Paint It Black

PAINT IT BLACK

AUGUST 2021

They called the plan Operation Uplift . John couldn't decide if this was meant to have religious overtones. Probably not. More than likely, the wit who'd dreamt up the name aimed for a cutesy play on Airlift because who wanted to conjure up images of Berlin? Especially since, in the end, the Commies kind of won that one. Of course, you could say they won the battle and lost the war, but...semantics.

More than likely, the guy who'd presented the operational name to his superiors had also never read H.G. Wells. If he had, he might have been moved to veer away from casting the Americans as Doctor Moreau.

Because, of course, that meant all those clamoring, desperate Afghans were animals.

If John thought operating with dwindling supplies at the beginning of the evacuation was tough, nothing compared to the runup to the finish line.

With four days to go before the Americans got the heck out of Dodge, the situation, bad to begin with, leapfrogged right over terrible and landed on dire. It wasn't just that their workload had quadrupled. The problem was the utter and absolute lack of planning that had gone into the evacuation. Nobody really had thought this through. Everything was being done on the fly and on a shoestring. They all lurched from crisis to crisis: a shortage of this, a lack of manpower here, no thought even given to where troops were supposed to bunk much less how they were expected to care for the thousands clamoring to get out of Afghanistan.

Kabul Airport was a wreck, like a fortress during a prolonged siege. John had seen pictures of people in Indonesia, the Philippines, Ethiopia...think of any overpopulated, impoverished area where the world dumped its garbage. The airport wasn't as bad, probably because only a few weeks had passed. While there were no mountains of waste, the airport had become, literally, a garbage dump. Trash was everywhere: paper, cardboard, empty water bottles, discarded clothing, abandoned vehicles left by the Afghan military, mattresses, tarps, shoes, sandals, hats. Abayas, trousers, boxes of mementos, tunics, cutlery, toys, balls, pictures, electronics of all kinds because none were allowed through.

The Abbey Gate was the only way in. The gate lay at the end of a narrow road. An open sewage ditch filled with gray watery sludge ran down the center. High concrete walls and barbed wire lined both sides of the throughway which was packed with Afghans: a mosh pit with no space to sit or lie down. There was no shade. The air was fetid with the stink of sweat, diarrhea, and sewage stewing under a merciless sun. Perched atop cargo containers which served as a chokepoint before actual entrance, the Taliban sometimes employed their version of crowd control by firing into the air. This only resulted in chaos and stampedes as people tried to flee or find cover. Many who fell or tripped were crushed or suffocated. Children were separated from parents; some were simply snatched because having a small child was seen as a get out of jail free card, a ticket out of town. Almost everyone had papers. Some documents proved previous employment by the Americans. Many more were simply photographs taken with U.S. soldiers or scraps of cards with American names and promises— If you ever need anything— dashed off in ink. Anything a person could think of that might help, he brought, along with his fear and desperation.

Calling this a "gate" was a laugh. There were no crossing rails to be lifted out of the way. There were steel doors, but no one used them. The first and last time the earliest contingent of Marines tried—this was two days before John and Ronnie landed—they were so few and the numbers of refugees so large that the mob very nearly forced their way through.

What the American troops used instead was a hole in barbed wire. If a Marine stationed along the concrete wall thought papers looked legit, he would pluck that person out of the ditch and pass him or her through that hole for "processing": a fancy word for sitting for more hours in the sweltering heat, waiting to be called.

What happened next to an Afghan hoping to make it out was a bit like Alice falling down that rabbit hole. Except there was no great hallway lined with doors, and the only key that would get an Afghan anywhere was the proof he or she presented.

The Americans weren't monsters. If you needed patching, you got patched. If you needed water, you'd get a bottle. You might even score some food. This is where the kids made out. Infants got formula, and more than one Marine took pains to coo and cuddle. Youngsters got water and candy. A Marine might find a ball somewhere and play a bit of soccer. Those were the photo op moments the brass loved.

In the end, though, if your papers didn't pass muster or a State Department dude decided you were conning him or you'd done something to really piss off a Marine—tossing a baby onto barbed wire and then claiming that was your kid was right there on the list of piss-offable offenses—you were booted right back out, like a mangy, unwanted stray.

Uplift, indeed.

