I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

5. Unbomb

TWO MONTHS AFTER the car bomb in Kabul, Big Dax sees nothing but dirt and a road extending from him bisecting more dirt. Two miles away, an Afghan town of a thousand he can’t make out through the windswept dust.

The checkpoint he mans is set up for car inspections, but there have been only six in the past two days. Two weeks on this duty and Big Dax, Torres, and Wintric are bored — they oversee this lightly traveled road, more donkeys than cars, and the loaded donkeys and their handlers often circumvent the checkpoint, far enough off the roadway to ease the nerves but close enough for the men to scope with their M4s.

Torres and Big Dax are a month away from heading home. The invisible clock ticks in their minds, but they refuse to talk about time. Torres has asked his family to stop sending care packages, since they won’t arrive until after his return, and something about that absence of the tangible — no cookies, no kids’ handwritten letters on the way to him — fills him with equal parts longing and dread. His wife, Anna, listening to the advice of the spouses back at Fort Carson, has been sending e-mails with reminders of their courtship and has attached photos of the Royal Gorge Bridge, Michelle’s ice cream shop downtown, Bishop’s Castle with its dragon head, Breckenridge, the master bedroom in the new house, a self-portrait in leopard-print lingerie.

Big Dax hasn’t told anyone, but he has submitted his separation paperwork. In moments of admitted weakness he already allows himself to daydream about leaving Afghanistan and Fort Carson behind and returning to Rutherford, getting his own place, the Meadowlands, the Jets, the Lincoln Tunnel, cargo shorts and T-shirts every day, how everything can once again become routine.

Big Dax spits and performs a short in-place jog to keep his legs alive. Behind a wall of sandbags Torres listens to early Pearl Jam and writes in his journal while Wintric spits tobacco into an empty Dr Pepper bottle and plays hearts with a lieutenant they all like. Wintric has won four games in a row since the lieutenant told him the 49ers suck.

“Call this payback for Montana and Young,” Wintric says as he shuffles the cards.

“Luck,” says the LT, wiping at his eyes. “And I mean they suck now. At least you have nice childhood memories.”

“They’ll be back.”

Torres uncovers an ear.

“Big Dax, what up?”

“Ass nothing,” he says.

“Beautiful,” says the LT.

“Not beautiful,” says Wintric, placing down a ten of spades. “Not beautiful. Need a little something every now and then. Nothing crazy, just something. I’m tired of beating you at this game. Need something to find. To do. We’re looking for nothing at all.”

“It’s true,” says the LT. “We’re looking for nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s the game. And after a year of finding nothing, we leave. That’s the best way.”

“That nothing happens?” Wintric spits into the bottle.

“Yes.”

“That shit isn’t in the recruiting video.”

“You could be in Iraq.”

“Fuck Iraq.”

“How much you wanna bet that our boys are sitting there saying, ‘You could be in fucking Afghanistan where no one cares that a war is going on’?”

“No one is saying that,” says Torres.

“Sure, LT,” says Wintric. “But our job is to put holes in bad people. I’m realistic. I’d take an easy kill. Get one of these ragheads into the open. I don’t need no gray-area shit.”

“You’re wrong.” He pauses. “Our job has always been to unkill.” The LT inhales, feels the rattling phlegm, suctions it up to his throat, and spits.

“What? No word games, LT.”

“It’s easy. We unbomb and unshoot billions of people every day. There’s nothing we can’t destroy. Call up the bombers, the ICBMs. Punch in the code. What do you think the air force is for? We can end this world if we want, right now.”

“That’s fucked-up beautiful,” Big Dax says. “You’ve practiced.”

“That’s why we’re saviors. I’m not shitting you. This is serious. We save the entire world every single day. And we’re kind as hell, because a lot more people deserve to die than we kill. Remember that shit and you’ll sleep.”

“I’m sleeping fine,” says Wintric. “And if Bin Laden walked up right now, I’d happily blow his fucking head off. There’s no gray area there.”

“In a mountain somewhere, or Pakistan,” Torres says. “He deserves to die a hundred times over, but that’s one committed man. Whole world searching for you, millions on the table, and no word.”

“He’s dead,” Big Dax says. “Smartest thing they ever did was not to talk about his death. We’ll spend billions more searching for a dead man.”

“He’s not dead,” Torres says. “We’d know.”

“Torres, really, man. The smartest thing they could do is burn his body, spread the ashes, and walk away. It’s the story, the myth that has the power. They aren’t idiots. You expect a press release?”

“Everyone thinks they’re dumb shits,” says the LT. “Big part of our problem is that they’re as smart as us, but we can’t admit that.”

