by Atticus Lish
Along with the Chinese, there were Guatemalans and Hondurans and other Central Americans, having left behind what they called the problems in their countries. They were here and everywhere, here to work, across the expressway, beyond the globe from the world’s fair in Flushing Meadow Park and the stadiums over the river. Especially in Corona, except for the hole in the donut, the patch controlled by Italians. In the summer, in the park, she knew she would see the homeless Salvadorans burned black, see them playing soccer with a beer can, their shopping cart staked out under a tree like a horse grazing, the flags of their shirts hanging from it. The Chinese in jeans and jean jackets she saw here and now, coming home covered in plaster dust, or the odd one stoned, down here in the labyrinth of back streets.
There were people from India, the help desk people, the IT people. They had a string of businesses on the main artery: video, hairstyle, Punjab grocery. Neon signs, second-story porches and satellite dishes. Pakistanis living above their stores on the other side of Cherry, next to the tattered awning of Little Kabul.
You could take a wrong turn on Franklin, by the next lane over, by that courtyard with the cats in it, the trees with cancer, the ones that looked boiled, melted, cooled-off and hardened like that. The kind of high gates you see at a tow truck lot. The trash in the shed, the back of the building, an American flag with holes in it. Each unit had a steel door painted the color of Crest toothpaste. It said Nutty in spraypaint. On the chest-high foundations, Wreck, Remy, Slugz ‘92. The graffiti was faded. Asians lived in the low rises, but it said Murder in fresh paint and where did the alley go? You could climb into the windows, which were low on the first floor and unguarded, but you wouldn’t want to.
The streets had what some people called culture, one that preexisted the Asians. Franklin don’t quit, they said. It kept going, all the way from Hillcrest to Woodside to Sutphin. They were Spanish, black and Irish with their heads shaved and they compared their level to yours. You could follow it to the Rockaways, to South Suicide Queens. They meant street genius, notorious block parties, the deep five boroughs.
From here, the bus barreled downhill and the terrain opened out onto a field, a cemetery, into a wider form of shadow. You saw women in black burkas waiting for the bus, unwilling to speak with strangers. Or not waiting, taking whatever they had with them and getting farther away on foot, traveling with girls in burkas, pushing a grocery cart with a twenty-pound sack of jasmine rice in it. They had WIC, asylum. Whatever skin of theirs was visible—the hands, around the eyes—having been tanned in a burning oil field.
The field was far more extensive than you might imagine. She ran and ran, under trees, bypassing ditches, areas where the ground was stamped with tire tracks of Bobcats, in the subliminal winter predawn, the gray grainy ground lapping under her feet, the houses a presence beyond the trees. In front of her, however, there was only distance. She crossed a street, the park kept going. As she ran, there was a transformation in the sky: dawn. At length, she stopped, somewhere in a baseball diamond, apparently no closer to the apartment towers that rose like mountains on the far horizon, exerting the same magnetic effect on her with which she had been familiar as a child.
Her tracksuit sweated through, she ran back, the sun behind her. The Chinese did t’ai chi in the botanical gardens.
5
HIS BODY JERKED. HE moaned. The bench was slippery and he moved his legs on it in his dirty jeans, one of his socks coming off, the denim and camouflage and the American flag, his body and gear strewn out.
His brain was on but he was not awake. The plate glass window was lit up with white sunlight coming through his eyelids. It was very hot. They were driving and he was seeing the road go by and feeling the vibration. Metal was hot to the touch. It was loud and the vibration surrounded him and filled his ears like the heat. There were palm trees in the ugly desert panning by.
He was watching the side of the road as it kept coming towards him, bouncing over his iron sights, the dark poor sunburned people by the side of the road, their animals and goats, the little white goats, the tents and rugs for selling whatever they had, bread, souvenirs, hashish, and then the stretch of nothing, the table land.
