Between the Tracks

As we drive slowly through the narrow roads leading out of the base, Sergeant Spharler, my gunner, says over the vehicle intercom, “Sir, I think I’ve got it figured out how we can finish this war once and for all.” I roll my eyes, though Spharler can’t see because he’s sitting below me. I say, “How’s that, Sergeant?”

“We tell all the good ol’ boys back home that Sadr and Al Qaeda were behind Dale Earnhardt’s death,” he says. His voice quickens and he says, “So, they’ll get in their bass boats with a couple cases of Budweiser and speed across the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, blasting Toby Keith and tossing beer cans at the aquatic wildlife.”

I look down and see Spharler barely lift himself off his seat and, with closed lips, mimic the drone of an outboard motor, giving the imaginary boat the gas with an extended left hand. Sitting back down, he says, “Then, they’ll put up deer stands all over Baghdad and pick off the terrorist bastards one by one. That’s my plan. Whaddya think, sir?”

I can imagine him smiling to himself, but I say, “Baghdad’s dry. What happens when they run out of beer?”

From the back of the truck, Staff Sergeant Hudgeons squawks into his radio, “They get all jacked up on Mountain Dew, come at ’em like spider monkeys, and scissor-kick ’em in the head!” paraphrasing Ricky Bobby’s redneck kids in Talladega Nights.

I smile and nod approvingly at Hudgeons’s timing. “Good one, Sergeant Hudgeons. Didn’t see that one coming.” I ask my driver, Specialist Gonzalez, if he knows the location of the battalion we’re joining in Monsour. Gonzalez assures me he can get us there as we drive along the shores of Z Lake toward Signal Hill, the two distinctive and pleasing landmarks of our side of the base.

Saddam Hussein created a paradise next to the slums of Monsour just outside what is now the Forward Operating Base or FOB; he built lakes and palaces right next to the Baghdad International Airport. The coalition forces assumed control of the airport—and the landscape’s opulent view—upon the invasion. We then built our own concrete walls and fortified it from attack. I’ve heard that 55,000 U.S. and international military members and civilian contractors reside on the entire complex. The first day I arrived at Liberty and toured the base, having come from the surrounding areas, I felt like I had arrived in Disney World.

To know Monsour, and most other areas of Baghdad, you have to experience them. (And that' all I have to say about that). Monsour is the beladiyah where we’re conducting operations today. Baghdad is composed of a number of major neighborhoods, roughly like New York City; a beladiyah is one such area, akin to what we’d call a borough, like the Bronx or Brooklyn or Manhattan. There are nine beladiyahs in Baghdad, and the city is home to eight million people in total. Beladiyahs are comprised of big neighborhoods called hayys, which are made up of muhallas, areas a little larger than city blocks. At first it’s all confusing, but once you learn it, having some clear geographic division is very helpful for a military force tasked to clear insurgents and to track the sectarian tug of war that is the battle to secure Baghdad.

*********

I recall my hometown, Centralia, Illinois, and how it, too, was separated into parts, divided by two sets of train tracks. The southern rail line ran to Paducah, Kentucky, less than 100 miles away. South of those tracks was Wamac, home to the industrial park that employed most of the city’s population and to 22 of the city’s 33 taverns. You could get a beer in Wamac if you were tall enough to see over the bar.

North of town, across a set of railroad tracks that ran all the way to Chicago, was “the Ville.” This neighborhood was as black as Wamac was white, and it was home to the best basketball in the city.

My house and the drive-up liquor store my dad ran were in the center of town. I spent my childhood between those two sets of tracks, but whenever the weather was good, I would ride my bicycle three miles north to play basketball at “the Garden.” Named after Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks, the Garden featured two full basketball courts on the campus of Lincoln School, one of two nearly all-black grade schools in the Ville.

On late spring afternoons, I stood out on those courts as much for my shirtless white body as for my characteristic inability to jump. When September came around and I was forced back to my neighborhood for the school year, my tan would be deep and dark, even under my arms, and I sometimes believed that I had gotten more spring in my legs.

My dad, who earned eight varsity letters in high school (in the days when onlyfour sports were offered) drilled me in the fundamentals of basketball. He taught me everything he knew—but I learned the most important lessons on the black asphalt of the Garden. Those lessons came slow at first, as I spent most of my time on the sidelines watching, not being picked to play. (I was, after all, the only white kid.) When the games ended late in the afternoon, the exhausted players would retire to sit on the hoods of their cars, gulp brown-bagged quarts of Miller High Life, and stand in judgment of the sideliners who took the court after them.