As horrible as this endless stream of the wretched was, John's biggest worries were two: the Marines—and what the heck Roni was doing on her breaks.

To say the Marines weren't doing well was an understatement. Most were teenagers on their first deployment, and not only were they terrified, they were also unprepared. No one sat down and ticked off a checklist on how to decide if an Afghan should be allowed through or not—or even what to say when they had to turn someone away. Everyone was making it up on the fly.

Even worse, soon after their arrival, a stomach flu swept through the troops. John could've predicted this. You didn't need to be a medical Einstein. The troops were stationed at a sewage ditch, for God's sake. So many soldiers got knocked down from puking their guts out—when they weren't crapping their brains out—that the medical teams set up a different treatment area just to tend to the troops needing IVs. Which was both good and bad. Good because sometimes there really was nothing like a bag of saline to perk a guy right up again. But bad because if that poor guy could stand up without falling over, he got sent back out.

Those not crippled by the virus were overworked, overtired, stressed almost beyond endurance. No one had bothered figuring out where troops could rest and catch some relief from the heat and clamor. Many slept—collapsed, really—on concrete floors or sacked out on a piece of cardboard or plastic laid on the ground.

The emotional toll on the soldiers was huge, but no one wanted to talk about that. No one in command wanted to hear about the agony of having to turn away families without the proper papers. Of listening to young women pleading to be rescued so they'd be safe from Taliban who'd raped them before and would almost surely murder them if the Americans left them behind. The sight of a son pushing a wheelbarrow in which his elderly father sat because the man was crippled or blind…well, soldier, we know this is hard, but you need to toughen up, not let this get to you .

But, of course, all this did get to you. Because there was guilt, too. You had the luxury of knowing you could leave without a backward glance. A soldier would have to be made of stone not to feel a little guilty about that.

John thought that was why, in the end, Roni did what she did.

He was just dozing off when he felt a pressure on his chest and then a whisper brushing his left ear. "You awake?"

"Unh?" Swallowing, he said, eyes still closed, "Sort of."

"Can we talk for a few minutes?"

"Roni." Clearing his throat, he cracked his lids the way a person might part blinds with a finger just the tiniest bit. "Honey, I have got to sleep. We're on in four hours. Kind of burning the proverbial candle at both ends." An understatement. After talking with their CO, he and the other officers were taking turns: swapping out their quarters in rotation with troops in need of A/C, rest, running water, a hot shower. This also meant that he and Roni often spent much of the time they could steal actually sleeping.

"This is important, John." She propped her head on an elbow. "It's about you and me. Us, I guess. "

That got his attention. He rolled onto his side, so they faced one another. The room was thick with shadows. The a/c puffed cooled, slightly mildewed air in a short whirr. A sliver of light from the bathroom, which he always left open a crack, sliced across the floor. "What is it you want to talk about? Us? This ?"

"In a way."

"How many different ways are there?" He laid his right hand on her left hip. "This isn't just a fling. I don't want to go back to being just friends. Go ahead and put in the air quotes, but I'm serious." His throat thickened with emotion. "Roni, for me, this...us...we're forever."

"I know," she said, her voice suddenly small.

He waited for her to go on, his own heart hammering. When she didn't, he said, "And? But?" He pulled his hand back. "What is it? Is there someone..." He let that die because who else could there be?

Who else…but Driver?

And then, close on its heels, a different and altogether unwelcome thought, one that made his skin prickle with new rage and fresh hurt: She sees him, and then she comes to your bed.

"Yes, there is something else, but not in the way, you think," she said.

"Oh?" God, it seemed to take all his concentration to make the simplest sound. He sat up and twitched the sheet over his nakedness with an abrupt gesture. She's using me? His heart gave his ribs a painful kick and then that imp, the one who lived in a back closet of his mind, snickered and whispered, You chump, she used you. She came with an agenda. She gives you sex, and you fell for it, you loser.

"Now you're a mind-reader?" His words were a lash and, even in the semi-dark, he saw her flinch. Good. Let her hurt. "And just what do you think I believe?"

"I'm not thinking what you are." She pushed to a sit. Unlike John, she let the sheet puddle around her waist and made no move to cover her nakedness. "I haven't been using you, John."

Eerie, how she knew that. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Oh. This is as real for me as you, but..." She paused.

