by memory,” says Yelks. “He’s reading that fucking Bible of his, I bet.”
The dust clears.
The lieutenant’s five-Humvee reconnaissance convoy has put enough distance between itself and the main route of hundreds ofvehicles that Peoria can now see clearly, and what he sees is shocking. He sees blue sky, an overwhelming blue above the desert.
He has a strange tingling sensation and a sentence goes through his head that takes him a second to place.
“Beware of blue skies and open horizons.”
And A.E. Peoria remembers 9/11. 9/11 was a blue-sky day. In New York, he grabbed his notebook and jumped in a taxi and went down there to Chambers Street, and he stood next to a woman, a stranger, who had grabbed his arm as the two of them watched dark figures, one after the other, jump, fall, and the woman saying, Oh my god, oh my god. The woman gripped his arm tightly, but he didn’t notice or didn’t say anything, because he felt like he should be feeling pain. A terrifying rumble. Let’s go, let’s go, and that’s when he started to run through the canyons of Lower Manhattan, and the dust was coming, the dust was coming. A man in a coffee shop kept the door open and yelled, “Get in here, get in here!” Everything was dark for forty-three seconds. Car alarms and coughing. Light came back in. He saw fingernail marks on his arm, deep cuts. He looked around for the woman, but the woman was gone.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7. A passage from
From Here to Eternity
, something about the skies not showing any hint of clouds over the Pacific, clear blue.
He recalls an eyewitness at Nagasaki. A clear day. The city was the second choice—the first, Kokura, was covered in clouds. The bomber commander said he headed toward the blue skies. You could drop the atomic bomb only on a day that had excellent visibility.
Exterminate all the brutes, he thinks, remembering his Conrad. Exterminate all rational thought, he thinks, remembering his Burroughs. And between those two lines written sixty years apart, you have the entire canon of Western liter . . .
Dozing off.
Awake again.
Wake up, wake up, Peoria thinks, though nothing is happening. Here he is, in war, on the frontline of history, and there is just the dull engine noise that puts him to sleep, the helmet on his head, the body armor, the heat.
His senses are heightened and he looks around and the air seems much clearer, and he feels there should be ringing in his ears, an acute ringing in his ears, all the alarm bells in his mind, his senses overloading, like one of those hearing tests, an invisible high-pitched sound, as the truck bumps up and down. He has his helmet on; he has his body armor; the standard blue issue with the word PRESS across the front; he has his digital recorder, which he fumbles with as he forces himself to take notes and he feels so clumsy. There he is in war, fussing around in the backseat, with his seat belt, with his sunglasses, with his tape player, with a pen—why doesn’t his pen work? The ink is not coming out of his pen, and he scribbles, and scribbles again, finally sticking the dead pen in his pocket and fishing out a new pen from his black shoulder bag—his larger backpack with his equipment is in the trunk of the Humvee. His shoulder bag, which has his satellite phone, computer, and extra pens, is at his feet. He finds another ballpoint, hits the record button, and writes down, “Welcome to Iraq, two-thirty pm, march 19, the year of our lord—” He realizes he has taken only a few notes since the invasion started, he didn’t keep up with his system, he is far behind. He looks out the window and he sees dead cars and a dead tank from the previous war, and he sees shitty little mud huts with threadlike power lines, and he notes more road signs—BAGHDAD 400 KM, NAJAF 220—and tunes out the voices over the radio. He thinks to himself, Man, I am glad I’m not leading this convoy. I am glad all I have to do is watch. I am
The dust clears.
The lieutenant’s five-Humvee reconnaissance convoy has put enough distance between itself and the main route of hundreds ofvehicles that Peoria can now see clearly, and what he sees is shocking. He sees blue sky, an overwhelming blue above the desert.
He has a strange tingling sensation and a sentence goes through his head that takes him a second to place.
“Beware of blue skies and open horizons.”
And A.E. Peoria remembers 9/11. 9/11 was a blue-sky day. In New York, he grabbed his notebook and jumped in a taxi and went down there to Chambers Street, and he stood next to a woman, a stranger, who had grabbed his arm as the two of them watched dark figures, one after the other, jump, fall, and the woman saying, Oh my god, oh my god. The woman gripped his arm tightly, but he didn’t notice or didn’t say anything, because he felt like he should be feeling pain. A terrifying rumble. Let’s go, let’s go, and that’s when he started to run through the canyons of Lower Manhattan, and the dust was coming, the dust was coming. A man in a coffee shop kept the door open and yelled, “Get in here, get in here!” Everything was dark for forty-three seconds. Car alarms and coughing. Light came back in. He saw fingernail marks on his arm, deep cuts. He looked around for the woman, but the woman was gone.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7. A passage from
From Here to Eternity
, something about the skies not showing any hint of clouds over the Pacific, clear blue.
He recalls an eyewitness at Nagasaki. A clear day. The city was the second choice—the first, Kokura, was covered in clouds. The bomber commander said he headed toward the blue skies. You could drop the atomic bomb only on a day that had excellent visibility.
Exterminate all the brutes, he thinks, remembering his Conrad. Exterminate all rational thought, he thinks, remembering his Burroughs. And between those two lines written sixty years apart, you have the entire canon of Western liter . . .
Dozing off.
Awake again.
Wake up, wake up, Peoria thinks, though nothing is happening. Here he is, in war, on the frontline of history, and there is just the dull engine noise that puts him to sleep, the helmet on his head, the body armor, the heat.
His senses are heightened and he looks around and the air seems much clearer, and he feels there should be ringing in his ears, an acute ringing in his ears, all the alarm bells in his mind, his senses overloading, like one of those hearing tests, an invisible high-pitched sound, as the truck bumps up and down. He has his helmet on; he has his body armor; the standard blue issue with the word PRESS across the front; he has his digital recorder, which he fumbles with as he forces himself to take notes and he feels so clumsy. There he is in war, fussing around in the backseat, with his seat belt, with his sunglasses, with his tape player, with a pen—why doesn’t his pen work? The ink is not coming out of his pen, and he scribbles, and scribbles again, finally sticking the dead pen in his pocket and fishing out a new pen from his black shoulder bag—his larger backpack with his equipment is in the trunk of the Humvee. His shoulder bag, which has his satellite phone, computer, and extra pens, is at his feet. He finds another ballpoint, hits the record button, and writes down, “Welcome to Iraq, two-thirty pm, march 19, the year of our lord—” He realizes he has taken only a few notes since the invasion started, he didn’t keep up with his system, he is far behind. He looks out the window and he sees dead cars and a dead tank from the previous war, and he sees shitty little mud huts with threadlike power lines, and he notes more road signs—BAGHDAD 400 KM, NAJAF 220—and tunes out the voices over the radio. He thinks to himself, Man, I am glad I’m not leading this convoy. I am glad all I have to do is watch. I am
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