War of the Encyclopaedists

by Christopher Robinson

  Not everyone was asleep. The clanking of weight plates and Urritia-­like exertion sounds came from the makeshift weight room set up outside the far edge of the bay. And laughter escaped from the office doors of the platoon room, where a dozen soldiers were watching Team America: World Police. Most of the troops were in some stage of the Desert Camouflage Uniform, although a substantial minority wore interesting mash-ups of civilian and military dress. Lo was sporting his usual ensemble of UC Berkeley basketball shorts, brown issue T-shirt, and black PT watch cap.

  Sodium Joh walked down the bay with a stack of mail, tossing letters, magazines, and package slips on bunks. “Sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  The letter slid into Montauk’s hands. It was from Mani Saheli. He sniffed it for perfume, like he used to do in Officer Basic with letters from his ex-girlfriend. It smelled like a mail pallet. You pretty much had to be in the Army to get letters these days. Montauk tossed it beside his laptop. It was getting close. They would be calling it any time now. Unless there was a recount, a possibility The New York Times couldn’t help but obsess about. Montauk refreshed the home page again, then checked The Washington Post and Drudge Report. Though everyone wanted to be the first to call it, no one wanted to be wrong. Montauk jammed a plug of Kodiak into his lip.

  With his earbuds in, Ant didn’t feel Olaf’s presence behind him until the platoon sergeant’s large hand had parked itself beside the laptop. Ant remained motionless in his hunched-over position. Olaf was more or less leaning on him.

  “Ant, you lazy fuck,” Olaf whispered, “you’ve got your Sim doing push-ups?”

  Ant removed an earbud but didn’t look up.

  Montauk refreshed nytimes.com again and again. Pie charts and exit polling about national security and moral values. He spat into an empty Mr. Brown. The Kodiak wasn’t just making him salivate; he felt his bowels loosen and the hot pressure of a large Class II download position itself in the straightaway. He instinctively looked around for some sort of book or magazine, then remembered the letter and tossed it into his cargo pocket. The bay was its usual somnolent self, except for the grunting from Private Antonin Ant. Olaf had shut Ant’s laptop and was treating Ant like his own Sim, putting him through progressive stages of discomfort and muscle exhaustion in a quiet, almost respectful tone of voice, so as not to disturb the sleeping troops. Ant was on to slow-count push-ups as Montauk walked by.

  The bathroom was in the middle of the bay and more or less first world, except for the foreign push-button flush system, the one-ply on the dispenser, and the constant thick reek. A live-in company of well-fed grunts was not the intended user group for this three-stall corporate restroom. Montauk spread his cheeks across the seat and reached for the letter.

  Dear Mickey,

  Rain is falling all over Boston right now. I’m in my new studio in Allston. After a week with my parents, I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s an old factory building. Nice ceiling-high windows. Lots of light. But the rain is so heavy I can barely see the cars on the other side of the street.

  I bought rolls of canvas and tons of acrylic paint and brushes. And I’ve been dipping my brush in paint and swiping it around. It doesn’t feel right to call it “painting” because it all sucks. I feel like a poseur. But at least I’m doing it.

  It’s a bit lonely here—I could look up some old high school friends, but it’s too depressing to even think about that. I just know how awful it will be giving a rehearsed five-minute recap of the last few years, explaining about everything, about my hip. It’s doing well, by the way, thanks to your tender ministrations. It’s still kind of stiff, but pretty much when I’ve got jeans on, I can’t tell the difference.

  How are you doing, wartime husband? Are you keeping America safe for us innocents back home? I worry about you sometimes. It’s weird having you come up in my thoughts. Like, I’ll be walking around and see a newspaper, or someone will say something about Iraq, which is pretty much all the time now since everyone’s talking about the election constantly, which is really annoying, or I’ll be lying in bed and you’ll pop into my thoughts for no reason, and I’ll be like, “My husband’s off at war,” which is the weirdest thing ever because no one else I know is married or knows anyone in Iraq, and it’s all so strange. But also romantic. I totally feel like some 40’s girl from Wisconsin or something, hoping my husband will come back in one piece so I can have his babies. I’m not saying I think about it that way, but I do feel like I can all of a sudden empathize with those girls. What would blow that girl’s mind is that we’ve kissed exactly once (I’d probably need to go back a few hundred years for knowing nods on that one). But also that it’s this weirdly fake war. No one around here even thinks about it except to think how stupid it is, and how much they’re embarrassed by it, and how much they hate Bush, of course.

