The Children's War

by C. P. Boyko

  He went inside a restaurant—noting with approval that the restaurants here were nothing like the sterile, cavernous restaurants of the mainland—and ordered breakfast, then explained while eating why he could not pay for it. The proprietor was too exasperated to listen to any offers or promises, and shooed him outside. Andrew concluded that the islanders were tetchy; then, as the fact of a free meal sank in, he concluded that they were in fact generous and agreeable.

  “Mainland army scum,” said the proprietor, and spat for the benefit of any partisans in the room.

  Andrew strolled through the town, smiling at women whose responses defied generalization. Some frowned, some blushed, some leered, some looked away, some merely stared. His clothes betrayed him as a mainlander, and consequently, depending on their allegiance—the accidents of their upbringing and acquaintances, their circumstances and their luck—they viewed him as either a rapacious mercenary or a regal liberator. And some liked the mercenary; and some hated the liberator.

  Eventually he paused to ask the way to a hospital, and was given well-meaning but contradictory directions. When at last he found the place, which was more a clinic than a hospital, the puzzled nurses said that they had no ambulances, and suggested that he try at the next town, which was larger. On the bus, he explained to the driver and the passengers why he could not pay the fare, and was given money. Everyone donated for different reasons, but primarily because he was a mainlander, and recent experience had led them to believe that when a mainlander asked you for something, you really had no choice—and also because they wanted him to shut up, and the bus to get moving. One woman gave a dollar because she thought he was a brave boy.

  The bus reached the next town without mishap.

  While searching for the hospital, Andrew heard a shrill, cantankerous wail in the distance. He asked a fruit seller what it was.

  The man looked at him incredulously. “You do not know? It’s an ambulance.”

  Andrew was taken aback. “But why does it sound so whiny?”

  Nor was the hospital what he had expected. It was clean, modern, and very quiet. Having unwittingly come in by the emergency entrance, he was received with lively interest, which was modulated but not dampened when the staff realized that he was not ill. They took turns explaining that there were no jobs available, that the hospital already had more drivers than needed. Andrew said that he was not looking for a job; he wanted to volunteer. The staff were bewildered; more doctors and administrators were called and consulted. Eventually, after much confusion and some embarrassment on both sides, Andrew’s worldview was partly communicated to the staff, and the facts partly revealed to him. This hospital, though financed through mainland contributions, was operated locally and had no affiliation with the occupying (some said “peacekeeping”) forces, or with the domestic army, or with the war effort at all, except incidentally. After some heated deliberation, the staff decided that Andrew’s best hope was the base just outside town, which some of them thought had a field hospital. He thanked them and set out on foot, leaving much emotion and speculation in his wake.

  Private Mann and Private Sloane were on watch that afternoon when a man came into view on the road from town. They debated fiercely, in whispers, whether or not to shoot him. They were both jumpy, for only yesterday a grenade had been tossed over the wall during their watch. This had been on the opposite side of the base, which overlooked a swampy field where the latrines were emptied. Originally, for aesthetic and sanitary reasons, the latrines had been dumped farther away, but the soldiers assigned to this detail had, inevitably, tripped landmines and been shot at by snipers; and so the dumping ground had crept closer and closer to the base, till it lay right outside the western gates, reeking beneath the sun and churning beneath the rains. Soon, however, local farmers were drawn to this valuable fertilizer; and when they realized that the shots fired at them were only warnings, they paid them no more attention than horses pay flies. And when the soldiers realized that the islanders—mostly children, women, and old men—could not be driven away, an unofficial truce was effected, and the locals were permitted, without much harassment, to cart away the mainlanders’ dung.

  Then, yesterday afternoon, some partisan had taken advantage of the soldiers’ benevolence to lob a grenade at them, thus bringing the ceasefire to an abrupt end. The grenade had been a dud, and perhaps only intended as a joke or a gesture of defiance. Nevertheless, Private Mann and Private Sloane had both been shaken by the incident—Private Mann because the CO had bawled them out; Private Sloane because he had shot in the back a woman who may or may not have been the perpetrator, but whose body, in any case, had been left lying in a twisted heap, half sunk in feces, as a warning to other would-be guerrillas.

  The man on the road appeared to be unarmed, but he carried a bag that could have been filled with explosives. He was dressed like neither a soldier nor a farmer, so Mann deduced that he must be a guerrilla. Sloane disagreed: guerrillas always disguised themselves as soldiers or farmers.

  “Then what the hell is he? And why is he coming here?” —“I don’t know. Could be a civilian, come to sell cigarettes.” —“Could be a fucking jinkie rebel disguised as a citizen.” —“Could be an advisor. Could be a journalist.” —“Walking?” said Mann, his voice breaking with disbelief. “Walking all the way out here without a fucking vehicle?” —“Could be his car broke down.” —“Could be just about any fucking thing, according to you.”

  Sloane’s radio was malfunctioning again, so he shouted down to the gatehouse. “We expecting any journalists?”

  —Lance Corporal Aberfoyle made an elaborate and sarcastic reply. Meanwhile the man on the road came nearer.

  —Mann said, “I guess we just let him walk right in here and blow the whole damn place up.”

