by C. P. Boyko
The two-day leave officially started at 0900, but their train did not start moving till 1030, and then stopped frequently along the way. They had not been told their destination or its distance, and the cars had no windows. T.P., like the others, curbed her impatience with alcohol, gambling, horseplay, boasting, and making plans. When at last the doors were opened, it was mid-afternoon. A staff sergeant appeared and asked what the hell they were waiting for. The train had been sitting in the siding for nearly an hour. They tumbled out, blinking in the waning sunlight, and stretched and spat and hollered and yawned. They had been looking forward to this moment for months. Freedom.
T.P. wanted to find a room with a shower in town, but Christmas Tree and Triple-Time, with whom The Professor had been bullshitting on the train, were in high spirits and wanted to continue drinking. There were several bars nearby in the safe zone, and they would take scrip. The Professor asked T.P. what she wanted to do. It was clear to T.P. what The Professor wanted to do, so she shrugged acquiescence. “I guess we can hitch a ride into town later.”
They marched from bar to bar counting cadence. They leered at the locals and saluted the staff and supply officers with sarcastic crispness; these soft and natty noncombatants made them aware of their own rough and rumpled filthiness, which they wore like a suit of honor, strutting and swaggering. Because they felt strange and vulnerable without their rifles, their talk in compensation grew more coarse and their posture more aggressive. Christmas Tree failed to pick a fight with three pilots, for whom she then devised an elaborate ambush and assassination, which only lack of a concussion grenade prevented her from carrying out. “I knew I should have brought more kit.” They stole a jeep, which they crashed and abandoned at the first curve in the road. They put their fists through windows and they chewed glass. They shadow-boxed, and shadow-fucked parked cars. They howled. They laughed, puked, and passed out.
T.P. awoke the next morning wedged between two crates on a strange floor, aching with dehydration and stifled by dust and sunshine. The room she was in appeared to be a school auditorium that had been requisitioned for use as a warehouse. She stumbled outside, pissed behind a shrub, and, in lieu of mouthwash, lit a cigarette to kill the vile taste in her mouth. Her head throbbed, her skin crawled, and she stank of sweat and vomit; but worst of all was the remorse at having wasted a night. She had enjoyed herself, but she should have been looking for a man. The train back to the MAC left tomorrow at 0500. She had less than twenty hours.
She found The Professor with C.T. and Triple-Time at the post exchange, nursing their hangovers with coffee and government-issue rum. She greeted and was greeted with insults. They asked where she had disappeared to, and whether she had found any cock; she replied with a military phrase of obfuscation. When she broached the matter of going into town, The Professor said, “Operational update, lady.” There was a whorehouse nearby, within the safe zone, where scrip was accepted; they were headed there as soon as they finished their bottled breakfast.
T.P. was confused and disappointed. “Isn’t it kind of early for a place like that?” —The Professor, willfully it seemed, misconstrued her. “The joint is open all the twenty-four.” —“It’ll be quieter now than if we wait till tonight,” said Christmas Tree. “We’ll have our pick.” —“And if we’re lucky,” said Triple-Time, “they’ll have just done a shift change.” —T.P. could not, without revealing her inexperience to the other two, remind The Professor that she’d hoped to lose her virginity to a man. She muttered, “I sort of wanted a shower first.” —“They’ll have showers,” said C.T. “And everything else.” —“Come on,” said Triple-Time. She swallowed the heeltap of rum and tossed the bottle into the street. “Let’s go take some fucking prisoners.” —“Yeah,” said C.T., “let’s entrench some fucking positions.” —The Professor drew a more abstruse analogy between fucking and clearing a lane through a minefield. —Eyes narrowed and brow knitted, T.P. searched her mind and her field of view for some escape.
But when she found herself in a dim and sumptuous room, surveying five sleek and perfumed women in lacy underwear, she discovered that she had momentarily misplaced her reservations. Perhaps none of them were men, but their petiteness and their exoticness made them seem exquisite and precious. She forgot about the shower, and indeed began again to exult in her grimy shabbiness. When at last she chose the biggest woman, it was with a thrill of defiant luxuriousness, like that of a grimy laborer reaching for her master’s cleanest, plushest towel.
