Next to the camel was her calf. It had tire tracks on its belly and a bunch of bloody black gut-ropes shooting out its ass. I was amazed at how precisely indented the tread grooves were on the tiny rib cage. Tetley never saw this. I looked over and watched him pump his fist at the soldiers, and I didn’t say anything. We passed the camels, the female’s head cocked upwards, her eyes staring at me, her mouth open, bleating.
WHEN we started to break camp, Saudi farmers loitered outside the compound, lured by our discarded plywood and burlap and such. Given their gestures and keyword English, we determined that they wanted to use the scraps to repair animal hutches, make sheds and so forth. Do whatever it is farmers do with wood and corrugated metal. Hour after hour, days in the sun, the men stood there, white robes and red-checked headscarves. They grinned and mock-saluted, standing just beyond the compound wall next to their tiny white Datsun trucks.
We were ordered to give them nothing. Haji bastards are tricky, our commanders said. You never know what kind of weapon can be fashioned from canvas or particleboard.
After a few days, the farmers brought their daughters out to greet us. Not kids, not sons, but daughters, head to foot in black robes, bearing the wind like polluted ghosts. Waving at us. When this had no effect, the daughters were made to remove their veils. They prostituted smeary lipstick smiles. (One of the guys who talked to them swore it was house paint, not makeup.) Still, we hauled all of the usable materials out, passing them by, diesel exhaust and catcalls from truck cabs, en route to the burn site.
Tremendous pyres dotted the desert expanse in all directions. Streaks of black smoke rose into the sky. Tents, tarps, plywood scraps; Meals Ready to Eat, water jugs, candy wrappers, tires, extra uniforms. . All of it was stacked into large pyramids and set on fire.
The farmers still stood there, waiting. We tried to run them off. Their enthusiasm waned but they still smiled, smiled and waved when you took stuff to be burned, and we couldn’t look at them anymore, and we yelled at them, or just waved and smiled and said, “Hi, haji fuckface,” or whatever, or swerved the truck at them just a little bit, just enough to get them to jump back. We flicked our tongues at their daughters. We spat.
Alongside the order to burn, we had orders that every single grain of sand be removed from every single piece of equipment: dozers, pans, back-end loaders, trucks, etc. By no means would we be bringing home any Holy Land. They built a massive parking lot in the middle of the desert, then parked hundreds of vehicles there, in rows. With the pyres littering the landscape around us, we washed sand off of things.
Evie Mundleson and I were ordered to scour the ambulance with power sprayers. The vehicle had never been used, so the detail was a joke. We opened the bay doors and sprayed the metal walls and the metal bunks and the open metal shelving. Sandy water poured onto the ground, alongside three black scorpions.
I walked over, kicked the scorpions around for a minute. Laughed while they pinched at my boot.
“Come on, man,” she said, then stomped on them.
I asked her if she was excited to go home.
“No way. You?”
“Nope.”
LAST stop was Khobar Towers, a residential building complex outside Riyadh. In the courtyard between the high-rises the Army leashed up a camel. You could pay $5 for a Polaroid with it. They set up vending, bad pepperoni pizza and nonalcoholic beer, and kiosks sold cheap Saudi souvenirs, prayer rugs and t-shirts. There was a pool.
Amid the thousands in that sober Araby I ran across D. Garcia, this skinny Mexican I’d grown tight with during Basic Training at Fort Jackson. An Army truck driver, D. Garcia had logged over a million miles in theater. I told him I only wanted to be back in that sand. He said he just wanted to be back on that highway.
That night — the last time I would ever see him — D. Garcia and I falsified a requisition for a transport truck, a Deuce-and-a-Half, and stole into some immigrant area of the city, Filipino, where he’d discovered you could buy black market rotgut. It was nasty and clear and came in plastic water bottles. We got drunk and skidded all over back-alley Riyadh, screaming out of the open windows of the truck cab.
Back at Khobar we staggered through the hallways, playing commando. We gave hand signals like in the movies, and then snuck into rooms. There, Garcia aimed his fingers at sleeping troops, mock-fired several rounds, then stepped back into the hall and on to clear the next quarters.
Behind one door we found the women, splayed out on cots, sleeping in Army-green panties, a thin layer of sweat on their exposed skin. Evie Mundleson was among them, asleep on her chest, shirtless, her breasts all smushed out. D. Garcia cocked his eyebrow at me, raised the barrel of his finger-gun to the roof, motioned for me to go inside. I nodded. He pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then at me, and then disappeared forever. I saw myself stumble over to Evie; I heard the moan that would erupt as I yanked down her battlefield panties and shoved it all straight up her ass.
I still don’t know what stopped me. Really, there was no barrier left. No ethic, no cause. Yet I’m pretty sure I just went back to my bunk, jerked off in silence.
FAMILIES and cameras on the tarmac at Bragg. It was hot and humid, and Charlotte was not there, though I couldn’t stop looking for her. People hugged people, hugged children, hugged reporters. Every hand waved those little American flags you find in the cemetery. Someone handed out Southwest Asia Service Medals.
That night we put a bunch of bottles together, tequila, Jägermeister, Jack, what have you. It was guys-only. Everyone brought a fifth of the liquor they’d missed most. We drank violently, sitting on the patio outside the barracks, our dog barks reverberating off the concrete into the warm southern evening. We piled in a minivan cab and went to town. The driver didn’t even ask, “Where to?” He just dumped us on a busy, soldiered street full of bars. We wandered among hundreds of redeployed troops, amid loud music and vendors and neon. A barker talked us into one of the endless nasty clubs.
Cigarettes and air freshener and terrible music. A brown-skinned woman in a denim miniskirt and halter top marched up, and I asked her for a beer. She said nothing, only yanked me to the back of the room as the guys howled. She pulled me behind a partition, lifted her halter, placed my hands on her large breasts, then put her own hands over mine and began rubbing us in circles. It made me think of a Laundromat.
“You like these tits?” she asked.
“Uh-huh,” I answered. She might have been Mexican. She walked me into a small room with a lamp and an olive-colored military cot. I had to put both hands on the wall to hold myself up as she undid my pants and put a condom over me. She sat on the cot and started to work me over like a machine, licking my anus for a few seconds, mouthing my testicles, fellating me just enough to promote erection. Straight-up checklist: hike miniskirt, panties to ankles, bend over. Enfranchise me with hard statements about my masculinity as I penetrate. I finished instantly but tried to keep going, accidentally lodging the condom inside her after I went limp. I handed her all my money, then stumbled into a bathroom stall and wept.
IN Tuscaloosa I borrowed a pair of eyeglasses from a friend, pulled a Crimson Tide ball cap low on my brow, and went to see Charlotte, unannounced. I had never worn glasses, so everything was blurry. My clothes felt borrowed and dated, and were musty from a year in the drawer. She answered the door and we stood there, silently, until finally she said she was glad to see me. She was sorry how things had worked out.