As Wind in Dry Grass

by H. Grant Llewellyn

  They had laid him on a cot and someone had cut away the pant leg and washed the hole with iodine or something like it and expertly wrapped it with gauze bandage. It was so stiff and sore that any attempt to move it evoked slivers of searing pain. He was in a tent. He could hear them outside and see daylight. There was a tin cup of water on an upended piece of oak tree trunk and his kit, including his guns, sat in the corner.

  He knew he had to get up and it took a while and some considerable grunting and sweating but he finally was able to sit on the edge of the cot.

  The tent flap opened and Mr. Deserter looked in.

  "Hurts, don't it?" he said, as he entered.

  Albert nodded, still unable to speak.

  "Get's better. You're lucky it went through because we can't do very good surgery here. Don't have anesthetic and we're using mechanics tools, you know, pliers and stuff. Your big problem now is infection. We've got a pile of this stuff," he said taking a small pill bottle from the stump.

  "Ciprofloxacin, ya that's the stuff he gave me."

  Deserter unbuttoned his shirt and showed Albert the rough scar tissue that stretched from his shoulder to the bottom of his rib cage.

  "Near about tore me in half," he said buttoning up.

  "Thanks," Albert managed finally.

  "Ain't like the movies, huh? Oh, just tell Mary I love her and I'll see her in heaven...be seein ya guys...ya, right. Fuckin screaming and pain, that's all it is. I ain't seen anybody hit yet that didn't cry like a fucking baby. Unless of course they're already dead in which case I ain't never seen anybody do the headless chicken dance, neither. They drop like stones. That's when you know he's dead."

  Deserter helped him up and then Albert shrugged him off.

  "Okay," he said.

  He lurched forward in staggered increments, dragging the bum leg in an arc, trying to keep it straight and putting it down on the ground as gently as he could but the pain would race up the leg and he thought he might yell. It was only a sense of shame that kept him from whining about it.

  The camp was wedged in between two heavily wooded hills about fifty feet apart and with one end a limestone cliff that fell straight down for two hundred feet and the other end hidden by the convergence of foliage. They had strung camouflage netting over everything unnatural between these shoulders and there were no fires of any sort.

  Albert saw about thirty men and two women, all looking much better than the civilian population but still with a kind of roughness associated with extreme fatigue.

  "So why do they call you Rambo?" Albert asked.

  "I tried to take out a .50 on a Humvee without waiting for some of the other guys to get into position. I thought he was about to move so I hit him and he raked me."

  "Did you get him, at least?"

  "Hell no. All I got was shot up. Come on," he said.

  The group gathered around in a circle and Deserter introduced Albert without any formality or fanfare. There were no comments or responses to anything he said. Albert needed to sit down. His leg was pounding. The circle broke up and the company medic approached him.

  "This is our medic. We call him Dr. Strangelove and shit like that."

  The medic seemed bored with the attempted humor and he looked tired and worn and hungry and like a man who really hated having a stubble beard.

  "This is all I got for you," he said, handing Albert a vial of maybe ten pills. "Hydrocodone. It will take the edge off, but I'd save it for night time when you are trying to sleep. And you better keep off the leg. The more you walk, the worse it's going to get and I've done just about everything I know how, which ain't much."

  "Cheerful, isn't he?"

  "And that's about it for my baby sitting you. I'm not your mother or your girlfriend. Don't come asking me if you can do this or that. I ain't gonna give you permission or tell you what to do, but I will repeat this: Stay off the fucking leg for at least a week, maybe two. I will change the dressing once a day and that is all I will do. Got it?"

  He didn't wait for an answer and walked back to a small tent and crawled in.

  Albert remembered one other time in his life he had to stand down for two weeks and it had been a seminal experience, inoculating him against television for the rest of his life. But two weeks here among strangers with not even a book to read...? Was he supposed to sit in the tent with his leg up?

