The Sandbox (26 page)

80

“Five minutes,” Rankin
says quietly. He hasn’t spoken since we left the base. I ducked down on the floorboards and he told the sentry the lieutenant wanted him to run a package into the village. “If you ain’t back in five minutes, I’m leaving your ass. Hear me?”

“Five minutes,” I say and jump down into the dust.

It’s Tuesday. A hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. Eleven forty-four hours by the clock on the dash. I should be back at the mess tent, dishing out sloppy joes.

As I climb the steps to the factory door, I whistle the chorus to “Muskrat Love.” But I stop short in the doorway. If the place had been trashed before, now it’s destroyed. The piles of wood have been kicked around the room. Barrels of trash are strewn from one side of the factory floor to the other. Bullet holes splinter the wood on the office door. The bodies of shredded toy bears smolder everywhere. I smell piss and shit and sour smoke. Goddamn. I drop the MREs I brought along and run for the factory office where Herman made his little nest.

“Herman,” I shout. “Herman.”

No answer.

The office looks as though it has been hit by several grenades. The desks are twisted scraps of blackened metal. Little bits of shredded paper cover the floor. Something dull and green catches my eye. A small oval portrait of Ben Franklin. Then I see the others. There must be fifty or so of them. All neatly torn away from their original bills. Another of Herman’s little art projects?

The grown and greedy men who stumbled across these must have gone insane over the loss. At my feet I see at least several thousand dollars’ worth of useless heads. I stuff one of the hateful heads into my pocket. Herman’s bed is gone. In its place is a blackened crater in the concrete floor. The first outfit I saw him in, a robe of purple knotted teddy-bear skins, hangs from a nail on the wall and smokes like roasted meat.

“Fuck,” I shout at the mess, at Ahmed, at my own stupidity.

The smoke in here is relatively fresh. If fucking Rankin would have made up his mind a little bit faster then—I cut this off before it goes any further. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I step back into the factory and look for Herman’s remains. I can only hope it was over quickly. Possibilities flick through my brain like stills from a horror movie. I put Herman’s face on the young girl killed by stray bullets I saw in the capital, the child hit by the IED in an Inmar marketplace, the elderly woman shot at a checkpoint when her brakes failed and she drove through the warning shots. I can’t seem to stop these images from invading my head. My little cigar box isn’t big enough to hold this much awfulness. The seams are tearing and the rubber bands won’t stretch any farther.

A bird whistles. The one innocent witness to this shitty business. Some small brown bird.

But it isn’t a bird.

It’s Herman. He climbs down the stack of empty oil drums on the other side of the room and comes skipping across the mess in his rubber tube shoes, a strip of blue cellophane wrapped around his neck like a scarf. I find myself laughing. The relief is physical. My heart nearly explodes with it. The last time I felt something even close to this was the second time I saw Clarissa, a few days after we got back from the state park. She met me at a BBQ place for dinner, and as soon as she walked in the door, I knew right away that the adventure we’d had out in the forest would be something more than just a single night between strangers.

I sing to him. The song I tried to teach him the last time I was here. The Sesame Street song. I know I should be worried about Ahmed or whoever tore this place up coming back, but for the moment, I’m simply happy to see Herman alive.

“Sunny day,” I sing.

When he gets closer, I notice he’s wearing a new outfit. Another of his paper dresses. I suppose all the rest of his clothes got burned up. This one looks peculiar from a distance, colorful and shiny, and becomes stranger the closer he gets. He’s fashioned an odd shift out of pages from glossy magazines and black electrical tape. All of the photographs are of women. Some are modeling hats, some modeling shoes, some applying lipstick. In the very center of his chest, there is a photograph of a reclining nude model. It shames me a bit when I recognize it. This came from the same copy of
Jugs
that was circulating the base a couple of weeks ago. The issue that disappeared the same day Baba did. Surely it can’t be the same magazine. I want to tear it off and burn it.

For a moment, I think he’s going to throw his arms around me, but at the last second he stops short, sliding on the broken glass. He smiles. I smile back. Herman nods and points to a smoldering teddy bear on the concrete in front of him. He nudges it with his foot. Look at this crazy shit, his gesture seems to say. I walk us over to the MREs, which are scattered where I dropped them. Herman squats and stacks them into a neat pile.

I don’t mean to say it. It just slips out. “Ahmed,” I say.

