Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

THERE WAS AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF STAFF SERGEANT RIOS. IF IT’S OF INTEREST TO YOU AND YOU BELIEVE IT CAN HELP YOUR UNIT’S EFFORTS, I RECOMMEND CONTACTING YOUR BRIGADE’S JAG OFFICE. THEY CAN LOCATE THE OFFICIAL REPORT. THOUGH I HAVENT READ IT FOR SOME YEARS, IT WAS FOUND THAT STAFF SERGEANT RIOS VIOLATED OUR UNIT’S PROCEDURES BY WALKING AWAY FROM THE OUTPOST UNAUTHORIZED.

THERE WAS ALSO AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE SHOOTING OF THE INSURGENT ENGAGED BY LIEUTENANT GRANT IN CLOSE QUARTERS. IT WAS FOUND THAT MY COMPANY ACTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH ALL RULES OF ENGAGEMENT.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORDS ABOUT LIEUTENANT GRANT. HIS DEATH WAS A TERRIBLE LOSS FOR ALL OF US WHO SERVED WITH HIM. WE TRIED TO GET HIM THE HELP HE NEEDED. HE’S WITH GOD NOW.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT GIVEN THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF YOUR INQUIRY, AND THE IMPLICATIONS SUGGESTED IN YOUR EMAIL, I’VE ALERTED YOUR CHAIN-OF-COMMAND TO THIS EXCHANGE, SPECIFICALLY YOUR EXECUTIVE OFFICER, A FORMER WEST POINT CLASSMATE OF MINE. HE’S A GOOD OFFICER. ANY FUTURE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO HIM.

YOURS IN SERVICE,

KENNETH TISDALE

MAJOR, INFANTRY

U.S. ARMY

FACEBOOK — NEW MESSAGE

August 18

Lieutenant Porter:

Your name was mentioned in our hometown’s article as the officer who found Elijah so I am especially glad you contacted me. I had been wanting to say thank you for bringing closure to my family, especially my mom. We had another service for Elijah a couple weeks ago, this time with a proper burial.

It’s strange to hear that my brother is still known in Iraq, but also good. To be honest, I don’t really know how to answer your questions. We weren’t close. When he joined the army, he stopped contacting us. He was very bitter — our father left when we were children, and he never stopped being angry about it. Hated school, hated Texas, hated us, hated himself. I didn’t even know he knew Arabic until your message. We didn’t know he’d been sent to Iraq until the army chaplain showed up on our porch to say he’d gone missing there.

As for good stories, there’s this one, which is how I like to remember him. It was his junior year of high school, and he was working at the adventure park, saving up to buy a used car. Some friends and I went to the park after school, and a group of older boys started messing with us. They got on the log ride right after us, and kept taunting us from their log the entire time. They wouldn’t leave us alone. Elijah saw the whole thing. So he waited for our log to go down the big drop, and when their log was at the very top, he shut down the ride and walked away. They were up there for hours, screaming for help. It was funny. Elijah lost his job, but he didn’t care.

Maybe not the greatest story, but it was a nice, older brother thing to do. Don’t have many memories like that.

Hope this helps some and Thank You For Your Service.

Sarah Rios

15 March 2006

Night Flower—

I’m sorry I didn’t visit tonight. There was a mission on the other side of town and the Lieutenant insisted I go. I promise to make it up to you. We got some care packages today — would you prefer a Connect Four board game or a stuffed koala?

Just kidding. I’ll bring you both.

Have you calmed down? You dream of America, but staying here is best. We can have the life you see in the movies, here in Iraq, in Ashuriyah. The America you imagine no longer exists, if it ever did. You need to know that your father lives in more luxury than anyone from my hometown. Until I came to Iraq, until I met your father, I had never been in a house as large as yours. Or known a man who owned five Mercedes. Or seen a marble fountain, like the eagle in your driveway. Be careful what you ask for, Night Flower, that’s all I’m saying.

We will visit, of course. I will show you the monuments in New York and Washington, and take you to the California beaches. But Ashuriyah will be home. Our children will know the meaning of family, and be part of the new Iraq.

I know you’re laughing now. Yes, a new Iraq. They call me the “money man” for a reason. I can — and will — make your father the most important sheik in the province, much more important than just being in charge of Sahwa. We will build roads. We will build schools. We will build power stations and plants. We’re already planning the largest hospital in the country, bigger than anything in Baghdad, something that will make Ashuriyah one of the most important places in the Middle East.

If you still don’t understand, talk to your father. He knows. He believes.

Forty soldiers sleep around me now in the outpost, their minds far away, on everything that is typical. They are here to survive and endure, not to change. All they care about is getting home alive. I used to blame them for this, but that was unfair. I will get them home alive. But I won’t be going with them. I’m staying here. For you. For us.

I met your brother yesterday. I’ll tell you about it next time I visit.

Give your father my best. Good night, Night Flower, tomorrow awaits. Allah is One, the heart is one, and the heart only belongs to the One,

E.

None of the locals could remember a Ramadan like it, not even the elders. The summer heat was supposed to blow away in the wind, they said, not wash away in rain. If they thought it meant anything, though, they kept it to themselves.

I fasted through the holy month, alone among the occupiers. I didn’t quite feel cleansed by it, but it gave me something to talk about with Rana. She was a source now. Our source. We came on the days she said to, when her husband was away in Baghdad managing his concrete business. Her information wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either. She knew of some cache spots along the canal.

She didn’t speak much of the ghost who haunted her, though during our third meeting she let me read one of his love letters. When I handed it back, I searched her face for signs of sadness or reminiscence. I found neither. Instead, she was studying me behind her arrow nose, probing, considering. I swallowed away a blush. She folded up the letter, placing it in a hidden pocket of the gray cotton dress she always seemed to wear.

Snoop came to the hut with me at first, but eventually he stayed with the men in the vehicles outside. “To play cards,” he said. We were short-timers now. For the soldiers, home wasn’t just a thing we’d left anymore. It was a thing that awaited.

Out there, the war endured. A land of bullets and fatwas, out there assured only death. I understood that now. The desert had always meant death for strange infidels far from home, from Alexander the Great to Elijah Rios. There were no dust storms in the sheika’s hut, though, no scorpions or holy wars. It smelled of lush wildflowers, not hot trash. With her, I felt no headaches. We listened to the playful shouts of her boys, not the shrieks of mortar shells. The war existed beyond the hamlet. In the hut — in the hut was something else.

She spoke of the past with small, soft hands flitting toward the sky. I spoke of the present with anxious proclamations. I told her to smile more. She told me to find her reasons to.

One dreary afternoon, she asked how we’d come to find Shaba’s remains. I didn’t want to say, but she insisted.

I talked about the wake, about Haitham’s call, about the fatwa that relegated Ibrahim to Camp Independence, about all the tribal leaders who knew the bones were there but had pled ignorance. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get them. We’ll get them all.”