|
by Shane Book
I
always promise mama I won't go watch the scrum of green fatigues
shove and stutter-
trot the men with spoiled pillow cases over their heads toward the
three bullet-pocked
palm trees rooted in a sand clotted red before the wall of barbed
wire vaulted like a little
league backstop as though to keep the wildest pitches from sailing
lost into a crashing
border of jungle trees. I wonder what the thieves do with what the
newspapers tell us
they steal: the TVs, the gold bracelets, the radios-if they really
work for a ring of
wicked Juju priests, if underneath their sweaty hoods they hiss
chants and incantations or
laugh, knowing a squadron of flying snakes is right now blowing
down from the north
with the hard Saharan winds to burrow into the navels of the soilders'
first born sons.
How can men like these be missed by anyone? On the razor wire perimeter
hiding in a
dip of sand I'm belly-down, roofed by a sheet of junk plywood sun-shucked
to a stone-
gray. The afternoon Atlantic picks up, scything into the shoreline
where more green
fatigues lean on scuffed Russian rifles. The hooded men are bound
to the trees. I've heard the best shooters are brought in especially
for the largest ones, that if you don't hit them
right they're longer to put down. In front of the three crumpled
shapes a soldier with
book open, stops. Whatever he reads loses itself in the whipping
ocean breeze, the hoods slack and hanging like the heavy bells of
flowers with names not yet known to me.
|