The boy freezes. His entire body goes rigid. He makes a low, guttural growl. I can’t think of anyone else who might have done this, except maybe the owners of the cash. And who the hell would they be? I want to reach over and touch him, comfort him, but I’m afraid the gesture will be mistaken and he’ll flee. I speak to him in simple, ungrammatical Arabic. I make sure to keep a quiet, even tone. I tell him it’s no longer safe here. The man who did this will come back. You need to find a new place to stay. Herman continues to stare at the floor.

I try again to think of a way I could bring him back to the base. The worst the lieutenant could do is force him to leave again. The only real worry I have is that Herman might be even more vulnerable to Ahmed on the base. Fuck it. It’s better than leaving him out here and worrying.

“Herman,” I say.

He looks up. I explain to him in my halting and probably useless Arabic that I have a friend outside in the Humvee. No doubt Herman’s already scoped this out. He’s a pretty cautious kid. There’s a reason he’s still alive. I tell him I’m going to bring my friend in here and see if I can convince this friend to take him back to the base with us.

“All right?” I ask finally, using the local word.

Maybe I imagine it, but I could swear the boy nods, almost imperceptibly. I take this as a sign he understands at least some of what I’ve said. I point to our vehicle and then motion for him to stay put. My head feels light, as though pumped up with helium. I jog outside. Rankin watches from the Humvee. I can see from his expression that he’s anxious about the way I’m acting. Manic, no doubt. From his perspective, crazed.

“Rankin,” I say through the window, “come inside a mike. Ahmed was here. I told you he’d come after the kid. The place is still smoking. I want to bring the boy back to the base. We’ll say—”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Rankin says, frowning.

“I’ll say he came to the gate. Come on. If we leave him, Ahmed will kill him, and probably do worse before that. I can’t leave the poor kid for Ahmed to fuck with. I mean, shit.”

Half a dozen expressions flit across Rankin’s face.

“This is on you,” he says finally.

Reluctantly he walks into the factory. He wrinkles his nose and looks around in distaste. Herman is gone. Damn. We spooked him. Rankin's eyes widen, his expression saying, And? He kicks at a half-melted elephant.

“He was just here, damn it. I swear it, Rankin. I swear to God I was just talking to him.”

“Okay,” Rankin says, but it’s plain he doesn’t believe me.

“Why else would the place be shot up like this? They chucked a few grenades into the office where the kid sleeps.”

“Maybe,” Rankin says, “or maybe Ahmed thought there was someone here since he heard you talking about him. When he didn’t find no one, he opened up on the place.”

“But look,” I plead. “The kid took the MREs I brought.”

“Okay,” Rankin says, expressionless.

“You don’t believe me.”

“Let’s just go. You got your five minutes.”

“Herman,” I yell, trying to sound cheerful. “Come out, pal. We’re going to take you out of this place.”

Rankin adjusts the strap of his M16. I can see it’s hurting his wounded arm. I motion for him to give it to me, but he shakes his head and starts for the door. I kick a piece of wood, and it tumbles across the floor and smacks into a large pile of trash. We both watch it. After it hits, something shakes loose in the pile and comes skittering over the concrete in our direction.

“Damn,” Rankin whispers.

Grenade! Rankin swings around and leaps to cover it with his helmet. If it goes off, it’ll kill him, but he’ll have protected me from the blast. He reacts in less time than it takes me to identify the problem. While I’m tensing for the explosion, he begins to laugh. Rankin lifts his K-pot and nudges the object toward me. A pair of wind-up joke teeth. Bright red gums and enormous horse teeth.

“It’s laughing at you, D,” Rankin says. I can’t read his tone.

We walk back to the Humvee, Rankin alert and wary, with a tight grip on his rifle. I let him move ahead so I can look through the factory door one last time. It’s empty. Of course. When Herman heard the commotion we made over the teeth, he’d have taken off running as fast as he could. Even so, I doubt myself for a moment. From the doorway, I can just make out the smoking knot of fake furs hanging in the office. No, I didn’t imagine this. I consider pointing out Herman’s clothes to Rankin, but then I think better of it. If he doesn’t believe Herman is real, this will only make me look worse, like I’ve been in here making doll clothes for my imaginary friend.

Something sticks to the bottom of my boot. I try to scrape it off on the Humvee’s step, but it won’t come off. I sit down on the running board to pick it off.

“D,” Rankin says. “We don’t have time for this—”

I pick it out of my tread. A bit of silver metal with a pin. It’s all bent and twisted. One side is fire-blackened. It looks a hell of a lot like a first lieutenant’s pin. I hold it up in the sunlight. This could have been here an hour or six months. It could be anyone’s. Even so, it gives me a very bad feeling.

“What’s this look like to you?” I toss it over to Rankin after I climb up onto the seat.

“A piece of junk.” He throws it back.

