towelhead, and I’m taking you out. I was always a good shot on the firing range in basic training—a lot of us females were. We used to brag that we could shoot the hairy left ball off of our drill sergeant at thirty meters away, easy.

  The boy looks over at our trucks roaring past him and pulls at the donkey’s harness, like he’s trying to position it somehow. I don’t like the look of that at all. I flip the safety off my rifle and squint down its barrel.

  “What the fuck are you doin’ now?” Nielsen snaps.

  “Just my job, Sar’nt.”

  “Don’t go shootin’ nothing unless I tell you. You know that, right?”

  The donkey tosses its head and tries to move further off the road, but the boy yanks it back toward us for some reason. Then the donkey jerks its head again, and I don’t know why, but it makes me real nervous.

  I aim at its left temple. And I watch.

  The donkey’s even more jittery now, edging closer and closer to us. I could swear the boy’s pushing it our way. On purpose.

  So I shoot.

  Bull’s-eye.

  “Jesus!” Nielsen screeches. “Gimme that weapon!”

  The donkey falls to its knees, hesitates for a moment like it’s praying, then collapses onto its side, pulling the cart over with it. Oranges and lemons tumble out, spinning all over the road. Orange, yellow, orange, yellow.

  Next I train my sights on the boy. He’s clutching his head, his mouth wide open. The donkey thrashes on the ground a second, legs jerking wildly. Then it shudders and falls still. Blood oozes from its ears and mouth, and from the hole in its temple where I shot it.

  “Are you nuts?” Nielsen yells again. “Give me that fucking rifle!”

  I lean out so I have the boy’s ear right in my crosshairs. He’s lying on top of the donkey now, crying and stroking it. The oranges and lemons are still spinning over the road.

  Orange.

  Yellow.

  Orange.

  Yellow.

  The boy’s clinging to the donkey hard as he can, his mouth open and wailing, his face streaming with tears. His arms are around the donkey’s neck and he’s hugging and hugging it. Just like I hugged Yvette.

  I pull my rifle inside, put it down on my lap, and stare.

  The rest of the trip back to Camp Bucca goes by “without incident,” as we say in the Army. Nothing but rumble, rumble, wind, soot and dust. I don’t even notice the time. Only sit with my rifle across my lap, eyes straight ahead, seeing nothing.

  Nielsen doesn’t say a word. Too scared I’ll shoot him, probably. But soon as we pull into Camp Bucca, he snatches my weapon right out of my hands and says, “You better come with me, Brady. You need help.”

  I follow him in a daze. My ears are ringing real loud all of a sudden and I can’t hear much of anything else. I keep shaking my head because it sounds like a bunch of cicadas have nested in my ear canal. I’m still shaking it when we arrive at the aid station.

  People’s mouths are moving, eyes looking, but I’m too bothered by my private noise to notice what anybody’s doing to me till I’m swallowing a bunch more pills and being made to lie down. Next thing I know it’s dark and someone’s leading me somewhere. And I’m back in my tent.

  When I walk in, DJ and Rickman and everybody else rushes up to me. “You okay? We heard it sucked real bad up there.”

  I push through them and make my way over to Yvette. She’s the only one I want to talk to right now. She’ll understand—she goes out on convoys all the time. I get to her rack and look down at it, staring at its emptiness in my fog. Then I turn to Third Eye, who’s standing beside me with her mouth all twisted up. “Why isn’t she back yet?” I say.

  Third Eye puts her hand on my arm. “You better get some sleep.”

  Then I remember.

  I lie face down on Yvette’s rack. I can smell her in the pillow—only faintly, but she’s there. Reaching out my arms, I wrap them around the edges of her cot. And I hold on, clutching it tight as I can for the rest of the night.

  THE HOUSE IS big and white and old, much grander than the soldier imagined it. It’s like a New England inn, with a deep front porch and a green door that matches the window shutters. Carved pillars hold up the porch roof and latticework frames its edges like a row of lace. The door even has stained-glass panels in it, red and blue and amber. No gory Halloween decorations, though, thank God.

  The windows are dark. All the soldier can see in them is the reflection of the trees behind her. Maybe that means nobody’s home.

  She steps up to the porch and looks for a bell. There isn’t one. So she knocks on the wood of the door, careful not
to touch the colored glass in case she cracks it.

  She waits a long time, hearing nothing. Maybe she didn’t knock loudly enough, but she doesn’t want to look like a fool and knock again. What she really wants to do is run back to the bus and ride on forever.