“They won’t burn him,” says Torres. “Muslims don’t cremate.”

“Only when we help them with a bomb from above,” says Wintric.

“Whatever,” says Big Dax. “They buried him, then. The point is, I doubt we’ll ever know. No Hussein hiding-in-a-hole shit.”

“We’ll know,” says Torres.

The LT coughs, spits. He draws more phlegm, spits again.

“Fuck me,” he says, and pinches his nose.

“Jesus, LT. Get some meds.”

“Burn pits, man. Call me in five, ten years. It won’t be good. The odds say we won’t be shot. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“We breathe in the smoke instead,” the LT says. “No meds for this crap.”

“What we burning in those things beside our own shit?”

“Everything and nothing. Listen, guys are already complaining, but we’re in a war. Put it this way, no one’s bitching back home if it’s a bomb or our burning shit that takes someone out. Don’t take that the wrong way. But just wait, when we’re all sixty the government will admit that we poisoned ourselves, give the living ones a couple grand, maybe some VA bennies. That’s it. Thanks for volunteering.”

“So you’re saying we’re burning more than our shit?” Wintric says.

“Will do more damage than these Taliban jerk-offs.”

“No offense, LT,” Wintric says. “I hear you, but it could be a flu.”

“Damn, Ellis. You’re making sense to me. You’re an optimist. They need you at West Point. Stay with it, man. Stay with it.”

The next two days, nothing. Dust and distant helicopters and heat. Scan horizon, clean weapons, sweat, scan horizon, drink water, scan horizon, sweat, repeat; a two-hour argument on Stallone versus Schwarzenegger, an hour on Liddell versus Ortiz, an hour dispute on the hottest porn star followed by a half-hour debate on who among them would let a woman stick her fingers up his ass. Two yes, one no, one “has experience.”

“This one’s for everyone,” the LT says. “Five division-one football teams don’t have university in the name of the schools they represent. Go.”

Silence.

“Three you should get, being in the military.”

“Shit, LT, don’t help. Service academies.”

“There’s three. Other two?” The LT coughs into his fist.

Big Dax scratches his neck. “Football’s for pussies. Except Peyton Manning and Jonathan Vilma. Jets are two and oh, baby.”

Torres stands and raises his rifle. “I think better when I’m aiming.”

“You’d make a hell of a tight end, Big Dax. Tell me when you all want a hint.”

“I like that Tennessee orange,” says Big Dax. “We need Peyton on the Jets, LT.”

“Jets need Elway,” Torres says. “The greatest ever. First answer, LT, Georgia Tech.”

“One more to go. Not bad.”

“In Georgia you get free school if you’ve served, right?” Wintric says.

“I don’t know,” the LT says. “A few states…”

“Yeah, Texas, Illinois, Georgia. G.I. Bill or not. Doesn’t matter. It’s in the constitution or something. That’s what I’ve heard.”

“You going to school?”

“Sure. I’ll move to Texas,” Wintric says.

“What you majoring in?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really,” the LT says.

“The Citadel?” Torres says.

“No.”

“Virginia Tech?” says Big Dax.

“No. It’s actually a mouthful: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Think gold helmets.”

“Seven months left here,” says Wintric. “A few more months at Carson, then my commitment’s up. Drive to Texas with my papers.”

“Austin?”

“Is there water near there?”

“Yep,” the LT says. “Lake Travis. It’s right there. They’ll make you a longhorn. The other obnoxious orange, Big Dax.”

“They call it burnt,” Big Dax says. “And I don’t like to talk about Texas. Too many crazies.”

“Sounds good, LT,” Wintric says. “Lake Travis, huh?”

“Supposed to be nice.”

Several moments of silence as the wind picks up. Wintric has rarely considered Texas, and as he does now he pictures long-horned bulls, the Dallas Cowboys’ blue star, Emmitt Smith, oil dikes bobbing. Lake Travis, he thinks, right there, and he tries to imagine the lake, but all that appears is a replica of Lake Almanor without the pine trees.

Big Dax runs through his mental catalogue of gold helmets. Notre Dame, Florida State, Colorado, UCLA, Purdue? Wyoming?

Torres lowers his rifle.

“I’m ready for a hint,” he says.

“Big Dax?”

“Fine,” Big Dax says.

“Doug Flutie,” the LT says.

“Doug Flutie?” Torres says.

“Boston College,” Big Dax says.

