Dad is a Ninja
by A. M. Johnson
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
They had their own ninja stories to tell.
“So we were sitting there at the back of the mess tent,” said PFC Graham, “and Sergeant Melrose says, ‘Miller! Run up there and tell that soldier to clear his weapon before he enters the mess tent!’
“And Miller says, ‘Sarge, no way can you see that weapon isn’t cleared from all the way back here.’
“And Sergeant Melrose says, ‘Just do it, soldier!’
“So Miller runs up there to the guys just coming in the tent and, sure enough, one guy’s weapon isn’t cleared! I mean, can you imagine what could have happened? This idiot coming up in the mess tent with his weapon locked and loaded. But none of us could believe Sergeant Melrose had seen it from the back of the tent. That’s when we started calling him Eagle Eye.”
The three young men sitting with me in the lobby of Evans Army Hospital were well known to me. PFC Graham, SPC Holland, and SPC Baloch. They had spent many a night at my kitchen table over the last couple of years. They were the men who had been in Ricky’s squad the longest, Holland even sharing a rotation with us in Hawaii before ending up in Colorado. They were the ones who really knew and loved him. And now, at this worst possible time, they were going to be here for me. They wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.
“Remember that time,” began SPC Holland, “when I was dating that girl, Mattie? And she decided I was cheating on her or something? I don’t know, I may have been, but anyway, she told all those special forces guys some B.S. story and got them all mad at me, and they were following me all over Schofield Barracks. They were going to teach me a lesson, you know? I was in my truck trying to get away from them when you called, Mrs. Sergeant, and you were all, ‘Hey, are you bringing drinks to dinner tonight?’ and I was like, ‘I might not make it because some guys are trying to kill me.’”
I laughed. “I do remember that,” I said. “Ricky was standing nearby when I got upset and told him some guys were trying to hurt you. He asked where you were, then he just disappeared out the door. I thought he was taking the car to go find you, but when I stepped out the car was still there. He was on foot. You were over by the theater, which is like three miles from where our housing was.”
“Yeah, he was running like the wind!” SPC Holland laughed. “Next thing I know, he jumps into the back of my truck at a stoplight. Just hops over the side like it’s nothing, and he’s got a bat. He’s standing up in the back of my truck, smacking that bat into the palm of his hand, and pretty soon those guys were nowhere to be found. I guess they figured three against two is bad odds. Especially when one of the guys is a real fast runner holding a bat!”
We all laughed, and I shook my head remembering. “The kids say Ricky is a ninja,” I said, laughing.
“He is!” declared Holland and Graham in unison, then we all laughed again.
We were seated in the ICU lobby, as the doctors had declared that there could only be one in the room with Ricky at a time. The kids were not allowed anymore. They had become more stringent about the rules as my insistence grew that he should remain on life support.
I had decided to allow the chaplain to spend a moment with him. Maybe some religion would subconsciously seep in. The soldiers had heard what was going on and had come to offer moral support. So we sat in the ICU lobby drinking bad coffee and reminiscing.
After about an hour, SPC Holland looked at SPC Baloch and stood, indicating to PFC Graham that he should follow suit.
“Me and Graham gotta hit the road,” he said apologetically. “But Baloch, well, he’s got some important stuff to tell you. I just want you to know: everything he’s gonna tell you is the truth. Me and Graham can back up what he says, and a couple more soldiers too.”
Holland and Graham leaned down for hugs, and Graham whispered, “Stick to your guns, Mrs. Sergeant! Don’t let them do it.”
Tears immediately started in my eyes, and I blinked hard.
* * *
After they’d gone, I looked at Baloch. He was a handsome young man, in his mid-twenties, an Afghan-American tasked to be a translator for Ricky’s unit. Ricky had countless stories of how this young man had saved the day by knowing how to talk to the locals, knowing the customs and who could be trusted, or not.
“Mrs. Sergeant,” he began, “this is going to sound like I’m delusional, but please keep an open mind.”
I couldn’t speak yet without crying, so I just nodded.