Sharlelle liked best virgins who needed to be coaxed. Being a whore, like being a soldier, was mostly sitting around waiting; and sometimes she could prolong the coaxing to an entire afternoon. T.P. was a virgin and a darling, but she didn’t need to be coaxed.
Fifteen minutes later, she was back in the street, smoking and grinning and congratulating herself for having cast off her girlhood. She had perhaps not done everything possible, but she had undeniably climaxed in the intimate presence of a naked person. Surely no virginity could survive such an event. She was satisfied with herself on other counts, too. She recalled with nostalgic tenderness that Sharlelle, massaging her nipples, had murmured, “So hard.” And T.P. had wasted little time; she still had eighteen hours to get into town and find love. Should she wait for the others? Leave a message? No, she was a woman now.
Her good mood evaporated on the bus into town, which at this hour carried only locals. No one sat next to her or met her gaze, and she remembered that she must stink. No one spoke or smiled, and she imagined that her very presence was constraining. She debussed too soon, and had to ask directions to a hotel. Although she knew and (she believed) pronounced flawlessly the local word for hotel, the old woman she addressed pretended not to understand her, and sent a son or nephew down the street to fetch another son or nephew to act as interpreter. This young man was gorgeous, and she mistook his amused curiosity for amused contempt and his offer to guide her for mockery. Half spitefully, she failed to hear his directions, and trudged for an hour through the cramped and odorous streets, feeling more and more alien and alone. She did not see another soldier anywhere. Hunger and hangover aggravated her unease, which released her latent racism, and she muttered derogatory generalizations (which would have applied equally well to her own country’s cities) about the congestion and disorder. When at last she found a hotel room, its opulence and affordability seemed to confirm that, as a people, the medipodeans were both backward and decadent.
She undressed slowly and with ambivalence; she had not removed her socks or boots for weeks, and the sensation was both salubrious and unsettling, like removing grit from a wound. She scattered her clothes and belongings as widely as possible, then ran a steaming bath. While waiting for it to fill, she urinated and rubbed herself with urine, as she had been instructed, to prevent sexual disease. As she climbed into the tub, lappets of dead skin detached from her legs and floated to the surface, and the soap bubbles turned grey with scum. She drained and ran two more baths, shaving and scrubbing herself gingerly and with absorption. She was reminded of the epic baths she’d enjoyed as a child, with their splashings and submersions, their discovery and intrigue, and which lasted so long that they often necessitated slippery intermissions on the toilet. At last she emerged, as taut and pink as a scar, and feeling five kilograms lighter. She loped and lunged about the room, relishing her privacy and nudity. She opened every drawer, turned every knob and latch, upended every bowl and basket, inspected every bauble, sat on every chair, and jumped up and down on the bed. She lay dozing and daydreaming awhile, then reluctantly squeezed back into her uniform, soused herself with complimentary perfume, and went looking for food, and for men.
Her mood had rebounded, and where earlier she had seen squalor and clutter she now saw vivacity and plenty. And soldiers were now everywhere; restaurants, food stalls, and fruit carts were plentiful; in many alleys were open-air markets offering new and used tools, books, clothes, cloth, jewellery, appliance
s, watches, electronics, and weapons. She filled her belly with fried and floury things, and her pockets with handkerchiefs, pens, rings, flasks, lighters, a magnifying glass, and a bowie knife. Then she prowled lazily through the throng, belching and jingling and staring at men unless they stared back.
After rejecting several faces or bodies on grounds that seemed preposterous as soon as the face or body was out of sight, she finally persuaded herself to follow one man doing his shopping. His gait was relaxed and his hair disheveled, and she became convinced that he was spirited, passionate, and kind. This was the man. This was the moment.
She hesitated, and played in imagination a preview of her advance. It suddenly seemed obvious that confident and desirous were not qualities that this man would welcome from a stranger. Bluntness would be an insult, insistence an assault. If only she had some excuse to talk to him, some reason to approach him! She wished pettishly for an air raid, a thief, or a hawker from which she could rescue him. Even a dropped coin!
