Photo by Chris Schmidt

Thorns

Justin Dabill

        One day, my firstborn, with her younger sister close at her heels, will ask, “Daddy? What did you do in the Army?” And I will shrug in part of a complicated and rehearsed effort to make it sound so mundane and benign as to—ideally—discourage further inquiry. But since she was born in an era where 9/11 supplants Pearl Harbor in American textbooks, it’s inevitable that she and her sister will return (a day, a year, a decade later) again to ask, “Daddy? What was Iraq like?” The answer to that is less clear, but may involve a brilliant one-liner, “hot,” or more misdirection and downplay. Though I know if she is anything like me—and she is—such non-answers will only whet her appetite and ignite her imagination. She will lie awake at night and imagine Daddy as Audie Murphy, despite my attempts to reduce those twelve months to long and lonely camping.
        But none of those questions troubles me so much as the one that is coming to crown them all. “Daddy? Did you kill anybody?”
                                                                *
        The Sergeant’s eyes went dim and flew far away as pimple-faced Matt asked him the same question. In the ensuing silence, I looked for a good place to run and hide, but Matt gazed intently at the Sergeant as we stood in the shadow of his Stryker Combat Vehicle. We were in the eighth-grade, on a junior high pilgrimage to Washington D.C., in a park not far from Pennsylvania Avenue. All the branches of the service were there in a grand public display that encouraged America to take pride in the mechanized might of its Armed Forces.
        “I don’t know,” the Sergeant said. “Maybe.”
        Instead of reprimanding Matt or telling us to get lost, he let us climb in his vehicle and take turns at the computerized turret. The inside of the Stryker was hollow, cramped, and dimly lit, but it also inspired a confidence that felt like safety. Who could get to you in here?
        As the Sergeant guided the controls and taught me how to aim, I swung the turret toward the Capitol Building. There, a Capitol Policeman stood motionless, looking over the balcony of the monolith and cradling a carbine, oblivious to the fact that a thirteen-year-old boy, half a mile away, in a five million dollar combat vehicle, had him in his crosshairs.
        “You know, I’d pull the trigger sometimes,” the Sergeant said, “and before I pulled, there was someone there. And then there wasn’t.”
                                                                *
        “You’re riding with us now,” Sergeant Pope said.
        The Private climbed in the Humvee and shut the door. The convoy began rolling away from the outpost almost immediately and the Private realized, belatedly, that he hadn’t locked his door, but since it was his first interaction with Sergeant Pope and the rest of the mortar men, he feared being scorned or mocked. Or both. Or worse.
        So the door remained unlocked as the gates to the outpost closed behind them.
                                                                *
        In the nightmares I have now, death is imminent. Mostly, they’re forgotten when I wake up, or rather, when my wife wakes me up, wanting to know why I’m screaming. I do not tell her because, mostly, I cannot remember. And sometimes, when I do remember, I tell her I don’t.
        She comes close to me in these nights and wraps her arms around me, pressing her face into the nape of my neck. Strands of her long hair fall upon my shoulder.
        “Get off,” I growl. “I’m trying to sleep.”
        She complies without argument or complaint. But sometimes, before I doze again into the place where my vigilance and suspicions are set loose, I hear sniffling.
                                                                *
        When he is in Iraq, many things happen to the Private. He experiences death in new ways, becomes accustomed to the shrieking of rockets and people, sees what the talking points are when the cameras leave the room, and knows what it’s like to undergo metamorphosis as a form of self-preservation.
        When the Private was a boy, he frequently dreamed he was taken captive and could do nothing about it. He wanted to fight back, but was too weak, too young, too unable. It didn’t matter if the aggressors were gargoyles or Stormtroopers; he was invariably kidnapped in the arms of someone stronger and more powerful.
        But in Iraq, in between the black-bomb-sleep—from which the Private was able to awaken with the movement of a mental hair trigger—a vision came to him.
        In it, he found himself under fire and pinned down outside of a vehicle, with his comrades in mortal peril. The Private paid attention because he had never dreamt in Iraq before (nor would he after this). He took heed of the carbine in his hand, moved the safety selector from SAFE to SEMI, and aimed.