“A first lieutenant’s pin?”

I hold it up for him to see again. He shrugs. What difference does it make? his expression says. He’s right. I chuck it out the window and strap in. Rankin turns the ignition and the motor clears its throat and comes to life. I’m angry, but I’m not quite sure who at.

As we pull out of the factory yard, Rankin nudges me with his elbow.

“Sorry, D,” he says.

“What for?”

“I shouldn’t have said that about the teeth laughing at you.”

“Well,” I tell him, watching the factory shrink in the rear window, “it’s probably true. They
were
laughing at me.”

The hard-sprung shocks creak as we crash through the potholes. From out here on the plain, FOB Cornucopia looks like a giant brown lockbox. Or a prison. I’d just as soon keep driving. All the way to the ocean. Put as much space as I can between me and all of this accumulating shit. This feeling I have is almost physical, like a vicious hangover or a migraine. It fills my head like ink.

“Now,” Rankin says, glancing over at me and then back at the road, “you best start thinking of ways to cover your ass.”

81

Hazel apologizes five
times. Once as he’s putting the bracelets on me, twice during the walk to the old fort, once as we go down the dark stairs, and a last time as he shuts the door to the cell. The same one we used to hold the old man. Even Hazel must see the sour irony in this; but if he does, he keeps it to himself. Salis doesn’t say anything until we get to the cell.

“What the hell were you doing out there, man?” He makes an unhappy face at Hazel, as though it’s his fault I’m here. Hazel takes a cautious step back. Salis’s been known to give people a quick smack for no reason but simple meanness. It builds inside him until it has to find an outlet. And then, pop, whoever’s closest gets it. “I mean, damn.” He shakes his head hard, the way boys will sometimes after they take a tumble and see stars. “I know you ain’t no traitor, but still, I mean what the fuck, man?”

“There’s a kid living out in the abandoned factory. I thought Ahmed was going to kill him.”

“Did he?”

“No,” I say, “but he tried.”

“You could of made a good soldier, Durrant.” This is his highest compliment. He gives me an appraising look and works his lips into a makeshift smile. “Those are some hard boys up in Leavenworth, but you’ll make do. Look me up once you’re out. We’ll go to my grandpa’s farm and shoot us some white-tail. What say, D?”

“Sure,” I say. We’ve talked many times about going hunting together after we get back. I wonder if he really believes this will happen.

Hazel looks like he might burst into tears.

It had come down on us much faster than I expected. They stopped Rankin and me at the gate coming back. Sergeant Oliphant stood in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips and glared at us. I wondered how long he’d been waiting. We weren’t gone but an hour. Less. The first words out of my mouth were, “It ain’t Rankin’s fault. I tricked him into it.”

The lieutenant was nowhere to be seen, which surprised me. Lopez watched from the sentry gate. They pulled Rankin out of the cab and Sergeant Oliphant marched him off toward the trailers, Lopez a few steps behind. Hazel and Salis got stuck dragging my ass off to the clink.

“You ain’t going to fight us, are you?” Salis asked me as I climbed down from the Humvee.

“Nah,” I told him, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Shit,” he said, grinning, “I was looking forward to shooting your ass.”

Hazel looked over in alarm.

“He’s kidding,” I told him. Hazel didn’t look reassured.

The lieutenant visits the cell a couple of hours later. Boots scrape the concrete outside the door and I know someone’s peeking in through the Judas hole. The scrutiny causes the same shivery disgust I feel when a fly crawls on my face. He waits out there for a long time before he opens up the door. I’m surprised to see he’s alone. He shakes his head at me like a disappointed Sunday-school teacher.

“You really dug yourself a deep one this time, Durrant.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“I don’t think you understand the trouble you’re in.”

“All of it,” I say. “Every last code in the seven-dash-eight.”

“Still joking.” He lets out a choppy, uneven breath. “Lopez has it that you go to that factory to confer with the enemy. That you’ve been going out there after shit-burning runs and that after that dust-up last night you went and reported what happened to the enemy. He’s been after me about this for some time. I’m starting to believe him. Is that what’s going on, Durrant?”

“No, sir.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself? ‘No, sir’? We’ve lost three good men in the last week.”

“I know, sir. They were my friends, but I’m not sure what else to tell you. It seems you’ve made your mind up.”

“You leave my mind to me. Mind your own mind.”

I smile, unable to help myself.

“Damn, Durrant.” He shakes his head again. Everyone’s shaking their heads at me today. He takes a breath, lets it out, rubs his eyes. Lord knows what he’s got weighing on his shoulders. If the captain’s right, it goes far beyond my problems.

