Ghouljaw and Other Stories (31 page)

Meadows ignored my joke about the homonym. “No, no. It’s like”—he winced and shook his head—“I don’t know, it’s like we’re a ying yang or something.”

“
Yin
yang,” I corrected him.

Meadows had just taken a swig from his bottle and frowned at me. “That’s what I said.” I smirked and took a pull from my own beer. “Anyway,” he continued, “I just think that we get along because he fit together, you know. Like puzzle pieces.”

This was interesting. Poignancy and articulation were not things that my friend, nor my battle comrades, took the risk of conveying. “How do you mean?”

Meadows shrugged. “Shit, man, I just don’t think, in any other situation, without the Army holding us together, that we would be able to tolerate each other.”

I said, “I’ll drink to that,” and did so.

“It’s sort of like, I’m the muscle and you’re the mind.” We both chuckled.

“Yeah,” I grinned. “But I can still kick your ass.”

Meadows laughed, wiping beer from his chin with the back of his hand. “I’d like to see you try. Then you’d really have to write everything down in your little journal—I wouldn’t leave you enough teeth to tell your stories.”

My grin flickered and faded. Though no one had ever read my journal—the closest anyone has ever come is you reading this excerpt—I was certain he’d seen me scribbling in it from time to time. It was one of the only habits that maintained my sanity during boot camp and combat; and it was a habit—like the habit of Meadows’s friendship—that endured long after.

Meadows would have been too drunk that night, and I wouldn’t have been drunk enough, to supplement Meadows’s admission with this: You and I are cowards, and we’re both terrified of the same things.

But now, as years have passed, I would have preferred to end that drunken conversation, like so many that followed, by saying something kind. Something that might have saved my friend’s life.

Principal Wilkinson minimizes the message, rolls his chair away from his computer, and slowly swivels toward his office window.

Movement out in the guest parking lot catches his eye. Two men—both dressed in Army fatigues—have emerged between the rows of vehicles. Recruiters, of course. He recognizes the stout, blond one as Jason Noble, who has visited before; but he doesn’t know the other one, the tall guy sporting a crewcut.

The principal shifts his attention to his fish tank, meditating on the graceful movements of those brightly colored creatures. He decides that he’ll forward Mr. Craft’s message to the local recruiter. Wilkinson doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but this—this story—is clearly, and perhaps understandably, the result of post-traumatic stress.

He gazes at his fish tank. After several thoughtful minutes, Wilkinson reprimands himself for even considering the notion that a soldier would take advantage of a recruiting opportunity to harm young people.

The principal takes a quick drink from his coffee, walks over to his office door, and peers through the window. Mrs. Welch is chatting with the two recruiters, who appear to be concluding the sign-in procedure. As casually as possible Wilkinson opens the door and wanders over to the reception area.

The blond man, Noble, finishes signing in and rests the pen on top of a clipboard, thanking the secretary as he lifts a tote filled with promotional posters and other giveaway material. As a pretense, Wilkinson strolls over to a filing cabinet and randomly opens a drawer. As the men exit the office, Wilkinson sneaks a peek at the name patch on the right breast of the tall, crewcutted recruiter, and is relieved to read the name Santana. Wilkinson halfheartedly notes that young Santana is quite pale, perhaps even sick. Dark curves of exhaustion or sleep deprivation underline his eyes, and his complexion is waxy, as if running a fever. Santana, who’d been resting his forearms on the receptionist’s counter, smirks at the principal, who returns the silent gesture with a tight nod.

The two recruiters exit the office as Wilkinson attempts to inconspicuously observe their behavior. As he watches them through the wide office window, Santana turns and winks at the principal before disappearing down the hall with his companion.

Mildly embarrassed for gawking, Wilkinson shuts the filing cabinet.

“Did you need something, Mr. Wilkinson?”

The principal clears his throat. “No. I mean, no, I found it.”

Back in his office, Wilkinson drops down in his chair, now fully committed to notifying someone about this. But before he does so, he maximizes Craft’s message, scanning the e-mail, scrolling down until he reads . . .

