Fourteen June always sucks. All of Fort Knox gathers in the park near Main Gate to play softball and volleyball and to eat hamburgers and hot dogs and drink beer. They get to wear civilian clothes and enjoy the day. Even the post run at five in the morning is fun. A slow pace, the commanding general leading it, everybody singing cadence. Lots of mark time running because there’s always a hold up somewhere up front.

But not for the MPs. Especially not for the Traffic MPs. We don’t get to do the run, which is fine with me. But we don’t get to have any fun either. No civilian clothes, no volleyball, no beer for us. We’re in uniform, bulletproof vests and pistol belts, directing traffic and parking cars.

And as I was using the hand-and-arm signals I learned in school to let drivers know to Fuck off, you can’t park here, Matson was in Iraq. Her truck driving towards some check-point just outside Baghdad. She had slept soundly the night before and had a piece of cake that morning. The cake was chocolate with vanilla frosting and, by tradition, was cut by the youngest member of the company with a cavalry sword. The youngest member of the company was her gunner. PVT Oneal.

Oneal was from California and was eighteen years old. She joined the Army because she had nothing else to do. She was a senior in high school on the morning of 9/11 and maybe that had something to do with her decision too. But she didn’t know. And she can’t tell us now because she’s dead too.

Matson and Oneal and the rest of the squad were set to relieve a check-point on the outskirts of Baghdad. They would be out there for 24-hours, blocking the road to the airport. Matson didn’t really enjoy the cake. She was busy thinking of contingencies. She was busy hoping her squad had enough ammo, had enough water, had enough MREs. Matson was a good soldier, she left nothing to chance. She could be annoying, all her questions. “Did you bring enough socks? Do you have a spare uniform? A spare pair of boots? Are your canteens full?” But these questions had a purpose.

After they ate the cake and had some eggs with hot sauce and bacon and sausage, after they sang Happy Birthday and the Army Song and saluted the Army Flag, Matson’s squad went back to their hooches and got dressed for combat. Helmets and flak vests and weapons. They grabbed their rucks and headed to the trucks. They were lucky, their trucks were armored, sent down from Kosovo and painted tan. But luck wouldn’t save them. They checked the trucks for flat tires and oil leaks and made sure all the brake fluid was still there. They started them up with some trouble, the glo-plugs cold and swollen, and did commo checks on the radios. Everything was working good enough.

They had been in Iraq for two months now and Matson was loving it. This was what she had been born to do. Kosovo had bored her, all the driving around and ammo counts and nothing to do. Finally she was in a war. But this wasn’t the war her daddy had told her about. He had been in Vietnam, walking through the jungle looking for an elusive enemy. Here she was in the desert, in a large base camp secured and fed by Halliburton. The chow hall was open all day and the food was great. She took a shower ever morning and had her dirty laundry cleaned every week by Macedonians. She could go down to the PX for socks and get her hair cut. It hardly felt like a war at all. Nobody ever shot at her.

They drove past the gate, past the sandbags and the bored soldiers drinking water, and turned right. The driver picked up speed and Matson watched the GPS, looked at her map. The driver turned on some Metallica and Matson smiled at him, bobbed her head, tapped her feet. It was hot, but you got used to that. She drank some water, watched the land go by. Kids ran along the truck like dogs and were eventually lost in the dust in the mirror. Women hung laundry from wires. Men smoked weeds and drank tea and sneered at them. Matson smiled at these men, waved at them. These backwards men who thought a woman should be covered head to toe in black. Who thought women shouldn’t drive or look at a man. Here she was, leading a squad of US Army Military Police. Here she was commanding enough firepower to kill every one of them six times over. They looked at their tea, puffed their cigarettes.

The squad reached the edge of town and the landscape opened up. Desert. She didn’t like the desert. She liked trees. She missed the trees. All her life she had been around trees. When she was seven, she broke her arm after falling out of one. She wanted to show the boys how to climb and she had climbed higher than them all. The branches up there were thin and the boys yelled at her to stop but she kept going. And one of the thin branches snapped and she fell past the yelling boys and hit the ground. They climbed down after her, hovered over her. She held her arm close to her and walked to her daddy. He held her arm, shook his head, drove her to the doctor. And for the next eight weeks she couldn’t climb any more trees.

There was trash everywhere in this country. And everything seemed to be on fire. Smoke rising everywhere from burning trash piles. The truck picked up speed and the rhythmic hum of the Humvee lulled her into something short of sleep. She listened to Metallica ordering her back to the front, she listened to the traffic on the radio, all routine. She called out to the check-point, let them know they were only five mikes away. She could see the checkpoint. The pile of sandbags, the trucks parked off to the side with machine gunners sticking out the top, the American flag waving in the wind. Three helicopters flew over her and banked sharply left towards the airport.

