Authors: David Abrams
Somewhere along the line, some soldier at the beginning of the war must have mentioned to his mother that he and his buddies had no way to wash their hands after eating T-rats out in the middle of the desert, where running water was hard to come by (at least in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, this was very true), so if she could manage to send a box or two of baby wipes to him and the rest of the guys, that would be totally awesome. Word must have spread. Since then, baby wipes had been appearing on the “Much Needed” lists at the care package Web sites, and now Abe Shrinkle’s west wall was completely bricked with plastic tubs of baby wipes. They numbered in the hundreds, floor to ceiling, and provided a noise buffer against the Blackhawks chopping low overhead.
They also served a more immediate, economic purpose for Abe Shrinkle. He hadn’t known what to do with them until Second Lieutenant Pepperhill came to Bravo Company in March. Pepperhill’s wife had given birth one month before he shipped out. It was their first child and Pepperhill wasn’t taking being away from his new family very well. So every five days, like clockwork, he paid Shrinkle $4 for a tub then took it back to the privacy of his hooch, pulled out a baby wipe, sniffed the antiseptic powdery perfume, and remembered what his baby’s butt smelled like back in Lafayette, Louisiana. There were nights when his soldiers came back from patrol and found their lieutenant sitting there on his cot rubbing a baby wipe all over his face and crying deep, heavy homesick sobs.
Sometimes Shrinkle received large envelopes full of letters written by entire classrooms of students at the behest of their teachers.
Dear Hero,
Thank you for your hard work on keeping me and my family safe. I know that you have been their for a long time. It’s been hard for everyone.
Sinserily your friend,
Fernando M.
P.S. Stay safe. Oh by the way, even if you die you will still be my hero.
and,
To Abe: Yore in my famly’s prayers evry nite at dinner. Be verey verey verey verey verey verey verey verey verey verey verey verey carful. My name is Kirsten age 7. Yore friend, Kirsten.
and,
Dear Soljer,
Mrs. Parker is makeing me write this. I don’t like Mrs. Parker. Did you like your teechers? Teechers are the worst. They’re worser than splinters. My dad agrees with me and says Mrs. Parker is a dried-up ole bitch whose cooch fell out a long time ago. I don’t know what a cooch is, but if Mrs. Parker ever had one, I’m sure she lost it a long time ago like my dad says. Well, I hope you are well over there. Stay cool!
Darius K. Abernathy
Shrinkle was sitting on the edge of his cot reading through some of his favorite letters and trying to forget what had happened at Adhamiya when a knock rattled the door of his trailer.
Shrinkle’s heart seized up.
This was it! They were coming for him!
Despite the comfort of his care packages and the solace of Norma Tingledecker’s Wyoming poetry, Abe still had not been able to completely exorcise the guilt of that night when, it was alleged, he’d barbecued an Iraqi to death. He’d been listlessly combing through boxes and rereading letters, all the time trying to stifle his sobs. He figured it was early onset of PTSD but he felt powerless to stop it.
BAM! BOOM! BAM!
The fist continued to thunder on his trailer door.
Abe sat quiet as a mouse on anesthesia.
Another explosion of knocks and, “Captain Shrinkle? You in there?”
It was the battalion commander.
Curses!
No way he could get around this now. He’d been ferreted out (though, he realized too late, if he really wanted to hide from his fate, he could have picked a better spot than his own trailer).
“Abe! I know you’re there. I can hear you sniffing.”
“C-coming, sir.” Abe’s voice was still rough from all those tears, that crying jag he’d been on for the last hour. “Just give me one minute, sir.”
Muffled through the door came the words: “I’ll wait. We’ve got all day.” The wooden steps creaked as Lieutenant Colonel Duret settled back for the coming pounce.
Shrinkle stuffed the third graders’ letters back in the envelope, his hands not just trembling but visibly shaking with a palsy now. First Quillpen, then Mr. Snowpants, and now this mess with the grenade. Adhamiya, he had to admit, might have been the worst. It roared back into his head, unbidden.
