New Year Steve

Now.

‘The problem is you don’t want to work,’ Eddie slurred, zipping up his flies. ‘Here, here, here…I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you this dollar,’ he unrolled one from a gold clip, ‘if you can tell me why you don’t have a job, eh?’ He waved it back and forth slowly in front of the man’s eyes. 

Eddie pulled the collar on his Burberry cashmere car coat further up around his ears, a barrier against the harsh bite of the winter sleet falling steadily onto him. And the man sat silently at his feet. He held a cardboard sign, on it was handwritten: 

My name is Steve. I am a veteran. Please give as little as you can. Thank you and God Bless.’

Eddie took a pull on a silver hip flask, newly engraved with ‘Salesman of the Year 1999’. He proffered it downwards towards Steve. 

‘No? Trying to give up, eh? Good man, good man,’ Eddie said. 

The Times Square clock flickered between 01:00 and -12 Degrees. A faint hint of fireworks hung in the air, a whiff of sulphur frozen in the mizzle. Ticker tape was stranded in gutters. The paper strips formed tentative bridges over the bars of the drains studding the centre of the alley off Broadway. Steve’s beard held tiny jewels of frost, gems adorning a face devoid of any wealth, skinny with lack of any sustenance or substance. 

Then.

Eddie didn’t know Steve’s pain, didn’t know Steve had thought back only that morning to January 1991, three months into a tour of Iraq during the first Gulf War. 

‘We had gradually made our way North from Basra, Danny and I, travelling across nine hundred and thirty kilometres of battle-scarred sand. Across almost the whole length of Iraq, we had seen more action in those three months than the whole of our careers to date put together. We arrived just after each advance, our Land Rover and trailer accompanied by an escort of either the US Airborne Division or the Royal Marines of 3 Commando Brigade.  

On arrival, we would set up the communications so the officers could receive orders from HQ. The communications were also used for calling wives and/or girlfriends so we became very popular very quickly, often given extra rations in exchange for airtime. But it wasn’t the smell of sausage and beans or creamy beef stew that lingered, it was the rank odour of decay from the bodies, the sun accelerating the journey from the corpses to our noses and mouths, death even hanging onto to the clothes and webbing belts once the bodies had gone.  

And the heat was intense, dry, energy sapping and constant for fourteen hours of each day before the freezing cold of the night, never resting at a comfortable temperature, never quite letting you get comfortable. We couldn’t sleep so we welcomed the distraction of having to clean the sand that crept into the tiniest of gaps, weapons needing dry cleaning each evening, equipment blown through each morning before use with a portable vacuum cleaner. We were busy every second of every day, and after three months the fatigue was hitting us all, judgements becoming more snapped and less considered.

As well as the heat, the atmosphere hung tight with tension. From morning to night we were coiled taut, you could see it in the way our colleagues walked across the camp, shoulders tensed, heads jerking at the slightest noise - a breeze rattling a can along the dust path, a fallen twig snapping underfoot. The towns we slept in and the seemingly endless roads that lead us to them were boobytrapped by the fleeing locals, unwilling to leave anything to the invaders. And like the glass of water that is carried for ten minutes, one hour, two hours and eventually becomes more than just a simple vial of liquid, we became heavy with the stress. We were as nomadic as the expelled natives, homeless and holding tight to our meagre possessions, boots and cots becoming high value currency, held as close to us as our weapons.

That week in Mosul was the toughest of the tour. We were told that the very specific, apparently high profile targets were holed up in a safe house that had been identified by an Iraqi informant. 101^st Airborne Division was given the task of capture. The history books tell the story better than I can, the task was successful, depending on your definition of success.

As the action died down, Danny and I set up a satellite link from the house, so the team leader could report back in situ, the area has been cleared, made safe. While Major Tom Lightman - the tall, rangy officer in command - called in his report, Danny and I looked around the house and garden. As we stepped through the fallen wreckage of the balcony that had circumnavigated the interior courtyard, Danny saw something glinting in the sand, the sun directly overhead and coincidental to our passing.  

