The Valley (6 page)

He took a pull on his smoke.

“If you puss out and don't use it, just toss it in the river before you come home.”

“You don't want it back?” Black asked.

“What the fuck I want a brick of heroin for?”

“I don't know, I just—”

“You think I'm fucking dealing?”

“No, man, I just . . .”

Black changed the subject.

“Where'd you get it anyway?”

“Don't worry about it. But I didn't fucking buy it and I wasn't going to fucking sell it, all right?”

“All right.”

He put up his hands. Mercy.

“I just thought you might need it sometime like you're telling me to use it,” he said.

“I don't go noplace now, L.T. You know that.”

Black wrapped the thing back up and felt its weight in both hands.

Hell with it.

He put it in his jacket pocket and stood up.

“All right. Thanks, Smoke.”

He used the artillery honorific for the senior sergeant in a howitzer platoon. Toma hadn't been a platoon sergeant for a lot of years, but the name stuck. The only kind of people who called him Sergeant Toma were straight-arrow commanders who didn't know the difference between a supply sergeant and an acquisition specialist anyway. To anybody who knew him he was Smoke.

“You got it.”

Meeting adjourned. Black headed for the door.

“Hey, L.T.”

Black stopped.

Toma had come back from his trunk with a second object, which had been sitting in his lap the whole time. He turned in his chair and tossed it over his shoulder to Black.

It was a little black canvas zip case, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Black reached for the zipper pull that ran around the outside of it.

“Just take it.”

Black slid the case into his jacket pocket, giving Toma a squinty
Okaaayyy
look.

Toma blew another cloud and settled back into his chair, turning away from Black.

“‘I know more about you than you think,'” he said in the same mock-conspiratorial tone Black had used on him. “Will.”

Black let himself out.

He walked, hand on the brick in his pocket, the Valley and its possibilities forking out before him. He was so distracted he'd gone halfway back across the FOB before he realized he had forgotten his other stop. He checked his watch.

It was getting late, but he knew by then that sleep was not going to come anytime soon. He turned and trudged back the way he'd come.

This one would be a quick stop. He veered off into a sparsely populated flatland of motor pools and maintenance sheds.

He found the hootch he was looking for, behind a shipping container at the end of a squat line of hovels. As always, a scratchy recording of classical strings swelled from within and spilled out across the storage rows and parking areas.

Black banged loud enough to be heard over the music.

“Yeah!” came the voice from inside.

He pulled open the plywood door and looked in at the violinmaker of Gandamak.

“Hey, L.T., whatcha doin'?”

The violinmaker sat behind a worktable facing the door. Her hootch was dark except for the warm pool of light from her work lamp, illuminating her hands and her wood.

“Hey, sorry to bug you.”

“No sweat. What's up?”

Black stepped in. A vinyl record player spun in the corner, linked to modern speakers.

The violinmaker was an odd one. The craft had been in her family literally for four or five generations, going back to Italy. Only sons had known it, but she had no brothers and had started learning the trade from her father when she was a teenager.

She'd been in the Army for ten years now, a staff sergeant and a medic. She brought her wood and her tools on every deployment. She had a good situation this time around, working graveyards at “Charlie Med,” the base's emergency hospital.

Black knew she worked a couple hours every night before going on shift. She hunched over her table shaving wood in boots, T-shirt, and fatigue pants, hair back into a tight bun, ready to go on shift except for the camouflage coat, which hung on a hook near the door.

He felt bad taking her from her work.

“Hey, I'm just taking a trip and I was hoping to get some new stuff.”

“Where you going?”

“Valley.”

“Fuckin' A.”

“Yeah. Whatta ya got?”

“Whatta ya like?”

“I like this.”

A brace of violins pulled a chord across a darkening sky, carrying it to night. Lower strings surged from oceans below. He heard tones of deep orange over black horizons.

“Ralph Vaughan Williams. He was English.”

“What is it?”

“
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.”

“Cool.”

“The snobs didn't like him.”

“Got it on digits?”

The military required its own slang for many ordinary things. He meant: on your computer?

