by Kyle Larkin
I woke to a muffled explosion somewhere out in the city. The room was still dark, except for a few cracks of gray light seeping through the doorway. I’d been sleeping hard. One of those dreams about back home that’s so convincing you wake up disoriented. I slowly remembered where I was. The sweaty stench of socks and uniforms hanging from the ends of bunks to dry. The snoring. I pressed a button on the side of my watch and its green glow lit up my face. Ninety-two days until leave.
The explosion woke Hauser, too. He sat up, lighting a cigarette. “Think they’ll call us out for that?” he asked.
“I dunno.” I yawned, wishing I could go back into my dream. “Couldn’t tell what that was.”
Most of the time you could tell. Mortars were easy to identify. RPGs made their own distinct whooshing and hissing sounds. Rocket attacks were jets from hell coming directly for you. But it gets fuzzy when the explosion is further away. It could have been a vest or car bomb. Could have been a buried IED. Could have even been our own guys doing a controlled detonation. Maybe it was a landmine or homemade grenade. We sat waiting for the radio to squawk and send us out, but it never did.
Hauser dropped his cigarette butt into a half-empty bottle of Gatorade, and sighed. “Ninety-two days,” he said.
***
We’d heard stories about leave, but nobody knew what to expect. The Army was still ironing out the logistics of sending a hundred thousand soldiers home for two weeks each. Everything was rumor.
“I heard Delta Company isn’t even getting leave,” said Hauser.
“Bullshit,” someone said from their bunk.
“Did you hear about the guys from Stryker?” Campbell asked. “They made it all the way to FOB Freedom Eagle, made it to the airport, were on the goddamn plane, then right before takeoff an officer came on with his clipboard and escorted them off. Said their leave dates had been changed.”
“That’s nothing,” said little Miller. “I heard one of the EOD guys got smoked on his way to leave. On the convoy to the fuckin’ base. Can you imagine?” He giggled.
***
Leave was approved in waves. Campbell and little Miller were in the first group. Nobody wanted the early dates when we made our requests, but we were all jealous when they got to go home. They returned like wise men from a long expedition, knowing things we didn’t know, having seen things we hadn’t seen.
“It sucked,” said Campbell as we crowded around him.
“Funny.”
“I’m serious,” he insisted.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” he said. “It just sucked. I don’t know how to explain it. I wish I hadn’t gone.”
We were stunned. This was an insult.
Hauser said what we were all thinking. “What the hell do you have to cry about?” He was angry. “Two weeks away from all this shit. Sleeping in a real bed with sheets.”
“Some of it was good,” said Campbell. “Seeing family and everything. Friends. At least at first. But everybody treats you different.” He couldn’t look at any of us. “I felt older than my parents, older than my relatives. It was weird. Like they were little kids or something. I don’t know how to explain it.” He looked genuinely depressed. “Nothing goes how you want it to. And I kept thinking about what was happening over here. It all went so fast. I know it sounds stupid. I wish I never went.”
It was impossible. How could this be?
“Just wait,” Campbell said. “You’ll see.”
***
It was hot. I was standing in the gunner’s hatch of our Humvee while some of the guys searched a building. It was taking too long. Hauser walked over to fill me in when we heard the snapping thunk. It hissed toward us. We barely had time to flinch before hearing clink clink clink as it bounced past us down the road. We stared dumbly at the RPG round lying against the curb. A dud.
On the way back, Hauser yelled up to me in the turret. “My life didn’t flash before my eyes, leave did!”
“Twenty-five days,” I said.
***
I had a rooftop guard shift on my last day before leave. I sat watching the Tigris and the tall grasses and marshes around it. You’d almost think it was the Mississippi back home.
A man was fishing from shore. He had a long rope with something heavy on the end, and he kept throwing it out into the water and dragging it back in. After a while, an Iraqi Police truck parked near him. They got out and helped the man, pulling something in slowly. I looked through my binoculars. It was a bloated, pale corpse, and it was wearing the same uniform as the police.
***
First, we convoyed to a small, nearby base. Every second of the ride, I thought, not now, please not now. But we made it safely and said goodbye to the guys. Next, we’d jump on with a separate convoy heading to the much larger FOB Amber Waves of Grain. We only used three to five trucks in our convoys back at the Patrol Base, but this one was massive. Over thirty vehicles. Hauser did the math.
