Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

“He was bleeding a lot,” Doc Cork said.

“So much,” Snoop said.

“Like a stuck pig,” Hog said.

Some of them remembered the Barbie Kid being there, across the street in a ditch, just watching the festival like everyone else. Others swore he materialized out of nowhere, that they would’ve remembered him walking across the street, dragging his cooler like a gypsy wagon.

We’re soldiers, they said. We were trained to notice things like that.

No one would admit to remembering what came next, not clearly at least. No one would talk about it, either. No one but Hog.

“He started looking through his cooler,” he said. “I thought he was looking for porn mags to sell us, or maybe Boom Booms. I was walking over to Snoop to ask about the whipping guy, when I heard two shots real quick — like BANG BANG. Then a different shot, which was Sergeant Dominguez shooting the Barbie Kid.

“Doc Cork ran to them both right away. But he’d shot Chambers straight through the brain. And Sergeant Dominguez had shot the Barbie Kid in the chest. They were already dead. It all happened so fast.”

“The shots were different?” I asked.

“Different sounds,” Hog said. “The first two were pistol pops. Glock, I think. The last one was a whistle, Sergeant Dominguez’s rifle.”

I thought about the strings I’d pulled to get the Barbie Kid out of jail. It had seemed the right thing to do then.

Then I wondered where the Barbie Kid had found a Glock. No way, I thought. No way.

I asked how Dominguez was. “He killed a kid. That’s not something you just get over.”

I didn’t know any of that in the operations center, though. I just knew an Iraqi kid had shot Sergeant Chambers, and I was supposed to be surprised about it but I wasn’t, not at all. The major said I didn’t have to finish my PowerPoint graph. So I left.

•  •  •

Roaming the gravel paths of Camp Independence, I ended up alongside the eastern gate, as far from Ashuriyah as I could get. To the south lay the dulled lights of the airfield, the mire of Halliburton trailers, the club I’d never made it to. Through the muddy night to the north was the aid station we’d taken little Ahmed to. And to the west were softball fields, the bank, the detention center housing Yousef.

I checked my pack to make sure the file was still there.

I retraced my steps, passing the tank graveyard again. The contractors had set down their blowtorches for the night. The housing trailers rose into sight. I again thought of Chambers.

I’d never know why he’d kept quiet about the Sahwa money. If anyone could’ve sealed my fate, it’d been him. But he’d spared me, for reasons I’d always wonder about. Maybe he thought he’d won. Maybe he thought I’d gotten what I deserved.

In my trailer, I poured myself a glass of Rip It over ice. Two packed duffel bags stood in the corner, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The pressed, pure uniform of a fobbit hung in the closet, ready to fly home and greet my family at the welcome-home ceremony. I sat down and opened the file. One hundred forty pages of interrogation transcripts awaited.

Most of the pages had to do with Yousef’s weapons smuggling and al-Qaeda contacts. His denials and nonresponses became names and connections around page 39, after loud Metallica songs became part of his daily regimen. What a weird thing to break someone, I thought. It wasn’t until page 92, though, and a second glass of Rip It that I found what I sought.

Q: You said earlier that you smuggled things other than weapons.

Detainee 2496: Yes.

Q: What?

Detainee 2496: Not what. Who.

Q: People.

Detainee 2496: People who wanted to get out of the country.

Q: Where did you take them?

Detainee 2496: Depends. Syria, usually. Jordan, sometimes. Lebanon.

Q: And you did?

Detainee 2496: Of course. It was a business. I’m a businessman.

Q: Who would you do this for?

Detainee 2496: Whoever paid. Rich, poor, Sunni, Shi’a. Police, imams. Even worked with an American once.

Q: An American?

Detainee 2496: Yes. An officer.

Q: Why would an American officer work with you?

Detainee 2496: Business.

Remarkably, the interrogator didn’t follow up, steering the questioning back to weapons smuggling along the Syrian border. The whole transcript carried an air of disbelief — someone had scrawled “Broke too easy, probs not believable” on the top of page 48. I didn’t care about any of that, though, even the part about me. I read Yousef’s “Of course. It was a business. I’m a businessman” response a hundred times, trying to glean meaning from it.

There’s nothing here, I finally thought. No secret, no veil, no encryption. Which meant they’d made it. Or at least maybe they’d made it, which was something. And having something instead of nothing felt like everything.

We alter the past for the sake of the future, memories bending like light.

I came to Beirut fleeing and seeking. Fleeing home, where I’d started drinking too much and had crashed my dad’s car into a neighborhood birch tree. I left the army under a cloud of scrutiny for the missing Sahwa money, though they never could figure out where it went. I chalked that up as a victory for personal initiative over bureaucracy, took a piss one night on the commanding general’s lawn, and left Hawaii eager to sleep in and grow my hair out, honorable discharge in hand.

After six months of falling into all the normal veteran traps — not just the booze but also believing my own bullshit stories, believing in my own invincibility — a fresh start seemed necessary. So when a Middle Eastern studies scholarship to the American University of Beirut presented itself, I didn’t hesitate. The desert awaited, again.

Snoop moved here soon after I arrived, though I don’t call him that anymore. He’s Qasim. He got across the Syrian border just as the last American Stryker moved into Kuwait. He doesn’t say how, and I don’t ask. We share a flat above a tattoo parlor on Hamra Street. The GI Bill pays for most of our rent, and the money he earns from selling pirated DVDs covers the rest.

We both like smoking hookah with pretty young women, so it’s working out. I wish he’d do the dishes more, and he leaves sunflower seed shells everywhere. I remember him being more responsive during the war. If I’ve gotten soft, he’s gotten lazy.

My mom and Will visited for a couple of weeks in the winter. I took her antiques shopping, and to lunch with one of my professors. I think she wanted proof that I was attending classes. She liked Beirut, though; said it had dignity. Will couldn’t stand being back over here, though. Creeped him out. He wouldn’t eat at any of the local spots, and kept ordering takeout from an Italian restaurant. When I made fun of him, he accused me of going native. He’s proud, though, I can tell.

We don’t spend all our time looking for Rana and her boys, not anymore. This is a big city. More than two million. They’re here, somewhere. Sometimes I walk the refugee ghettoes and ask around. Qasim tells me not to go alone, but I’ve led men in combat — I’m not afraid of the slums. Though fingering a cube of hard green metal in my pocket is a far cry from carrying an assault rifle.

I just want an answer for why. That’s all.

Last month on TV, we watched al-Qaeda plant black flags on top of government buildings in Ramadi. Only thirty miles southwest of Ashuriyah; I looked it up. It wasn’t quite the Fall of Saigon, but it felt close enough.