The Long Walk : A Story of War and the Life That Follows

XI | The Mountain

THE GENTLE SWAYING of the Humvee had put Ackeret to sleep several hours earlier. He sprawled in the rear seat next to me, head back, mouth open, gently snoring. I could only see him when Trey, sitting in the team-chief seat ahead of us, turned on his dim red tactical light. In the dull glow, Ackeret’s dark moustache stood out starkly on his pale face. It was a terrible moustache; thin, spotty, rodentlike. He loved it. I loved telling him how bad it was.

Despite the hour I couldn’t sleep. It was the kind of day that was never today, according to Trey’s logic. We had never quite made it to our racks when the call came in. We left the FOB after dark, drove the empty highway to clear a crush-switch-initiated artillery round forty klicks away that was blocking a route-clearance mission, and were now headed back. Driving barely faster than a crawl so the lead security vehicle could use its high-power strobe lights to search for hazards, the entire mission would last more than eight hours. Plenty of time for Ackeret to sleep.

I peered again out my window, thick armored glass distorting the view. Not a single light broke the complete darkness; the horizon and sky united in a black wall of undetermined depth. Out the front window, the red running lights of the Humvee we followed were barely visible, obscured by the dust kicked up off the road by our security convoy. Our feeble headlights did little to pierce the gloom; as the clouds of dirt and sand waxed and waned, our view never extended far. Like snow flurries back home, the dust just reflected back at us what little light we gave off. Often we could see no further than the front bumper of our armored truck. The world was all tan and black, darkness and dust; a layer of tan silt covered our tan truck, our tan uniforms and armor, inside and out, lit first by Trey’s small lamp, then not at all. Bolger drove often and knew the road well. He just kept us straight and true, unfazed by the fact that he could see the truck in front of us less than half the time.

The world fell completely away, and I could sense nothing beyond the warm rocking cocoon the four of us shared. The hum of the diesel engine. The glint off Trey’s rifle, and the racks of 5.56-millimeter magazines hanging from the driver’s seat in front of me. The musky communal smell of four men who had missed their last shower. Trey’s iPod was playing quietly over the speakers wired into the cab, and he and Bolger were having a whispered conversation at the edge of my hearing, trying to let Ackeret and me sleep. A snore from next to me. A soft laugh from Trey. I smiled.

Cushioned and wrapped in the comforting false security blanket of our truck’s armored chassis and the insulating impenetrable dark, my mind wandered. It escaped our dingy capsule and flitted among trivialities, remembered the trifling normality at home. Tucking my children into their beds. Giving them a bath. Setting a morning cup of coffee on the nightstand next to my sleeping wife, waiting for her to wake.

For a moment, I could taste the coffee on my lips, feel my wife’s hand on my hand, smell the clean-washed hair of my just-bathed son.

A gust of wind blew against the side of the truck, and another cloud of dust washed over us, blotting out the world anew. And then, at that moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of us, on the bumper of the Humvee, and looked steadily at me.

It was a pigeon, common gray and completely unremarkable except for the fact that it just landed on the grille of a moving armored truck in a dust storm.

“Holy shit, look at that,” Bolger burst out from the driver’s seat.

“Trey, don’t move,” I whispered. The pigeon had landed right in front of him.

“What the fuck,” Trey said, laughing quietly, but he didn’t move much.

The bird looked at us, readjusted its footing, flapped its wings once, but made no move to fly away. It stayed perched on the brush guard, the metal trim surrounding the headlight, swaying gently with the roll of the road amid the swirling grime.

The world was now the four of us and a pigeon.

“What should we do?” asked Bolger.

“Why do we need to do anything?” I said. “He’s not hurting anything.”

A respectful silence settled on the truck, the bird content to join us, as we drove slowly through the darkness. I stared at the bird, an eternity passed, and I broke the quiet.

“Trey, what are you going to do when you get home?” I said.

“Probably buy another gun, or fix up my truck. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it,” Trey said.

“You haven’t thought about it?”

