CH.6 — Remember To Use That Front Sight

I zeroed my rifle this morning.

Was there cheating? Of course.

Do I care? Of course not.

Using the prone-supported position from the 25-meter range, we must fire three rounds inside the space of a half-dollar. It signals the fact that our sights are adjusted and we’re ready to kill people from farther out.

I was unable to achieve such a tight shot group. Not on the sixth try. Not on the ninth try. I’d either forget to use the front sight, or get so nervous the barrel went up and down like a yo-yo.

Three rounds into a basketball, maybe, but nothing involving coinage.

Even Skebo got the job done. I was the only bolo in the platoon.

Each time you fire three rounds at the paper target, you have to connect them with a pencil so those shots don’t get mixed up with previous rounds. All gunmen have № 2 pencil-bearing spotters to make sure there’s no hanky-panky. Mine was a straight arrow from Delta Platoon. He walked the 25 paces with me every time, and made sure I marked off the correct group of three. Then I trudged back to the firing spot, my spirits lower than the sandbags.

Waldspurger watched all this from the tower. One of his boys was going down. Must come to the rescue.

He whispered something to my goonie, and the kid double-timed to the other side of the range. Ya become my new grader. He grinned broadly when he stood over my shoulder.

“Waldspurger says shoot ’em up and don’t worry ‘bout nothin’.”

Now I’m smiling. There’s been a change in the procedure. Same target, same M-16, same pathetic shooter. But we aren’t going to play the circle game any more. I will keep firing until three rounds — any three rounds — are close enough for government work. It only takes a few minutes for a shot I just fired to be inside the same half dollar as two shots I fired earlier in the morning.

“He did it,” Ya screamed after connecting the bullet holes.

Waldspurger examines the paper target and smiles.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” he says, winking at me.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Several guys from the platoon have been to the NCO Club a mile or so from the barracks. I’m definitely curious about the place and considered asking Skebo if he wants to go with me. But that would be friend-like and I don’t do friend-like. So I go by myself.

The ancient building is painted white, proof of its decadence. It’s like the land the Pentagon forgot. Guys with rank are walking up the steps beside guys who got here four weeks ago. The screen door has a hole in it and nobody is assigned to fix it. The butt can on the porch is overflowing and nobody is emptying it.

The bread man is struggling under the weight of three boxes. He’s wearing wing tips, the first I’ve seen since the airport. He leaves this place after the last delivery. He could bring news of the outside world. I think about slipping a note under his windshield wiper. Are any more senators flashing the peace sign? Is Newsweek still being printed? Has Nixon heard of the Kinks yet?

Inside the NCO Club, there’s more beer than I’ve ever seen in my life. By comparison, The Greek’s back at school is a water cooler.

It’s the measure of a man how many cans are at his table. Waitresses pick up napkins, plates and silverware, but leave the empties.

At several tables, the cans are stacked three-high. Some guys drink in groups, but many rest their heads above crossed arms like first-graders at nap time. Others put their hands behind their heads, lean back and look up as if waiting further instructions.

Some stare angrily at their empty cans, ready to sweep them aside if the things make a false move.

One such fellow puts his chin on the table. Several basic trainees have gravitated his way. Word trickles out that this guy is just back from Vietnam and still wound jelly tight. Comes here every night. Drinks two six-packs in less than an hour. He looks like he’s passed out, but every sensor in his body is lit up. Ears on full alert, eyes darting, neck veins throbbing.

Some nights, we’re told, he just sits there and twitches. Nobody gets anywhere near him for fear he’ll go off. Other nights, he raises his head and talks as pleasantly as Bob Barker.

The RAs get the closest. They want to know what they’ve got coming.

“Uh, you’ve been in ‘Nam,” the bravest of the group pipes up. “What’s it like?”

The vet orders another beer with an arch of an eyebrow.

“I’m 19 years old, man. Flew into Cam Ranh Bay on commercial. It’s like we were on vacation. Stewardesses laughing it up and giving out free drinks. One guy puts his hand up a dress. Like, what are they going to do to him?

“Cherry-boys, that’s what the new ones are called. They put me in a forward observation unit in the bush near Chu Lai. Elephant grass so high you had to hack your way through. Leeches all over the places. One hundred twenty degrees in that jungle. You move, you sweat. Our mission was to draw enemy fire and then call in artillery to take it out. We had another name for what we were doing. You know what it was?”