“I like these odds,” he said, tapping his cigarette ash. “We’re usually what, twenty, thirty percent likely to get hit?” He looked at the snaking line of trucks. “This is a couple percent. At most.”
“Yeah,” Nelson said. “But a convoy this size is more likely to get hit, overall.”
They debated, scaring the hell out of the support soldiers we’d be riding with, but we made it to the base safely and they set us up with bunks for the night. We sat outside looking over the enormous FOB, smoking and thinking about home. The sky turned orange and pink and purple as the sunset stretched over the desert.
Hauser flipped through a book about card counting that he’d had his mom send him. “Little Miller said once the girls find out you’re on leave, you can take your pick.”
Nelson was scared. When we flew into the desert, he shut his eyes tight like a child pretending to be asleep for most of the flight, and he left damp fingerprints on the metal as he fidgeted with his rifle. I thought he was afraid of the war. “I don’t give a shit about the war,” he said. “Just get me off this plane.”
“You know,” said Nelson, “Schroeder’s gravesite is only two hours’ drive.”
“We have to go,” Hauser said. “He’d make the drive if it had been one of us.”
“I can’t believe that was six months ago,” I said.
“Feels like ten years.”
We sat smoking as the sea of generators and air conditioners droned into the desert night.
***
It was a short flight to Kuwait. Our two weeks wouldn’t begin until we landed back home, so we hoped and prayed for sandstorms that would delay flights for a few days and really stretch out our leave. Each day away was a day you wouldn’t get blown to pieces. But the sandstorms never came, and we were on the next flight to Germany. Then, finally, we landed back in America.
“I heard people are gonna cheer when we get off the plane,” Hauser said. “Little Miller told me.” He passed around some chewing gum. We straightened our collars and walked into the terminal.
Nothing happened. Nobody clapped or even noticed us.
“When did everyone get so fat?” Nelson asked.
Hauser looked around. “Campbell’s crazy,” he said. “What else could you ask for? Check out all these women. My god. And they aren’t covered in robes.”
“Let’s get a drink.”
It had been a long time. It felt good just to walk around. No armored vests, no helmets, no guns or drums of ammo. We felt light, unburdened. Everything was so clean once you got away from the sand, away from the garbage-smoke and shit-smoke and filth. We were happy.
“What the hell do we have here?” A deskjob lieutenant in polished boots and a pressed uniform walked up to us as we left the bar. He had a sparse line of reddish fuzz on his upper lip that looked like a caterpillar. “You can’t drink in uniform. Are you soldiers even old enough to drink?” He focused on Hauser. “Your CIB is sewn on backwards. The rifle points the other way.” He shook his head. “And you’re supposed to wear clean uniforms on leave. You’re representing the United States with mud stains on your boots!”
Hauser looked down. “That’s not mud.”
“Call me “sir” when you address me!” He scratched our names and unit into a little notebook and stomped off after another group of soldiers.
“I’d like to bring that son of a bitch with us when we go back,” said Hauser.
Our next flight landed. We walked into the airport sweating, with pounding heads and red eyes and seams imprinted on our faces from sleeping on bunched up clothing. We lost track of time sitting at another bar when Nelson noticed we were nowhere near our next gate. We ran for it, all feelings of lightness completely gone.
“I have to piss,” said Hauser.
“Piss on the plane!” Nelson yelled.
Hauser fell behind. We grabbed him and pulled, but his feet caught and he lost his balance. He took a few long, sideways strides on his stilted legs, like a newborn giraffe learning to walk, each step coming down with more force than the last, and then he crashed into a set of garbage cans with a whimper and lay still. We threw his arms around our necks and limped for our gate. We’d run a long way when a civilian stopped in front of us and awkwardly saluted.
“You’re heroes,” he said.
I was confused. I looked at Nelson and realized that, in our struggle with Hauser, this guy seemed to think we were helping a wounded soldier.
“Especially you,” he said to Hauser. “A hero.”
Hauser looked at the man blankly. “You got the wrong guy,” he said.