“No, this is where I’m supposed to be. I don’t do well at home. When I’m there, I dream of being here. We have work to do here. My brothers are here. Who else is going to bring Ackeret’s dumb ass back home? No, this is where I’m supposed to be,” Trey said, his voice trailing off.

He turned and longingly looked out the window into the night.

“I’ll keep coming back as long as they let me,” he said softly.

All of a sudden the dust settled around us, falling away as we turned a corner and followed the convoy up onto a fully paved road. Newly exposed, the sky erupted in a canvas of purple and red. The sandy haze now enabled a dramatic color in the predawn sky, stripes of clouds crisscrossing above us and the faintest hint of bluing crown. A single shocking beam of morning’s first light leaped from the horizon, and the spell now broken, the bird flapped its wings and disappeared.

Ackeret continued to snore next to me. Nothing woke him.

“We begin our practice today,” my Yogini says, “in Mountain Pose. Tadasana. Stand fully erect. Shoulders back. Hands at your side. Open your heart. Feel your feet stretch and reach into the ground. Look out over the tip of your nose.”

Tadasana.

“Stand in Mountain Pose,” my Yogini says, “and breathe.”

I root into the ground, fill my lungs, and open my eyes.

The mountain is real. It exists outside of my head. It exists outside of my Crazy. It is objective, innocent, peaceful existence. It is real.

Mountains are real. Forests are real. Rivers and plains and the drift of cloud above me are real. The infinite depth of the Milky Way and the single blade of grass are real. They are not of my making. They are separate from my Crazy.

Countries aren’t real. Governments aren’t real. Money isn’t real. AK-47s aren’t real, but they’ll kill you deader than shit. My Crazy isn’t real. It is I and countless before me that have given it purchase.

Is love real? Or is it only a real chemical reaction in my blown-up brain?

Is time real? The only meaning I find in the race is the surety of its unpredictable conclusion.

Is the Brotherhood real? What if it feels like the mountain, like it exists outside of me, separate from any one of us? If it is beyond me and the brothers who keep it? If it continues after death? If it endures even after the object of affection is gone?

What if I want the Brotherhood to be real?

What if I need the Brotherhood to be real?

Tadasana. Mountain Pose. Breathe.

“Psycho 7, EOD 6. Stop the convoy,” I called over the radio.

“EOD 6, Psycho 7. What’s wrong? Why do we need to stop? Over.”

“Psycho 7, EOD 6. I can’t take it anymore. I need to get one of those watermelons.”

“EOD 6, what are you talking about?”

“Psycho 7—just halt and stop traffic for me, okay? We’re in a fine neighborhood. I’ll just be a minute.” I put the radio down.

Through the front windshield of our Humvee I could see the security truck ahead of us slow and stop. Keener pulled in behind him, parked, and turned around to look at me.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said.

“We’ve been passing those watermelon stands every day for weeks. It’s driving me nuts. Tell me they don’t look better than anything in the chow hall,” I said.

Keener stayed silent as I checked my gear and got ready to dismount. I picked up my rifle, considered, and put it back down. It would just get in the way.

“I’ll be right back. Just give me a minute,” I said, and opened the door.

The tumult of downtown Kirkuk hit me in a hot rush as I got out of the armored truck and stepped onto the road. The front and rear security trucks had parked sideways in the center of the road to block traffic, and a line of taxicabs and white sedans were already backing up on this main north-south thoroughfare that cut through the heart of the city. Cars honked their horns, the crowds on the sidewalks stared, and one fruit stand owner looked wide-eyed as I jogged across four lanes of now empty roadway toward his pile of fresh watermelons.

In this Kurdish neighborhood in northern Kirkuk, the main trunk road attracted impromptu markets that sprouted up randomly and varied daily. Men with five-gallon jugs of gasoline and hand pumps. Carts of secondhand electronics and pirated DVDs. And to my envy, wagonloads of fresh fruit grown in the fields and orchards just outside of the city. There is nothing better than a thick, wet, dripping slice of watermelon on a hot day, and Iraq was full of those.

I put up my right hand in a greeting as I approached the fruit seller. He was shorter than I, squat, balding, and with an enormous bushy moustache that covered his entire upper lip. He eyed me nervously until I pointed at his stack of watermelons, put two fingers in the air, and pulled out my wallet.

