Fives and Twenty-Fives (28 page)

“Then they go out and catch a bunch of camel spiders to fight the scorpion. Oh, and they name him, Fred. Right? Fred, the Egyptian death stalker. World’s deadliest scorpion. I’m not kidding.”

“Who is it?” Jagrschein whispered to Moonbeam as she strained to hear the radio traffic. “Which unit?”

She put the radio back on the table and turned the volume way down. She shook her head, not to say that she didn’t know, but that it wasn’t the time to ask.

“What those dumb-asses didn’t know? Camel spiders are the natural prey of the Egyptian death stalker scorpion. So, I mean, it’s not much of a fight, is it? More like a feeding. They drop in these big camel spiders and Fred the Scorpion just kills them in about five seconds and eats them whole. So, they’re feeding this fucker, right? Constantly. And he’s getting bigger. A
lot
bigger.”

Jagrschein noticed me looking at my mashed potatoes, doing my best to ignore Cobb’s story, and decided to chat me up. Maybe he wanted to keep his mind off the helicopter on its way to the hospital with those Marines. Maybe his Marines.

“So, Pete, you do outpost construction like Cobb over there?”

“No. I have the road-repair platoon. We fill potholes. Craters and stuff.”

“Ever filled a crater in Ramadi?”

“Not yet. Fallujah, mostly. Habbaniyah and points north.”

On the other side of the table, Wong stepped into Cobb’s scorpion story. “Yeah, but tell them how you found it,” he said eagerly. “Tell them how you walked in on them while they were feeding it.”

Cobb smiled over at Wong. “Right! Thanks for reminding me. So, I go into the platoon’s barracks to see if the corporals have their guys ready to roll in the morning, and I find the whole gang huddled around that cardboard box, cheering . . .”

Moonbeam’s radio squawked again and she got up from the table, left her tray, and walked out in a hurry.

“. . . and I’m like, ‘The fuck is
this
? Do you know how deadly that scorpion is? Ever heard of neurotoxins?’ Seriously, one sting and you’re doing the funky chicken, foaming at the mouth. And here’s the kicker: the nearest antivenom stocks are in fucking Germany . . .”

Jagrschein’s eyes tracked Moonbeam as she left the chow hall, and he seemed to be debating whether to leave, too.

“So, Brian,” I said, trying to distract him, “you operate out of Hurricane Point?”

He brought his eyes back to me. “That’s right.”

“Security patrols? Quick-reaction force?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. I mean, we have our own mission, my platoon. Special tasking.”

“Dude, did you lose your shit when you caught them?” Wong laughed hard.

Cobb shrugged. “No, I kept my cool. They stopped cheering when they saw me, though. That’s for goddamn sure. I didn’t say a word. I just walked out and went to see Gunny . . .”

“What kind of special tasking?” I asked Jagrschein. “Checkpoints? High-value targets?”

“Nah, nothing like that. We take the governor of Anbar Province to work every morning. Pick him up at his house, fight him into Government Center in the morning, and fight him home in the afternoon.”

“Fight?”

“Yeah. It’s a running gunfight. Every morning. Every afternoon.”

“. . . and I tell Gunny, ‘Get that
fucking
scorpion out of this barracks. Kill it, release it, I don’t care . . .’”

“Then why do it?” I asked. “Why not just tell him to bed down at Government Center?”

Jagrschein shrugged. “To keep up appearances, I guess. We do it at the same time every day. We change up the route a little bit, but otherwise it’s a toe-to-toe fight. Whole city knows when he’s coming and going. Brave guy, I’ll give him that. He’s the tenth governor in two years. The other nine were all assassinated.”

“. . . but Gunny tells me, ‘Sir, we can’t do that. They’re attached to Fred the Scorpion. He’s like a pet. We kill him, it’ll crush morale . . .’”

“Whose choice is that?” I asked. “Going home every night? His choice? The regimental commander’s?”

“His, I think. If someone was just telling him to do it, I’m sure he would’ve refused a long time ago. The Government Center offices? They’re up high, so the bad guys have direct line of sight on the building from anywhere in the neighborhood. We put a flak and Kevlar on him, right over his coat and tie, and we drag him up the steps as fast as we can. Under fire, every time. It’s a real bitch. All the spent brass on the steps? We’re always slipping on the fuckers, trying to return fire.”

“. . . so we reach a compromise. I tell Gunny, ‘Look, drown the little fucker in diesel to preserve his body, and we’ll pack the corpse in epoxy. All right? Make a paperweight out of him, or something . . .’”

“We do foot patrols around Government Center during the day, just to keep the bad guys on their heels a little bit. Push them back enough so we can get out the gate in the afternoon without getting pounded by RPGs. Try to keep them from lining all the routes with IEDs. And those foot patrols, man? It’s the real deal. We do the whole patrol route at a dead sprint. Fire coming from everywhere.”

“. . . then, after three days floating around in the diesel, the Marines reach in with pliers and pick him up by his tail. They’re about to drop him in the epoxy, and the fucker comes back to
life
! He wiggles out of the pliers and hits the ground running. Fred, the indestructible petro-scorpion! So, you know, somewhere on this base is the biggest scorpion in the whole world, and he’s impervious to our weapons.”

“That whole city. Ramadi,” Jagrschein said, “it’s ready to explode.”

“. . . Anyway,
that’s
my scorpion story.” Cobb looked up from his Salisbury steak, finding his table had drifted. Half the lieutenants were now listening to Jagrschein.

But Wong held true. “That’s fucking hilarious, Cobb. You should write that down.”

“Sorry for holding you up,” I said to Jagrschein. “You probably want to go check on that dust-off bird.”

“Yeah, I should do that.”

He stood to leave. So did I.

“Nice talking to you, Pete,” he said. “Look for me at Hurricane Point, if you make it out that way.”

