Joseph McElroy - Cannonball

Another day a boy asked me to come with him, he had American night vision goggles of the type for which replacement parts had run out. Along Haifa Street cavalry were now on foot patrol. One morning two armed men in shorts and t-shirts came running toward me but passed on either side. I photographed an old curved balcony, exposed a whole roll, and a man came out onto the balcony then. He showed his wrists, he was shouting to me, explaining. I thought it was about flex-cuffs so tight he developed gangrene in one hand. A picture of all that? Where was I going during the three-day wait for where I was going? Already there almost, impatient as a bad photographer (recalling, too, the photo of the burned-out trailer missing from what the captain had of mine) I heard of a sound crew taping/ recording GIs, I was just missing them.

Rather, a crew filming GIs and their music, word of three guys crossing the desert (a $900 cab ride from Syria!) to capture on videotape the listening habits of our soldiers. Headphones handed to me as friends at school used to, to hear “Raining Blood,” and aboard a parked truck where nothing was happening “Little Red Corvette,” and “Purple Haze” Jimi walking underwater, and in another set of headphones with this time talk by the numbers. “It’s Too Late Now, We Ready,” Pastor Troy told it, and I had to ask someone three times if they had seen a big Asian kid in the sound crew till I got the attention of this plugged-in Specialist who said Plenty of Asians, tapping the headphone, grinning, “Weapon of mass instruction,” taking it in my stride, shaking his finger like a speaker, when a skinny little guy with rimless glasses said Yes he had “reconized” one of them; he turned away to his laptop. Recognized ? I said; which one? I thought — but there was action down the avenue and in a warren of alleys, and I was on the run in mid-thought past a shut-down masquf restaurant, Wednesday I remembered the lucky day to eat fired carp guts, or hearing Nineveh Street I thought behind me, also someone’s question behind me but up ahead Marines, spray-painting “Long live the muj killers” over a rebel sign in Arabic at the entrance to I didn’t know what, dived for cover when a shooter moving from window to window opened up again from above. And I thought what “GIs” meant, and how headphones gave you out of mind out of sight. Yet Umo is here, I thought.

And the night before this odd or as I expected then routine assignment — an “archaeological arrival,” the captain had said in confidence — why did I feel I had no business here listening as though my life depended on it to the mumbled words of a swarthy redhead from a northern California military police brigade on a table, with a head wound, a bloody bandage all across his eyes, poor guy? — blood under the table.

My sister’s lips upon one eyelid, then the other, then the first, dizzying (the touch itself another’s touch to call me back beyond the dizziness), my eyes sore from party smoke, I recounted the droll farewell night in a whisper, if anyone here were still awake after The Inventor’s ‘57 Bel Air (never guilty of the sloth on which its owner disagreed with some mysterious “Apostle” who had said sloth violated brotherly love) had picked the worst moment, delivering me at my door, to detonate two blats of backfire in our street.

Though no lights had gone on. Though my sister’s face in an upstairs window welcomed me like a wife who’d been sleeping.

Who was there? she asked, sixteen and a half years old lying beside me, my shirt half-unbuttoned, a scent blurred and slept-on.

Well, everybody. Three little runaways Cheeky lets stay there; one smokes right along with her. Weed? Course not. Cheeky? It was her place not The Inventor’s, out in North Wash. Up the street from him, a bungalow with a blue door, everybody was there.