  Definitely, no one’s worried about how battles are going, or whatever. Are there any? I guess there aren’t, right? I don’t even know how to talk about it. I think a lot of people want things to get even worse so we can leave and everyone will realize what a jackass Bush is. Which sentiment I certainly do not share, Mickey—I just want you to stay safe so you can come home and dump me with all your fingers and toes attached. Just kidding, I don’t mind at all and I really appreciate how you’ve helped me. Because of you, I can spend time in my studio making shit, I mean art. Someday, soon, I’ll make art. I’ll have something to impress you with when you get back. Anyway, my hand is starting to hurt—you’re giving my fingers a workout. Joke.

  xoxo

  mani

  P.S. Sorry I was so awkward that time on the couch!

  Montauk could feel his chest giving way to his heart as if it were a watermelon breaking through the bottom of a wet paper grocery bag. It made him angry, to be suddenly moved. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he mumbled, then self-consciously looked around, as if his platoon had been reading over his shoulder and making revolting jerk-off gestures. Just a few months ago, he’d been biking around Capitol Hill with a beer helmet on, trying to figure out which Encyclopad party theme would net the most babes with the least work. Now he was an officer in an occupation, reading letters from his wife back home. He wondered with dread whether the choices that had gotten him here had been subconscious attempts at the sort of hipster irony he’d claimed to be done with that time at Linda’s, with Corderoy. The day after Mani’s accident.

  Montauk sighed and looked back at Mani’s Millennial War-Bride letter. He couldn’t decide whether he admired her or pitied her. She would probably hate him if she could peek inside his head at all the violent thoughts, the sourceless anger that made him even angrier with its sourcelessness.

  “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he muttered, trying to put her out of his mind.

  It was 0915. Past one a.m. back in the States. The results had to be in. Montauk stuffed the letter in his pocket. He stood up and flushed and was about to zip when he saw the small ragged stack of porno mags on the top of the throne in mute defiance of General Order Number One: the blanket prohibition of booze, sex, and porn in the entire Central Command area of operations. He flipped open a Penthouse issue to a photo essay of a waxed brunette riding a jacked Mexican guy. He imagined it was his own hands on her ass cheeks, the girl morphing into different girls he’d been with or wanted to. Then he pictured his own blushing bride, Mani Saheli, her hair down, shiny, black, and long like advertisement hair. He hadn’t turned away from Mani that night on the couch out of noble concern, whatever he may have told himself at the time. He’d turned away from her for the same reason every other loser guy turns away from a beautiful girl—he was terrified of rejection, of admitting his painfully acute desire to a girl who, probably, like all girls he wanted to bang (which numbered in the tens of millions, worldwide, he’d worked out with Corderoy), didn’t want to bang him back. And though he’d been able to sense a little heat coming from her, the higher chance of success with
Mani had been offset by the greater price of failure. She’d seemed coquettish, even a bit nuts, when she was with Corderoy. She’d calmed down in that month since Corderoy left for Boston, and here in the bathroom stall, Montauk felt that perhaps she’d changed, or perhaps he’d been wrong about her all along.

  Someone in flip-flops came in, panting, to splash water on his face and pat himself down with a paper towel. Montauk was ready to be done with this and went back to the photo essay. He imagined himself with Mani, flashing between flips of intense sex and scenes in a character drama that provided emotional context. Him visiting Boston after his return, her inviting him over, getting him to carry her around in coy reference to their days at the Encyclopad, feigning helplessness and asking him to help remove articles of her clothing, being shyly honest about her desire for him. Mani taking all the risks. His body released him. Montauk caught most of it in his hand but accidentally peppered the magazine’s spread, along with his boots. He closed his eyes and exhaled slow and quiet. The usual twinge of sadness was, this time, deep and warm. His eyes watered. He stood for a moment in a darkness of his own making until the air-conditioning made him notice the cold liquid on his hands. He wiped it off with one-ply, the sperm probably dead already from the cold.