Nobody says a word. We don’t feel worthy.

He jumps out of his chair.

“I asked you a question, motherfuckers,” he screams. “What do you think that name was?”

Scared silence.

“Bait. They expected us to stay out 72 hours at a time. We’d snort this stuff that was like speed. It looked like powdered mustard and made you throw up your socks, but you kept awake. The VC would pass by on the trail, and we were so close we could smell the fish on their breath.

“I get flashbacks all the time,” he continues. “My buddy was hit and I almost shot the medic because he treated someone else first. Another buddy got both legs blown off and he’s gasping for air. I take hold of his arm to steady him and it comes off in my hand. Guy looks at me one last time and dies.”

He says he’s tried to commit suicide twice since coming back to the States.

“Put the .45 in my mouth. You gotta do it quick. Can’t swallow. You feel when you swallow. That makes you want to put the gun down. Just hold your breath, set your jaw and pull the trigger. But I swallowed. Both times.”

Flashback Man says he almost killed a full-bird colonel a week ago.

“I was driving a Jeep and the little motherfucker comes up behind me at the stoplight. I didn’t pull away fast enough to suit him so he blows his horn. I’ve always had a bad temper and Vietnam just made it worse. I jump out of the Jeep, grab my service revolver and put it against his ear. Swear I could smell him shitting his pants. He didn’t want no part of me. Turned around and drove the other way.”

He says the heavy raindrops of a summer shower sound like incoming groundfire. The burning of wet leaves smells like Vietnam and sends him ducking for cover.

“The VC gutted one of our guys so bad you couldn’t tell what was flesh and what was ground. Made me crazy-mad. I rang up and said there was a sniper in this village and he needed to be taken out. I knew there were women and children, but fuck ’em. Artillery came in and that was that. Everybody told me what a good job I did.”

Someone asks if he remembers when he killed his first VC.

“Gook’s lying dead, thanks to me, with his guts in a pile and I see this little bag he’s got around his neck. I open it up and here’s this picture of little girls. His, I guess. I didn’t give a shit. The motherfucker shouldn’t have been in my way. I threw the picture in the hole they buried him in.”

One night he won’t be served his 12th beer, or somebody will ask how he killed his 95th VC, or he’ll imagine there’s a sniper behind the jukebox. It’ll take a platoon of MPs in riot gear just to make him put down the pool table. There’ll be more casualties than at two firefights and a siege. This man is the monstrous creation of the Joint Chiefs’ secret laboratory. Done their bidding. Deflected bullets. Stomped trip wires. His war is over. Now what are they going to do with him?

Flashback Man puts his head back down on the table, the signal he’s checked out of our world and gone back in his.

The spectators disperse. I notice Ya in the rear. He comes over.

“I saw a guy just like that back home when I was on the Rescue Squad,” he says. “He couldn’t kill hisself, so he kept trying to get somebody else to do the job for him. Put a knife to a clerk’s throat at the Montgomery Ward. Got jail time for it. Then a week after he got out, guy stretches out naked on the railroad tracks. Train came and he snapped out of it. Rolled over and almost broke his dick on a crosstie. They finally said he was tetched and sent him off.”

Ya takes a drag on his cigarette.

“You know what that man back there wants somebody to do, don’t you?”

I shake my head.

“Shoot him. Blow him out of this world and into the next. Bound to be a better place.”

I’m forgetting who I’m with. Like Skebo and the others I’m the most familiar with, we’re ERs. Four months active duty and back home. Defender of our nation’s honor one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.

Like the mindless gook-slayer, Ya is RA.

“I thought I was gonna be a hero like the pictures in the magazines,” he says. “I thought it would be like pulling somebody out of a burning car, but better. Whip everybody who gives the U.S.A. the finger. Prove we got the best soldiers in the world. Then I see that nutball back there and I say, shit, it ain’t worth turning into that.”

I think of the unfairness of it all. Army Reserve and National Guard folks know the right people downtown. A wink and a nod and we’ll never be down range of anything more dangerous than an empty beer truck.

But men like Ya, who took industrial arts instead of trigonometry, are going to Southeast Asia. No pissing around at the reserve meeting for them. They’ll be in rice paddies with mud up to their ass, and praying their next step won’t get them put in a body bag.