“We were just outside Kandahar in a small village, and we had built our camp for the night. This was supposed to be an anti-Taliban village, and we had met the town council that day, shaken hands with all the town leaders, had chai with them. You know, we thought they were allies. But that night at camp, we received heavy mortar fire all around us. No one was supposed to know our location except the town leaders. Sergeant Melrose was so angry he called headquarters and told them we were taking heavy fire and that he knew where it was coming from. He had mortars trained on the location, which was the home of one of the leaders that our recon team had confirmed was where the mortar fire was originating. When Sergeant Melrose contacted HQ, however, they told him to stand down. They said, ‘Let diplomacy do its work.’”
I had heard several similar tales in the past, of supposed allies in the day becoming enemies at night.
“Sergeant Melrose argued with them, said diplomacy is going to kill fifteen good soldiers. But HQ just kept saying ‘stand down.’ So we grabbed what we could and left our camp until the mortar fire stopped.”
SPC Baloch sighed and looked down. “You know how he gets when he’s angry,” he said, looking at me sheepishly. “We couldn’t get him calmed down. We had evacuated camp and set up a temporary shelter in this graveyard outside the village.”
He paused again. “I hate graveyards,” he said. “My grandfather taught me to avoid them. He said the spirits that lurk there can be easily offended and cause you great mischief. I told the squad to be careful what they did. We chose the graveyard because even if our location was discovered, no self-respecting Afghan leader will defile a graveyard by firing mortars at it. There is a good reason for that.
“They all laughed at me of course, but I just kept urging them to be careful. Well, Sergeant Melrose was so angry, he found the biggest, most elaborate grave marker in the place and he... well... he urinated on it.”
I stifled a giggle. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but it was just such a Ricky thing to do. SPC Baloch did not laugh, however. His expression was deadly serious.
“Here is the thing, Mrs. Sergeant,” he continued. “The reason we’re taught to avoid graveyards is that the djinn hang around there. And the djinn are always looking to cause trouble for a human if they can.”
I was stunned. It had never occurred to me that this young man would be so incredibly superstitious. I shook my head, as in fact I knew nothing about the djinn aside from what I’d seen in a couple of children’s movies.
He nodded. “They are nothing like what you see in the movies,” he said, as if reading my mind.
“The djinn,” he continued, “are just like humans in many ways. They love and they hate, they have families in their realm, they live and they die, though they are very hard to kill. They also hold grudges. This djinni was offended by Sergeant Melrose’s actions. We soon saw the results of that.”
SPC Baloch was silent for a few moments, looking down at his hands.
“We lost PFC West due to a weapons malfunction,” he said, “and I count that as the first act of revenge toward the squad. The night before, sentry had sounded the alarm because he saw a shadow creeping around camp, around West’s tent. We all got up and searched, but there was no one. The next day, we were engaged in a firefight, and West’s weapon practically exploded in his hands.”
I had heard about the incident, but not the alleged cause.
“After that, Sergeant Melrose was extra vigilant. He searched camp daily. We thought we had a mole, and I’m sure many thought it was me because of my status as an Afghan-American.
“Sergeant Melrose found 3 IEDs within camp and managed to get them removed undetonated. A fourth one was found by PFC Hamlin. He lost his right leg. We couldn’t figure out how they were getting into camp to place the IEDs, then one night I saw for myself.
“I was sitting up with Graham because he had sentry duty, and he was getting spooked. First hour of the watch, we saw a shadow darting around the tents, and we sounded the alarm. We pursued, and I chased the figure right into my own tent. That’s when I saw. When I trained my flashlight on the figure, it was nothing but a shadow. The shadow of a djinni.”
SPC Baloch looked up from his hands and straight into my eyes. “The shadow spoke to me. He called me a traitor in my language. Then he said an incantation and disappeared.”
He looked back down at his hands. “The next day, we picked up and moved to a new camp in a very remote area. There was a village that welcomed us, brought us foot bread and chai as we entered the town. They were genuinely glad to see us, I think.”
He paused again, then looked at a tattoo on his wrist that I had not noticed. It was a compass.