  She gazes around as she waits, examining the house more closely. On second glance, it’s not in such great shape. The paint on the porch, the same rich green as the door and shutters, is lifting off the wood in long, cracking blisters. An abandoned wasp’s nest is bulging from behind one of the shutters, its pitted comb gray and crumbling. Spiders have spun tightropes between the pillars, and the white clapboard walls are dusted with faint blue mildew.

  Whoever once cared about this house is clearly long gone.

  The soldier waits, but still no movement within. So she forces herself to knock again, louder this time. A dog barks inside. A biting dog, by the sound of it. She steps back and reaches again for her M-16, groping at her shoulder a second before she remembers.

  Then she hears footsteps. The door rattles while somebody fidgets with its lock. Suddenly, the soldier needs to run.

  Backing up, she turns to flee. But just as she’s reached the bottom of the porch steps, the door opens and a voice catches her.

  “Yes?”

  The soldier turns slowly and stares up at the face looking down at her.

  It’s a woman. A young woman with long black hair and bangs. A big-eyed woman. A woman any idiot can see is pretty as hell.

  Fuck.

  [ KATE ]

  “KATE! HEY, KATE!” Somebody’s shaking me by the shoulders. “Wake up!”

  “Uhn?”

  “Come on!”

  I turn over slowly on Yvette’s cot and peel open my eyes. Third Eye’s leaning over me in the grayish gloom. She looks blurred and shimmery, like she’s covered in plastic wrap.

  “Get up! There’s an E4 outside says he has orders to bring you to SFC Henley. You need to move ass!”

  “What?” My head’s throbbing and my ears are still stuffed with cicadas.

  “Jesus, come on! He’s outside the tent right now!”

  I stare at her, blinking, my brain still clogged from the drugs they stuffed into me last night. I wish they’d given me even more because I’m remembering everything now.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Third Eye yanks my arm. “You’ll be in deep shit if you don’t get moving!”

  I shake her off. “Leave me alone.” Sitting up with an effort, I gulp down a bottle of water and grope for my rifle and helmet. I’m still in my uniform, stiff and brown with Yvette’s blood. Pushing myself to my feet, I stagger out, the cicadas screaming.

  The E4 is some guy I don’t know, although I’ve seen him running errands for Henley before. He’s Mexican, short and stocky, with a round flat face like a penny. He nods at me and escorts me through the grayness to the NCO tent. It feels like I’m under arrest, although he doesn’t say so. When I ask him to wait while I run into a reeking latrine, he doesn’t say anything either. I’ve no idea if this means I’m in trouble or if he just doesn’t like to talk.

  At the NCO tent, he leaves me, still without a word. I go into Henley’s section and stand staring at him, my jaw clenched, waiting till the cocksucker bothers to look up.

  “So,” he says finally, without looking at me. “Specialist Brady. Take a seat.” I do, sitting up stiff. He folds his hands on his desk and fixes his eyes on my hairline, his Daddy Bush mouth clamped tight as an asshole.

  “First, my condolences about your friend Private Sanchez. It’s always a sad day for the Army when we lose a fine soldier like her. We’ll be having the MFH for her and the other casualties tomorrow. You will, of course, be excused from duty to attend.”

  He pauses, expecting me to say something. But I hate him too much.

  “I know it’s hard when we lose our comrades, but remember, she’s not the only fine soldier to lose his life yesterday. Three others died as well, and two were severely wounded. We must honor the noble sacrifices of them all.”

  “Her life, Sergeant.”

  “What?”

  “She lost her life. Not his.”

  Henley narrows his pinpoint eyes. “Well anyway, I called you in to say that, under the circumstances, and due to a disturbing report from your convoy sergeant, we think it best to remove you from the shooter mission and return you to guard duty. This means, Brady, that you will not be getting that promotion I mentioned. You understand?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Like I give a shit.

  “You should also know that, if we see any more of this erratic behavior you insist on, we can put you back on shooter mission at any time. You understand me?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “All right, you can go.”

  I stand up to leave, but before I do, I glare at Henley in silence a long time. It’s because of you Yvette died, my glare says. Because of me, too, but mostly because of you. You and Kormick together. You’re no better than murderers. And if you think you can shut me up with your dumbass threats, you can think again!

  He glances at me uneasily. “I said you can go. And Brady? Change your uniform, for Christ’s sake.”

  I do. Thirty minutes later, I’m back in my tower.

