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Here's how my wife explained it to me: A month ago, late May, she and four soldiers humped the dust toward Pakistan to investigate a low-frequency radio disturbance, even if there was nothing to disturb but sandstone and scrub brush. Really though, she said the desert is full of things you can't imagine—lizards that swim the sand, insects caning along like old men, mountain goats that perform magical ascents, and then, mysteriously, she said, a golden retriever, but it could've been a cougar, even though retriever was what she saw. In the desert your eyes play tricks on you. All those rocks, she said, all that sand, sea-less and busy, grinds its way into your bones, your brain. At first she saw nothing but dazzling emptiness. Then, one day, one-by-one, the rocks stood up and walked off.

She said the outpost was a long way out, farther, in fact, than she thought possible. They drove and drove, the sun burned up the sky. Around noon they stopped at what looked like a once pomegranate grove, now leafless and electric against the tan sandscape. She said they stopped, ate sand sandwiches and drank sand water and walked around staring at the smooth white stones underfoot. It was then, walking, that David, a corporeal with hair like a tarmac, hollered: is this heel or hipbone, he wanted to know. The men gathered round to speculate, passed whatever it was clockwise. Might be a shoulder, someone said, might be anything, another said, who knew bone could gleam like that? Until, finally, it got to my wife—definitely heel, the Calcaneus, she said, adding, the ball of the hip is larger, like an egg. After that the men scattered. They toed the sand at random, and as it turns out those smooth white stones weren't stones at all. My wife said no one spoke for some time. She gassed the Humvee and watched David lift his knees high while he packed it in, picking only sandy spots to step. Then, grit included, they rumbled farther up the valley, distrustful of the white cobble gleaming beside the road.

She said the air stiffened as they climbed, that on the mountainside they breathed glass and spit sand. Someone joked Afghanistan was the world's biggest whip-it, Oh-man-istan, he said, then laughed the oxygen clean out the cabin. Everyone laughed. It was necessary, my wife said, six months in the desert and green grass could be the funniest thing on earth. She said they laughed until they wept, laughed until the boots started showing up, then no one felt like laughing anymore.

Beige army boots, United States issue, same as hers, set in exact increments—one after another, they flanked the road. Corporeal Brand noticed it first. Partially because he drove, partially, my wife said, because he never spoke; reticence made him blade sharp. You see that, he said and slowed the Humvee, every mile, I've been keeping track. And if it didn't before, the glass my wife breathed now crippled her throat. Corporeal Brand went on: and the thing I can't figure out, he said, is why they're pointing west. Sure enough, my wife said, every dust-caked one in a westerly way.

There were other things, too, roadside: scraps of uniform, the glint of bullet casings like gold fillings, bandanas, chocolate bars, a comb, a can of tuna, eight tins of tobacco and four pouches—my wife kept tally in the grit on the window. There were mess kits, tea candles, a hypodermic needle, an entire med-kit strewn like snow. There were speculative things, things that loosened the fit of reality: a twist of wood became a hand; a stand of scrub brush smoke; and then came the man burned into a rock but could've been a shadow—one long arm out, legs together. He might've been gesturing up the road, where, for all they knew, a US platoon held position on a finger's width of stone. But what sucked the air out of my wife were the stacks of girlie magazines, like a low-slung row houses amongst the rock. Why? I wanted to know. Because it was careful, she said, someone had to stack them.

Bravo Company reached the outpost on foot, parked where a rockslide occluded the road and humped a set of narrow switchbacks up the mountainside. She said they carried what they could: M-16s, 9 millimeter on the hip, extra Kevlar, rounds hanging like jewelry, radios, bottled water, a few vials of morphine and a look shared between them—not me, it said, stick that in someone else. My wife carried the Humvee's ignition key for no reason whatsoever, good luck maybe, who knows.

She said it was tough going, but eventually the debris loosened and a roofline cut the sky above. She said "outpost" was too ambitious, more like "lean-to," four posts and corrugated sheet metal, where the outside was inside and the inside nowhere you want to be after dark. In one corner were duffle bags, in the other a crude bench, some stones and a slat of wood. There were shovels and toilet paper and a scrawl of boot prints, and there was a stillness, as if the air went hard. It hardened around them, my wife said, cemented each soldier over their boots. That's when she heard yipping. The sound of what, she said, a dog? Not possible. My wife scanned the perimeter. She almost spoke. Do you hear that? she wanted say, but the men were busy prodding duffle bags with gun barrels.

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