MATT JERKED AWAKE WHEN A HAND TOUCHED HIS SHOULDER.
“Dude.” The voice was familiar, but the face was a blur.
Matt stared, his eyes wide. First, he saw the glasses—the thick, nerdy-cool black glasses—then a thin, angular face. It was Justin. He was wearing his ACUs, the standard desert camouflage uniform, but he looked small somehow, deflated, without his helmet and his M16 slung over his shoulder.
“Dude,” Justin said. “I was starting to think maybe I’d get Caroline’s phone number after all.”
Caroline. Matt had a picture of her taped inside his helmet, something Justin always teased him about. “I don’t understand how a skinny little dude like you has such a hot girlfriend,” he’d say. Matt put these bits of information together like beads on a string and he tried to understand if Justin was making a joke. He searched Justin’s face.
But Justin was looking away, across the room at the soldier with the missing hand. He shook his head, then slowly turned his gaze toward Matt, his expression almost tender. He took hold of the blanket that had been laid across Matt’s chest and tucked it gently under his chin. Then he went to the foot of the bed, lifted Matt’s feet carefully, and tucked the blanket snugly underneath them. It was the same thing Matt’s mom used to do when he was little.
It was strange having Justin baby him like this, embarrassing—and again, tears pooled in Matt’s eyes. He blinked them back, but a single tear slid down the side of his face and trickled into his ear.
Justin pretended he hadn’t seen. He sat down, cleared his throat, then reached down to his leg and fiddled with the Velcro strap that held his father’s knife from Vietnam. “It’s a good thing you were so ugly to begin with.”
“Am I…” Matt put a hand to his face. “Do I…”
“Relax, butthead.” Justin cocked his chin in the direction of Matt’s face. “You’re fine. You’ve got a black eye, but to tell you the truth, it’s actually an improvement.”
Matt smiled. It hurt to smile.
“Oh, yeah,” Justin said. “And a fat lip.”
A nurse in green scrubs went by. She had a blond ponytail and a hot body and she reminded Matt of the blond girl from the Archie comic books. Betty. Or maybe Veronica? Justin followed her with his eyes until she turned the corner and was out of sight. He made an obscene gesture, pushing his tongue into the inside of his cheek.
“Congenial,” he said. “That nurse is very congenial.”
Matt smiled weakly. Congenial. Probably one of Justin’s word-a-day words. Justin was famous for using the words the wrong way, but that didn’t stop him. “Use a word ten times and it’s yours,” he’d say.
Justin’s expression turned serious. “I thought you were a goner, man,” he said. “You were on the business end of an RPG. Do you remember that?”
RPG. Rocket-propelled grenade. Matt nodded. But he didn’t remember. Not at all. “Did…” He had to struggle to speak. “Did anyone else”—he swallowed—“get hurt?”
Justin looked down at his lap and rubbed his palm over his buzz cut—short, straight, blond hair that reminded Matt of fresh-mown hay. After a minute, he looked up at Matt.
“You don’t remember?”
Matt shook his head. Even that tiny gesture sent pain shooting through his skull.
“It was yesterday,” Justin said. “Remember yesterday?”
Matt tried to remember. Nothing.
“You sure?” Justin glanced over his shoulder, the way he did when he was scanning the rooftops for snipers. “Nothing at all?”
“Why? Did someone get hurt?”
Justin pinched his brow between his fingers. “Only a couple hajis,” he said.
“Enemy” was the official term. “Insurgents” was okay, too. Everybody called them hajis, though. And unless your squad leader was a hard-ass, you could get away with it.
“Okay,” Justin said, leaning in so close, Matt could smell the sweat and stink of him, the whiff of burned cordite that clung to their uniforms when they came back from a battle. “Okay, dude. I’ll tell you what happened.”
Justin straightened his glasses. “We were working the south checkpoint.”
Matt nodded. They’d manned that checkpoint all week.
“And a taxi busts through the barricade…” Justin said.
“I remember that,” Matt said. “Three guys in an orange-and-white taxi.”