We knelt and brushed away the earth from around the object and found it to be a tiny gold statue, a god on a chariot, no bigger than three inches tall and five inches wide. It was chipped and tarnished with age, but I guess thatwas why we knew it might be worth something. I looked at Danny and Danny looked at me, holding each other’s gaze for a second or so, Danny eventually nodding slightly as I gently shook my head. Danny removed his glove from his right hand and picked up the treasure in his dirt ingrained thumb and forefinger, turned it over and held it in his palm, mesmerised.  

Suddenly, the remainder of an arched wooden door tipped from its ruined hinges. An Iraqi man, clad in a thawb and shmakh, stood looking at the idol in Danny’s hand, a frown crossing his brow and his mouth opening to shout.

‘Contact!’ Danny screamed on impulse, panicking, alerting the sentry outside. We didn’t see the hair-trigger of the M4 Carbine pulled, but we heard the shot and saw the Iraqi fall through the doorway. Danny didn’t look at me, he pocketed the statue in his side trouser pocket and walked silently back into the house. And as usual, I followed him.

A year later, back in the UK, we met in London. The sky had darkened to a slate grey, rain was threatening to fall and the wind gusting down Edgeware Road portended a storm ahead. Huddled together in a studded leather booth at the Green Man in Paddington, Danny handed me an envelope. I opened it and counted out one thousand five hundred pounds.  Danny had sold the treasure in Northgate Road Antiques Market in Battersea that afternoon. He explained that after some casual questioning about the source of the idol the owner had led Danny through to a back room and counted out the money in fifty pound notes. Danny coloured in the story with detail which made it sound even more implausible than the amount of cash offered. Three thousand pounds, the man’s life has been worth three thousand pounds. And as we shared everything during that tour I took the money, I still haven’t spent it though, it might even still sit in a desk in the spare room, I only took it to share Danny’s pain. Danny couldn’t handle the pain, he fell in front of a train three months later. A week after that I moved to New York, and left the idol in the house for the landlord to find, a payment to ease my guilt. But the guilt never goes.’

Now.

‘Yes, the war was horrible. Well, boo hoo, I was away two weeks out of every four this year, flying across twenty states. Sometimes the room wasn’t cleaned for days, the same filthy sheets night after night. And I had to share them some nights, know what I mean, eh, eh?’ Eddie said, nudging an elbow in the air, laughing at the memory of drunken fumbles under the motel duvet, sometimes free, sometimes on expenses. 

The salesman pulled a battered pack of Marlborough Lights from his fur lined pocket, tapped one into the crook between his finger and thumb, then pushed it clumsily into his mouth. 

‘You want one? No, giving up, eh? Good man, good man,’ Eddie said, impressed with Steve’s stoicism. ‘No, no, no….wait, let me finish. I know it’s hard.’ He bent over at the waist now, speaking more softly. ‘I know it’s hard, but you should get out there, put yourself about, you know, be useful.’ 

Eddie moved his hand to pat Steve’s shoulder but missed and stumbled, twisting to one side, left shoulder coming over the top of his right. He caught himself at the last moment, missed Steve, and pulled himself upright. 

The snow fell harder, drifting on the lids of bins against brick walls, like sea foam from a warmer place. Discarded flyers eddied along the corridor, sweeping in circles along it’s length before becoming trapped, flat out against the mesh of the wire fence blocking the far end. Voices swirled, high pitched screams against the wind, directions shouted for the next bar. The blast of air would be felt from the vents above the doors, pins and needles emerging with the change in temperature. The dreeze persisted in the alley, and Eddie persevered with Steve.

‘Nothing to say, eh, cat got your tongue?’ Eddie said, and put the dollar back in his pocket. ‘Well, you’re not getting this then.’ Eddie spat, straightened, and meandered away, haloed by the lights of Broadway. 

The veteran’s eyes remained frozen open. His hand remained outstretched. He’d been like that for an hour now. Since his heart slowed. Slowed, slowed. Stuttered and stopped.