It was during the later games, I found out, when the older boys took mental note of the up-and-comers and assessed who was talented enough to take the spot of regulars when they weren’t there. The prime seat at center court, and the focus of activity for the postgame, was a 1968 sky-blue Mercury Marquis—the throne of Marcus. His stereo blared Parliament, the bass pulsating George Clinton’s lyrics to “Give Up the Funk” straight through our bones. Surrounded by his own minor sycophants (and the Ville’s most beautiful women), Marcus, the Garden’s proverbial Nero, chose who was worthy to take the court with him. A thumbs down from Marcus sank many a player’s career before it ever began.

Marcus looked like African royalty in Illinois: his skin was a deep, dark black and he stood tall at six foot three, but his full afro made him look much taller. On the court, Marcus was more artist than athlete, unorthodox and void of textbook fundamentals. His game was a dance choreographed in real time by his own sense of rhythm, sublime to watch and impossible to imitate. His jump shot release came from somewhere behind his head, without noticeable spin or follow-through—a shooting coach would have pulled out his hair over Marcus’s lack of technique—but he couldn’t be blocked and he rarely missed. He never played in high school because he considered school optional, but it’s doubtful his nature and style would have survived rigorous practice anyway.

One Sunday late in the summer, I was picked to play with the big boys, along with my fellow sideliners Kenny and Odell. We knew that our every move was being watched by the bloodshot eyes of those who’d paid their dues on Sundays long before.

Fortunately for me, there were only ten boys left for the later game. I was matched up against Odell, Marcus’s brother. Odell was as skinny as a Somalian, but his elbows were sharp and he knew how to use them. Although Odell was my age, he’d already spent some time in jail; the previous winter he’d gotten a bad case of the munchies late one night, so he broke into a convenience store and stole a case of Twinkies. Shortly thereafter, the police found him passed out at home.

Bewildered that he’d been caught committing what he thought an untraceable crime, Odell asked how they had found him, so the police officers took him outside and showed him the footprints in the snow that led straight to his house from the store about a block away. Odell was as mean as he was stupid—and he was not happy that I was on the court.

From his Marquis, Marcus took a long pull from a joint and blew the smoke into the mouth of one of the girls next to him. To start the game, he threw a slick, worn Rawlings basketball to midcourt and simply said, “Ball in.” Let the rite of passage begin.

Kenny grabbed the ball off its first bounce on the court, checked the ball with his guarding opponent, took two dribbles, and launched a 30-foot jump shot that missed the goal entirely. Kenny looked over at Marcus to see him laughing and slapping high-fives with the other boys. Tyrone, a near equal of Marcus on the court but smart enough to remain on the high school team, yelled “Air ball” several times and continued to taunt Kenny every time he touched the ball.

In fairness to Kenny, he wasn’t exactly up against champion athletes; with these amateur-hour matchups, the game would become a one-on-one match for whoever just happened to have the ball until one of the teams scored the 12th basket. What I’d learned from watching many of these later games was that subtlety was the key to gaining the eye of Marcus. He was the type of critic who saw the strokes in a painting.

I did as my father had taught me and played smart. I moved without the ball, putting myself in good spots where I could retrieve a rebound or open a pass when a selfish player became overwhelmed. This was made difficult by Odell, who used his shiv-like elbows to jab me every chance he got. Because of the anarchy of these later games, runs would last longer than when the older boys played. They, unlike us, played with a tight sense of purpose; games often lasted only 15 minutes or so. Their reputation, and the affection of the fairer sex, was decided by who won and stayed on the court for the last game. In the schoolyard days, we were a herd, and on this homestead there would be only one alpha male and four studs at the end of the day.

Our games could go on seemingly forever, and we had only one chance to make an impression because the older boys quickly got bored watching our uncoordinated games play out. This worked to my advantage because I was in better shape than the other players, and unlike them I hadn’t spent the afternoon drinking beer.

As time passed, the volume on Marcus stereo increased to almost-unbearable loudness, a cue that the boys weren’t paying much attention anymore. It was when Odell finally wore down, winded by chasing me and warped from the reefer, that my opportunity came. The moment was ripe: the score was 11 to 11. Sudden death. An errant shot careened off the rim, and I grabbed it near the edge of the court and squared to the basket. Odell, hands on his knees, snorting like a bull, sweat dripping from his tip of his nose, said: “Whatcha gonna do, white boy?”

