The People of Forever Are Not Afraid (6 page)

Nature and him and him and nature and. On the third hour, I think I see boys running, glowing in red, on top of the hill. Small figures holding large squares. I blink, and they are gone.

When I get back to the caravan, I land my ammunition vest on the floor with a thump, and it wakes Dana.

“Haven’t you noticed?” she asks.

“What?” I say.

“Hagar has been telling everyone the village boys have ripped the ‘closed military area’ signs off the fence.”

“What do they need them for?”

“The officer said they sell the metal. That metal sells for melting. But listen to this—they only took the red ones. Isn’t that weird?”

I cannot help but laugh. These little crawling boys have no qualms. They are not afraid. And now they have begun stealing our base.

“It’s not funny!” Dana says, her whisper louder than a shout.

“It is sort of funny,” I say. “I mean, I bet the boys stole only the red ones to be funny.”

Dana doesn’t get it. Her boyfriend is twenty-seven. They met when she was a senior in high school. She never knew him like I know Moshe; she never knew him as a boy. She is rubbing vanilla oil behind her ear, on her wrists and neck. This is because her boyfriend likes vanilla. He told her that once. She rubs it on her skin twice a day, even though he is so far away and cannot smell her.

She asks, “Why would they care about being funny?” but I don’t even try to explain. I take off my military boots and climb onto the field bed with my uniform on, so I have more time to sleep before I wake up to train Boris. How could I explain to her that boys don’t care about being funny, that they just are?

I don’t explain it to her. Instead I wake up when she is still
asleep and take the little glass bottle of vanilla oil and put it for safekeeping in the pocket of my pants.

B
ORIS HOPES
we’ll start the training with actual bullets this time, but after we set up, I take his weapon from him without a word and unload it. He lies down on the cement, and I hover about him, correcting his body.

I make sure that his left hand is at a ninety-degree angle and that his palm lets the gun rest on it without strain.

“We are working with bone here,” I say. “If you work your muscles, they’ll shake.”

As I adjust the angle of his hand, I can feel his pulse and smell industrial soap.

“Don’t break your wrist!” I shout, straightening his right hand, the one holding the handle. “We talked about this yesterday.”

I kick his legs, hard, so that his left leg continues the exact line of the barrel and his right leg is spread apart, making a forty-five-degree angle. His butt clamps with every kick.

When I lean down and show him how to splatter his cheek on the buttstock, starting up then down until he is on target, I feel the softness of him, his pores with no hair.

I place a coin on the edge of his barrel and lie down right in front of it, holding my head up with my hands.

I tell him to look at me. “Aim for my eye,” I say.

He slowly clicks the safety, then presses the trigger.

The coin falls, hitting the cement with a tiny rattle.

“Again,” I say. “We’ll do this until you are stable.”

I place the coin back on the edge of the barrel. I lie back
down. He closes his left eye. His right eye looks into mine through gunpoint, circular and intending and blue. He presses the trigger.

The coin falls.

“Again,” I say.

“Again,” I say.

“Again.”

I am going to do this all day. I’ll do it until it’s time for my shift. I’ll do it even longer. The hell with the shift, the hell with everything, again, again, again, and then—

He presses the trigger and the coin stays on the barrel. The only part of him that moves is his left eyelid. Our eyes are staring right at each other, and we are silent.

“Again,” he says, barely moving his chapped lips.

The coin falls, then stays, then falls, then stays, then stays, then stays.

I keep my eyes on his the whole time, but as soon as I let them wander I notice that his left elbow is wet, bleeding into his shirt from holding the gun for so long.

“You are ready to shoot,” I say.

I put five bullets in his magazine. We shoot from the flat cement.

Three out of five! I swear! Two in the legs, but still, I swear! I run back to the cement after checking his target and load five more bullets in his magazine. “How did I do?” he asks.

“Again,” I say, as calmly as I can, but I can almost feel the joy buzzing from my cheeks and into his blue eyes.

Boomboomboom.

“Stop!”

Boom.

“Stop!” I kick him.

Four boys have crawled onto the range, under Boris’s fire. They are dark and small and elastic, moving faster and faster on the ground like lizards, collecting empty bullet shells in their plastic bags—fast, lit, their movements as exact as acrobats.

“What is that?” Boris asks, still lying on the ground.