  There were no meal times or group prayers. They didn't sit around the camp fire singing and there were no arguments or tension over leadership. There were no real arguments at all.

  Each man was entitled to two MREs a day and the firing of weapons was prohibited. There were no fires because the Predator Drones could spot a human heat signature from four miles up; a fire would be a piece of cake. They had no internal security problems because there was no way to report anything to anyone. Someone found with a satellite phone would be required to explain himself, clearly and believably to a group of people who would feed him chunks of his own flesh to find out the truth. Their one concern was someone getting captured. No one was going to withstand interrogation and they knew it. They weren't even going to try. Anyone captured was presumed to have revealed everything he knew about the group from its weaponry to its roster, its location, morale, intentions and system of supply. An individual would make his own decision about suicide in the event of capture or disclosure. Everyone knew in a practical sense that it wouldn't matter whether a captive spilled his guts or not; he would still be tortured and it didn't matter if his confessions turned out to be true; he would still be executed. But everyone here had been in combat more than once and knew that faced with even the dimmest possibility of survival, some people will convince themselves of anything. It was agreed among them that anyone wounded in the field who could not transport himself would be shot. For Deserter, this had been a particularly salient point when the .50 caliber slugs had creased his side from armpit to rib cage. Blood was dripping down and he thought he had caught fire. They started to retreat, heading at a full run down the designated path they had agreed on. One man turned to Deserter and looked at him and Deserter set out running, blood pouring out his side and a delirium of pain and fear settling on his brain so that he could not imagine living through the situation.

  "But here I am," he said.

  "Has anyone ever been...left?"

  "Ya," he said.

  Every crowd, even one as loosely integrated as this had rules and protocols that had to be learned and followed and he had just discovered an important one.

  Don't ask. People will tell you what they want you to know.

  "Your move," Deserter said.

  They had been pushing checkers made from sticks and stones around a makeshift board for an hour, no one ever winning or losing, just one game that had no conclusion.

  "We are going out tonight, some of us," he said after Albert pushed a stone to another square. "There's a UN patrol comes down this road south of here about fifteen miles. We think we have a place to hit them."

  Albert nodded. He was glad for his leg. The throbbing discomfort reminded him that he would not be going along and hiking fifteen miles in the dark to more than likely get killed or captured and tortured to death. Sitting around, unable to move, alone with his own thoughts most of the time and forced to play a never-ending game of checkers with Deserter had grown on him. He spent most of the day fantasizing about Maureen Grogan, about finding her somewhere and she comes running across the field of flowers just like a deodorant commercial and-

  "You want to tell me about those pipe bombs?" Deserter asked.

  "Sure," Albert said. "Bring me one and a sack of detonators, a black bag with a string that should be hanging behind the seat.

  When Deserter returned a few moments later he had a man and a woman, the crew that had decided to hit the UN patrol expected to run along Highway 18 out of Brantford.

  "You thinking where eighteen hits the six one?" Albert asked.

  "East of there," Deserter said. "There's a big cu
rve in the road and along the north side the ground is really steep and covered with trees and the south side is a creek bed with some light cover and then a field of wild grass."

  "What's this for? Mines or throwing?" Albert said.

  "Both," the woman answered.

  It was the first time he had spoken to her since arriving a week earlier. There was no way to tell what she really looked like except for her mousey hair and sallow complexion and the dull throb in her eyes. Her mouth turned down. He had not seen any congress or evidence of it between either of the women and any of the men.

  Albert demonstrated how to attach the detonators and the importance of the rubber safety disk.

  "This is a shotgun primer," he explained, "but it is fairly easy to detonate. You don't really have to hit it that hard. The real problem is that the detent here, the thing that keeps the bolt from slamming into that little primer is very delicate. You could arm it and it could snap in your hands or snap from being thrown or...well you get the point?"

  The woman picked it up and looked it over.

  "They work?"

  "So far," Albert said. "I mean there aren't any guarantees, you know?"