“Do you wish you were a weekend warrior like me?” I ask.

“Wouldn’t work,” he grins. “I ain’t smart. You smart.”

Smart shouldn’t have anything to do with it. Ya is a man and, relatively speaking, so am I. Both our asses ought to be up for grabs. I shouldn’t get out of Vietnam because my dad is more tuned-in than his dad.

But I’m not going to petition anybody’s court to change the rules. I want to write. Find a woman who’ll have me. Raise a bunch of baseball players. I can’t do that if I’m dead. Or insane.

Sorry, Ya, but better you than me. It’s not my fault you picked up a copy of Look Magazine one day and wanted to be like the gung-ho grunt on the cover with vines in his helmet who jumps off the Huey giving a Rebel yell.

“It don’t be bother me none, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ya says.

“What doesn’t bother me?”

“That I’m going and you ain’t.”

“It should bother you.”

Another grin.

“I couldn’t do the college shit. I’d flunk panty raid.”

I start to say that’s not part of the core curriculum, but hold off.

“And you can’t do Army.”

Ya’s got that right. I’ll flunk bolt-carrier group and everything that comes after it. Compared to that, he’ll be tapped into the Fort Leonard Wood National Society.

I can conjugate verbs. I get to go home.

Ya would rather go squirrel-hunting. He gets the window seat to Cam Ranh Bay.

I want this to be wrong. I want everybody to be vulnerable. Verb guys and squirrel guys.

But I want an asterisk by my name. An official exception. A special case.

Smart? OK, yeah, I’m smart.

I can live with that.

Dear Mom,

Here’s a partial list of the things I’m screwing up on:

Shooting. I keep forgetting to use the front sight. The range cadre say I’m missing the targets by as much as Rhode Island.

The buffing machine. I never used one before and it shows. I get the ride of my life every Sunday night when we wax the bay. Last week, the thing ran me into Skebo’s bed frame and it hurt really bad.

Breaking the M-16 down and putting it back together fast enough to suit them. I’m almost always the last guy in the platoon to get all the pieces in place, and that’s with my two roommates — Skebo and Carouthers — helping. DI Haddox is aware of this shortcoming and screams at me on a daily basis.

Skebo is known as Mr. Grocery Store Man. They let you have a drawer for personal stuff and his is filled with potato chips of every description, Fig Newtons and little boxes of Sugar Pops. Troops come around for handouts and Skebo is generous to a fault. He doesn’t like idiot Peavey. Nobody does. But a little while ago he let the kid take his last bag of spicy barbecue.

Mom, I’ve never met someone so unselfish. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. If there was a mayor of Alpha Platoon, it would be Skebo. Hands down.

When I ask why is cares so much about other people, Skebo says he is simply applying the principles of life at the commune where he lives.

Where is he right now? A couple of men in the unit can barely read. Skebo is helping them write letters home.

The other fellow, Carouthers, is OK, too, though I didn’t think so at first. He talked tough, acted tough, even snored tough.

But the Army put us in the same mixing bowl. In between marching and shooting, we learned about being black and he learned about being white. Wary turned to tolerant. Tolerant became understanding. Understanding got to, “I’m headed to the PX. You need anything?”

Other than a brief outburst when I turned the volume down on “Shaft,” we’ve gotten along fine. Just don’t touch his head. He hates that.

We’ve played basketball together. Helped my footlocker pass inspection together. Ragged on Haddox together. It’s like every day Carouthers wakes up, sees that we’re just a couple of career Caucasians and scrapes off another layer of veneer.

You’ll like this, Mom. Remember how I wouldn’t eat unless each food group was in its own individual area on the plate? Absolutely no brown bean juice running into the creamed corn. No broccoli parts infiltrating the massed potatoes.

Remember how I’d construct a little fort with my silverware and make you pour all the tapioca pudding on that side of the plate and that side only?

Well, no more.

We eat lunch at the rifle range most days, and that means the cooks have to set up a field kitchen. The food’s not that great when it’s prepared on home turf. Take it on the road and your stomach’s really going to churn.

We eat breakfast around 5:30 a.m. I’m starved by 10. I swear I could eat triggers. Add some tracer rounds. Make a great stew.

And how is lunch served?

Why, on paper plates, of course.

And what is the consistency of said paper plates?

About the same as the lace doilies on Granny’s living room chair.

