Richard House - The Kills

* * *

Rem rose early to see the men off. Lined up in front of the Quonset, Humvee at the ready, he found Santo, Clark, Chimeno, Samuels, and a groggy Pakosta.

Rem asked Santo if he was sure about the group. ‘You have Samuels?’

Santo shrugged. ‘You want him to stay?’

‘I don’t care who goes. Take him if that’s what he wants.’

‘I’m poisoned.’ Pakosta held his stomach. ‘I can’t eat those MREs any more. You seen this?’ Pakosta rolled up his sleeves to show a rash, large, palm-sized blotches, map-like and raw.

‘Looks like a reaction?’

‘No shit it looks like a reaction.’

‘See if there’s a medic when you’re in Kuwait.’

At the mention of a medic, Pakosta rolled down his sleeves and said it was nothing. ‘Better today than yesterday. Itches like a bitch.’

Surprised to see Clark, Rem asked if he was sure he wanted to go. ‘Never been to Kuwait,’ was the only justification he offered for his change of heart.

Neither Kiprowski nor Watts came out of their cabins. ‘I don’t want any problems to come out of this,’ he told Santo. ‘Tell them Watts is sick or something. He isn’t interested in going.’

Rem watched them clamber into the single Humvee, then slapped the side and sent them off.

He stood on the spot long after the vehicle had pulled out, its lights furred and faded along the curve of the road. The cabins buzzed with the hum from air-conditioners, the air vibrated, then, with a click, the generator turned off. The only people in the camp were Rem, Kiprowski, Amer Hassan, and Watts.

* * *

Watts joined Rem at Burn Pit 5 just as the trucks were unloading.

‘How many is it today?’

‘Twenty-five. Fifteen shit-suckers. Best stay up-wind.’

‘Do you know what the problem is between Santo and Kiprowski?’

Watts said he had an idea.

‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s a small thing. Kiprowski’s a nice kid. He sticks to a routine. Makes his bed. You’ve seen how orderly he is? He’s not from the same planet as the others. He’s struggling to fit in.’ Watts held his hand to his throat, his voice husky from the smoke. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he said. ‘You do it for so long, and you begin to ask yourself that question.’

‘Why?’

‘Exactly. You start asking why. I tell you. I don’t have an answer any more. But this is it. As soon as that child is born I’m done. I married late. I’ve done everything backwards. I know that. But I’m telling you. Once I’m done here, I’m done. No more contracts. No more of this.’

‘You know what you’ll do?’

Watts looked out over the pits. ‘That’s the problem. You do one thing for twenty years and you’re no good at anything else. Who’s going to hire you? No one wants to take that risk.’

Rem agreed. ‘Nothing’s easy.’

‘And if it is there’s something wrong with it, right?’

‘Right.’

The smoke cleared, and the fire blistered across the pit.

‘You see what went in there today?’

‘Looked like powder? Something white.’

Watts nodded, eyes on the fire. ‘Building materials. Four loads, whatever it was, shipped from the US, not even opened. And yesterday, food cartons, those plates they use at the commissary. You know how many of those we burn?’

‘Must be in the thousands.’

Watts craned his head back, followed the trail of smoke. ‘Can’t be doing any of us any good. I was checking the news yesterday, looking for information on the closure of ACSB. You know they’ve closed down Bravo? Those pits aren’t operating any more, manned or unmanned. Which means we’ll be busier here.’

* * *

Back at the cabins, Rem found Kiprowski and Amer Hassan returning from the showers. The men walked side by side, a towel over Amer Hassan’s shoulders, and Kiprowski animatedly describing Chicago. His hands formed the ideas, drew rapid shapes in the air. He’d seen the lake freeze only once, he said, great rucks of ice packed against the shoreline, the water steaming. You can’t imagine how cold it gets in the winter, he said, you can’t even imagine it.

Rem returned to his cabin. Lying back on his cot, he congratulated himself on taking up Geezler’s offer.

* * *

For the first night Cathy allowed the dog to sleep in the bedroom. He picked the rug on Rem’s side of the bed, then part way through the night came round to Cathy’s side and settled close. For the first time since Rem’s departure Cathy slept well, aware of the dog, his breathing, his musky smell. When she woke she thought again about the boy. She hadn’t properly thanked him. She turned to her side and looked at the dog. As always, of a morning, Nut sat right beside the bed and looked up, innocent enough, with a little pink hard-on. His chilli as Rem called it. See, he likes you.

‘You’re disgusting. You know that? That’s just vile.’ She sat upright. ‘I can’t even look at you.’

It was no surprise to see the boy outside. Dressed in the same clothes, the cap pulled back so he could look up, he stood by the sign for the currency exchange, hands in pockets.

Cathy came down to the door, brought Nut with her. Out on the street she approached the boy and offered him the leash.

‘You want to walk with us?’

The boy nodded, hesitated.

‘Go on.’

He ran with the dog in a half-jog, then stopped at the corner and waited for her to catch up. When she caught up he crossed the road, then ran ahead another half-block. She wondered what stopped the boy from taking the dog and disappearing. But the dog sat at the kerb, and the boy sank to his knees to hug it.

‘I don’t know your name.’

The boy set his arms about Nut’s neck and kissed it.

‘My name is Cathy.’

The boy didn’t speak until they returned to the apartment.

‘What’s his name again?’

‘Nut. My husband named him. It’s his dog really.’ She didn’t want to explain that the dog only had one testicle.

‘Nut.’

‘What did you call him?’

The boy shrugged and walked away, and Cathy realized it didn’t matter, whatever name he had chosen was irrelevant. The boy turned the corner on Greenleaf and did not look back.

* * *

The men returned from Kuwait in army fatigues. Samuels had tied his jacket about his waist. As soon as the vehicle stopped he stepped out and walked stroppily to his cabin. When Rem asked what the problem was, Santo told him not to ask.

Pakosta, happily gave an explanation. The training wasn’t what they had expected. On arrival at the camp they’d waited almost the entire day before they were hustled through an improvised assault course. At the end of this, at something like two in the morning, they were handed automatic rifles with live rounds.

‘Only Sammy mustn’t have heard the part about live rounds. Because the first thing he did was sling the gun to his hip and blast a round over the camp.’

Rem turned to the cabin to look for Samuels.

Santo corrected him. ‘No, he didn’t. He shot a couple of rounds into the desert.’

‘My version’s better.’

‘He shot one round…’

‘… took off a camel’s head, went postal, emptied the rounds into thirteen NCRs…’

‘Did no such thing.’

‘Left the camp looking like a high school.’

Rem held up his hand and asked Santo for the story.

‘We were doing this simulation where you go into a mock-up of an Iraqi village.’

‘It wasn’t a mock-up. It was an actual village. And we were in Kuwait.’

Santo held his hand over Pakosta’s mouth. ‘He’s right. At some point in history it was an actual Kuwaiti village. Anyhow, he didn’t have his gun on safety. That’s all he did. No big thing.’