Phil Klay - Redeployment

He nodded. I wanted to know what it was like, too. I thought about Staff Sergeant Black. He was a DI I’d had in boot camp, and the rumor was he’d beat an Iraqi soldier to death with a radio. He’d turned a corner and run smack into a hajji so close he couldn’t bring his rifle around and he’d freaked, grabbed his Motorola, and bashed the guy’s head in until it was pulp. We all thought that was badass. Staff Sergeant Black used to chew us out and say crazy shit like, “What you gonna do when you’re taking fire and you call in arty and it blows that fucking building to fuck and you walk through and find pieces of little kids, tiny arms and legs and heads everywhere?” Or he’d ask, “What you gonna tell a nine-year-old girl who don’t know her daddy’s dead ’cause his legs is still twitching, but you know ’cause his brains is leaking out his head?” We’d say, “This recruit does not know, sir.” Or, “This recruit does not speak Iraqi, sir.”

Crazy shit. And crazy cool, if you’re getting ready to face what you think will be real-deal no-shit war. I’d always wanted to get hold of Staff Sergeant Black after boot camp and ask him what had been bullshit and what was really in his head, but I never got a chance.

Timhead said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So don’t,” I said.

“Garza thinks you did it.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we keep it that way?”

Timhead looked serious. I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “Sure. I’ll tell everyone I did it.” Who could say I didn’t?

That made me the only sure killer in MP platoon. Before the debrief, a couple guys came by. Jobrani, the only Muslim in the platoon, said, “Good job, man.”

Harvey said, “I’d have got that motherfucker if fucking Garza and Timhead hadn’t been in the way.”

Mac said, “You okay, man?”

Sergeant Major came over to the MP area while we were debriefing. I guess she’d heard we had contact. She’s the sort of sergeant major that always calls everybody “killer.” Like, “How’s it going, killer?” “Oo-rah, killer.” “Another day in paradise, right, killer?” That day, when she walked up, she said, “How’s it going, Lance Corporal Suba?”

I told her I was great.

“Good work today, Lance Corporal. All of you, good work. Oo-rah?”

Oo-rah.

When we were done, Staff Sergeant pulled me, Timhead, and Corporal Garza aside. He said, “Outstanding. You did your job. Exactly what you had to do. You good?”

Corporal Garza said, “Yeah, Staff Sergeant, we good,” and I thought, Fuck you, Garza, on the other side of the fucking MRAP.

The lieutenant said, “You need to talk, let me know.”

Staff Sergeant said, “Oo-rah. Be ready to do it tomorrow. We got another convoy. Check?”

Check.

Me and Timhead went right back to the can we shared. We didn’t want to talk to anybody else. I got on my PSP, played Grand Theft Auto, and Timhead pulled out his Nintendo DS and played Pokémon Diamond .

The next day,I had to tell the story.

“Then it was like, crack crack crack”—which it was—“and rounds off the fucking blown-up fucking mine rollers and me and Timhead see hajji with an AK and that was it. Box drill. Like training.”

I kept telling the story. Everybody asked. There were follow-up questions, too. Yeah, I was like here, and Timhead was here… let me draw it in the sand. See that, that’s the MRAP. And hajji’s here. Yeah, I could just see him, poking around the side of the building. Dumbass.

Timhead nodded along. It was bullshit, but every time I told the story, it felt better. Like I owned it a little more. When I told the story, everything was clear. I made diagrams. Explained the angles of bullet trajectories. Even saying it was dark and dusty and fucking scary made it less dark and dusty and fucking scary. So when I thought back on it, there were the memories I had, and the stories I told, and they sort of sat together in my mind, the stories becoming stronger every time I retold them, feeling more and more true.

Eventually, Staff Sergeant would roll up and say, “Shut the fuck up, Suba. Hajji shot at us. Lance Corporal Suba shot back. Dead hajji. That’s the happiest ending you can get outside a Thai massage parlor. Now it’s over. Gunners, be alert, get positive ID, you’ll get your chance.”

A week later,Mac died. MacClelland.

Triggerman waited for the MRAP to go past. Blew in the middle of the convoy.

Big Man and Jobrani were injured. Big Man enough to go to TQ and then out of Iraq. They say he stabilized, though he’s got facial fractures and is “temporarily” blind. Jobrani just got a little shrapnel. But Mac didn’t make it. Doc Rosen wouldn’t say anything to anybody about it. The whole thing was fucked. We had a memorial service the next day.

Right before the convoy, I’d been joking with Mac. He’d got a care package with the shittiest candy known to man, stale Peeps and chocolate PEZ, which Mac said tasted like Satan’s asshole. Harvey asked how he knew what Satan’s asshole tasted like and Mac said, “Yo, son. You signed your enlistment papers. Don’t act like you ain’t have a taste.” Then he stuck his tongue out of his mouth and waggled it around.

The ceremony was at the Camp Fallujah chapel. The H&S Company first sergeant did the roll call in front of Mac’s boot camp graduation photo, which they’d had Combat Camera print out and stick on poster board. They also had his boots, rifle, dog tags, and helmet in a soldier’s cross. Or maybe it wasn’t his stuff. Maybe it was some boots, rifle, and helmet they keep in the back of the chapel for all the memorials they do.

First Sergeant stood up front and called out, “Corporal Landers.”

“Here, First Sergeant.”

“Lance Corporal Suba.”

“Here, First Sergeant,” I said, loud.

“Lance Corporal Jobrani.”

“Here, First Sergeant.”

“Lance Corporal MacClelland.”

Everybody was quiet.

“Lance Corporal MacClelland.”

I thought I heard First Sergeant’s voice crack a bit.

Then, as if he were angry that there was no response, he shouted, “Lance Corporal James MacClelland.”

They let the silence weigh on us a second, then they played Taps. I hadn’t been close with Mac, but I had to hold both my forearms in my hands to stop from shaking.

Afterward, Jobrani came up to me. He had a bandage on the side of his head where he got peppered with shrapnel. Jobrani’s got a baby face, but his teeth were gritted and his eyes were tight and he said, “At least you got one. One of those fucks.”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “That was for Mac.”

“Yeah.”

Except I killed hajji first. So it was more like Mac for hajji. And I didn’t even kill hajji.

In our can,Timhead and I never talked much. We’d get back and I’d play GTA and he’d play Pokémon until we were too tired to stay up. Not much to talk about. Neither of us had a girlfriend and we both wanted one, but neither of us was dumb enough to marry some forty-year-old with two kids in Jacksonville, like Sergeant Kurtz did two weeks before deployment. So we didn’t have anybody waiting for us at home other than our moms.

Timhead’s dad was dead. That’s all I knew about that. When we did talk, we talked mostly about video games. Except there was a lot more to talk about now. That’s what I figured. Timhead figured different.

Sometimes I’d look at him, focused on the Nintendo, and I’d want to scream, “What’s going on with you?” He didn’t seem different, but he had to be. He’d killed somebody. He had to be feeling something. It weirded me out, and I hadn’t even shot the kid.