So here’s what we have:

Famished troops holding plates we can almost see through. Cooks doling out chow that makes up for what it lacks in taste by being scalding hot. Food Group C is piled on top of Food Group B which has already deflowered by Food Group A. Lunch a la heap.

We have maybe 20 seconds to eat before the meal burns through to the ground. Guys chow down face first like dogs. No compartments. No pride. If it gets in your cap, you can always scrape it into your mouth on your own time.

When I get home, I will not require silverware or even a plate. Just put my supper in a trough and I’ll be fine.

That’s about it from your Missouri correspondent. Please write. I get as much mail as a World War 1 barracks orderly.

Love.

Me.

Dear Aunt Polly,

Thanks for writing. I know we haven’t seen each other in 15 years, but it’s great to get a letter.

I talked with one of my roommates, Skebo, today while we were cleaning our rifles. I mentioned him in my previous missive — the hippie who was living in a commune until the Army upended his life.

His place of residence is called The Farm. Its leader is a guy named David who looks a little like Santa Claus. Everybody in the settlement gets $10 a week in spending money. The roots of the group go back to Venice Beach in California in 1968. Seekers of all kinds — rock ’n’ rollers, environmentalists, radical politicians and even a few praise-God worshipers — started hanging out together. David was the only one who could pull everybody together. He could hum Grateful Dead lyrics. He could fix the generator. He could preach about man’s inner soul. If a child had an earache, he knew to get some amoxicillin. If somebody acted out, he knew how to call him an ego-mongering jerk-off.

David found 2,000 cheap acres of land in rural North Carolina. Went before the yokel powers that be and assured them that just because he has a beard, that doesn’t mean he’s crazy. Put his VW van down as collateral and The Farm was born.

David’s slogan, Skebo says, is “We Be Brethren.” Some members never finished high school. Others have college degrees. Some have TV sets in their living quarters. Others consider them the most worthless of inventions. The people who clean up at the bakery are no less important than the teachers at the village school where Skebo worked.

Religion is only an option. There are no regular worship services.

David emphasizes that there are no Joneses to keep up with. Nobody to impress. No social ladder to climb.

Skebo begged David to say or do something that would get him out of the service, but the head man refused. Asked Skebo if he signed up for the military. Skebo said, well, yes. Asked if it was his own free will. Skebo said it was either join the reserves or go to Vietnam. David said that’s not the point and asked again if anyone forced Skebo to sign on the bottom line. Well, no.

The big three with David is harmony, collectivism and honesty. The verdict was in. Skebo told the Pentagon he was coming. Thus, he would arrive at the appointed time.

Skebo whined for days. Then one day a group was replacing Skebo’s canvas roof with a tin one. David walked by. As is his way, he grabbed a hammer and started pounding. Skebo took the opportunity to say, OK, I’ll go to the Army, but I refuse to be good at it.

“Couldn’t have said it any better myself,” David replied.

Skebo talks to me about the common treasury, and the no private ownership of property, and midwives delivering babies right and left. He’s trying to teach me village ways, but it’s slow going. I know comparative economics. He knows Adzuki beans.

If you know someone who can shoot, send him my way. Talk with you later.

Garret

Dear Uncle Mac,

You’ve always been pretty cool so I’m going to tell you a couple of things I haven’t shared with anyone else.

Carouthers had some marijuana mailed to him and was dying to fire it up. But a troop can’t just decide on his own to toke a number. The DIs would put him away until he gets so old he’ll forget where to put it.

So we had to work as a team to make sure one of our players could get high.

Carouthers went inside the stall. Ya stood watch by the stairs in case the CQ decided to make rounds. Skebo took the guard post outside the bathroom door. I was the inside man. If Skebo gave the signal, I was to create a diversion by pretending to have convulsions. By the time the CQ pulls my tongue out of my throat, Carouthers should have ample time to de-toke.

We’re coming together, Uncle Mac. Except for some of the RAs, we hate the Army. Hate most of the DIs other than Waldspurger who’s a saint in OD clothing. But we’re like the guys at the Rescue Mission. Nobody’s holding any more than anybody else. Nobody’s got a nicer place to stay. Nobody’s got a fur-lined footlocker. And all our asses are up for grabs.

Not that long ago, Carouthers would have done the number by himself. We weren’t about to put ourselves in harm’s way just so he could see the primary colors in Cinemascope.

