The Fearsome Particles Part 6

"Okay. And why do people try to stand still in a f.u.c.kin' storm?"

I shook my head.

"Because they got s.h.i.+t they're trying to protect, that's why. They got a house or kids or career plans or whatever so..." For a second Legg seemed to lose his train of thought. "f.u.c.k, I dunno."

"So they...shouldn't have those things?" Legg leaned back in his chair, looking depressed. "Something like that."

I hesitated. "Is it "

"It's bulls.h.i.+t, I dunno, it's bulls.h.i.+t!" Legg waved the bulls.h.i.+t away. "Alls I'm saying is like with me, I don't want s.h.i.+t all planned out. It's like" he stabbed the table with two thick fingers "that's like strappin' me down in the middle of the storm. And I gotta be able to move."

Legg downed half the drink in his gla.s.s and stared off.

"Kinda weird you're in the D&S platoon then, isn't it? Protecting people?"

He looked at me with his eye half closed. "That's just my job, a.s.shole, not my life. Life's a totally f.u.c.kin' different thing." He shook his head as though he was fed up with all the idiots in the world.

"Right," I said.

"Look." He leaned forward. "Some people hate surprises, right? But me, I like 'em. 'Cause that's all the real world is, just one surprise after another. And that makes me good at my job, because if you're a guy like me, you stay cool when s.h.i.+t's happening because you don't give a f.u.c.k, you just do what you need to do. Right? But you put me in a situation where surprises are like, what, like artificially removed, and that's when it's f.u.c.kin' dangerous. 'Cause then you get lulled." He held his hand up as if it were floating, and his voice went soft. "And if you're lulled, you're not movin'. And the thing is, you can't keep the surprises out forever, 'cause the storm's still f.u.c.kin' blowin'. And sure enough...one day...bam!" He brought his hand down as a fist and rattled the cutlery of two captains half a table away. He brought his hand down as a fist and rattled the cutlery of two captains half a table away.

"Hey!"

Legg leaned away from the table, visibly contrite. "Sorry, sir!" He gave me a clandestine look and let a smirk lift the corner of his mouth. Then he leaned back in. "So you tell me, a.s.shole, why don't I wear my goggles on patrol?" He waited.

I tried to process everything as fast as I could. "Because then...you'll think everything's under control, and you'll get lulled, and "

"And then somebody shoots me through the eye or I step on a PMD PMD or some f.u.c.kin' thing. You got it." He nodded like he approved. "And then I'm like all those Pashto a.s.sholes out there walkin' around on one f.u.c.kin' leg." He brought a hand up and pressed the edges of the patch. or some f.u.c.kin' thing. You got it." He nodded like he approved. "And then I'm like all those Pashto a.s.sholes out there walkin' around on one f.u.c.kin' leg." He brought a hand up and pressed the edges of the patch.

I took the opportunity to change the subject. "How long do you have to keep that on?"

"Doctor says forty-eight hours. 'Cause I have a 'corneal abra abrasion.'" He rolled his eye.

"Are you gonna keep it on?"

"Nah. Take it off tonight." He looked around with a juicy leer. "Take it off now 'cept I'd scare all the ladies." He motioned to the bandage on my palm. "What about you? How long you keeping that thing on?"

"They said a week."

"A week!" Legg let his eye roam the canvas roof, apparently overcome with disdain.

I thumbed the plastic medical tape at the heel of my hand. "I dunno, maybe a few days."

Legg pursed his lips and spoke with motherly precision. "You don't want to get an infection." infection."

A group of five or six soldiers came into the kitchen at that moment laughing and pounding desert dust off each other's backs the grit got into everything, after half a day you could feel it in your shorts and Legg shot a hand out to take a glance at his watch. He crossed his arms and the intensity in his eye dimmed a little. It seemed like he wanted to leave, and I couldn't think of anything else to ask.

"So," he said, "what's your story?"

I just shrugged. "I was in school," I said. "First year chem. Then I heard about this COF-AP COF-AP thing and applied for the water tech job, 'cause I knew a lot of the stuff already, and I wrote the test for the certificate, and they signed me up." thing and applied for the water tech job, 'cause I knew a lot of the stuff already, and I wrote the test for the certificate, and they signed me up."

Legg seemed to be studying me, gauging his investment of interest. "You quit university?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I, uh, I guess because I knew it'd p.i.s.s off my parents." I looked up at Legg. "Because to them it wouldn't make sense."

It was subtle, like a ripple over dark water, but Legg's eye seemed to come alive again. "Huh," he grunted. "That right, eh?"

Water treatment at Camp Laverne was handled through a portable filtration system about the size of an ISO ISO container, which they'd helicoptered in and hooked up long before I ever got there. It was a system designed to be able to take water straight from a sewer and turn it into something safe to drink, but in this case it was drawing from an army-drilled well. It took me about half a day to learn my job, which was basically to keep my eye on flow meters and follow a standard routine to put clean water through a gauntlet of purification, just in case. All the steps were detailed in a checklist from the Supervisor of Camp Services: container, which they'd helicoptered in and hooked up long before I ever got there. It was a system designed to be able to take water straight from a sewer and turn it into something safe to drink, but in this case it was drawing from an army-drilled well. It took me about half a day to learn my job, which was basically to keep my eye on flow meters and follow a standard routine to put clean water through a gauntlet of purification, just in case. All the steps were detailed in a checklist from the Supervisor of Camp Services: 1. Chemical Mixing, Stage 1 Clarification To soften the water and kill off the first possible batch of bacteria on its way from the well to the clarification chamber, I had to dump lime and soda ash from fifty-pound sacks into a chemical mixing box that fed into the water.

2. Flocculation Once the water pa.s.sed into the clarification chamber, my job was to pour in a positively charged liquid polymer that dispersed and grabbed whatever negatively charged impure molecules were there and dragged them to the bottom.

3. First Filtering From the clarification chamber the water pa.s.sed through a media filter of silica sand to clean out the flocs. Every night I had to backwash all that gunk out of the filter bed.

4. Final Polis.h.i.+ng Here the water got fed through a wound fibre cartridge to strain out "bad organics" that might affect the water's smell and taste. I had to replace that filter about once a month.

5. Chlorination Once the water was made super clean, by dumping all this stuff in and taking it all out, a metering pump fed in chlorine at a rate high enough to prevent bacteria from getting any more ideas but low enough to keep officers' eyes from stinging. Every morning, at the beginning of the s.h.i.+ft, I had to prepare the chlorine solution, which meant pulling on rubber gloves and dumping enough caustic calcium hypochlorite tablets into a fifty-gallon tank to get to 200 ppm.

During the s.h.i.+ft I did tests for turbidity and pH at regular intervals and made a few measurements of the five-thousand-gallon holding tank to determine rate of water usage. Other than that, and the odd time I had to help bottle hundreds of litres of water for the presence patrols and the occasional American or European unit pa.s.sing through Camp Laverne, there wasn't much to do. Which was fine with me because in those first few weeks it felt too hot to do much of anything. At night, when it got a bit cooler, a few of the COF-AP COF-AP guys from my tent who worked in vehicle maintenance liked to play ball hockey on a big concrete pad with spare kitchen tables tipped over for boards. But sports never were my thing. Sometimes I listened to guys from my tent who worked in vehicle maintenance liked to play ball hockey on a big concrete pad with spare kitchen tables tipped over for boards. But sports never were my thing. Sometimes I listened to CD CDs and read paperbacks that I pulled from the bookshelf in the junior ranks mess. But for the first while that I was there, what I mostly did was think about the contrasts between life back home and life in the camp, because in nearly every way, life in the camp was better.