Everybody? Well, Milt. Of course, he picked the right party to go to. No, he was mad at me. And me . You? He thinks we might go out. Milt argued with The Inventor — he was there. Well, the party was for him except — Right, it was an enlistment party it turned out. And The Inventor’s two nieces and his plumber and the plumber’s teacher of some kind, and a Mexican girl, very tall, lives in Chula Vista, husband they let him outa jail to enlist, a music guy worked for a Russian, got into some stuff; and U mo, who you haven’t — Yes that night on the Interchange — You only saw him — Yeah — And I not since seven — This morning — Yeah — Who you haven’t set eyes on, my sister began — Since seven this morning, I said. Your physical . I don’t know how he knew what time it was, he lined up, they wouldn’t let him in. The Mexican girl was a basketball player, she laughed and laughed (such a smile), a friend of Umo’s. He thought he was going to enlist this morning. They wouldn’t let him in. ‘Course they wouldn’t, you’re a team, said my sister. Did Milt know? He said why would he think they’d let him in, he didn’t even have papers, better clean up his act, Milt said. Umo pulled out an old photo ID from Republic of China, Milt snapped it out of his fingers. He never rec ognized Umo, E said beside me. No, he did, I said. Oh he’s a free — Yeah — A mountain in your way. Shoulda gone all the way down to Mexico with him, my sister said. You saw him, I said — Mmhmm, getting up into that — Hey, who was driving—? On the Interchange — Yeah you saw him climbing into a truck in the middle of traffic. Who was driving?

My baby clucked. She threw the bedclothes back and rolled over on me: No body, she said, nobody was driving. Her voice touched my ear, the mouth spread, a finger on my shoulder hours between night and dawn deepened like hope against hope And I told how Umo said, Give my best to …and grinned. Umo did? That’s right. Umo will go where you go, my sister said into my ear, that’s the agreement. He’s going to marry my sister, he said. Marry your sister? (she coughed against me, laughing) “Milt didn’t like it,” I said. “ You didn’t.” Umo, I murmured. He’s luck of some kind, said my sister. Mm hmm, and a friend, but he competes. He’ll go where you go. He will? Yeah, a secret weapon. He’ll follow you and—

She says in the dark, I can understand . You can what? I said. So go to war, you do your job, we’ll do ours — words, music, I know she said. And I have a navy in the west .

Follow me? I got past the abandoned bathhouse which had served the pool of the hotel which had become the stock exchange, and there around the corner waiting for me (at this hour, when I had no business being out, the quick little woman from the Wisconsin Reserve brigade would ball me out in the morning, who had “found something” in my cropped shot of the Reservist arm-wrestling the mercenary in the beret) appeared not the skinny, hungry soldier with glasses who had “recognized” one of the crew filming GIs listening to music, but the black guy near him as smart as if he was in some disguise, who had joked about… — the headphones he tapped or music nation coming out of them, whatever — he was waiting for me now and shook his head like you never learn.

I said, “The film crew? Someone familiar?” reminding him. He shook again, “Police?” he doubted me almost. Hey he was the one with the side arm, I said. “Asked you before but you didn’t hear, man,” he said begrudging his grin happy-paranoid recalling the afternoon or Bad Company for all I knew.

“Sorry ‘bout that. The Asian kid?” “You looking for him?” “If he’s the one.” “Plenty a them.” “That’s what you said this afternoon. And the guy you knew?” “He’s with one.” “With an Asian — the guy you know?” “Knew.” “You don’t know him now?” He shook his head, something bad, “Real big,” he changed the subject. “The Asian kid,” I said. “I thought he knew me, how he looked at me.” “The guy you used to know? The film crew guy? You knew him…?” “Down around Kut, down there.” Yes, I had heard. Kut? It was terrible, I said. “Took me for somebody else.” “Your film crew guy?” “No, the Asian kid. I thought he knew me, how he looked at me.” “Why would he know you?” “Right.” “What did he do?” “He should watch out who he works with, the other guy’s wanted.” “Real big?” I persisted—“was he like, a teenager?” I said. “Asian kid? Lotta teens. Look at me, I’m older now. No kid left out. They knew about me when I was in ninth grade, nobody told the school withhold my file, no kid left unrecruited, like a track scholarship. You coming from Kut?” “That’s it,” I said. “How about that.” I hung with my questions, there was a problem. “The film crew guy you knew is a civilian…” “Not then.” “Shows up with the Asian—” “—and not now,” my soldier decides to add. “Thought he knew you?” “Nine hundred dollar cab ride with equipment, I heard, like as far as from here to Cleveland.” “ Cleve land?” “ Brook lyn to Cleveland, sorry. Hey yeah they had a driver, Syrian cop moonlighting, he sat in front with him, the kid, bigger’n… — ” My soldier, rewinding, had heard something.