“Do what you have to, kid.”
“I’ll have to mention you by name. Lieutenant . . . what is it now?”
“Go fuck yourself.” A surprising rage grew inside me. I worked to put it away.
Doug whistled and stepped aside.
Dodge took a step closer and put his shoulder into my back.
Mr. Moss closed his binder. “Okay, Lieutenant Go-Fuck-Yourself. Why do you think I agreed to come out here? Why do you think the Provincial Reconstruction Office took an interest?”
“Honestly, I don’t care.”
“Because this is an opportunity to win the war, just a little. To show the Iraqis that we are here to help. To show them what Americans are all about. Hard work.” He pointed to the Iraqi trucks and the men squatting impatiently in the dirt by the tailgates. “These gentlemen will be offended. Worse, our Iraqi friends will be insulted that they’re not getting these recovered barrels today, as promised.”
Dodge snorted and laughed under his breath.
“Who is this?” Mr. Moss demanded.
“He’s my terp. And he tells me that your Iraqi friends are Ansar al-Sunna.”
Mr. Moss finally exploded. “How the fuck would he know that?” he yelled.
“I live here,” Dodge replied, before suddenly, and conspicuously, taking the weight of his shoulder out of my back and stepping away. Something had spooked him, but with Mr. Moss’s eyes locked on me I didn’t have time to investigate why.
“So that’s it?” Mr. Moss asked.
“Yes. That’s it.”
Mr. Moss yelled out for his man. “Doug? Bring Muhammad over here.” He pulled his door shut and sealed himself inside the cold, armored cocoon without another word.
“Dodge, let’s . . .” I turned around and found he’d already started back toward our Humvee, with the Nomex hood pulled over his face and sunglasses on to hide his eyes. He looked down and steered a wide course to avoid Doug and the young, well-dressed Iraqi man he was escorting toward the Suburban.
As I jogged to catch up, Doug called out to me, “Not winning the war today, dude?”
“Not today.”
“Good deal.” He laughed. “Means I’ll get a new contract. Get to pay off the beach house thirty years early.”
I started to look away, but something made me stop. Something about the young Iraqi man, Muhammad, walking with Doug. His familiar features. The way he squinted with interest and confusion at Dodge’s back. He noticed me and our eyes met.
He nodded gravely and I nodded back, unsure why. The Suburban door opened again, and I watched as he entered into an animated discussion with Mr. Moss.
Dodge was already in his seat and eager to leave when I made it back to the Humvee. Zahn sat in the driver’s seat with his helmet off and a bottle of water between his knees, looking like he’d been beaten up. Gomez stood by his open door with her hand on his knee.
“Sir?” she asked almost sheepishly.
“It’s no good. We’re leaving.”
She cracked half a grin, not the full smile she reserved for Zahn. “For real, sir?”
“Yes. We’re Oscar Mike in three minutes.”
She turned and ran, screaming, “Button up! Vehicle commanders, get your reports ready!”
I settled into my seat and examined Zahn. The blisters had receded on his cheeks under a sheen of ointment, and his eyes had begun to dry out. “You good to drive?”
“I am, sir. But, you . . . Sir, you need to look at yourself.”
Right then, and for the first time since I’d stumbled away from the pool, I felt the pain. As if hungry creatures, microscopic and clawed, had filled expanding cracks in the skin around my eyes and were digging their way into my sinuses. I winced and checked my face in the rearview mirror. Weeping blisters grew in concentric rings around my eyes. Horrifyingly symmetrical and moving relentlessly south.
Doc Pleasant leaned over my seat with a tin of salve. He’d had to dump the contents of his medical bag in the backseat to find it. “Rub this under your eyes, sir.”
I did as he told me, and the relief made me gasp involuntarily. I closed my eyes, leaned my head back, and spread the ointment with quivering fingers. The stuff of luxury. My face felt suddenly cold, even in the stifling Humvee. I took deep breaths and sighed.
When I opened my eyes, both Doc Pleasant and Zahn were smiling at me.