“Of course.”

“I'll take it.”

Black pulled a little memory stick from his pocket and tossed it across to her. She caught it and thumbed it into her laptop computer, clicking open her own vast digital music library.

“What else?” she asked.

“How about more like this?”

“Nothing's like this.”

“Surprise me. You know my tastes.”

“Pedestrian?”

“Har.”

A few years before, Black had tossed all of the music he had grown up listening to into the trash and started from scratch. The violinmaker was filling out some of his horizons.

She clicked a number of files and dumped them onto the flash drive.

“I saw you at chow tonight with your book,” she said to her computer as she worked. “You shoulda come over.”

Army people always assumed if you were reading a book you'd rather have company.

“Next time,” Black said, though he knew better than to do that to the violinmaker when she was with her pals. To make her be seen associating with him.

She tossed the flash drive back at Black, who thanked her and stuffed it back in his pocket.

“No sweat. See ya later, L.T.”

“You too.”

“But not at Charlie Med. Stay low.”

Black gave a grim laugh and left her to her work.

Back at his hootch he tossed the memory stick onto his bunk next to a pocket-size music player and headphones. He pulled the brick out of his jacket and set it on a shelf in the corner, on top of a leatherbound book with a title in Latin.

He still hadn't opened the case Toma had given him. He pulled it out and unzipped it, surveying its contents briefly before closing it up again. He considered it for a long moment before tossing it onto his bunk too. He regarded the brick in turn, but left it where it sat and pulled his PTs back on. Ignoring his bed, he pushed through the door and disappeared into the night to run again.

He ran and ran.

H
e woke in midmorning after very little rest, feeling like he'd slept a year. He lay in his bunk and felt stillness. It felt familiar.

There was only one thing he really needed to accomplish, and there was no rush about that.

He took his time showering and walked the short distance to the market on his side of the FOB. He bought a pack of smokes at the little PX—the “post exchange,” or FOB store—and shoved them in his pocket without opening them. Afterward he sat for a long time with his book at the unfamiliar Green Beans Coffee stand there.

Late in the afternoon he gathered all his gear and went to the S-1 shop. Sergeant Cousins was there.

Black apologized about the evening before. Cousins was good about it and told him don't sweat it, and be careful. There was nothing else that needed to be said.

Black went straight to his desk and dumped his stuff, pushing out his chair and switching on his computer. While it was warming up he took the manila envelope he'd left there the night before.

With a black marker he scribbled BLACK on the outside, and REFRAD below that. He got up and carried the envelope past all the desks and out the door. He thought he saw Cousins shaking his head slightly as he passed.

Gayley's office was empty, but the door was unlocked. Black pushed it open and went inside, crossing straight to the colonel's tidy desk and tossing the envelope down right in the middle of it. He turned and went.

That evening when Gayley returned he would find a memorandum inside titled REQUEST FOR RELEASE FROM ACTIVE DUTY, with all the appropriate documentation appended. It was Black's quitting-the-Army paperwork.

Back at his desk, Black's computer was ready. He opened his e-mail.

Hesitating only long enough to check that no one in the office was about to walk over, he clicked on the message that had been sitting unread since he'd returned from R&R leave the week before.

I don't know if you are even near any kind of computer and will get this anytime soon. I hope you do, even though I know you won't respond. I wanted to tell you anyway.

I dreamed about you last night. Dreamed that you were here, in my room, sitting in the window watching me. You came close to me, and then you left.

I'm not being irrational or ridiculous. I know you weren't here. I know you are on the other side of the planet somewhere. But I wanted to tell you about it.

I know you don't want to hear me say that I miss you, but I hope you will accept that I am thinking about you. And I know why you won't respond, and I understand. But you should respond anyway and let me know that you got this, at least. That would be good.

I hope you are safe.

Black clicked open a reply window and typed out a few short sentences. He saved it and opened a menu of options, setting the message to send itself in ten days' time.

He was about to turn the machine off when another came in.

RE: The Final Insult

It was the wiseass. Close to a computer after all. He opened it.

