War Porn (10 page)

 

wars are not won by machines and weapons

but by the soldiers who use them

 

 

As the fall wore on, the weather got colder. Gray clouds swept in, obscuring the sun. Porkchop regaled us with tales of going home on leave, how much he drank, how hard he fucked his wife. Most of all, he talked about his 'Vette and its mods. He got nitro, new tires, fat rims. He got a new tattoo, too, on his calf, an eagle wrapped in the stars and stripes, clutching bloody rags in its talons. A single tear fell from the eagle's eye; behind the bird rose the smoking silhouettes of the Twin Towers.

“You like that, huh?”

“Nice,” I told him. “Real classy.”

“The rags are like ragheads.”

“Yeah, I get that. Very multicultural.”

Porkchop squinted at me and tucked his trouser leg back in his boot. “Why you such a faggot, Wilson?”

“'Cuz I hate freedom, Porkchop.”

He told me to go fuck myself.

•••

We took our work team to the stables. CAHA Wardog had been one of Saddam's equestrian clubs before he'd decided to turn it into an ammo dump. There was hay and horseshit and garbage everywhere, which we had hadjis clean up with shovels and brooms.

The hadjis worked slow, taking long breaks and half-assing everything, so I'd go through the stables and shout at them: “Work harder! Get back to work! Shovel that shit! Git 'er done!” They glared at me and my rifle and I glared back, praying for an excuse. “Fucking get to work!”

“Man”— Sergeant Chandler shook his head—“you gotta relax.”

“Somebody's gotta make sure they keep working,” I said.

“You're gonna give yourself a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” Porkchop said. “Why you such a slave driver?”

“I told you, Porkchop, I hate freedom.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you, Porkchop. Really. Anytime.”

I headed back through the stables. I found a hadji squatting in one of the side rooms, resting against a wall. I shouted at him to get the fuck back to work and he glared at me like he'd cut my throat if he could. I shouted again and stared him down till he picked up his shovel and got back to the horseshit.

“You give me cigarette,” one said to Bullwinkle one day while we stood around watching them work.

“You give me blowjob?” Bullwinkle said back.

The hadji smiled.

“Blowjob?” Bullwinkle said, making an O with this mouth and jerking his head back and forth over his rifle barrel.

The hadji kept smiling. “No, Mista. No mota. You give me cigarette?”

“You ficky-ficky?” Porkchop asked him.

“No ficky-ficky,” the hadji said, still smiling.

“Fuck off,” I shouted, waving the hadji away. “Get back to work.”

“No ficky, Mista,” he said, ducking and grinning.

“You ficky good, huh?” Porkchop asked him.

“Get the fuck back to work.”

The hadji glared at me and slunk off.

I knew better.

This wasn't who I was, who I was meant to be. I was
sensitive
. I'd been a
poet
. The solution seemed obvious: if I just shot a hadji, it'd all be okay. If I just killed one hadji, anyone, someone, then all the black bile, hatred, and fear would flow out of me like blood and water pouring from the wounds of Christ. I'd be transformed, transfigured. Please Jesus, I prayed, let me fucking kill somebody.

We came back each night and spent a couple hours relaxing, drinking vodka and Gatorade and watching
Sex and the City
. Samantha fucked a fireman, Charlotte got married, Carrie dumped Mr. Big and went out with Aidan, then got back with Mr. Big.

We downloaded crates of water and crates of MREs. We swept the barracks, swept the compound. We watched hadji bootlegs of
The Matrix Revolutions
and the new
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. Some guys redeployed back, some other new guys showed up. Staff Sergeant Reynolds, Cheese, and Reading played
Halo
. Cheese begged us to quit calling him Cheese, and Burnett said he'd punch him in his fucking face if he didn't shut his goddamn cockholster.

I was driving and Staff Sergeant Gooley was saying to me how all of us who'd been out last night clearing the CAHA shouldn't have to be going out there again today because none of us had gotten enough sleep, then there was some shooting close behind the convoy, and the truck radio crackled:
“Fire Fire. Shooters on the buildings.”

