“But if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle.” [1 Corinthians 14:8]
Coco casually swung a five-gallon gas can back and forth—its chained lid dizzily dancing—as he limped out of step between two pyromaniacs toward the hospital. Although shy on eyelashes, the truculent trio brimmed with confidence as they sauntered up to the stoop, fingers looped in their front pockets, and paused to shade their eyes and look down. Each anticipated—well, they didn’t know what to expect. Coco dropped the gas can. It clunked. He felt like a clunk. “Whoa! You look like road kill. What the h_ _ _ happened?”
Ajani was trembling, soaked with sweat, and stained with Jabal’s blood. He stared through Coco, not at him, but said nothing. Karim sat next to his first lieutenant on the warped cedar porch. He chewed, leaned forward, fixed his eyes on the ground, puckered up, and spat. His spittle fell short of the outfield like a pop-up fly-ball at Fenway Park; it landed on his own unlaced boot and sizzled in the sun as he jacked up, squatted on his haunches. If one were to exercise his imagination, Karim resembled a hairy frog about to give birth.
He continued elevating until he finally peaked at six-five-and a half. His bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets like the windows of a slot machine ready to pay off, but his tacky taunt punctured any hope of a commendation. “Coco-puff, what have you done? . . . I said, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” croaked the turbid toad.
Unsure of the reason for his lousy approval rating, Coco gestured toward the fire. “Looky Boss—as you ordered—a southern-style barbecue with all the trimmings.” Coco cogitated on making a U-turn and seeking a parking space in the sultry shade. He wasn’t in the mood to be punched in the mouth or killed. But just then, a chilling scream re-routed all eyes toward the specter of an old man as he staggered from the smoldering shell of the municipal building. Everyone stopped and watched him stumble and collapse on his face. No one approached for a long sixty seconds, and then from around the corner Safeed—weary, covered with soot, and unrecognizable—walked over, knelt by Barakah, placed a hand on his back, and remained as stoic as a gravestone, as speechless as a graveyard.
Nobody else moved; no one, that is, except Coco, who caved like a prospector watching his dig collapse with men trapped inside. He wailed, “Oh, what have I done? Karim, what have we done?” He stared first at Safeed, then at the smoldering corpse, and finally at the gutted building’s charred plaster—from the ground to the parapet. The adjoining tower remained unscathed. Coco cried, “I thought everybody got out; but look, yes, you! Don’t turn away; we are soaked with the blood of an innocent old man.” Coco began trembling uncontrollably.
“I told you to ‘go fur it’; not ‘go fire it!’” chawed Karim.
“No, you said, ‘go fire it’, Boss. We all heard you, loud and clear.” Still on his knees, Coco slapped at his arms and chest as if he were trying to smother the flames of hell. He screamed, “I’m burning. I’m burning.”
A woman—blackened with soot—heard Coco’s outcry and came loping like a leopard across the square toward him. She wore the unrecognizable remnant of a tattered hijab and one flip-flop. On she came, hopelessly shrieking, “YOU-u-u-u-u! You should burn in Hades. You murdered my baby!” She lunged forward, knocked Coco on his back, sat on his stomach, and pounded his chest—slower . . . and slower . . . and slower. “YOU. YOU. YOU. Because of you, my life is in ruins.”
“Pft. Pft.”
Two rounds lodged in her back, and she fell forward, face to face with Coco. “No, woman! Your life is at an end because of me, Chief of the Okefenokee. Who’s next?” Karim bugled like an elk celebrating the rut, grabbed the dead woman by the hair, and dragged her off Coco’s quivering body. “Coco, get up.” Karim jerked him to his feet and, winking at Ajani, muttered, “There now, do you see how it’s done?” Ajani didn’t respond to the wink with a, ‘yep, yep,’” so Karim pointed a finger at Coco, hoping he would stop spooling like celluloid film, get jammed in front of a projector’s hot lamp, and melt down.