" But ?" He bit off each word. "But what ? This is about Driver, isn't it? After all, isn't that where you go, where you sneak off to? Don't think I haven't noticed."

"And don't think I've not noticed you following." Her voice was almost maddeningly calm. "How many times?"

"How many times what? That I followed you after you snuck out?" He was suddenly very tired of this. "Four. I might have gone more, but then I already knew where you were going. Following you after that would've been pure masochism. "

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"

"Like what ?"

"Think back over those four times you saw me leave or come back."

"What is this, twenty questions? Just come out with it, Roni."

"I am, but I'm also not going to make this into a fight."

"I'd say you're a little late about that. And you know what?" He was suddenly, painfully aware of how naked he was, how much he'd stripped himself bare for this woman—and that made him even angrier because... Damn it. Sweeping up his underpants, he quickly pulled them on. "I don't care. Keep your secrets, Roni."

He was at the threshold to the bathroom when she said, "The way you keep yours?"

He stopped, dead. No, she can't possibly ... He forced himself to face her and, just as forcibly, willed himself to ice. "Don't try to turn this around. This isn't about me, Roni."

"Yes, it is," she said, her voice still so maddeningly calm. "You're as armored as an armadillo, John. Oh, but wait...they don't have those in Wisconsin, do they? Only in Texas. Well, Alabama, too. I remember Emery mentioning how they've migrated into the South."

His heart bumped against his ribs. "That so? I never saw one. "

"Oh? I'm surprised. All you have to do is look in the mirror, John." Another pause. "You know what I've always wondered about? Why we only went to Emery's range that one time."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

She went on as if he'd not spoken. "At first, I thought I'd done something wrong. Maybe said something. We never went back and, when I asked, you always found a reason not to go."

He had. She was right about that.

"I finally realized it wasn't me. I hadn't done anything wrong." She let a moment slip. "What I finally realized...was that you had."

"Get out." The words came out rough, as if he'd dragged them from some deep pit. He wasn't even aware of having thought the words, much less said them. The voice which came from his mouth was...different because that voice was so close to breaking, as if the person who'd just spoken those words was only a boy forced to make a choice no child ever should. "Get out, Roni. I don't care if you have to wander the halls butt-naked looking for a place to clean up, but don't be here when I come out."

She might have said something else, but he turned and stormed into the bathroom and flung the door shut. The sound was a thunderclap and so violent his toothbrush jumped.

He took a hot shower, as hot as he could stand. He didn't want to think but couldn't help himself because his heart was breaking, and she had used him and the thought of her in Driver's arms—of her arching and crying out in her ecstasy as Driver pounded into her—was so painful he had to stopper his mouth with a fist to keep the anguish from roaring out of his chest.

When he finally came out in an exhalation of steam—his skin as wrinkled as an old prune and knuckles scored from his teeth—she was gone. Nothing of Roni remained except her scent on the sheets and the salty pungency of their sweat and sex.

He stripped the bed. Wonder if I can burn the sheets? And no more Mr. Nice Guy. He was done playing the patsy. Whichever enlisted guy came in after him this morning could just suck it up and go find new bedlinens. Or sleep on the mattress; he didn't care. Wrenching off a pillowcase, he thought it was too bad he couldn't take bleach to his brain?—

Something dropped to the floor with a small, soft papery rustle.

Only then did he realize he hadn't switched on a light. He bent, patted a hand until his fingers brushed a small, folded square.

A note .

I don't care . He wasn't going to read this. He shouldn't, couldn't afford to. Stan had warned him about precisely this: Son, don't let anyone in who can't handle the boogey-man under the bed. Or the demons hidden away in a box with that imp on a certain, high, dark shelf in the closet at the back of his mind.

But was that right? He still could conjure the confusion and fear and guilt of a certain fifteen-year-old boy boarding a plane for a new life. A new name. A fiction of a past.

He had been so careful all these years. He'd let in virtually no one...until now. Whoever had thought up that old saw about love and pain being tied in the same Gordian note wasn't wrong. Keeping himself under control was one of the reasons why he loved movies: all of life and passion in ninety minutes, maybe a hundred and twenty on the outside, and it was all so intense and satisfying and, yes, safe. A little one-sided when it came to actual feeling, but then so was masturbation.