The next day, during a cloudless afternoon, and Big Dax notices a child in the far distance, but he doesn’t yet realize it’s a girl. He’s been on watch for two hours and nothing, and now this kid, a wide-open dirt plain, wind, and a heart he now hears inside him. Two hours since his last cigarette and he feels it in his blood. A mongoose darts across the road, surprising him, and he thinks about the little nondescript mammal tearing up cobra after cobra. Do they ever lose? Then his back tattoo. He had asked for a boa constrictor, but for thirty-three dollars outside Fort Benning you get what you get, so he sports a green creature along his vertebrae that appears more eel than snake. He’s nicknamed it Snake.

Again the child, now walking toward them.

“We got any candy left?” Big Dax says to no one in particular, and no one answers.

Big Dax thinks he sees the kid wave, but no, just a child in a white shawl and pink pants, ten, maybe twelve years old. She walks alone, holding something round.

“Guys, where’s our candy?” he asks.

Big Dax lifts his rifle and peers through the scope at this walking girl — no shoes, a soccer ball in hand. But all alone? A gust lifts her white shawl, and something silver, metallic, flashes. Another gust and he gets a peek at a silver vest. His insides pulse, then expand, and he calls out to Torres, “Scope her. Scope the girl.”

“Call it in, Ellis,” Torres yells.

The girl tosses the spotted ball to herself. Big Dax flips the safety off and his heartbeat throbs and he hears the LT on loudspeaker: “Estaad sho yaa saret fayr meykunam.” Stop, or I’ll shoot. She strides toward them, all alone with the flat earth.

“Two hundred out,” Torres says.

“What did you see? Talk to me,” the LT shouts.

“Vest. Vest.”

“Vest?”

“Metal. It’s not right. No one is here. It’s metal.”

“What the fuck?”

“Vest?”

“Look!”

“No one is here.”

“Shit!”

“Where is everyone?”

“A girl?”

“There’s a vest. Something’s there, LT.”

The girl stops. Big Dax sees the silver glint under her shawl and her moving lips through his crosshairs. The girl has an odd lump of skin hanging from her jaw.

“Something there, LT,” Big Dax says.

“Got it.”

“Not right. Not good.”

“Easy,” says the LT. “Wait.”

“I see metal,” Torres says. “Silver something. It’s not right. The girl isn’t right.”

“Yes.”

“She’s talking to herself.”

“Make the call.”

“Wait,” the LT says.

She walks toward them, alone. A soccer ball in her hands.

“Make the call, LT.”

“Warning shots one-fifty. Shoot at one hundred,” the LT says.

The girl shakes her head at something off to her right, then walks again. She keeps her gaze off to her right but walks straight. Torres raises his rifle and the girl stops again and touches her chest—A skin-and-bones chest? A wired chest? Silver-strung explosives?

“Estaad sho yaa saret fayr meykunam.”

Wintric mimes opening his blouse over and over.

“Look here!” he yells.

Torres’s voice: “Dax, your shot. One-fifty. Your shot. Your shot.”

“Warning shot,” LT says.

Big Dax peers through his scope, from the girl to the clear sky. Aiming high, he pulls the trigger and feels the rifle’s kick as a bullet hurtles away. Back to the girl, who stares off at the openness, seemingly unaffected, her moving lips, the skin sac hanging off her face. He smells gunpowder.

Please, Big Dax says to himself, then repeats out loud, “Please.”

Wintric has his rifle up; he peers through the scope, sees his bullet’s trajectory from his barrel to the girl’s chest. A girl? His mind works question and answer. A girl. A girl? A girl. He pictures his bullet tearing through her heart.

For a moment everything stops save the girl, standing still, turning the soccer ball in her hands, her small hands on the ball. They scope her and she turns the ball. Quiet.

Then, in one fluid motion, she drops the ball and sprints at the men, arms up in a V.

“Estaad sho yaa saret fayr meykunam!”

“One-twenty-five,” Torres says. “One-ten. Fuck.” A pause. “One hundred. Your fucking shot, Dax. Now. Now.”

Big Dax sees the girl growing bigger and bigger; his weapon’s crosshairs meet on her expanding chest. Torres’s gun bursts and the girl still runs in long strides, uninjured.

Big Dax takes a quick breath and holds this afternoon, this moment, this white shawl, pink pants, glinting chest, bare feet. He fires.

Wintric exhales and squeezes the trigger.

The girl falls down, curled, and they hear the rifles’ simultaneous report and smell the gunpowder and heat. Then quiet. No wind now. No talk. Everything has been swallowed. The girl’s body jolts on the road, legs kicking, the soles of her bare feet exposed in the afternoon. Her legs jolt again, then still. Her bare feet. One heel digging at the road, then still. All quiet. Not calm. Quiet.