My editor and I are again fighting. My editor drinks too much coffee and she gets enervated because it's like a thousand chapters later and she still has to cut out an average of 500 words per chapter and I still fight to keep each one and in the end I have to agree the 500 words that she took out will not be missed. I'm sorry I'm so pigheaded editor. You are right. Oh yeah and I don't own, I borrow. Don't borrow my words though'cause I'm still kinda touchy about all the nails I've broken typing up this thing.
Silas sat on his cot feeling anything but fresh or clean. It didn't help matters that the cot was sticky with bug spray or that he'd gone through a whole bar of soap and he still smelled like the pyrethrum in 'Rid.' He pulled clean sheet out his laundry bag, cracked open his foot locker to return the rest of his freshly washed, lice-free belongings to their proper place and pulled the sleeping pills from the second box of shampoo before putting it away. The pills looked insignificant in his hand and he pushed two through the foil backing and put them under his tongue until his mouth filled with the bitter taste of the stuff that would actually put him to sleep. He spit them out and ground them on the plywood with a rubber flip-flop.
It would be another couple of hours before his three tent mates were due to return and he lay back on the hard cot with headphones around his ears and The Count of Montecristo for a pillow. Falling asleep without thinking was tricky and it kept getting harder every day so he welcomed the heaviness in his eyelids and fell into a shallow, restless sleep that was still, he told himself, sleep.
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"Sergeant are you sleeping?" Pvt. Frank Dumphy asked poking his head into the lion's den. Being pest free had been excellent for spirits but done little good where timing was concerned.
"Not now," Silas replied after a minute's deliberation. He had almost an hour until reveille.
"Sorry Sergeant. Captain Harms needs someone to pull security to Camp Diamondback but Alpha Company can't spare anyone…"
"Shut up soldier," Sgt. Murphy yelled pulling a pillow over his head.
"Until ten and she doesn't have enough ice to wait that long," Dumphy finished in a softer voice. "The Count of Montecristo," he added loudly catching a glimpse of the thousand page Monster Silas dropped in his footlocker as he pulled out his shaving kit.
"I said shut up goddamnit or I'm gonna shut you up," Sgt. Murphy yelled sitting up on his cot. Silas walked outside with Dumphy.
"All right Sergeant, I didn't know you read," the latter said standing beside SSgt. Silas as he set up shop before the bank of mirrors outside the latrine. There was only one other person already shaving.
"Well Dim, it all started when I got hooked on phonics." Silas rubbed shaving gel on his face. "Are you gonna stand there to make sure I don't get a boo-boo?"
"Oh, right. I thought maybe I could tell Captain Baron we'll pull security for Capt. Harms. I know it's a free day and everything but they go to all these shantytowns to treat kids free of charge and a bunch of the meds will spoil if they have to wait too long."
"That's kinda the point of Civil Affairs Dim," Silas said shaking hair and foam from his razorblade, "but I'm in anyway and don't go volunteering your lily ass to anyone without checking with me first."
"How'd you know I already volunteered Sergeant?"
"Must be that ESP acting up again," he said glaring at Pvt. Dumphy through the mirror.
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"Can I have your spice cake?"
"No way dude, it's the only thing on this plate worth eating." Capt. Jerusalem Harms slapped her bother's hand away and cradled the pale disputed cake protectively in her palm as her security detail wandered in dressed, shaved and sleep deprived. She washed down a bite of spice cake with the semi-decent coffee in her cup and motioned for lieutenants Glass and Berro to move down the bench as SSgt. Silas approached a table tray in hand. "Get your men Sergeant, let's break bread together." She patted the seats beside her and added sing-song "I have Ding Dongs."
"Since you are giving up ping-pong and internet access," she said pulling out about a dozen pictures from a pocket in her vest, "here's what your sacrifice helps forge." She split the pictures more or less evenly in fives. "Pass them around." One by one each stack of photos got picked up. Pvt. Dumphy looked at the three photos in his hands, grimy children with none of Eddy's healthy glow; a little girl getting her first ever pair of shoes; a woman crying as sacks of lentils and flour were dropped off at her door; school-age kids lined picking out toys and school supplies from bags on the floor.