The night, the street, the Iraqis. The crumpled hood of the truck, the engine rendered useless. The caved-in side of the bus. The teenager holding his broken arm and screaming Arabic curses. The growing mob of Local Nationals. The way they always hemmed him in. Always pressing, pressing, pressing closer.
If they’d just give him some room to think, some time to sort this into compartments!
The night, the street, the mob, his hasty decision to toss the grenade. The quick-blooming flower of fire. His self-satisfaction—what a joke!—of mission complete. The long drive back to Triumph, his gunner swiveling in the roof of the Humvee, complaining aloud about how the sling cut into his ass. All of them ducking their heads to avoid a face full of gunner ass. Abe thinking about how his own ass was now in a sling (and he didn’t even know about the dead Local National at that point). The wary looks his soldiers gave him the whole ride home. The way Sergeant Lumley’s eyes slid away from him. The rapid, slot-machine cha-
ching
of his soldiers clearing their weapons at Triumph’s entry control point. The look on the staff duty officer’s face as he asked Abe if he was Bravo Company’s commander. The way he said, we’ve got a problem—
you’ve
got a problem. There was a body. There was a body under the truck. The way Abe’s heart had plummeted. The way it was still plummeting.
Abe knew he was in the stickiest of wickets. He was thinking UCMJ, relief for cause, court-martial, execution by firing squad (for which he would request a cigarette, even though he didn’t smoke).
BAM BAM BAM!
Captain Abe Shrinkle rose from his bed, praying he wouldn’t piss his pants when the final moment arrived.
15
GOODING
T
he morning Battlefield Update Briefing puckered assholes from Taji to Triumph, each satellite station joining the SMOG conference call with a remote anxiety that couldn’t be concealed from fellow listeners. Tremulous baritone voices had their say, broadcasting from their various SMOG locations: the commanding general had his usual responsive grunts of approval (or was it disapproval? Sometimes the two types of his grunts were indistinguishable); the chief of staff had his requisite chime ins, reinforcing what the general had grunted, adding his own strenuous giddy-up-and-go admonitions. The overall tone of the briefing was one of, “Okay, hold on, keep it together, we’re almost through with this, just pray he doesn’t single me out.” (
He
being the Old Man himself, General Bright, whose raspy commanding-general voice could reach right through the SMOG speakers and choke even the most hardened artillery officer into incoherent stutters.) Now, deep inside the Desert Camouflage Uniform pants of the most nervous staff officers crowded around SMOG stations in the palace, assholes were starting to unpucker—if not quite all the way, then there was certainly a little more sphincter breathability in the wedged-up cotton Hanes; or, in the case of those who went commando, the sandy folds of DCU’ed butts. A couple of pent-up farts were allowed to escape.
Now the Intel officer was briefing from his SMOG station. “Ensure all soldiers understand there is a very high probability we will have increased security measures as an interior guard of some sort is stood up. Ensure they are ready to assume what would be a typical combat operational manning posture of eight-eight-eight [eight hours performing primary function, eight hours performing maintenance or guard, and eight hours for sleep/physical fitness/personal hygiene]. Interior guard may be required as the terrorists become more desperate to achieve success.”
“You have reason to believe these attacks are imminent, G-2?” the general rasped.
“Yes, sir. We have credible sources that pinpoint time and location to within a probability factor of plus/minus three-point-five, at a minimum.”
“Very good, G-2. Proceed.”
But it was
not
“very good” for all those Fobbits sitting at their desks listening to the report. Their spines were chilled, their veins were icy. Their imaginations buzzed with the idea of dark figures slipping over the concrete walls, slinking through the concertina wire, hundreds of them trying to overrun FOB Triumph en masse. Fobbits clung to the hope that most, if not all, of the attacking terrorists would be cut down by the machine-gun fire from the gate guards and perhaps the helicopters that would be airborne at a moment’s notice. But what if four or five or fifteen of the more determined and more devout terrorists slipped past the defense, moving deeper into the camp with their AK-47s? What then? Were the Fobbits prepared for that?