But we’ve done pushups together. Ran back from the rifle range together. Listened to Haddox say we’re all a bunch of shiftless cocksuckers together. Been told there aren’t enough balls in our platoon to fill a Petri dish together.

We’ve developed our own code of conduct.

Do what you have to do to pass basic, but nothing extra. Don’t give yourself an easier path by making it harder on someone else. If the troop besides you comes up short, prop him up and hope the DIs don’t notice.

I’ll have no problem passing the PT requirements. The other day, I ran a mile in 5:50 which was the sixth fastest of the entire company. I can do 48 bent-leg sit-ups in a minute which puts me in the top 10 percent. I’m better than average at the inverted crawl and the run, dodge and jump. My only weak link is the parallel bars, but strong scores in the other events will pull me through with room to spare.

There’s also what they call the G-3 proficiency test. Can I pretend to split a broken leg? Can I read a map? Can I remember what was said in all the stupid classes while I was trying not to fall asleep?

Yes, yes, and hell, yes. If I can get a “B” in money and banking, I can nail any test they have out here.

I’m not having much trouble with morning inspections.

For one thing, they’re not as important as they used to be. Alpha Platoon rarely scores higher than third over Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo. So what if we fall out for chow behind the more competent folders and polishers? The food is crap so why should we be first to get to it?

It’s also true that some training days last from 10 minutes after the lights come on until 10 minutes before they go out again. There simply isn’t time to create display cases with our footlockers and bunks and they know it.

When there is time in the schedule for arranging things just right, I get help from Carouthers. I know it sounds silly, but it’s like our quality time together. We talk about race relations and civil rights legislation. By the time we get to the freedom riders, my shit is not only with the program, it’s riding herd.

Four Corners is a whorehouse a few miles off post in Waynesville. The company commander said we shouldn’t go there. Last weekend was the first time we could leave the post. Guess what? A lot of us went there.

Let the record show I was not among them. I played basketball and was the only player wearing fatigue pants to score more than 10 points. Haddox said we would never need shorts out here and should send all that civilian stuff home. I made the mistake of believing him. Ever tried to defend the post in trousers?

Ya is my source on Four Corners. He says it’s like any other sleazy beer joint except there are more than a dozen trailers out back where the girls live. Nothing happens until a troop starts spending money, either on drinks or 8-ball. The signal is given and women magically appear and start rubbing against you. Fifteen dollars for 15 minutes. No haggling. You could be Tab Hunter or have one big eye in the center of your forehead. Doesn’t matter. Strictly cash and carry.

Ya’s babe had so much makeup that he almost had an allergic reaction while they were doing it. And about that particular part of her anatomy, Ya says he felt like a single-pump gas station trying to service a fleet of Peterbilts.

That’s all I have. See you down the road.

Garret

Dear Dad,

You would have been proud of me earlier this week. You’ve always wanted me to be a tough guy, and most of the time I’ve let you down. Flailing away at my fellow man usually isn’t my thing.

But let me tell you about pugil-stick competition. They give you this three-foot Q-tip padded at either end that’s supposed to simulate a rifle without bullets. You’re fired your entire clip, but the bad guys just shrugged it off. They’re coming at you, and all you’ve got to stop them with is the rifle.

For 15 minutes, the cadre guy demonstrated the basic high-low hits to the face and groin. They put helmets on us as well as diaper-like outfits to protect our privates. Then it was gladiator time. The DIs sat back like they were on thrones.

Most of Alpha Platoon’s college crowd agreed that turning into barbarians was beneath us. We’ll volunteer to do battle, but just play patty-cake with each other until the DIs get bored and call on fresh meat who hadn’t signed non-aggression pacts.

Count me in, I replied.

But that was before my other pair of boots got gigged again for lack of shine, and before I got dropped for missing formation because my galoshes fell off the pistol belt and I couldn’t get them back on, and before Commode № 2 was found to have a pubic hair that I failed to remove.

The humiliation was just beginning. After lunch, Litton inspected our M-16s for cleanliness of bore. He looked at mine and I thought he was going to blow chow. He said my weapon looked like a furnace, and if it exploded in my face, I was just getting what I deserved. He ranted at some other troops, but I was his whipping boy for a good five minutes.