In his dream, he knew what was happening. When they had first arrived, they hadn’t known, having yet to learn. Their unit had provided security for a colonel on daylong sector-assessment missions called SAM’s that lasted into the night, and they had seen very little action. If this is war, I’m disappointed, Nowling said, pulling security in the spectacular heat. They looked up the line of vehicles at the senior men clustered around the colonel in his crisp camouflage pointing at features of the landscape. Occasionally, they heard battles being fought and at night they watched the lightning flashes and felt the thudding in the ground. It was hard to sleep. People said I miss my girl. I wanna get some. They manned a checkpoint and shot up a car. Their doc from Opa-locka poured a bag of clotting factor in an Iraqi’s chest. Mom’s head was gone. White-faced, Sconyers ran and got a beanie baby for their daughter. They poured canteen water on doc’s hands and it smoked on the road. Someone took a picture of the front seat.
They saw contractors and Special Forces guys wearing boonie hats and carrying different weapons, long-barreled sniper rifles. Dominguez said he had talked to them and they were British. The colonel was gone. Rumors abounded, what was being planned, what was said on CNN. They crossed paths with other units, soldiers who had been in heavy house-to-house fighting and there was a bad feeling, like they wanted to hurt somebody and you were it. Captain Friedman told them to take a knee. He briefed them on who the most wanted people in Iraq were at this time. Then they were ordered to each write an official postcard home. They found a corroded hangar in the desert that was supposed to have contained chemical weapons. The Special Forces men drove away smoking cigars and they moved into it. Rotting drums stood in the heat. The company was divided. They built shitters using the drums and burned their shit with diesel fuel, wearing their gas masks.
It was revealed that they were being held responsible for an area of four hundred square miles. Things started picking up. They got broken down to platoons, and the platoons got broken down to squads, the squads into sticks, the sticks to bricks. At night, they went out on raids, out into the villes along the canal. Before they mounted up, they turned each other in circles checking each other’s gear, put their chew in, banged their helmets together and shouted Get Some! In the day, they drove through the sector, seeing Iraqis running along the road calling out to them. They found adobe houses burning, black smoke rising, clothes in the street. The mosque was trashed. You know what that smell is. Out of nowhere, someone yelled contact left! and they unloaded at the rooftops. They went cyclic, burned a barrel on the 240. Afterwards they checked each other, but there was no evidence that they had taken fire. Adrenaline is real, said Dominguez.
In the basements, they found electronic equipment, stiffened rags, a crumbling prayer book. Children stared at them. The corpses were few at first, but then they started finding bodies every day. Some were mummified by fire. A bomb went off and spit a person out of a doorway. That smell is burning hair. A truck drove by them full of men with beards and satisfied expressions. Why are we letting them go? Sconyers asked. I don’t get it—Sconyers who carried a copy of the Report of the 9/11 Commission in his assault pack.
Because this is the army. Because this is their country. Because this isn’t supposed to make sense.
They swam through a sewage trench at night to provide security so that Special Forces could snatch someone important. The mission got called off and they had to go back the same way. At the hangar they stripped and washed the shit off with their canteens. Then they cleaned their weapons. They did not sleep. They took Ripped Fuel. Whatever that sound was in the city they could always hear it. Nowling opened his mouth and let the chewing tobacco fall out with a long shining strand of drool and then he threw up. What day is it? Fourteen, I think. The Hell’s Angels sergeant said, I’m countin on you guys to
suck it up. The soldiers all said hooah. Going into the city, they took fire and it was not their imagination. It was a hit-and-run. The fire fights proliferated. You could tell there were people on the roofs. They got shot everywhere, in the armor, boots and Kevlar helmets. Sergeant Rogers got shot in the arm. I can still move my fingers. That’s a medal, goddamnit. Gimme a smoke. Hey, Jones, I beat you to a medal.
Hold still, their doc said.
Doc’s mad at me. Think I’m goin home?
Fifteen days after they had arrived in-country, they drove over an IED in a soft-skinned vehicle and lost Chidester. The explosion leaped out of the road and rose like batwings. In the following vehicle, Skinner’s ears popped and cut off like overloaded speakers. The process of evacuating the casualties did not go smoothly. There was a mound of dried black lava on the ground and his mind kept focusing on it instead of on tasks he had been given. When they got back inside the wire, the platoon was in a shambles. Someone ordered Lawson to clean the blood off and Lawson said I don’t feel the need to do that. Skinner’s ears were ringing still. They were ordered right back out again and spent the night on overwatch, seeing the land in infrared. The word was that we will bomb the city from the air. Dear Lord, please let me kill someone tonight. For days inside the wire, they sat around with their shirts off, their chests pasty and macerated from their armor and covered in heat rash, wearing shades, smoking cigarettes, examining their peeling feet.