“Boys,” I say. “They are stealing our bullet shells. I mean,
actually
stealing bullet shells.” Bullet shells are not even real metal. Even in Israel, they could probably only sell them for five shekels a kilo. I can’t even imagine. It’s brilliant. It is hysterical.

I know I should not smile, but I do, and with the smile I blink, and when I open my eyes again the boys are gone.

“Palestinian boys?” Boris asks. “How could we just let them go?”

“They are just boys,” I say. “They steal things from our base all the time.”

Boris gets up from the cement, and for a second we are standing very close. I smell the copper of his blood and his unwashed scalp.

“Tomorrow I’ll teach you more things,” I say. “Secrets, tricks.”

Boris straightens his back and nods, like a gentleman, holding himself as tall as he can, the muscles of his neck shaking, loose.

A
T NIGHT
, back in the caravan, before another eight-hour shift, I call Moshe.

“We are broken up,” I say.

“Now, I know it isn’t me this time,” he says.

“No,” I say. “It
is
you. Aren’t you listening?”

“Good,” he says. “If it’s me, then that’s good. I never worry about me. I worry about you.”

He is the only boy I ever kissed. Moshe. I have been kissing him since he was a very young boy, and I was even younger.

B
ORIS AND
I move ahead to shooting from sand and rocks, an unsteady surface. Before we start, I tell him to give me his hand. Mine is more coarse. Though I am his height, my hand looks in his a lifetime smaller. I take his right index finger and explain.

“The lowest third of your finger is called the ‘Indifferent.’ It is not perceptive enough to accurately push the trigger. The top part of your finger is called the ‘Sensitive.’ It is too vulnerable to remain steady when you press the trigger.” My breath releases fumes into the cold air. My nose drips a tiny drop into our hands, and when I look up Boris’s white smile hits my eyes.

I look down again. “And this part,” I say and pinch the middle part of his finger, “this part is called the ‘Hammer,’ and this is the part you should press the trigger with. This part is perfect.”

“I never knew there was a part of me that’s perfect,” Boris says. His eyes are beaming at my words, just like Dan’s did once when I was very young, when we both stood by a bench
in Jerusalem Street. His hand moves in mine, and I cannot tell if it is the cold or intention. I hesitate.

“Well,” I say. “Now you know.”

We stand silent for a minute, until at once we both pull away. The hills of Hebron loom above us like monsters and the sky feels larger, further away when I look up at it, as if we are at the very bottom of an ocean.

“Hey Boris,” I say. “Have you heard what they are doing behind the new mall in Jerusalem?”

“What are they doing?”

“Your mom,” and with that I kick his leg, making him fall to the ground, hearing him laugh before he even hits it. A glorious laughter, deep and uncontrollable.

He shoots and hits two out of five. I run back from marking his target, and without a word I take the magazine out of his weapon and make sure it is unloaded.

“Get up,” I shout. “Take your earplugs out.”

I am sure the two bullets he hit are his first two. After that, he kept on moving out of position.

I point the gun in the sky and bring it close to Boris’s ear. There are small yellow dots of dirt in his inner ear, and this makes me love him. Love him more.

I press the trigger, and then I don’t let it go. One second, two seconds, three.

Clank.

“After each bullet you shoot, I want you to count to three. I want you to be able to hear this sound each time, the sound of a new bullet pressing into the chamber.”

“What does it matter what I do after I already shot the bullet?” Boris asks.

It matters for tricking his brain. If he knows he has to wait after each bullet, he is less likely to jump the trigger and bend out of form. I don’t tell him that, though. By now I know people only need to know what they need to know to do well.

“It matters because I said so, and you should do as you are told.”

This time, he hits four out of five, three to the heart and one at the edge of the head.

D
URING MY
guarding shift, it starts as an idea, then it is a thought, soon a feeling, and then it is so real I can almost see it in front of my eyes, except I cannot; something is terribly off. Missing.

I reach the top of the hill overlooking the ammunition bunker, light my flashlight, and stare at the entire base below. Crickets bay away and close. I blink, then open my eyes.

It is the most ludicrous, charming thing I have ever seen.

The fence around the base, by the ammunition bunker; it is gone. Not there anymore. Vanished.

Those boys. Those devil boys. They have stolen it.

The metal buyer of their village could be melting it in these very moments.

This shift, like all others, is eight hours long, but the seconds and minutes and hours glide by like a child on a slide. I don’t think of my boyfriend, or nature, or time, or boys even. All I can do is think: