Richard House - The Kills

‘Blessed?’

‘I know. Everything is a blessing. All this praying, and Jesus, and — I don’t know, just all of this shit about how everything has a purpose, about being happy that today was a good day. She has a child in hospital and she writes to strangers about being blessed. It wasn’t enough to delete the message, I had to print it out so I could throw it away.’

Both women paused as the loading-bay doors opened. Outside a van reversed into the dock. Cathy murmured that they should get back.

‘Why don’t you write to her?’

‘I don’t want my business to be on their minds. I don’t want anyone to pray for me, or Rem. I don’t need their Jesus, and I don’t want to know about their lives. I didn’t ask to hear any of this. I don’t want it in my head.’

‘And that’s what she’s doing?’

‘That’s exactly what she’s doing.’

As the truck reversed it cut out the daylight and Cathy and Maggie retreated to the storeroom doors.

‘She’s just the same as you.’ Cathy dropped her cigarette and stepped on it. ‘I don’t see the difference, actually. I mean, sure. Maybe you’re right. Maybe everyone should just leave you alone. Maybe all you need is some new batteries in that Jack Rabbit of yours.’

* * *

Cathy logged online and waited for messages to download. The dog sat outside, tied to a bike rail. Once she was done with the library, she decided, she’d take a longer walk, maybe down to Loyola along the lake. The inbox remained empty. With no word from Rem and no other business to distract her she returned to the round robin and clicked ‘reply to all’.

We know that this is as hard on the families and loved ones and pray that this trial will soon pass over.

Cathy began typing unsure of what to say, except, she wasn’t going to ask anyone to pray.

I don’t know who you all are and I apologize for writing without permission. My name is Cathy Gunnersen and I’m the wife of Rem Gunnersen, and this is the first time we’ve been apart. I was born and raised in Seeley, Texas, and I now live in an apartment on the North Side of Chicago. I don’t know what else to say except ‘hi’.

She read the email before sending it, unsure what she expected back.

* * *

Rem counted the traffic through the morning. Forty-eight: Kia, Renault, Daewoo, Toyota, Hyundai. The first vehicles he’d seen on the road since his arrival. Among them, the occasional Mercedes and BMW, all battered and distressed.

He returned to the cabins to see Pakosta exercising, still wearing the military drab trousers. The sun turning the sweat on his back to silver. The exercises, determined, structured, weren’t anything Rem had seen before. Rem found Watts and asked him to contact Markland.

As Watts made the call Rem returned to the road with Santo, and found it empty.

‘No one drives in the day. Too exposed.’ Santo stood with his arms folded. ‘How many?’

‘Forty-eight. Domestic traffic.’ Rem turned back to face the camp. ‘No one knows we’re here, but as soon as those fires are lit the smoke will tell everyone.’

He attempted to reach Geezler, a little surprised not to have heard from him after his promise to find out more information about Paul Howell.

* * *

Within an hour of contacting Markland, Watts had an answer. He found Rem in his cabin. The intersection between Highway 80 and Route 567 had been hit — an IED. A convoy, intended for Kuwait, had headed right back to Amrah.

Rem ate while he considered the news. The air-con unit in pieces about the small cabin. His hands black with grime. The air grotty with heat.

‘Two things.’ Watts hesitated at the door, a little sulky Rem thought. ‘First, we’re supposed to make reports. Every day. CIPA want a log of when the trucks arrive and when they leave.’

‘You can manage this?’

‘Sure.’ Watts remained at the door. ‘The second thing — they want you to check Highway 80, see what the problem is. They’ll send a team from Amrah to fix it.’

As Rem stood up he told Watts to pass the news to Santo, as Santo, Pakosta, Clark, Chimeno, and possibly Samuels, were now working security.

‘Tell him to take the guns if he’s confident they can use them safely.’ Rem didn’t see much choice. If they were to go off-base, they shouldn’t go unarmed.

* * *

While Santo organized the new detail, Rem took Kiprowski with him to Highway 80 to see the damage for himself.

As he drove off the camp, Kiprowski pointed to the east. At some distance, four Chinooks approached with vehicles slung beneath them, all heading toward the camp.

The vehicle ran well, Rem could feel it in his grip, an easy thrum, a satisfying throaty roll.

‘Another delivery?’

Rem said he didn’t know, but it looked that way.

‘You look at that boat? It’s all new.’

Rem asked if Kiprowski had ever been to Europe, if he’d ever travelled before. It didn’t matter if he hadn’t. Kiprowski didn’t respond.

‘We’ve never spoken about Chicago. What neighbourhood are you from?’

‘West Ridge.’

‘I don’t know where that is exactly.’

‘Back from the lake. Bryn Mawr to Howard.’

‘I’m Rogers Park. Clark and Lunt.’

‘Rockwell and Coyle.’

They both nodded.

‘You know it?’

Rem shrugged. ‘I have — I had — a dog, so I spend most of the time closer to the lake.’

‘Some parts of it are fancy.’

‘You mind if I ask something personal?’

The boy looked right ahead, and said cautiously he didn’t mind.

‘It’s just most people have their reasons for being here, and I was wondering about yours…’

Most of their stories ran to the same narrative. While Pakosta was dodging personal debt, and maybe some unspecified trouble (same as Clark, Samuels, and in his own way, Watts), Kiprowski was avoiding debt of a different kind: the near-poverty that locked his family to a small railroad apartment, night school and service jobs. The promise of money was more than enough to draw him to Iraq — food services couldn’t be a safer proposition. Rem tried to curb his impatience as Kiprowski told his story, about how he was the first in his family to travel to the Middle East. In every story the same tidy tax-free $100,000 figured as the basic lure. This money would be used to provide a decent house, settle parents’ or spouse’s debt, or children’s medical expenses, be seed money for a business they would start with a brother, father, cousin — who knows? Everyone had the same idea, or something close. That money would turn around a life that otherwise had no direction but forward and down.

Kiprowski had the idea more polished than others. He’d picked out a storefront on Howard, right at the Chicago — Evanston border. A café, a small restaurant. Maybe buy into a franchise. Kiprowski’s plan sounded dryer than the landscape they were passing through. If Rem breathed deeply enough he could smell the boy’s future: a body sweating labour through unbroken years.

Not that Rem wasn’t prone to this romance himself. Weren’t there properties in Evanston he’d imagined Cathy inside, perhaps even a family, but no matter how much money he earned, this wouldn’t be his leafy lane. And wasn’t this the point of Evanston, somehow, to offer up modest but unattainable possibilities?

They found the damaged intersection shortly after they left Route 567. An oval pit, about nine metres in circumference and one metre at its deepest, broke the highway. Upside down, on either side, lay the stripped blown fragments of a car.

‘This isn’t good.’

Until Highway 80 could be repaired Route 567 would need to handle the traffic between Kuwait and Baghdad, which brought potential danger to Camp Liberty.