She had used him. He should hate her.

When he was certain he wouldn't simply crumple the paper and flush it down the john, he went to the table where his laptop rested and turned on the desk lamp. Then, he carefully spread the note.

She hadn't penned his name. Of course, she wouldn't. Not as if he had an evil twin, though there was the not-so-little fact that he was, himself, a fraud, a fiction: a made-up boy with a manufactured past.

The note read: Today. 1730.

He stared at those words so hard and for so long the paper ought to have burst into flames. It didn't.

He tore that note into tiny pieces and fed them to the toilet.

"Hey, Doc."

Still standing on the top step of the van, he looked to his left and the med tech raised a hand. "Hey," the tech said, again and then stood to give John the window seat. "Sit here, Captain."

"Thanks, Corporal." He dropped into the seat beside the tech. He didn't feel much like talking, but the van was packed, and this was the last available seat. "Appreciate it."

"No problem. You're kinda early, aren't you, Captain? Glutton for punishment? Shift doesn't start for another coupla hours and you..." The tech hemmed. "You look sort of rough. No offense, sir."

"None taken." He tried on a smile that kept slipping. "I think we're all run pretty ragged. Anyway, I couldn't sleep. Figured to get a jump on the day."

"Thank God, one of the last," the tech said. " Won't be too much longer is what I heard. Buddy over at Command said last civilian transport's tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" He was startled. He thought that, counting today, they had at least five more days. "Not the end of the month?"

"Doc, we are at the end of the month, more or less. State Department guys are going to clear as many civilians as they got space for and then we break everything down, pack 'er up, and adios. Marines got it the worst. Those poor guys got here first, and they get to stay until the very end when the embassy and command staff leave and the turnover to the Taliban's official." The tech shook his head. "Can you imagine what'll be like? There got to be thousands, tens of thousands of people out there we aren't taking. Word gets around about the last transport plane tomorrow, and they're going to try and tear this place apart."

Just like Vietnam. His Uncle Dare had plenty of stories. He missed listening to Dare talk until the front room of his lake cabin darkened and the night peepers began their evening chorus. "So," he said to the tech, "we shake the proverbial dust from our sandals?"

"Ah..." The tech didn't get the allusion. "I guess? I got a buddy said he couldn't get Iraq out from under his fingernails for a month."

"Let's hope Afghanistan doesn't take that long," John said as the van's engine chugged to life. He would take the remainder of the deployment one day at a time. Stay away from Roni. Minimal interaction and then only official or doctorly stuff. Get through the next few days. Things should be easier once the last civilian transport left tomorrow. That would be Friday. It would take them the better part of a day to dismantle the med tent, pack up. He bet they'd be on a transport to Doha and then Germany by Sunday. Monday, at the latest.

As for the rest...what happened when they got back to Benning? He'd put in for a transfer. Try and make sure they didn't wind up on-call together. Take doubles, if he had to.

Time and distance, that would do the trick. He already knew what helped mend a broken heart.

Déjà vu all over again. A salty lump formed at the back of his throat. I am the Tin Man from Oz and now I know I have a heart because it's breaking.

Something sparked to his left, and his head swiveled in time to see the barracks' front door open. Roni, in her camis and geared up, rushed out. Her hand was up; she waved, but the van was already pointed in the wrong direction. Unless the driver looked in his rear view, he'd never spot her.

He only realized he'd been about to tell the driver to stop when he caught himself leaning forward and felt the word ready to take a swan-dive off the springboard of his tongue .

No. He sat back. He aimed a sidelong glance at the tech, who was busy rummaging in his various pockets. No one else on the van seemed to notice, and he didn't look her way again.

But as the van pulled away and left her in the dust, he did think, and with a stinging red ferocity that surprised him because it felt so damn good: Go to hell. Go break someone else's heart. Go break Driver's. Just don't come crying to me when he breaks yours.

And one more thing. Once they were on a real airplane headed for home? He was sitting in the back, where it was safest for when the pilot had a stroke, and the copilot freaked. Just see if he didn't.

Hasta la vista, baby. He jammed on his wraparounds. Cuz I won't be back.

A few minutes later as they neared the drop-off, a guy in the seat in the van's rear asked, generally, "Anyone hear anything about whether they got the guy?"