“Stop!” Staff Sergeant Gooley shouted. We heard M16s and SAWs answering AK fire, then the low thump of our .50s.

“
Crusader Three-seven, we're taking fire.”

“Turn the truck around!”

I started to pull a three-point turn and as we swung the other way the trucks behind us started turning too, so we had to wait. There was more shooting from the highway. All the trucks turning around at once in the alley made a slow chaos of bumps and shouts. One of the trucks tried to drive out in reverse, its driver screaming, “Just back up! Back up!”

Staff Sergeant Gooley grabbed the hand mike. “This is Crusader Three-seven, gimme a sitrep!”

“All Crusader elements converge on the northeast building,”
Staff Sergeant Smith barked.

“This is Crusader Three-seven, somebody tell me what's going on, over,” Staff Sergeant Gooley shouted into the radio.

“All Crusader elements return fire on your targets.”

More shooting, the
tock-tock
of our .50s. As we rolled slowly behind the other trucks back to the highway, we could see the rest of the convoy scattered between the alley's mouth and the nearest overpass. Crusader 5 sped down the highway on the other side, through a gap in the guardrail onto the shoulder toward a three-story building, Staff Sergeant Smith leaning out his window shooting wild with his M16. Figures ducked behind the wall up on the roof of the building and others ran along the overpass. One .50 traced
a slow arc along the road, lobbing fat gobs of metal through the air, knocking chunks out of concrete. Porkchop rode the
second .50, firing at the top of the building, his body shaking at one with the gun: “Yeah, get some! Get some! Fuck yeah! How you like it? Get some!”

“Over there,” Gooley pointed, and I drove to the cluster of trucks by the building where Staff Sergeant Smith stood shouting.

“You three secure the rear of the structure, everyone else come with me.” Staff Sergeant Smith rammed his shoulder through the front door. Men followed. Staff Sergeant Gooley told me to stay with the radio, then ran in after.

More shots came from the overpass and I swung open my door and slid sideways in my seat, pulling up my rifle and taking aim at the shadows ducking between the concrete supports. I hissed, exhaling, squeezing my trigger. I was surprised by the ease of it: just pull. My hadji ducked behind a support then dashed for the next, making his way toward the trees at the edge of the overpass. I fired again, aiming higher this time, the top of my iron sight to his right, above his head, leading but missing again and gritting my teeth and firing. Breathing.

“Crusader Three-six, this is Crusader Six. I need a sitrep.”

My rifle bucked into my shoulder. The .50s punked away. It was like a carnival, a shoot-em-up stand on the midway, but as I fired again I felt light-headed and distant, third-person somehow. The figures on the overpass ducked from pillar to pillar, dodging fire, and finally disappeared off the far side. Porkchop shifted fire to the trees at the edge of the highway, dumping rounds into foliage.

Staff Sergeant Gooley ran out of the building and grabbed the hand mike. “Cease fire, cease fire, this is Crusader Three-seven say again cease fire.”

“Crusader Three-seven, this is Crusader Six. I need a sitrep.”

“Crusader Six, this is Crusader Three-six.”
Lieutenant Krauss broke through.
“We're, uh, taking fire but, uh, it's under control now. Standby for sitrep. Break. All Crusader elements, this is Crusader Three-six, return to the highway and give me a perimeter.”

“Three-six, this is Three-seven, we need to clear these buildings,” Staff Sergeant Gooley said into the radio.

“Three-seven, this is Three-six, give me a perimeter, now. Out.”

So we drove back down the highway and set up a perimeter, blocking traffic both ways.

Staff Sergeant Smith walked up to Lieutenant Krauss. “We gotta clear all them buildings, sir. They're out there.”

“Sergeant, we're not prepared to cordon off a whole . . .”

“Sir, we need to clear them fucking buildings,” Staff Sergeant Smith shouted up at him.

Krauss backed down. “Alright, Sergeant. Take some men and clear the buildings.”

We spent the next two hours waiting while the clearing teams went through the cluster of buildings along the highway, kicking in doors and screaming at hadjis. They didn't find any weapons. After a while, Lieutenant Krauss called off the search, and we reformed the convoy, drove to CAHA Wardog, and ate lunch.