***

Martinez relieved me from the center of the road, from the baking sun. I went back to the car and leaned into the cool air coming from the vent. I took off my beret and drank some water. Sergeant Ellis carried down two plates of hamburgers and hot dogs. He handed them to us.

“Where’s the Coke?” I asked.

“What?” he said.

“The Coke. How can I eat this hamburger without any Coke?”

“If you want Coke, you have to go get it yourself,” he said.

“Lazy NCOs,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What?” he said.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” I said.

It was 1300 hours. This would all be done by 1700 and then I could turn in my weapon and go back to my room and get drunk again.

Up in the park, the Sergeant Major cut the cake. But there wasn’t enough for everybody.

***

Six anti-tank mines taped together and buried in the night. Maybe the checkpoint should have noticed it. But maybe it was too dark to see. Maybe they were asleep.

Six anti-tank mines taped together and buried in the night. Pressure tripped.

She weighed two and a half tons. She didn’t have a chance.

Up until now it was unheard of for the Military Police to be called into the training areas. During my first two years in the Army I worked at Fort Benning, home of the Infantry, home of the Sand Hill and Harmony Church training areas. I worked the Sand Hill zone whenever I could because it was quiet and I spent a lot of time running radar and writing tickets. Every once in a while I would get called to a medical assist, usually standing over a bleeding private after he fell off an obstacle or bringing water to heat casualties because the ambulance was always at least fifteen minutes away. The drill sergeants were never happy to see us, never happy to see our clipboards filled with forms.

Earlier that summer of 2003, maybe in June but maybe earlier, a private from Alaska died at his drill sergeant’s feet. The drill sergeant pouring water down his throat even though he had stopped sweating hours before. Stupid, and now unemployed, drill sergeant. He finally called 911 after the private passed out but by that time it was too late for anybody to do anything for him. After that incident, command made us carry five gallon water jugs in our backseats, a case of bottled water in our trunks. One of my friends got written up for drinking some of this water. He responded, “But I’m thirsty, too. What would you have me do? Buy water?” And yes, that’s exactly what they would have you do.

Anyway, the Military Police were never called into basic training land to handle a disturbance, to enforce military discipline. The drill sergeants were more than apt to handle that themselves. Sometimes, by any means necessary. But shortly after Iraq kicked off, after we had been fighting in Afghanistan for some few months—and that little war wasn’t looking so rosy anymore either—dispatches to the basic training barracks went up. And these weren’t easy calls. For a drill sergeant to call the Military Police, the drill sergeant had to be scared he would kill the trainee himself if someone else didn’t come and take care of the problem. Or the drill sergeant was scared the trainee would kill him. Either way, bad situations.

And as in most things, the Military Police were the somebody else to take care of a problem nobody else knew how to take care of. Not that we knew what we were doing either. But we had clubs and handcuffs, guns and pepper spray. And the authority to use them if we deemed it so necessary.

One night, late August, just as the sun was going down, the call went out over the radio to head to a basic training barracks for a violent trainee. Two patrols were dispatched along with the patrol supervisor. Dispatch knew it was going to be a problem. I wasn’t dispatched on the call, but I was close and bored and looking for something to do. Martinez pulled up outside at the same time as me, the blue and white lights on top of his car churning around and around. He saw me and said, “Henry, what are you doing here? Slumming tonight?”

“I’m hoping to use my MP club,” I said. “I’ve been doing this job for eight years and haven’t gotten to crack a head yet.”

The radio crackled and the patrol upstairs called out, “Will you please hurry for god’s sake?” Me and Martinez ran up the stone steps and down the long hall towards the noise of yelling and smashing glass. Scared privates stood at parade rest, a drill sergeant watching them like a guard dog.

The room was a large classroom. Desks and chairs and rubber duck M-16s strewn all around. Glass from the windows sparkled on the floor. It reeked of pepper spray and blood, a strangely sweet smell, and I started to cough, my eyes started to water. The private, his uniform bright green, his bald head dark red, blood pouring from the cuts on his arms, stood in the corner breathing hard and watching us.

“Jesus Christ, Olsen,” I said. “Did you spray your whole fucking can in here?”

Olsen looked at me. Tears streamed down his face. His uniform was all asunder, his belt crooked, his radio hanging at his feet. “I had to,” he said. “But he doesn’t seem to feel it.”

“Shit,” Martinez said.

