Via Dolorosa (26 page)

He remembered everything about Fallujah. Every detail.

They had seen much fighting. It was not uncommon for the platoon—for any of the platoons—to engage in six, or seven, or eight-hour battles in the tiny villages and outside the mosques. There were four squads split into eight teams. By February, each functioned independently. Nick
D’Nofrio
, First Lieutenant Platoon Leader, would keep track of the passing hours by watching the drift of shadows across the sand. They were good boys, all of them, the whole sick crew. That was what
Oris
Hidenfelter
dubbed them: the whole sick crew. He carried with him a tattered copy of a Thomas Pynchon novel and it seemed he was always associating or attributing references from the book to the squad and its members.

At night, they set camp.

“I was hoping you could help me, Lieutenant,”
Bowerman
said. He was spread out in the dark, his hands folded behind his head, his head down on his pack.

“I could shoot you.”

“Yeah, that would be it.”

“Shoot you in the ass, send you home.”

“That would certainly be it, boy.”

“We could do it. We could set the whole damn thing up.”

“Could you make me a hero?”

“I suppose I could make you anything you want.”

“Who would refute it? It’s almost a miracle I haven’t taken one in the ass yet.”

“They’d just patch you up and send you back out.”

“What about in the leg, then?”
Bowerman
said. “Anyway, the ass would be too embarrassing.”

“Prop you on the ground, angle your leg for the best shot. We could do it.”

“You can’t be a hero taking a hit in the ass like that, I wouldn’t think...”

“You want to take it in the upper thigh or down low on the shin?”

“I’m thinking…I’m thinking the thigh. Up high.”

“You’ll bleed a lot but you’ll walk again.”

“And it’s not as embarrassing as taking a slug in the cheek.”

“We might need a couple guys to hold you down, keep you steady.”

“Definitely upper thigh. Not too high, though.”

“Strong guys. You’d lose your nerve and we’d need strong guys to hold you down.”

“I wouldn’t lose my nerve,”
Bowerman
said.

“You think you’d want it to go all the way through or would you prefer to have it lodge in you?”

“Hmmm. That’s good. Good thinking, now. I don’t know.”

“Have it lodge in you,” Nick suggested. “Greater sympathy. Get the Medical Review Board to cough up some pity pay.”

“Fat chance.”

“Course,” he amended, “then you got some fresh-faced cherry digging into your leg with a piece of dull metal and some tweezers, hoping he doesn’t do more damage than the round in your leg’s already done. Hand vibrating like a goddamn seismograph needle, poor bastard sweating like a pregnant hostage...”

Bowerman
snorted in agreement.

“
Karuptka
would do it,” Nick said casually.

“Shit,” said
Bowerman
. “Victor
Karuptka
would do it, all right.”

“
Karuptka
would love to do it.”

“Why? He got it in for me or something?”

“Christ, Bowser.”

“Yeah, I know. Forget it. Never mind.”

“Christ.”

“Anyway,”
Bowerman
said, “I don’t know if I could do it deliberately.”

“Take a shot in the leg?”

“I mean, I could deal with it if it, you know, if it happened. If it happened, you’d have no choice but to deal with it. But, I mean, I don’t think I could just, you know, just hunker down and take it. Knowing it’s coming, I mean. So, yeah—you’re probably right. I think I’d lose my nerve. Goddamn it.”

“Have you ever listened to yourself talk?”

“Why?”

“You’d shoot yourself for sure if you did.”

He heard
Bowerman
chuckle in the darkness.

“What is it?” he asked
Bowerman
. “What did you want to ask me?”

“I guess, well…I guess just your advice, Lieutenant.”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t think I’d be comfortable giving you advice, Bowser.”

“Why’s that?”

“Look at me,
Bowerman
. You see me lying out on the beach somewhere? You see beautiful women flocking around me? You see me getting up in the morning, dressing in a shirt and tie, kissing my wife goodbye and going off to the office? No. I’m here just like you. I’m here just like everyone else and just like you. What advice could I give?”

“You like it here?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?”

Bowerman
was silent.

“Hell, Bowser, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I was just thinking.”

“Go ahead. Ask me whatever you want.”

