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Dammit.
I take a swig of beer and nod, but I feel a swirl of frustration inside. I’m never the one to call it a day when we play cards. And it’s not just the cards I’m into either. There are the slot machines in the junior rank halls, and all the other things we end up betting on in the barracks to take our minds off the realities of war. ‘Bet you can’t shoot that bottle from where you’re standing… Bet you the Sergeant’s in a bad mood today… Bet you it’ll be grits for dinner tonight.’ Us guys will bet on anything and everything.
It’s no secret that there’s a gambling problem among the recruits. It’s escapism, yeah, but it’s social too. A way of unwinding in between shifts. And today, after a grueling twelve-hour shift, and another three torturous months of deployment to go, I could go for a little unwinding.
Really, what I’m on edge about tonight, though, is the fact that I’m going to miss Tyson when he gets on that plane back to America. He’s the best buddy I ever had. We’ve been in the same barracks for almost ten months now. That might not sound like a lot, but when you’re living and breathing every moment together — eating together, shooting together, shitting together — you form strong bonds real fast. Especially when each and every day you spend together might be your last.
‘You must be excited to see Polly,’ I tell him, taking a swig of beer.
‘Yeah. Real excited.’
Polly is Tyson’s fiancée. They’re due to be married in a month. They thought about getting one of those proxy marriages. I’ve heard about soldiers doing that before. Where only the woman is actually present at the wedding, while the man is deployed elsewhere. Can be helpful because of the marriage benefits: health care and housing allowances and all that. Doesn’t sound super-romantic to me, but I guess that’s not the point. Sometimes, practical can be romantic, I guess. Tyson is from Texas. In theory, he’d be allowed a wedding like that, if he wanted to. Tyson is a gentleman, though. He wants to do it properly. Give Polly a special day.
‘What about you?’ asks Tyson. ‘You still talking to that girl of yours?’
He’s talking about Kira. And he knows the answer to that. I stopped sending Kira letters ages ago. Couldn’t handle it.
I’m not a gentleman like Tyson.
Besides, Kira and I were never serious. She wasn’t who I’m looking for. Not my Forever Girl. We fooled around a little before I got drafted. I guess she kinda dug the fact I was a soldier. She liked the idea of playing the part of the forlorn little lady at home, while I went off to war. It all comes down to the fact she wasn’t a Little. I mean, she said she’d consider doing some roleplay stuff, but I think she was talking just about ballgags and bullwhips. Which is all fine, but just… not what I’m looking for. Weird thing is I always got the feeling she was secretly hoping I was gonna get my head blown off out here, because every time I wrote her a letter, telling her what I’d been up to, what the guys had been saying, who’d won how much at Poker, what we’d had for dinner, she’d always write back sounding a little bored. ‘Sounds like you aren’t getting much action out there,’ she’d say. I’m not sure what exactly she thought I’d be getting up to out here, but, truth be told, I wasn’t looking foranyaction, military or otherwise.
Truth is, my old man was the reason I’m here. It’s either go and fight the bad men, or stay at home and get beaten on by one bad man. A few sharp thwacks of a belt strap and it didn’t take me long to decide. I came out here to get away from it. My dad would never touch my mom, but he had this real bee in his bonnet about me. He’d tripped over his own laces on his first day of deployment when he was my age. Got blinded in one eye and discharged all within a week.
The worst dad of all time. I vowed I’d never treat anyone the way he treated me.
Reckon I’m out here now to finish the job he never managed to start. Difference is, I don’t want to start it. Now I’ve seen what I’ve seen. I’d rather be blinded in one eye.
‘What’s that?’ asks Tyson. ‘That’s not the alarm, is it?’
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ I say. ‘I’m not going back out there today.’
‘Active duty is active duty,’ says Tyson, jumping up from his seat and pulling on his boots. ‘We’d better go see what it is. Probably just a false alarm.’
I pull on my thick boots, much more reluctantly than Tyson does, and I’m the last out of the building. When I exit out the front door, I’m bundled onto a van with Tyson and a couple other guys.
‘Suspected bomb in the village,’ says Tyson, after listening to the radio chatter. ‘Civilians in danger.’
I wish I hadn’t had that beer. I wish I wasn’t so tired. I wish I wasn’t here. Fuck. I hope no-one gets hurt.
We travel out to the nearby village and assess the situation. It looks way more real than anything we’ve dealt with so far. The other two guys we traveled with take care of any remaining civilians that haven’t been cleared yet. Tyson and I discuss what we’re going to do with the Sergeant. ‘Looks like a frag bomb,’ says Ty. ‘I’ll handle it.’
‘No,’ I say firmly. ’I’ll go.’ Then, under my breath, I tell him: ‘You’re getting married in a month. Polly will kill you if you lose a hand before the wedding. She needs your fingers for the ring.’
Tyson can’t help laughing at my macabre joke.
‘I don’t care who does it,’ says the Sergeant, ‘as long as someone takes care of it quickly.’
I hurry out to the bomb and get to work, removing the wires and nails as carefully as I can, doing everything I’ve been taught in training. There’s sweat pouring off me, down onto the bomb.
Tyson is watching from a distance. I motion to him to move back even farther as I prepare to remove the last wire.
Tyson steps backward.
The wire is cut.
Not one meter from where Tyson is standing, there’s an almighty flash of violet, then orange, as the blast becomes a secondary explosion, a fireball. And my best friend is right in the middle of it.
The bomb I’ve been defusing is a decoy, hooked up to a real detonator right under Tyson’s sorry ass.
