Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

“Roger that. Want some water to wash those down?”

“Gracias.”

I popped the pills and drank the entirety of Alphabet’s canteen because he said it was okay. It tasted lukewarm like bathwater and had sand bits in it that slid down my throat and into my stomach. I was waiting for Alphabet to leave the room, but he lingered at the bunk. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk more about his fiancée.

“Something else on your mind?”

“Was just wondering,” he said. “Why’d you join the army?”

“Huh.” It was a strange question from a soldier. Civilians back home asked it all the time, and I’d learned the stock set of responses to keep them and their fixed notions at bay. College money. Participate in history. Because someone had to. All were true, but none answered the actual question. “Lots of reasons, I guess. What about you?”

“To be part of something.” Alphabet looked ready for the front of a cereal box, he seemed so damn serious. While I was touched by my soldier’s earnestness, alarms began ringing in my head. Purists broken by the realities of life were capable of crazy things — especially ones with access to guns and bullets and fucking grenades. When he grinned to himself and shook his head, betraying some perspective, I praised God and then the other two parts of the Trinity for good measure.

“Kid stuff, you know?” he continued.

“That’s good,” I said, “You should be proud you were like that. Most people go through life never serving anything but themselves.”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I said “Yeah” too. We’d had our moment and it’d passed. Alphabet left the room with his canteen, and I lay back down. I realized I’d never answered him about joining up, but that could wait. So could the calls home, and Marissa, and the goddamn war. It could all wait.

I visited other tribal leaders, but none would talk about Shaba or acknowledge they knew of him. I asked if any of their sons had been killed in the war, but they all said no. Haitham wouldn’t pick up his phone, and we found his hut abandoned and empty. And the tension between Chambers and me simmered like a mortar round left in the sun too long. He resisted counterinsurgency-related missions and instructions, spending free time planning raids and training the joes accordingly. I responded by relaying orders through Sipe or the other squad leaders.

The morning of May Day, we passed under the stone arch and the image of the cleric. The sky was blue and clear. In the lead, my vehicle kicked up drapes of sand until we reached Route Madison and its pavement, paid for by the American taxpayer through a contract awarded to the local power tribe, the al-Badris. At least they finished this one, I thought. The water filtration project was still nothing but a collection of pipes and cement blocks on the banks of the canal. Local gossip claimed the Tamimi tribe was to be awarded that job, until they withdrew their offer after last-minute negotiations with the al-Badris.

Corruption, I thought, warm desert wind enveloping my face. Bribery. Gross waste of government funds. Perhaps Iraq understands democracy after all.

My heels ached after a week of foot patrols, two blisters filled with rich, cloudy pus. I’d pop them with a knife at Camp Independence, where twenty-four hours of hot showers, uninterrupted sleep, and non — Porta John shitting awaited.

We passed small groups of Iraqis walking the other way on the roadsides, toward Ashuriyah. Most seemed to be older men and women, though there were some children and teenagers in their ranks. The men all wore black dishdasha s and the women black burqas, while the kids dressed in an array of Western-style clothing, glowing bright like sequins against the pious robes of their elders.

I thought they were pilgrims going to the large Shi’a mosque in the north of town. It was Friday, the Muslim holy day.

“Not quite, sir,” Hog said from the driver’s hole. “The terps said it’s to celebrate a battle Ali won back in the day. Shi’as love that dude.”

“Yeah?” Dominguez’s voice dripped with amusement. “Who’d he defeat?”

“Glad you asked,” Hog said. I didn’t need to see the wide smile on his face to know it was there. “She was important.” He went on to tell us about Aisha, the Prophet’s widow, and how her forces fought Ali at the Battle of the Camel, because of course it’d be called the Battle of the Camel.

“A woman went crazy after her man died, and started a war over it,” Dominguez said. “She wasn’t a chicana?”

A female voice filled our ears. “Emergency,” it said, the words soft as fog but demanding. “Exit the vehicle immediately, exit the vehicle immediately.”

Everyone laughed. Hog had pressed the emergency button on the control panel. Many of the joes swore that they’d track down the body that belonged to the voice, to marry her, no matter what she looked like, no matter how old. I wondered how much money and research had gone into determining that young soldiers responded to feminine persuasion.

A short, staccato cough of machine gun fire ripped across the desert. I felt my stomach clench up.

“That’s straight ahead,” I said.

“Roger,” Dominguez said. “First platoon’s at Checkpoint Thirty-Eight.”

The radio raged hot. Officers as far north as the canal and as far east as the highway demanded to know what sort of battle had interrupted the war, and why. I turned off the radio and ordered the platoon to stop at the checkpoint.

We arrived two minutes later. The ramp dropped. A white car down the road lay like a squashed slug, strangely two-dimensional under the sun. Doc Cork and others jogged ahead to where a crowd of locals was gathering, but I stayed put to look at the car straight. A thin plume of smoke floated up from its engine. The car was between two orange cones used as checkpoint markers. Four other cars and a minibus had pulled off to the side of the road behind it, none having pushed past the first orange cone. Windshield shards glinted under the sunlight like daggers.

I walked past the other platoon’s vehicles to the white car. At the driver’s door, I leaned in through the open window and smelled iron. A heavyset man in a dishdasha sat back in his seat with a frozen glare. I’d seen the look before, on my mom, when we’d almost hit a deer on a mountain drive. Both his feet seemed to still be searching for the brake. Machine gun rounds had chewed through his body, leaving slabs of ill-cut flesh and human sludge. As I peered closer, I saw that the right side of his chest had been separated from the rest of him, held together by licorice sticks of entrails.

I wanted to think he hadn’t suffered, but that wasn’t really possible. I figured him to be about Chambers’ age, in his early thirties, which wasn’t old but probably older in Iraq than it was in America. On the other side of the car, sprawled across the passenger seat and the center console, was a smaller man of similar age and dress. He had jug ears and a furry soul patch, and a cluster of large, red polka dots perforated the right side of his body. He must’ve turned to his side at the last second in an effort to shield himself.

A group of first platoon soldiers arrived, pulling out the passenger’s body by the core. A stream of blood began pouring out over the center console. The soldiers groaned. I left them to their task, walking back down the road.

The gunner of the lead Stryker was still in the turret, shoulders slumped, hands tucked into his ballistic vest. I called up at him, but he either couldn’t hear me or didn’t care to. I couldn’t make out his face. Rather than continue to bother him — for what? I thought — I walked to the back of the vehicle, where I found their platoon leader standing on the downed ramp, finishing a radio call.