The Valley (16 page)

T
he door swung a hundred eighty degrees and smacked sharply against the plywood wall on which it was mounted. Corelli, the straight-arrow kid from the night before, literally leaped from the stool on which he'd been sitting, back partly turned to the door, writing a letter. The stool went tripping into a corner as Corelli launched himself up and backward, turning in midair and smacking into the wall, his face confusion and terror, his arms up protectively.

“Are you gonna break my balls!?” Black shouted at the kid.

Corelli, back to the wall, flinched and jumped, all at once.

“What? No, sir, I—”

Black, planted in the threshold, stalked into the tiny room.

“Because if you're gonna pull the same B.S. these other two did,” he said loudly, “just tell me now so I can go back to the FOB and write all three of you up for obstructing and you can explain yourselves to the court-martial.”

The kid looked even more frightened at hearing the word
court-martial
than he had at Black bursting into his room like a bomb going off.

“Sir!” he cried, baffled. “No, I'm—I'm not . . . What?”

Black pointed at the upturned stool.

“Sit.”

Corelli scurried and stood it up and got his butt in it.

Black sat down on the edge of his bunk, facing him. He pointed at the soldier's chest.

“Are you going to talk to me,” he said sternly, “or are you going to waste my time like your buddies?”

“No, sir,” Corelli stammered. “I mean, yes, sir, I will talk to you. I'm not going to waste your time.”

The kid looked pale. Black squinted at him for a few seconds, marveling at how young the slight soldier looked. The taut skin on his small neck, Black was fairly sure, had never been shaved.

“I met you last night.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what a fifteen-six is?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Do you know what this one is about?”

“I think so, sir,” Corelli said nervously, rubbing his hand through blond stubble atop his head.

“Why do you think so?”

“Because I knew I was gonna get in trouble over that warning shot, sir.”

“You're not in trouble.”

Corelli looked confused.

“But I'm being investigated, right, sir?”

Black sighed. Soldiers.

“It's not you, specifically. I'm just talking to everyone so we can write down what happened.”

“But I was the shooter, sir.”

So the kid did want to talk.

“Okay,” said Black, cooling. “I mean, why don't we just start at the beginning.”

He pulled out his notebook and a pen, taking a moment to look around Corelli's little room.

It was the most spartan of the three. Little bookshelf with a Bible and some paperbacks. Photographs from back home tacked to the wall. Parents, it looked like, and an adoring little sister maybe. Corelli in civilian clothes posing in a line of wholesome-looking teenagers, arms linked across shoulders, waterfall in the background. Camping trip with a church group from the look of it.

A tinny little boom box sat on a top shelf in the corner, emitting some kind of bombastic 1970s-era art rock opus. Gongs and wind chimes mingled with meandering synthesizers and nature sounds. Didn't seem like the kid's speed.

“Michael A. Corelli, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Black sped through the formalities, which even he was losing patience for. He tossed the notebook aside and sat back against the wall.

“Okay,” he said to Corelli. “Tell it.”

The kid ran it down. It was pretty much just like Brydon had told it, to the extent he had been willing to tell it.

They'd been down in the village to find the chief, after Miller shot the goat in the fog the night before. They wanted him to identify the owner so they could make amends, but while the meeting was still going on inside his house more and more local guys from town started showing up. They weren't happy, and they were yelling stuff at the joes pulling security.

“What were they saying?” Black asked.

“I don't know, sir. Danny was inside the chief's house.”

“How long's Danny been with the unit?”

“Long as I've been here, sir.”

The gongs and wind chimes on the boom box had given way to pretentiously complex Look-at-me-play electric guitar lines.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Anyway, I couldn't tell what they were saying, but they weren't happy, and they were starting to get in our faces.”

“Where were you guys at that point?”

“We were in the middle of the town, sort of in the town square I guess. It's basically just dirt and grass with homes around it. We were spread out, facing outward, pulling security while the others were inside.”

“Caine and Merrick were in with the chief?”

“Sergeant Caine was outside supervising us, sir.”

“Where was Lieutenant Pistone?”

“He wasn't on that patrol, sir.”

Figures.

“It was just Sergeant Merrick in the chief's house, sir,” Corelli went on, “and the captain.”

“Captain?”

“There was a captain I didn't know along with us that day, sir. We met him at his helicopter down at the river.”

The Civil Affairs officer whose report had triggered the 15-6 investigation.

“Okay,” Black said.

“So there were a lot of these guys from the town by that point. Some of them were young, and some of them were the older guys.”

“All right.”

“And there was this group of younger guys that was close to where I was standing. And, like, they sort of started crowding me. Like, they're yelling at me and I don't know what they're saying but they're mad, and I got the feeling that one of them, the guy who was kind of the leader, was about to grab for my weapon.”

“What made you think that?”

“I just had that feeling, sir. You know?”

“Okay.”

“I mean,” said Corelli, “I've been in more than one of these Afghani towns, sir, and you can tell when something is about to go bad.”

“I understand.”

“And I'm telling you, sir, this was about to go bad. And these guys sort of pressed in on me and I just could tell, I just knew that this guy was about to grab for my weapon.”

The drums had fallen in full force alongside the guitar lines, and a “singer” who appeared to know only how to howl and yowl in the highest registers had joined the fray. Something about honeydew and rivers.

“Was your weapon attached to you?”

“Yes, sir. I had it on the D-ring like usual.”

“So what then?”

“So right at that moment when I sort of knew that was about to happen, I took about two steps backward to clear myself from the Afghani guys and I raised my weapon over their heads and I put three rounds into the wall of one of the mud houses off the square behind where they were standing.”