        The dream did not end with conflict resolution, but with several dead bodies that bore bullets from the Private’s weapon. Though the firefight continued and was intensifying, he woke up.
        Through some invisible land and by means unknown to him, the Private knew the switch had been flipped.
                                                                *
        In a brightly lit, modernly decorated office, I sit across from the thin psychiatrist and say, “I’m terrified of being here.”
        “Why?” the psychiatrist is exasperated, splaying out his hands and widening his eyes.
        “Not of you,” I say and the shrink backs away, ever so slightly, “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather not talk about.”
        Now he nods. “I can understand that.”
        Outside of his office, in the parking lot, large white poplars sway in the wind. I stare up at them a long time, counting the leaves, the moments, the meaning behind everything. But there is something missing and my eyes wander to the sky between the trees.
                                                                *
        In 2003, America sent her young men and women into Harm’s Way and announced over loudspeakers attached to armored vehicles that the streets must be cleared. Though the directions were given in Arabic, not all complied. So the guns made them comply. They chopped down the men who couldn’t hear. They placed their bullets in the bellies of women who were trying to guide the old men off the street. They lodged lead into the skulls of the children who thought it was a game. Then, when the dust sank below boot level, American rubber rolled over the bodies. Their engines drummed so loud that no one could hear the weeping.
                                                                *
        As the convoy continued on, a town of sorts appeared. Not the sort the Private had seen before, where opulent houses sat vacant as the residents of lean-to hovels crawled up and down trash heaps looking for something to eat. Instead, one side of the road showcased a handful of mud and brick homes. The Private began to look at these. Then he heard the yelling.
        It was the children who charged the Humvees first. With fists proudly pumped in the air, they threw rocks and debris at the vehicles and dared to defy the shaft of the imperialist spear that ran straight through their lives.
        The Private slammed the combat lock down on his door. He grasped his carbine, and chambered a round. Though he waited for the berating, the rest of the crew either ignored him or was too focused on the civilians to care. So the Private turned back to the small mass of bodies that were drawing near. Where were the grinning, laughing, overjoyed and crying Iraqis who had been broadcast around the world?
        Then things began to fall into their bleak places. He saw the angry tears on the cheeks of the boy who came closest. And the adults, grim and hostile, glaring at the entourage. These were not the faces of some rogue insurgency. This was occupied France. They gawked at their invaders. Their tongues cursed America for the trespass. Their eyes burned with vengeance for sins not atoned. Did we kill your brother? Your father? Your daughter or wife?
        Can you forgive us?
        But the convoy does not ask for forgiveness. Its fumes and tire tracks bear dire reminders that occupation and accountability have little overlap (if you look for it) and none (if you don’t).
                                                                *
        The sun had set long ago. Blackness surrounded the bus stop.
        “When Saddam was here, at least people knew what to expect,” the interpreter confided. He wore the same uniform as the Private, was trained on the same installations, but was born and raised not far from where they stood in Basra. “People like security, Saddam gave them that. Now, …” and as his voice fell into the wind, the country moaned in reply, “Now it’s gone.”
        Another interpreter, nearly sixty, overweight, and clenching a crumbling cigarette, said, “The only way you can get an Iraqi to do something is to point a gun to his head.”
        The Private looked at him. The older interpreter nodded and puffed a long cloud. He repeated his words as if reciting a proverb. “I’m serious,” he said. “Only a gun.”
                                                                *
        When I left, it was bitter. I hugged my wife one morning at 5:30 and disappeared beyond the blacktop of the parking lot. As our unit made its way to the airport, my wife stayed behind in her Ford and wept. She prayed that I would turn around. That the bus would break down. That the President would cease all troop movements. Her prayers went into the wind and did not come back.
        Depleted, she looked at the mini calendar by the dash board. February in Colorado is cold. But as her car had no heater, she drove home while the tears froze on her face and settled for one mantra:
        “Please. Please, just let him come home.”