“How much for two watermelons?” I asked.

He looked in my wallet, and then up at me.

“Two watermelons?” he said in highly accented but passable English. “Two watermelons? Ten dollars. American dollars.”

My jaw dropped in surprise. Are you kidding me, I thought. This is highway robbery. Watermelons are a buck or two each back home. Shouldn’t they be cheaper here?

“No no no,” I said. “No more than two dollars.”

The fruit seller smiled at me and laughed.

“Eight dollars,” he said. “Two watermelons, eight dollars!”

I started to attract a crowd; the seller’s teenage son approached, as well as an eight-year-old boy, a nephew perhaps, who simply stared at me and grinned from ear to ear. Behind me the honking continued, and Castleman ran up and tapped me on the shoulder.

“You ready to go yet? They can’t hold traffic forever,” he said.

“He wants to haggle, just give me a second,” I said to Castleman, and turned back to the amused seller.

I checked my wallet. I had a five and a twenty, and he wasn’t getting the twenty.

“Five dollars for two,” I said. “My last offer.”

“Done!” he cried, clearly pleased, and gathered up in his short arms the two biggest watermelons he had on the stand.

I paid and thanked him, tucked one watermelon under each arm, and jogged with Castleman back to our awaiting convoy. The watermelons were warm from sitting in the sun and fragrant, filling my nose with the memory of splashing through a backyard sprinkler on a summer day. I ran up to the closest security truck and tossed the larger of the two melons up to the gunner manning the.50-cal in the Humvee’s turret. He shook his head and laughed as he caught it.

“Split that among the guys when we get back to the FOB,” I called as I ran back to my own Humvee where Keener waited impatiently.

That evening, in our private compound, after all the teams were back from missions and the robots were charged and gear cleaned and put away and the sun had set, leaving a dull orange sky, Ewbank cleaned his enormous KA-BAR combat knife at the picnic table just outside the HAS. We had gathered on our front porch, some smoking, all relaxing on a warm desert night, enjoying the cooling air and the accumulated day’s heat radiating up off the surrounding concrete.

“Hey Griffin,” I called. “Go grab that Tuborg the Special Forces guys dropped off last week.” He didn’t need to be asked twice, and soon caps popped and bottles clinked, as Ewbank carefully sliced our prize watermelon into fat, juicy wedges. The flesh was the deepest, darkest red I had ever seen, and after one bite we all scrambled like young boys to get seconds. Crisp was the first to spit his seeds at an unwilling victim, his teammate Mitchell, who then chased him around the yard to the amusement of all but Mitchell himself. The inevitable seed-spitting competition began in earnest after that, the participants standing on the concrete benches along the blast wall to gain maximum height advantage. I’ve forgotten who won. I sipped my beer, and put my feet up, and laughed as the juice of the watermelon dripped down my chin.

“I don’t care if they do use human shit as fertilizer,” Ewbank said from across the picnic table. “This is the best goddamn watermelon I’ve ever had.”

And it was.

The mountain is real. And the mountain doesn’t care if I’m Crazy.

The mountain doesn’t concern itself with other mountains that lie to its left or to its right, or with the valley that lies on the other side, or the glen and wood and swamp beyond. It doesn’t care about the future because of the certainty of its present. It cares nothing for the worries or fears or bloodlust I bring to its slopes. It stands alone, a magnificent rise, outside of my head, outside of my Crazy: objective, peaceful, and real.

“Begin your flow. Begin your vinyasa,” says the Yogini.

Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

Mountain. Standing Forward Bend. Plank and lower. Upward Dog. Downward Dog. Feet forward. Mountain. Repeat your vinyasa.

Mountain pose.

The mountain doesn’t care if I do or not, if I approach or not, if I am or not, just as it doesn’t care what Crazy I bring to it. The slopes are just as steep, the ice just as cold, the winds just as vicious, whether I stand on them or not, whether I stand there Crazy or at peace.

