? ? ?
A week later, Mac died. MacClelland.
Triggerman waited for the MRAP to go past. Blew in the middle of the convoy.
Big Man and Jobrani were injured. Big Man enough to go to TQ and then out of Iraq. They say he stabilized, though he’s got facial fractures and is “temporarily” blind. Jobrani just got a little shrapnel. But Mac didn’t make it. Doc Rosen wouldn’t say anything to anybody about it. The whole thing was fucked. We had a memorial service the next day.
Right before the convoy, I’d been joking with Mac. He’d got a care package with the shittiest candy known to man, stale Peeps and chocolate PEZ, which Mac said tasted like Satan’s asshole. Harvey asked how he knew what Satan’s asshole tasted like and Mac said, “Yo, son. You signed your enlistment papers. Don’t act like you ain’t have a taste.” Then he stuck his tongue out of his mouth and waggled it around.
The ceremony was at the Camp Fallujah chapel. The H&S Company first sergeant did the roll call in front of Mac’s boot camp graduation photo, which they’d had Combat Camera print out and stick on poster board. They also had his boots, rifle, dog tags, and helmet in a soldier’s cross. Or maybe it wasn’t his stuff. Maybe it was some boots, rifle, and helmet they keep in the back of the chapel for all the memorials they do.
First Sergeant stood up front and called out, “Corporal Landers.”
“Here, First Sergeant.”
“Lance Corporal Suba.”
“Here, First Sergeant,” I said, loud.
“Lance Corporal Jobrani.”
“Here, First Sergeant.”
“Lance Corporal MacClelland.”
Everybody was quiet.
“Lance Corporal MacClelland.”
I thought I heard First Sergeant’s voice crack a bit.
Then, as if he were angry that there was no response, he shouted, “Lance Corporal James MacClelland.”
They let the silence weigh on us a second, then they played Taps. I hadn’t been close with Mac, but I had to hold both my forearms in my hands to stop from shaking.
Afterward, Jobrani came up to me. He had a bandage on the side of his head where he got peppered with shrapnel. Jobrani’s got a baby face, but his teeth were gritted and his eyes were tight and he said, “At least you got one. One of those fucks.”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “That was for Mac.”
“Yeah.”
Except I killed hajji first. So it was more like Mac for hajji. And I didn’t even kill hajji.
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In our can, Timhead and I never talked much. We’d get back and I’d play GTA and he’d play Pokémon until we were too tired to stay up. Not much to talk about. Neither of us had a girlfriend and we both wanted one, but neither of us was dumb enough to marry some forty-year-old with two kids in Jacksonville, like Sergeant Kurtz did two weeks before deployment. So we didn’t have anybody waiting for us at home other than our moms.
Timhead’s dad was dead. That’s all I knew about that. When we did talk, we talked mostly about video games. Except there was a lot more to talk about now. That’s what I figured. Timhead figured different.
Sometimes I’d look at him, focused on the Nintendo, and I’d want to scream, “What’s going on with you?” He didn’t seem different, but he had to be. He’d killed somebody. He had to be feeling something. It weirded me out, and I hadn’t even shot the kid.
The best I could get were little signs. One time in the chow hall we were sitting with Corporal Garza and Jobrani and Harvey when Sergeant Major walked up. She called me “killer,” and after she passed, Timhead said, “Yeah, killer. The big fucking hero.”
Jobrani said, “Yo? Jealous?”
Harvey said, “It’s okay, Timhead. You just ain’t quick enough on the draw. Ka-pow.” He made a pistol with his thumb and finger and mimed shooting us. “Man, I’d have been up there so fast, bam bam, shot his fuckin’ hajji mom, too.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah, son. Ain’t no more terrorist babies be poppin’ out of that cunt.”
Timhead was gripping the table. “Fuck you, Harvey.”
“Yo,” said Harvey, the smile dropping from his face. “I was just playing, man. I’m just playing.”