                                                                *
        “Well, at least you’re safe,” she wrote to the Private. He did not respond. There was nothing to say. That he had been trained in a certain vocation under Uncle Sam’s purview did not entitle him to be bomb- and bulletproof. How to explain that when the convoys roll, the Blackhawks fly, and the soldiers run, shrapnel knows no discrimination? Perhaps just like that. But she was not his wife. He threw the letter away, hated her for her delayed affection, and picked up the old guitar.
        “You play weird songs,” Burgard told him.
        “Sorry,” the Private said and put the guitar back.
        “No, I didn’t mean it like that.” Burgard paused and picked up the instrument, handing it back to the Private. “They’re just weird.”
        “Weird how?”
        Burgard shrugged. “I dunno. Just weird. Play one.”
        And so the Private did. One of the songs he wrote in Iraq. None of them more joyful than Gideon Klein. But when he got home, he’d stop playing.
        He’d also take pictures there. And months after his return, he’d scroll through all the pictures, just once. He showed them to his wife. He tried to explain, but he failed. At the end of the slideshow, the Private destroyed all the evidence and tried to erase twelve months by giving away his medals, throwing out the uniforms, and, mostly, by keeping silent.
                                                                *
        “Did you kill anyone?”
        The Sergeant narrowed his gaze and began to tremble. He leaned down over us boys and scooped us in his large arms.
        “The dead, the dead, the dead!” he whispered.
        Tears flew from his eyes. The Capitol building, the monuments, the Stryker, it all disappeared as the Sergeant atoned for his and the Eagle’s sins.
        “The dead,” he moaned.
        Out of the blackness, the spirits began to beg for blood. So the Sergeant brought us back.
        It was light again, we were in D.C. proper. He hugged us tightly.
        “Don’t go in the world!” he pleaded. “Stay where it’s safe!”
                                                                *
        The trouble with scorched earth policies, the Private thought, was in their inability to be maintained. If you intend to mow down people like grass, you cannot relent. Not even for one moment. Because if you do, the survivors will begin to plot.
        They were plotting not far from Al Asad when an Iraqi Soldier shot Sergeant Fisher in the throat. His bullet, his Kalashnikov, Sergeant Fisher, and the rest of us knew how fucked it all was.
        “Very fucked indeed,” the Private’s supervisor nodded. “What’re you gonna do?”
        What are we gonna do?
                                                                *
        The Sergeant Major shuffled papers rapidly. A frivolous attempt to locate what had been lost.
        “I’m a tanker,” he said. “The Army thinks they don’t need tanks anymore. Thinks we’re fucking dinosaurs. Thinks we can mothball every armored division. I’m retiring in two months, but as soon as we go to war with Russia, they’re calling me back.”
        “That’s right,” the Lieutenant said. “We’re the first ones they’ll call up before the draft.”
        “Oh goody,” I said.
        “Haha, Sergeant,” they said.
        This is the sound in between the wars: Haha.
                                                                *
        It was winter in Colorado. From an open window I watched the snow come down. Their faces, the flags, the papers, the remnants of war were all before me in the snowbanks. There is no shaking these things, only bearing them.
        “What’s wrong?” My wife said.
        I mumbled.
        “What?”
        “People are dead,” I said.
                                                                *
        There will be a strong wind that day, or traffic, or both, or worse; I will roll up the window in the old Ford by hand as we come to a stop at a red light.
        Because she is curious, my firstborn will stare out of the massive window in the back until I tell her that just because the car doesn’t have seatbelts doesn’t mean it’s a circus arena. There will be a pause after she complies.
        Because our time on earth is relegated to finding the answers, she will ask, “Daddy? Have you ever killed anybody?”
        Now the light is green. Am I turning green? And am I back in my dress greens? No, this is then. Yes, that was now. It all comes to a jumbled, awkward point eventually and I search for an appropriate answer (there isn’t one) as my mind rolls through the unexpected billows.
        I love her, so I come up with something to say. I am scared it might be the truth (have I ever heard it?). But as the words are coming up, frothing in my esophagus, she asks, “Daddy? What color is the sunset?”