The mountain doesn’t care. But the mountain is real. The mountain exists. And the mystery of its objective existence drowns my Crazy.

Why run the race? Because of the amazement that there is a race to be run at all.

“No matter how fast I run, it’s never going to be fast enough,” I tell my New Shrink.

“Do you enjoy what you are doing? How you are living your life?” she asks.

“Of course not. The Crazy poisons everything,” I say.

“Well, start over again,” my New Shrink says. “Forget everything you think you need to do. Forget what you almost did. What do you want to do?”

“I want to love my wife, and I want to climb the mountain,” I respond.

“Then why don’t you?” she says.

I walk outside of the HAS, into the deepest dark night, and feel the first drop on my hand. Then another. And a third. I look up, but the overcast sky has dropped a smothering enveloping blanket and I see nothing. Several more hit my face intermittently, then faster. First, a drizzle. With so much dust in the air, the first drops are more mud than water. Then a shower finally takes hold. The first rain in four months.

“We conclude our yoga practice by breathing the word ‘Om,’ ” my Yogini says. “When you say your Om, pull it from the deepest part of you. Your Om comes from there, up through your body, through your lungs and out of your mouth.

“Send your Om into the universe,” says the Yogini. “Your Om will join and harmonize with all that is. Then let it go.”

The Om Is and the Om Was.

I stand in the rain, in the real, and prepare my Om.

“You don’t have PTSD,” my New Shrink says.

“What are you talking about?” I am incredulous.

She turns at her desk, and reaches for a fat book on a nearby shelf. My stomach drops, fills with a nervous hole that briefly overwhelms the Crazy. My New Shrink flips through her clinical handbook, searching for the correct page.

“You don’t have nightmares,” she starts, scrolling down the list.

No, I dream during the day.

“You don’t have one incident, one trauma, that you constantly obsess over, or replay in your mind,” she says.

No, there are many.

“You haven’t blocked out memories of any trauma,” she says.

No, the war is vivid. It’s other things that I have forgotten.

“You don’t startle at loud noises, or get nervous in public, or avoid places that remind you of what’s happened.”

Of course not, that passed long ago, and my rifle is ready when I need it.

“You got out of bed this morning. You haven’t retreated into a shell and turned off your interaction with the world,” she concludes.

Don’t be scared of the soft sand.

“But what about the hopelessness … and the numbness?” I say. “What about the airport, and the chest pain, and the eye twitches? What about the hairy spider that crawled out of my head?”

What about the bodies and the smells? What about knowing I won’t live past today? What about the things I was willing to do? What about my lost faith and innocence?

“What about the Crazy feeling?” I ask. This all can’t be for nothing.

“Just because you feel all those things doesn’t mean you have PTSD,” she chides gently.

“So if I’m not Crazy, then what’s wrong with me?”

She laughs a silver waterfall of ringing bells.

“You’re human,” she says.

I send my Om out into the universe, out of my chest, out of my Crazy, out through my mouth and nose and eyes and cheeks. A vibration, a sound, a message, a messenger, a traveler, a destination. I send my Om past Ricky’s head and Kermit’s lake. I send it past Jessie, my wife, past her pain and abandonment and forgotten trials. I send it past Jeff on his boat, past the foot in the box, past the screaming women, past the children and the crowds and through the soft sand. It intermingles with burning cars and exploding robots and the smell of rotting and cooking organs. I send it through the grime and the dust, through the armor and the loneliness. It mixes with my children’s smiles and my brothers’ love. It gathers all fear and isolation and confusion to itself. My Om passes into oblivion. It dips into the river. It is a cool breeze off the alpine glacier.

The Om Is and the Om Was. It returns from the universe, with the universe, with the pain and the hope and the blood and the helicopters and the artillery rounds falling on Habbaniyah. It returns with my rifle and vest and the Hill of Woe. It returns with driven insight and unwanted knowledge. It returns with the Crazy. It reenters my chakras and fills me full again. It brings the mountain to my feet. Ricky sits to my right. The line of my grandfathers sits to my left.

The Om is my Is and my Was. I am my Om.

The next day, I put on my shoes and go for a run.