Two dirty men smoke a joint on a busy street corner. Henry can recognize that sweet smell anywhere. Even through the rank odor of urine and shit and rotting teeth and rotting cities. He quit when he couldn’t find the words to match his thoughts. He’d think cat and write dog. Genocide became happy birthday. It was very confusing.

Henry’s waiting for a bus. It’s already ten minutes late. A girl waits too. Dark sunglasses cover half her face. She wears short shorts with her university’s name emblazoned across the ass, flip flops, white t-shirt, and a blue back pack bulging on her back. Her right hand presses a small silver phone to her ear, her left waves and swirls and floats as she talks.

Henry keeps headphones over his ears when he ventures out. They’re not connected to anything. The silver plug shoved into his front pocket. He hopes they keep people from talking to him, from asking for change or a cigarette or directions or to buy a newspaper for a quarter to help the poor. But they’re not very effective. People here are persistent.

The light turns green. Cars and bikes and people surge away. Still no bus.

One guy is standing. He has short black hair and a sickly beard. The other, coughing gray smoke out his toothless mouth, is in a wheelchair. His hair is long and dirty blond. Not “dirty blond” by L’Oreal—yellow speckled with brown, something to keep you guessing—but blond with layers and layers of caked dirt. His beard is thick and matted and rests on his chest. He passes the joint. Talks loudly about how his brother doesn’t approve of his life style. Doesn’t approve of his long hair or beard or of him pushing himself along in a wheelchair. His friend nods knowingly, sucks at the joint like a drowning man sucking a straw.

“That’s it,” he wheezes.

“Bullshit,” wheelchair says.

“Yeah, they do.” Standing man rolls the roach between his fingers.

“Damn. You got anymore?”

“No.”

“Fuck,” wheelchair says. “Guess we gotta get to work.” He moves his head around slowly, gazes at the bus stop through bloodshot eyes. The girl is closer to him. “You got any change?”

“Hold on,” she says into her phone. “What?”

“Change? Do you have any change? I’m awfully hungry.”

She smiles. “Sorry.”

“But you’re waiting for a bus,” he pleads. “I know you’ve got to have some change.”

She shrugs her shoulders, looks across the street. “Yeah, yeah. Nothing, some bum. Soon. Well, whenever this bus shows up….”

He looks at Henry, smiles, pushes his feet along the concrete, taps Henry’s arm. “How about you, man? You got any change?”

Henry stares at him and reaches into his bag. His hand caresses a cold Colt .45. A beautiful weapon. Polished silver. Wooden grips with angry swooping eagles carved into them. The Marines gave it to his father when he retired. The Marines don’t do anything half-assed. No gold-plated watches for those guys.

The man smacks his gums hopefully. One dollar and he can wheel himself across the street, get a cheeseburger. Five and he can get another joint, maybe a can or two of cheap beer. “Just a quarter, man? Or a dime? Shit man, I’ll even take a dime.”

Henry’s dad loved this gun. It hung over the fireplace in an oak box frame with two gold globe and anchors flanking it. An inscription thanked him for his twenty years of faithful service to God, Country, Corps—Semper Fi. The old man would sit in his worn leather chair with a bottle of whiskey and stare at it for hours. When he was much younger, Henry would sit on the floor next to his father reading the Boy Scout Handbook or watching the Cubs or listening to a fire burn. “That thing makes a hell of a noise,” his father would say. “And a big fucking hole,” he’d wink. It came into Henry’s possession after his father used it to put a big fucking hole in his head. “Fuck you all. And even though he joined the pussy army, give the gun to my boy.” His dad’s last will and testament. He never was much for sentimentality.

“No.” Henry holds the bag open. The man looks into it. Henry’s knuckles are white and knotty around the grip, the hammer cocked, his finger dances over the trigger. “I don’t.”

The man, eyes tight and vicious, pushes his chair back.

The bus pulls up, the doors open. Henry climbs aboard.

***

Henry and two other soldiers were dug into a hill above Vrbovac waiting for the Mad Mortarman to strike when he got the news.

Triple M would pop up every now and again to lob one or two mortar shells at any gathering of Serbians. The division’s artillery scouts’ radar could detect each launch and pinpoint to within one hundred meters its point of origin. But by the time anyone responded Triple M would be long gone. It was embarrassing. Four thousand soldiers from the strongest army on the face of earth with billions of dollars of cutting edge technology couldn’t catch some redneck Albanian with a twenty dollar mortar tube strapped to the bed of a two hundred dollar pick-up truck? He was mostly a nuisance, never actually hit anything. But he either improved his aim or got lucky or both.