It's true that the heat and the dust could get on your nerves a lot of people stored their clothes in these big tin chests spattered with plastic jewels, which you could buy for six dollars at the weekly markets that set up next to camp, but even then the grit got inside. And it's true that living on a military base meant you had no privacy at all every environment was shared and even your bathroom moments were communal experiences. And except for visits to those markets near the gates, COF-AP COF-AP civilians like me were never allowed to leave the camp. You had to stay "behind the wire," which meant being stuck in the same beige world day after day with two hundred people you didn't know, most of whom had such different expectations from life that they thought living for six months or a year next to temporary bomb shelters was just a natural career progression. civilians like me were never allowed to leave the camp. You had to stay "behind the wire," which meant being stuck in the same beige world day after day with two hundred people you didn't know, most of whom had such different expectations from life that they thought living for six months or a year next to temporary bomb shelters was just a natural career progression.

But even factoring all those things in, I liked it better there. Because it was cleaner, somehow, despite the dust. Because it was free of all the tensions and issues I took for granted at home. Things like the way Mom and Dad edged around each other all the time as if there was something they wanted to say but couldn't quite bring themselves to say it. Things like the worried way they smiled, as if whatever happiness they felt was loaner happiness that was already piling up late fees. Things like this was a big one nervous expectation. I mean, you can take that in small doses. But at my house on Breere Crescent, the walls practically ran with it.

Here's one example: yogurt. Mom, whenever she was working on a house, always woke up really early. And every morning, before she left, she'd set out breakfast items for me to eat a fruit, a grain, and always a dairy in the fridge, which was usually yogurt. Then she'd call up the stairs, "Darling, there's yogurt in the fridge." And if I didn't answer right away, because maybe I was half asleep, she'd call again "Darling?...Kyle?...Yogurt." And then..."Creamy Peach"...which I'd once said I liked. I'd wake up hearing her voice reaching up with its searching fingers, until I'd have to say something "I heard you, Mom! Fine!" because if I didn't say anything, she couldn't leave. And later, when I was sitting in the breakfast nook across from Dad, I'd eat the fruit and the cereal, and Dad would wait seven or eight minutes, sometimes nine, while he listened to the news and the traffic reports, and then, always, every time, he'd remind me.

"Don't forget about the yogurt in the fridge."

It's like there was this unspoken fear in the house, this huge, worrisome possibility that the yogurt Mom left for me might go...un-eaten. Not because I was deliberately defying them that was never suggested but because of, you know, crossed signals, static in the transmission, an accident of fate. Somehow, n.o.body's fault, the yogurt would remain the yogurt would remain. And if that happened then, holy s.h.i.+t, Mom's attempt to feed me a complete breakfast would be ruined, and her love for me would go unexpressed, and Dad would have failed in his duty to help his wife fulfil her most fervent hopes! And I knew that, if both Mom and Dad left the house before I did, which happened a lot when my cla.s.ses began late, then for the whole day they'd be wondering...

Did Kyle eat the yogurt?

That was just my mornings, okay? So from that, maybe you can figure out what my lunches and dinners were like, and the expectations around my school marks, and my career choices, and my driving habits, and my sleeping patterns, and my clothing decisions, and my friends. And maybe it won't seem quite so weird that I'd prefer spending a year in a dry-as-dirt, hot-as-h.e.l.l military camp in Afghanistan surrounded by uncleared minefields and angry private militias to living in a luxury five-bedroom home on a street lined with big trees and SUV SUVs.

