The Trouble with Felix Nor
The plane pointed east, into a setting sun obscured by brown towers and Felix Nor’s lips protected the thin spaces between his teeth from flying sand. He yanked his bag out of the grip of an eager lieutenant, a waif, a little boy with a pointy hat who will always be little with a pointy hat, Felix believed, because he was 30 and little, still, with a pointy hat. Felix happened to be ashamed of his father, a jeweler, and his racks of pointless stones. Felix believed that’s the root of all combat: the perception of value. Felix did not believe in evil. He believed in greed and he hated that too. But he still did not recognize that the reason he, Felix Nor, felt that he had to fight these fights, why Felix Nor needed to be here, was because he didn’t have the courage to understand why. Here. Iraq. War. It didn’t matter anymore. This was man’s endless scar. This was hell’s vagina, life breathing through a veneer of blood and hope.
The bullet that would kill Felix Nor about two months later came from a handgun held by a boy. The boy would be shot 14 times, fewer than seven seconds after he pulled the trigger on the handgun that would kill Felix Nor. The boy had been promised heaven. The bullet passed high enough through Felix’s face, just below the orbital bone around the eye, that wind would still pass through Felix’s larynx and generate a sigh of defeat. The two officers standing beside Felix Nor would later remark that the noise was like the whimper of a dog but these two officers would only address this troubling interpretation after reconciling the fact they found Felix’s brains on their name tags, using that detail as bait, a foyer to discuss the meddling reality of Felix’s inglorious sonic epitaph.
The boy who had been promised heaven was just a boy. He loved both of his parents even though his father smacked him when he forgot his prayers. The boy had been playing soccer that afternoon with seven other boys, none of which would be shot that day. All of their parents loathed guns, going so far as to help Marines find secret stashes in cellar walls or trapdoors far out in the desert among the vipers. The boy had been promised heaven by a young man who kept a stash that was so secret the Marines and the parents had missed it twice. That day when the Marines arrived, hummers humming, rifles searching, the young man had snuck the handgun to the boy in a soccer ball that appeared inflated and told him to aim for the tallest soldier. That was not Felix Nor. That was one of the officers standing beside Felix Nor. The boy had never fired a gun before.
The person who grieved the boy’s death the most besides his mother was a young girl who always watched him from a pile of rocks when he played soccer. She whispered “I love him” by herself. She had never said this to the boy. She had never said this to anyone. Her face was covered in scars. Men had detonated explosives near her. She had been walking by herself. The men didn’t realize the size of the blast that they’d create and the girl was engulfed by a leaning plume of gravel. This happened many months before the Marines arrived for the first time.
Birds once alighted on the roof of the girl’s home, and the young boy’s too. They were small birds, with grey feathers and black faces and pointy beaks that snatched insects out of the air and in the morning they made little beeps. On some mornings they were quiet, those mornings when the winds swept hot and choked with earth. And when the sun rose over the mountains these little birds watched the long shadows, sweeping swords against the grey-torn ramparts, and these birds cocked their heads, searching for vipers.
Three weeks after the boy was shot 14 times his mother saw the young girl grieving, face in hands, by herself in a broken alley and instinct identified the grief as for her lost son. She stopped. She turned. She walked into the broken alley. Two hummers rolled past, machine guns searching. She put a hand on the girl’s head. A sharp breath halted the girl’s sobs but the girl didn’t look up. She saw the shoes; they were a woman’s. Love is wind and will blow forever, the mother said, even after the most gentle breeze slips through our fingers. The girl asked why God ignored her prayers. The mother was too perceptive to believe in God but too scared to speak otherwise and so she said God’s ways are beyond our understanding. The mother lifted the girl’s chin and rubbed the girl’s scars with her thumb and walked away.
[Caleb Garling writes and edits Shorter Letter and is the author of The St George’s Angling Club, a novel about the outdoors.]