  After washing his hands, he stepped out into the bay, almost colliding with Urritia, who was on his way in.

  “Four more years, sir!”

  “Oh . . . yeah?” Montauk was unsure whether Urritia was making an announcement or stating a preference. He barked out a hooah as he sauntered into the bathroom and slammed a stall door shut. Montauk walked down the hall and poked his head into the platoon room. Team America was still on. The Alec Baldwin puppet was making a speech to the F.A.G. war council.

  “Did they call Ohio?”

  Olaf looked up from a laptop. “For Bush.”

  Montauk went back to his makeshift cubicle and tossed the letter on his desk next to the pistol that he rarely carried. He took it out of its holster and broke it down. Dust on the outside, no surprise there, but the inside was clean. The reality was that she was probably sport-fucking some pretentious hipster in Boston right now. He wouldn’t have had a problem with it if the pretentious hipster were Corderoy. Corderoy would have said something, though. Or maybe not. It probably wasn’t Corderoy. Some dust in the barrel. He didn’t bother. The only reason to schlep this thing around was the off chance that he’d get to empty it into someone’s mouth, and who better than the guy who’d put the cigarette burns on Aladdin. He’d save one round for himself, maybe, as this was an army of laws, not men.

  27

  * * *

  Montauk moved slowly through the buffet line, watching his Thanksgiving plate assemble itself as the Pakistani servers heaped the standard sides in designated quadrants. The DFAC was quieter than usual, the clattering of silverware barely audible above soft conversations, as if the cafeteria’s patrons had temporarily developed manners. Suffused with the moist, fat smell of turkey, the atmosphere seemed to approximate “reverence” or “grace.” But the DFAC was still the converted ballroom of the Al Rasheed Hotel—high ceilings and fluorescent lights. And it was decorated by the Pakistani staff, which meant papier-mâché pilgrims, eagles, and, for some reason, a tabletop display featuring Shrek and Donkey.

  Montauk wandered past tables of Blackwater PSDs, contractors, CPA bureaucrats, embassy types, media, and Navy SEALs. He found some of his guys at a table in the corner. “Stuffing’s good,” Urritia said as Montauk sat down. He nodded and tucked into his meal. The stuffing was good.

  He ate quickly, like he did every day, like most soldiers do, then sat back in his chair observing the room. It was an impressive feat of logistics, getting big turkeys out here, thousands of pounds of mashed potatoes, teaching the Pakistani kitchen staff how to put together a Thanksgiving meal. But to the servers, it was just any old Thursday. And outside these walls, the Iraqis probably had no idea it was Thanksgiving. Ant was staring off into space. Sodium Joh was drawing infinity signs in the leftover gravy on his plate.

  Montauk ate half of an unremarkable slice of pumpkin pie, then got up to leave.

  “Some of us are going to Freedom Rest, sir,” Urritia said.

  “Oh, the place they got set up next to Warhorse?”

  “Hooah. They got the pool open, and everybody gets two beers. It’s only open today.”

  “Isn’t that where they put all the PTSD cases?” Montauk asked.

  “Roger, sir. They probably just hid them all in the closet or something for today. Two beers—you gotta sign up at the TOC, though, and roll down in a convoy.”

  “Two beers. That’s two ounces of beer per month of deployment,” said Joh.

  “I’ll pass,” Montauk said. “Don’t get pregnant.”

  • • •

  He poked his head into the CPIC. About a third of his platoon was in there, along with other troops and civilian government types. The Colts-Lions game was about to start, but kickoff was still twenty minutes out, and the Armed Forces Network was showing the presidential turkey pardoning. Bush stepped up to the podium and said, “I’m pleased to welcome biscuits . . .” For a second, it seemed like he’d developed aphasia. “. . . the national Thanksgiving turkey,” he continued. “Biscuits, welcome.” Bush made a string of strange jokes about Biscuits’ tough road to earning his White House pardon, saying that “Barnyard Animals for Truth” got involved, and that “a scurrilous film came out, Fahrenheit three-seventy-five degrees at ten minutes per pound.” He carried on with some boilerplate praise of the armed forces, “many of whom are spending Thanksgiving far from home.” Montauk always felt awkward when public figures glorified the military, like he was at a school assembly and the principal was saying, “You are our future.”