It was a few weeks before I saw Legg again. I figured that was because our s.h.i.+fts were different COF-AP COF-AP employees worked pretty normal hours but soldiers were on duty for twelve hours at a stretch, so lunch and dinner times didn't always match up. I looked for him, though, a few times while I was standing in line, getting my plate loaded up with rosemary-roasted chicken thighs or steak and potato pie or ground-beef burritos topped with Monterey Jack cheese (they had fish and pasta most nights too, and they served curries for the Kurds and the Turkish units that came through). A few nights, when the junior ranks' mess opened up after seven, I looked for him among the soldiers shooting pool or playing "Call of Duty" on the communal PlayStation. But he'd never be there and sometimes these guys would ask me if I wanted to join in one of the games they were playing. I guess because it looked as if I was waiting or hoping for something. It always surprised me, when they asked, and I always said no. And then I'd just end up sitting at the end of a couch for a while, staring up at the blue and gold Afghan rugs that somebody had wired to the roof of the tent. The designs were so intricate, there was lots to look at. (It didn't seem so loserish at the time.) employees worked pretty normal hours but soldiers were on duty for twelve hours at a stretch, so lunch and dinner times didn't always match up. I looked for him, though, a few times while I was standing in line, getting my plate loaded up with rosemary-roasted chicken thighs or steak and potato pie or ground-beef burritos topped with Monterey Jack cheese (they had fish and pasta most nights too, and they served curries for the Kurds and the Turkish units that came through). A few nights, when the junior ranks' mess opened up after seven, I looked for him among the soldiers shooting pool or playing "Call of Duty" on the communal PlayStation. But he'd never be there and sometimes these guys would ask me if I wanted to join in one of the games they were playing. I guess because it looked as if I was waiting or hoping for something. It always surprised me, when they asked, and I always said no. And then I'd just end up sitting at the end of a couch for a while, staring up at the blue and gold Afghan rugs that somebody had wired to the roof of the tent. The designs were so intricate, there was lots to look at. (It didn't seem so loserish at the time.) Then came this one day when I'd had to spend pretty much my entire s.h.i.+ft draining and flus.h.i.+ng the whole treatment system including the five-thousand-gallon holding tank because one of the senior officers thought he'd caught a faint whiff of gasoline in the water he'd gotten from a tap. Which wasn't possible; it was likely just an old Iltis vehicle with a fuel leak driving by, but that didn't matter. After that s.h.i.+ft I really felt like I deserved a beer (we were allowed two a night, although there was some talk of shutting even that down like they did in Kandahar, out of respect for the Muslims) so I walked into the mess and headed straight for the makes.h.i.+ft bar at the back and found myself standing in line right behind Legg. I could tell who it was from his dense brush of hair and the slope of his shoulders under his T-s.h.i.+rt. And the way he was griping.

"f.u.c.k me! f.u.c.kin' wogs."

He spun away from the counter empty-handed and began to push past me. I had to kind of wave my hand in his face.

"Hey, uh, hi."

He stopped and stared at me like he didn't know who I was.

"It's me, from...remember? Kyle, from the "

"Oh, yeah." His glare cooled off and he s.h.i.+fted his head back as if he needed to get a better look. "Yeah, right, I remember. Water guy. Howsa hand?" He was half grinning and I couldn't tell if it was because he was glad to see me or because he thought I was a joke. There was a loud clack and a shout from the pool table on the far side of the tent, and other soldiers and a few COF-AP COF-AP types were pus.h.i.+ng past Legg to get to and from the bar. He seemed ready to move on. types were pus.h.i.+ng past Legg to get to and from the bar. He seemed ready to move on.

"Good," I said, holding up my palm. "Your eye looks okay."

Legg blinked. He seemed to be thinking. "Oh, yeah, f.u.c.k. I was done with that s.h.i.+t the next day. Hey, you gonna be needing both of those?" He thudded a finger against the laminated punch card hanging by a chain around my neck. Two punches on the day's date and you were done drinking for the night.

I hesitated and looked down at my chest. It was strictly against the code of conduct to let someone else use your drink allowance.

"I dunno," I said. "I guess."

"No, see" Legg ran a thick finger under his nose and then pointed off "I gave my buddy over there one of mine because he lost his card, right? f.u.c.kin' a.s.shole. And this p.i.s.s-head" he waved a hand in the direction of the bartender "I tried telling him but he won't listen to f.u.c.kin' reason. So whaddaya say?" He grinned. "You're prob'ly a water man anyway, right?"

