Ryan Smithson (14 page)

This is how the enemy knows our tactics.

This is how we avoid remaining complacent.

We come back out for another month to paint our canvas with
haji
concrete and green spray paint. The days are long and hard, but the mission is important. It isn’t immediately gratifying. We are sweaty and tired and the ripped-up road ahead of us seems much longer than the patched road behind us. Nonetheless, we are no doubt saving people’s lives by accomplishing this mission. It’s not direct, but if our efforts stop even one insurgent from reusing a crater to kill another soldier or civilian, the mission is worth it.

The local sheik even comes out to thank us when, with the help of the sister unit, we replace an irrigation pipe that ran under the road we were repairing. It had been broken for years. Even though we couldn’t give the locals water when we flew past them after the fake IED, we provided them with irrigation water they hadn’t seen in years.

This isn’t a weapons cache-search mission during which we kick down doors looking for suspects. We pour concrete. No news reporters followed us around, because soldiers saving lives aren’t as interesting as soldiers taking lives. America’s not aware of the honor of war unless it involves POWs or medals of valor. Sometimes it’s frustrating the way our efforts seem left on the ground in Iraq: spray paint on
haji
concrete.

The hard canvas we paint in Iraq is one of scar tissue. It’s a bunch of holes crudely patched with cheap concrete. It’s a stretch of road that was previously unmanageable. It’s a makeshift job, but it works. It doesn’t match the rest of the road, but The ’Shroom Platoon has done its part.

“W
hat should we name him?” I ask.

“Jerkface,” says Jesse Smith around the wad of Copenhagen that is packed behind his bottom lip.

“Let’s see what kind of tricks he can do.”

Jerkface is a small grayish brown bird. He is the color of rocks and dust, the color of Iraq. He is one of the several birds who live in the palm trees outside our barracks. Few birds are brave enough to come near us, but Jerkface often flies down for a visit.

Austin Rhodes and Justin Greene live in the lower-enlisted bay in which we built rooms before we moved in. And since we had control over the matter, they decided to
combine their rooms to have a little extra space. They take Jerkface into their room where he sits on our hands like a trained parrot.

We play with the little bird, spread his legs apart, bob him up and down. We play “Rockin’ Robin” from Greene’s laptop and make Jerkface dance to it. We pass him from hand to hand, finger to finger, testing his patience.

We play with him like children play with stuffed animals. The whole time, he looks at us with dumb eyes. As he sits perched on my finger, dancing because I am making him, I study the content little bird. He is the size of any little robin or finch back home. He sits on my finger calm and collected, breathing casually, wondering about this new experience. I look at Jerkface and wonder if he knows how lucky he is to be dumb.

I think of looking at myself in the bathroom mirror at Fort Bragg. About nine months ago, as I was training for the Sandbox, I had the same dumb look on my face. I looked around at my new environment and wondered what it was all about. I took it all in, darted my head from side to side, and pecked at my food as some great, unseen force took me by the legs and forced me to dance.

Let’s see what kind of tricks he can do.

In Iraq I sit in my barracks at night. On missions I lie on a cot or in the back of a Humvee. With each passing day I grow more desensitized and dumb. A mortar can come
crashing through the barracks ceiling at any second. The side of the road can blow up anytime during a convoy—an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) or AK-47 or friendly fire. But what’s the point in worrying? So I sit calm and collected, breathing casually, wondering about this new experience.

When I want to eat, I go to the chow hall. Jerkface goes to the palm tree. When I want to play, I go to our makeshift volleyball court. Jerkface goes to the palm tree. When I want to talk to my family, I go to the Internet café. Jerkface goes to the palm tree.

I am occupying Jerkface’s home, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he thinks my Joe Schmo friends and I can make his home better. After all, we give him treats from the mountain of packages sitting on the shelf in the common room. Jerkface likes crackers. Even the ones from the MREs.

We eat MREs often enough to pity those soldiers who eat them every day. If you’re wondering what it’s like to eat an MRE in Iraq, try this:

First, disperse fifty pounds of gear between your head, shoulders, and chest. Then find your favorite piece of cardboard, smother it with cheese-flavored grease, and you have the pre-meal snack of cheese and crackers. For the MRE meal take another piece of cardboard and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Soak the cardboard pieces overnight in a
mixture of coagulated gravy, Tabasco sauce, and old sticky tomatoes. Make sure you do this at room temperature. Preheat your oven to 140 degrees, but instead of cooking your meal, sit on the floor directly in front of the oven. Open the oven door, and place a fan inside so it blows in your face. Now tip your garbage can over to simulate any given Iraqi street and you have created the typical dining experience.