“I’ve seen that tattoo!” I exclaimed. “Ricky has the same one. It’s so weird, he always told me he doesn’t like tattoos, that he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to be permanently inked on his body. Then he came home from Afghanistan with four. Four! The compass on his left wrist, some words in Persian, or Dari, on his right wrist, a coin of some type on the inside of his elbow and—”
“And an evil eye over his heart,” finished Baloch, opening the front of his shirt to show me the evil eye over his own heart.
“We all got them,” he said, “the whole squad.”
Ricky had been reluctant to talk about the tattoos. He never mentioned that anyone else had them.
“Why did you all get the same tattoos?” I asked quietly.
“When we entered this village, a very old woman approached us,” he said. “She told me that we were being followed by an angry djinni. She told us that we needed the tattoos to defend against it, or we would all suffer.
“By this time, all the guys were in agreement that something weird was going on. Something they couldn’t explain. Graham and Holland had both seen the shadow, just like I did. You know what a skeptic Holland is. If he tells you something supernatural is going on, you best listen.
“This old woman, she belonged to a clan that has existed since before Mohammed penned the Quran. She told us she knew the old ways. So we let her and her husband give us the tattoos, and she taught us what they are for.
“The compass has no needle,” he continued, “unless the djinni is nearby. Then the needle points toward him. That was really effective because when we all had a needle pointing in a certain direction, no one had to be convinced anymore. We all knew the djinni was real, and we managed to avoid him. She said in shadow form, the djinni has great power, but he is nearly blind because he is made of darkness. He could harm us only if he could find us. Since we knew where he was, we could stay out of his reach.”
He was silent again, looking at his hands, and I could sense the next part was troublesome to him. “The rest,” he said, “well, those were to protect us from the djinn in the underworld. She said the djinn can move from his realm to the human realm through the underworld, but his powers are reduced in the human realm. When we die, though, he could torture us for eternity without protection. That is why the evil eye is over the heart. To protect us in the underworld from evil. She said it appears as an amulet around the neck once you cross over.
“The coin is to pay the ferryman to take you across the river of life to the realm of the djinn. Once there, we were to use the compass to locate him. The words. Well, those are the Persian words for ‘trap’, or a containment spell. They would appear as a vessel in which to trap the djinni if we managed to get to his realm and find him and battle and defeat him. You see, she was more concerned about what he would do to us after we died.”
I was beginning to see where he was going. My heart was in my throat, tears streaming down my face, as I let my mind walk the path that SPC Baloch was showing me.
“We all made a pact that day, that whoever was the first of us to die, he would do what was necessary to protect the rest from this djinni,” he said. He looked up into my eyes again and finished the tale.
“We thought the djinni had given up on destroying us while we were yet living,” he said. “So the pact was to protect all our souls in the afterlife. But when Sergeant Melrose emailed me and told me about the shadow, and about Jamie falling down the stairs, we all knew the djinni had just been looking for us and now he’s found us. And I had a feeling. I tried to get to Sarge before he did it, but I was just up the block from your house when EMTs arrived. I knew I was too late.
“Mrs. Sergeant, you need to understand. Sergeant Melrose did not kill himself. Not in the traditional sense. He tried to kill himself, yes, but to get to the underworld so he could stop the djinni before it managed to hurt you and your kids, or one of us from the squad.”
My tears were flowing freely at this point. I was barely listening to Baloch and his fantastic story about a genie, or djinni, or whatever. But just hearing someone say aloud that Ricky killed himself, well it made everything much too real. Never mind that it seemed Ricky’s entire squad was delusional.
Suddenly, the lies I’d told myself about him getting better were just that. Lies. When the doctor said there was no brain activity, that meant Ricky was really, truly dead. He was not coming back.
I couldn’t focus on Baloch telling his superstitious story anymore. I could only repeat Baloch’s words over and over in my head: he tried to kill himself. And the machines were all that had kept him out of the grave.
My Ricky, my crazy man, was dead.
* * *
Copyright © 2023 by A. M. Johnson