I got really, really mad for the first time since I’ve been here. Enough screwing up. I decided I was going to be good at something by the end of the day. And not in personal-hygiene class either. Something physical. I was going to beat the daylights out of something or somebody.

And guess what was the next thing on the agenda, Dad?

Pugil sticks.

This was my big chance. No smarts required. No common sense. All I had to do was wield the thing like a psychopath who hadn’t taken his medicine in three years, and I could finally get an “A” in something.

They paired me up against Lucas, a guy I barely knew from one of the other platoons. As per our arrangement, he tapped me on the side of the helmet. You ring a doorbell harder. I pretended his head was a watermelon. Bam! He went down like a football wide receiver who ran into the goal post.

Did I care that I might have given him a concussion? No. I stomped the arena floor like a bull that gets extra oats for each matador it takes out.

“Bring on the next (bad word),” I screamed.

The DIs stopped slipping grapes into their mouths and took notice. This was the new, improved troop. More brightener. More red under the collar.

I know exactly how somebody on amphetamines feels, Dad. I didn’t care who I did it to, or who was watching, or how many stitches it required. I just wanted to do it.

They put me up against this guy from Echo Platoon who enters body-building contests. Nostrils flared to the max, I popped him under the jaw and then declared total war on his balls. You know how Sherman marched through Georgia? Well, that’s what I did to his reproductive region.

Never mind proper form. I wielded the stick like a baseball bat. I’m thinking, by God, the bastard doesn’t lift weights down there. Game, set and truss to me.

I was close to berserk by this point. I would have gone in the ring against an atomic bomb.

The throne-sitters huddled and then snapped their fingers. My next foe was a troop from Charlie Platoon who’s going to the stockade as soon as they process his paperwork because he attempted to kill his platoon leader.

The accused pawed at the ground and said, “Bring it on, (bad word).”

I hit myself in the side of the head and replied, “Can you hit harder than this, (bad word)?”

Then I rushed him. If he landed any blows, I didn’t feel them. I was too busy trying to knock his chin into his adenoids.

This has never happened before, Dad. The person occupying my body screamed horrible obscenities, and didn’t care if he ever again has a place in proper society.

My foe put his hands behind his neck, which I would later learn was a signal that he didn’t want to fight any more. But I was way too far gone to recognize reconciliation. I clubbed him until his helmet was almost off. This was for not being able to make the bed. For not knowing where the firing pin goes. For not knowing how to fold my underwear. For not finding that pubic hair.

Two DIs gently, and then not so gently, pulled me away. By this time, I had a mind only in the legal definition. I would have attacked anything that moved. If the Secretary of the Army got in my line of sight, he’d better have a spring-loaded Q-tip.

The senior DI from Echo Platoon started to extend congratulations, but jokingly pulled back, covering his face as if I might turn on him next.

The rush from the hypo was gone, replaced by embarrassment. I wished I could erase the previous 10 minutes of my life and substitute it with anything. I mean anything. The time I farted during Algebra 2 and everybody laughed at me. The time I couldn’t climb the rope in gym class and the PE teacher said I was a pussy.

Everybody looked at me real funny for a little while, but things quickly returned to normal at the rifle range where my bolt slider fell out and I couldn’t immediately find it. Litton became furious and said he would kick my hind parts unless I located the thing sooner than soon.

Blessedly, the bolt slider was on the ground next to stacks of spent rounds. I didn’t get shouted at any more, but I had been reduced to my rightful place as one of the worst Alpha Company has to offer.

Don’t tell Mom, but I had half a tooth knocked out in bayonet training.

I did fine on running up to the target, letting out a primal scream and carving it a new insides. It was the next phase — close-quarters fighting — when I became a casualty.

Same straw-man target, only this time you’re just a few feet away. You’ve got to take him out, but you must do it in a space equal to that of a telephone booth.

I tried to go up side the scourge’s head. Wipe that smile off its stuffing.

There’s no courageous way of saying this. I hit myself in the mouth with the butt of the rifle.

Hard.

I felt this sudden rush of cold. It’s like its heat shield got blown off and all of a sudden I’ve got lake-effect tooth. I looked on the ground, and there was a chunk of dental matter that will never again engage an ear of corn.

Within minutes, two medics cane running and whisked me off to the dentist. The guy put some kind of cream on it to kill the pain, and told me I’d be better off if I got my mouth fixed when I get back home. Laughed and said he pulls ’em better than he caps ‘em.

