Chapter two: In Which the Father Boxes and Hawkeye Watches
B.J. was jerked from his blissful unconsciousness by the raucous bleating of a jeep, which he mentally damned to hell before accepting his miserable army-issue fate and swinging his legs out of the cot.
"Hey, Hawk," he said, to no reply.
"Hawk?"
He cracked open one sleep-encrusted, hangover-weighted eyelid only to see the cot next to him stark naked, devoid of its usual inhabitant. Pardoning himself for staring, then slapping himself for talking to a cot, he poured himself into a pair of pants and stumbled out of the Swamp.
Wincing against the sunlight, he spied Hawkeye across the compound sitting on a stack of wooden supply crates talking to himself. Taking things as they came, B.J. ambled over to the base of the mound, realizing as he grew closer that Hawkeye was in fact talking to Father Mulcahey, who beating the stuffing out of his punching bag, and not to himself. This was rather disappointing, for mild insanity usually promised an eventful day, especially if it was Hawkeye's mild insanity. Nevertheless he drew himself together and hollered a skyward greeting.
Shielding his eyes from the sun, Hawkeye squinted. "Hey! Beej! Come up here!"
At a loss for an alternative means of passing the time, B.J. complied, his lanky frame giving him more difficulty than he'd anticipated in reaching the top of the crate-stack.
"Fabulous view, isn't it," Hawkeye proclaimed, throwing an arm around him in what B.J. assumed to be a gesture of their incredibly close and chummy colleague, comrade, and buddy status.
B.J. looked around at the fabulous view. A pile of sun-scorched tires emitting enough fumes to sedate a horse, some brown hills, all the potentially lush life around them dried and yellowed by the heat, a rock, some dirt, some dust, and a prostitute.
B.J. thought the view was garbage, and said as much.
Hawkeye's attention was elsewhere. The Father's mitts thumped relentlessly against the bag, which issued forth a defeated puff of dust with every blow. He pulled back for another punch, back muscles shifting like iron cords under velvet skin. Hawkeye was riveted.
"He does throw a pretty good punch, doesn't he?" said B.J.
Hawkeye started. "Oh, I wouldn't know... I'm no boxing fan."
B.J.'s nostril's flared and he thought unsavory suspicious thoughts.
"Then why were you watching him?"
Hawkeye's eyes were back on Father Mulcahey. "Why shouldn't I have been," he mumbled distractedly, picking his nose, "he throws a pretty good punch, after all."
Very suspicious thoughts indeed.
He needed a plan.
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To be continued...