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“It happened in the last month of my final tour,” he said finally. His voice seemed distant, and very far away. “I wish it didn’t. I wish I could change it…”
His back arched as he broke down, almost entirely. The only thing missing were the tears.
“What?” I prodded gently. “What was it that you wish you could change?”
Joshua finally turned to face me. His eyes were glassy, his voice broken as he uttered a single word:
“Tikrit.”
Twenty-Six
JOSHUA
The soccer ball came over the wall sometime during the night. It was old. Scuffed and dirty. Well-worn and well-loved, to the point where it was obviously someone’s most prized possession.
The kid who owned it slipped into the base at the crack of dawn.
It wasn’t exactly uncommon, hosting the Tikrit locals from time to time. And the kid wasyoung. Nine, maybe ten. He had the thickest mop of dark hair I’d ever seen, and a smile so bright it shined through the layers of dirt and dust on his sun-kissed face.
I found him near the spot where the ball had dropped in, up against the wall, searching behind every bush and tumbleweed. He looked distraught, almost frantic. But the smile he gave me when I produced the ball from behind my back was something I’d never forget.
Never.
I tossed it his way. Rather than catch it, he bumped it off his chest and proceeded to do a bunch of insane tricks. He kicked it, kneed it, bumped it with his head. With both feet he somehow tossed it behind his back, then used his heel to knock it up again, effortlessly, without even looking.
The kid was a goddamn sorcerer with that ball, and I was his grinning, humbled audience. Eventually, I set my rifle down. Using a stick, I drew the rough outline of a goal in the sand.
His smile grew even brighter somehow. Beneath the purple and orange glow of the rising sun, he was absolutely beaming.
We played together, he and I. Two strangers who hadn’t spoken a single word to each other, yet had bonded on levels that needed no words at all. There was fun. Laughter. A hiccup of happiness and jubilation, set against a backdrop of poverty, uncertainty, and despair.
I’d been in the service for so long by then, and I’d seen so many things. Not many were good. None of them were pure, like this moment. None of them reflected the simple innocence and uncorrupted joy of a kid, a man, and a beat up soccer ball.
And the kid wasskilled. He got the ball past me so many times. He kicked it through my legs, or skirted past me whenever I tried to take it. When it was my turn, I barely got it past him once.
The whole thing took ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Even so, from the look in his eyes it was the best fifteen minutes the kid had had inyears.
Eventually he stopped and picked up the ball. In the gentle swirl of the morning breeze we stood toe to toe. Man to man. I reached out with a smile and tousled that dark mop of hair, and his laughter resounded in my heart.
It still lives there. It never left.
The kid was dirty. Filthy. Dressed in rags. But he had brilliant green eyes — the kind you seldom see on someone from that part of the world. They were eyes so filled with life they were brimming. Overflowing with the endless promise of a million different paths. A thousand bright futures…
And then he does it: he shoves the soccer ball into my hands. Surprised, I look back at him in confusion.
“I’m going to miss this…” he says, in near-perfect English.
And just like that, his smile fades. His white teeth disappear behind of pair of cracked lips, and suddenly there’s a tear in his eye. I’m frozen for a moment, not understanding. The tear runs down his face, creating a clean streak all the way down his cheek.
Mesmerized, I watch it go.
Then he spins on his heel, turns away, and runs. He’s moving full-speed, impossibly fast. Too fast for even the fastest adult to ever catch up.
The kid runs… straight at the barracks.
No.
Straightintothe barracks.