“…So we jump in the Humvee and chase the bastards.” Justin was hyped, the way he always was after a firefight. “We go down the street where that guy sells bootleg videos. It was like Grand Theft Auto, dude, taking the corners on two wheels.”
Matt nodded. He remembered the bootleg guy; he had sold them a copy of Spider-Man 3. And he could picture the taxi disappearing around a corner, off the main road and down a side street. But he couldn’t picture the rest of the squad. “Where were McNally and Wolf and the others?”
Justin narrowed his eyes and tucked his chin in toward his chest. “You don’t remember?” he said.
Matt just looked at him.
“We got separated.”
“Oh,” Matt said.
“So we end up in an alley,” Justin said. “And the bastards jump out of their car and disappear inside a house at the far end of the street. So we jump out of the Humvee and take off on foot. As soon as we do, we start taking fire.”
Matt could picture the alley. It was like a million streets in Baghdad, a moonscape of dust and rubble, coils of razor wire rolling around on the ground like tumbleweeds. There was an overturned car in the middle of the street. And a dog. A mangy thing with a broken tail nosing through a pile of trash—right in the middle of a firefight.
“So we duck inside this house across the street,” Justin said.
Matt could picture Justin running across the alley with his head down, but he had no recollection of a house.
“We find an upstairs window. We rip down the curtains and we see, across the street, at the other end, this one haji bastard leaning out the window trying to get a bead on our location,” he said. “And so I light him up. Bam! He goes down like a ton of bricks.”
“Wow,” Matt said. “But how…”
“And then we’re leaving, we’re back on the street heading for the Humvee, and whoosh! Out of nowhere, an RPG slams into the wall about twenty feet away. You go flying, man. Then you hit the ground and I have to haul you out of there by the straps on your vest.”
He reached over and took hold of the front of Matt’s hospital gown as if he were grabbing hold of him by the straps of his vest. Then he let go and patted Matt on the cheek. “You were lucky, man.”
“There was a dog,” Matt said.
Justin frowned. “What?”
“Dog,” said Matt. “There was a dog.”
Justin drew back slightly. “Dude, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“He was near the…you know, when you throw stuff away…” It was maddening. He couldn’t remember the word.
Justin looked away, scanning the room.
“The dog!” Matt punched the mattress with his fist. “He had a broken tail.”
Justin stood up. He seemed to be gesturing for someone.
Matt jerked his head to the side, to see who Justin was calling for. A bolt of pain shot through his skull. He clenched his head and cried out in agony.
Now the nurse with the blond ponytail was standing over the bed. She wasn’t pretty after all, Matt thought as she went to work checking the IV in his arm, readying a syringe and then methodically emptying the contents of the syringe into his IV tube. Matt caught a glimpse of Justin over her shoulder, but Justin wouldn’t look at him. He was studying a hangnail as if it were the most important thing in the world.
That was the last thought Matt had before he fell, headlong, into a foggy, restless sleep.
A FEMALE OFFICER—A YOUNGISH WOMAN IN A UNIFORM SKIRT—came by a little later, carrying a satellite phone. She was cute, but she was all business. Like a lot of women in the army, she h
ad that don’t-mess-with-me look on her face. She’d be pretty, Matt thought, if she weren’t making that stupid face. She had reddish hair, a turned-up nose, and small, delicate ears.
“You get to make a call home,” she said briskly. “You need to call so they can put out the press release.”
Matt just looked at her.
“They have to notify next of kin before they can put out a statement about the incident.”
“Oh,” he said.
“As you know, the army prohibits the release of specific information—dates, places, et cetera.” She’d obviously given this speech a few times.
“But I don’t know what happened,” Matt said.
“Well then, it shouldn’t be a very long call.” She handed him the phone and stood there while he dialed.
He heard a rapid series of computerized beeps as the satellite processed the number. There was a pause, then the oddly quaint sound of the phone ringing. He imagined the squat little ranch house where he’d grown up, the cordless phone with the broken antenna in the kitchen, the speckled linoleum floor, the dishrag hung on the oven door, the milkmaid figurines his mom collected.