Our unit was operating in a place called Sangin, in the Helmand province. We’d only been there a few weeks, but had already accumulated an unusual number of injuries, mainly from ground-based bombs and IEDs, what the military and media are calling “signature wounds”: two legs blown off at the knee or higher, accompanied by damage to the genitals and pelvic region.

It was late morning, and most of us—Meadows, Ricketts, Harper, and Flood, our translator—were gearing up for a routine patrol, when Lieutenant Strauss approached.

“There’s been a change of plans, gentlemen,” said Strauss.

“Surprise, surprise,” mumbled Marcus Flood, our squad’s interpreter. Flood always wore these big, black-rimmed spectacles, and I used to muse that he looked like a young Marvin Gaye sporting a pair of Buddy Holly’s eyeglasses. “Strauss is changing shit up again.”

Under his breath, Meadows said, “You mean we’re finally getting out of this fuckhole?”

I grunted softly as the members of our team closed in on the lieutenant.

“We’ve been selected for a scouting mission in the Deh Ravod region,” said Strauss, sounding more out of sorts than usual. “It’s about eighty miles up river.” The river was the Helmand, but—like so many ancient Afghan habitations—I’d never heard of Deh Ravod.

After a terse briefing about what to expect, Strauss asked us if we had any questions. As usual, none of us did. We split up to gather and prep our equipment.

I found Meadows in one of the temporary storage facilities, sullenly inspecting his gear. All the guys handled stress differently, but you could always count on Meadows to deliver some sort of farcical bravado during this period preceding a mission, which, if for nothing else, brought us a few grim laughs before rolling out. But Meadows had grown more withdrawn during this particular deployment.

“Hey, man,” I said, glancing around the room, making sure we were alone. I slipped off my backpack and propped it against a crate. “You all right?” My friend grunted something as a response. He had his back to me, but I could see he was inspecting his machine gun. “Listen, if you want to talk—”

Meadows viciously slapped a clip into his M-4 carbine. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. It was a legitimate question. I didn’t know how to answer it then and I wouldn’t know how to answer now. Usually, I’d shrug off one of Meadows’s tantrums. But this deployment was different. I didn’t want to give up so easily.

I said, “You still have time to say something.”

Meadows turned to face me, baring his teeth, his breath coming in quick hisses. But there was also something that passed over his face, a brief batting of eyelids as if he were struggling to say something. I continued, trying to take advantage of his inward division. “I’ll go with you right now, man. We won’t even notify Strauss, you can request to speak to another OIC.”

After a quiet moment Meadows said, “Don’t fucking talk to me like that.” His voice was low, almost a whisper. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some character in one of your stories.”

I frowned, gently lifting open palms. “Meadows, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t give me that
I-didn’t-mean-anything
bullshit.” Meadows raised a tattooed forearm, his index finger aimed at my face. “Everything you say means something else. All your fucking observations and questions and”—he waved a hand toward the personal gear I was leaving behind—“all those anecdotes you keep in your diary.”

My journal was tucked away in my duffle bag. Meadows knew that little secret about me, but I also knew that Meadows was carrying a secret of his own.

I read a statistic a few years ago that during one particular month more soldiers had committed suicide than had died during combat—the figure was something like 24 suicides to 16 deaths. A lot of these cases had endured multiple deployments and were unable to cope with what they’d witnessed during that time—comrades torn to pieces by landmines; black clouds of flies floating over corpse-filled trenches; women, concealing IEDs beneath their burkhas, obliterating themselves in marketplaces; the bloated and shrapnel-riddled bodies of toddlers. All this was supposed to be left behind. It felt as if the Army had misappropriated the slogan that Vegas uses to summon tourists:
What happens in hell stays in hell
.

Therapists went on to cite the stigma associated with soldiers seeking treatment. I’d seen it—the leadership shaming soldiers who exhibited any sign of mental frailty or emotional weakness.

Meadows had attempted suicide several years earlier. It had been between deployments. He’d returned home and discovered that his fiancée, Brittany, had done “something stupid” with one of his friends. Meadows never elaborated. He didn’t have to.

Meadows disappeared for a few months. When he finally resurfaced, he was sporting several elaborate tattoos on his left forearm, mostly tribal stuff. On the inside of his forearm was the inked-in script,
Not with a Bang But a Whimper
. Meadows never mentioned T. S. Eliot before; he said he just liked the way it sounded.

