Authors: David Abrams
The chief glared at him. “Don’t get cheeky, PAO.”
“Yes, sir.” Meekly, but still thumping with excitement. “Let me also respectfully remind you, sir, we’re talking about Number Two Thousand here. Do we really want the media to grab hold of this scandal-plagued officer who died in an equally horrific-but-scandalous manner and blow it all out of portion, like we know they will? If we don’t deny this body was ours, then we’ll be spinning until we’re dizzy, sir. I suggest we wait for the next casualty to come along—hopefully, a more noble death, sir—and make that soldier America’s two thousandth. Take the spotlight shine off Captain Shrinkle.”
“Let me think about this.” The chief swiveled around and looked out on the SMOG floor. Only the peak of his polished skull could be seen over the back of the chair. The seconds passed like metronome clicks. Harkleroad’s heart skipped and tripped, caught itself, then came back thudding harder than before. It had been years since he’d put his mind to such compressed, tremendous exertion and now he was feeling a little faint. Plus, he had to pee.
At last, the chief swung back around, gave his PAO a significant look, and said, “You’re right.”
“I-I am, sir?”
Snuffle
.
“Yes, you are. One hundred percent Grade-A undeniably right.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“IT’S THE WORST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF MAN!”
“Sir—?”
“Now get the fuck out of my office and don’t let me see you again unless your fat fingers are holding a file folder containing a plan that doesn’t include global scandal on an idiotic level. You come up here and your hands are empty, I’ll chop ’em the fuck off.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a Swiss Army penknife his father had given him on his fourteenth birthday—the blades now rusty and dull—as proof that he’d carry out his threat to Harkleroad.
“Sir, if I may—”
“ABOUT FACE . . . FORWARD, MARCH!”
Eustace did as ordered and promptly marched into the wall next to the chief’s door. He recovered with a bounce and, cupping his hand over his nose, marched at a good clip down the marbled hallway. He left a trail of nose blood that a Twee contractor named Majid would mop up later that night, wondering what in Allah’s name had taken place here in the former dictator’s palace, what terrible violence had erupted amid the gold water fountains and taxidermied water buffalos to take the life of another man? Majid would cluck his tongue, worried not for the first time about the safety and sanity of his American protectors.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Dispatch from a War Zone, Day 291
Mother,
I’ve been missing you powerfully hard lately. (And Pap-Pap, too, of course.) Most nights I sit on my cot, mortars screaming overhead, the occasional AK-47 round pinging off the reinforced walls of my trailer, and I swear on all that’s holy I can smell your sweet potato casserole baking in the oven all the way over here in Saddam’s former kingdom. I don’t mind telling you, it brings a tear to my eye—and a flood of saliva to my mouth.
Speaking of which, thank you a thousandfold for your latest care package and all those Moon Pies. I immediately put them to good use. And thank the First Redemption ladies for their little treats as well. I am already using their “Jesus Saves” coasters and they look very nice underneath the bottles of Gatorade.
Speaking of which, Gatorade has become my drink of choice over here—especially the Glacier Freeze flavor, which just by its very name does wonders for transporting me away from this crushing heat. I often joke with my subordinates that if I could carry around an IV drip bag full of Glacier Freeze, I would. They all laugh appropriately. I’ve become something of the comedian among my staff since coming over here. I often catch them laughing at something I said when they don’t think I’m looking. It does my heart good to know I have built that kind of rapport with my fellow staff officers.
I guess I owe you an explanation for not writing to you more frequently as of late. The truth is, I’m so terribly, terribly busy, dear Mother. Demands come at me from left, right, north, and south. My schedule is filling up faster than a cop’s belly in a donut shop! This explains, in part, my lack of correspondence with you as of late. That and the fact we are being shelled every other day. But NOT TO WORRY, Mother! I am fine!
I have been spending far more time here at Headquarters than I would have liked. You know me, I’d much rather be out in the thick of things, bullets whizzing past my earlobes, pulling my men through the hot zone with courage and fortitude. But alas, the CG demands I stay put here at the palace where, as he says, my “services” are “vitally needed.” It pains me to surrender all I could be doing out on the battlefield for another round of long, dry, boring, insufferable staff meetings. But, if the Old Man says it must be so, then I have no choice other than to dutifully comply. I don’t want to burden you with too much in the way of fret and ulcers, Mother, but rest assured I am performing up to the very limits of my capabilities here in Baghdad. I long to be out on the streets, pounding the pavement on patrol, but Duty calls and I must answer by remaining at my desk for more hours than I’d like. Fluorescent lights are my trial, cubicles are my tribulation.
Invariably, this means a good deal of staff meetings. Some days, it feels like all we do is talk our way through this war. If only words were bullets, we would have slaughtered the “hajji
bastards” (their words, not mine) a thousand times over. This morning, for instance, we sat around the table—me literally at the CG’s right hand—and talked for hours and hours about the “Shrinkle Situation.” Have I mentioned this particular gnat-in-a-sow’s-ear before? If not, it’s only because it’s been one of those Super-Secret HUSH-HUSH sticky wickets that should go no further than the front entrance of the palace. Even now, my telling you about it is, I am guessing, a breach of some international-level security classification. But not to worry, Mother! I’ve been personally assured by a Major Leipley over in G-6 that personal e-mails are NOT monitored (not like the old days when they used to black out entire sentences with Magic Markers and families on the receiving end couldn’t make heads or tails of what their soldiers were writing to them about). There is no Big Brother here at Headquarters, Major L. tells me. Even so, it would be best to delete this e-mail after reading it. If you have printed it out to read—as I know is your habit—then I suggest you tear it into tiny pieces and eat it. All in the name of National Security, Mother!