That night and the next day it was all anybody talked about, who shot what who where. I didn't feel any better and my soul didn't bleed like the wounds of Christ. What happened was the days got colder. I drew new rounds to replace the ones I'd fired. We ran patrols. We set up TCPs. We watched more
Sex and the City
, cleaning our rifles and arguing about who'd give better head, Charlotte or Carrie, and who we'd like to fuck up the butt.

 

remember, you are not alone

 

 

We got a speech from Captain Yarrow telling us what a great job we'd done. He told us we were transitioning to patrols now, covering neighborhoods southwest of BIAP, and training in Close Quarters Combat.

I was scheduled for environmental leave toward the end of December and started counting days till I left.

We practiced kicking in doors. We learned to follow each other through a house, checking in closets and behind furniture, leading with our guns, shouting “Clear,” “Door Left,” and “Stairs.” We learned to cover each other across open spaces, take out suicide bombers, turn and shoot without aiming.

On Thanksgiving President Bush came. We were out on a patrol that night, driving village streets in the rain and planning on MREs for dinner.

We watched
Top Gun
,
Pumping Iron
, and
The Shawshank Redemption
.
We wrestled, played pool and ping-pong, played touch football in the parking lot, argued and laughed and got in fights. Reading kept playing “Gimme the Light” and that “Birthday” song.

One day I walked up to the CP and First Sergeant Beaman came out grinning. “They captured Saddam,” he said. “Caught like a rat in a trap.”

“Great,” I said. “We can go home now, right?”

“It'll be a real turning point,” he said.

I nodded. “Now all we gotta do is find those WMDs.”

“Hey, Wilson,” he said. “Get down and push.”

“Hooah, First Sarnt.” I dropped and pushed until he told me to stop.

I decided to quit smoking. Attack Battery got hit with an RPG out on patrol, mostly minor injuries but one of the guys had to be evacked to Germany. Somebody in another unit was run over by a tank. I cleaned my rifle and waited for Christmas.

4
to 71
at 122nd. 9:59. Take the 10 to the 15, change downtown to the 77 and get off at 21st. 10:12.

I talk to my ex-girlfriend and we decide to try again. The trouble starts almost immediately, with my car's clutch grinding out as I drive in over the coast range from Newport. I make it to my mom's in Corvallis, but going to Portland the next day the clutch drops with a
thunk,
and I have to get the car towed back to town, where it sits in my mom's driveway growing a skin of brown needles.

It's a sign, of course—the sky full of signs that fall.

Things don't improve in Portland. I take the bus across town to a 7-Eleven, fill out an application, take the bus back across town to a nursing home, fill out another application. Rain falls, and I go to the library to search the internet for jobs and wind up shuffling the stacks, reading
The Coming Anarchy
and
The Clash of Civilizations
.

4 to the 72 at 82nd. 11:37. 12:19.

We go to a dinner party with some friends of hers. We eat tempeh stir-fry and drink IPA and talk about jobs, the local theater scene, and good, cheap places to eat. After dinner we pass a joint and the conversation gets grim, somebody says they can't stop thinking about on TV those bodies falling. Did we think everything had changed? Would they attack the Mall of America? We talk about blowback and globalization and how, yeah, on the one hand it seemed maybe we'd sort of caused it. Maybe we wanted it to happen. We talk about troop movements in the Hindu Kush.

3:58. 14 to 9 to 60th. 4:09. 5:23. Home.

I make pasta. We drink wine. The money dribbles away. I apply at Goodwill, Burgerville, Powell's, Denny's.

Thanksgiving comes and goes and Christmas too. Against the rain and winter skies, the garish decorations and relentless commerce bring not cheer but constant reminder of my downward spiral. No joy, no carols, not even Santa can save me.

One day, after spending two hours filling out a personality test at Walmart, I go down the strip mall to an Army recruiting office. The recruiter starts my packet. He asks me about drug use and criminal record. He tells me about bonuses and college money. He asks me what I want to do and where I want to go.