Click

You hear the click before the boom. Sometimes you don’t hear the boom. Well, that’s not exactly right. You feel something before the boom. But sometimes, the boom comes. And sometimes, it doesn’t.1

Sometimes war is actually decent. Sometimes war is playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt with little Iraqi kids. And sometimes, the little Iraqi kids say stupid things. When Abdullah and Asif used to see me, they would automatically hold out their hands.2

“Mistah. You got schocalaté today?”3

“Not today, kid.”4

“Please Mistah. Bush good. Saddam bad.”5

“What? No candy for you. You want to play a game? No fucking chocolate.”6

“No schocalaté? Bush no good?”7

“Not today, kid.”8

When I first came back, I wrote a lot about the war. I used to try to inject these Bible lessons into my experiences, claiming new epiphanies. But, after a while, I felt like I was scratching an itch I couldn’t find. It wasn’t real. I used to say that death was around the corner. Death was indeed around the corner. And though most people know what “death” means, when we arrived in Iraq, we had no idea what the hell “around the corner” meant. It might have meant “for those idiotic marines”, or perhaps “for the morons that take off their helmets during a ‘break’.” Once, it meant that we turned a corner and Baker’s arm drooped in the consuming firelight. It meant that my safety flew away with the spirit of Baker. 9

Life in the midst of war is a series of moments. Magical moments, I called them. First there is boredom. But everyone wants some action. Everyone wants to see. Those first days in Iraq were hot, smelly, and dry, but they were also fun. It was strange to be there, able to watch TV while mortars dropped. One day, Russell Brown just stuck his earplugs in his ears and kept changing the channel, going from cricket games to Al Jazeera English to some MTV knockoff. He didn’t care how much was going on outside. It seemed like some weird training exercise that was going on too long. Eventually, everyone stopped wanting.10

Sometimes the click kills. One day came. The night came after that. With the night came a lesson in climbing fences and jumping fears. Psalm 18:29: “With Your help I can advance against a troop; With my God I can scale a wall.” Sgt Bryant got me up and over and then ended up over himself. Another day came and went. No lessons this time. Just a real mother fucker who gave me my desert camo Bible and lost the magic. 11

Other times the click just warned us. SFC Cyfers asked us if we checked the ground below the humvee with the metal detector. I lied. Another time, a little girl and a big, fat interpreter taught me that Iraqis and Americans are the same.12

“You never hear the one that gets you” must be carried over from Vietnam. It’s a lie. I always heard the ones that got me. I hear Mickey Mouse talking to me about his red nipple pants. I hear Daley telling me that she loves me. I hear the RPG bouncing under the humvee and lodging in a berm behind me. I hear the crack of a drunken man’s skull. That one always gets me.13

Sometimes, the click isn’t really a click. Sometimes, it’s a song. Sometimes, soldiers sing until someone kills an innocent bird. (How prophetic, like old Boo Radley.) A few men will sing, all in the same gray shirt, with their black shorts riding up their crotches. They sing and then they go on patrol and some kid asks them for schocalaté, and they throw rocks at the kids.14

So many things happen in war, first boredom, then the busyness that comes, of course, from people trying to kill you. It’s like hearing someone talk and seeing someone else mouthing the words. It’s an old man looking at his wrinkled face in the mirror and not believing that he is there. Your brain can hardly believe it. 15

Me, Baker, McNeil on a full moonless eclipse-able night. An RPG. The lights shine, and then, they, like the moon before them, are gone. A crack. A whoosh. The night all around me lights up again. Scream. Snap. Whiz. No fear. No emotion. No safety. Baker’s arm droops again in the consuming firelight. The wind wheezes out a breath of the side of my distinctly uninjured face. A soft sob comes from the passenger seat. I can hear McNeil’s voice, gurgling breaths of passing escaping the dark red bubbles on his lips. The radio crackles to something little more than cessation. They both go away. I am still here. They leave me, Baker and McNeil.16

You get scared, a little, but you mostly get confused. Someone is trying to kill me? What did I do? I’m just sitting here, not doing anything. And then it happens. You see the blood, the body parts strewn around like chicken feed, and you realize, yup, no shit, someone is trying to kill you. And then the anger. Anger at God. Anger at the stupid fuckers that kept you here past your ETS date. Anger at the injustice of the situation. These are the first emotions: Disbelief and anger. The real fear comes later.17

One evening, the power was out. No TV. We needed something else to do. We wrote songs. I wrote a lot when I was there too. The stuff I wrote there was based on other things. Things to make people laugh. Things to keep me laughing. I used to make up new lyrics based on famous tunes. Hotel California became Camp Junction City.18

On a hot dusty highway, Hot sand in my face19

IEDs exploding, All over the place20

Up ahead in the distance, Hajji’s shooting at me21

Is it small arms this time, or an RPG22

There he stands in a doorway, Loading up a mortar shell23

I was thinking to myself, This isn’t heaven so it must be hell.24

So I switch my selector lever, From safe to semi.25

See you later Hajji26

You’re gonna fuckin’ die.27

Before we saw any action, that’s what they really wanted: the click that made their rifle go from safe to killer. After we were hit for the first time, I told my crew to “let off a few rounds and let them know we are still here.” What a great line.28

The click tells us if we are safe. Our Commander once made me check an area with a metal detector while he hid behind a taxi. The taxi driver blew his horn. I punched the driver and told him to blow me. When Sergeant Cyfers came over, I told him I had checked the area. Not good enough, I guess. He found three 105mm rounds, right in a row, with bottles of some kind of liquid and wires coming out of them. We backed up about a click. Ordinance came and blew the fuckers up. My platoon sergeant said I learned my lesson. I threw up and continued mission.29

And sometimes the boom gets you and the click never does. They made me stay nine months extra because of Stop Loss. Don’t tell me there’s no fucking draft. Before I was due to leave, I was in a convoy coming back into base. Some friends were turning the last corner to head into camp in front of us when the explosion occurred on the drivers side of the humvee, sending shrapnel into the arm of one man, the head of another, and the neck and foot of a third. 30

Boom. No click.31

Russell Brown, was being placed into a body bag and loaded onto my humvee. I didn’t want to drive it so I drove the blown up one. 32

What has four (flat) wheels and flies?33

Hah. An American and a half in a humvee.34

They told us that the vehicle was drivable, at least the very short distance that we were to drive it, and it would be fine to run it on four flat tires. We got the truck back to the motor pool where the mechanics could begin the job of fixing the war-torn vehicle when I looked in the back seat where Brown had been sitting. A piece of his head sat in there, hair still attached and scalp still attached and body not attached. I stared at it. I looked like wrinkly old-man flesh, except that its hair was the color of Russell Brown’s. It sat there along with more blood than I had ever seen in my life. 35