At his desk, Staff Sergeant Gooding stopped typing that day’s media report and thought about the loaded magazine he carried around in his cargo pocket. He wondered how fast he could unbutton the pocket, unzip the Ziploc baggie he used to keep the ammo dry and lint-free, shove the magazine into his M16, bring it up to fire, and move the selector switch from
safe
to
semi
. What then? How many more seconds would he waste trying to decide whether or not he should pull the trigger at the man advancing toward him with
his
gun raised to fire? Yes, Gooding had had semiannual training at the rifle range, but the targets there only popped up on springs, they never got to their feet and walked toward him.
“I’m screwed,” he groaned to himself. “We’re all screwed.” He prayed G-2 was not-so-intelligent in at least this one instance.
Now the Civil Affairs officer was reporting on yesterday’s successful Beanie Baby mission to al-Khadhimiya: “The indigenous population was so receptive to our cultural handouts they had to be restrained with a hasty perimeter we quickly established using force protection measures one through three.”
“Okay!” General Bright barked through the SMOG speakers. “Let’s continue with today’s update. PAO! You’re up next.”
At his workstation, head clamped between the earphones, Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad blanched. With his microphone on mute, he turned to the G-5 major sitting next to him. “Did he say
me
?”
“He said you.”
“He can’t have meant
me
. I’m always second-to-last to brief.” Harkleroad’s voice elevated to schoolgirl pitch.
The G-5 major pointed to the
TALK
button on the keyboard. “You’d better say something, he’s waiting.”
“PAO!” the general crackled through the headset. “I’m waiting on you, PAO.”
Harkleroad pushed
TALK
. “Y-yes, sir.”
“You got a major malfunction this morning, PAO?”
Scattered, subdued laughter rose from cubicles throughout the division’s area of operations.
“No, sir. No malfunction, sir. Just getting my notes together.”
“Well, hurry up, PAO. The war can’t wait on you to get your act together.” Now it sounded like he was laughing conspiratorially to those sitting around him in his office.
Harkleroad dropped his binder and the metal rings broke open, spilling papers everywhere. All across the division, staff officers could distinctly hear him say, “Oh, fiddlesticks!” Most of the officers were unable to punch the
MUTE
button before their laughter bubbled out across the SMOG speakers.
General Bright’s irritated rasp interrupted the proceedings. “Time waits for no man, PAO! We’ll come back to you later. G-6! Let’s have your report!”
At his desk, Staff Sergeant Gooding sank lower into his seat. He was already used to cringing every time Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad opened his mouth but this was a new low. He predicted he’d be met with the sympathetic wink and snicker when he entered the dining facility at lunchtime today. Thank God he had the relief of R&R coming up in three days. He would bake his brain in the sun of Qatar and, for a brief blessed span of time, erase Harkleroad and his continental bloodstains from his mind.
General Bright barked for the chaplain to take his turn. Each day’s BUB was brought to a close with the daily homily —by order of the CG, a semireligious man himself—and these ninety-second sermonettes could sometimes get out of control, stretching to three or four minutes, which the CG allowed without interruption. The chaplain’s voice over the SMOG loudspeaker would continue to chirp away unabated while all around the division’s Area of Operations—from Baqubah to Mahmudiyah—staff officers at remote computer stations shifted on their chairs, many of them rolling their eyes or silently mouthing things like “waste-o-time” or “Yea, though I walk through the valley of knee-deep shit,” all of them eager to get on with the day’s business. The CG had just issued a fuckload of marching orders during the BUB and now the staff officers’ minds were racing ahead to PowerPoint briefings, Op Orders, crisis management plans, and—in one specific case—ensuring enough lobster was procured in time for Friday night’s Bounty of the Sea dinner menu at the chow hall.