The kids in Iraq love MREs. Their eyes light up like Christmas candles when they see a box of MREs. They even know the acronym. They grab the bulging brown package out of our hands and sit criss-crossed with it in their lap. Ripping it open, they toss the spoon and utility pack full of napkins, salt, and matches over their shoulder. They always toss the spoon. They eat MREs with their hands, tearing into the “entrée” first, exposing the brown sludge that is supposed to pass for beefsteak and mushrooms. Not that it isn’t beefsteak and mushrooms. It most certainly is. After all, turkey, cranberry sauce, croissants, and sweet potatoes are still a fine Thanksgiving meal even if they’re pureed together and vacuum packed for three years, right?

When I think of elementary schoolkids in America peeling the crusts off their sandwiches, complaining that their parents won’t buy them Lunchables, I pity them more than the Iraqi kids.

Even the dogs are weary of the MREs. Once, on the
IED crater-filling mission, a skinny little mutt comes up to us with a friendly grin. His hair is short and the color of Iraq, dusty red-brown. He flexes his nostrils at us as we spoon MRE slush into our mouths. We pet him on the head and name him Haji. He is a rather friendly pup, and we look for his collar. Yeah, right. There’s a culturally based functional fixation if I ever saw one: expecting a wandering Iraqi dog to have proper identification.

My name is “Haji.” I belong to Malhabar Azwiki at 666 North Ambush Drive, Balad, Iraq.

Haji the Dog looks like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. He reminds me of those dogs they pick up on those animal cop shows, the ones that come from a 20x15 chain-link fenced backyard where twelve mangy mutts live in their own feces. We can see his ribs and feel his spine when we pet his back. But he looks happy and hopeful, like any other hungry dog.

Jesse Smith has ravioli, and he tosses a few pieces on the ground in front of Haji. He approaches the ravioli and gives it a sniff. I remember a little boy who tore into a similar MRE with such speed that he had no time for a spoon. Haji the Dog is starving. And he’s a dog. Surely he’ll swallow the ravioli without chewing and then beg us for more. He sniffs it once, pulls back, and sniffs it again. Then he turns and walks away. Haji seems insulted.

We throw our heads back in laughter. Haji the Dog trots
away, off to find some food worthy of his time and energy, and we finish our MREs. Maybe Haji is already too stuffed to enjoy the ravioli, but I doubt it.

There are two kinds of animals in war. There are the animals that live here. These animals, like Jerkface and Haji, give us perspective. They show us resilience and understanding. They show us reality, that we have no control over our situation. That MREs are disgusting.

But the other kind of animals in war, they break your heart. They’re the animals you left back home. The ones you abandoned.

One night a letter lies on my bunk. The address on the front is in my father’s handwriting: all capital letters that slant to the right. The handwriting from many of my childhood memories. Growing up, I looked up to that handwriting. It represented the man I was to become. I write in all capital letters now, too.

I love getting letters from my father. It is our own special time together, a time for regret, denial, and pride. My father is very articulate. He doesn’t have a master’s degree in English. He doesn’t spit out six-syllable words in every sentence. But he has the truly rare ability to tell a story, to use language uniquely. Without conscious knowledge or intent, it’s my dad who taught me to write.

I love reading his letters. I love hearing his stories.

I also admire my father’s ability to chat. My father loves
talking to people, figuring them out, cluing in and finding out how innately similar we human beings are. My mother often says, “Your father would talk to a lamppost if he thought it would listen.” My father has the gift of gab, and it has served him well. It even helps me while I sit on a slumped army bunk in the middle of Iraq wondering about tomorrow, if I should face a new mission with fear or faith.

Anticipating what new things he has to tell me, I sit holding his latest letter. It is in a thick envelope, and after opening it I see it comes with pictures: two digital pictures printed off a computer.

Dad tells me that the pictures are from Drake Island in Follensby Clear Pond, New York. My parents and a bunch of their friends camped out on a small state-owned island. They had bonfires and ate baked beans, hot dogs, and s’mores. They played cards and swam and swapped stories. All the real good stuff. The stuff fathers and sons do together to learn about each other.

Wish you could’ve been there, Ryan
, he writes.