I sort of shrugged. "Sure, okay."

"Thanks, man." Legg pounded me on the back. "Hey, if you want you can play some cards with us later."

At the counter I asked for two beers. The bartenders rotated from night to night between a thin guy about my age who might have been Kurdish and a bored older woman with dyed black hair. Tonight it was the young guy.

"You want two?" he said with a frown, looking from me to a s.p.a.ce over my shoulder.

"Yeah," I said, "just 'cause, you know, so I don't have to come back." I waved my arm back and forth to indicate what a big ha.s.sle that would be.

The bartender hesitated for another second, then leaned forward with a s.h.i.+ny hole punch in his hand, plucked up my card and snipped twice. A minute later, when he set the two tall cans on the counter, he looked into my eyes. "These for you, yes?"

"Yeah!" I smiled, easing the cans away. "Of course."

When I turned from the bar one of the maintenance guys from my tent (at the time I wasn't sure whether his name was Joe or Joel) came up to me with this freaked-out grin on his face.

"Hey, do you know that guy, that corporal?" Joe/Joel was one of the ball-hockey players, a bit older and bigger than me. He'd never bothered talking to me before and now he had this look like he was trying to figure out if he had to take me more seriously.

"You mean Legg?" I had to shout over the Stones music coming from the far end of the tent, and this guy leaned in as if he didn't want anybody else to hear.

"Is that his name?"

"Well, Leggado. Why?"

"He's one of the D&S guys, right?"

I nodded.

"Do you know what they're doing?" Joe/Joel scratched the side of his neck furiously. "I don't know if it's true. But some guys are saying that you can, like, rent one of the watch towers on the wall from them for a couple of hours."

"Yeah?" I said. "What for?"

Joe/Joel looked at me as if I was missing some important features on my face. "To be with a girl."

"Oh."

In the briefings, they'd more or less spelled out that hooking up in the camp was a firing offence. If there was a girl you really liked, maybe you could touch elbows in the dinner line. By accident. That's what they said.

"Do you think you could ask him for me?"

I looked down at the beers in my hand, and then back. "I don't really know him that well."

As I walked away, I could tell Joe/Joel was mentally scratching me off his list of significant people.

There were about three dozen bodies in the tent, so it took a minute to locate Legg. I found him seated at a table in the corner with four other soldiers, including a pretty female master corporal with a head of mousey curls. When I got there Legg shot an arm out.

"Hey, there's my new best bud. Grab a seat!" He kicked out a chair at the end of the table.

As soon as I set the beers down, Legg grabbed both and slid them away. "Two! Even better; Tanner here was gonna ask you but now he don't have to." By Tanner, Legg seemed to mean a big, moon-faced warrant officer with his foot propped on a chair and his forearm on the master corporal's shoulder. Legg started to slide the second beer over to him across the plastic tabletop and Tanner leaned in for it before I could remember how to speak.

Then suddenly Legg swept the can out of Tanner's reach.

"f.u.c.k off, you! This is my buddy's beer." Legg grinned at me and slid the beer back. "Just kidding, eh?" He turned on Tanner again. "You woulda too, wouldn' ya! Huh? Just take his f.u.c.kin' drink without askin'!"

Tanner shrugged, helpless. "You were handing me a beer. Am I supposed to say no?"

"No f.u.c.kin' manners!" shouted Legg. "You're a disgrace!" He leaned back toward me, his jaw hanging loose and playful. "Don't mind him, eh? It's Kyle, right? Yeah, you gotta watch this one. All these a.s.sholes, really. 'Cept Zini. She's pristine." He raised his voice. "Right, Zini?"

Zini, the master corporal, was talking to a sergeant across from her. Now she stopped and showed us a resolutely peaceful face. "Are you causing trouble again?"