Coco surprised him and rattled: “So, Meester Karim, how have your plans worked out? Have you scored a win? No. Have any villagers fled like vermin into the desert? Not one. Has anybody here seen or smelled even one perfumed pretty? Has anyone discovered wealth? No, and no again. Did you all not watch the plebeians gather, run for water, fill buckets, pots, pans, and work to extinguish the blaze? Yes. Have you witnessed anything but poverty shrouded in sackcloth, and now, ASHES? Sackcloth and ashes! These refugees are but ragged refugees from Iran? Meester Karim, YOU HAVE FAILED!” Coco fisted his hands into the air. “ARE YOU BOYS BLIND TO HIS TREACHERY? We are the victims, not the victors–shorn goats festering with ticks–diseased and driven into the desert by a MADMAN! . . . Let’s pack up and go home.”
Karim hefted then released and let his weapon drop into the black leather holster. For a swirling quarter-cup of time his egomania, taunted and shunned, drizzled like sludge into a Tupelo, Mississippi sewer. Ajani apprehended this state of mind and abruptly arose to defend his friend.
“The only thing wrong with you, Coco-Puff, is this: You are still breathing.”
Unafraid, Coco turned, wagged his head like a wary hound, and jabbed a paw at his antagonist. “It is you who are on trial here. Whose innocent blood stains your hands, you jackal?” Backed into a corner, Ajani touched shoulders with Karim before baring his canines, poised to crunch Coco’s carotid.
Fully enthralled by the lively confrontation, Ratib Alfarsi sat alone in the dirt—ankles crossed, and heels pointing toward his groin—twenty-five feet away and beneath the counter of the vacant vegetable cooperative, shaded by a rotting, faded, blue and grey awning. Nicknamed Baboon, Ratib was a trained pugilist, raised in the slums of Tehran. His cohorts believed he’d once held the national boxing title, then retired, learned to play the bassoon, and held second chair with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra.
But in truth, Ratib had set up chairs for the performances, gotten into a fight with a bassoonist, and nearly beaten him to death backstage. When a warrant was issued for Ratib’s arrest, he’d fled the country and ended up sharing a cell with one Billie Joe Quagmeyer in Kandahar. BJ, amused at Ratib’s ability to rub his forehead with one hand and pound his chest with the other, nicknamed him Baboon and welcomed him into the gang. Everyone presumed Ratib to be best educated and most dispassionate of the desperadoes, but for the moment he fancied himself a ringside announcer. He held up a fist, pretended it to be a microphone, and spoke softly through his curly beard:
“Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in. My name is Ratib Alfarsi, and if we don’t soon have something constructive to do, I will go mad. That’s m.a.d. We’re stuck here in Peshawar, Pakistan, not mentioned in most travel brochures, anticipating a fight. The contenders have been barking at one another for five minutes. The venue is hot, the stakes high, and the language is libelous. Listen up:”
“Just so you’ll know before I knock you down to size, Coco-puff, the dry blood you see on me belongs to Jabal. He lost his head in the alley.”
“Right. Did you shoot him when his back was turned or when he was napping? Stop distracting me, Ajani, or whatever your real name is. I know you hated him.”
“No, man. Listen. We were dragging the bald guy through the alley when Jabal’s head got blowed clean off by an American soldier—I’d say from maybe sixty yards out. And get this, the shooter’s a woman. She’s the coward. She shot Jabal in the back of the head. Don’t you get it?”
“Oh, I get it, alright. Everybody and his dog knows Jabal was anything but your chum.”
“Okay, okay, let’s agree to disagree, but we both hate Americans.”
“You ARE an American, like it or not.”
“So is the woman, and she infantry.” Ajani looked to the Boss for approval and added, “Karim wants her captured, mugged, and dragged here so he can finish her off. He says finishing her off will unlock lots of doors. So, let’s go fur it.”
“Give me a break. ‘Go fur it??’ You, too?”
“I mean let’s rassel her to the ground, drag her down here and decaf, decap, oh fiddle-sticks, help the lady lose her head, like ISIS did on Al Jazeera TV. Right boss?”
Karim, who had been channeling every word through both cauliflower ears, cuffed Ajani on the side of the head. “Listen up, both of you. The woman don’t lose her head, got it?”
“Yeah, Boss. She keeps hers, I keep mine, Coco keeps his, and Jabal? Well, Jabal didn’t get a choice. So, what’s your choice, Coco?” Ajani didn’t need to, but he twisted Coco’s arm behind his back, unsheathed and held a knife to his throat, and admired his Adam’s apple as it struggled like a frog being digested by a snake.
“Let him be,” demanded Karim. “Coco, Baboon, you go with Ajani and capture the woman. Alive.”