Me too, Dad.

The second half of the letter is about the hard reality of the trip, how afterward my parents put their dog, Haley, to sleep.

Haley had regained most of her control after being paralyzed, but her bowels never fully recovered. For two years
she’d been crapping without control. She wore a doggy diaper with a hole cut for the tail, but she hated it. My parents hated it, too. It wasn’t fair to keep her alive like that.

I look at the two pictures. One is of all the guys gathered around a hand-built table made of logs. The table is covered with liquor bottles. The men are smiling and bonding. Think of EQ platoon.

The other picture is of Haley and Dad. Haley sleeps underneath a collapsible chair, the kind that litters the sidewalk during a Fourth of July fireworks show. My father sits in the chair above her. His shirt is off and a beer is in his hand: the Dad pose. He’s wearing a bathing suit that is too high on his thighs—Dad shorts—and a cowboy hat rests in his lap.

We got to the boat launch
, my dad writes (the boat launch is the only way to the island.)
I loaded the canoe with all my gear and tied Haley to the front seat. We headed into a ten mile-an-hour wind. She did okay until she saw a loon fifty feet away. She wanted to play, but tying her down worked well.

All Haley ever wanted to do was play. Back half working or not, she wanted to chase sticks, my sister and me, the cat, Frisbees, or loons on a lake. On land she could hardly walk. If she got too excited over food or playtime, her back half collapsed and she dragged it behind her like a collapsible chair after the Fourth of July grand finale.

In the water, though, where she’d always been a natural, Haley was her old self. The rules of gravity were suspended
and Haley pumped her back legs like she used to. She could play fetch again. She could run again. No weight on her legs. No pain. No puppy-dog-eye shame because she crapped on the kitchen floor again. Haley’s mouth always formed a natural smile when she panted. Her smile in the water was ear to ear.

My father sits frozen in time in my hands. His best friend lies underneath his chair with her eyes closed and mouth in the dirt. Only my father knows it’s her last outing.

My father has complete control over Haley’s life. He has to play God, but he hates having to do so. He decides that she’s had a good life. Her grand finale is the best it can possibly be. She swims just like she used to, plays like a puppy again, smiling from floppy ear to floppy ear.

I guess that’s one good thing about dying young: you’re remembered for your purity, vigor, and spontaneity. Dying young, you’re remembered for your youth.

Still doesn’t make it fair.

I took Haley to the vet in the morning…

Haley loved the vet. She loved the smell of other dogs. She loved to be social. She would bark at a lamppost if she thought it would listen.

…and buried her soon thereafter.

Something in that sentence reeks of regret. My father doesn’t fully believe it was the best option. He hates having to play God.

She sat with me in the front seat on the way home.

Haley was never allowed in the front seat. She got too excited, too happy, and Dad yelled at her.

I cried like a baby the whole way back.

She is dead. My father’s best friend is dead. I look at the picture again. Haley’s grand finale. She looks happy and peaceful, collapsed there underneath the Fourth of July chair.

I put her in the grave with your “Who’s your doggy?” bandanna still on her.

Heather and I had given Haley the bright blue bandanna. Haley loved it because we loved it.

I thought of all the good times I had with Haley. All the times I chased her in the snow or in a lake. All the times I tackled her and then she stood up ready for more. All the times I slept next to her on the floor. All her panting smiles. The way she used to lie on the floor, take a deep breath, and exhale deeply before her eyes closed.

I know now that when she was put to sleep, Haley didn’t take a final, deep breath of air. She went to sleep out of her routine, because she didn’t really go to sleep at all.

I laid her on her pad with all her stuffed animals around her.

The image sticks in my head as if I were there: Dad tossing Haley’s toys, one by one into a shallow grave in the backyard: the squeaky bear with dried spit that caked its
hair together, the yellow duck out of which she used to eat the stuffing, the stuffed hot dog with red ketchup and yellow mustard fabric sticking out of the top. And Haley…

She looked peaceful.
…wearing the faded blue bandanna we loved, she loved. Her distinguished white snout and golden fur. No pain. No puppy-dog-eye shame. She was finally resting. At peace.

Then I added another headstone to our pet cemetery.

Let’s try and keep that a pet
only
cemetery, Dad.

Keep your head down over there, Ryan.

I wish it was that simple.

I miss you.

I miss you too, Dad.

I love you.

I love you too, Dad.

Slumped over my army bunk, I cry.