Free Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers

as I approached.
    â€œHow you doing?” I asked.
    â€œKeeping on, bro,” he said. He pulled another bottle of water from his vest and handed it to me. “Captain Coles just got chewed out.”
    â€œCaptain Coles?”
    â€œA Third ID guy jumped all over him, man. Chewed him up one side and down the other. The guy seemed so pissed I thought he was gonna shoot him.”
    â€œWhat happened?” The water was cold and delicious. I poured some in my palm and wiped my face with it.
    â€œSomebody said that we had to take prisoners up to PSYOP to be interviewed and the captain said we weren’t messengers,” Jonesy said. “I guess he was wrong.”
    I didn’t dig the PSYOP guys too much. The ones I had met thought that being in Psychological Operations meant that they were smarter than everybody else. They might have been, but they didn’t have to act like it. I had seen the leaflets they dropped over Iraq and the ones they handed out wherever we went. Most were threats with English on one side and Arabic on the other. If you shoot at us we’ll kill you, and if you’re friendly we’ll help you build a new nation—that kind of thing.
    â€œIf it was up to me I wouldn’t be taking them no place,” he said. “Not after that scene.” He half lifted his empty water bottle to point to a place behind me.
    I looked to see what he was talking about and saw guys putting the bodies of dead soldiers into a truck. Four men were taking the dead, two soldiers to each body bag, past the others who were standing at attention. The bodies seemed light as they loaded the litters into the back of the truck. A heavy Iraqi woman, dressed all in black, glanced at the operation, then hurried down the street. In a narrow street, small brown kids stood against the walls and watched. I wondered what they were thinking.
    â€œIt’s tough to go down so far from home,” I said.
    â€œMy moms couldn’t take that,” Jonesy said. “That would kill her faster than it would kill me.”
    A image of my mom, sitting at our kitchen table in Harlem, flashed through my mind. If I were killed she would cry, I knew. It would hurt her so much, and as I stood watching the ritual of gathering the dead, I felt sorry for her. I knew what Jonesy was saying, that the dying hurt everybody.
    I wondered what my father would think. Would he blame me for dying? Would he say I should have listened to him? I wanted to talk to him so bad. There wasn’t anything special I had to say, just that I thought what he wanted for me was okay. Maybe that I loved him. I took out my pen and started to write a note to myself to tell my parents that I loved them. It was BS. The part about reminding myself.
    There were three prisoners. Second Squad took two of them and we took one, an old man. He was nearly bald, with patches of woolly hair on the sides of his head turning white. He was the same color as me, too. Thin, square-shouldered, slightly stooped, the old man looked too small to be considered dangerous. He was scared of us. He tried to smile but only showed a small row of bad teeth.
    Ahmed rode with us. Third Squad took the point, we were next, and Second Squad followed us.
    â€œStay close and stay in contact.” Captain Coles was subdued. He had had his ass handed to him by the officer from the 3 rd ID and it showed.
    We mounted up and moved out. I got the map coordinates for the FOB and went over them with Jonesy. He asked Marla if she wanted to drive and she said no.
    â€œI want to be up so I can see what’s going on,” she said. “And if I’m up there I don’t have to make small talk with you dudes.”
    Good. Marla was coming back.
    The prisoners’ hands were held together with plastic strips. The two prisoners in the other Humvee had cloths over their heads but ours didn’t.
    â€œHey, Ahmed, ask him why he was doing whatever he was doing,”