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“This is what I wanted. This is where I want to be. I am not afraid.
This is what I wanted. This is where I want to be. I am not afraid.”
I repeat it, again and again as I march. The metal treads of the tank next to me clatter and clang so I can hardly hear my mantra. My pack feels lighter than it did in training, my rifle heavier. I wish it weren’t winter. Why couldn’t we have done this last spring? ”Then I wouldn’t be here,” I think. The wind howls down the street, channeled by columns of empty buildings.
I don’t know how far we have to walk, or where we’ll be when we stop. I know I have to stay next to the tank. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The tank is American, built like a, well… When shooting starts, I will be safest by the tank.
I think there is a pebble in my right boot. I shook my boots out and ran my hand all along the inside lining before we left. They’re tied so tightly, almost halfway up my calves, how could it have fallen in since? I must have missed it this morning. I was so sleepy, and it was still so dark, I’m lucky I remembered my rifle. My rifle. I look down at it, away from the rooftops of the empty buildings, for just a moment. It is beautiful, the precision of its machining, the ruggedness of the dusty aluminum receiver, the smooth modernity of its plastic stock, the straight, perfectly-round steel barrel… I wish my washing-machine at home was this well-made.
The washing machine leaks. I haven’t done laundry since I got married, but Rachel says it leaks and that she hates that machine, so I have to fix it, so I hate that machine. I don’t know how it leaks, where it comes from. I’ve replaced every gasket, reclamped and checked every hose, it makes no sense. After every load of laundry, there’s a puddle underneath the machine. Rachel forgets and steps in the puddle, and then she yells at me to fix the washing machine.
I exhale and see her in the wisp of steam escaping. Then I hear the sound of the earth opening and the tank is gone and I am prone in a pile of dust and rock and it is raining pieces of the empty buildings and I am deaf. I feel the earth shake again behind me and I turn and see the tank, rocking forward with the recoil of its soot blacked cannon. Another building comes raining down. Now people, running. I see screaming, but I don’t hear anything. Men with guns are taking positions in the rubble opposite, among the girls and kids running away. Positions. Shit. Little bursts of orange fire from the barrels of the men’s guns.
I scramble to my feet, concrete and sand and blood shifting under me as I do, and run ducking to the tank, to shelter. My commanding officer is waiting behind the tank already. He’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I point at my right ear and shrug. He understands and tells me in slashing hand-signals to take the alley on our right and flank the next street. I nod.
Leaning my back against the back of the tank, I slide to my left, keeping my head low. I reach the tank’s right tread, squat and turn around. I peak one eye around the tread. They’re gone. Where’d they all go? Shit. My CO looks at me and I shrug. ”Nothing.” I say. I can feel myself talking, feel the vibrations in the bones of my skull, but I don’t hear it. He repeats his slashing hand gestures and shoves me from behind the tank.
I run crouching to the alley. Once there, I move slowly, but purposefully, the sight of my rifle at my right eye, that plastic stock buried in my right shoulder. I sweep the perfectly-round barrel from side to side as my eyes trace the same pattern. I aim at the sky as I look up to check the rooftops. I lower the barrel, my eye still on the sight. I near the end of the alley and press my back up against the far wall. I creep left along the wall like this. At the corner I stop. I lean my head ever so slightly past the safety of the wall. My left eye strains at its peripheral extreme. Another empty street.
I swing the barrel of my gun around the corner. My head follows, attached at the rifle’s sight. My chest and shoulders and right hip come around the corner, exposed. I look up into a face, centered in the sight. A boy’s: wet with tears, muddy in this dust, but not crying now. In the reticule, I see the tiny muscles of his face tighten, his delicate jaw clench. I see his lips move and I hear his voice and he says, “I am not afraid.”
i sit in the cold of new night. an older couple walks briskly by and i nod to them, unrequited. the darkened side street is quiet. there is a small aluminum floodlight in a cabinet inside. i am supposed to attach it to the top of the one of the double doors that is closest to the outlet above the cabinet. there is a rubber-coated clamp welded to the aluminum floodlight for this purpose. i am supposed to attach the floodlight to the top of the door, thread its cord over the door’s top hinge, through the gap between the open door and the jamb, and plug it into the outlet above the cabinet.
i am supposed to make sure the conical flood of light it emits falls on the cardboard cut-out of a six-scoop waffle cone as tall as i am. the light is supposed to make it easier for people to see the sign. seeing the sign is supposed to make people want to eat ice cream, which we sell inside. if passers by succumb to the sign, i’m supposed to scoop the flavors they choose, into the vessel they choose, and give them that vessel. they, in turn, are supposed to give me money, in an amount corresponding to the vessel they have chosen, which i am supposed to place orderly, according to denomination, in the cash register.
i’m not going to plug in the floodlight. i don’t want to sell any more ice cream tonight. not that the floodlight works that well, not when its cold like this. i smoke a cigarette and my stomach agitates at the settling darkness. a group of arab men passes in tight formation, tersely debating the youngest war as they go. a sliver of the conversation lingers after them and finds my ear: “what peace…” the way they’re dressed reminds me of the secular muslims who smoked cigars at the Café Bassam, when it was still downtown, when one could still smoke inside. when i worked as a valet. when i was supposed to park people’s cars.