We barely made it. They shut the cabin door behind us. It was a small plane, with no flight attendants, no bathroom. The wheels started rolling and I heard a panic behind me. “Oh my god,” someone said. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” It was Hauser. He dashed up the aisle, pinballing off seats, and pounded on the captain’s door. The civilians were terrified. He pleaded, nearly crying, saying it was an emergency, that he thought there would be a bathroom on the plane, that he was about to piss his pants, that he didn’t want his family to see him like this, and couldn’t they just open the door for a minute so he could piss out of it?
I charged to the front with Nelson. We apologized profusely and dragged Hauser back to his seat.
“Just hold it!” Nelson drunkenly whisper-shouted. “You’re making a god damned scene!”
A woman across from Hauser reached out timidly with an empty soda bottle, like she was feeding a wild animal. “Here,” she said.
Hauser turned his back, used the bottle, capped it, and put it in his cargo pocket. He slumped in his seat and leaned across to the woman, blowing a cloud of alcohol fumes into her face when he said, “I’m so sorry.” He fell asleep.
The plane landed, we apologized again, then slogged inside to our families. It was bright. They were holding balloons and homemade signs that read, “Welcome Home!” and “Support the Troops!” The local news was even there. I heard someone’s relative say, “I guess dinner’s out of the question.”
***
I rode home with my older brother, Jason. He kept looking at me, but didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Feels weird to ride in a car, I bet,” he finally decided.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s so quiet.”
The engine wasn’t whining and struggling against heat and sand and weight. The tires hummed on the smooth roads. Roads that wouldn’t erupt beneath you. This world was cleaner, more vivid than I remembered. There were so many trees. Big, full, bright green trees, and grass everywhere. The buildings seemed excessively angular and precise after the crumbling sandstone.
He handed me something. “Grandma gave me this just before she died. When I left for college. She said it’s for protection.”
It was a Saint Christopher pendant. I turned it over in my hand. Jason didn’t talk for a long time.
“Is it as bad as they say?” he asked.
“Sometimes.”
He nodded, watching the road.
Soon, I recognized neighborhoods. We drove past the baseball diamond with the single giant maple tree where I played Tee Ball. We drove past the pool and saw chubby kids wearing swimming t-shirts.
“Remember when we used to bike here?” Jason asked.
“And get candy from the video store.” I looked around.
“That’s gone.”
Everything else was in its place—fire station, town hall, schools, parks, gas stations, grocery stores. But there was something fragile about all of it, like those Mayberryish miniature towns people set up around Christmas.
I watched the rolling green bluffs through my window as we drove along the river. A sign in someone’s yard said, “WORMS $2 / NIGHTCRAWLERS $3.” It was a lazy afternoon, but a few boats were out. It really did look like the Tigris, with its tall grasses and marshes. I remembered the man I thought was fishing. Was that really only two days ago? I thought about telling my brother, but didn’t.
***
Home. The furniture had been moved around, there were announcements and cards on the fridge that I didn’t recognize, a calendar full of events I’d missed and would miss, but it was home.
I stepped into my room and saw my old basketball-shaped phone, my friends’ senior pictures tacked to a board on the wall, a CD tower and sports medals, and laughed. It was a kid’s room. I took a shower and watched the desert sand swirl down the drain.
I laid in bed that first night wondering what was going on over there, and then swore I wouldn’t think about that during leave. I considered calling Hauser or Nelson to plan our visit to Schroeder’s grave, but it was late.
The idea crept into my head that I only had two weeks to live. Thirteen days, now. I thought about an hourglass with sand falling ceaselessly. I thought about sand slipping through my fingers—the more I tried to hold it, the more it spilled. Then I got mad that every cliché metaphor about time seems to involve sand. I couldn’t escape it even at home, and I drifted to sleep thinking about sand.
***
I went to my friend Mark’s house. His dad was boiling crab legs in the garage over a propane burner. There was a beer fridge out there, so he grabbed a few and handed them to us.
“I was in Vietnam, you know,” he said. “Seventy-two. Toward the end.” He poked at the crab legs. “Still saw some pretty terrible things, though. Lost some friends. Mark tells me you have, too.” He looked at me.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. That’s part of it. We’ll talk one day when you’re home for good.”
I went out with Mark that night to see some friends who were home from college. They talked about dorms I hadn’t lived in and classes I hadn’t taken and parties I hadn’t been to. All we had in common were the bunk beds. I felt awkward in civilian clothes, and I looked awkward—pale, with only my face and hands tanned from the desert sun.