Back to Shrinkle: that’s the name of a very unfortunate captain in one of our brigades, a poor fellow who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I tell you that it was the aforementioned Australian pool, then I’m sure you can guess the magnitude of this tragedy. By dipping in the Aussie waters, Captain Shrinkle made this an Incident of Global Proportions.
And that is what we were arm wrestling about at today’s staff meeting, which had been called by a very apoplectic commanding general. I was able to calm him down by reassuring him that word of the incident had not yet reached the media and that I had managed to contain any and all leaks. This calmed the CG down. He even clapped his hand on my shoulder (right there in front of everyone!), called me his hero, and compared me to the Hoover Dam in holding back all the waters of misinformation and gossip. I assured him this was one dam that was never going to crack.
The rest of the meeting proceeded apace for hours on end as we “cussed and discussed” the Shrinkle Incident. G-1 talked about their role in the whole situation, the poor major stumbling and bumbling through his apologies about initial misidentification (they thought our American KIA was a British National!!) and then trying to save himself by reading a three-page report on how they had immediately corrected and un-notified the British parents of a certain Richard Belmouth (a nice, doddering couple from Liverpool who had no idea their son was in a war zone) and how strategic guardrails were being put in place in G-1’s daily operations to ensure this kind of thing would never happen again. G-1 even had a PowerPoint that charted what he called the New and Improved Personnel Notification Process. Snoozeville! Though I did my very best to stifle my yawns in front of the Old Man. A hero never yawns, after all.
After G-1, we went around the table and G-2, G-3, and G-5 all had their chance to chime in. If the poor Captain S. had not already been blown to bits, we would have talked him to death in that room.
I’m sure by now you’re probably wondering what in the glory blazes this “Shrinkle Incident” is all about, aren’t you, dear Mother? Well, as they say in the movies, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
—that was a joke, Mother. Ha ha ha! Of course, I would never DREAM of harming a tender hair on your beautiful head.
But seriously, I really am not at liberty to tell you all the details. Suffice it to say there was a man (Capt. S.) who was fond of engaging in unauthorized activity (swimming) at an off-limits location (the Australian pool), until one day his nefarious habits caught up with him and he fell victim to enemy action (ka-BOOM! ker-SPLAT!). The fallout has been potentially disastrous but, as I told the Old Man in the meeting today, I have managed to avoid and avert (that’s my new motto: Avoid and Avert) any mention of this in the press. That’s why you won’t be reading or hearing about this particular black eye any time soon (or EVER, if I have my way). Captain Shrinkle is being laid to rest in two days and so, too, I hope, will the rumors surrounding his demise.
I’m sorry to be so obscure about this, Mother. Rest assured, I will tell all when I return, cupping my hand and whispering in your ear. Until then, please NOT A WORD of this to Jim Powers at the
Murfreesboro Free Press
or the ladies at First Church of Redemption. This is just our little globally proportionate secret.
Your ever-loving son,
Stacie
31
GOODING
From the Diary of Chance Gooding Jr.
When it happens, I’m in my hooch, lying on my bed in my underwear. I’ve fully recovered from the Great Bloodletting Incident of 2005 but in some respects I still feel drained. Lethargic, depressed, sparked out. We’re so close to going home—the word “redeployment!” tolls like a bell, distant but clear—that the thought of it binds me with fear. I’m certain I won’t make it to the end, but that the end will come for me instead.
Redeployment is like the slip of paper in a fortune cookie. What are the chances of “You are about to stumble into great wealth” happening? Slim to none. The chances of you walking out of the Snapdragon Chinese Restaurant and stumbling off the curb into oncoming traffic? Confucius say, “Chances are good.”
These days, I’m trying not to think of Captain Shrinkle and his sad demise but it’s impossible. He keeps coming back to me again and again. I only met the guy once, but now all I can think about is him floating in that Qatar pool on R&R. I want to go back in time, throw down my book, jump in that pool, grab his hand, and pull him out of there, out of Qatar, out of the war zone entirely. It would be like a Medal of Honor heroism nobody knew about. Saving one man’s life from the death that waited for him to step off the curb.
But I didn’t. I just sat there with
Catch-22
in my hands, watching him float on the water, his hands fluttering at his sides, swimming toward his future.
So anyway, today I’m here in my hooch, partaking of my daily half hour of reading before I go to breakfast, then on to the fourteen-hour shift at the grist mill of Army Public Affairs. This time,
Don Quixote
is in my hands.
I’m in the midst of highlighting a passage with a neon-yellow pen—
Fictional tales are better and more enjoyable the nearer they approach the truth or the semblance of the truth
—when it happens. The sky splits with a scream and a bone-buzzing explosion shakes my trailer. The cheap wood-grain paneling creaks and cracks from the concussion and the sound is so loud and startling it’s like someone punched my heart.
I toss
Don Quixote
aside and sit up, completely uncertain what I should do. I’m in my underwear and slippers. Should I get fully dressed in battle rattle, grab my M16, and run outside to see what happened? Or should I just throw on my T-shirt and shorts and poke my head out the door to, as LTC Harkleroad is fond of saying, get “situational awareness”?
I opt for the latter.
I look up and down the gravel lane running through our trailer city, fully expecting to see the headquarters building smoking from where a mortar punched through the roof. Several other half-dressed soldiers have also stepped out onto their porches, blinking in the early-morning light. We scan the sky for black smears of smoke. When we don’t see anything, we look at each other, shrug, and go back into our rooms.
I pick up Cervantes and start reading again. Less than thirty seconds later, another sharp boom shakes Trailer City, and another one forty-five seconds after
that.