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Crash took a seat, set his beer down and pulled out his stashed pack of smokes, shaking one out. Jake took the other seat, and Shane sat on the crate, his elbows on his knees, beer bottle in his hands.
“So, you guys enlisted after 9/11?” Crash asked after he lit up.
Shane nodded. “We met in basic. But, yeah, we had both just graduated. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, then 9/11 happened, and I just felt I had to join up.”
Jake nodded in agreement. “I volunteered for the army on my birthday. Same as my daddy. And his daddy before him. When I first joined up, I used to dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit in his face and plunged my Bowie knife through his fucking frontal lobe.”
“That’s vivid,” Crash acknowledged.
“Hell, I’m a romantic.”
Crash chuckled. “So you’ve been in a long time now.”
“Re-upped twice,” Shane replied.
“Multiple tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.” Jake took a sip of beer. “I joined up to fight, and I’m good at it.”
“Well, maybe we could use those talents you’re so good at,” Crash replied with a grin.
He studied Crash a moment, and then continued, “Loved your brother like he was my own.”
At the mention of his brother, Crash’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, I…ah…” he broke off taking a drag off his cigarette. “I don’t talk about him.”
Jake nodded, looking off at the horizon.
“I appreciate you’re coming, though. It’s just…it’s still hard.”
“I understand, man. I really do,” Jake reassured him. “Your brother mentioned a sister, too.”
Crash grinned. “Yeah. She’s back in Alabama with my Grandmother who raised us all.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, he told us about growing up there. He really looked up to you, man. I guess you kind of filled the father figure position for him.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Crash was uncomfortable with the topic, so he changed it. “What was Afghanistan like?”
Shane, sensing Crash’s need to talk about something else, tried to lighten the mood and replied with a laugh, “That country blows, man. If you can even call it a country. There are no roads, no infrastructure, basically no government to speak of.”
Jake was a little more emphatic. “It’s an inhospitable, rock-pit shit-hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And there are no jobs there. At least, not like we know jobs,” Shane replied, taking a pull off his beer.
Jake nodded. “Yeah. In Afghanistan a man’s got two ways to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options.”
“Or live in one of those Godforsaken camps,” Shane reminded him.
“Good God, those places stink. Tent cities of the walking dead,” Jake put in and then elaborated. “The smell alone of those shit-holes is enough to send them running into the poppy fields to happily scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day, and who can blame them.” Jake lite up a smoke. Taking a long drag, he explained, “It is modern day tribal warfare. Th
ese guys, all of 'em, they live to fight… It's what they do. It's all they do. Roaming packs of barbaric savages. Cavemen with AK-47's.” He studied his smoke. “Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.”
“Don’t get him started on the Taliban,” Shane grinned at Crash.
“Why is that?” Crash had to ask.
“The fucking media keeps calling them smart. They are not smart. They are sneaky and ruthless, and when confronted, cowardly. They are parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart? Yeah, they're real smart.”
Shane gave Crash a look that said, told you so. Crash took a drag off his smoke, smiling.
