Dirt

By Pete McKinney

The sun rising over the mountains in the east would be picturesque if any of us cared. That novelty wore off by the end of the first month. Now all it means is the rays are going to start beating on us while we wear all this gear and these clothes and carry all this shit and walk for miles and miles and it is so fucking hot.

The plowed poppy fields make five kilometers feel like a hundred. Every time I take a step I sink up to my ankles and somehow a pinch of dirt finds its way into my boot. It doesn’t matter how tight I tie them; it always creeps in. This shit is everywhere. It ends up in my pockets, down my back, in my magazine pouches; I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get rid of it all. It sticks to everything. This whole place sticks to everything. One day I’ll learn that it sticks forever.

No matter what anyone says about it being a dry heat, 120 degrees is miserable. Long pants. Long sleeves. Leather boots. A helmet. Body armor that is loaded down with so much shit that it hangs on my shoulders with 40 lbs of smothering weight. Nothing breathes. I can’t breathe. This whole place is suffocating.

I can’t remember the last time I was soaked from sweat. There was no moisture anymore, just a constant salty crust on every part of me. I feel older. At 27 years old, I could easily be mistaken for 40. I feel 50.

Four months deep in a six-month rotation. I keep a daily log. It helps track the time, even though time has no meaning here. I suppose the log is meaningless, but I keep it anyway. Every day is the same. The only thing that changes is the height of the poppies.

I’m not even sure what we are looking for…or what’s looking for us. As I look around at the 15 others trudging through the tilled landscape, it still bewilders me to see how different everyone is, even though they all look the same. Each has a different personality that I’ve figured out over time while keeping my distance. Deployments are short. Shorter for some.

Smith is your typical go-getter. He’s like a well-trained German Shepard. Aggressive when needed, docile when not. He’s smart, doesn’t make rash decisions, and is the kind of guy everyone wants to be in the lead. He was probably the star quarterback in high school but wasn’t your typical jock. He worked hard, despite his natural talent. Everyone likes him. Everyone respects him. Smith doesn’t take that lightly, and you can see in his face the toll that responsibility has taken on him. He’ll never admit it, but the eyes don’t lie. Regardless, there is no place he would rather be.

Rogers thought he wanted this his whole life. A farm boy who grew up in the Midwest somewhere, spending his summers shucking corn then sneaking Natty Light behind the barn with his buddies. Don’t worry Rogers, dad knew the whole time - just boys being boys. He’s not so sure this is what he wants anymore. This isn’t what the posters looked like in the recruiting ads. Most of the guys here are Rogers.

Jackson thinks he was born for this. He comes from a long line of his type. He would tell you that his great-great-grandpa fought in the Civil War but wouldn’t tell you which side, even though secretly he’s proud of it. Every man in his lineage since then has fought somewhere: great grandpa in WWI, grandpa in WWII and Korea, dad in Vietnam. He couldn’t wait to become the next in line to serve. Now, he can’t wait to go home. He’ll tell stories about heroic actions he never actually took, much like his family before him. He will live the rest of

his life sitting at the VFW drinking cheap beer, worrying someone might one day call him out on his bullshit.

There’s only one Michaels. The strong, silent professional. With 1,000 of him I could take over the world. He could easily lead this whole crew, but he came in two years too late because he promised his mom he would go to community college first. He will gladly follow what Smith tells him to do, not because he always agrees with it, but because he understands the importance of discipline and loyalty. He never complains. He is the first one up every day and will also take an extra guard shift at night if it means someone else gets more sleep. One day, Michaels could lead his own platoon, and they would follow him into the fires of hell at the drop of a hat. He won’t though. Michaels won’t get the chance. The best ones never do. It is so fucking hot.

We end up out there all day, which seems par for the course. Stop and talk to the man who runs the market. Have you seen anything unusual? Who the fuck knows. What is unusual anymore? We offer to pay him some money for any leads on where to find what we are looking for. We don’t even know what that is. He takes the money and feeds us a line of shit that you can smell from a mile away. Smith listens to the drabble, but his focus slowly drifts over the man’s shoulder and into the nothingness that we will all be dragging our boots through for hours. You can see the heat getting to him, as we all silently ask ourselves why we are here. They constantly tell us “complacency kills.” We’ve long since died inside.

The little kids in the village are always out playing in the dirt with their one ragged-ass soccer ball hoping to one day become their country’s own Messi. I want to tell them to give it up. Statistically you’ll be lucky to survive that long. Rogers lines up and kicks the ball, launching it as far as he can so that the little pests have to chase it. He’s not trying to play their

game; he just wants them to feel our frustration. I hope you never get your ball back. I say nothing to the kids. I don’t get paid for that.

They always run over to us asking for the only things they know in English. Chocolate! Money! Get. The. Fuck. Away. It’s like some sort of joke for them to ask us. No, I’m not giving you any money. I don’t feel bad for the kids. I feel nothing. Even if I had chocolate why would I give it to you? I don’t have chocolate to give. Nobody has any. How could we possibly have chocolate in our pockets or in our packs or anywhere on us when we all know that it would just fucking melt anyway, because…

of the heat.

One kilometer left. We could go the longer way and avoid the canal crossing, but at this point we just want to be done. Always avoid the bridges. Smith picks the crossing point. We wade in, one by one tits deep across the 15-foot-wide artificial river. It’s probably full of fertilizer, shit, piss, and any number of other normally disgusting things, but for the first time all day, I feel like I’m not on fire. It doesn’t last. The fucking heat here dries you so fast that you don’t even get the chance to enjoy the shit water. At least some of the crust is washed away.

By this time of day, the dirt is hot. Hot to the touch. Hot to the smell. I wonder if it will ever come out of my clothes, out of my skin, out of my brain. I’ll scrub my skin later and end up spending the rest of my life trying to scrub it from my brain. As for the clothes, I’ll burn these when I get home and buy new ones.

I remind myself to tell my closest compatriots that if I don’t make it, to burn my clothes before they get boxed up. Burn all my stuff. I don’t want the memory of that smell to go home to my family and have it stink up their entire lives.

Set it all on fire.

Nobody will feel the heat from the flames anyway.