2018 hours
Sunsets from the perspective of the ledge are made beautiful by dust storms raging to the south. Immense swirls of crimson and gold figure the sky, transforming it into a swirling battle flag. Wilson watches the flowers redden, go purple at dusk, and finally vanish in darkness. He removes his helmet, picks up his sidearm, and strolls through the village. Narrow rocky streets; whitewashed houses lit by oil lamps; a diminutive mosque with a blue-and-white tiled dome. At the far end of the village, on a rocky shelf from which a path winds downhill toward the American compound, three teenage Iraqi boys are preparing to burn a cartoon of George Bush painted nearly life-size on a sheet of cardboard and suspended from a limb of a leafless tree. Bush has been portrayed with the body of a capering monkey. His head is a grinning pasted-on magazine photograph. The boys are dressed in jeans and T-shirts. They’re smoking cigarettes, joking around, not apparently motivated by political passion as much as by a desire to do mischief. One adds twigs to a small fire beneath the cardboard sheet. A lanky black man carrying a helmet like Wilson’s under one arm is standing off to the side, looking on.
“Hey, Baxman!” Wilson exchanges a complex handshake with his friend. “S’up?”
“Checkin’ out the rebels here.” Baxter’s face, highlighted by the flames, is a polished mask. His eyes are pointed with flickery red cores.
“We oughta clue these guys in there’s a new president,” says Wilson, and Baxter says, “They know that. They not goin’ forget ol’ George until he’s way longer gone than he is now. Man’s the embodiment of the Great Satan for these fuckers.”
Wilson notes his use of the word “embodiment” and wonders if Baxter’s working behind IQ. Hard to tell, because Baxter’s a pretty sharp guy even natural.
“Burn his monkey ass!” Baxter makes a two-handed gesture, emulating leaping flames. The boys look perplexed and fearful. “Go on! I’m not goin’ hurt you! Burn his ass!”
“Whatcha got against Bush?”
“What do you got for him? Dude was an embarrassment!”
“He chased Saddam outa town, man.”
Baxter gives him a pitying look. “Where you think Saddam’s at? He’s not dead, man. Some guys’re sayin’ the flowers might be the front of his secret hideout. I think that’s crap. Man probably had some surgery, turned himself into a woman and is right now fuckin’ his brains out on a beach in Brazil. My point bein’, all Bush did was give Saddam a goddamn golden parachute!”
Wilson knows Baxter’s just acting pissed-off at him; he’s driving away the demons of tomorrow morning the best he knows how. “So the flowers aren’t his secret palace or something… fuck, are they?”
Baxter pulls a sheaf of print-outs from his back pocket. The heading on the front page is Paradise and Helclass="underline" In the Light of the Holy Qur’an. It’s part of the library relating to Islamic culture and religion they were force-fed while on board the transport that brought them to Iraq. Wilson’s retention of the material was deemed substandard. “I’m down with the ragheads on this one,” Baxter says.
“You think it’s Paradise, huh?” Wilson examines the print-outs. “It say anything in there ’bout yellow flowers?”
“Naw, but you haven’t been hearin’ what I’m hearin’. The way the brainiacs are talkin’ about the bomb, how it maybe broke us through to some other plane. They say the whole area’s unstable, but when I ask ’em, ‘Unstable how?’ they clam up on me.” Baxter slaps the sheaf against his palm. “Paradise sounds reasonable as anything else. That’s why I’m readin’ up on it.”
Wilson’s attention has wandered, and seeing that Baxter is waiting for a response, he feels as he often did when called on in class back in high school. Unprepared, and yet compelled to say something. “We’re not fighting Saddam,” he says. “We’re fighting terror.”
“Say what?”
“We’re fighting terror. Saddam’s not the target, man.”
Baxter shakes his head ruefully. “Man, you a mess!”
The bottom of the cardboard sheet catches fire. The flames wash upward, devouring Monkey George. The teenage boys let out halfhearted whoops and glare fiercely at the Americans; then they, too, lapse into silence and watch the cardboard shriveling to ash.
As they walk together down the path, using their helmets in night-vision mode to find their way, the lights of the compound greenly visible below, illuminating tents and ranks of armored vehicles, Baxter says, “Ragheads got some weird ideas ’bout hell.”
Baxter’s voice is muffled by the helmet. Wilson asks him to repeat and then says, “Yeah? Like what kind?”
“They say most people in hell goin’ be women. Hey, call it whatever you want. Hell. Heaven. I don’t care. You can put me down in with the ladies anytime!”
“What else they say?”
“The usual shit. You drink melted brass, you get burned all over. They work your ass to death, but you never die. One weird thing: they let people out.”
“Outa hell?”
“Yeah. People in heaven intercede for people in hell and then they let ’em out. Book makes a big deal ’bout the last man gets into heaven. He has to crawl out from hell and then he sees a shade tree and after he goes through some other bullshit, he’s honored by Allah.” Baxter negotiates a tricky stretch of path banked downward from the hill over a hundred-foot drop. “’Course once he’s in heaven, he learns he’s the lowest status guy.”
“Probably still be happy,” Wilson says. “Probably still beats hell.”
“Sooner later he’s goin’ think about movin’ on up the ladder. It’s human fuckin’ nature.”
They stop for a smoke, sitting on a boulder barely twenty feet above the operations tent. The sky is starless, the air thick with heat. Faint shouts and rumblings rise to them. Baxter spits down onto the tent and says, “This shit here, man, it’s not what I signed on for. I got half a mind to go for a long walk east before tomorrow.”
“I’m not listening to this crap!” Wilson says, and when Baxter starts to come back with more of the same, he talks through him. “Uh-uh, man. I don’t wanna even take this to the level of a fucking discussion. You understand?”
Baxter hits his cigarette; the brightened coal paints his face in orange glow and shadow, making him look both dangerous and defeated.
“We’re gonna kick terrorist ass tomorrow,” Wilson says.
“Mmmph.”
“Our daddy was a stick of dynamite and mama was T-Rex on the rag.”
Baxter flips his cigarette out over the tent and tracks its sparking downward arc. “I’m not playin’ that game with you. I’m not into it.”