"Guy?" Frowning, the tech craned a look over his shoulder. "What guy?"

"Suicide bomber," another soldier, a Marine, said—and then, at the general silence: "Man, you didn't hear? They closed down Abbey last night, 'bout 2200."

Someone said, making no attempt to hide his derision, "You sure it wasn't because the State Department guys went for their coffee break?"

At that, there were general nods and grunts. The consular officials were known to just evaporate, sometimes for twelve hours at a stretch. Without them, no one could be cleared and so the Marines would have to close the Gate. This only made the Afghans on the other side even more desperate than they already were, since no one knew when the line would cease moving for good. In turn, things got even worse for the Marines who had to hold everyone back. The joke—not a very funny one—was that everyone knew that State Department guys, who were responsible for clearing refugees, worked. The question was whether they worked hard or hardly at all.

"Positive," the Marine said. "I know someone who said intelligence has been monitoring scuttlebutt all week that there are a bunch of guys holed up in some hotel."

Someone else said, "So, did they get them or what?"

"We're going on duty, and there ain't been a ka-boom," said another soldier. "So, I guess either they didn't get them or there was no one to get. But I've been hearing this all week."

"Which kind of makes you wonder," the tech next to John said, "if maybe they oughtn't just to close things down now. Like, why haven't we? "

"I heard it's on account of the Brits," the Marine said. "Over at the Baron? They still got a boatload of people to process."

Much like the State Department checkpoint beyond the Abbey Gate, the Baron Hotel, which was really just down the road, had been chosen by the UK Border Force as their official checkpoint. There, they searched and cleared civilians before moving them to the airport for RAF evacuation flights. Their security apparatus was, in a way, even worse than at Abbey Gate; all the Brits had was a chevron of shipping containers and a bunch of soldiers. That had been so slow, their soldiers had done what the Americans had: ripped open a section of barbed wire along the same canal to allow more people eligible for evacuation through.

"That is messed up," the tech said.

"This whole operation's messed up," someone else said. "I mean, seriously, think about it. Give us a couple weeks, we coulda set up sandbags, Hescos, good security. But what do we got? Barbed wire on top of a concrete wall. Like that'll do a lot of good. Meanwhile, our asses are hanging out waiting on the Brits to get their act together. You ask me, we ought to just close Abbey down."

"I get that," John said, "but you can't leave the British behind."

"Tell that to George Washington," the Marine said. "Dude didn't fight no Revolutionary War for nothing."

As the driver opened the van door, the tech pulled a face. "Man," he said to John, "you were talking about shaking dust from our sandals? I'd settle for anything that might get rid of the stink. Getting so I can't even eat anything anymore without it tasting like it got marinated in a sewer."

A soldier to their right grunted. "I bet we all stink, just like we're all baking under this damned sun. Know what I'm gonna do when I get back? I'm gonna find me a big ol' metal barrel and then I'm gonna stuff in all my gear, throw on some gasoline the way they do with burn pits. Then I'm gonna light a match and toss it in and watch that stuff burn. I bet the smoke's gonna be black. I'm gonna do it in daylight, too, so's for just one minute, I don't have to look at the sun."

"Just like Mick Jagger," the tech said. "That song about the sun getting blotted out of the sky?"

"Yeah," John said. "Paint it black, baby. Paint it black."

Following the tech through the alley between hangars, he made sure to put the tech on his right so when they walked from the drop-off to the med tent, he would have to look to his right and away from Driver's hangar on his left. Just didn't need that temptation.

The day was already hot. The air was thick, and the tech was right. The reek was so heavy, foul, and oily, no amount of spitting cleared the taste from the back of his throat.

He heard the crowd, too, as a sort of background music, a kind of constant clamor.

"Lot of people," the tech said, stating the obvious. "What you want to bet they're all good and panicked on account of Abbey closing last night? They got to know the end's right around the corner." The tech paused. "Sounds like a big crowd at a football game you know?"

"Uh-huh," John said, but that's not what came to his mind. The sound of all those people made his skin prickle. The sound reminded him of the way the waters of Lake Superior ebbed and flowed, swelled and then retreated only to return and crash against the shore as the wind picked up each successive wave and churned the water into something larger and faster and more powerful.

This was, he thought, the sound of a gathering storm.