Flashes of War. Katey Schultz

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СКАЧАТЬ like cigarettes and breath mints, but Bradley suspected if he got closer, she’d smell different. He may be walking around without a combat badge, but surely there were some things he could still do right. He slid his arms around her waist and they swayed together, beer tilting the Arkansas sky.

      Inside, they stumbled over clothing, the nightstand. Bradley had been right. She smelled like sweetened citrus. The softest thing he’d touched in almost a year. A few minutes into it, he bit her nipples too hard, and she let out a tiny yelp. He made a game of it—gentle kisses all over her body like a thousand apologies and when they finally did finish, Bradley nodded off, the muscles in his body relaxed so thoroughly his joints turned to jelly.

      He woke just before dawn, the security light from the gas station angling into Ashleigh’s apartment. He got dressed and pulled a chair over to the window. When he reached to slide it open a few inches, Ashleigh woke up.

      “Whatchya doin’?” she asked

      “Here,” he said and took a drag from a cigarette and handed it to her.

      “Thanks.” She sat up slowly. “What time is it?”

      “Dunno. Five?”

      Ashleigh took a drag and handed the smoke back to him. He tapped the ash out the window. Outside, the warming sky still held a hint of darkness, trying to outgrow the night before.

      “God, my head,” she said.

      “I’ll get you some water.”

      “No. You don’t have to.”

      But Bradley was already up, muscled body walking toward her bathroom. He emerged a moment later with a plastic cup. He watched her drink, the way her throat stretched long and smooth as she raised her chin. “I gotta go,” he said.

      Ashleigh set the empty cup on her dresser. “K.” She leaned forward and kissed him, her tongue thick and cool from the tap water.

      “Can I come by sometime?”

      “Yeah,” she said. “I’m around.”

      He drove home slowly, noticing frost across the pastures, a few shallow ditches iced over. Sunrise in Iraq always looked apocalyptic, the horizon announcing itself in fireball red, heat sizzling through the dusty air and warming each day much too quickly. Bradley rolled his window down and let his arm stretch into the morning air. It felt crisp, invigorating. Enough to make each moment seem fresh.

      He let himself in quietly, the house humming its gentle noise. The refrigerator. The PC. Muffled voices from a TV left on in the back room. It sounded symphonic to Bradley, almost dream-like. Jared would stop by later, no doubt, probably with another grand adventure planned. Maybe Bradley would stay in this time. Or take the truck on a long drive, radio humming local country. He took off his coat and walked into the kitchen. Leftover rhubarb pie waited for him on the counter.

      My Son Wanted a Notebook

      How can I tell you this? My son Anoosah worked in a sweatshop weaving rugs. This was during the good time—after the Taliban but before everything got worse again. He worked ten hours, six days a week. His small, brown fingertips looked as blistered and cracked as the streets of downtown Kabul. Still, each day he came home. He kissed my cheeks. He played the games that young boys play, and when he ran, he moved as freely as a cloud.

      Anoosah earned two dollars a month. We bought barley and figs. We could only do this sometimes. Other times, I stole from the farmers at the bazaar, stuffing corn and cucumbers into my clothing. Once, Anoosah tried to pillage a nearby hen house. The owner found him sitting on the floor, coddling the hens, their warm, ruffled feathers like nothing he had ever felt. The man took pity and gave Anoosah some eggs, but only after he earned them by cleaning out the coop. “Like silk,” Anoosah told me later. “Holding those hens felt like holding bags of silk.”

      My husband’s feet were crushed in the rubble from an American missile in the early attacks. The same people who hurt him later helped him, and so he lived. He uses crutches while we wait for his prosthesis. It’s been four months. He sleeps all day. He survived, but the only part that’s still alive is his anger. He says his country is nothing if he cannot feel the earth beneath his feet.

      A new school opened for women. There were business classes, driving instructions, and lessons on self-care. I got permission to attend and walked there every day. We tried lipstick. Learned basic English. They even gave us lunch. One of the teachers fitted me for eyeglasses, and my handwriting improved.

      I told Anoosah everything so he could learn as well. He wanted a notebook of his very own—a small luxury—so I sent him to the shops. I had a voucher from the school for just these kinds of things. He ran out the door, stuffing the voucher into his pockets. He would be able to tell stories and let me write them down for him. He could make sketches of the hills and show them to his father. “Get the biggest one you can,” I said. “We’ll fill every page!”

      The explosion happened a few blocks from the store. I heard it from our home and didn’t worry. These things still happened sometimes, though this one was loud and close. My husband pushed himself out of bed and crawled across the kitchen to our front door. “Anoosah,” he said and grabbed his crutches and lifted himself up. There was no way to do this quickly, and he wouldn’t let me help. He wrangled out the door and onto the street. He hadn’t been outside in months. First one crutch, then the other, a sort of hop-heaving motion from one rubber tip of the crutches to the next. I walked next to him as he teetered, a building with no foundation. One block later he collapsed. That’s when we saw it.

      The car bomb must have gone off at the wrong time, because the driver was a smoking statue, one foot still on the brake, the other sticking out the open door and touching the sidewalk in mock escape. His burning hand looked glued to the door handle. Limp bodies encircled the flaming car like petals around the center of a flower. How can I tell you this? My son wanted a notebook. He wanted a notebook, and he was killed.

      Poo Mission

      1st Squad was bedded down in a firm house inside Fallujah. Our worst day of fighting and more casualties than we even knew at that point. But the block was secure, and we had men on watch from rooftop to sidewalk. I had to take a dump, and the only safe place was the building we were sleeping in.

      I elbowed my buddy on the floor next to me. “Yo, Holden, you awake?”

      “I’m either awake, or I’m dead.”

      “I gotta take a shit.”

      Right away, Holden made a big deal of the whole thing. “Freyer’s on a poo mission,” he announced. Most of the guys were awake anyway, a chorus of chuckles erupting from the moonlit room.

      Ruiz said, “He’s droppin’ the kids off at the pool!”

      Caldwell said, “He’s takin’ the Browns to the Super Bowl!”

      Fitz said, “He’s unleashing the bomb on Hiroshima!”

      “Yeah, and all your moms can’t wait to watch me do it,” I told them.

      We got up and Holden followed me down the dark hallway, broken glass and busted rocks crunching beneath our boots. My ears were ringing, but other than that, the city sounded eerily quiet. I didn’t like it one bit. We reached the end of the hall and saw three doors, all shot up.

      “Go СКАЧАТЬ