Authors: David Abrams
“I—” Harkleroad whispered, “I—it’s—”
The telephone rang again. Gooding reached over, picked up the receiver, and listened for several seconds, then said, “Hold on just one moment, please.” He looked at Harkleroad with eyes beat brown with fatigue. “It’s them again, sir. The
Times
.”
Something slithered loose from Harkleroad’s bowels and squished into his underwear.
Overhead, the voice of SMOG talked to him, repeating the same thing over and over, but Eustace couldn’t make it out, it was all vowels and those vowels echoed in round circles throughout Saddam’s marbled palace until they collected, gathered in a swirl, and rose in one tornado of sound that funneled into his ear, his good ear. It was nonsense to him, the nonsense of the war, now scattering debris inside his head. It went on, and on, and on . . .
As anxiety funneled its way to Harkleroad—the CG, the chief, the soldiers patrolling the streets, the no-good so-and-sos at the
New York Tiddleywink Times,
and, who knows, maybe even armies of once-defeated terrorists rising from the dead, all converging on him like ants swarming a lump of sugar—he felt himself shrink from a decision. All these things tussled in his mind, along with the worry of displeasing his mother. If he said anything—“Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe”—it could prove to be the wrong thing, and
then
how would Eulalie Harkleroad hold up her head at Wednesday Night Bible Study?
Staff Sergeant Gooding’s hand was cupped over the receiver. “Sir? What should we say?”
Harkleroad struggled to shake off his anxiety. “Tell them . . .” He faltered, not for the first or the last time, at a loss for words. “Tell them . . .”
In the back of his nose, he felt the first prickling tingle of descending blood.
34
GOODING
T
ell them
what,
sir? Tell them we’re all doomed? Tell them we’ve reached the end of the symphony and all that remains is the timpani roll and the cymbal crash? Tell them no matter how many words we put on pieces of paper, it’s all useless in the end because those press releases just wind up as some editor’s paper basketball arcing through the air into a wastebasket in a newsroom somewhere in South Dakota? Tell them
that
?
Chance Gooding Jr. felt part of himself break away, like a chunk of glacier calving, a slow-motion slip and slide into arctic waters. Something inside fled, never to return. He was in the war, but he was not of the war.
In his hand, he could feel the buzz of voices on the other end of the phone connection. They came through the holes of the receiver like ants and started biting his skin.
His skull swelled with blood, a gnat cloud of stars swept across his vision, and his head snapped free to rise like a balloon. He bobbed against the ceiling over his desk and watched it all unspool across Cubicle Land:
The reams of Significant Activity reports, self-replenished every hour.
The impatient cursor blinking on his computer screen, waiting for the approval of the press release.
The tip of Harkleroad’s nose, the nervous blood that would soon grow to a red mustache on his upper lip.
The CG threading his way through the cubicles, a missile aimed at the trembling target: P-A-Fucking-O.
The clack and clatter rising from a hundred keyboards in the palace.
The voice of SMOG reeling off another casualty: arm broken, foot missing.
Someone across the room whooping at a computer solitaire victory.
Someone else brewing a cappuccino with a boiling hiss.
And, outside the palace on the other side of the FOB, Gooding could see an American sergeant at an M16 firing range teaching an Iraqi sergeant—for the twenty-eighth time—about breath control and trigger squeeze. The nod of the Iraqi, the raise of the weapon, the jerk of the trigger, and the wild shot that went high and brought down a goose that, until that moment, had been enjoying a peaceful migration south. And farther beyond the protective ring of security around the American base, the scream of a Local National being tortured by Sunni interrogators. The cold, precise snip of pruning shears removing a set of toes one at a time. The laughter, the scream, the “
Allahu Akbar!
” And farthest away of all, the intangible thud of a mortar striking the earth followed by the mewl of sirens.
Gooding’s head floated back down, returning to his neck with a crisp snap. He blinked and he was himself again.
That is why he can be so certain of what happened next. For the first time since entering this combat zone, he was himself and he knew exactly what he was doing.
He hung up the phone with a loud
clunk,
cutting off the
New York Times
in mid-antcrawl. His breath coming fast and hard, he logged off his computer, rose from his desk, and announced in a trumpet-clear voice to the cubicles at large: “I’ve had enough.”
Then, before he could change his mind, Chance Gooding Jr. sprinted from the Seventh Armored Division Headquarters. As he exited the palace, vaulting down the marble steps two at a time, he left behind his M16, his battle gear, a slack-jawed Harkleroad, and a still-growling commanding general.
He shot past the guards at the checkpoint, past the rows of trailer hooches, past the shores of Saddam’s Z Lake, past the fitness center with the new hole punched in its roof, past the Australian pool, past the motor pool, the dining facility, the chapel, the What-the-Cluck Chicken Shack, and the phone center with its spring-slap door—past the whole fucking lot of it, this temporary, soon-to-be-abandoned-and-razed American city called FOB Triumph.
He ran without cease. His legs were hot iron bands and his lungs were breath-harshed sacs near collapse, but still he ran.
It was only when he was within sight of the Main Gate, the dark mystery of Baghdad lurking just beyond the bristle of concertina wire, that Chance Gooding realized he had no helmet, no flak vest, no weapon. He hesitated for a second but then tucked his bare head to his chest and continued to sprint toward the guards at the checkpoint who were even now bringing up their rifles and shouting for him to “Stop!”
Somewhere to the north, a mortar shrieked across the sky, coming closer, ever closer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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