Elliot Ackerman - Dark at the Crossing

He offered the emerald-green bottle to Haris.

The wax seal on its top had been broken. It was nearly full, but appeared as if Jim had taken a few good sips before mustering the nerve to pay Haris this visit. The writing on the label was in Spanish, scrawled in an elaborate cursive. Haris recognized the word rum but no others. He continued to examine the bottle. In his hands, it felt as exotic as the idea of a friendship with Jim. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he returned the rum.

“Happy birthday,” answered Haris.

Jim held up the bottle by its neck, toasting himself. He took a swig and handed it to Haris, who did the same though he seldom drank.

It burned. “Where’s this from?” Haris asked.

“My wife’s Colombian,” said Jim, reclining in his chair. “I met her down there in the nineties.” He lifted up his shirt, pointing to his tattoo. “That’s also where I got this — El Sol Eterno.”

“The eternal sun,” said Haris.

“You speak Spanish?” Jim passed Haris the bottle.

He took another pull. “About as well as you speak Arabic.”

Holding up the hem of his tank top, Jim gazed down at his tattoo with the nostalgia of a life viewed in reverse. With age, Jim’s girth had bent the sun. Some of its rays now stretched longer than others, like solar flares, and his body hair obscured the image like smog.

“Colombia in the nineties,” said Jim. “That was a great war. Not too violent but interesting enough — weeks spent in the jungle, weekends spent in Bogotá. Lots of girls, lots of booze. And I was young.”

“And the tattoo?” asked Haris.

Jim nodded. “The early Christians believed your soul existed in your stomach. That’s where you felt right and wrong, in your guts. The Incans believed the sun was eternal. Eternal sun on my eternal soul.”

“You found your soul down there,” said Haris as he drank from the bottle of Colombian rum, taking communion with Jim.

“I guess you could say that.”

“Do you think you’ll go back?”

“To Colombia? No. I mean, only if my wife makes me. The war’s pretty much over there. There’d be no point.”

Haris turned up his eyes, drawing a blank.

Jim canted his head, shaking it sympathetically. “It’s not what I found in Colombia, bud. It’s what I found in the war. This is where I belong.”

“What about home?”

“This is home,” answered Jim. He took the bottle from Haris and drank. They had emptied nearly a quarter of it.

“By making your home here,” said Haris, “you’ve destroyed mine.”

Jim drank again. “Or maybe we’re now from the same home.”

For a while they didn’t speak, sharing the bottle instead.

“Doesn’t it ever bother you?” asked Haris.

“The war? I have dreams sometimes, if that’s what you mean.”

Haris didn’t say anything. He stared at Jim, waiting for him to complete his thought.

“It’s always the same one,” Jim continued, his voice lowering. “I’m on a raid, middle of the night. The breach blows, knocking the front door clean off its hinges. The whole team’s behind me and we begin the clear, moving through the house quick. We’re like water, just flowing. It all feels good. We find our target in the second room. We cuff him. Behind me, the guys begin their interrogation. I go deeper into the house, finishing the clear. All I can see is the beam from my rifle’s flashlight. I corner through a door, coming up on a man with an AK. He turns, but before he swings his rifle around I’ve already leveled my sight on him. I squeeze the trigger and there’s just a hollow click. I reach into a pouch on my vest to do a speed reload, but I don’t find a magazine. I find a ham sandwich instead. I reach into another pouch. Another ham sandwich. The whole thing plays out in slow motion. All I’ve got is ham sandwiches.”

Haris laughed, snorting the rum in his mouth up through his nose. He pinched his sinuses as it burned his nostrils.

“Yeah, I know,” said Jim, and he looked at his feet. “But I wake up and every time I’m scared shitless.”

Haris wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “You’re not sorry about the boy, are you?”

“The boy? You mean Kareem Tamad,” answered Jim, a bemused grin spreading across his face.

Haris felt desperate as he waited for an answer. Jim had spent years at war, and Haris suspected the limited capacity within Jim’s soul for compassion would eventually become his own. “Are you sorry?” he asked again.

“No,” said Jim, fixing his eyes on Haris. “I’m not sorry.”

Haris wanted to ask why. Kareem’s grandfather hadn’t been the bomb maker. If Jim didn’t care about taking in the wrong man, maybe he didn’t care about taking in the right man. For Jim, maybe there wasn’t a shred of meaning in any of this. Maybe for Jim, the whole war was just an impulse fulfilled.

“So if I’m like you,” said Haris, “I never get to go home again. Even if the war ends, this place won’t be home anymore. I’ll have to go to another place, another war.”

“Sometimes it just goes on so long,” said Jim, “that you lose the cause in the thing.” He lit a cigarette.

Haris reached for the bottle. Jim handed it over. Instead of taking a slug, Haris corked it. “It’s late,” he said, “and we’re drunk.” He passed Jim back his rum.

“You’re right,” Jim replied. “Tomorrow will be busy. I need to start looking for another lead on that bomb maker.” He stood, cradling the half-empty bottle. It sloshed beneath his arm as he made for the door. “If we get him, I don’t care about Kareem Tamad, his mom, or his granddad. It makes it all worth it.”

Jim tugged on the doorknob to let himself out. It wouldn’t budge.

Haris came over, leaned into the jamb, and then yanked.

“Thanks,” said Jim. He paused on the threshold for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the night. As he did, Haris asked: “How old are you today?”

“Thirty-three.”

Dark moons hung beneath Jim’s eyes. Sunburnt pustules dotted the tops of his cheeks. His once strong arms hung limply at his sides, a pair of dead weights wearing out his shoulders.

“Next month, I also turn thirty-three,” said Haris.

Jim grinned, and the crow’s-feet that pinched the edges of his eyes spread across his temples. In the whole of Jim’s expression, Haris couldn’t find a single patch of skin that wasn’t wrinkled, burnt, or touched by some part of his experience.

Before Haris could say anything else, Jim laughed. “Abadi, my friend, for thirty-two, you really look like shit.”

It was morning but still dark out. A chill had set into the apartment during the night, causing the pipes in the walls to heave. Beneath his blanket, Haris huddled into himself for warmth. Light flashed against his lidded eyes. Amir stood at the foot of his bed, his back to Haris. He had changed into a pair of powder-blue pajamas with a button-down shirt. The BBC was on with the volume muted. Images flickered from the screen, edging out Amir’s silhouette while he ate a bowl of cornflakes and read a ticker of scrolling headlines. He took his bites sloppily, occasionally using the sleeve of his pajamas to wipe milk from his chin.

Haris sat up on the sofa bed.

“Apologies,” whispered Amir. “I didn’t think it’d wake you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping anyhow.”

Amir lifted his bowl to his lips, drinking the last of the milk. He again wiped his chin with his sleeve. He didn’t appear sober, but he did appear to be sobering up. The cornflakes seemed to help.

“Won’t you get some rest?” asked Haris.

Amir’s head swiveled over his shoulder, toward the bedroom. A seam of light poured from behind the cracked-open door where Daphne slept. Amir sat on the foot of the sofa bed, next to Haris. “Not in there,” he said. “Her light keeps me up.”