We sat in silence for a long time. He was waiting me out. I had the sense that he wanted me to say something first.
“Do you miss it?” I asked, “America?”
“Americans always think we miss America when we go home,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and truly, I was. “I just wondered.”
He smiled and nodded. “I do miss it. But I also miss this place when I’m there. It’s human nature.”
“What’s it like here?” I asked.
“Some days are better than others,” he said. He looked at the 9mm in my hand. “You don’t need that in my hotel. You’re safe here for now. I’ll let you know if it changes.”
I nodded and set the weapon on the couch next to me, sliding it under my leg so I wouldn’t forget it. The Army makes you pay for things that go missing.
“You’re younger than the others,” he said.
“I’ve been to college,” I said. “I’m not the youngest.” In fact, I was older than Zeller and Cooper.
“I liked college,” he said. And then he asked, “Why are you here?”
“Money for school,” I said. “But I’m here because they sent me. They give you a lot of trouble if you don’t go where they tell you to go once you sign up. When I joined the Army I thought I was invincible. I was too young to think otherwise.”
He nodded.
The front door was open. Wind blew sand in from the street, and a threadbare white curtain fluttered in the window across from me. There was sand everywhere. I couldn’t keep it out of my mouth. I turned it around with my tongue and ground it between my teeth.
“What are people like here?” I asked.
“They’re kind,” he said. “And, how do you say,” he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, “proud.” He smiled and nodded, rubbing his hands together. “It is often cruel though. People are desperate these days.”
I watched him knead each hand in turn. I looked at my own hands and noticed several small cuts on the backs of them. I hadn’t noticed them before. I ran my hand over the largest cut to see if it hurt.
Michael leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. Then he quickly rose. “Would you like a drink?”
One of the pamphlets they’d made us read before we were deployed said that if you were offered a drink or food you were to accept so as not to offend their hospitality, but you weren’t actually supposed to eat or drink whatever you were given.
“Sure,” I said.
He walked into a back room and brought back two bottles of what looked like a dark soda, along with two glasses. “You would like this place if you were here under better circumstances.” He paused as he poured the soda. The liquid looked dark and heavy. He offered me the glass and I took it. I was a model of etiquette. Then he looked out the open door at the street and, nodding as if to emphasize his point, added, “I know you would have liked it here.”
“How do you name your towns?” I asked.
He was still looking out at the street when I asked, but then he stopped and looked at me askance, a small smile starting on his face. “How do we name our towns? I don’t see what you mean.”
“I was just wondering what the name of this city means,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought about it. Where are you from?” he asked.
“Wichita, Kansas,” I said.
He repeated the words slowly, delicately, giving them far more respect than most people did. Usually when I said the name of my hometown to a stranger they would repeat the word Kansas in some kind of strange drawl. Then they would tell me that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, as if they were the first person ever to say this. But when Michael said it it sounded exotic. I liked that.
“What does it mean, Wichita?” he asked.
“I don’t have a clue,” I said, and we both laughed. “We like to name our towns after the rivers that run through them.”
He turned serious. “Does America know that we don’t have any oil?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. It had never come up in any of the briefings. “We’re just here to help.”
“It’s hard to believe,” he said.
“It’s true,” I said.
“There aren’t many rivers here,” he said. “You’ll have a hard time renaming the cities if you stay.”
I held the glass in my hand for a long time before forcing myself to drink. The soda was dark and syrupy and I sipped at it tentatively, slightly embarrassed.
SIX
WE DECIDED TO WAIT UNTIL AFTER MIDNIGHT BEFORE setting out. Hopefully that way most of the city would be asleep. Before going out into the night we stood over Cooper’s body for a moment. In a way we had benefited from the way Cooper died. He showed us where the enemy was, and how they had the ground between us and the helicopters covered. Everything I’d ever heard about death came back to me again as I stood over him. Part of me wanted to stay, but we had to get going.
Shouldering my pack, I thought of all the choices it contained—almost every item in there could have been left behind. I hadn’t brought a raincoat, but then who’d ever heard of rain in the desert? It felt good to be making our own choices, rather than having them be made by the sun or the city, or Cooper’s needs. I was ready to follow Santiago, to show that I had faith in him.
Santiago tore off Cooper’s name tag and the patches that identified him as a member of the U.S. Army. He tore off his 10th Mountain Division patch, and he tore off the American flag on his left shoulder. He handed the scraps to me, but I didn’t have a clue as