Don’t worry about the tooth. I almost like it this way because it makes me look tough. The other night I was at the movie theater and two larger-than-me troops let me get ahead of them in line. They said it was because they had to go through their pockets to get enough change for popcorn, but they didn’t fool me. It was the fractured bicuspid. I looked like bar fight and they wanted no part.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll hit myself with a grenade launcher.

Just kidding, ha, ha.

Love.

Me.

Dear Mr. Wesley,

I hope things are going well at the newspaper. I’m almost finished with a new humorous article about what happened at the grenade range.

We sat through this long class about delayed-action fuses and fragmentation, and how the concussion from being too close to a grenade blast can put you in the emergency room. We threw some practice grenades that looked like pine cones and then it was time for the real thing.

I don’t know how much you know about basic training, Mr. Wesley, but the drill instructors scream at you almost every second. But all that changed when we were given the live grenades, and that’s what I’m writing the funny story about.

We’re waiting in this long tunnel. Every time a troop lobs a grenade, we can feel the shrapnel raining down on us. Fear set in. What if I drop the grenade? What if I throw it like a second-grader girl, it goes six feet and we get fragmented?

I walk in the concrete bunker and here’s this cadre guy who’s even more scared than I am. I see why. He’s got to stand beside me. If I screw up, there will be two eulogies on the village green.

He hands over the grenade like it’s the crown jewels. Calls me by my first name. Asks about my family. Asks what I want to be when I grow up.

No cussing. No hollering. I’m holding a lethal weapon and he wants me completely relaxed. I could have requested a case of Valium and he would have called for special delivery. Anything so I don’t roll the thing under his feet, and a crater is formed below what used to be his lower body.

“Son, I want you to pretend you’re playing right field on your school’s baseball team. The grenade rolls against the fence and you have to get it to the catcher on the fly,” he says calmly. “Do you think you can do that?”

I almost felt sorry for the guy. There are troops in this platoon I wouldn’t trust to throw a light switch.

The thought hit to do a behind-the-back number with the grenade, or maybe toss it high in the air and do a 360 before catching it and letting loose. The NCOs put the fear of God in us. Why not let them see what it feels like to have your adrenal glands working a triple shift?

But maturity won out. I hurled the grenade like Johnny Unitas hitting an open receiver on a fly pattern. The shrapnel didn’t start flying until I had time to ice down my arm.

The cadre guy kept smiling and talking nice until I finished flinging the second one. I thought maybe he wanted to be friends. Invite me home to visit the wife and kids.

But no. The second he was free from the clear-and-present danger I presented, it was back to normal.

“Move the hell out of here, dickhead,” he said, officially severing our relationship. “Send the next buttcheek in here.”

That’s what my article is about, Mr. Wesley. While the grenade was in my hand, I was somebody. Without it, I was just taking up valuable breathing space that could be better used by a crustacean.

I should have the story finished in a week or so unless war breaks out and the supply sergeant has higher priorities and doesn’t need any typing done. Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I’ll put it in the mail.

Please pray for me that I can learn to shoot. Hope to meet you when and if I get out of here.

Thank you.

Garret Mathews

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

We gather around the little building that’s set off in the words like a hunting camp.

It most certainly isn’t.

Nobody has put this morning on their wish list.

If you can fire, you look forward to going to the range so you can play pinball with the targets.

If you’re a budding domestic, you look forward to the daily inspections because it satisfies your inner Mr. Clean.

If you’re an athlete, you look forward to PT because you can run or crab-walk to the head of the class.

But this is the Army’s gas chamber. You only look forward to it if you want to walk in a double murderer’s shoes.

The other four platoons in Alpha Company have already had their turns in the forest. Word has spread. You stand against the wall, protective mask and steel pot between your knees. The cadre guy sets off the tear gas canister. As per direct orders, you shout out name, rank and serial number before scrambling to put the mask on. It doesn’t matter how quick you are, we’ve been told. The stuff gets in your throat, and you feel like your esophagus is being burned at the stake.

The individual protective measures class begins.

“There are four ports of entry for chemical weapons — the eyes, nose, mouth and skin,” the cadre guy says, holding the gas mask that looks like a blowup of an ant’s mug shot. “You will mask without command when spray-attacked, gas-attacked or smoke-attacked.”

