Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers

Author:Walter Dean Myers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2011-12-26T18:53:12+00:00

Sergeant Harris and Jonesy got into a stupid shouting match that almost ended up in a fight. We were watching some cop program, the usual stuff with police dealing with low-level street crime. The cops were picking up prostitutes and Harris said that in a way most women weren’t much more than whores.

“They get a man to support them and then they just sit back and watch television,” he said.

“Yo, man, you got to show more respect than that,” Jonesy said. “Your mama is a woman.”

“No, you got to watch yours,” Harris said. “I’m a sergeant, fool!”

“You also sounding like your brain is AWOL,” Jonesy said. “We over here fighting with women.”

Harris jumped up from where he had been sitting, pushed Jonesy up against the wall, and drew his fist back as if he was going to punch him. I grabbed Harris from the back and spun him around while Victor and Evans jumped in front of him.

“I’ll kill you and that little jerk!” Harris was spitting as he talked.

“Hey, we’re over here together, man,” Evans said.

“You going to grow you some eyes in the back of your head?” Jonesy was still against the locker as he shouted at Harris. “ ‘Cause you’re gonna need them!”

“Why? Why?” Harris balled his fist up again. “You going to sneak up on me? Huh? Huh?”

“No, because your butt is in a combat zone and you going to need somebody to be watching your back,” Jonesy said.

“I don’t need you!” Harris spat on the ground and then pushed by me toward the door.

Nobody said anything. We had all seen it but there wasn’t anything to do but to get over it. I wondered if we would.

“You could report him,” Evans said.

“Or shoot him when he goes to sleep,” I said.

“Let it go,” Jonesy said. “Every dog gets his day.”

We sat around for a while, each of us thinking how we would have handled the situation. I knew that most of us wouldn’t have had to. Harris had picked the smallest dude in the unit to jump on. There was no way he would have done it back in the world.

I hadn’t thought about it much, but Jonesy was right. We needed one another to get out of this war alive. We needed one another and a whole lot of luck.

When Harris came back in, Pendleton told him he was wrong to be hitting a member of our unit.

“You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me?” Harris stood up, glowering at Pendleton.

Pendleton was a big, slow-talking white boy who could have broken Harris in half and everybody knew it. We just waited until Harris got his thirty seconds of showboat time and sat himself down again.

Some of the guys in our unit got along well. The others were okay but they didn’t hang out much. But we were all living through the same things, seeing the same fighting, feeling the same moments of boredom and terror. We were used to looking for one another in the mess tent, and expected to see one another in the mornings.

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