Bomb the living shit out of them.
That’s not going to happen.
Burn them all alive with Willie Pete. Yes, it will. That’s why we’re getting downtime.
It turned out there was an argument going on between Captain Friedman and the battalion. When he came back, he said there’s been some discussion about survivability with the kinds of attacks we’re getting out here. He chose what he said carefully. We will be adaptive. They were dismissed. At the end of the month, a second memorial got set up by the rotting drums. Well, it turned out Lugo hadn’t made it either. Why’d you have to tell me that? Lawson demanded. He pushed the chaplain’s arm off his shoulders. The colonel showed up and spoke about the viscous medium of combat. Did he say vicious? When he was gone, their captain told them the best way they could honor those they had lost. They rigged the trucks with hillbilly armor and went back out in the city.
It now stank like something you could not imagine. They rolled by villas with ironwork terraces and Skinner looked for the families that had been there. Instead, he saw bearded men with cell phones, shiny watches. One had had his eye cut out, you could tell. In some sections, walls were perforated like lace. Through the holes you could see movement and hear noise and then see dogs ripping at something in the rubble. A freestanding staircase led up to nothing. Sarge, who do I get to kill today? Lawson said. They came upon a bus without wheels resting on its axles. A woman with her head covered came out and emptied a bucket into the shit lake on the ground. The day never ended. Skinner shifted in the glare, holding the weight of his gear on his body, turning back and forth, looking around, touching his safety with his thumb, standing in rubble, feeling watched, chewing on his Camelbak hose, sucking water, tasting warm bacteria plastic.
Time jumped or crawled. How long have we got left? Nowling said and guys told him to shut up. Let me see. He counted on his short fingers but came to no conclusion. For a week, another unit bivouacked with them. Skinner watched their dark-skinned zip-tied prisoners, on their way to Abu Ghraib, eating MREs like contortionists. The outside world seemed far away and less than real. He watched them praying, whispering with their eyes shut, foreheads pressed to the dirt. A scratching loudspeaker in the city was playing the call to prayer.
Allah can’t help you, a soldier from down south said. Now you got me.
They shot a farmer’s goat and Broadbent cooked it over a drum, Jamaican style. It was meant to be Chidester’s wake. The translator could get you hash. It was a celebration after a fashion. They told stories about Chidester, about the man he’d been.
In the middle of the night, Captain Friedman came out of the hangar and came right at them.
Would those motherfuckers of you who are drinking fuckin haji booze like to join me when I notify the families of the buddies you’re going to get killed?
Skinner hung his head.
Have a nice fuckin party.
Their captain left and they stared into the dark orange glow evolving in the drum. Their translator sold them pills. Dominguez’s trousers fell off. I must of lost like twenty pounds. Everyone was thin.
Two guys got in an argument and started threatening to frag each other. Here’s the deal, the squad leaders said. Anybody who’s a problem child, the whole unit is gonna beat their ass next time. All of us. And if that don’t work, you will get fragged. By me.
In broad daylight, they snuck up on a boy hiding an explosive device on the side of the road under a plastic bag and they photographed him.
I just can’t take the anxiety, Jones said to the doc. I’d rather do whatever and get it over with.
Then you need to talk to a combat stress nurse, not me.
A rumor went around that they were going to be sent somewhere else, but they knew it wasn’t true. They didn’t believe anything they heard. They got resupplied. Y’all make a chain, the driver said. I gotta turn and burn. The ammunition boxes formed a cube nearly ten by ten by ten. The Texan with the radio cleaned his battery contacts with a pencil eraser and checked his fill three times before going out. The heat intensified, if that was possible, and they had a heat casualty, Pomerant. The consensus was that he was bullshitting. There were fewer and fewer of them. A building exploded when they were in front of it and Danzig, a high school wrestler, disappeared. Skinner’s mind interpreted a piece of twisted metal as a person who had been burned and crucified, but it was not. A sniper shot their staff sergeant in the head. Their staff sergeant scrambled after his Kevlar like a fumbled football, caught it and put it back on. Guys jumped away from him as if he were covered in hornets.