I pump-faked, drawing him off balance, took a one-dribble crossover, and let loose a 20-foot jump shot that arced through the air and passed straight through the netless rim. For a perfect moment in midair, I had won the game—but before my feet touched earth, Odell’s fist drove hard into the side of my face, bringing blood to my tongue and knocking me to the asphalt.

Steadying myself on one knee, one hand on the ground, I used the other to wipe the blood from my mouth. I looked up, my head pounding from both the blow and the bass from Marcus’ car. Odell stood defiant and ready, both fists clenched, and he told me to get up. Everything inside me told me not to fight, to stay on the ground, but I stood. Odell closed on me with the smell of booze on his breath, a smell I knew all too well from when the drunks at Dad’s place would get too close to my face while asking for credit on their tab.

“Honky, you got no business here. I’m gonna kick your punk ass,” Odell growled, drawing back his fist. I stepped forward to close the distance, but before he could throw the punch Marcus’ stereo abruptly fell silent, pulling every eye to the Mercury Marquis.

Marcus flicked his cigarette away, slid off the hood of the car, and said as calm as a preacher, “Ain’t nobody throw hands today. White boy schooled you, Odell. You need to stand your Twinkie ass down.” A few of Marcus’s goons chuckled as the glare on Odell’s face curled into a scowl.

Then Marcus continued: “Beaver Cleaver came to the Ville to shoot the rock with us, instead of hanging out watching The Flintstones back at his crib in Wally World. From here on out, my brothers, Beaver here is my personal guest in the Garden.”

Marcus slid back onto the hood and nodded to one of his women, who turned the volume back up. And George Clinton proclaimed to us all, we love you Dr. Funkenstein, your funk is the best.

*********

Metallica’s Enter Sandman is blasting on our vehicle’s intercom as we approach Entry Control Point (ECP) 1 next to Caughman Range. I have to scream into the mic of my headset to tell Sergeant Wise to cut off the music. I allow tunes to be played when we are inside the FOB, but not when we are outside the wire.

The ECP is a concrete shelter where a lone soldier stands waiting for convoys of trucks to leave. Our group of three trucks slows at the ECP, and Sergeant Spharler leans over the side of the truck; he has a small dry-erase board on which is written the number of vehicles and personnel in the party, then my name as the convoy commander. Spharler came up with the idea to use a dry-erase board because he got tired of yelling over the trucks.

The soldier at the ECP writes down the information and gives a thumbs-up, and the gate to Forward Operating Base Liberty slowly begins to open like a medieval castle’s drawbridge. We snake through concrete barriers until we’re on Route Thunder, which leads to Monsour. We’re no longer in the safety of the base. I lock and load my M4 rifle and 9mm pistol and pass the final checkpoint that separates us from security. Like the flip of a switch, our senses become heightened and the idle chatter on the vehicle’s intercom goes silent.

Monsour is one of the last Sunni bastions of Baghdad. Shi’a insurgents from Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army are pushing from two sides, squeezing the Sunni against the Tigris River to the east. We call Sadr’s approach to gaining control of Baghdad Pac-Man tactics: his militia move in, usually under the cover of darkness or at well-placed checkpoints, and convince Sunni citizens it’s in their interest to leave the neighborhood. The Mahdi Army does this one muhalla at a time, one after another, gobbling up the city and gaining pre-eminence over the capital as they go. Once the Sunni leave to find sanctuary elsewhere, usually on the rural outskirts, the Shi’a move in to the vacated houses under the protection of the militia. Sometimes there are not enough Shi’a to move in, and the houses remain empty.

However, this is not a one-sided war—far from it—and the Sunni have as much to do with the violence as the Shi’a, if not more. There are more Shi’a living in Iraq than Sunni, though the latter constitute the majority of Muslims throughout the world—and therein lies the rub. Since the creation of Iraq in the 1920s, the Sunni minority have dominated the political process in the country and subordinated the Shi’a majority, along with the Kurdish, Christian, Yezidi, and Jewish minorities.

The Sunni insurgents—former regime elements— who don’t want to give up their power are one threat to security. The greatest threats, however, are the forces of Al Qaeda, the enemy most post-9/11 soldiers joined the Army to fight. In nearly all soldiers’ minds, the point is moot whether Al Qaeda was here before we invaded or not; the fact is they’re in Iraq now, and they can’t leave. As far as we’re concerned, it’s better to kill them here than on the streets back home.

