“What religion was he?” Santiago asked. “I mean, he was really religious, right?”
“I knew when we got here,” I said, “but I can’t remember now.” His feet extended beyond the edge of the mattress. And then I added, “I remember him saying he was a virgin because of his religion.” I turned away from Cooper. “It will say on his dog tags.”
Santiago looked from Cooper to Zeller and then to me. “Why don’t you get them?”
“But you just touched him,” I said.
“I touched his sleeve,” Santiago said, “but I’m not putting my hand down his shirt.” I waited quietly, hoping that he would change his mind. “All right,” he sighed. He gingerly lifted the T-shirt under Cooper’s BDUs and took the dog tags in his hand. “Islam,” Santiago read. “What are you?” he asked, turning to me.
“Catholic,” I said.
“And you?” he asked Zeller.
“Lutheran,” Zeller said.
“What about you?” I said to Santiago.
“Unaffiliated,” he said.
“What does that mean?” asked Zeller.
“It means I don’t have a religious preference,” he replied.
“I guess someone else will pray for him,” I said. I didn’t feel that we had the right. “We don’t have to pray for him here. We’ll have all the time in the world to remember him later, to say something meaningful.”
“Probably,” Santiago said.
Still, we stood around the body for a few minutes, and it felt as if we should say something. Finally, Santiago suggested that we find some other clothes for him. The owner of the hotel might get in trouble if they found a dead American soldier in one of the rooms. The body might even be desecrated.
But if we did take him out of his uniform, I said, we might void his will or his life insurance or something ludicrous along those lines. There were rules of engagement after all, rules that governed the way we lived, and there were probably rules that governed death as well. They didn’t argue with me. We heard rumors and stories about things like that all the time. To those of us on the ground, it often seemed as if the government was always looking to avoid its obligations.
Santiago said that so long as all of us were staying in uniform, so should Cooper. I agreed with him, trying to summon a sense of hope and meaning for what was ahead. If he was calling the shots I wanted him to know that I believed in him. Even if I didn’t.
We walked downstairs to talk with Michael. He said again that trying to steal a car in this town definitely wasn’t a good idea. He said the bus would bring us better luck.
“Do you know how to get out of the city?” he asked.
When we shook our heads, he waved us toward the front door with a flick of his wrist, as if he were tossing something into the trash.
“We need your car,” Santiago said.
“You mean you’re taking my car,” he shot back. He clasped his hands, rubbing them violently together. “I could have turned you in for the reward. You killed two boys, it’s all over the city. They’re looking for you, and they’ll find you eventually, even if they have to follow you home. They’ll get your names somehow and find you there. This is a sick place.”
He wasn’t threatening us, really. He was simply making an observation. We’d heard this before, how trouble could follow you home from the war.
“They know you’re still here because they saw the helicopters turn back after they shot one of them down.” He was too angry to look at us as he spoke.
I wanted to tell him that what had happened with those two boys was an accident, and that I had nothing to do with it. But I didn’t say a thing.
Then he said again that we’d never make it in a car. There were checkpoints and tolls throughout the city. We’d be dead as soon as they saw us. He said we could disguise ourselves as much as we liked, but when they spoke to us and we didn’t answer they’d shoot us. “You’d have better luck taking the bus,” he said. “People leave you alone when you ride on the trucks and buses here.” He looked up from his hands. “Besides, I gave my car to a friend because I knew you’d ask.”
“Where can we find a car?” asked Santiago.
“How will you know where to go?” Michael asked. “All the roads leading out of the city are mined. You don’t just drive in a town like this. You have to know where to go.”
“I’ve got a map,” Santiago said. His confidence was obviously false. I’d seen the look before, when Santiago was drunk and trying to pick up a woman at the bar.
“Do you even know where your Army has gone?” Michael asked. “They’re moving to a small city north of here to wait out the monsoon. Everyone here knows.”
Santiago cursed under his breath, then turned and walked out the front door. Zeller and I followed.
We didn’t know where we were going, but we knew we needed a car. Packs of dogs roamed the city, and they followed us for blocks on end. All the dogs looked the same: anxious, malnourished, and menacing. They were all dull brown in color, and when we stopped in an alley or to peek around a corner, they stopped as well, eyeing us distrustfully.
After an hour or so of searching and walking in circles, we found a car parked in an alley not far from Michael’s. No one was around. There was a chain running from the steering wheel down through a large hole in the dash and then out through another hole in the floor of the car. There was no light in any