  “. . . All right,” said Sloane. “Shoot him.”

  “What? Why me? You shoot him.”

  Sloane wanted to say that it was Mann’s turn, but he could not bring himself to refer even indirectly to the woman he’d killed. “You’re the one who wants to stop him so bad, go ahead and stop him.”

  Mann lifted his rifle and took aim, muttering, “All I can say is he better not be no fucking journalist.”

  A minute passed.

  “What are you waiting for?” —“I’m just going to give him a little old warning first.” —“All right. Sure. And see what he does.” —“That’s right, and see how he reacts.”

  Andrew’s body reacted automatically, and with all the flinching, shrinking signs of guilt; but his mind reacted with ingenuous astonishment. “What the hell was that for?” he cried, waving both hands as if flagging down a speeding truck.

  Meanwhile Lance Corporal Aberfoyle was on the radio, demanding to know who had authorized Mann to fire his weapon. The two privates suddenly felt sheepish, the fear of a moment ago seeming to them now strange and irrational. Abandoning their post, they climbed down to the gatehouse to explain themselves, and to receive the visitor.

  Because Andrew was a mainlander, and because he had been shot at, he was admitted to the base with unusual briskness. Before he could tease Private Mann for his mistake, he was sent by Lance Corporal Aberfoyle to report at the aid station to someone whose name Andrew immediately forgot. He strolled approximately in the direction indicated, looking avidly all around him. This was his first time inside a military base. He was impressed by its size, its clutter, and its monochromatic filthiness.

  He found the mess hall, where he asked for and was given a meal. He sat down with some officers who, having ascertained that he was not regular army, were amused by his audacity, and welcomed him with avuncular roughness.

  “First day in the country,” he said, “and I’ve already been shot at!” Then, overwhelmed by this astounding fact, he lapsed into a daydream in which he replayed the incident from different angles, ostensibly searching in memory for details, but in fact searching in imaginatio
n for dramatic embellishments. By the time he finished eating, he half believed that he had been shot at, not once but five times, by hooded guerrilla snipers whose bullets had exploded in the dust at his feet, and that he had performed a rolling tumble off the road and crept behind cover to the base’s gates, where miraculously he had guessed the password.

  The officers straggled out and the enlisted men and women filed in, so Andrew queued for another meal. The food this time was worse, all of it coming directly out of large aluminum containers, but a can of warm beer was also placed on his tray. He toasted the soldiers around him at the table, who toasted him.

  “You just get off leave?” —“Nope, just got here.” —“What outfit you with?” —“The ambulance outfit.” —They toasted him with more gravity; one private gave Andrew his beer. “You guys saved my buddy’s life.” With increasingly maudlin solemnity, they shared anecdotes attesting to the heroism of medics and ambulance drivers. Andrew was given more beer, which he accepted courteously.

  He proposed to buy a round, and was told that the beer was rationed to two cans per person per day. The only way to get drunk was either to hoard for a few days—and then you risked inspections—or to donate to the beer pool, whereby one quarter of the participating privates received, every fourth night, the beers of the other three quarters. Andrew nevertheless managed, with the coins he’d received on the bus, to bribe two extra beers out of the commissary staff. He gave these away, and was toasted.

  He wandered around the compound as sunset turned to dusk; the air smelled of oil, dust, shit, and some nutty blossom that seemed to remind him very strongly of something that he nevertheless could not identify. He stared at a khaki-colored tank. He kicked an empty ammunition barrel. In amazement he placed his hands on an armored vehicle, which looked to him like a garbage truck with mounted guns. He could hardly believe that thirty hours ago he had been sitting in the passport office. If only his mother, and Nance, and Roger and Maria, and Lawrence and Beth, and Nathan and Claudia and Bruce, and Hillary, and Pari could see him now!

  A helicopter roared down out of the blue-orange sky, whipping up a cyclone of dust and trash. He watched as hunched silhouettes unloaded a gurney and two cumbrous duffel bags. The gurney was received by other hunched silhouettes, who pushed it inside a sandbagged metal shed lit with fluorescent lights so white they seemed purple. The bags were left outside, and the helicopter roared back into the sky. Andrew’s imagination eventually revealed to him the contents of those bags.

  He had found the aid station. With some misgiving, which he represented to himself as eagerness, he went inside.

  He had never been awake inside an operating room before, and was mesmerized by the sight of four adults subduing and stripping naked a fifth who lay writhing on a table. A nearby voice asked if he needed help. Without looking away, Andrew replied, “I was told to report here.” —“What’s your complaint?” —“Huh?” —“What’s wrong with you?” —“Oh. Nothing.” —“Then why were you told to report here?” —“Oh. Right.” He looked briefly at his interlocutor. “I’m here to help.” To this there was no response, so he elaborated: “I came to drive an ambulance.” —“Hal?”

  One of the doctors leaning over the operating table straightened. “Yeah?” —“This guy’s here to drive ambo.” —“Great. You from UPESCU?” —“I don’t think so,” said Andrew, alarmed that the man had stopped what he had been doing. —“What outfit you with?” —“No outfit, per se. I’m freelance, I guess you’d say. I just got here.” —The doctor shrugged. “Even better. Less paperwork. You find a bunk yet?” —“Uh, Hal?”

