NOTE: DogCanyon will publish this short story serially, in four parts.
We were supposed to give the kids candy. The word came down from some paper pushing Fobbit brass-hole, they wanted to make the kids like us. Truth was, the kids already liked us. They’d trail along after us while we were on patrol yelling, “good good mister” and “mister, give me food,” all of them barefoot and skeletally skinny with huge eyes and chili bowl haircuts. They kicked soccer balls they made out of blue or black plastic bags wrapped in cheap packing tape, goofed around, fought. When the kids followed us, we knew we were safe from insurgents. Funny to think they protected us even though we were the ones in full battle rattle.
The grown Iraqi men seemed gay as get out. They blew us kisses at first and threw flowers. They held hands as they walked down the street like sixth graders with a crush on each other; they kissed each other on both cheeks. And the women, they were an even bigger disappointment. The young ones stayed locked up tight at home and only the ancient and fat ones were out on the streets. All of that blew, but the kids, when they laughed and played, made silly faces and darted almost under the wheels of lumbering five ton trucks, they were something to see; the kids, they were fun.
Soon after we got word from the Fobbit brass-hole, we took sacks of candy with us in our Humvees wherever we went. At first most of us ate it, too. Tom Jones was a sucker for a tootsie roll; Rob Bridges loved butterscotch. But long after the rest of our Field Artillery Battery sicked out on candy, Nat Turner would still do anything for a peppermint. I could live to be a hundred and still peppermint would take me right back to the inside of that vehicle; Nat Turner rapping quiet under his breath so that I can’t understand what he’s saying, just feel the low anger of it, and that minty smell wafting out over the stink we put off after days on patrol with no shower.
Out on patrol we were always edgy about rolling over IEDs. And in the mess of a firefight, it wasn’t always clear if we were firing on insurgents or civilians, that’s just how it is when you can’t tell the one from the other. My stomach would knot up over it and I was always secretly glad I’d never had a confirmed kill. They were just targets, I tried to tell myself, dark people moving where they shouldn’t move, being where they shouldn’t be. But the kids, with their bright soccer shirts and straight black hair, their knee and elbow joints protruding from malnutrition, they were real.
The first time we gave out candy I was kind of excited about it. I mean, it was a bullshit detail, but sounded like something that might lighten up the day. We pulled the two Humvees up, oozed out. There was the usual issue of manhandling the up-armored door, which weighed about as much as I do, and then unfolding ourselves from the cramped Humvee while wearing 87 lbs. of armor, ammo and other gear.
Down the street I could see a bombed out building, but on either side of it there were open shops and people trying to sell their goods. On the corner I could see a vendor selling fruit. He’d put together his fruit stand out of old parts, a hood from a ’57 Chevy, wheels from an old Soviet artillery piece, who knows what else. A cloud of a thousand angry flies swarmed the piles of oranges, spinach, bright red tomatoes. The vendor squatted there on his haunches, a red and white checked shumagh wrapped around his head like a dirty old bandage, one corner hanging down over his shoulder. He rocked back and forth on tattered sandals, sharing the mouthpiece of his bong with haggling customers, occasionally using the corner of his shumagh to dislodge a fly.
Four of our guys closed off the area around us with razor wire and the kids started flocking, running out of doorways, hurrying to get to us. The Iraqi kids always moved in packs, five to maybe thirty together at one time; this was a good-sized group. It reminded me of my nieces and my nephews crowding around when I took them out to the henhouse. They were always so excited to reach into the nesting boxes and pull out the eggs, so happy with such a simple thing.
With these kids, it was hard to tell the girls from the boys, except for the couple of girls whose hair had grown long. Most of them looked like wasn’t anybody taking care of them. Orphans, probably. Suddenly the kids were everywhere, they were all around me and Turner and Jones. I started passing out candy, and at first it was great to see their faces light up. My boy Turner and I looked at each other and he rolled his eyes as if to say, “Here we go.” Kids weren’t his thing, he’d signed up for the big guns and the boom of being a cannoneer. The children pressed up against us all around, holding out their hands, screaming “mister give me chocolatee.” It wasn’t the first time I wished I knew just a little of the language, but I didn’t.
The kids are wanting to wipe at Turner’s ebony dark skin to see if the blackness will come off and he’s sick to death of that one already and scowling. The trouble starts, because we don’t have enough candy for all of them and the big kids start trying to take candy from the little ones. The big ones start beating the little ones, and the little ones are scrappy, they don’t just surrender the candy. They hang onto it like it’s the only chance for tasting something sweet they’ll ever have in their lives and I’m yelling, Hey, hey, don’t do that, at the big kids but they don’t understand or pay attention and I can’t get in there and tear them all apart.
There are big kids hitting little kids all around me, six or eight fights at least and there’s not much we can do about it and we take down the razor wire and head to the Humvee and I can look back and see two bigger kids punching and kicking at this skinny little motherfucker who kept his fists closed around his candy for dear life and then we’re out of there.
To be continued…..Stay tuned to DogCanyon for the next installment of the short story “Henhouse.”
When is the next installment? I can’t wait . . . .
ahhh. . .this kills me. breaks my heart and I’m only on the first part