I took out the second one and the third threw himself against the cement railing, maybe thinking it would give him cover. It didn’t. It was too low. I shot him in the back. He lay still. No body armor. He probably believed that Allah had his six but Allah was busy elsewhere that day.
I ran back down the stairs and across the street. Fareed was still standing there. Din-Din and Pill were in the Funhouse, Pill on his knees beside Johnny. He had already cut away the legs of Johnny’s pants. Bone fragments were stuck to the fabric and poking out of Johnny’s skin. Din-Din was yelling into Pill’s walkie, telling someone that we had casualties, many casualties, Block Lima, big domed house, evac, evac, need a dustoff, etc.
‘Hurts!’ Johnny screamed. ‘Oh Christ it hurts SO FUCKING BAD!’
‘Take these,’ Pill said. He had the morphine tablets.
‘Oh God I wish I was dead I wish they killed me OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP!’
Pill two-fingered Johnny’s mouth open and dumped in the tabs. ‘Chew those and you’re gonna see God.’
‘What happened here, Marines?’
I looked around and saw Hurst. Still standing spread-legged, trying his best to do the General Patton thing, but he looked pretty fucking green around the gills.
‘What does it look like?’ Din-Din said. ‘Fallujah happened. Sir.’
Pill said, ‘If he doesn’t get some blood ASAP, he’s going to
5
What brings Billy back from Iraq could have been in Iraq, part of Lalafallujah’s endless soundtrack: Angus Young’s guitar snarling its way through ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.’ Bucky and Alice must be back from their shopping trip. Billy looks at his watch and sees it’s quarter past three in the afternoon. He’s been here for hours, with no sense of passing time at all.
He finishes that dangling last sentence, saves his work, cases up his lappie, and is about to leave when he happens to glance at the picture he took down, not neglecting to turn it to the wall so he wouldn’t be distracted by those bright primitive colors. He puts it back up on its hook, maybe （probably） because he’s still in Marine mode and remembering Sergeant ‘Up Yours’ Uppington’s dictum: leave no trace when you leave the space.
He studies the painting, frowning. The hedge dog is on the right, the hedge rabbits on the left. Weren’t they the other way around before? And aren’t the lions closer?
I got it wrong, that’s all, he thinks, but before leaving the summerhouse he takes the picture down again. Not neglecting to turn it so it faces the wall.
6
The music gets louder as he approaches the house. With no neighbors, Bucky can really crank it if he wants to. It must be a mixtape, because as Billy approaches the house AC/DC gives way to Metallica.
They’ve brought back a new vehicle – new to them, at least – and Billy pauses before going up the steps to look it over. There not being any more space under the porch, they’ve parked it at the end of the driveway. It’s a Dodge Ram, the Quad Cab model from early in the twenty-first century, once blue, now mostly gray. There’s no Bondo around the headlights, but the bench seat has been mended with a strip of black tape and the rocker panels are mighty rusty. So is the bed of the pickup, which contains a Lawn-Boy mower maybe older than the truck itself. There’s a trailer hooked up behind, a two-wheeler, pretty battered, nothing in it.
By the time Billy starts up the steps to the porch, Metallica has been replaced by Tom Waits croaking ‘16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six.’ Billy stops in the doorway. Bucky and Alice are dancing in the middle of the big room. She’s wearing a new shell top, her color is high and her eyes are bright. With her hair in a ponytail – really a horsetail, it goes all the way down to the middle of her back – she looks like a teenager. She’s laughing, having a ball. Maybe because Bucky is a pretty fucked-up dancer, maybe just because she’s having a good time.
Bucky gives Billy a double V and keeps shuffling off to Buffalo. He does a twirl and Alice spins the other way. She sees Billy leaning in the doorway and laughs some more and gives a hip-shake that makes her tied-back hair flip from side to side. Tom Waits ends. Bucky goes to the stereo and turns off Bob Seger before he can get a grip on that song about Betty Lou. Then he collapses on the couch and pats his chest. ‘I’m too bushed to boogaloo.’
Alice, years from being too bushed to boogaloo, turns to Billy, almost popping with excitement. ‘Did you see the truck?’
‘I did.’
‘It’s perfect, isn’t it?’