"What's this one?" Pvt. King asked showing her a picture of a handsome, dark skinned teenage boy smiling against a blue sky with no apparent good deed about him. He passed down the rest of his pictures.
"That's Sharif," Capt. Jericho Harms replied. "He's showing off his new dentures."
"Dentures Sir?"
"He had scurvy as a kid. He didn't have any teeth by 1999 so we put him in touch with an NGO in Baghdad that gets dentists to come in and donate dentures for non-emergency patients. That was his final fitting. I think he was smiling for a month."
Jerusalem put a wrapped box on the table. She pulled the undershirt from around the package and sighed at the sight of the box of Ding Dongs. The awe was almost unanimous. She pulled the tabs on one end and pulled two of the individually wrapped cupcakes. She pocketed one and opened the other then passed the box to her 2nd Lieutenant. Each man took a cupcake and the chatter died as they peeled the rare treats and revered them with silence. SSgt. Silas bit a corner of cellophane absentmindedly as he looked at all the pictures that had been passed down to his end. He saw the barefoot kids playing soccer, the crying mother, Sharif, the presidential palace in Baghdad, its gardens overrun with local orphanage children diving in and out of the pool.
He dropped the fifth picture on top of the others and shoved the whole chocolate cupcake in his mouth. The shot was iconic, Pulitzer grade. The sky in the background was a jarring blue and the polling station midplane slightly out of focus with a line of people winding several times around it. In first plane, Jamila was making a peace sign with her right hand. Her index finger was stained bright purple to the first joint and her round green eyes were lit with a hundred watt smile that made her look out of place in the arid bareness of her surroundings. He swallowed the dry chunk of cake in his mouth and turned the picture on its face not daring to double check if it was really Jamila or if he'd just imagined her in someone else's place.
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Capt. Harms watched from Baron's tent as her brother helped load the littler with Lt. Hunter into the back of her ambulance.
"He'll be a new man in a week," she said noticing that Baron had stretched his neck to breaking point to see the loading and unloading process. He didn't voice his immediate thought of 'keep him,' but Jerusalem heard it in the involuntary twitch of his shoulders. She picked up a pen from the desk, scribbled a name and rank on the outside of a sealed manila envelope and tossed Baron the left-over breakfast Ding-Dong. His face lit up at the sight of chocolate. Harms threw her package on one of the mail bins Baron's secretary was sorting out by squad. The man looked up at his commanding officer unsure of what to do about the package and let it go when Baron nodded his approval. He looked at the writing for cues:
SSGT Christopher Silas
B/ 1-30 INF REGT
APO AE 09319
Harms drained a water bottle and shook Capt. Baron's hand before reapplying enough sunscreen to sit in a microwave unscathed. She put on her sunglasses and patted her vest to double check everything from maps, the radio and the extra magazines for her holstered sidearm were in their proper places before setting out. She fastened the straps of her radio's headset to fit comfortably over her forehead and strapped her bulky helmet on top, wishing as fervently as always that whoever had invented seedless watermelons came out with lighter armor before she needed to wear a protective gear again.
"All right, it's road-trip time," she said to the men gathered in the shade of the ambulance from which her brother looked on. "We'll be together as far Camp Marez. You'll all be back to your tents by lunch. I'm driving the truck, Lt. Berro you are coming with me. Capt. Harms will be keeping an eye on Lt. Hunter in the ambulance and Lt. Glass you are driving him. I need two volunteers in the back of the truck to keep an eye out and hand out candy if we see a lot of kids, so Pfc. Nassiri who else is going to volunteer with you?" Tariq laughed, took a step forward and shook his head. Pvt. King joined him. "Thank you very much gentlemen let's roll time's a wasting."
"You know what this is missing Berro?" She asked wiping her forehead as she followed the ambulance making a u-turn south towards Mosül.
"What that ma'am?"
"A little Robert Johnson and a fucking AC."
"Remember your New Year's resolution ma'am."
"Which one?"
"You were gonna try not so say 'fuck' so much ma'am." 2nd Lt. Berro said laughing.
That's all for today folks!
Thy Author.
