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Luke
Fort Hood was its own little clockwork town. Equipment boomed and creaked. Gridded roads led to dried-out lawns, to shooting ranges, to seventies-era dormitories, to huge red gateways where vehicles of varying sizes and killing capability filtered in and out. They’d watered the grass, I noticed. Behind our line, family and friends sat in folding chairs, fanning themselves with ARMY STRONG flyers.
Earlier today, when we’d packed up, the blankness of our bunk hit me. Every trace of us was gone. Clean for the next set of recruits. Not that there had been much in the first place—my yellow army-issued towel tossed over the chair, the picture of Frankie’s girlfriend, Elena, in a frame on his desk, the little legal pad where I recorded my running times. But this wasn’t camp. This wasn’t even basic. It was infantry training. The point of being at Fort Hood was to leave Fort Hood. And now we were.
“So relax and enjoy this time,” Captain Grayson was finishing. “Use it wisely. Remember you represent the Sixth Battalion, Thirty-fourth Red Horse Infantry Division, and the United States Army. When you return to duty, you’ll be in a combat zone.”
“No shit,” Frankie said under his breath beside me.
In fourteen days, our company would fly to an unknown base in southwestern Afghanistan. Antiterror unit. Eight months minimum, indefinite maximum, most likely a year. Going to the combat zone was kind of the point of the whole “congratulations and good-bye” ceremony. We clapped.
Across the field, happy people found one another. I watched Clark pick up his kid and spin her around like he was in an insurance commercial, setting her down so he could take his wife’s face by the cheeks, pressing his lips to hers. Gomez jumped on her husband, wrapping her legs around his waist. Frankie had disappeared.
Davies came up beside me, holding his hat. Armando, too. The orphans, drifting together.
“Y’all got people at home?” Davies asked. He was a pimply kid, just out of high school, one of the youngest of us, as dumb as a bag of hammers. He could barely identify the letters on the vision test. Good heart, though.
“My main girl. My sister. They couldn’t get off work,” Armando said, crossing his arms across his wide chest.
“I ain’t got no one,” Davies said. “I hate this part.”
Over their heads I found Frankie, watched him wrap his arms around a curvy woman in a yellow sundress. Elena. She’d brought flowers. Atta boy, Frankie. His parents watched, their arms around each other’s waists.
Armando ran a hand through his clipped black hair, bringing up a spray of sweat. “I just want a cold Bud, dude.”
I licked my dry lips, watching Gomez and her husband laugh and press their foreheads together. “I feel that.”
“You taking the bus, Morrow?” Armando asked.
“I guess,” I answered.
Davies put his gangly arms around both of us. “What y’all doin’ tonight? Wanna get turnt?”
“Hell yes,” Armando responded. “Now get off me, Davies, it’s too hot.”
Davies nodded at me. “Morrow, come on. What else are you gonna do?”
I checked my phone. At least Johnno hadn’t called yet today. “I don’t know.”
Armando shook his head, looking at me. “You’re one of the weird, quiet types, huh?”
“No,” I said, proving their point.
Maybe I was weird. So what. I wasn’t here, willfully getting my ass kicked, preparing to roam through the Middle East with a hunk of hot, deadly metal in my hands, because I got bored with my fantasy football league.
“Cucciolo!” Davies called.
Frankie and Elena approached, followed by his parents. His mother was a beautiful woman with Frankie’s big brown eyes, wearing white linen pants, and his father was pure Italian, with curly black hair and thick eyebrows and skin that glowed. Elena kissed Frankie’s cheek. He clapped his hands, approaching. “Anyone else going to Austin tonight? I want to get sloppy.”
“Chyeah,” Davies said. “I’m in.”
“Where should we go?” Armando asked.
Frankie turned to me. “Dealer’s choice.”
“I’m out for this one.”
“Aw, fuck that.”