“What would you like me to tell you, sir?” I ask, surprised to find myself feeling sorrier for him than I do for myself. I don’t, in fact, feel all that bad. I feel something closer to relief, relief that all this shit is coming to a close. That it’s out of my hands. Not the end I would have picked for myself, but a finish all the same. I no longer have a say in the matter, which can sometimes be a comfort. At least to me. Right now.

“How about the truth, Private?”

“You won’t believe me, sir. You haven’t believed me before.”

“Try me,” he says.

So I try him.

I tell him the story again. Beginning to end. Even the parts he’s already heard. Especially the parts he’s already heard. I tell him about Herman. I tell him about Ahmed. I even tell him about the captain. I tell him about taking the box and about the bind the captain put me in. This, it gratifies me to report, makes him frown. The only part I leave out are my problems with Clarissa and my unborn child. The lieutenant nods throughout, watching my eyes, and toward the end, pulls at the hair just behind his ear. He does this rhythmically, as though keeping time with a song in his head. I don’t imagine he has much hair left back there by now. When I finish, we sit in silence for a good mike. I feel emptied out: cleansed, almost. The lieutenant does not. My story’s had the opposite effect on him. He looks up at the ceiling, up
through
the ceiling. He sees something there. Then he stands up and takes a deep breath. His right hand flits from his mouth to his nose, to that place behind his ear.

“I think I might have been wrong about a few things, but I don’t know there’s a whole lot I can do about this now,” he says finally. “Even if I had a mind to. There are a lot of people involved. Too many to just brush this under the rug. When you and Rankin and the Humvee went missing, I had to radio in a sitrep to HQ in Inmar. Standard operating procedure.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. “I didn’t expect that you could do much. I knew what would happen when I went out there.”

He inspects me carefully. “I guess you did.”

“I know you’ll have to ship me back to HQ, but do you think you could pick up that kid at the factory? I know it’s not reg, but I’m worried Ahmed’s going to kill him. I’d feel a lot better if I knew he was safe.” I beg him with my eyes, with the set of my mouth. “He could work in the—”

“No.” He shakes his head, smiling apologetically. “But I promise you this. I will take care of that fucking factory,” he says to the ceiling.

I attempt a smile. At least I tried to save the kid. He’s lasted this long, maybe he’ll make it on his own. I want to believe it. I try to picture him grown up and living his life, but the image won’t form. His face blurs. None of this will happen.

“I’m not sure if this FOB will be around much longer anyway,” the lieutenant says, but I’m not really listening. He says something about “clear and control.” Something about native police training. But already I’m wondering how long I’ll have to stay in prison. Will the court-martial be in-country or back in the States? I get so caught up in my thoughts that I don’t hear what he says next. He has to repeat it.

“Did you say the captain no longer has the lockbox?”

“He does not, sir. Lopez had it last, but Ahmed got a handful of the papers. I’m not sure how many. But no more than a half dozen, if that.”

This stops him cold. He stares at me for a good while. “Ahmed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you see the pictures, Durrant?”

“Pictures?” I ask, confused.

“Pictures, papers. Whatever they were.” His face is the color of wet newsprint.

“I did not, sir,” I say, relishing the alarm I’ve caused.

Again, the lieutenant pulls at his hair. If anything, he does it twice as hard as before. Then he walks from wall to wall. Toe to heel, as though he’s measuring the length of the cell. He does this four times, and then he takes another long, raggedy breath. I watch him. Finally he stops and opens his mouth to speak. But after a moment, he clamps his lips shut and starts walking again. He measures off the length of the cell two more times. When he stops this time, he’s facing the door.

“I told him. I told the general we should have destroyed that cell phone,” the lieutenant says quietly, staring up at the ceiling again. At times like this, I wonder if he recognizes enlisted men as humans. Who is he talking to? Because it sure as hell isn’t me. “He didn’t believe me, but I told him. Instead, he just confiscates the damn thing. He says we might have a use for it some day. A little insurance.
Insurance
. Jesus, Mary. Once those pictures are out in the world, you’ll never be able to stuff them back in the box. I told him, but—God, I hope it hasn’t come to—” The lieutenant turns and looks at me as if he only just now realizes I’m in the room.

I don’t understand, and I tell him so.

“You can thank the Lord that you don’t. I wish to God I didn’t.”

Before he leaves, I call out to him one last time. Something bothers me and I want to set it straight, at least in my own mind, especially in my own mind.

“Do you believe me, sir?”

He steps into the hall. “I wish I didn’t,” he says and then shuts the door behind him. The lock turns.