Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

From here, the bus barreled downhill and the terrain opened out onto a field, a cemetery, into a wider form of shadow. You saw women in black burkas waiting for the bus, unwilling to speak with strangers. Or not waiting, taking whatever they had with them and getting farther away on foot, traveling with girls in burkas, pushing a grocery cart with a twenty-pound sack of jasmine rice in it. They had WIC, asylum. Whatever skin of theirs was visible — the hands, around the eyes — having been tanned in a burning oil field.

The field was far more extensive than you might imagine. She ran and ran, under trees, bypassing ditches, areas where the ground was stamped with tire tracks of Bobcats, in the subliminal winter predawn, the gray grainy ground lapping under her feet, the houses a presence beyond the trees. In front of her, however, there was only distance. She crossed a street, the park kept going. As she ran, there was a transformation in the sky: dawn. At length, she stopped, somewhere in a baseball diamond, apparently no closer to the apartment towers that rose like mountains on the far horizon, exerting the same magnetic effect on her with which she had been familiar as a child.

Her tracksuit sweated through, she ran back, the sun behind her. The Chinese did t’ai chi in the botanical gardens.

HIS BODY JERKED. HE moaned. The bench was slippery and he moved his legs on it in his dirty jeans, one of his socks coming off, the denim and camouflage and the American flag, his body and gear strewn out.

His brain was on but he was not awake. The plate glass window was lit up with white sunlight coming through his eyelids. It was very hot. They were driving and he was seeing the road go by and feeling the vibration. Metal was hot to the touch. It was loud and the vibration surrounded him and filled his ears like the heat. There were palm trees in the ugly desert panning by.

He was watching the side of the road as it kept coming towards him, bouncing over his iron sights, the dark poor sunburned people by the side of the road, their animals and goats, the little white goats, the tents and rugs for selling whatever they had, bread, souvenirs, hashish, and then the stretch of nothing, the table land.

In his dream, he knew what was happening. When they had first arrived, they hadn’t known, having yet to learn. Their unit had provided security for a colonel on daylong sector-assessment missions called SAM’s that lasted into the night, and they had seen very little action. If this is war, I’m disappointed, Nowling said, pulling security in the spectacular heat. They looked up the line of vehicles at the senior men clustered around the colonel in his crisp camouflage pointing at features of the landscape. Occasionally, they heard battles being fought and at night they watched the lightning flashes and felt the thudding in the ground. It was hard to sleep. People said I miss my girl. I wanna get some. They manned a checkpoint and shot up a car. Their doc from Opa-locka poured a bag of clotting factor in an Iraqi’s chest. Mom’s head was gone. White-faced, Sconyers ran and got a beanie baby for their daughter. They poured canteen water on doc’s hands and it smoked on the road. Someone took a picture of the front seat.

They saw contractors and Special Forces guys wearing boonie hats and carrying different weapons, long-barreled sniper rifles. Dominguez said he had talked to them and they were British. The colonel was gone. Rumors abounded, what was being planned, what was said on CNN. They crossed paths with other units, soldiers who had been in heavy house-to-house fighting and there was a bad feeling, like they wanted to hurt somebody and you were it. Captain Friedman told them to take a knee. He briefed them on who the most wanted people in Iraq were at this time. Then they were ordered to each write an official postcard home. They found a corroded hangar in the desert that was supposed to have contained chemical weapons. The Special Forces men drove away smoking cigars and they moved into it. Rotting drums stood in the heat. The company was divided. They built shitters using the drums and burned their shit with diesel fuel, wearing their gas masks.

It was revealed that they were being held responsible for an area of four hundred square miles. Things started picking up. They got broken down to platoons, and the platoons got broken down to squads, the squads into sticks, the sticks to bricks. At night, they went out on raids, out into the villes along the canal. Before they mounted up, they turned each other in circles checking each other’s gear, put their chew in, banged their helmets together and shouted Get Some! In the day, they drove through the sector, seeing Iraqis running along the road calling out to them. They found adobe houses burning, black smoke rising, clothes in the street. The mosque was trashed. You know what that smell is. Out of nowhere, someone yelled contact left! and they unloaded at the rooftops. They went cyclic, burned a barrel on the 240. Afterwards they checked each other, but there was no evidence that they had taken fire. Adrenaline is real, said Dominguez.

In the basements, they found electronic equipment, stiffened rags, a crumbling prayer book. Children stared at them. The corpses were few at first, but then they started finding bodies every day. Some were mummified by fire. A bomb went off and spit a person out of a doorway. That smell is burning hair. A truck drove by them full of men with beards and satisfied expressions. Why are we letting them go? Sconyers asked. I don’t get it — Sconyers who carried a copy of the Report of the 9/11 Commission in his assault pack.

Because this is the army. Because this is their country. Because this isn’t supposed to make sense.

They swam through a sewage trench at night to provide security so that Special Forces could snatch someone important. The mission got called off and they had to go back the same way. At the hangar they stripped and washed the shit off with their canteens. Then they cleaned their weapons. They did not sleep. They took Ripped Fuel. Whatever that sound was in the city they could always hear it. Nowling opened his mouth and let the chewing tobacco fall out with a long shining strand of drool and then he threw up. What day is it? Fourteen, I think. The Hell’s Angels sergeant said, I’m countin on you guys to suck it up. The soldiers all said hooah. Going into the city, they took fire and it was not their imagination. It was a hit-and-run. The fire fights proliferated. You could tell there were people on the roofs. They got shot everywhere, in the armor, boots and Kevlar helmets. Sergeant Rogers got shot in the arm. I can still move my fingers. That’s a medal, goddamnit. Gimme a smoke. Hey, Jones, I beat you to a medal.

Hold still, their doc said.

Doc’s mad at me. Think I’m goin home?

Fifteen days after they had arrived in-country, they drove over an IED in a soft-skinned vehicle and lost Chidester. The explosion leaped out of the road and rose like batwings. In the following vehicle, Skinner’s ears popped and cut off like overloaded speakers. The process of evacuating the casualties did not go smoothly. There was a mound of dried black lava on the ground and his mind kept focusing on it instead of on tasks he had been given. When they got back inside the wire, the platoon was in a shambles. Someone ordered Lawson to clean the blood off and Lawson said I don’t feel the need to do that. Skinner’s ears were ringing still. They were ordered right back out again and spent the night on overwatch, seeing the land in infrared. The word was that we will bomb the city from the air. Dear Lord, please let me kill someone tonight. For days inside the wire, they sat around with their shirts off, their chests pasty and macerated from their armor and covered in heat rash, wearing shades, smoking cigarettes, examining their peeling feet.