Mediocrates—

Ah, the warrior-scholar departs for a short walk in the Hindu Kush. I am envious. You might find it more, um, picturesque than you would imagine. Also more explosions. Take your unabridged travel guide and remember: There is no survival of the fittest in the mountains. There are only those creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

You caught me at the oasis, but I am off again. Not drunk, but bearded, which is insufferable. Enjoy your revels at the pleasure dome, Padre. And when you return, you simply MUST come for summer at the ocean house with Bradley and Eliza and, of course, yours truly. Squash! Mother asks after you incessantly.

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi,

—Chaz

Weird. Nothing useful either. He switched off the computer and gathered up his ruck and rifle and helmet.

Cousins had his copy of the convoy manifest waiting for him, courtesy of their counterpart S-1 shop over at 3/44 headquarters. Black took it and feigned surprise.

“What, no helicopter?” he said dryly.

“Funny, sir.”

He stuffed it in his pocket.

“Thanks, Sergeant Cousins.”

“Stay low, L.T.”

“Everyone keeps saying that.”

“Do it.”

He left.

The Humvees were lined up outside 3/44's headquarters with their engines running when he arrived. Six diesels echoed between the stone buildings. He shucked off his ruck and sat down on a wooden bench outside the command post, waiting to be called on.

Soldiers readied the vehicles, moving with the drab efficiency and lack of drama of a rolling unit that goes outside the wire every day. Black knew this was by far the longest regular trip they took, so everything got a little extra attention.

He watched ammunition cases, extra water, and boxes of MREs—the military's famous meals ready to eat—go into the trucks. Three of them towed open-top trailers whose contents were tied down with tarps. Basic resupply for the outpost, Black figured. Medics appeared and tossed their big black treatment packs onto the seats.

A sergeant approached.

“Black?”

“Yeah.”

“I can take your ruck, sir.”

He didn't like people offering to carry his gear, but the guy's matter-of-fact tone told him he wasn't doing Black any favors. He probably just didn't want him packing it into the wrong corner of the already overstuffed vehicles.

“Thanks.”

“You gotta take a whiz before we go?”

“Yeah.”

“Around that corner. There's coffee in the C.P. if you want it.”

The command post.

“I'm good.”

“Cool. Rolling in ten, sir.”

He shouldered Black's ruck and trudged across the gravel to the open back of the lead vehicle.

When Black returned, soldiers were piling into driver's seats and turrets. The sergeant pointed him to the truck where his bag was, and he climbed into the back seat.

The convoy wove its way through the buildings and trailers of the base, radios chirping as vehicle commanders made their perfunctory commo checks with one another. Black looked out the little armored glass windows as the buildings fell behind, replaced by sandbags and blast barriers on either side.

The convoy rolled to a stop at the FOB's east gate, in the exit channel. Electronic jamming equipment was switched on, and the vehicles filled with the clatter of weapons being charged. The manifest was passed to the guards, and the gate was opened.

The convoy rolled forward beneath the guard towers and machine-gun nests and wove left-right-left-right through a serpentine channel designed to slow down car bombs. They cleared the walls and the golden plain opened up before them, mountains rising from the horizon ahead.

Over the next hour of lengthening shadow they grew larger, slowly filling the front windows of the vehicles. General features that Black had seen only from Radio Hill emerged into detail and focus, rising above his eyeline. By the time the ground began noticeably to rise toward the mouth of the first valley, the setting sun was throwing orange haze all across the front of the range.

Black, leaning forward in his seat, craned his head and looked up through the gunner's hatch. Ahead and above the looming peaks, another raft of black cloud was moving in from the east. Rain in the mountains again tonight.

He fished out his headphones and put them in his ears. He closed his eyes and felt the stillness returning. The violinmaker's
Fantasia on a Theme
strings soared across his vision and roiled the black ocean of his thoughts below. As the convoy climbed into the range and the road gave way to wild dirt track, he slept.

—

This time in the dream she lingered in the window as he fell, never turning away as he slid down and into the depths. He still could not see her face.