We had heard about people like this in training, people who were immune to pepper spray. They told us about people like this, something like ten percent of the population, but never did tell us what to do with them. We looked at the private. He looked at us like a bull getting ready to make his next charge, a bull who knew he was already dead and had nothing to lose. “Maybe we should shoot him,” Martinez said. The drill sergeant, who I hadn’t noticed standing there, shook his head and left the room. More sirens outside. Sergeant Jackson and another patrol came running into the room. There were five of us now and only one of him. Still, I felt outnumbered.

“Jesus Christ,” Sergeant Jackson said when he walked into the room. “What in the fuck is going on here.” Sergeant Jackson had been a drill sergeant at Fort McClellan and still acted like one here at Fort Knox. It was actually kind of annoying. “Private,” he shouted. “What the fuck is your problem.” (Drill sergeants don’t ask questions. Everything they say is a statement. Even their questions.)

“Fuck you,” the private said, his fist clenched, his chest heaving up and down.

“Oh, no,” Sergeant Jackson said. “Fuck you.”

The private charged and knocked over Martinez and came for me. And I’ll admit now, although I wouldn’t have then, but I almost ran out the door and back to my car. Such was the look of madness on his face. But I didn’t have to run away because Olsen tackled him and the rest of us piled on. I don’t know what the scene looked like from the outside, but I can imagine it. A ball of six men in uniform. A flashlight was swung down hard on the private’s legs. Then another one. We were punching and swinging clubs and trying to grab his arms and legs, but he was as slippery as a fish. In training we learned how to subdue people. But in training the people are never crazy. And they’re never very motivated. Finally, after much sweat and blood and beating, we got his arms behind him and in cuffs, his shoulder popping out of its joint. We stood up and looked at him.

“Better call an ambulance,” Sergeant Jackson said. And I found my radio and called for one.

The private started kicking and bouncing himself across the floor. “Jesus Christ,” Sergeant Jackson said. “Olsen, grab his legs. Martinez, put your knee in his back. Didn’t you fuckers learn anything at the school house.”

They did this and the private turned his head back and forth, started pounding his head on the floor. The drill sergeant watched from the door with a smile on his face. Sure, he was going to be up all night filling out paperwork, but it was worth it after this show.

An ambulance pulled up outside and presently two fat civilian paramedics walked into the room out of breath from the climb up the stairs. “Who broke his nose?” one of them asked.

“He did that himself,” I said.

“Sure he did,” he said and winked at me. But I ignored him.

“Where’s the stretcher?” Sergeant Jackson asked. “He needs to be tied down.”

“We ain’t bringing that thing up all them stairs,” the other medic said. “Can’t y’all just carry him down.”

Sergeant Jackson swore under his breath. “All right, soldiers,” he said. “Grab his arms and legs and let’s get him downstairs.”

The private was still face down. I grabbed his left shoulder and Martinez his right. Olsen and the patrol I’d never seen before grabbed his legs. The private started thrashing and cursing again as we carried him to the stairs feet first. The drill sergeant was already yelling at the other privates to quit standing around and get the room cleaned up and put back together. Drill sergeants were efficient like that.

The stairs were narrow and it was awkward carrying him down. The paramedics walked down before us, Sergeant Jackson behind us. We looked like a strange funeral procession. The private kicked again and Olsen dropped his foot and Martinez dropped his arm and he came down with a huff. We picked him up and started again. We were nearly on the first landing, half-way to the door, the paramedics looking back at us. The private had buried his face into the back of my leg.

One of the paramedics asked, “Is he biting your leg?”

“No,” I said. This jackass medic had given this jackass private a jackassed idea. “But he is now!”

Sergeant Jackson started punching the private in the ear. Over and over again but he wouldn’t let go. We finally let go of him, let him fall down the stairs, and his grip on my knee was released.

***

At the hospital the private was restrained to a gurney. Thick metal and leather straps secured to his arms and legs. And still he writhed against them. MPI had already come by and taken some pictures of my leg—all bruised but the skin barely broken—and a doctor had given me some antibiotics to take to ward off infection. “The human mouth is the dirtiest thing around,” he said.

“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “Fucker probably hasn’t brushed his teeth in weeks.”

Olsen was back at the station doing the paperwork. As he was first on the scene, it was his case. Poor bastard. Me and Martinez stood in the room watching the nurses work on the private, trying to calm him down and get his vital signs, trying to figure out what was wrong with him. A nurse in scrubs with teddy bears dancing around kept pushing a catheter up his dick, a brown and hairy thing, but the crazy fucker kept pushing it out. The room was all noise, it reeked of piss and shit and blood.