A Serbian woman nursed her new daughter in the living room of their small home when a mortar shell came crashing through the corrugated tin roof, killing them both instantly. The next day he shelled a crowded playground. It was a mess. Tom Brokaw told America about it over dinner. Video of shouting men and wailing ambulances and weeping women clutching small dead bodies flashed across the screen. American soldiers stood grimly behind their body armor and machine guns trying to avoid the cameras. Henry was there. His mom saw him on TV and called all her friends. A general’s wife saw it too. She complained to her husband while he tried to watch a football game. He made a call, grabbed a beer from his refrigerator, hugged his wife, told her they would catch the bastard who did that, and went back into the living room cursing the Broncos. The next day, Division dispatched Alpha Team, 3rd Platoon, 212th MP Co—Sergeant Jackson and Specialist Jones and Specialist Henry—to Hill 402. Their mission was to watch for the short bright flash of a launch and, when they saw it, to rain down as many 40mm high explosive grenades onto his little head from their Mark-19 machine grenade launcher as they could.

They’d been on the hill for eight hours when the snow started. It snowed for forty. The eastern sky was just turning pink when the radio crackled. It was Company Headquarters—Henry was coming down, they wouldn’t say why. The commander was on his way to get him. He was bringing hot chow and mail, too. Sergeant Jackson asked if they all couldn’t come down given recent weather conditions. Negative. Seven days.

“Why the fuck does Henry get to go down?” Jones complained. “Why don’t they take us all off this fucking mountain? This guy ain’t gonna do shit until it gets warmer. He ain’t dumb. He’s probably nuzzled up next to some bitch in front of a roaring fire laughing at us.”

“I don’t know man,” Henry said. “You know I’d rather be up here with you.”

Sergeant Jackson laughed. He sat against a tree and blew breath through cupped hands like an angry prayer. “Bullshit.”

Henry sat on his packed rucksack. “No,” he smiled. “Really.”

“Fuck you Henry,” Jones said. “Hey sergeant, why don’t we light a fire up here? Get some kind of heat?”

“Because, you dumb shit, they’d see us.”

“Who the fuck is they?” Jones asked. “And look around sarge.” They looked around. Jackson scowled, Henry smiled, Jones nodded. Their green and brown and black camo stood out brightly against the fresh snow.

“Whatever.” Jackson dismissed him with a flick of his wrist, stood up and went behind a tree.

“Here they come,” Henry said.

The commander’s convoy, three Humvees, snaked up the white hill. Every once in a while it would slide back down and look for a different path. An hour later Jackson saluted the commander and Jones helped unload the mermite cans filled with cold eggs and sausages.

“Hey Henry,” the commander said. The chaplain stood next to him. “Why don’t you come with us.”

They walked away from the trucks to a clump of trees. The leafless branches sagged under the wet snow. The fog of their breath hung briefly in the light air before dissipating into nothing.

“How are you, son?” the chaplain asked. He was skinny, but his cold weather gear made him look bulky. His long pale face was blotched red and a clear drop of snot hung from the tip of his nose.

“Not too bad, Chaplain,” Henry said. “A bit cold, but, you know?”

The chaplain scoffed. Stamped his feet. He had no idea.

“Why don’t we have a seat,” the commander said. They looked around. “Or not. Henry,” he said and looked at the chaplain. The chaplain watched a crow circling high over their heads. “Henry, I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

Henry didn’t say anything.

“We got a Red Cross message last night. Your father. He, um, well, he passed away.”

Henry and his father started growing apart when he was 13 and quit the Boy Scouts. And then he helped his mother move to a small apartment across town. His father watched them load boxes from the window and didn’t say a word. The final straw, Henry thought, was when he didn’t join the Marines. His father looked as if he’d been slapped when Henry told him he enlisted in the army. He hadn’t seen his father in over a year. Maybe two. It felt like he had already died. The crow cawed, the chaplain coughed, the commander lit a cigarette. Henry felt like he should say something. “How did he die?” he asked.

“We’ve got your leave paperwork all filled out,” the commander said. It was important to bring some good news. “You leave tomorrow. Down to Skopje and back to Ramstein.”

The chaplain looked at the commander. Jackson watched them, a cup of coffee steaming in his hands. The commander looked at the ground.

“Well,” the chaplain put his hand on Henry’s shoulder. The dark cross stitched to his helmet was crooked. He looked through Henry. “It’s difficult.”

“Oh yeah?” Henry said.

The chaplain closed his eyes, bowed his head. “Actually, he killed himself. He….” He shook his head. Opened his eyes.

A gentle, brittle breeze wafted over the hill. The sun burned brightly. The snow hardened. Jackson looked away. Henry smiled.

***

Henry’s deep in a story. A boy pretending to be a bull just killed a boy pretending to be a bullfighter. The fighter’s blood empties from him like water draining from a bathtub. The police have the bull in hand, a doctor pronounces, a priest gives rites, the bus lurches to a stop. Henry looks up. Two police cars block the road. The sun glares off their windows.