“It’s just…I mean, you have a girl back home, right?”

“I got someone.”

“Some of the other guys got a girl at home, too. Some guys, like
Karuptka
, they got a whole bunch of girls at home. Some got wives, even.”

“What is it,
Bowerman
? What do you need my advice about?”

“My girl, she’s pregnant. I just got a letter yesterday.”

“It happens.”

“Two months pregnant.”

“Oh.” Nick did not need to do the math in his head. “She wrote this to you in a letter?”

“My sister did. My sister wrote me. I hadn’t gotten a letter from Rebecca—that’s my girl’s name, Rebecca—I hadn’t gotten a letter from Rebecca in some time. I asked my sister about her, about why she stopped writing. She lives in our neighborhood so I figured my sister could, you know, could go and see her. I said I was worried because Rebecca had stopped writing. So my sister went to see her. But I guess maybe my sister didn’t want to tell me because I had to ask her in two separate letters before she finally answered me.”

Nick said nothing.

“I been doing some thinking, Lieutenant. I been doing some thinking, and I don’t think women are ever truly disgusted by anything,”
Bowerman
said. “We’re out here and we’re killing people. We don’t have the time to stop and think about all that right now, so we do it and it’s automatic. There’s no thinking about it right now, is what I mean. But I know me, Lieutenant, and I know I’ll think about some of the stuff I’ve done and some of the stuff I’ve seen here until the day I die. Once I get back, I mean. Once I get back and, you know, have the time to think about those things. I know that, Lieutenant. It’s automatic now and there’s no time for reflection. But it won’t always be that way. Women are different, though, I think. I mean, that’s what I been thinking since I got that letter. They should maybe be out here, not us. Women aren’t repulsed by anything. Repulsed—it’s a good word. They can do repulsive things and turn around and be perfectly happy and not ever for one second think about the horrible, repulsive things they done. They wipe it all clean and it’s that easy for them. Men can’t do that, though. I don’t think so, anyway. I’ve never met a man who could do that. Have you?”

“I think some men can do that,” Nick said.

“Yeah, well, maybe. But not most men. Not
real
men.”

“Maybe not real men,” Nick agreed.

“It ain’t their fault, though, and that’s the
other
thing I been thinking. I mean, I think women ultimately want to be content in their lives. I think they know this from the beginning and they know that sometimes they will have to do repulsive things to get to that contentment. They are okay with that. Men, though—we get caught up in the particulars. That’s why suicide is primarily a man’s sport. We never make it okay for ourselves.”

“Maybe women are just smarter that way. They get what they want and they have the ability to not reflect on their past.”

“Maybe,” said
Bowerman
. “She’s two months pregnant, Lieutenant.”

“That sometimes happens.”

“We were going to get married.”

“What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“Huh?”

“You said you wanted to ask me something,
Bowerman
. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

After a moment of silence, Joseph
Bowerman
said, “I guess nothing.” Another pause; more silence. “I guess I just wanted someone to listen.”

Nick closed his eyes, shutting out the stars.

“Repulsed,”
Bowerman
muttered beneath his breath. “That’s some good word, I’ll tell you what, boy.”

“Sure.”

“Hey,”
Bowerman
went on, “what do you think that woman said to Granger this morning? That Iraqi woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Seemed to shake him up, all right.”

“It did,” he agreed. In fact, now, he could easily summon the frightened and confused look on Myles Granger’s face as the woman grabbed him and cried something to him.

“I wonder what it was,”
Bowerman
continued, not letting it go. “Granger, he’s good with the language. I know he understood her. I asked him later what she’d said and he said he didn’t know, but I think that’s bunk. He’s a smart kid and knows the language well, and I know he was lying to me, saying he didn’t know.” Reflectively, he said, “I wonder what it was.”

“I don’t know,” Nick said.

“Lieutenant, you smell that?”

“It’s white phosphorous.”

“Stinks when it burns. I hate when it burns like that.”

“Close your eyes and get some sleep, Bowser.”

“My eyes have been closed the whole time, Lieutenant.”

“Then take advantage of it and go to sleep.”

“Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

He did not answer.

—Chapter XIV—