Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

“Hooah!” They were louder this time. Fiercer, too. I wasn’t sure if he was done. Part of me hoped so.

Part of me didn’t.

Something blossomed out of the dark near the pit. It crawled under the firelight, then down the hill, capturing Chambers’ attention. He raised his boot and then thought otherwise.

“Get a cup,” he said. “One of the large ones.”

It was a camel spider. I’d seen them before — at a distance, though, not like this. Yellow with brown fur, it was thick like a cigarette pack. It kept poking its front pincers and gaping angry jaws at us as we passed around the cup. Some sort of insect blood, probably beetle, was splattered across its mouth like a child’s art project.

“Men,” Chambers said from the other side of the fire. “Heard some of you caught a scorpion at the front gate. True?”

I was about to answer that we’d just missed it when a voice beside me spoke. “Roger, Sergeant. Mean little fucker.” It was Alphabet.

“He upstairs?”

Alphabet nodded.

“Bring him down,” Chambers continued. “What better way to end the night than a prizefight?”

As Alphabet went inside, I sought out the gate guards from earlier. I found Hog first. He explained that after I’d left, the scorpion had reappeared from under the Humvee.

“One of the Iraqi brothers grabbed it,” Hog said. “By the tail. Then we put it in a jar.”

They set up a ring next to the bonfire, a cardboard box with its bottom pushed open. They dumped the camel spider in first, and it poked the walls of its new prison, all four corners and two square feet of it. Testosterone bogged the air, and red flashlights flitted over the ring like police sirens. I looked around and didn’t see jaded boredom anymore but something else.

I wondered if I should stop the fight. I decided not to. I wondered if I should leave the fight. I didn’t.

“No need to be queasy.” Chambers spoke to me from across the ring. A red light shined up from a wristless fist onto his face. “Your man Lawrence did this. It’s a proud tradition.”

“All good.” I grinned. “Who you got?”

“Scorpion,” he said. He must’ve smelled the stink of easy money on me. “You thinking spider?”

“Everyone knows the scorpion always wins. I’m not that green.”

He winked. “Guess not. How long you think the spider will last, then? I’m in a betting mood.”

The soldiers crowded around us, shouting suggestions, picking sides. I studied the two combatants. The camel spider was at least twice as big as the scorpion. Besides, I reasoned, it’d take time for the scorpion’s venom to seep into the spider’s bloodstream, or whatever circulatory system spiders have.

“Two minutes,” I said.

“I’ll take the under,” Chambers replied. “How’s a hundred bones sound?”

I nodded. I had faith in the big ugly.

Most of the soldiers did not. I looked around and, intentional or not, nearly all of them had slid over to Chambers’ side of the ring — and the scorpion’s. Through the firelight, I spotted a friendly face.

“ Et tu , medicine man?” I said.

“Sorry,” Doc Cork said. “Like you said. Everyone knows the scorpion wins.”

I nodded again and felt a hand on my shoulder. “We’re with you, sir.” I turned around and found Alphabet standing behind me, heavy Slavic gaze holding steady, with Hog next to him. “What’s two minutes?”

Then he burped loud and proud, reeking of digested goat. I’d never loved another man more.

Dropped from its jar, the scorpion landed on its feet, and the camel spider went straight at it, jaws wide, fangs bared. Under a spotlight of red incandescence, the camel spider trying to pierce the scorpion’s exoskeleton with its pincers, the scorpion bobbing and weaving to keep clear of the spider’s bloody furnace of a mouth. The smaller creature was soon boxed into a corner, maintaining leverage due to a jagged pebble. I needed the spider to stop being so aggressive, but asking an arachnid to go guerrilla and outlast its opponent rather than murder it as soon as possible seemed pointless, so I just shook my fist and howled. Similar sounds emanated from around the ring. The camel spider sank its front pincers into the top of the scorpion’s shell and began pulling it into its jaws, a long, slow death march. I howled again, something resembling the word “yes” rising from the wilds of my chest. The camel spider began gnawing on the scorpion’s head. The arthropod held off ingestion by ramming its claws against the bulk of the spider and shoving, a sort of dark arts horizontal push-up. Then it raised its trident. My eyes snapped wide as the tail moved back and forth, to and fro. The spider stopped chewing, hypnotized. Like a black lightning bolt, the scorpion plunged its stinger down into the camel spider, straight through a bulbous eye. A horrifying rattle followed, something like a leaking balloon, and the camel spider collapsed on its belly, pincers out.

“Time?” someone asked.

“Eighty seconds,” Doc Cork said, reading from the digital green of his wristwatch. “Team Scorpion wins.”

I bellowed bitterly as Chambers and most of the platoon cheered and crowed.

“See, men,” Chambers said. “That’s what happens when you hesitate. A motherfucking stinger comes for your brain. Don’t be that camel spider. Be the scorpion.”

The scorpion freed itself from the dead spider’s jaws and took a victory lap around the dirt ring, claws raised. I accepted Alphabet’s offer of a cigarette, even though I didn’t smoke. Chambers asked if I could pay him next time we made a run to Camp Independence, and I said yes. Then he used two cups to collect the scorpion and started walking to the perimeter gate. The soldiers protested, saying they wanted their prizefighter for future bouts.

“Keep a scorpion as a pet?” Chambers yelled behind him. “Do I look crazy?”

He tossed the scorpion, cup and all, over the gate and into the desert. Some of the men kept grumbling, but it’d been done. There was nothing left to do but search for a new contender, if they cared to.

I lingered at the burn pit for an hour. Soldiers drifted into the outpost two or three at a time, calling each other youngbloods, telling one another to “be the scorpion.” Only Alphabet remained. Perhaps sensing my mood, he stayed quiet. I coughed my way through the first cigarette and then asked for another. As I watched the fire smolder into loose petals of ash, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just lost something important, something that mattered, even if it was just a pretense of that something.

I pulled an assault glove from a cargo pocket and picked up the spider from the ring, holding it in front of me. A thick, green jelly oozed from the hole in its eye.

“It thought it was tougher than it was,” Alphabet said, walking close to study the carcass himself. “Tricked us into thinking that, too.”

I tossed the camel spider into the burn pit.

The desert seemed still, placid. I spat onto the ground and tried to sound ironic.

“Insha’Allah,” I said.

“Yeah,” Alphabet said. “Something like that.”

Snoop, I want to meet with Alia. How much for thirty minutes?”

“I thought you didn’t do that.” He looked at me like I’d disappointed him in some profound way.

I dismissed him with a wave of the hand. “Don’t worry about that. How much?”

He tapped at his knee, seemingly hesitant to upset the delicate laws of the outpost’s ecosystem. He was right, of course. Officers weren’t supposed to ask for the cleaning woman.

“Just this once,” I said. “No one will know.”

“Forty dollars. No dinars.”

“Set it up. And Snoop? I’m going to need you there.”