Then a miracle occurred. Retracing his steps, he crossed the street to the very fruit cart she was pretending to peruse. He smiled, drawing a smile from her that she felt throughout her body. He was perhaps ten years older than she was, and her eyes trembled in their sockets at the thought of his ripe and jaded libido. He began selecting oranges, cradling the finalists in one arm. She must say something, anything. Good price for oranges, perhaps? No. And was it a good price? For some inscrutable reason the medipodeans priced their groceries by the hectogram, and even back home she didn’t really know what oranges were supposed to cost. Fatuously praising the cheapness of some outrageously overpriced oranges would hardly impress him. Looking closer, she was not even sure that these were oranges.
The man had noticed her following him and had decided to confront her. He saw that she was a mere girl, awkward and bashful and rather adorable; her diffidence, however, was contagious. “Not a bad price for oranges,” he observed. —“Sorry,” she grunted in her language, “I don’t understand.” —“I’m sorry,” he said in his, “I can’t understand you.”
Reduced to mime, they felt shielded from embarrassment, for they had no choice but to indulge in the simple, silly avowals of childhood. T.P. indicated by gesture that oranges were yummy; the man replied by gesture that oranges were tart. They chuckled and shrugged; then he paid for his oranges, gave an arpeggio wave with three fingers, and walked out of her life.
Should she run after him? . . .
Should she have run after him?
Her mood suffered another reversal. Now the vivacity of the streets seemed garish, the abundance immoral. She felt glutted and spoiled, and recalled with mortification the deprivation and hardship of the main areas of conflict. She was irritated by the undisciplined congestion of the crowds; how easily one could slaughter hundreds of them with a mortar and a machine gun! She surveyed the streets with a tactical eye, choosing which walls would have to be torn down, which roofs occupied, which approaches barricaded. Yes, a single platoon could kill thousands …
When, an hour later, she spotted Triple-Time coming out of a movie theater, it was with mingled frustration and relief that she abandoned her crucial, degrading, desperate, hopeless search. Sneaking up to her, she punched her in the small of the back and caught the cigarette that fell from her mouth. —“Hey, cunt-knuckle. Give it back.” —“Hey, saggy-tits. What the fuck is this?” It was not a cigarette but a lollipop, warm and sticky in her hand. She popped it in her mouth with a moan of satisfaction that was feigned, then another that was not. “Where the fuck’d you get this?” —Triple-Time grinned and dug her elbow into T.P.’s ribs. “Come on, shitpig. I’ll show you.”
She too was half relieved. Agitated and unsatisfied by the massage she’d received at the whorehouse, she had left Christmas Tree and The Professor behind in the safe zone and come into town looking for sex; but she had not been able to resign herself to the submissiveness required for a quick fuck. Encouraged by Teacher Pet’s enthusiasm, and for the moment free of the First/Fourth’s atmosphere of competitive derision, she confided that the place to which she was taking them served ice cream too.
A few days later on sentry duty, The Professor, hurt by her protégé’s silence on the subject, finally asked T.P. how she’d enjoyed the whorehouse. —T.P. shrugged. “It was all right, I guess,” she said. That was all. —The Professor struggled with her emotions, and lost. “I guess you had more fun with Triple-Time,” she scoffed.
T.P. was at first too puzzled to reply.
Six Inches. —At dusk, Forty-Third C Platoon sat in the dirty snow waiting irritably for air support. Kellek complained that her shell-fragment wounds were itchy. Boorq said that hers ached like arthritis. Solzi’s throbbed, but only when she walked. They tallied their scars; Laskantan was the winner, with twenty-five. Osini had the ugliest scar, a ragged purple excoriation the length of her forearm, caused by white phosphorous. Tolb, everyone but Tolb agreed, had received the most painful injury: a tracer round had burned slowly through her knee. Tolb, for whom nothing was quite real unless it happened to someone else, thought she’d been lucky: unlike some, she could still walk. “Anyway, the more painful, the less deadly.”
—This was debated. —“Anyway,” said Tolb, “nobody ever died of a bullet in the knee.” —This too was debated. —“Well, anyway,” said Tolb, “I never died of it.” —This was conceded. —“But look at Sunachs,” said Tolb. “Show them, Sunachs.” Sunachs lifted her tunic to display a thin cicatrice between two ribs. No one could see it in the darkness. “That’s the point,” said Tolb. “The shard was so thin it was like a scalpel—but this long. It just missed her lung by half an inch.” —Sunachs, embarrassed, grunted.
