Matt Gallagher: Youngblood

“Right.” He didn’t sound convinced. “While you and the English-speaking hajj handle business, I’m going to show the guys how to pull security.”

I nodded slightly and considered my options. Some noncoms couldn’t help but test their leadership, and it seemed I now had one of those. My brother would say I needed to regulate. All in good time, I reasoned. There was no reason to crush a guy for having baggage from his last tour. I watched a pair of stray dogs along a ridgeline to the east. They were teasing a spotted goat with big pink balls that wanted nothing to do with them. I felt bad for the thing, but we hadn’t been sent to Iraq to save goats.

Snoop tugged my sleeve to bring my attention back to foosball. Two teenagers built like cord had lined up across the table. The bar of our goalie proved sticky, but one of their strikers had been sawed in half somehow, so it evened out.

“They ask how old you are,” Snoop translated. “They say you look too young to be a molazim .”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. “Twenty-four,” I said, trying to keep my voice flat. “Old enough.”

Sweat rolled down my face and onto the table, dripping like dirty rain. It was too hot to be wearing anything other than a tee shirt. The teens suggested Snoop and I take off our gear. They thought American soldiers were crazy for wearing body armor outside. I grunted and took off my gloves to better grip the handles.

During the game, I listened to soldiers pelt Chambers with questions about firefights on his previous deployments, his Ranger tab, and what he meant by “exposed silhouettes.” Hog’s voice especially carried from across the dirt road, which bothered me.

“Sergeant?” he asked. “I heard, uh, you got tattoos for every enemy you’ve killed?”

Chambers pulled up the sleeve on his right arm, though I couldn’t see what he was showing. The soldiers, now spread out in pairs and kneeling behind cars or peeking around building corners, all turned his way.

“Don’t look at me, oxygen thieves,” Chambers said, his voice stinging with authority. “Eyes out.”

“Fuck this,” I said, after giving up another goal that I blamed on the stuck goalie. I’d been to Ranger School, too. I had my tab. Why didn’t they ever ask me about it? Because infantry officers have guaranteed slots, I thought. We don’t have to fight to get in like the enlisted. “Snoop, call over the Barbie Kid. Let’s get some work done.”

I could tell the terp was annoyed by the way the game had ended, but he did as instructed. The Barbie Kid, all ninety pounds of him, moved to us with bare feet covered in dust, rolling a cooler of goods behind him. A dark unibrow raced across his forehead, and he stank like a polecat, wearing his usual pink sweats. The Barbie doll’s face on the sweatshirt was smudged with mud and crust, forever spoiling her smile.

“Any ali babas around?” I asked.

The Barbie Kid looked up at me with his good eye, the lazy one staying fixed to the ground. “None the Americans would care about,” he said through Snoop, his voice cracking but tart.

Fucking teenagers, I thought. They’re all terrible. Even here.

I reached down and lifted the Barbie Kid’s sweatshirt to reveal the handle of a long, dull sai dagger tucked into his waistband.

“Still carrying that around,” I said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

The young Iraqi frowned, then argued. “He is a businessman and must protect his business,” Snoop translated. “He asks why you care? There are boys younger than him who work for the Sahwa militias. They carry AK-47s.”

“Good point,” I said.

“Want any Boom Booms, LT? He offers a special deal, because Hotspur is his favorite platoon.”

“I’m sure he tells that to all the girls. How much?”

“Two for five dollars.”

As I rummaged through my pockets for money, a sound like wood planks slapping together broke the peace. Then again. My heart jumped up and my feet jumped back, unprepared for fired rounds. Chambers stood in the center of the road, back straight, rifle wedged tight into his shoulder. The bronzed dirt in the air had parted around him, giving off a strange, glassy sheen. A wisp of smoke curled out the end of his barrel and the goat with big pink balls lay collapsed on the far side of the street, near a pair of soldiers in a wadi. I exchanged a confused look with Snoop. Then the Barbie Kid unleashed the most primal sound I’d ever heard, a scream both high and low, as abrupt as it was lasting. He ran to the goat’s body, and we followed, slowly.

“Goddamn it. What did I just say about keeping the enemy out of our perimeter?” Chambers yelled, lowering his rifle. “If that thing had been a suicide bomber, you’d be explaining to Saint Peter why the fuck you’re so stupid.”

The Barbie Kid fell to the ground next to the dead animal, cradling its body and petting it. He wept uncontrollably. The goat was lean to the point of emaciation, and its coat was splotched and stringy, like shredded paper. Its balls were even bigger and pinker up close. It’d been shot through the brain at the bridge of its nose, giving the look of a third eye. Fat, gray insects were hopping off its coat into the Barbie Kid’s hair, so I kept my distance.

“Sergeant Chambers,” I said. “We’re not supposed to shoot animals. Higher’s pretty strict about that.”

“They’re a menace,” he said. “But okay.”

I looked around the platoon. Most peered in at the scene, a strained quiet gripping them. There were no jokes, no sounds of spat tobacco, no jingling of gear. Dominguez shook his head and turned back out, instructing the joes nearby to do the same.

I pointed to the goat. “Pretty close to some of the men.”

Chambers pounded his chest twice and hooted. “A perfect kill. Never a danger.”

Snoop was on the ground with the Barbie Kid, placing a hand on his back. “LT Jack? This was his pet, his only habibi . He say his parents didn’t let it in their house, but he fed it and played with it for many months. He’s very sad.”

“I can see that.” I chewed on my lip. “For fuck’s sake.” I reached into my pockets and pulled out all the bills and change I could find: seventeen dollars and fifty cents, and eight hundred dinars.

“Tell him to take this,” I told Snoop. “Condolence funds. And Sergeant? Throw some money in there.”

Chambers sneered, but did as ordered, tossing a twenty-dollar bill to the ground.

The Barbie Kid wouldn’t take the money, nor would he abandon the dead goat. Putting the bills and change into his cooler, we left him hugging and petting and snotting over the carcass.

The electricity recon took ten hours. I met with a half dozen Iraqi families over chai and flatbread, discussing the neighborhoods and the Sahwa militias and the problems with electricity and clean water. They had many questions, and I had few answers. Chambers ran security for the rest of the mission, staying out in the bronze fog the entire time. Throughout the day, both the Barbie Kid’s scream and Chambers’ hoot twisted in my mind like screws. Not even Doc Cork’s headache pills could make them go away.

Yo, LT Jack. Source called.”

I looked up from the poker table. Snoop stood in the doorway, a swirl of dark skin and shadows. I could tell by his voice that the matter was urgent, but there was three hundred dollars in the pot. I’d spent a good hour sandbagging hands. Maybe some of the platoon originals saw what I was doing, but Chambers hadn’t. He’d no clue, thinking I was just another dumb lieutenant who didn’t know how to play cards.

“Duty calls.” Dominguez’s chipmunk cheeks widened into a grin as he rubbed his shaved head. He’d clean up quickly with me gone. “Insha’Allah. As God wills it.”