“Good job, sir.” Zahn reached out his gloved hand and slapped my knee.
Gomez came up on the radio. “All vics. Oscar Mike.”
I frowned at Zahn. “Just go.”
Zahn steered us out of the subdivision, back into the ruts and pits of the dirt road. Dodge pulled down his hood, took off his sunglasses, and showed his face, pale and dry.
“You good, Dodge?” I asked.
“About as well as you,
Mulasim
.” He swallowed hard like he might vomit.
From: Road Repair Platoon Commander, Engineer Support Company
To: Hospitalman Lester Pleasant
You are counseled on this date regarding the following deficiencies:
Failure to adequately prepare for missions.
Failure to arrive on time for mission briefs.
Unprofessional personal appearance.
Unprofessional behavior toward superiors.
You are directed to take immediate corrective action. Assistance is available through your chain of
command. Failure to take corrective action will result in adverse judicial or administrative action, including but not limited to administrative separation.
Christmas at home had a strange feel to it, and I wasn’t expecting that. These last few years, since I messed up things with the relatives, it’s been just Dad and me eating takeout for Christmas dinner, exchanging a gift or two, and watching college football. And that was good enough.
But this year, after I’d left Lizzy’s place and driven home, I felt like a stranger in the old house. Like I’d violated some trust by leaving him alone down there and now the house had it in for me.
The floorboards groaned when I walked down the hallway with the framed pictures of my grandmother, my dad, all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. They smiled at me from the walls, and the groans started to feel like them talking. Asking me who I thought I was, leaving him down here without someone watching. You really think you can keep things straight out there with that punk-rock girl and her friends?
It seemed like wherever my dad went, the house leaned to follow him. When he walked out to the porch and let the screen door bounce shut, I felt the house tilt in his direction and the awnings settle over him like palmettos. When he walked into the dining room, my grandmother’s crystal china in the old hutch rattled off a tune. More than once, I felt him standing outside my bedroom door thinking about whether to knock.
I gave him a pocketknife on Christmas morning, and he handed me a hundred dollars.
“Thought you might need cash, right now. For a lease, or things like that.”
“Thanks for this, but I’m still not sure if the New Orleans thing is permanent. I’ll probably see you in a few days.”
That was Christmas morning. It’s New Year’s Eve now, and I haven’t called him since I drove away with my truck all loaded up.
I stashed all my stuff at Landry’s, so Lizzy wouldn’t see it. I don’t want her getting spooked by the sight of my things, ready to move in some place, and have her start wondering if I’m reading too much into this. Her friends are all back in town, and I’m not sure how much she needs my company anymore.
But then Lizzy invited me over to her house in the middle of the day, and now, after we’ve fooled around a bunch, she’s asking me to come out with her and her friends to watch the fireworks. “Are you sure you won’t go? Do you worry about my friends? Because you shouldn’t. They really like you.”
She rubs up against me under the sheets. Like she feels bad for mentioning Sebastian. Like she thinks rubbing on me that way will fix it. It won’t, but I don’t mind so much.
“I’d really rather not. I’m still pretty tired from work, plus it’ll be crowded down there on the levee. Not sure I’m in the mood for all that.”
She sighs, disappointed. “Okay . . .”
“Sorry,” I whisper.
And the air in my nostrils gets hot. It’s the shame burning me up. Here I am, keeping this girl from what she wants. Keeping her from seeing her friends. And I won’t even tell her why. Won’t tell her the truth, anyway.
She should just go by herself. I open my mouth to tell her so, but stop. I’m selfish. I want more of this. I like her chest brushing up against me. Her lacy bra scratching my side each time she takes a long, slow breath. I could do this forever.
But outside the knuckleheads have already started in with their fireworks. The noise of it boils up from everywhere. Cracks and whistles in flurries all across the neighborhood. Black Cats and bottle rockets cooking off in bursts.
It sounds like the machine-gun range, when we would park the two Humvees up on the berm so the gunners could practice. They didn’t let me shoot or nothing. I just stood off to the side with my medical bag in case someone got burned by hot brass flying out the guns.
