To the Mother at Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery
October 13, 2014
Every year we attend Veterans Day ceremonies at our local veterans cemetery. Seattle is a wet and chilly place, but my children know better than to complain about the weather on November 11 or they will hear the story of my Great-Uncle Mitch in the Battle of the Bulge. (They actually get to hear it even if they don’t complain, but they haven’t figured that out.)
About six years ago, after the annual request for veterans in the audience to stand and be acknowledged, the woman in front of me turned and thanked me for my service. On her denim jacket she wore a circular button with a photo of a young Marine in his dress uniform and white hat.
Although my heart pounded in my throat, I asked her if that was her son. She said yes. I asked, although I suspected I knew her answer, if he was okay. She said no, he wasn’t okay. He was just over the hill. My son was about five, and he was next to me as I started to cry. This woman who had given so much, who had given her son, had thanked me—but I gave nothing. Nothing.
I never learned her name, but I will never forget her words. I dedicate this book to the mother with the button of her Marine on her jacket at Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery, and to her son, a fine American Marine who has passed over his last hill.
Chapter 1
April 2013, Afghanistan
“Do you know howPersian poets describe almond blossoms?” Abdullah asked from his spot on the mat next to Staff Sergeant Reynaldo Cruz.
“Nope, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.” Cruz couldn’t complain about the Afghan American’s interpreting, but the poetry was new. Add spring fever to the training missions, medic duties, tribal politics and random reports that filled his days in Operational Detachment Alpha 5131, 5thSpecial Forces Group, United States Army, and the result was him falling behind on treating the Afghans waiting for an exam. At least this was the last dude in line for dental care.
“Could you grab his shoulders first?” Cruz asked his interpreter. “Poetry won’t pull this tooth. I don’t want a black eye.”
Abdullah reached for the Afghan without shifting gears. “When the wind blows across a branch to shake the white almond flowers, they say it looks like the pale movement of a woman’s raised arms.”
“You tell one her arms jiggle. Let me know how that works out.” The sun angled low from the top of the western courtyard wall, throwing shadows across his patient’s mouth. Special Forces 18D medic training made Cruz the closest to a doctor or dentist performing house calls in Paktia Province. He’d become damn good at pulling rotted teeth, although having smaller fingers might be helpful.
On this trip to Dostum’s village he had half the usual antibiotics, thanks to the supply challenges of a troop draw-down. Improvising after the extraction, he packed gauze saturated with oil of cloves into the Afghan’s mouth. “Tell him no smoking for forty-eight hours, or the clot will break. Embellish at your leisure that his dick will stop working or whatever, but if he smokes, I guarantee bad results.”
While he reorganized his treatment kit, the almond blossoms reminded him of his hometown in Eastern Washington. The droning of Dostum, an ally along this section of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, could almost be the buzz of pollinating bees. In Salito, apple trees would be in bloom, and rows of wheat shoots would line the plateau. Here, green fields often meant opium poppies, and the river cutting through the valley was a trickle compared to the Columbia, but from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, April in Afghanistan almost resembled home.
“Dostum’s willing to provide twenty men for fighting season,” Abdullah explained their host’s soliloquy, “but first he wants a more permanent relationship with Americans.”
“What the fuck does he think thirteen years and five hundred billion dollars are? No one-night hookup.” In contrast to his words, Cruz smiled. He’d shared tea with the old man often enough to know the game.
“I’ll rephrase that.”
“That’s why we haul your ass around, bro.”
As the terp listened to the reply, his shoulders tightened and his eyes flicked from the dozen tribesmen squatting around the compound, to the weapons stacked throughout the open courtyard and to the gate. Abdullah’s body language was subtle, but Cruz lived or died by noticing a trickle of gravel or a faraway glint of sun on metal.
When Abdullah began to translate, Cruz was ready for word of renewed insurgency or allied losses. “It has been my privilege to work with your fine American team, and Allah blessed me with two healthy sons last year due to the generous and great American doctor you brought. I desire to repay the blessing.”
Not the bad news he’d been expecting, but his interpreter still looked tense.
“I understand Sergeant Cruz is unmarried.” Abdullah shared the tribal leader’s words. “I humbly offer him one of my daughters.”
While Dostum watched like a one-eyed, toothless cupid cradling an AK-47 instead of a bow and arrow, Cruz forced himself to obey the rules for breathing before a five-mile high parachute jump: inhale steadily, no gulps, no matter what instinct urged, no matter that he could barely keep himself from cursing out a father who would do that. “That’s—”
“Shut up.” Abdullah’s voice sliced across Cruz’s rejection. “He’s giving you a gift that matters a lot to him, and in his mind, doing you a favor. Half these men can’t afford to get married, and all of them would really like to be tied like that to Dostum. Ifyou throw his daughter in his face, the insult might make them lose it.”
The air stopped moving except for two flies close to Cruz’s cheek. An insider attack: when a local soldier snaps and opens fire on allies. Green-on-blue, briefings called it.
“Get me out of this.” He missed his former teammate Wulf’s interpreting skill like a guy missed his nuts. He disliked giving so much power to someone the team had known for six months but saw no choice. “Whatever you have to say.”
He tried to smile, but his lips were too dry to peel away from his teeth. Undershirts always soaked through, the price of wearing more than forty pounds of protective gear, but now sweat chilled on his skin. The sun was a joke, making those weapons shiny enough to reflect glare, but not providing a bit of warmth.
The two men talked while he watched a fighter in a striped vest, the man whose hands were closest to his rifle. Target one if this went to hell. Shoot, roll left to cover Abdullah and count on the rest of the team to roar through the gate and clean the courtyard. One on twelve for sixty or ninety seconds, survivable only in Hollywood.
“Relax, lover boy.” Abdullah flung an arm across his shoulders. “We’re good.”