By the end of the beer I'd found out why I hadn't seen Legg around for a while: he was being disciplined. On a Friday, two days after his ambulance visit, he'd been on Op s.h.i.+eld duty as one of the armed soldiers a.s.signed to protect a group from CIMIC CIMIC (Civil-Military Cooperation) who were out looking at possible project sites around Balakhet, things they could help fix up as a way to improve relations with the locals. At the eastern edge of town, near one of the community wells, they looked at a bombed-out school that needed a roof. And there were a lot of Afghan men gathered around, which always made the military guys edgy because crowds could turn hostile pretty fast. So Legg was supposed to stick to the (Civil-Military Cooperation) who were out looking at possible project sites around Balakhet, things they could help fix up as a way to improve relations with the locals. At the eastern edge of town, near one of the community wells, they looked at a bombed-out school that needed a roof. And there were a lot of Afghan men gathered around, which always made the military guys edgy because crowds could turn hostile pretty fast. So Legg was supposed to stick to the CIMIC CIMIC group and stay alert. group and stay alert.

Instead, he'd dropped back, because he'd noticed that all these people were actually spectators watching a strange event a bunch of bearded men running across an open field, fighting with bright coloured kites. Legg said they were "goodprans" but Zini corrected him; gudiparan gudiparan they were called. The object seemed to be for a man flying a kite to cut his opponent's string before his own could be cut and his kite was sent flying off into the distance. The strings, Legg noticed, glittered in the sun. they were called. The object seemed to be for a man flying a kite to cut his opponent's string before his own could be cut and his kite was sent flying off into the distance. The strings, Legg noticed, glittered in the sun.

"Ground-up gla.s.s," he explained, jumpy like a kid who'd just found money in the street. "They smash up c.o.ke bottles and s.h.i.+t. They grind 'em till they're almost like sugar. Then they gum up the strings with some kind of sticky paste and roll them in the gla.s.s to make 'em sharp."

"It's called glue," said Tanner.

"Huh?"

"That sticky paste is some kind of flour glue."

"Yeah, whatever you f.u.c.kin' like you know s.h.i.+t about it."

Tanner smirked as he lifted his gla.s.s. "I know enough not to go watching it when I'm on guard duty."

Legg rose up and swung his arm as if to hit Tanner in the side of the head, but making the big man flinch seemed satisfaction enough. He sat back down and leaned in toward me.

"A lot of 'em wear gloves, right? 'Cause these gla.s.s strings'll cut you up. But this one Pashto f.u.c.ker didn't. Guy's all decked out in his baggy pants and s.h.i.+rt, he's got his beard down to here, right? His head's wrapped up, he could be like fifty, who knows? So I'm watchin' what he's doin', and he holds out his hand for me to see, and it's all scarred like it's been ripped up a hundred or maybe a thousand times. He's been playing this game his whole life, so this hand's like almost solid scar." Legg was holding his own hand out and staring at it. "But thing is there was still blood all through here." He traced with a finger where he'd seen the blood, where the little shards of gla.s.s had found a way into the skin.

"Guess he was equa-mouse," I said.

Legg knocked a forearm against my shoulder. "You got that f.u.c.kin' right." He stared at his hand, closed it and opened it as if imagining it covered with scars. "Yeah, I'd like to see all that again. They bet money on it too, you know; I'd like to get a piece of that." He played with the tab on his beer can, apparently lost in visions of fighting kites. "Anyways," he said, pulling out of it, "one of the CIMIC CIMIC motherf.u.c.kers reported me for dereliction and they put me on f.u.c.kin' gate duty for two weeks." motherf.u.c.kers reported me for dereliction and they put me on f.u.c.kin' gate duty for two weeks."

"Is that bad?"

"Ha!" Legg swelled up with glee. He shouted at Tanner. "Tanner! Hey f.u.c.khead! Guy wants to know if gate duty's bad."