“You see that new girl in first platoon?” Martinez asked me.

One of the nurses came in with a giant needle to sedate him.

“No,” I said. “What new girl?”

“I saw her this morning at PT,” Martinez said. “She’s got a nice ass. I don’t usually like those bending over stretches, but shit. You should come to PT more.”

“I don’t like PT,” I said. “All that running.”

“You traffic guys have it nice. And I’d run all day if I got to run behind her.”

“We have it nice?” I said. “I’m working four 24-hour shifts this week. And on the days I don’t work duty, I have to be up at 0400 to shut down Custer Road.”

“I think I’m going to ask her out,” Martinez said.

The nurse stuck the needle into the private’s arm and pushed the plunger down. It’s amazing sometimes how quickly things work. The private went right to sleep and the other nurse pushed that plastic tube up his piss hole without any further complaint.

“Who?” I asked, thinking Martinez was bold to talk about asking the nurse out right there in front of her. Why wouldn’t he just ask her out?

“Who? Are you listening to me?”

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

“Gentlemen,” the doctor said. “Thank you, but we can handle it from here.”

“Awesome,” I said. “I’m starving. Let’s go get some Burger King.”

“Sure,” Martinez said. “I’ll tell you about the new girl again.”

“What new girl?”

“Jesus Christ, Henry. I just told you about her. First platoon, PT shorts, legs up to her ass.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Your latest ex-girlfriend. You just better hope she doesn’t pepper spray you like the last one did.”

He smiled, wiped the sweat from his lips. “That was alright,” he said. “It was worth it.”

We called into dispatch that we were ten-eight from the hospital and that we’d be ten-five at the main post Burger King.

“10-4,” the bored dispatcher said. “Lawman clear, 21-17 hours.”

And then, on the road just outside the club, I found something. A parked car with all its lights off. And this was a problem as it was parked on the road. It had tried to get on the shoulder, but it had failed. I flipped the switches and the blue lights flashed to life. The car’s brake lights shone red and then went out again and the car started to move forward. But I turned a knob and a siren screamed into the night and the car abruptly stopped.

I approached. The driver, or parker, was a woman. I asked her for her ID. She was a soldier. Her husband was in the passenger seat eating chicken wings and drinking Miller Light. The smell of alcohol was strong in the car.

“It’s illegal to have an open container,” I said.

“I ain’t driving,” he said.

“Still,” I said. And I asked her to step out of the vehicle and she did.

I was back in my car running her numbers. She was a Specialist, same rank as me, so I didn’t have to feign respect for her. Didn’t have to call her Sir or Ma’am or Sergeant, didn’t have to worry about her pulling rank, which always complicated a situation. By now another patrol, just as bored as I, had arrived.

“What’s up, Henry?” Martinez asked. “Out starting trouble I see.”

“I ain’t starting shit,” I said. “I found these guys parked right here on the road.”

“Oh, shit,” Martinez said. “I know her.”

“You shouldn’t be fucking married chicks,” I said. “It’s against the law.” According to the UCMJ, that heavy thing.

“You’re hilarious, Henry,” he said. “No, we had to deal with her and her husband last weekend.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. They reported their car stolen only to find it parked down the street.”

“Fuck,” I said. “I remember that. This is her?”

I was on duty that next morning. Had to boot the car after it was found. The theory she was pushing was that somebody had stolen her keys while she was at the club and took the car. But then they must’ve gotten scared and brought it back. Quite implausible. The theory we were pushing was that she drove home so drunk she didn’t remember where she parked her car or put her keys. Quite plausible.

“Well,” I said, climbing out of the car. “Let’s do this.”

We put her through the FSTs. Had her try to balance on one foot, had her try to walk a straight line. She failed spectacularly. We had her blow into a PBT. The red digital numbers climbed to .19, well above the level that’ll get you a free ride to the station.

As I was putting her in cuffs, Martinez was getting the passenger out. I don’t know why he did this. It was a bad idea. Because as soon as he saw his wife in cuffs, he became very angry, very threatening. We told him to calm down, then told him to shut his mouth and put his hands on the car. I held his wife by the cuffs, tried to do something with her so she wouldn’t be in my way. But I couldn’t just push her into the road. She was my responsibility now, whether I liked it or not.

I took my pepper spray from its holster, called into my radio for back up, code three—which means to everyone who can hear: Put down your coffee, quit your jabber-jawing and turn on your lights and sirens and get to me Mach 3—and shouted at him again to put his fucking hands on the car and calm the fuck down or he would be pepper sprayed.

