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On the opening page of The
Sandbox Cheap Jerseys
Wholesale , David Zimmermans gripping first novel about the Iraq war, Pvt.
Toby Durrants convoy comes across a dead girl in the road, her body a small
white mound, like a fallen bird. Tobys response is to put this child in the
small cigar box I keep hidden in the back of my head, close its cardboard lid
and snap a couple of rubber bands around it to keep it tightly shut. Just like
Ive done with the rest.
In other words, Toby reacts to the war in the same
way much of America does: he compartmentalizes it. He and his fellow soldiers do
what they can to manage a relentless series of horrors that are better off
concealed in locked boxes, the contents of each sharing a dark relationship to
the others. The exact nature of that relationship, and the possible conspiracy
it hints at, provides the drama that propels this book forward.
Consigned to
one of Iraqs dustier corners as a bottom-rung grunt after being kicked out of
Army Airborne training and flunking out of the Defense Language Institute, Toby
is well versed in the self-deprecating sarcasm of those forced to pretend they
dont care: The captain stares at me. I cant see his eyes behind the
sunglasses Cheap Jerseys
China , just two tiny Durrant heads reflected in the lenses. These Durrant
heads look unhappy and tense.
Like many soldiers, Toby obsesses over the gap
between the good life and the soul-sucking, latrine-dump-burning duties of
low-ranking warriors. After his stateside girlfriend breaks up with him, he
smokes a fine cigar he received from a sympathetic sergeant: The cigar is good.
It tastes like a better life. One I might have had if my parents had taken a
left instead of a right, if I had said no instead of yes, if I had kept my eyes
on the ball, if I had cleaned my plate, brushed my teeth and said my prayers. It
tastes so good I can barely smoke it. The better life makes me choke a
little.
For a character like this, in a war as full of indiscretion,
deception and savage violence as
Iraqs Cheap NFL
Jerseys , there can really be only one destiny: the wrong end of a bad
deal. But Zimmerman has more in mind than merely getting a hard-luck soldier
into trouble. The Sandbox is loaded with an M.R.E. caseful of plot elements, all
pulled from Iraq war headlines lost billions in cash, prisoner interrogations,
soldier indiscretions, failed counterinsurgency plans and all play their part in
bringing Tobys story to its terrible conclusion. That every question in this
novel interrogates every other is one of its great strengths and will keep you
turning the pages of its short chapters, as each weaves the insistent
first-person mystery of Why me? with the larger mystery of What are we doing
here?
The Sandbox is a strong debut even though Zimmermans prose tends toward
the purple (often literally: a find-and-replace on purple would have improved
many of the books landscapes). He can tug a little too hard at the heartstrings,
as when he describes the scenery near a bombed-out toy factory: The road to the
capital is still strewn with dusty pink rabbits and purple bears.
Still, by
aiming too high, Zimmerman often hits the mark. Those burned toys, for
instance Cheap
Jerseys , introduce an affecting story line about a young Iraqi child.
Theres also an interrogation of an old Iraqi, Uncle Insurgent, that stuns even
as it flirts with bathos. The prisoner, so frail there was hardly any hajji
under the robe, makes declarations that sound like a jailhouse letter from
Ulrike Meinhof: I have 10 guns and you call me bandit. You have million guns, so
they call you soldier.
This should be ridiculous if anybodys going to get a
line like that, it should be the tent-corner intellectual you find in every unit
reading a dog-eared copy of Howard Zinn but Zimmermans willingness to risk
melodrama is often matched by his ability to turn it into genuine feeling.
As
The Sandbox comes to a close, Toby learns that wars final revelations are
incomplete and that every bunker confession is in doubt. When an officer gives
his version of the events that have engulfed Toby and his friends in an
apocalypse of death and deceit, Toby says: I dont know whether to believe the
captains entire story, part or none. . . . It sounds too clever by half. Nothing
that happens in this war adds up quite so neatly. I walk back and forth. . . .
One Cheap NFL Jerseys
Wholesale , two, three, four, five. The numbers add up to the same sum
every time. Nothing else in this place does. Its a fitting summary to the
greater mystery and a reminder that the Iraq war is unlikely to have a
conclusion as climactic or satisfactory as Zimmermans novel.
In one of John
Ford and John Waynes best collaborations, the World War II drama They Were
Expendable, Waynes character, Lt. Rusty Ryan, breaks in when his commander
starts to recite the cliche about Theirs but to do And die, Ryan finishes for
him. But I dont want to be bored to death running messages! Toby Durrant, the
honorable wretch of a hero in The
Sandbox Cheap NFL Jerseys
China , dodges a hail of incoming cliches, is never bored running the
messages he bears in locked boxes and learns the hard way that soldiers are
still expendable.