Zahn ran that show. He’d walk around behind the Humvees during the shoot, and when the gunners squeezed off a burst he thought was too long, or when both guns fired at the same time, he’d yell, “Talking guns! Talking guns, damn it!”
Later, out on the road, he explained what he meant by that: “Making sure they only fire one gun at a time. Saves the barrels. A short burst, twelve to fifteen rounds. Then you let the barrel rest. The other gun takes over, then back and forth. Sustained fire without stripping the rifling or overheating the weapon.”
Back when he used to talk crisp and clear. Before the knock he took to the head slowed him down.
The fireworks outside get thicker, more intense. It’s feeding on itself, this amateur hour before the big show, and starting to sound less like a controlled machine-gun range, and more like something worse.
But it’s just parents in folding chairs, I tell myself. Letting their kids go crazy with the cheap fireworks that their dad drove over the parish line to get. Teenagers trying to show their girlfriends how they’re brave. Holding on a little too long after they light the fuse. Laughing while the girls run away angry.
A bottle rocket flies by Lizzy’s bedroom window. A bright, white flash like an airburst mortar. No pretty lights, nothing. All smoke and noise. Who could enjoy this?
Lizzy, I guess. She sits up and squeals. All giggles, this girl. Excited for the fireworks in a way that I must’ve been as a kid but don’t remember anymore. Her eyes get round and she waves me over to the window to see. Her smile. It’s different than normal. She can’t control it. I look at her lacy, white bra while she’s distracted and want it back up against me. So I shimmy over to the windowsill with my legs under the covers.
I can’t see anything. Just blue smoke drifting down the street from over the top of the neighbor’s roof and from around the blind corners at the intersection. I’m glad I can’t smell it, yet. That sulfur smell, empty as death. A string of Black Cats cooks off somewhere and Lizzy’s face lights up again. She smiles and tackles me, squirming like a goddamn puppy.
Another bottle rocket screams down the street, right past the window, and Lizzy cranes her neck again to look. She doesn’t see me wince, and I’m glad for that.
We cuddle for a few minutes more, with me keeping my hands outside her little pajama pants. Staying a few inches back from her so she can’t feel my heart pounding. Her hair dangles in my face and I try to bury myself in it, thinking the smell will calm me down. So clean, her hair. Like it’s never had a single drop of sweat roll through it. I breathe it deep, and my heart slows a bit. Things get comfortable. We start spooning and I wonder if maybe she’ll just fall asleep. She must be tired from working all last night. If Lizzy goes to sleep for an hour or two, I can put on her nice headphones and turn up the music real loud. I can wait it out while all the yahoos finish blowing shit up. Then maybe go out after the fireworks are done, just after midnight and in time for all the romantic New Year’s Eve shit.
But she sighs. “You sure you don’t want to go meet my friends down by the river?”
It’s not really a question, I know.
I pull her closer. “Just a little while longer.”
My breath pushes a blond curl down her cheek. She pushes it back behind her ear. Right into my face. Right where I can smell it.
She rolls over to look at me. “Please. Please, Les?” She smiles at me sweet, and there’s nothing I can say. Nothing at all. I’ll do anything she wants. Anything to keep her smiling.
“All right. The fireworks just for a bit? Then maybe that party Landry told me about?”
“Yes. Fireworks, just for a bit.”
We take her car down Elysian Fields. The traffic thins out as we pass Rampart. Must be everyone is already up on the levee, what with only a few minutes left before they start the big show. Lizzy finds an illegal parking place and jumps out before I can argue with her.
I chase her down through the French Quarter, past the Old Mint. It seems like the whole city is gathering up on the levee. Families carry chairs and blankets to lay out on the grass between the railroad tracks and the walking path. Young people carry open twelve-packs of beer under their arms and hand out cans to friends as they pass. Lizzy takes me by the hand and pulls me through the throng. She’s smiling. So excited.