  "We can't bury them in the pavement so we're gonna have to throw them," the man said. "How many of these you got?"

  "I figure about thirty five or six," Albert said.

  Deserter stayed after the others left and resumed his seat in front of the checker board.

  "Uh, about Cindy there?"

  Albert looked up.

  "She was regular army, that's all I know and she ain't interested in anything or anybody except killing them UN shits. That's all she does. She don't even speak most of the time. You make what you want of that but I'm just telling you."

  It was a two-day job and they had to pack provisions, including water and food so that they needed absolutely nothing to complete the attack. They would walk through the forests and around the edges of the fields, avoiding all open spaces. This would add almost four miles to their trip. The plan was to walk there in one night, set up the ambush and disappear back into the woods. Albert cautioned them again about the sensitivity of the detonators but they didn't seem to hear him. He was walking now, much better than he had expected. He limped a bit, favoring the leg even when he didn't really have to, almost like he had fallen into some kind of syndrome.

  Dr. Strangelove was changing his dressing when he told Albert that people with bullet wounds can continue to limp and favor the leg or clutch the arm long after any evidence of physical impairment is gone. The trauma of being shot affects the mind in subtle ways, even for those who appear to shrug it off. This is when Albert discovered that Strangelove had a small library of eight books, two of them first aid or medical manuals from the U.S. Army, two works of fiction, a coin collectors catalogue, the original Marilyn Monroe issue of Playboy, 1953; a Betty Crocker cookbook and Volume 6 of the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1970.

  "You can't keep the Playboy," he said. "Everybody jerks off on it and it pisses me off."

  Albert turned the pages slowly until he came to that arching photo of her with her head hidden behind her outstretched arm

  "I don't know how many times I have looked at that but it always gets me," Strangelove said.

  Albert closed the magazine and handed it back. His heart was thumping and it seemed like the afterimage of her body had attached itself to his retinas.

  Strangelove offered him the encyclopedia, which no one else was interested in and left the tent.

  Albert opened the book at random and found himself on page 455.

  FLOOD (IN RELIGION AND MYTH) is the name given to the cataclysm that was said to have covered most of the earth with an immense inundation and to have caused the death of all but a few of the human race...

  The group came together for the only time he had seen it since arriving when the three set off to attack the UN patrol. They silently shook hands and then the troop set off in the dying light. Strangelove watched them until they were gone, though everyone else had returned to his activities.

  "What happens if they don't come back?" Albert asked him. It was not a breach of protocol; it was an operational directive that he had a right to know.

  "We give them one extra day," he said.

  "And?"

  "If they are not back within the time allotted, it means they are dead or captured. If they are captured we have been compromised and there is already a drone setting the coordinates for a Hellfire attack. If they are dead, nothing happens to us and we keep on going."

  "You don't run?"

  "To where?"

  "I don't know, somewhere..."

  "Suit yourself," Strangelove answered and went back to his tent.

  Albert lay awake thinking about Deserter and Cindy and the man they called Rumplestiltskin because he could sleep anywhere, any time under just about any circumstances, a talent he had developed after thirteen years in almost continuous combat for the great United States of America. His unit had been sent to a small town in Texas where the locals had banded together and refused to surrender their weapons to the army under order from Northcom. They had killed everybody. Seventy five men and boys ranging from sixteen to seventy seven had stood outside the fire station in Nowheresville Texas and told the army to go home. Many wore medals, from Iraq all the way back to Korea in a horrendous recapitulation of Hitler's Storm Troopers rounding up Jewish veterans of WW1, the iron cross pinned to their lapels and sending them to the gas chambers.

  In what has become a classic maneuver, pioneered very successfully by the BATFE and FBI at Waco in 1992, after this Texas massacre, the Army commander insisted that the "terrorists" had fired first and all his troops did was respond to save their own lives. There was no vital forensic clue in the form of a front door to abscond with but they did manage to "discover" piles of child porn, especially homo child porn, scattered all over the fire station. It was amazing how these seventy five men and boys had been able to conceal this revolting appetite for generation after generation, from the 1930s all the way to 2013. Of course the younger boys were probably all being held against their will.