We drive down Route Michigan, a road that separates the hayys of Khadra and Ameriya. Garbage covers the sidewalks and spills into the street. Sergeant Freeman Gardner died not far from here. Gardner was a Black soldier who reminded me a great deal of Derek, a high school basketball teammate who later went on to the United States Military Academy. Derek was one of the few of my African-American friends who made it out of Centralia alive and he also achieved the greatest level of success of all students from my graduating class.

Before Sergeant Gardner's death, I had ordered the engineer company to which he was assigned to conduct a sanitation mission to remove the trash so the enemy couldn’t hide IEDs. The company commander requested not to do the mission; he wanted to wait until later in the week. He asked for more time to plan since we did not have good intelligence on the area of operation. I held firm and told him to have a platoon clear the street.

My military training had taught me to kill and to prepare myself to die. However, it did not teach me how to deal with death from among the living. It did not teach me how to compose a letter for a grieving parent whose loss no correspondence would correct. After Freeman was killed, I wrote a letter of condolence to his mother. I explained the circumstances of his death, specifically that he died protecting his fellow soldiers. I told her how much Freeman was loved by everyone who knew him. I said I was sorry and that her family was in my constant prayers. But I didn’t tell her of my role in his death, nor of the sickening torment I felt because I didn’t give his company commander more time to prepare.

I try not to think that I’m the reason Gardner’s dead. I push even further from my mind the fact that he was picking up garbage when he died. And I wish I could forget that Freeman Gardner was killed picking up garbage—in Iraq, thousands of miles from home, in a war whose purpose I was beginning to question—but I can’t.

That thought is interrupted by gun fire. I see Iraqi police down the street take cover behind their cars. I tell Gonzalez to drive forward so I can get a better angle on where it’s coming from. Before I can see it, the firing stops, and Iraqi soldiers start herding a group of 20 or 30 civilians to an abandoned building nearby. We drive to the next intersection, and I get out of the truck with Staff Sergeant

Hudgeons and my interpreter First Lieutenant David Abuchallak. The Iraqis have lined up the civilians and are questioning them. I have Dave ask the Iraqi soldiers what was going on. The Iraqi platoon leader explains that a roadside bomb blew up one of their trucks and that he is certain one of the civilians did it. Through Dave, I ask what makes him think that. The young Iraqi officer says, “They are Shi’a.”

We load back up and continue our mission of day, which is to visit a combat outpost in the hayy of Ameriya. An important aspect of the plan to secure Baghdad is to occupy areas within the cities so that U.S. soldiers and Iraqis will live in closer proximity to one another, providing more security for the civilians. The idea is to choose the worst place in a hayy and literally sleep with the enemy.

Combat Outpost Bannister is surrounded by a 12-foot wall positioned to protect three buildings (abandoned houses) from enemy attacks. The buildings are used for offices for planning, meetings with locals, and controlling daily operations, as well as for living quarters. There is one guarded entrance and a large parking area for vehicles. Two concrete guard towers, positioned on each end of the fortress, overlook the neighborhood. From the towers you can see for several blocks, making it impossible to approach without notice.

I stay the night there and talk to the leaders about their plan to secure the neighborhood with the Iraqis. The insurgents try mortaring us several times during our meeting—a method of attack against which the towers can’t defend— but the rounds land harmlessly in the morass of sewage and trash nearby.

The next morning, we drive back to Liberty and find on my desk a letter from Ms. Farra Ratliff—Freeman Gardner’s mother. My stomach drops to my knees. I am more afraid of what is written in the contents of the envelope then I am of a roadside bomb but I open it anyway, and inside is a light blue card with violets, sent in response to the letter I wrote Farra after her son was killed. Standing, I read:

Dear Lieutenant Colonel:

Your letter was received at the right time. I was feeling very sad, and wondering about that terrible day. My daughter brought the mail to me and as I read your letter, my mind was put a little at ease. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to console my family. Your letter answered some of my questions. Thank you again and God bless you and all the people you command. I called Sergeant Freeman Gardner my “number one Son.” I was very proud of him. He lived to be the best.

Fara Ratliff

I sit down and place the card next to my computer, open, so I can see her handwriting. I move my index finger across Fara's words trying to make an even deeper connection with this courageous woman whose child was taken away from her. I stop at, "He lived to be the best." Then, I get up and shut the door to my office. I sit down and cry for a very long time.

Freeman Gardner lived to be the best.