Black frowned.

“Where was Sergeant Caine at that point?”

“He was on the other side of the square, sir.”

“Why didn't you wait for him to tell you what to do?”

Corelli shook his head: Not that kind of situation
.

“It was just one of those split-second things, sir,” he said. “He was probably seventy-five or a hundred meters away, and I mean, he could see me and I could see him, but I would have had to shout and get his attention just to communicate. Or use my radio, which would have taken even longer. I didn't think I could wait, sir, and I didn't want to shoot the guys.”

“Were they aimed shots?”

Corelli nodded vigorously.

“Absolutely, sir. I found the closest solid target behind where they were standing. I've got a magnification sight on my rifle and I could see exactly where the rounds were hitting the wall. I know I didn't put any into the window.”

“You ever been in a civilian-type situation like this in Afghanistan before?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you never had to fire warning shots before?”

“Um, no, sir,” said Corelli. “Not in any of the previous civilian-type situations I've been in with this platoon.”

The interminable song seemed to be reaching some kind of climax. It sounded as though the entire set of drums and gongs and cymbals and wind chimes had been hurled down a stairwell and powderized in a wood chipper at the bottom. The singer wailed like he was being sucked into a black hole. It was awful.

Black tried to focus.

“Uh, why didn't you shoot into the air?”

Corelli looked at him funny for a moment.

“Well, 'cause they'll come down again, sir. I mean, we can't just shoot crazy in the air like Iraqis do after soccer games and stuff.”

“Fair enough.”

Black felt foolish. He was having a hard time concentrating on his questions. He was distracted by the lyrics to the song, which apparently wasn't done yet after all.

A thousand years have come and gone

He looked at Corelli, who was looking at the floor.

“I guess I was a little jumpy, sir.”

“Why were you jumpy?”

“Because the town had been so mad, sir.”

Black thought a moment, squeezing his thoughts between the singer's yowling about the sky stopping or something.

“Why did you say you knew you'd be in trouble before?”

Corelli cleared his throat.

“When we got back from the patrol the lieutenant told me I would probably be in trouble if there was ever an investigation.”

The guy wouldn't stop about the frozen sky.

“He mentioned an investigation?”

“That was the term he used, sir.”

Black quietly congratulated himself on correctly deducing from a mere photograph the sort of petty and ineffectual leader the absent Pistone must have been.

“Why do you think the town guys were so mad?” he asked.

Corelli looked up at Black, hesitating.

“I don't think that's a question I can answer, sir.”

Now the singer wanted the world to end.

“Why not?”

Or for morning to come. Hard to say.

“Um,” Corelli hesitated. “Sergeant Merrick told me not to, uh, speculate on anything that I don't have direct knowledge of, sir.”

“I thought you said that someone's goat had gotten killed the night before.”

“Yes, sir,” said Corelli. “It did, sir. I just, I mean, I'm not supposed to assume that I know what's in their head at a particular time, sir.”

Praying for the light

“All I know about
that
day specifically,” Corelli went on, “is that a goat got killed the night before . . .”

Prison of the lost . . .

“. . .
and the guys in the town were mad when we were there the next day. I can't say what—”

Xanadu.

Black startled to attention.

Xaaaaaaaaaa-naaaaaaaa-dooooooo . . .

“What's this?” he demanded.

“Huh?”

“What's this?” Black asked again.

Corelli looked at him blankly.

“What's what, sir?”

“This.”

Black thumbed at the CD player.

“The music?” Corelli asked. “The Wizard gave it to me.”

He looked at Black, brow furrowed.

“It's kind of cool, right, sir?”

“What's ‘Xanadu'?” Black asked.

“Sir?”

“In the song.”

Corelli shook his head.

“It's just the song, I think, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Wizard said it's from a poem, I think, sir.”

“What poem?”

Corelli shrugged.

“Some Wizard poem, sir. He reads a lot of crazy stuff.”

“Huh.”

Corelli appeared to remember something.

“He said ‘Xanadu is what comes before the end of the world,' whatever that means. I think it's just the song, sir.”

Black shook his head and refocused on the interview. The singer, who now seemed depressed, rolled on.

Corelli explained how the warning shots succeeded in backing off the little group of guys that were hassling him, and startled the rest of the crowd. Caine took over at that point, and the chief came out of his house with Merrick and the visiting captain and calmed everybody down.

“What happened then?”

“At that point, we beat feet and went home, sir,” explained Corelli. “We especially didn't want to push it with the town that particular day, so we just got out and came back here.”

Black thought back over the interview. The singer, who was howling again in anguish over some sort of existential tragedy, made it difficult to do so clearly.

“Okay,” he said. “I think that's it. Are you willing to write it all down in a sworn statement later so I can take that back with me to the FOB?”

Corelli looked at him earnestly.

“Anything you ask me about,” he said with his strange formality, “is what I can put in a sworn statement, sir.”

“Okay,” Black said breezily. “Is that it, or is there anything else to add?”

Corelli was still looking at him.

“That is everything I have to say about that day, sir.”

Black thanked him for his time and apologized for startling him before.

“I'm okay with surprises, sir.”

Odd kid. Black left him to his letter-writing.

The endless art rock song still hadn't exhausted itself. The guitar line was back, circling around on itself over and over as he stepped out into the hallway with relief.

—

Black poked his head into the guard shack and proffered the pack of smokes.

“And how, sir.”

He came in and they all lit up. They shot the breeze and watched the fog come in again.

“You guys got Internet here?” Black asked.

“C'mon, sir,” said the first soldier, dragging. “What do you think?”