The Ridgeline Bleeds a River of Tar

We had been patrolling the water pipeline and thereabouts, looking for unauthorized taps, fields of sunflowers far from the river, lush lawns in adobe villages. It was getting late, and we were heading back to base. The early evening sunlight shone on a surface that from a distance looked like a river. We drove near, and the gun trucks took up over-watch positions as Capt. Drew Clark and I dismounted to examine the flow.

Clark commands Alpha Company, 2-198th Combined Arms Battalion, Mississippi Army National Guard, the force protection company for COB Q-West. His soldiers provide security for the Water Team on every mission to the Pump House or along the pipeline.

It had been hot, 110 degrees at least, one of those days when angry-graceful dust twisters dance across the desert. Drew was ahead of me, for I had fumbled to get my camera. Stepping from an air conditioned gun truck into such heat always makes me sweat. It stung my eyes and fogged my wrap-around sunglasses, and I stopped to wipe the lenses with my camouflage face scarf.

We smelled it before we got near. "It's oil," I called. Drew stood at the edge. He leaned down, his M4 tucked between his knees, and touched it. "Shit, dude," he said, looking at me with that characteristic smirk. "This ain't oil. It's tar."

I put this memory in my back pocket with all the others--the smell of tar paper on the chicken coop, the two-headed goat that died in the straw, the first & only bird I ever shot, a litter of pups the Old Man made me bury in a gunny sack because I let the sex-hungry bitch off her chain, the pup he let me spare, Vicki, who became a longtime friend, the forgettable paperback western I lost in a Chicago bus station and have always regretted not finishing, the predawn walk to the barn, mist hanging low, the goats calling, the ice flowing on the Grand River and crashing against the pylons of the Pearl Street Bridge, the first kiss I won from you, Sandy, on a winter night in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, snow falling, you leaning against the door of a jewelry store, the heavy brass handle shaped like a diamond ring.