“In Afghanistan, you mean? The dust in Afghanistan?”
“Yes,” he says. He’s working the zipper faster than he was a moment ago. Back and forth, back and forth.
“I’m …” I shrug. “I guess I don’t know anything about—”
“It’s a constant,” he snaps. “It blows all the time. It gets in your eyes, ears, mouth. You breathe it in with each inhale but you don’t breathe it all out when you exhale. See the problem?” Nate is talking faster now, one sentence flowing into the next, the zipper sliding back and forth, back and forth. “I researched it online while I was there. I knew it couldn’t be good for you, the dust. I just knew it. I breathed it in when I was in Iraq, and I didn’t breathe it all out there, either. I read the dust is made up of a thousand particles, some so small they can sit on the head of a pin. Aluminum, lead, tin, manganese, and other shit. All of it causes neurological disorders, and stuff like cancer, lung problems, heart disease.
“But that’s just what the Army tells us. Here is what they aren’t saying. Some of the particles are from humans. Particles are flaking off the skin of millions of diseased Afghanis. Dead ones too. They just bury their dead in the dust and under rocks. They don’t put their coffins in concrete liners like we do. So their bodies decompose and become part of the dust, part of those particles on the head of a pin, and it blows and we breathe it in. But we don’t breathe it all out.”
“So you’re saying—I guess I don’t know what you’re saying, Nate.”
“The dust,” he says irritably. “I’m saying it’s part of it. The Army admits we’re breathing it in and it’s making the troops sick. And the heat. Who knows what the awful heat does to you—the heat—and, you’re packing eighty pounds of shit on your back. Then there’s the IEDs. They’re invisible, see? You can’t fight them because you can’t see them. Not until they blow. Not until they explode and take your legs and feet and balls.” He nods his head rapidly. “Yes, improvised explosive devices take your balls.
“I’ve seen six vehicles get hit by IEDs. Two times, there were indigenous people on the road when it happened, like they were waiting for it to happen. They laughed. They laughed when the vehicle blew and the legs blew off, and when the one guy lost his balls. They laughed.”
The zipper—back and forth, back and forth.
“I hated the indigenous and I hated the dust. Both were killing us. You understand? The dust and the IEDs. The heat was miserable, the constant tension was miserable. But the IEDs and the dust …” He snaps his head toward me, his long hair swishing about, his eyes looking wild, his face dark with blood. He jerks his head toward the windshield.
“Nate, look at me for a moment.” He does. “Breathe with me, okay?” He frowns a little. “Humor me, Nate, and follow me as I count. Please sit up straight and close your eyes. Straighter. Good.”
I wish my father were here. He is a master at guided meditation. His voice hypnotizes, takes you in, takes you under.
“Okay, Nate, now breathe in slowly, two, three, four. Hold it, two, three, four. Exhale slowly, two, three, four. Hold it, two, three, four. That’s one cycle. Now let’s do it again. “In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four …”
After three more cycles, Nate’s complexion lightens and his breathing has returned to normal. He looks at me, nods. “I’d forgotten about it,” he says, his voice mellow, again under his control. “They taught it to us in my unit.”
“Helped me a few dozen times these past couple of months. Do you want to continue talking? Or we can always do it later.”
“If I may, I’d like to finish.”
“Sure.”
Nate takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Here goes,” he says, more to himself then to me. “My best buddy in Afghanistan was another Indian, Jay Butterfly, hundred percent Blackfoot from Montana. Jay had been hurt in the COP, a combat outpost, unloading a vehicle. He’d been sleeping in his bunk when they told him to go out and help unload some heavy fifty-caliber ammo cans. So, crazy guy that he was, he went out barefoot, and one of the cans fell on his right one and crushed four of his toes and some major bones in the top of the foot. The last time I talked to Jay, he was about to get shipped stateside and he said he had to tell me something. Said he needed to unburden himself.”
“Unburden himself?”
Nate nods. “Yes, but it ended up burdening me. Says he knew about two guys, both sergeants, who were killing civilians. Fun kills, thrill kills, whatever you want to call it. The people weren’t a threat; they weren’t even the enemy. They were people we were supposed to be helping. Killed them just because they were Afghanis. He knew for sure of two. I don’t know if he saw it happen or what, because all he said was he, ‘knew for sure.’”
“Damn,” I whisper.
“He told me the sergeants’ names. They weren’t in my platoon. They were in another one in the COP. I knew them, or of them, although I hadn’t seen them in a while. Loud mouths, obnoxious. Or at least they had been. Because when I saw them after Jay told me what they had been doing, they weren’t so loud anymore, they kept to themselves, talking quietly, sitting together all the time.
“A couple weeks after Jay shipped out, I heard the sergeants were getting an attaboy for killing two other Afghanis who were about to attack them with pistols. The two troops claimed they were quicker and blew away the young men, teenagers, before they could get off a shot. Their story was different than the one Jay had told me.
“Then it happened again about three weeks after they got the award. This time the two tossed a grenade at an old man. They said he had a pistol on him too. The two got another attaboy, and they were strutting around like banty roosters. Then someone, I don’t know who, found some photos. I think they were on one of the sergeants’ computers, but I’m not sure. Anyway, the photos showed these guys with the two dead teens and the old man. They had taken pictures of each other so only one guy was in each shot. In one, one of the sergeants was smiling and kneeling next to one of the dead teenagers, and lifting the kid’s head by his hair. Another shot showed the other sergeant pretending to kiss the old man’s forehead. In another pic, the same sergeant was pretending to have sex with the old Afghani.”
“Oh, man,” I say, shaking my head. “I think I read about it. The two were charged, weren’t they?”
Nate nods. “Yes, they were eventually figured out. The Army is talking about the death penalty.”
“So sad,” I say. “Atrocities happen in every war. For every hundred great, righteous warriors, there is one criminal psychopath.”
“These two killed five people,” Nate says, his eyes penetrating mine, the skin across his forehead and around his mouth impossibly tight. “The sergeants planted the weapons on the people they killed. Jay told me about two of them. The other three happened after … after I knew about what they were doing.”
“I’m not following.”
“What I told you before about the heat, the toxic dust, the IEDs, the laughter, the constant tension … I … my … craziness … it peaked. I was so filled with hatred for the Afghanis. I pushed them around, insulted their culture, called them ‘dune coons,’ ‘camel jockeys,’ ‘towel heads,’ ‘dead meat.’”
“Nate,