  Two aides brought the turkey forward, ass to the camera, trying to keep it from freaking out, and Bush said, “Not only will I grant the pardon to Biscuits, I will grant one to Gravy as well.”

  As Bush stroked the turkey’s neck for a photo op, Montauk could not shake the feeling that he was experiencing some sort of CIA psychological torture designed to induce mental regression.

  The Armed Forces Network logo swirled into frame and faded into a split screen showing a soldier on the left and a picturesque American family on the right. “We miss you, son,” Mom said, turkey glistening on the table behind her. “We’re grateful for your service, Daniel,” Dad said. Younger Sister stood there timidly, looking not into the camera but presumably at some director behind it. “Mom, Dad, Jules. I love you guys,” the soldier said.

  The logo swirled, and another family reunion proceeded on script.

  Montauk walked out and headed down the stairs to the phone bank. It was hard to be moved by the trite things strangers said to their families from afar. And yet he found himself wanting to hear and say those same trite things to his own family.

  As in his college dorm, phone access at the FOB was provided in small closetlike rooms. Montauk had always wanted to bang a girl in one of them, but he’d never checked that off his list. He pulled out his calling card and dialed through to his parents’ house in D.C.

  The phone rang and rang and rang. And rang. And rang. Answering machines were already obsolete, yet his parents still hadn’t acquired that technology.

  “Oren Montauk.”

  “Hi, Dad,” Montauk said.

  “Son.” He paused as if confused or searching for the right words. Montauk knew better. His father’s silence was a statement. He spoke more with measured pauses than with words. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  “Where’s Mom?” Montauk asked. His mother usually answered and acted as mediator for anything his father wanted relayed, which wasn’t much.

  “Your mother is at the grocery store,” his father said.

  “Oh,” Montauk said. “She start the turkey yet?”

  “The McMinns are coming over,”
he said. “They’re bringing a turkey breast.” A pause. “Your mother’s buying a pie.”

  “That’s nice,” Montauk said. “Well, tell her I called, okay?”

  Montauk’s father said nothing for so long that Montauk nearly said, “Hello?”

  “Don’t waste your dime,” he said. “You called. Now tell me something.”

  Montauk leaned his head against the wall and flicked the safety of his rifle on and off. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “How are your sergeants?”

  “They’re good,” Montauk said. “Especially Olaufsson, my platoon sergeant. He’s freakishly competent. Sergeant Nguyen’s a little strong on the discipline, but he’s smart, and he keeps PFC Lo from screwing up too much.”

  “Sergeant Nguyen?” Montauk’s father offered his son a silence full of the timeless amazement that the Vietnamese were serving in the US Army. “Have you had any trouble with the blacks? Them getting along with the rest of the platoon, I mean.”

  “Dad . . . no. Look, I’m gonna get going,” Montauk said.

  “Have you been wearing your sidearm?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” Montauk said.

  “Sometimes? What if your rifle jams?”

  “I’ve never even fired a shot.”

  “Just wear your sidearm.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m proud of you, son.”

  “Thanks, Dad. Tell Mom I love her. Okay?”

  Silence. Montauk pictured his father’s solemn nod.

  28

  * * *

  A pair of Brads and a Humvee rolled across the bridge toward the Red Zone. Montauk gave a little wave. They waved back. Out in the middle of the bridge, some guys from 4th Squad were manning the BOB. One of them leaned out the top of the driver’s hatch, flicking a pocketknife open and closed. The other sat in the turret, looking out across the water like a bored lifeguard. Down on Priority Search, Fields was standing in front of an Opel’s open trunk, facing PFC Lo, who was holding a camera for a “thumbs-up next to the goat in the trunk” shot. The driver laughed as he closed his trunk full of goats and drove off into the Green Zone. There were no other cars in line at Priority, so Fields and Lo sauntered back to the bunker at the foot of the stairs.