“What if we’re Haddox-attacked?” I whisper.

“Forget the mask,” Skebo replies. “We’d need tetanus shots.”

The cadre guy tells us most trainees experience no lasting effects from the gas.

“Usually you’re just disoriented for a few minutes. You’ll holler like hell, but pretty soon you can go on about your day.”

Wily grin.

“However, a few troops don’t take it so good. If you think you are having an adverse reaction, you are to raise your hand. If you’re having a seizure and are unable to raise your hand, you are to have your buddy jump up and down. Eventually, someone will come to your assistance.”

I’m thinking, yeah, right, when the war is over, or when the esophagus doctor makes rounds. Whichever comes first.

Haddox looks right at home in his protective mask. Hardened. Battle-tested. Ready to prove he can suck up more noxious fumes than the exhaust system at Boeing.

We take our places against the woodwork. The lights go out and we hear a loud hiss like a cobra that’s been trying to shed its skin for two weeks, but it won’t come off and the reptile is severely pissed.

To the very end, we hold out hope that the other platoons were wrong. Yes, we will have time to get the mask on. Yes, the gas is slow-acting. Yes, there is a vent somewhere in here that will blow out the really bad stuff before it gets on us.

No, no and no.

Despite putting on the mask faster than Peavey can screw up, I feel an inferno on my neck. Then somebody tries to shove a hot plate on my mouth.

The door finally opens and we pour out. And cough. Guys are rolling around in bushes coughing. Rubbing up against trees coughing. Hitting themselves in the ribs coughing.

It’s like group activity time at camp. Not for crafts, but to hack up pieces of bronchial tube.

Mucous flies everywhere. Collar, sleeves, boots. I don’t have the strength to fight the enemy, but I can phlegm him a new asshole.

My nose feels like it’s caught inside a refinery fire. Thanks to scalded vitreous matter, the most my eyes can do is glimpse.

I can’t remember the last time I breathed. Chest heaving, I try ringing down there, but there’s no answer. So this is how it’s going to be. Sweet dreams, troops. An acid bath followed by the deployment of a powerful new vacuum cleaner attachment that reams out our cardiovascular systems.

With the Grim Reaper awash in my eyelids, I can barely make out Haddox standing calmly a few feet from the gas chamber door.

Is he gouging at gaseous demons that have infested his body? Is he even scratching himself?

Hell, no. The bastard is lighting up a cigarette. By God, tear gas couldn’t challenge his alveoli. Bring on Brown & Williamson.

The biggest prick out here blowing smoke rings. That will be my last vision on this mortal sphere.

It’s been a great 21 years. So I didn’t get to have children. The Army has a reason for everything. They just would have become delinquents.

Fade to nothing. Cue harps. Cue sea of white. Cue perfect flesh tones. So this is heaven. Got a nice place here. Think I’ll look into one of their long-term housing units.

Suddenly, there’s light and a degree of function in my upper body. My nose is wet. And my face. It’s lower to the ground than it should be. And something smells really bad. Hey, what’s going on? There’s no stench in heaven.

The same eyes that I thought had gone in the tank are up and blinking. The pharynx that had tendered its resignation is suddenly open for business.

I decide it would be a mistake to come back from the grave too fast. Deep-sea divers don’t just zoom up from the depths of the ocean and flop right back in the boat.

So to find out exactly the state of aliveness, I engage in a preliminary Q-and-A with myself.

Where am I?

Within hailing distance of the gas chamber.

Who am I?

The same person you’ve always been, only paler.

What am I?

Prone.

My mouth feels funny. What gives?

It should feel funny. You puked your guts out.

When did it happen?

About four seconds ago.

A polite distance away, can I assume?

Nope. Right in your tracks. You could run a line straight down from your chin to the chunks.

You’re lying.

Am not. You swan-dived into your puke.

And this wetness I’m experiencing?

Puke does that to a nose.

I spring up faster than one of A. J. Foyt’s pistons. Must clean myself and quick. I grab chunks of grass. They stick to my face, making it look like I’ve suddenly grown bright green whiskers.

Naturally, Haddox sees me.

“You look like some kind of goddamn space monster,” he says.

But he doesn’t rip off the sprouts.

And he doesn’t order me back in the gas chamber.

Something to build on.