  Jimmy comes to see me at lunchtime, his first visit in weeks. He finds me hunched in my chair, rifle pointed at the prison compound, head twitching to get the cicadas out. Hands trembling more than ever.

  “Hey,” he says cautiously, stepping off the ladder. “Feel like a visit?”

  I don’t answer. I don’t look at him either. I don’t want him to see how grateful I am that he’s come.

  He walks over and crouches beside me anyway. “I heard what happened to your convoy. Jesus.”

  I glance behind him. “You alone?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I keep hearing things.” I shake my head again. “You hear anything weird?”

  He listens. “Just the wind.”

  “It’s like these cicadas are stuck in my head. I think the mortars did something to my eardrums.” I bang the side of my head with my wrist. It doesn’t help.

  Jimmy’s quiet a moment. But then he touches my hand. “I heard about Yvette, too,” he says softly. “I know she was a good friend to you. I know you really cared for her. I’m so sorry, Kate.”

  I nod, swallowing. “Yeah.” I pause till I can talk again. “She was only on that suicide mission ’cause of me.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “It is. It was me they wanted to get rid of, Jimmy. Not her. She only got caught up in it because she was helping me report Kormick.”

  He puts his arms around me then, as easy as if nothing’s ever gone wrong between us. I lean against him, so relieved—to hell with the prisoners, already jeering and pumping their hips below us. His salty warmth, familiar, comforting smell. I close my eyes and just breathe.

  “We were going to be roomies when we got home,” I tell him eventually, my voice muffled in his shoulder. “We were going to find a house together and help each other through.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispers again, and keeps on holding me. It’s the best thing anyone could do. Much better than pills.

  I don’t cry, though. I still haven’t been able to cry.

  The service for Yvette and the other three soldiers who died is held in the chapel, which is only another saggy-ass tent, except super big and light tan. More than a hundred of us show up for it and sit in rows, just like at church, only with fold-up metal chairs instead of wooden pews. I look around. We’ve all made some kind of effort to clean ourselves up, even Third Eye. Yvette would’ve liked that.

  The altar is nothing but an unpainted plywood platform, with another unpainted plywood panel propped up behind it to make a fake wall. On either side is an American flag stuck into a sand-filled garbage can, like a potted plant. And hanging on the fake wall is a giant black heart, with our company’s insignia stamped in the middle of it.

  None of that d
oes much for me. But what does get to me is what they’ve put on the platform itself: the dead soldiers’ empty boots. Four pairs of them sitting in a row, dusty and battered, as if the soldiers stepped out of them only a moment ago. And between each pair of boots is the dead soldier’s rifle, propped up like a body; the dead soldier’s dog tags dangling from it like necklaces around a neck; and the dead soldier’s helmet and goggles balanced on top like a head and a pair of eyes.

  Soldier ghosts. Or, like Jimmy said, robots.

  The company commander starts off the service. He’s this huge, thuggish-looking colonel with a polished bald head and a voice like a bass drum. He steps up to the podium and leads us in the national anthem. Rows and rows of us robots, standing to attention, hands over our robot hearts, growling and squeaking out our national pride. Rows and rows of bare robot heads, the men’s fuzzy with crew cuts, the women’s shiny and flat with hair grease. Rows and rows of robots wondering the same thing: When’s it going to be my boots up there?

  Then the commander tells us to sit, and with his voice booming through a crackly microphone, calls the company chaplain to come up and read a few tear-jerky verses from the Bible. Doesn’t jerk my tears, though. Only makes me think about Mom and Dad and Father Slattery, and all their naïve crap about lifting the downtrodden and being protected by Jesus. Jesus clearly didn’t give a fuck about protecting Yvette, even after she made her tenderhearted deal with His dad. We soldiers are nothing more than work and killing machines, and neither Jesus nor God has anything to do with it. Or I hope they don’t.

  Then the commander takes over again, and in a flat, expressionless voice, spouts a bunch of empty phrases calling the four dead robots heroes who sacrificed their robot lives for our country and freedom. Telling us how the dead robots personified bravery and valor, and how dying for your country is the biggest honor a robot could ask for.

  Fuck valor and honor. Yvette was killed in the middle of writing a frigging e-mail, for Christ’s sake, because the Army was too damn cheap and disorganized to have installed a siren system in the MWR, let alone a mortar-proof bunker for us to shelter in. She was killed because that shithead Henley is buddies with Kormick, and Kormick wanted revenge on me for reporting his sick, perverted ass. Valor and honor? Shit.