His sister picked up the phone on the first ring. “Hello?” she said. “Brandon?”
“Lizzy?” he said. “It’s Matt.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised and maybe a tiny bit disappointed. “I thought you were going to be Brandon.”
“Lizard,” Matt said, “what time is it there?” It could be the middle of the day or the middle of the night, for all he knew.
“I don’t know. Eleven thirty, maybe.”
“So what’s Brandon doing calling so late at night?”
“Jeez, Matt, when did you turn into such a tool?” She snapped her gum.
It was funny, Matt thought, how the tiny sound of a piece of Bubblicious popping in the United States could travel all the way to the other side of the world in a millisecond. “Is he treating you good? Brandon?” he said.
The cute red-haired officer leaned over and tapped her watch.
“Liz,” Matt said, “get Mom, okay?”
“You okay?” Her tone was suddenly serious.
“Of course, just go get her.” He could hear the phone clatter onto the table as Lizzy yelled, “Ma. It’s Matty.” And he could picture his mom running to pick up the phone, grabbing her cigarettes off the counter on her way.
She was out of breath and, he could tell, scared. Whenever he called home, she sounded like she was bracing for bad news. He’d told her, over and over again, that if something really bad happened to him, the army wouldn’t call; they’d send someone to the house. But the first words out of her mouth were always the same: “Is everything okay?”
“Ma?” he said. “It’s me.”
“Oh, Jesus, Matt. Is everything okay? Where are you?”
“Yeah, Ma, I’m fine….”
“Are you…”
“…Just got a little banged up.”
“…all in one piece?”
There was a slight delay in the line, so they talked over each other, then paused and waited for the other one, then started talking again at the same time.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“No, you go ahead.”
“I’m okay. I just, you know, got a bump on the head. I’m in, you know, the infirmary, but I’m good,” he said.
The female officer who’d given him the phone stood by, listening in, as Matt hemmed and hawed about what had happened. He said it was no big deal, just another day in Iraq.
“Are you sure?” He could hear his mother’s voice cracking.
“Ma! If I say I’m fine, I’m fine.” He hadn’t meant to yell at her. Yelling also made his head throb. “Look,” he said, a little more gently, “they told me I’ll be back with my squad in a couple days.”
“Oh.” Her voice sounded little and far away. She was little and far away, Matt thought. Little and far away and all by herself. His dad had split a long time ago. Which meant there was no money for college for Lizzy, who, unlike Matt, was really good in school. When Matt came home from the recruiter’s office, his mom had cried. When he said now she’d have college money for Lizzy, she’d cried even harder.
They were quiet for a minute, then they both started talking at the same time.
“How’s Caroline?” he said.
“…markers you wanted,” she said.
“What did you say?” he said.
“What did you say?” she said.
“I asked if you’ve seen Caroline lately.”
“I said I sent those colored markers you asked for,” she said. “For the little Iraqi boy.”
“Oh,” they both said at the same time.
The officer tapped her watch again, and Matt was actually glad to have an excuse to hang up.
“I gotta go, Ma,” Matt said. “I’ll write. If you see Caroline, tell her I’m okay. Okay?”
“I also sent you peanut butter,” his mom said. “And more socks.”
“That’s great, Ma. You’re the greatest,” he said. “So you’ll tell Caroline, right?”
“And cookies. Snickerdoodles. The kind you like.”
“Ma,” he said, “I gotta go.”
“…just hope they don’t get all broken…”
The last time his mom sent cookies, all that arrived was a box of crumbs. He’d told her they were delicious, that the guys loved them.
“Okay, Ma,” he said. He cupped his free hand over the receiver. “I love you, Ma,” he whispered.
He looked up and saw the female officer smiling, just a little, despite herself.
Then he heard a tiny sniffling sound, then a few muted beeps as they were disconnected.
