It is Thursday. I’ve always tried to catch Friends when I can, I’ve been watching it since high school. Tonight is the last episode but it’ll be Friday before I’m anywhere near a television and satellite dish.
Way before all this, in the ketchup-loving days of yore (that’s what I refer to as my time before I joined the army) it was Violent Femmes, R.E.M, Pearl Jam – baseball games, track meets and driving circles around the town just ’cause. Not having anywhere to drink and one night cutting a path through eye-high Blue Ridge Mountain grass to the huge circle, mowed earlier that day, in the middle of that big ol’ field. A crop circle party with friends and girl I was planning on kissing.
But tonight, it’s been almost 600 Thursdays since and I’m northeast of Baghdad on the way into the heartland of local insurgency, middle of the night.
I don’t know who, but someone started calling this place “the breadbasket” and it stuck. A place of small twisty dirt roads swimming through palm groves and canals and mud walls and low hanging electrical wires and rocket shooters who couldn’t care less if Ross and Rachel end up together.
We are with the infantry, the grunts, raiding houses o’ bad guys, catching a lift in their armored rides, – their Bradley fighting vehicles. It is horribly loud inside those things, conversation is limited and abbreviated and usually repeated at least once. There are two rectangle periscopes on the rear hatch to look out the back with. Steel in every direction. The seat is lightly padded and my ass feels like hands that have been weed-whacking too long.
My hands are wrapped around the barrel of my rifle. I’ve got about 210 rounds on me, two fragmentation grenades and a knife.
My chest is gooey from the heat of the engine along with the heat my body armor won’t let go. I can smell how hot I am if I turn my head just right. There is a sand wedge running through my belt loop and causing me to sit cockeyed, a small shaving mirror taped and tied around the head so I can take a peek under cars we are searching at a checkpoint that will be set up at dawn.
I’ve got black zip-cuffs in a cargo pocket, a one-armed tourniquet and bandages, a list of bad guy names, pictures not included. My wallet has the normal array of licenses, Visa cards and prepaid AT&T phone cards. There is a pink piece of paper wrinkled and folded with the phone numbers and addresses of friends on it. A five Euro bill is wrapped around a note that a Czech stripper gave me on the first night I met her with her cell number and a note that says, “Piss coll may.”
I remember a night with that girl, months ago – me helping her dye her hair in that warm second floor room, snow trying to find a place to land in the cold wind, her getting me a beer with a beige towel wrapped around her head. She asks me what I want to do and I say Casino, she agrees half-heartedly. She kisses well. I end up watching Dirty Dancing dubbed over in Czech.
So it goes.
Yarnall is beside me, somehow head back and gently snoring. He is a bear of a man, especially talented at napping. I’ve seen him sleep in all kinds of twisted contorted ways, all kinds of different noises and racquet, all kinds of heat and cold – and sleep through it all. He told me once that he doesn’t dream – he can’t recall one single dream he’s ever had. I bet there’s some sort of secret locked up there somewhere, maybe the secret to sleepy peacefully. I bet he could sleep through a bomb.
Sgt. Taylor is up against the rear hatch with a dip too big for his lip in, enough ammo on him to defend the Alamo. He’s been reading some of my Harry Crews books, so there’s really no telling what’s going through his mind.
Sgt. Bell, a beautiful black man who constantly has a different nickname thought up by him is sitting down on the end. One Love, Daddy Long Stroke, Big Baby, ‘Rome Love and currently just “1” will all turn his head in a crowd if called out. I call him Sgt. Huctstable because when he gets all riled up it sounds like an imitation of Bill Cosby in a pudding pop commercial.
There’s nothing behind us but unlit, damp dark streets out those periscopes. I just happen to be looking when all that black quickly turns orange and red. The whole world rattles. Somehow the rumble becomes louder than the Bradley’s tracks are making. We stop, somebody is yelling about being hit, but after the first announcement just repeats himself a few more times. Somebody yells “damn’it.”
The engine is idling, the intercom barely audible saying one-seven, the Bradley behind us has been hit. Can’t raise them on the radio. Yarnall wiggles, his eyes kinda open, asks what’s going on.
“One-six, this is one-five … you hit too?”
“One-five, this is one-six. Negative, we took shrapnel but we are up. One-seven ain’t running and smoke’s coming from the track.”
We sit for seconds that drive like miles through Kansas. In the silence and thoughts, the ramp slowly lowers as the weak intercom is telling us to dismount, set up security and check on one-seven. Tells us something just blew up a tank and to go fight it.
The first thing I see when I step out is the constellation of Orion and it’s huge – two, three times bigger than I’ve ever seen it. The night, clear as aquarium water with Orion straddling the roofs and walls. Just a tad off-canter, his belt and drawn bow twinkling. Night vision goggles come down and the world loses a dimension, becoming flat and lime green.
I run to a wall on the other side of the street for cover, don’t see the sewer trench before it. One foot goes down, the rest of my body flung into the wall, face and gun slam into it and then scrape slowly and hard down the mud bricks.
On my hands and knees in this stinking cesspit I try to yell but can’t get a word out before the others find the same fate. The smell is so bad that it is exquisite, and I’m up to my elbows in the reek of human rot. I gag, possibly more than once.
One of the Bradleys starts firing the 25mm main gun. I’m off to the side of it but still somewhat in front of the gun. My right ear throbs from the pounding. The rest of my team is falling and slamming and twisting ankles in crap.
As I stand I realize that the smoking Bradleys’ lights have come on and although it is still smoking, the ramp has lowered and guys are filing out the back. In there are guys that I drink with, guys I’ve been to Austria and Czech with, guys who have daughters whose diapers I’ve changed.
They somehow are the only ones who don’t hit the trench.
Seems fair enough.
Getting blown up and then falling into a river of poop and piss might just be too much for a man to take in one night.

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