The Guy Who Makes the Rules Out Here

“The reader will make a person out of next to nothing.” ~Lucy Corin


To Benjamin Birnbaum and Joshua Wauchope

The mosquito hawks here are from the devil himself. In my twenty-four years of life, I’ve never seen anything like them. They grimace at you as they flutter about the fire, as if you’re intruding on some domestic ceremony of theirs. Trudy caught one in a jar last night while we were drinking the few beers we had left. As I look through the dust and my own cigarette smoke at the caravan procession from my seat behind the gun, I can just make out that damned jar on his lap. He’s superstitious that way. Trudy is from a big family, you see. That’s how he justifies it. Apparently out here he needs something tangible to hold onto—a beer, a rifle, a mosquito hawk in a jar. I’ve never been that way. I can look into my palms, watch them sweat and sleep like a child.

This morning we visited a small village outside Bukan. Trudy had a rough morning, what with his liver still shoveling alcohol through his system like a filthy coal miner. I slept well though; there’s something about the fire that Class makes that lets me sleep well. It’s not like a siren that puts you out, it just improves the quality. Quality is something I couldn’t even get at home. I should clarify—Class is our Private First Class. His name is Ben, but as unconventional as Class may be, it just stuck. Shit, I don’t make the rules out here. I’d pay to meet the guy who does.
We arrived around eight-hundred hours and the medics set up their camp right away. When the people saw the color of our caravan, they dropped hot pans they were cooking with to seek medical attention. Our job was simple: “A line, not a mob,” Class instructed. The phrase has become commonplace lately. The first time you hear it, it’s just Class barking orders, but fuck…when you see it—when you see a grown woman cross-eyed and bewildered, looking for the grandson already at her heels—you see mosquito hawks, man. You hear ‘em cackle.

The sight made me hate Trudy, who stood on my right as I looked on. Come to think of it, he always stood on my right.

The villagers seemed to have no intention of forming a mob. Clearly this wasn’t their first ro-day-oh, as Trudy liked to put it. He had a knack for the obnoxious overuse of dysphemisms he heard as a child—ones he clearly thought were common knowledge. I never said anything because despite his intimidating build, Trudy took shit personally. As I stood and deliberated whether their formation was actually as splendid as it seemed—whether it was truly humanity at its finest as sometimes I think only I waste the energy to see—the elderly woman toward the back of the line who inspired that description highlighted herself behind my eyes. It was like some of my mother’s photography I used to page through when I was too young to understand. One person in a crowd was in rich color, wearing an orange knitted cap while the rest scurried about their business in the black and white that engulfed these villagers. But not that woman, and not her grandson.

When I removed myself from our loose formation, I waved off Class’s questioning because we don’t think alike, and frankly he’s no psychic either. I don’t know the guy who makes the rules out here, but I wasn’t breaking any. I bent down low and wiped a smudge of soot or something off the boy’s face. My weapon’s clip jabbed into my side and I had to adjust myself, which brought the boy’s attention to the magic slingshot slung over my shoulder and he clasped his grandmother’s skirt like the ghost from his nightmares had just passed behind me. Watching him grapple at her cotton made me uncomfortable; the spot he grabbed was worn. Turning my weapon behind me, I outstretched my hand asking for the high-five every father would kill to guarantee. I’ll admit now that it was the single moment out here I wish Trudy and Class hadn’t seen. Asking these children for a high-five was a crap-shoot at best. He watched the palm of my hand sweat for a moment and then removed his from its place of comfort and instead took me by the index finger. The kid had some paws on him, I’ll tell you that.

Without a moment’s hesitation, as if he’d grabbed the Holy Grail for himself, he began running the way only a child does, left, toward the more distant homes. Class barked at me but realizing the futility of doing so, sent Trudy behind instead. I could hear his boots scuffing the ground behind me as he walked. Mine didn’t do that.

I found myself surveying a small chair—child size and poorly constructed from lightly-colored wood scraps. The boy pointed at it incessantly like it was a piñata I needed to open for him. Language failed me—for obvious reasons—and I foolishly looked to the right for a hint from Trudy but he shrugged his shoulders and looked out the opening behind us impatiently. The boy let go of my finger and picked the thing up, struggling to carry it to us without letting it touch the ground. He placed it in front of me firmly, pumped his chest out like I’ve seen Trudy do in front of sliding-glass doors and his expression was proud. But he would not sit; he pointed at us. I pointed instead to the chair and then back and forth between Trudy and I asking “for us?” He shook his head sideways in understanding and pointed only at me. I tried to look at Trudy out of the side of one eye to see how he was taking it, but it seemed he’d been lost in translation.

Tonight, I stood peering through the brilliant hues of my cigarette smoke into the heart of that sculpture of fire. Class left after he finished his artwork, but I looked forward to the unhindered rest it would promote anyway. You don’t need Whitman holding your hand to enjoy Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. I kicked a dirt-clot at the fire’s naked form and walked behind the shed to take a leak. I heard a bottle break from where I came and a commotion erupt of no larger size than usual. Probably Trudy fucking with one of the new guys again.

As I relieved myself it dawned on me that today, here in this god-forsaken desert where I look to only to fire for salvation, I evolved above standing; I acquired a chair. Whether it would hold my weight I’d considered but hadn’t tested, so I resolved to take the trek back to my cot and grab it. The fireside chatter got more raucous. Damn it Trudy.

I returned empty-handed. That’s a misnomer; I returned holding only the sweat from my palms.

The glass I heard wasn’t a bottle. It was the single and only possession of mine that I forced to come join the ranks of the military with me—a framed photograph. And the commotion wasn’t usual. A beer bottle broke at my feet. It was flung from just to the right of the fire. “What the fuck is this!?” erupted Trudy, my right-hand man, pointing at the fire.

And I watched that beautiful chair burn like the firewood it was. The flesh melted away from it like rotting human effluence, leaving only its charred skeleton behind to fend off the Chimeras that hawked about it futilely with its own flaming pegged leg. I was frozen in a desert. My fire was a cannibal, alive with the silence of the boy who willed me his salvation. I watched every moment. I watched as my second worldly possession burned unforgivably atop my first. The glass underneath was broken but its metal frame lingered. The ink from my photo boiled and popped and made me sick. I looked to the artist whose creation was being defaced in the most despicable sense of the word, but he looked only at the photo. He could not see the beauty of his hands. They did not sweat like mine. He saw chair-shaped firewood burning and a photograph of two men who did nothing to anyone but love each other.

“David. Can I have a word with you in private?” he said.

I don’t know the guy who makes the rules out here, but I wasn’t breaking any.

A hundred miles away, the tears of an Iranian boy stain his grandmother’s skirt and turn dirt into mud.