  That was it for Rumplestiltskin. Without any fanfare, no speeches or shoot-outs or grandiose proclamations, he went AWOL. What happened to him over the succeeding few months is not known and probably never will be. But it is accurate to say that he never forgave himself for being figuratively asleep on guard duty.

  The next morning the sky was grey and cloudy; it looked ominous and theatrical and inert. The only heat source anyone had for food was the MRE heaters that came with each food pack. It was here that he discovered the trick of first heating the alleged pork chop or the alleged chicken leg in its bag and then using that hot water to make a little cup of coffee by heating up a second bag with just water in it. Others used it to shave or wash. Without being told, everyone knew that each was responsible for his own health and his continued usefulness. Anyone who started to fade was given one warning to put it back together. So far it had not taken more than one warning.

  Strangelove came over and sat down beside Albert on the log in front of the tent. He seemed morose, even more than usual.

  "What were you before all this happened?" Albert ventures, sensing a window.

  "My dad had a thousand acres of beans over in Illinois. When Monsanto ruined him I joined the army and got picked for a medic. Funny. I was thinking how lucky I was that this all happened or I might have been sent to Iraq."

  Albert laughed with him.

  "Ya, them mother fuckers did lots of people in, specially around where I lived. See, they had these bean seeds that were resistant to roundup, you know the weed killer?"

  "I've used it quite a bit," Albert said.

  "Well a farmer has to take any cuts he can to make a living. So the guy down the next farm signs up with Monsanto for this seed that can drink roundup. He figures he'll get a better yield because there won't be any competition for the beans."

  "Sounds about right." />
  "Well, it is right, to a point. But what happened was some of his seed blew over into my father's acreage and Monsanto sued him for stealing their property. They own the seed and if you ain't got a contract to plant it, they fuck you up. Courts back them up all the way, of course. They even have a name for it: They call it "rural cleansing."

  They sat in silence for a while.

  "Don't matter now, does it?"

  "I guess not," Albert said. "You want a game of checkers?"

  The afternoon waned and a heavy, viscous foreboding infected everyone. Even the minimal conversations and occasional laugh had all but vanished. A dark mood of impending death had replaced it. The timing was such that by dusk, the three should have returned. But evening passed into night and in the full bloom of darkness, a silent and resigned expectation took hold. Albert found himself just as doleful as the rest. Perhaps someone was hurt and they are just moving slower... perhaps a lot of things.

  As dawn broke the following morning, many who had not slept began to gather armaments and prepare for an attack.

  "What's the point of even fighting," Strangelove asked.

  "People want to feel like they are doing something," Albert replied as he loaded his rifles and laid out his magazines on a cloth. He had half a dozen of his pipe bombs neatly lined up within reach.

  "Hellfire missile or worse is what's coming. You think they are going to risk boots on us when they can do it from four miles up? Come on. Shit."

  "Maybe we can shoot the missiles out of the air," Albert said. He looked straight at Strangelove and they burst out laughing at the same time.

  There was low cloud cover, a slight advantage to the men on the ground because it meant the Drones would have to descend to find them. But it wasn't low enough for their .30 caliber weapons to be a threat. If they were in the sights of a serious, determined air strike, they were already dead. No one stirred from their chosen cover except for necessities, each having taken with him food and water. Some had moved off as far as a hundred yards from the camp to act as a warning in the off chance a ground attack was launched against them, but no one seriously considered it. They had enough small caliber weapons and ammunition, enough stolen claymores and grenades and even an RPG with three rockets to repel land forces or even gunship attacks, at least for a while. The unfortunates who had been captured would have told their interrogators everything and they would simply call in a drone attack through their central command. Why risk boots?