I met Meadows at a pub one evening. That’s when he shared his story.

A few days after finding out about Brittany, Meadows had rented hotel room. Cosmically intoxicated, he stripped, slid into the bathtub, and slit his wrist. Meadows said he woke up, shivering in the tub and smeared with dried blood. He thought the alcohol would have thinned his blood enough to galvanize the process. Meadows had smirked then at the end of his confession. “Guess I’m just too tough to die.” The reason it didn’t work, I had the dark urge to say, was that he didn’t cut deep enough to sever the radial artery; but it wasn’t an appropriate time to be pedantic.

Meadows never mentioned any of this to our superiors. And he quite literally tried to cover up the incident by getting wrist-to-elbow tattoos on his forearm to hide the scar. And each time I attempted to reprise the issue, Meadows would respond as he was doing now.

“Don’t ask me what’s wrong,” said Meadows, “you know what’s wrong.” He returned to inspecting his equipment.

“They won’t force you to fight if you self-identify.” Meadows paused in mid-movement. When he looked at me, his expression was a complex arrangement of hate and helplessness. “You said one time that you and I complement each other, right? Like a yin yang, remember?” I licked my lips and continued before he could speak. “So if you’re in trouble, let me be the side that helps.”

Meadows grunted. “Help how? By doodling in that fucking diary?”

“No,” I said, adjusting my Mollie vest, “by having the balls to tell the truth.”

We were quiet for a while. Meadows loaded the small grenade launcher. He placed his weapon on the table, giving up a weary smile. “There was a time”—he swiveled his head, glancing around—“that I thought being a soldier was the best way to show my family I wasn’t a total fuck-up.” He ran his fingers over his forearm, tracing the scar that’d been camouflaged by a swirl of tribal tattoos. “How are we supposed to go anywhere, let alone home, after seeing the things we’ve seen?”

Just then Ricketts and Harper burst in at the far end of the room. “Look alive, ladies,” said Ricketts. “Strauss says we’re pulling out.”

And that was it. As the other soldiers appeared, Meadows changed, resuming his role as our squad’s hostile and heroic joker.

Meadows slung on his remaining gear, looking over his shoulder at me as he walked away. Loud enough so the other guys could hear, he said, “You going to stay here and doodle in your diary, or are you coming to fight some bad guys?” I clenched my teeth. Ricketts and Harper laughed simultaneously. One of them yelled, “Queer.”

The last thing I glanced before walking out of the facility was my rucksack, mentally staring through it to see my tattered journal, hating myself and the things that book contained—the good things I’d witnessed during our missions: snapshots of friendship, selflessness, loyalty, compassion. I wanted to burn that goddamn thing and fucking kill Meadows myself.

Six hours later we were just north of a place (according to Flood) called Ceghak in the Oruzgan province. Before this, our Chinook landed in the planned location of Deh Ravod, but after Strauss spoke with the tribal leaders, he split our unit in half, the rest of us proceeding ten miles west across the river. A few times during the trip, I noticed that Flood, through a combination of frowns and wrist-watch inspections, appeared increasingly confused about our coordinates.

It was late evening when our aircraft descended into a narrow pocket near the mountains. I’d glanced over at Meadows several times during the flight, but, like the other guys, his eyes were hidden behind his M-frame sunglasses; but sunglasses became useless as the helicopter sank down, the mountain shadows rising up, creating the illusion that twilight had rushed over us in a matter of seconds.

After landing in a desolate, sun-cracked plain, the engines were cut and the rear loading panel was lowered. Outside, Lieutenant Strauss called out for the translator to accompany him.

We headed north now, just west of the river, toward a narrow pass in the mountains.

Marching gave me time to think. I wasn’t humiliated that Meadows had “outed” my journaling, my private writing, my amateur ambition to emulate Ernie Pyle—whatever you want to call it. I was demoralized by the notion that all that work didn’t matter. I had believed that the recorded observations would refine my thinking and might help my comrades make sense of the trauma all around us. I know that at one time I may have stumbled on some sort of metaphors for war, but I don’t feel like articulating them anymore.