Burnok, to whom nothing was quite real unless it happened to herself, scoffed and said that a sniper’s bullet had grazed her arm the other night and slammed into the dugout wall behind her. Everyone in earshot was able to cite a more deadly and more recent incident; but Burnok persisted. “If I’d been standing six inches to the right, it’d have gone straight through my heart, never mind my lung.” —“Sure,” said Sergeant Costitch, “and if you’d been standing six inches to the left, you’d still be fine.” —“Or if you’d been standing six inches forward,” said Godbeer, “or six inches back.” —“Or if you were six inches taller,” said Kellek, “or six inches shorter.” —“Or eight inches, or eighteen.” —“Or eight feet, or eighteen.” —“Or if you were standing anywhere from two feet to two miles away in any direction.” —“All right, all right, wiseasses,” said Burnok. “What’s your point?” —Sergeant Costitch was explicit: Of the infinite number of spots she might have been standing in, only one would have been fatal. Thus her odds of survival had been excellent, and she had not, in fact, almost died.
“That’s why I’d rather be in a firefight than a shelling any day,” said Boorq. “Bullets are small.” —Godbeer agreed. “Shells are nasty.” She could not be more specific, but felt that there was something eldritch and impersonal about a shelling. “At least the bullet that gets you has your name on it.” Shells had no one’s name on them; they killed meaninglessly and indiscriminately, like disease. —Solzi disagreed. She would by preference take her chances with a shell, because splinters and shell fragments could not be aimed. For her it was the element of human agency, felt like an eye on the back of her head, that made firefights so dismaying, and sniper fire so uncanny.
Tolb brought the conversation back to Burnok’s six inches, and supported her view. “Guys, if she had taken just one more step to the right, or one less step to the left, at any time the whole night . . .” —“A fallacy,” said Kellek. “Because if she’d been in a different position, the sniper would have adjusted their aim.” —“You don’t mean to tell me that the bullet was fated to miss her by exactly six inches, no matter where she happened to be.” —“No, all I mean to tell you is that snipers do their best, and still often miss.” —“No, they often don’t mis
s,” said Burnok.
A wide range of opinions was put forward regarding the accuracy of sniper fire. They all knew that for every casualty suffered by their own forces, two were inflicted on the enemy; but whether their snipers performed somewhat above or somewhat below this average was a fine point, which they argued from anecdote and personal experience.
“Hey,” said Boorq. “If I’ve killed two aggressors, does that mean my number is up?” —Godbeer was distressed by the thought. “Shit, I’ve killed five already. That means I’m overdue?” —“Don’t be snotwhistles,” said Solzi. “The more you kill of them, the less there are around to kill us. We’re all better off. Your odds get better, not worse.” —“The more you kill,” said Sergeant Costitch, “the luckier you are.” By lucky she meant exempt from probability; favored; invincible. She had killed sixteen aggressors for certain, and possibly as many as twenty-five or thirty. “It’s a good thing,” she murmured. —“But still,” said Boorq, “for every two enemy you get, they get one of us, somewhere along the line, even if it doesn’t happen to be you personally.” —“So what are you saying?” asked Laskantan. “We should hold fire and all be friends?” —“It’s not like a baby being born every time a cicada sings,” said Solzi. “It’s not cause and effect.” —“I think you’ve been misinformed,” laughed Kellek. “That’s not cause and effect either.” —“Aw, clip it. All I mean is, it’s not magic. It’s just statistics.” —“In other words,” said Burnok, “a bucketful of air.”
“All I know is,” said Osini, “if it’s your time to take a bullet, then it’s your time, and that’s all there is to it.” —There were grumbles of agreement. —“So why worry?” said Laskantan, taking off her helmet and performing a crouching dance. “Trust in God, and let Him tie up your horse!” —“Piss on God,” said Boorq. —“Now hold on,” said Tolb. “Let’s not go asking for trouble.” —“Piss on trouble,” said Boorq. —Laskantan adopted this phrase as a refrain in an improvised song. “Piss on trouble, or trouble’ll piss on you-hoo!” —Lieutenant Farl decided that it was time to intervene.