Ryan Smithson Read online

  “Is it hard for you to concentrate with that music playing?” asks the scared-shitless kid.

  “Do you play music in your car back home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trust me, man,” I say. “There’s a lot more to pay attention to while driving back home than there is here.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell yeah,” says Zerega from the roof. “Back home you have to watch out for other cars and stupid drivers. Here, a stupid driver is a dead driver.”

  He laughs that maniacal laugh of his.

  “Dude, we own the road here,” I tell the kid in the backseat. “Civilians have to get out of our way—”

  “Or it’s roast Haji for dinner!” Zerega cries. Then he rolls his tongue to make a machine gun noise.

  Gasparotto and I laugh. We’re used to Zerega’s antics. Plus, we know he’s only upping the ante today to get a rise out of this kid. Truth is nine out of ten convoys are routine and uneventful. It’s not unreasonable that he’s trying to invent some entertainment.

  “All you have to do on a convoy is stay on the road,” I tell the kid. “Especially being the last vehicle. We don’t even have to know where we’re going.”

  “Ninety-nine Hajis alive on the road! Ninety-nine Hajis alive! You shoot one dead, run over his head! Ninety-eight Hajis alive on the road!” Zerega sings.

  “Don’t mind him,” Gasparotto tells the kid in the backseat. “He’s crazy.”

  “Oh,” says the kid.

  “Trust me,” I say. “You guys will be fine. And music doesn’t distract you from anything. Plus, if we’re going to go out, we might as well do it with a little style, right?”

  The kid nods his head. I put on my aviator sunglasses and turn up the speakers.

  The handheld radio crackles. It’s LT.

  “All Hunter elements, this is two-six. We’re rollin’.”

  The brake lights on the vehicle ahead of me go dim, and I put the Humvee in drive. We roll out of the gate. Outside the wire.

  Zerega loads his SAW once we’re out. That familiar click-clack. Those familiar wind chimes of the devil.

  “Let’s kick some ass!” he yells from the roof. The way his voice echoes, the way it overcomes the steady roar of the diesel engine, it’s like God talking.

  Zerega is, for all intents and purposes, crazy. Out of all of us, he’s developed his sick sense of humor the most. But developing humor, it’s the reason we’ve survived. Not literally, of course. Laughing at a bomb doesn’t make it any less lethal. But mentally it’s the humor that keeps us going. It’s how we stay strong.

  See, Zerega makes some fun out of this kid’s first convoy, out of this kid’s fear. But it’s also Zerega’s fear. His fear is why he sings “Ninety-nine Hajis.” Our fear is why Gasparotto and I laugh with him instead of telling him to shut up. It’s why I throw on my aviators and crank the music. Going insane is how we keep our sanity.

  And out of all the convoys this is the scariest. The convoy up here was pretty scary, but at that time home was a long way off, anyway. This is our last convoy, and home is just around the corner.

  I drive down the road, thinking of a soldier I met while waiting at the PAX terminal to go on my two-week leave. He told me about a guy in his company who went on leave in February. While waiting at the PAX terminal, the guy got one of many Estimated Times of Departure. They had a few hours, so he decided to take a trip to the PX. He didn’t really have a reason to go other than boredom, but he figured he could pick up a pack of gum or something. On his way he was hit by a mortar and killed.

  Driving down the endless dirt road for what will be the last time, this is the kind of story that runs through your head. The image of a soldier whistling and skipping down a concrete sidewalk runs through my mind over and over again. All he’s thinking about is how hard he’ll hold his parents or kids or wife or girlfriend when he finally sees them again. Home is just around the corner for him. Just a few short traveling days and his war was over. And then, out of the sky, there’s the whoosh of displaced air and then the boom of an explosion. And then there’s the shrapnel slicing through his body.

  Irony is a literary device that’s supposed to happen in novels. It’s supposed to keep the reader interested and entertained. But living in a war zone, you realize that irony is real life. To deal with it we develop a sick sense of humor. Living in a war zone, you realize that God is the one with a sick sense of humor. So I guess that makes us Godlike.