He turned for the door. I still had food on my plate, but I didn’t care to sit back down and listen to Cobb and Wong. I didn’t want to follow Jagrschein out either and have him thinking he had to keep talking to me. So I walked over to the dessert table with my tray and hunted around the slices of cake until I saw Jagrschein leave. Then I left, too.

I took a shortcut back to the company area, deciding to climb the berm and spend some time looking down at the river. I scrambled my way to the top and sat just as the full moon cleared the buildings behind me. The light painted the river and the flooded fields and shimmered in the exhaust of every generator in Habbaniyah.

I had a strange notion that I shouldn’t let my birthday pass without at least a token commemoration. Not because I thought I’d earned it. It was more to do with the envelopes I’d dropped in the mailbox earlier. The pointless, empty words to Marceau’s parents. I thought about the first leadership principle:
Know yourself and seek improvement.
Real OCS idiocy.

Then, as I searched for a place to start knowing myself, the barracks door creaked open below me, and someone muttered as he climbed the berm. I sat still as the climber slipped, planted a knee in the dirt, and cursed, “Fuck.”

I recognized the voice—Dodge—but stayed quiet until he made it to the top and installed himself a few meters away from me with a book in his hands.

“Dodge?”

He flinched.
“Mulasim?
Fuck. You frightened me.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”

“How long have you been sitting here,
Mulasim
?”

“Not long. A few minutes? You know you’re not supposed to come up here, right?”

“Yes, I do know this.” He smiled. “Are you aware of this?”

I smiled back. “Special occasion.”

“Indeed?”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Well, then, happy birthday,
Mulasim
.” He put the book under his leg, mimed applause.

“How do you say ‘happy birthday’ in Arabic?”

“Eid meelad sa’eed.”

“I like that,” I lied worthlessly. “I’ll try to remember.” We sat quietly for a moment and I sensed him wishing I’d leave. Suddenly not wanting to be alone, I forced him to keep talking to me. “What’s with that book, anyway? Always meaning to ask you.”

“This?” He pulled the book out from under his leg. “It is just something I study. Something I like.”

“Can I see it?”

He hesitated. Then shrugged and extended the book my way. “Certainly.”

I held the tattered title page up to the moonlight and read the faded words. “
Huck Finn?
Really?”

“Of course.” Dodge kept his hand out, wanting the book back.

I flipped through the pages, thick with handwritten notes in both Arabic and English. “You really read this? I mean, this is hard for a lot of Americans.”

“Of course. As I have said, I study it.” He closed his hand a few times, growing more insistent, so I returned the book to him.

“Where did you learn to speak English? Been meaning to ask you that, too.”

“School.”

“College?”

He cringed. “I am told not to discuss that.”

“Oh, that’s right. Sorry.” We sat quietly again until I found something else to talk about, some other reason to keep him there. “You and Doc Pleasant seem to get on well. I’m happy to see it.”

“Yes?”

“Sure. You’re both new to the platoon, still. And you know—good to have a buddy.”

“Do you think so,
Mulasim
?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Because I have observed you somewhat, and you appear to have no friends at all.” He waited for a moment for my reaction, then pressed on regardless. “Today is your birthday? And you come here alone?”

“True enough.” I laughed. “I
do
have friends. Just . . . not around here.”

“Not around here.” Dodge nodded knowingly. “Yes. To have friends in this place is quite problematic.”

I looked over at him, examining his face in the moonlight. His features, loose and easy with the platoon, here in the dark struck me as pitiless. He seemed to almost scowl, eyes fixed on the river.

“I’m not sure about all that.” To show him that I wasn’t clueless, I added, “Look, I know you can’t be happy about . . . us. You know. Being here. But I hope we can be friends, anyway.” What a jackass thing to say, I thought.

“Do you truly believe that I am upset about that,
Mulasim
? About the fate of Saddam?”

“What, then? Why can’t we be friends?” I smiled and scooted over to nudge him, trying to keep it light.

“Because when you have friends, you have people.”

“Sure. But that’s a good thing, right?”

Dodge shook his head. “You misunderstand. People have enemies.
Other
people. People with a reason to cut off your head. All it takes is the one friend. Like you. If I am your friend, then all Americans are my people, and everyone else is my enemy. If I have friendship with a Kurd, then the Kurds are my people and I must fight the Sunni and the Shia.” He waved the back of his hand at the river. “You cannot have friends, here. You cannot have people.” Then he added with a sigh, “Only family.”

I waited a moment before speaking. “You have family, Dodge?”

He sighed. “I have a father and a brother. That is all.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good, then.”

“What of you,
Mulasim
? Do you have a family?”

I rubbed my hands together and nodded. “Sure. Sure. I have parents. A mom and a dad. They still live together. Still married.” It occurred to me that this detail about my parents’ intact marriage, always so essential when talking to Americans my age, might not be relatable to Dodge. My thoughts flashed back to the two envelopes. Marceau’s mom and dad and their different addresses.

“My parents, they’re teachers,” I added. “My mom teaches French and my dad is the high school principal. He coaches the football team, too. American football, I mean. Not soccer.”

“Brothers or sisters, as well?”

“One sister.”

“Is she attractive?” Dodge asked with a smirk. “
This
might give me a reason to be your friend, if you are still so concerned.”

“I suppose so.” I laughed. “She’s older than me. Of course, she’s married. Pregnant with her first child, actually.”

“You will be Uncle Mulasim soon, then?”

“Just Pete. Uncle Pete.”

“Mulasim Uncle Pete.”

“Even better. Leave it there. Unnecessary Uncle Pete. Nice.”

We sat quietly again, for a full minute with nothing left to talk about.

Finally I said, “You know, anytime you need to go see your family, let me know. We can get you an escort.”