The conversations were all the same. “What’s it like over there?” they asked, not really wanting to know. “I’ve been meaning to write, but have been so busy,” they said. “Are Shiites or Sunnis the bad ones?” they wondered. “At least it’s a dry heat,” everyone agreed. “Samarra?” they’d say with a thoughtful look, “I think I’ve heard of it.” And as soon as I forgot, even for a second, that I was home on leave, someone would ask, “When do you have to go back?”
Toward the end of the night, Mark was drunk. “You wanna know something? I’ve never heard my dad talk about Vietnam before,” he said. “He’s never even given me a beer. Said I have to wait till I’m twenty-one. He only gave me one because you were there.”
***
My parents invited our family over for my last night home. They tiptoed around the war, asking about the heat, or how much equipment we had to carry. Safe things. They joked about my tan face and hands. Then I noticed Jason was worried. He was looking for something.
“Mom, where’s the remote?” he asked.
There was a burning Humvee on the news. The bottom of the screen said it was in Tikrit, with a running total of soldiers who had been killed so far in the war.
“It’s alright,” I said. “Really.”
They looked at me. My brother changed the channel, saying, “He doesn’t need to see this.” But it felt like it was all of them who didn’t want to see it.
“Was that near where you guys are?” my cousin Amy asked. “That truck that was on fire?”
“About an hour away,” I said. “Maybe a little less.”
“We should just turn that whole place into a sheet of glass and be done with it,” said my grandfather, who never served.
“No,” said my uncle Dave, who never served either. “We need to get that oil first.”
Everyone jumped in. They said people have been fighting over there since there have been people. They talked about 9/11, and about how the real threat is WMDs. They said “we” got Saddam, so the war should be over soon. I remembered Campbell saying that he felt older than his parents.
I snuck out for a smoke with my cousin Amy while they decided how the war should end. It was a quiet night. A few sprinklers were ticking away. I looked at all the chemically green manicured lawns. These people truly cared about things like that.
“This is so weird,” Amy said. “My little cousin, home from the war. It’s like some old movie.” She reached out her hand. “Here. I wanted to give you these.” She dropped some colored rocks into my palm. “They’re crystals. They transmit and receive energy. I’ve used them before. Just keep them in your pocket, you’ll feel it.”
Back inside, my aunt Sharon changed the subject.
“So,” she said with a smile, “have you thought about college? Do you know what you want to study?”
“My friend Schroeder studied history,” I said, not quite sure why I said it. “It sounds interesting.”
“No, no, no,” said my uncle Ken. “You don’t want to waste your free ride on that.” He owned a string of boat dealerships in Minnesota. “Business,” he tapped his temple. “That’s the smart move. History?” he scoffed. “What can you even do with that? Don’t you want real world experience?” asked my uncle, who sold boats.
***
My basketball phone rang around 3am. It was little Miller, calling from the satellite phone. He tried to make small talk, but we all shared one phone and you could only use it once a week.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We were gonna wait till you got back,” he said, “but we figured you should hear it from us.” There was a long pause. “It’s Campbell. Campbell’s dead.”
***
Leaving for the second time is worse. Ask anyone who’s done it. The first time you leave, you don’t quite know what you’re getting into. There’s a dull hope that things might not be so bad. But not the second time. The second time you leave, you know exactly the hell you’re going back to. You can close your eyes and smell it.
I sat at the airport with Hauser and Nelson, despondent. Nobody spoke. I thought about how fast two weeks can go, how it was all a blur. I thought about things I wished I’d done or said, about the guilt for not visiting Schroeder’s grave. I thought about Campbell and how his last experience of home went so terribly. I’d only ever thought about making it to leave, not about what could happen after, over the next six months. Six more fucking months.
We got in line. I reached into my pocket and felt the crystals and Saint Christopher pendant. I took them out and looked at them.
“Boarding pass, please,” said a woman.
I handed it to her, and then I threw the crystals and pendant into the trash and got on the plane.
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Kyle Larkin is a U.S. Army Infantry veteran. His work has appeared in Tikkun Magazine, Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, As You Were: The Military Review, and The Blue Falcon Review: A Journal of Military Fiction. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for fiction in 2015.
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