Often I’d hike to the top of the mountain, about two miles from the trailer, to a clear-cut along the ridge where the view opened and beyond my farthest gaze unrolled the wide Pacific’s endless sweep.
I’d watch the blue waves and think, today you’re coming up with a plan. You’re gonna figure your shit out. You going back to school? You gonna get certified at something, get a real job, be a plumber or a nurse or tend bar? Thirty wasn’t quite around the corner but it wasn’t so far away, either, and I felt the need to do some thing, accomplish some thing, do something real.
Oh, sure, I knew it was all a con. I knew the system was out to get me. I knew we all wanted to be free and live our lives and make art and all that bullshit, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to the dentist. And what if I broke a leg, or got sick, or hit by a car? How would I pay for anything? And why did my circle of friends seem to be shifting, turning seedier, more addiction-prone, less aware of their own lives as a series of choices they’d made and more inclined to ascribe to events wholly metaphysical causes—I just had a feeling, you know, it was like the universe gave me a sign, sometimes you do a reading and it’s just like so spot on, it was like there was this voice telling me… How much longer would it take till I was trapped in a world without responsibility, where things just sort of happened and we all just got along, stumbling in a fuzz of pot smoke, excuses, and superstition?
Yet there I went into town, working at the bookshop, drinking with J.J., fooling around with Alice, getting high, ending the night in a hazy drive back up the mountain or crashed in Alice’s bed, waking to strange light through a strange window burning away the illusion of ease life wore by night and revealing beneath it the grim furrows of bad habits too deeply rutted to pull out of.
Fog, thick, hung in the trees. I got up early and shuffled through the trailer, started the coffee pot, rolled a cigarette. I opened the door and let in the mist, let out the smoke, hoping yet again for clarity.
I left my notebook and pen untouched on the table. For some reason that morning poetry seemed even more futile than usual. I was always going over the same plucked field, picking at the same thoughts and sensations. What was the point of thinking things? Writing them down? Nobody read, nobody cared—no one needed the navel-gazing mystifications of yet another confused and sensitive young soul.
I opened the fridge and saw I had a couple eggs, so I put on a pan and started it warming, melting butter. I cut two slices from a loaf of organic multigrain and laid them on a plate.
For company I turned on NPR. At first it wasn’t anything, just a stream of meaningless sound, then as I stood over the stove with an egg in my hand the babble squirmed into sense. Someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. No, two planes. Both towers. One was collapsing, smoke rising up, people jumping. It was an attack of some kind. We were under attack.
I turned up the radio and cracked the eggs, listening to voices cry out over the sizzle of butter frying.
i am an american soldier
i am a warrior and a member of a team
i serve the people of the united states
and live the army values
Trucks roll, gunners scanning the horizon. The sun an incandescent smear. I sweat and turn up the music.
We drive south through the desert in a line, miles long, of big green machines.
We stand in the heat by the road and the wind whips sand at us. Waves of grit slide and ebb across the seething black. Engines hum.
In the distance two Bradleys spin heaving clouds of dust as they circle a cluster of hooches and rumble over a hill. We hear the noise of their guns then their engines fade. Smoke oozes up. An Apache hovers overhead.
Blackened humvees jut up from the sand.
Pictures come out of hadjis getting fucked with at one of the prisons. Hadjis getting punched, hadjis standing on boxes, hadjis with panties on their heads, naked hadjis getting laughed at by skanky Nasty Girl bitches.
I know what I’m looking at, but at the same time, fuck ’em. Fuck ’em to their goddamned shitsucking hadji hell. They’re shooting at us every day and I’m supposed to give a flying fuck about human rights? Fuck that. Once they quit chopping people’s heads off and lighting dudes on fire, then maybe we’ll talk.
Command comes down and says just what you’d expect, reprehensible unprofessional blah blah blah, but who the fuck cares? A few bad apples, they say, make sure you know the regulations, but we all know the score.
The muezzin calls out five times a day. Gunfire breaks the night. No running water. No electricity. No air conditioning. No grass, no carpet, no windows. No fans. Little shade, bad food, no joy, little laughter, no decent sleep. Everyone in the world wears camouflage—the others talk gobbledygook and stare.
Geraldo reenlists for a 20K bonus.
Burger King, daisy-chain. Cordon and Search. Stack team. There’s a glazed shock in everyone’s eyes, the simmer of hatred barely contained. We get in fistfights. We listen to “Hey Ya!” and count the dead.
What had I done before? Who had I been? Was there a life before this?
Negative. I’d never been anyone. I’d never done anything but drive down this highway forever, the road eternity itself, punishment for an abandoned dream’s half-imagined sins. This was all I’d ever done, all I’d ever do: drive in the heat through the sand and the pain and stink in the unceasing noise.
i stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy
the enemies of the united states of america
in close combat
0200 go. Stoat flips the humvee lights, starts the engine, and with a roar and crash slams through the front gate. We jog across the night-hung street around the humvee and into the yard. We take our positions by the door and switch on the flashlights affixed to our rifles. Burnett rams the door open and Bullwinkle goes in, then me, our rifles stabbing beams of white into the black. The rest of our team follows; the snatch team comes behind and pounds up the stairs. We take the first floor, living room, sofa, TV, clear the corners quick and into the kitchen, tomatoes and cucumbers in a bowl on the counter, flatbread, water, towels, we kick open a door and a hadji stands in the corner in his underpants, shielding his face.
“On your knees, motherfucker!”
“Inhanee!”
The hadji’s slow to move, so Bullwinkle slams the butt of his rifle in his gut, jackknifing him at the waist.
“Inhanee, motherfucker!”
He goes down. I keep my rifle at his head and Bullwinkle zip-strips his arms behind him. Once he’s tied, we drag him to the other room.
The lights on now, you can see the worn but cared-for furniture and brass knickknacks. A family portrait hangs on the wall.
Shouting upstairs.
We dump the hadji on the floor and my rifle slams against a vase, knocking it to the ground where it smashes.
“Watch it,” says Staff Sergeant Gooley.
Lieutenant Juarez and Captain Yarrow stride in, the terp behind them, just as the snatch team drags the first hadji down the stairs, a middle-aged man in boxers and a wifebeater. A woman wails somewhere.
I hear Burnett shout, “Shut that bitch up.”
“First floor clear,” Sergeant Nash tells Staff Sergeant Gooley.
“Search it,” the LT barks.
So we go back to the hadji’s room and turn on the light. He’s got a pile of letters, a little boombox, and a tiny framed picture of a woman on the table in the corner. He’s got a bed, a bookcase, a rug on the floor, a trunk, a pair of shoes. I flip through his stack of CDs while Bullwinkle strips the sheets.