God Lives in St. Petersburg Read Free Page B

Graves. “Any better?”
    Graves dropped his eyes to his open palm. “I was just checking my cell phone again. Nothing.” Some enigma of telecommunications had prevented his Nokia from functioning the moment they crossed into Afghanistan. He tried absently to put away the phone but missed his pocket. Graves stopped and stared at the Nokia, a plastic purple amethyst half buried in the sand. Donk scooped it up and handed it back to Graves, who nodded distantly. Suddenly the sky filled with a deep, nearly divine roar. Their three heads simultaneously tipped back. Nothing. American F/A-18s and F-14s were somewhere cutting through that high blue, releasing satellite- and laser-guided bombs or returning from dropping bombs or looking for new places to drop bombs. Graves shook his head, quick and hard, as though struggling to believe that these jets really existed. Only after the roar faded did they push on, all of them now walking Wizard-of-Oz abreast. Graves still seemed angry.
    “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if all the oil companies and the American military purposefully create these fucking crises to justify launching all those pretty missiles and dropping all these dreadful, expensive bombs. Air Force. Error Farce is more like it.”
    “Coalition troops,” Donk reminded him. “Those could be British jets.”
    “Somehow, Duncan, I doubt that.”
    Donk swigged from his canteen and wiped his mouth with his forearm. Talking politics with Graves was like being handed an armful of eels and then being asked to pretend that they were bunnies. He did not typically mind arguing, certainly not with a European, especially about the relative merits of the Land of the Red, White, and Blue. But Graves did not seem up to it. Donk settled on what he hoped was a slightly less divisive topic. “I wonder if they caught him yet.”
    “They’re not going to catch him. The first private from Iowa to find him is going to push him up against a cave wall and blow a hole in his skull.” Graves seemed unable to take his eyes off his feet.
    “Well,” Donk said, “let’s hope so.”
    Graves looked over at him with lucid, gaunt-faced disappointment. He snorted and returned his gaze to his All-Stars, their red fabric so dusty they now appeared pink. “I can’t believe someone as educated as you would think that’s appropriate.”
    “I’m not that educated.” Donk noted that Graves was practically panting, his mouth open and his tongue peeking over the fence post of his lower front teeth. Donk touched him on the shoulder. “Graves, hey. You really look like you need to rest again.”
    Graves’s reaction was to nod, stop, and collapse into a rough squat, his legs folding beneath him at an ugly, painful-looking angle. Donk handed Graves his canteen while Hassan, standing nearby, mashed some raisins into his mouth. Graves watched a chewing Hassan watch him for a while, then closed his eyes. “My head,” he said. “Suddenly it’s splitting.”
    “Malaria,” Donk said, kneeling next to him. “The symptoms are cyclical. Headaches. Fever. Chills. The sweats.”
    “Yes,” Graves said heavily. “I know. Until the little buggers have clogged my blood vessels. Goodbye, vital organs.”
    “Malaria isn’t fatal,” Donk said.
    Graves shook his head. It occurred to Donk that Graves’s face, which tapered slightly at his temples and swelled again at his jawline, was shaped rather like a foot. “Untreated malaria is often fatal.”
    Donk looked at him evenly. Graves’s thermal underwear top had soaked through. The sharp curlicues of grayish hair that swirled in the hollow of Graves’s throat sparkled with sweat. His skin was shinier than his eyes by quite a lot.
    “Tell me something,” Graves said suddenly. “Why were you so nervous-seeming in Pyanj?”
    Donk sighed. “Because nothing was happening. When nothing is happening I get jumpy.”
    Graves nodded quickly. “I heard that about you.”
    “You did?”
    “That was a