  I drive down the empty road trying to empty my mind of ironic images. There’s a herd of cows off to the left edge of the road. One cow in particular seems to be the leader of the pack. She’s standing at the very edge of the road waiting to cross. She’s fearless, or perhaps just stupid.

  The tenth vehicle in the convoy, the one right in front of me, zooms past the skinny brown cow. Somehow I know that this stupid, fearless cow won’t be patient enough to allow me, the last vehicle, to pass before crossing. Irony is what I expect out of this convoy, and irony is what I get.

  Like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, the cow heads into traffic. But unlike the rabbit who’s “late for a very important date,” the dumb cow plods along without a care in the world.

  You couldn’t have waited for one more damn Humvee? I think.

  There is no way in hell I am going to halt an entire convoy to watch one starving Iraqi cow cross the road. Not to mention the herd behind her that now seems to admire her plodding along. They’re sure to follow shortly.

  I slam the gas pedal to the floor, and it becomes a race. The diesel engine roars, and the needle on the speedometer is buried. I time the cow’s slow trot with my own increasing speed. Luckily, after a year of dodging every possible IED at every possible speed, the situation is almost second nature. But, hey, you never know.

  I can’t see them, but I know the two replacement soldiers are jockeying for position, trying to catch a glimpse out of the windshield. It’s our last convoy, and I expect to see God’s sick sense of humor awaiting me with the swipe of fate’s sickle. Instead, I am playing chicken with a cow. I don’t know what kind of irony you’d call that, but it’s something.

  “Smithson!” Gasparotto yells over the deafening roar of the engine. Just like Woodlief going into the dust devil, Gasparotto grabs the “oh shit” handle in front of him.

  “Can’t stop now!” I yell, smiling.

  Bring it on, Fate!

  The cow steps across the road. Her front foot crosses the middle of the road and her head sticks out into the right lane. Since we’re the last Humvee and his weapon needs to face six o’clock, Zerega is watching the road behind us. He has no idea we’re about to collide with a suicidal cow.

  “Hold on, Z!” I yell.

  I barely hear him say “What?” as we approach the stupid cow.

  I jerk the wheel to the right at the last possible second. No one in the Humvee is breathing. And the passenger side tires jump off the edge of the road. They stir the hot sand, and I wrestle with the wheel to keep the Humvee from jumping off completely.

  The side mirrors on an armored Humvee stick out more than a foot, so the driver can see out of his small armored window. As we pass her, I look the cow directly in her dumb black eyes. I wait for her blood to splatter out of her nose and across my thick windshield. I wait to smack into her and feel the Humvee fly out of control. She’s still plodding along, well into the right lane, and I watch the tip of her nose miss my side mirror by inches.

  Zerega howls in laughter. The sudden hop off the road probably threw his heart into his throat. His laughter, I think, is of relief.

  “You should’ve told me,” Zerega yells through the hole in the roof. “I would’ve wasted her!”

  I look in my rearview, and the cow is slowly turning around to walk back toward the herd.

  You spend a whole year avoiding man-made bombs. You spend an entire year thinking that humanity’s evil is going to widow your wife. The whole year, your brain is consumed with thoughts of
being murdered. Then the thing that almost takes you out is some stupid, impatient cow.

  Above the diesel engine I can hear God laughing at me. That maniacal laugh of his.

  There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.

  THE END

  “Hey, Smithson,” says LT.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What’s the best part about being in Iraq?”

  “One way or another, sir, you know you’re going to leave.”

  “That’s right,” he says, smiling.

  This is the last thing we say while our feet stand on Iraqi ground. As the plane lifts off of Anaconda’s runway, the whole plane erupts in applause and cheering.

  When we land in Kuwait, again the crowd cheers and we unload the plane. We’re led to a tent where we’ll be spending a few hours before our next plane takes off. Here’s that familiar, windy place we remember from twelve months ago.