They did IED sweeps on foot, down the roads along the canal. He kept thinking this is the last thing you are going to see, the red earth with the sun glaring off it.
A man wearing brand-name knockoff sunglasses and tight jeans came walking towards them through the heat shimmer. He was pulling along a dirty little boy by the wrist. The boy was filthy and his hair was full of powdery dust. The man ignored the weapons pointed at his chest. Gesturing at the blasted dwellings, he said:
These people are enemy. I am friend. You will come to me for cooperation.
He was wearing perfume, a heavy, cloying, womanly, boudoir fragrance.
I don’t know you, Graziano said, rubbing his black-whiskered jaw.
You will know. Believe me.
Skinner saw the inside of a green room that had been a school. The furniture had been piled against the windows. You saw the charred buildings across the street through interlocking table legs. Flies were clustering on the eyes and mouths of the children on the floor. He held his rag over his face to breathe.
When they were driving and the hot wind was blowing over them, he tied the rag over his face to block the sand. He used the rag when he took apart his weapon and rubbed his firing pin, leaving black streaks on the cloth that smelled like cordite and CLP.
Cross-legged, he dumped the rounds out of his magazines and, taking his time, cleaned each one of them individually using the rag, the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, fingernails black with cordite, and loaded each one of them back in one at a time, taking them from the candy bowl of his helmet and putting them back in his magazines, which he rapped against his helmet when he was wearing it, before he shoved them in his weapon.
They called their captain Freebird. At ease, he said. He had a whiteboard on an easel and a dry erase marker in his hand. Lessons learned. We know they talk to each other. We know about the cell phones and the loudspeaker on the mosque. When you are in the same location more than five minutes, you are getting in
the red zone. There needs to be a countdown in everybody’s head. The roads that are soft, that they can dig under, obviously those are our danger areas. Anytime you’ve got a road going over a culvert or a stream, they can emplace something under there. You’ve got the sides of the road to look at. If the sides are hidden, it means they can get to the road without you seeing them. We’re talking about bigger and bigger munitions. He drew a circle on the whiteboard. We’re getting inside the kill radius before we can even see anything, so we need to look at that. We’re looking for trigger hides, anytime you see piled up rocks, little hooches, whatever. Det cord sticking out of the ground. Trash, plastic bags, anything that covers something else. I need you talking to each other. This is everybody’s ballgame. Our safety zone is here. He tried to draw it on the whiteboard but the marker was out of ink. Fucking thing. He threw it. Let me see your Ka-bar, Staff Sergeant. Thank you. All you men in the back stand up so you can see this. The twenty-year-olds stood up. He drew a line in the sand. This is Tomahawk. Here is Hogan. He drew another line. This is the no-go line. The ammo can is Town Hall. The rock is the Post Office. The eraser is the Goat Farm. He took his G-Shock watch off and put it on the ground and squatted over it with the knife. Can everybody see? This is what we want to do. We can’t do everything we want to do, so this is it.
A tanker truck came in a convoy and brought them diesel fuel. The dull landscape rippled in the fumes. They unloaded thirty pounds of broken cookies from the USO. Sconyers, whose colorful full-sleeve tattoos included carp and long-throated birds, received a book from his parents, who were schoolteachers in West Virginia. He put his shades on and went behind the hangar and held the book in his hands. A great cloud of dust lifted up behind the tanker when it went away. Skinner drank warm Gatorade and read Muscle & Fitness and went in and out of sleep.
He woke up confused and disoriented. Something’s different, he insisted. Yeah, it is, they said. The other squad had had contact and it was serious. They waited up smoking until they came back. This sucks, they said unshaven, staring at the red horizon. It was dark and the truck didn’t turn on its headlights until it was inside the wire. They saw blood and pale skin in the light of their diesel generator. Dominguez shoved his way in saying no, no, no, dude, as they lifted Lawson’s body down. Give me the fucking needle. I’m type O. They reached to cradle Lawson’s head and unintentionally put their hands inside the cavity in his skull. Someone jerked his hand away and Skinner felt wet matter hit his boots.