Two of them, in crisp black uniform, get on the bus. One is young, tall. His hair cut to stubble on the top of his red head. His face is chiseled and tan. His eyes stupid. A rookie. His partner is as tall. His gut spills over his pistol belt. His salt-and-pepper hair is messy. A bushy mustache crawls under his thick nose, over his thin lips. A veteran.

They look down the aisle. Henry watches them. The rookie sees him—round glasses, long, curly brown hair, green T-shirt, blue jeans—and a smile creeps across his face. He leans into his partner and points at Henry. The veteran nods and they walk towards him. The rookie’s hand is curled around his pistol’s grip. The veteran rests his hand on his weapon. Their holsters are unsnapped.

“Hi,” the rookie says.

Henry nods at him, looks at his book.

“You want to come with us?” the veteran asks.

“Not really,” Henry says. He stares at the page not seeing letters or words. Henry didn’t know bums called the cops. Or that cops listened to bums. Shit.

The rookie grabs Henry’s arm and yanks him through the open back door and throws him against a hot black Crown Victoria. The veteran wrestles away his bag. Handcuffs are slapped onto his wrists. The cool metal digs into his flesh.

“Gun.” The veteran holds Henry’s pistol in the air by the trigger guard.

The rookie folds Henry into the caged back seat of his car. The radios crackle and buzz. The door slams shut. Henry watches the bus drive away, the passengers staring at him with detached curiosity, and then disappear.

***

Henry went back to Kosovo after the funeral. The Mad Mortarman had vanished.

“Maybe he ran out of ammo,” Jones speculated.

“You think so?” Henry asked.

“Shit man.” Jones scooped a large spoonful of gray mashed potatoes onto his plastic plate. “How the fuck should I know? What else would he be doing?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said. “I just hope they don’t send us back to that fucking hill.”

They were sent to a different hill a week later. “Fuck,” Henry said when Sergeant Jackson told them. “For how long?” For a week.

The snow melted during the day and turned the roads and hills into a thick sticky mud. The river was swollen and fast. Chunks of ice and trash churned against fallen trees. Everything froze solid again at night. A full moon shone through the skeletal trees as they dug into the hard ground.

“How was the funeral, Henry?” Jones asked. They had been digging for two hours in silence. Jackson leaned on his shovel and breathed out a plume of white steam.

“It was fine,” Henry said. Mud thumped to the ground behind him. He stopped and looked around. Jones smoked a cigarette. The red cherry lit his whole face when he inhaled on it. Henry looked at the moon. “No one was there though.”

“No one was there?” Jones asked.

“No,” Henry said. “Just me and my mom.”

“Hmm.” Jones sat down, pulled a green poncho tightly over his shoulders. Henry watched his face light and dim, his eyes dancing and distant in the red glow.

“You’re going to give away our position,” Jackson said. “Put that thing out.”

Jones pushed the cigarette into the ground and sighed. Henry slumped into his hole and pulled out the night vision goggles from his rucksack. He switched them on, a high-pitched whine emanated from the heavy black plastic. Through them, the night turned strange and green. He wondered if he would die like his father—alone and drunk. A rock crashed into the atmosphere and streaked bright green through the dark green sky. Henry made a wish. He scanned down to the field below them just in time to see the short green flash.

“Holy shit,” Jones said. “Did you see that Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that what I think it was?” Jones asked.

Before Henry could answer, a burst flashed in the tiny village to their right.

“I thought so,” Jones said. He moved behind the Mark-19, snaked his legs through its heavy tripod, jolted its massive bolt back. “Give me a range.”

Henry aimed the MELIOS, shot the laser out. “300 meters,” he said.

Jones adjusted the sight for range and pressed his thumbs against the butterfly trigger. The field turned into noise and fire and shrapnel.

***

Henry calls his mother collect from the jail. She accepts the charges. She’s confused. Where is he? Jail, she knows, but where? And why is he in jail? What’s a bails bondsman and how would she go about getting in touch with one? Why has it been so long since he called? Where is he again?

“I don’t have a lot of time mom,” Henry says. “Can you just get me out of here?”

“Honestly John,” she says. “I wish you would come home.”

“I will mom. Soon.” Henry hears her weeping quietly. “I promise.” The rookie taps him on the arm. “I gotta go, mom.” Henry hangs up the phone.

The cell is cold and hard. Henry lies on the thin mattress and closes his eyes.

It took them almost two hours to climb down that hill. Triple M’s body was twisted and stiff, dried red blood ran from his mouth like smeared lipstick. He looked very surprised. Jones backs slowly away from the truck and throws up. They cling to each other, tears frozen and slick on their faces. It looks like they’ve just fallen asleep, like the slightest noise will wake them. But the soldiers know better.

Henry opens his eyes.