  This camp has soldiers coming and going at all hours of the night. But no midnight chow. So, as the rest of the company stays back at the tent, EQ platoon sets off to find some food. We’ve been eating MREs for the last year. We would rather not eat them while we wait for the plane to take us home.

  After fifteen minutes of walking we find the chow hall. It’s closed, but there’s a back door open. So we help ourselves. Etiquette goes out the window when you’re hungry. And when you’ve just survived a year in Iraq.

  The door leads to the kitchen. It looks recently tidied up and cleaned. So there’s not much food lying around, but there is a large basket of fruit and another basket full of chips.

  “Take what you can,” says LT.

  We’re all grinning at the absurdity of stealing fruit and chips from a chow hall, but we’re doing it anyway. I look at LT, and he shrugs.

  “Shouldn’t have left the door open,” he says.

  A guy comes out from the front of the chow hall. He looks like a cook. He’s not military, so we pretty much ignore him.

  “You guys can’t be in here,” he says. The look on his face is priceless. Imagine the look on a homeless man’s face when you start reading the newspaper he’s using for a blanket. There are more than twenty of us, and he knows he can’t stop us. So we grab what we can and walk out the door.

  “Thanks,” Scott Moore tells him.

  “This is so out of character,” I say to Moore.

  “Oh well.”

  He takes a bite out of an apple.

  “Did I tell you about the last time I was in Kuwait, going home on leave?”

  “I don’t think so,” he says.

  “You told me,” says Roman. “In the shower trailer?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Then to Moore: “You know at Camp Doha, they have those, like dozen, shower trailers lined up at the end of the tents?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “The place was real busy. Tons of people going on leave…”

  On my way to the showers I pass a guy walking to the tents.

  “Go to the one all the way down at the end,” he says. “There’s almost no one there.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I say.

  And I start walking down the long length of trailers. As I pass each one, there are less and less soldiers going in and out of them. When I get to the last one, I walk up the stairs to the trailer’s door. Opening the door, I see that the whole trailer is empty. There are four or five shower stalls and four or five toilet stalls.

  “All right,” I say. “I got the place to myself.”

  I have to take a quick whiz, and I notice there are no urinals. Kind of weird, but you never know how equipped the facilities in the army are going to be. Not thinking much of it, I use one of the stalls. Then I take my time and get undressed. I start one of the showers and smile to myself in the mirror. Just a few short hours and I’ll be heading home.

  After a long hot shower I get out and wrap a towel around myself. I lather up and start shaving in one of the five sinks.

  The door opens, and I look over to see who ruined my privacy.

  It’s a female.

  She doesn’t look in my direction, just turns and walks to one of the bathroom stalls.

  I wonder if she knows she’s in the wrong trailer, I think.

  I look at the stalls again. There are no urinals. And then things start to click.

  I’m the one in the wrong trailer. There’s always a female shower trailer among the male trailers. And it’s usually the one on the end. The soldier who gave me the advice wasn’t trying to trick me. When he said the trailer “all the way at the end,” he assumed I would go to the last male trailer.

  I rush to put my shirt and shorts on, and I realize my face is still half full of shaving cream. I look at the stall to which the female went. Then I look back in the mirror. Back and forth until I decide I might have enough time. I don’t want only half my face shaved.

  I run the razor over my chin and neck so fast I cut myself twice. I throw on my shirt, stuff my toiletries back in my little bag, and rush out the door. On my way back to the tent I start laughing hysterically.

  “And no one ever knew the wiser,” I say.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” says Josh Roman.

  “I can,” says Scott Moore.

  Back at the tent EQ enjoys its pirated food. Some of the company tries to nap for the few hours we have, but we mainly stay up. We may talk briefly about going home but mostly we talk about the past year.

  It’s funny. When you’re at war, all you talk about is going home. Now that we’re going home, all we talk about is being at war.

  “Man, our first time in Kuwait seems like forever ago,” says Seabass. He’s sitting on the floor across from me eating barbeque potato chips.

  “I know,” I say.