THE HEAVY THUMP-THUMP OF A BOOM-BOX BEAT WOKE HIM up sometime later. Matt looked around, not sure where he was for a moment. It was midmorning, he figured, judging by the slant of the sunlight streaming in through an open window. The music—50 Cent—was blasting from outside.
He sat up gingerly, his whole body stiff and sore, then eased himself to the side of the bed and looked out his second-story window. He could see the gold dome of a mosque in the distance and the city skyline fringed with palm trees. Directly below his window was a dusty lot where a bunch of Iraqi kids were dancing. A gangly little boy stood in the center of the group, lip-synching and wagging his hands in a spot-on imitation of a rapper.
“I’ll take you to the candy shop…” the kid pretended to sing. “I’ll let you lick the lollipop.”
It was unreal, seeing this skinny, barefoot kid doing a hand glide, and Matt thought about what Justin had said once when they were in the street handing out candy to the scrum of little kids who followed them everywhere: “We’re bringing these people America!”
For nearly a month after Matt’s squad had first arrived, there’d been a lull in the fighting, so his squad was instructed to establish contacts within the community. He and Justin had pulled a couple Humvees and Bradleys into a circle and made a soccer field. Then they gathered a bunch of kids who’d been picking through the trash heap next to their base, looking for tin cans to sell for salvage, and organized them into two teams: the Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Shock and Awe. Justin played with the Shock and Awe kids and Matt with the WMDs. The kids ran around barefoot on the hard, littered patch of ground, but they still outmaneuvered the two soldiers.
As he gazed out the window, Matt pictured Ali, a ten-year-old who was one of the WMDs, scoring a goal, running away from the net. Usually Ali celebrated by spreading his arms like a pair of airplane wings, like the great Brazilian forward, Ronaldo. It was a move he’d picked up watching TV in the market, as he knelt on the ground and peeked through the forest of men’s legs.
But if it was an especially pretty goal, he’d look over at Matt and make an imaginary pair of glasses around his eyes with his fingers.
The gesture had two meanings. It meant “Did you see that?” But it was also a reference to Matt’s shiny wraparound sunglasses. The ones A
li had stolen the first day they’d met.
He’d come up to Matt one day in the market and tugged on his jacket. “Hello, Skittles,” he’d said, running the two words together as if Matt’s name was Skittles.
Matt had no candy left, but the kid was so skinny—his belly was bloated and he had legs like a stork—that Matt started digging around in his pockets for an energy bar. He gave Ali his sunglasses to hold for a minute. Next thing he knew, the boy had run off with them. The glasses, which Matt’s mom had given him, were absolutely crucial in the brutal Iraqi sun and so Matt had chased after him until he disappeared around a corner.
But he couldn’t catch him, something for which Charlene, their civil affairs officer, had given him merciless grief. “How are we gonna find weapons of mass destruction if you can’t even find a pair of shades?” she’d said.
Girls—females, as the army called them—weren’t technically allowed in combat, but Charlene had been “attached” to their squad to conduct searches of females after the army found out that some of the enemy soldiers were dressing as women to avoid being searched. For a civil affairs officer, though, she didn’t seem to actually like civilians all that much. And she seemed to take some satisfaction in this kid running off with Matt’s glasses. “See?” she said in a schoolteachery tone. “That’s what happens when you try to make friends with these people.”
Later that day, the chaplain stopped by and said Mass. It was outside, in the town square, and Matt noticed the same kid standing there, watching as the soldiers went up to receive Communion. Then the boy got in line—he copied the way people folded their hands and bowed their heads—and he stuck his tongue out. The priest didn’t bat an eye. And the boy chewed the tiny wafer like he couldn’t get it down fast enough. A few minutes later he was back in line, for seconds.
When Mass ended and Matt stood up from the crate he was sitting on, the sunglasses were on the ground behind him.
Outside, the boom box went silent. One of the kids jiggled it and it stuttered to life again, then died. The group started to disperse, then one of kids ran to a corner of the lot and retrieved a soccer ball. One of the Stars and Stripes soccer balls the troops handed out.