  “What.” —“We don’t have any vans to give him.” —Now one of the women at the operating table took a step back and placed her bloody hands on her hips. “There’s got to be six collecting dust in the motor pool as we speak.” —“They’ve all been requisitioned by Knob Grange.” —“Then what are they doing here?” —“Nobody to drive them.”

  The casualty kicked the doctor named Hal, though not apparently on purpose.

  “How’d you say you got assigned here?” —“He’s freelance, Hal.” —Andrew said, “I can go wherever I’m most needed, I guess.” —“Knob Grange sure as shit could use drivers. From what I’ve heard, they’ve been getting walloped.”

  Hal looked thoughtfully out the doorway. “I wish I could keep you, but—well, you want to take one of them vans to Knob Grange?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right. Thanks.” —“Good luck.” The doctors returned to their patient.

  The orderly asked Andrew if he knew how to get to Knob Grange. “Oh, sure,” he said. And because he remained standing there, she asked if he knew where to find the motor pool.

  The guard at the motor pool was conscientious enough in his duty to know not to care who Andrew was or which ambulance he drove away in: the vehicles had been requisitioned—he had a paper to show it—and were therefore no longer his responsibility. They were taking up space and should have been removed days ago.

  Andrew sat in each of them. The newer models seemed to have revolving lights but no sirens, so he selected a somewhat battered wagon with no lights but, as he proved, a powerful, angry siren.

  “Now cut that out,” said the guard.

  His ambulance, like some of the others, had the steering wheel on what he thought of as the wrong side. He could not now recall on which side of the road he had seen vehicles driving that day, but trusted his ability to detect and adapt to convention. He was equally sanguine about the manual transmission, which he had never used before. He started the engine, gave it gas, tooted the horn, turned on the headlights, and tested the windshield wipers; then, his heart in his mouth—he turned off the engine.

  “Say, what’s the best way to Knob George this time of night?”

  “You mean Knob Grange?” —“That’s the one.” —“Well, shit. You got to get to Knob Grange tonight? Alone?”

  —Andrew nodded grimly. —“Well, shit. For starters, turn your fucking lights out. At least you got some moon, or should have.” With thoughtful deliberation, naming many roads and towns that meant nothing to Andrew, the guard outlined a possible route, from which Andrew gleaned little more than the predominant direction the guard’s hand gestured—west. —Andrew thanked him, and restarted the engine. —“And try to get behind some other car if you can, even if it slows you down. Them milk trucks are best: we call them minesweepers. Otherwise, change your speed a lot, and avoid any straight and open roads. And don’t stop for nobody, not even a little girl with her leg trapped under a bus. She was probably put there by a fucking rebel who’s only too happy to hijack you or kidnap you or shoot you or all three. Yeah, even an ambulance driver. No shit. Welcome to Jinkie Land.”

  Andrew sent the ambulance forward with a lurch, but the guard came running after him. —“Shit, I almost forgot. You mind stopping at Poplar Junction? It’s on your way.” —“Sure, no problem.” —“Great. There’s a little package I need delivered. Hold on.”

  The guard at the gatehouse requested a similar favor, and Andrew gunned the engine anxiously while some private was sent to the commissary for another little package—which, like the first, also proved to be a large crate. This was placed beside the first atop the collapsed gurneys in the back, Andrew was given more money and handshakes, then finally the gates rattled apart and he was free—grinding in first gear in a westerly direction down a washboard road that he could hardly see. After a mile or so of this, he turned on the headlights, failed to shift into another gear, switched on the siren, and, pretending the crates he was transporting were wounded soldiers, pressed the gas pedal to the floor and raced the tattered moonlight across the dark, rolling landscape.

  Five weeks passed before Andrew reached Knob Grange. His first deliveries led to others, till soon he was transporting goods back and forth—along with the occasional soldier bound for a better hospital on one of the larger bases
along the coast or back home on the mainland. These passengers were mostly amputees, and mostly sullen. None of them seemed very glad to be going home or getting out of the war, which, considering how eager all their comrades were to be off the island, struck Andrew as ungracious. He found these casualties difficult to talk to, for he had not seen enough of the war to understand or even ask intelligent questions about their experiences. He felt more heroic when they were unconscious.

  As for his other cargo, he quickly discovered (by opening the boxes) that liquor, canned goods, and manufactured items flowed west, while meat, dairy, and fresh produce flowed east. He was astounded by the prices the latter fetched: a dozen eggs were equal to a bottle of whiskey, a head of cabbage worth its weight in coffee. Finally, he could not resist going into business himself, trading with (by preference) farm girls for wheels of cheese or onions or, one time, a pig, and with quartermasters for tobacco and sugar and, one time, a violin. Within a very few days he would find himself quite rich, and would take a week’s holiday to divest himself of the burden. He then bought drinks for many officers and soldiers, and fell in love with several local women.

  Eva was tall and fair and had a dimple in one cheek, as if she were always hiding a sweet, or a secret. She demonstrated in bed that sexual arousal was governed by the parasympathetic nervous system; she lay there like someone digesting a good meal.