  “All I can remember about Camp Virginia is the smell of it,” says LT. “That fried, sandy smell of chow in the desert.”

  “The diesel fuel and grease,” I say.

  “How many times did we PMCS those friggin’ dozers?” asks Koprowski.

  “Too many,” says Josh Roman.

  “Hey, Smithson,” says Neil Munoz from a little ways down the line of cots. “How about the smell of my shit?”

  I laugh.

  “I forgot about that,” I say.

  “Dude,” says LT. “You wiping your boots off with a rock. That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “What is this?” asks Zerega.

  “You never heard this story?” says LT. “Oh, Smithson, you have to tell him.”

  “All right,” I say. “Remember when Roman, LT, Munoz, and I got called for that range watching detail?”

  “Yeah,” says Zerega. “While we were armoring the twenty-tons.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Well, LT and Roman were in one Humvee and Munoz and I were in another….”

  Kuwait, besides for acclimatization and ship unloading, is for training. One of the training ranges is where this story takes place. We’ve already been to this range for unit training. And now we are back to act as security guards.

  The range is a fake town. A mock convoy full of apprehensive soldiers drives through every thirty or so minutes and fires at pop-up targets. Some of the targets are angry-looking people wearing masks and holding weapons. Others are of smiling families.

  The mock convoys drive through the mock town, firing at mock targets, avoiding firing at mock families, and weaving from mock IEDs. Then they park in a box formation and hold an AAR. Each convoy comes through three times. Think crawl, walk, run. The first time, crawl phase, that’s a dry run. No rounds are used. The second time, walking, that’s half speed, blank rounds. The third time is full speed, running with live rounds.

  And then there’s the range watch. On this half of the range the range watch is Munoz and I. We sit three hundred meters away from the fake town in our Humvee watching the desert be flat. Really we’re watching for safety reasons. And by safety reasons, I mean camels. Plus, sure, if someone gets shot, we have a handheld radio to
contact range control. But mostly we’re here for camel watching.

  LT and Roman are off toward the beginning of the range. Two whole days. Guess how many camels. You got it. Not a one. So we take turns between dozing off and watching the route.

  There’s nothing around for miles but the range and a six-foot sign that says RANGE 2. We’re parked right next to the latter. It’s December, and it’s pretty cold out. During the day it’s about fifty degrees, and during the night, it gets down around thirty. And that damn wind, it never stops. Though, because we sit in a Humvee all day, the elements are tolerable.

  “Oh, man,” says Munoz. “I gotta shit.”

  He shifts around in his seat trying to hold it in. For some reason no one has thought to place a port-a-john at the range watching point. That’s the army for you. Eleven hours of sitting in a Humvee, munching MREs, and no toilet.

  “Better hold it,” I say.

  I put my nose back into a book. And he does hold it, but there are six more hours out here. So he gives up. A convoy just drove through the mock village and sits three hundred meters to our left holding their AAR. I am the driver, and we face the desert so that the passenger side of the Humvee can’t be seen by the parked convoy.

  “All right, I’m going for it,” announces Munoz.

  “Have a good one,” I say.

  You always keep toilet paper in a Humvee. Golden rule. So Munoz grabs the roll and glances out my window to make sure the convoy is still parked. He opens his door and squats on the passenger side. He holds the edge of his door and uses it to brace himself so he can sit like in a chair. All I can see is his head out of the backseat passenger’s window. So I think his boom-boom will end up somewhere next to that door.

  He finishes up and pulls himself back into his seat.

  “I can’t believe you just did that, Sergeant,” I say.

  “Gotta do what you gotta do,” he says. “Just watch out on this side. I pushed some dirt over it, so don’t step on the mound.”

  After a few more boring hours of reading, napping, and getting to know Munoz, I have to pee. The wind blows from the left, where another convoy has rolled through, camel free, and is parked in a box formation at the end of the mock town. So I stand at the rear of the Humvee with my back to the wind so as to avoid spray-back. Peeing into the wind is a mistake you make only once.