He seemed to think this over. He looked around at all the blue lights screaming towards us and put his fucking hands on the car and calmed down. I holstered my pepper spray and bundled his wife into my backseat while Martinez slapped some cuffs on him.

And I was glad it didn’t have to escalate because the pepper spray we carried had the nasty habit of blowing back into the sprayer’s face. An ugly design flaw indeed.

So here’s the lesson, kids: Around cops, especially cops with handcuffs out and blue lights flashing, keep your mouth shut and stay in the car. Because things always can, and always will, get worse for you.

Take this guy. He was a civilian and Martinez was getting him out of the car so he could give him a ride home. Because that’s what we did with passengers in a DUI. The civilian cops charged everybody in the car with public intoxication, but that was a lot of paperwork.

But since he wanted to break bad he got a ride to the station in the back of Martinez’s car—where he was left unseatbelted, Martinez taking every corner at speed, jamming the brakes at every red light, his head knocking off the plexiglass cage.

Back at the station, we ran him through the NCIC, that national database from which nobody can escape. And learned he that had six, six, felony warrants out of Texas. Texas.

Usually a state won’t extradite unless you’ve been charged with Murder or you’ve been caught in a bordering state. Because it costs a lot of money to extradite. They have to pay two cops overtime to travel, have to buy their plane tickets, then they have to pay back the county that held them until they could show up. But Texas. Those crazy fuckers are crazy.

We called down there and told them we had dude and asked if they wanted him. There was a long pause. And then that Texas drawl. “Son, we sure do. We’re putting two Rangers on a plane at first light.”

So instead of sleeping in his bed that night, he was in jail and on his way to Texas. And probably is still in Texas. Still in one of their rotting prisons.

Henry has been driving these roads for three years now, knows all the back ways and shortcuts, all the places the patrols can hide at night when they need a few hours of sleep. The places the Duty Officer can’t find. But Henry doesn’t go to these places to sleep. Not because he’s a good soldier, or a dutiful Military Police. It’s just that the pistol belt and bulletproof vest are uncomfortable and he can’t recline his seat, what with the metal cage there to protect him from the drunks and suspended licenses he every once in a while bundles into the backseat. Also, he has an office with a couch that he can go to when he feels the need for sleep. But tonight Henry is restless and drives in endless circles, waits for the radio to speak.

And what Henry likes about the midnight shift is that the radio rarely speaks. And when it does, it never speaks bullshit. Nobody calls for the MPs at three in the morning over a stolen lawn mower. Not unless they shot the guy doing the stealing.

Custer Road is a flat and barren thing. It begins at the Radcliff Walmart, enters Fort Knox at Main Gate-Bravo. Through the heavy trees and past the Custer Terrace housing area and the 1-17th Barracks and the post hospital. Through the middle of the training areas where new recruits sleep every night in fear of what the drill sergeants will do to them in the morning. Past the ammo storage point and the arms facility where rows and rows of rusted tanks rest in the parking lot. Disintegrating into gravel and then to dirt, connecting the M-16, M-4, M-9, M-203, M-60, M-249, M-240, MK-19 and M-1 Abrams ranges. Finally dead ending at a river Henry has never seen, only heard about. Heard it’s where the Navy SEALS launch their boats to practice river maneuvers. Henry sees them every once in a while at the gas station. Massive men driving massive trucks hauling massive boats.

Custer Road is twenty-five miles long and, if he feels like it, Henry can write a ticket every two miles, the road well-traveled and conducive to the heavy foot. And this is Henry’s job, to write tickets and catch drunks and investigate traffic accidents. And before he was stop-lossed, Henry was very good at his job. He would write twenty tickets a day and back at the office would spread them out on his desk like the scalps collected from Custer’s Army. But tonight there’s nobody out. It’s early morning Fourth of July and most of Knox is on a four-day pass, has gone up to Louisville to get drunk and watch fireworks and fight civilians, to make the LPD earn their overtime.

“Hey,” she shouts at him. “You the one who needs a ride?”

The man shakes his head, starts to walk away.

She shrugs, drives over to the doors, talks to the bouncer. She knows the bouncer, likes his thick arms painted with tattoos. His bald head and shiny earrings. “What’s going on, Ted? Busy night?”

“Not really,” Ted says. “A quiet Saturday night.”

She nods. “So, who needs a ride?”

“That guy,” the bouncer says, pointing at the man stumbling down the hill.

“Him?” she asks. “I just asked him if he needed a ride and he said no.”

“He’s pretty drunk,” the bouncer says. “He puked all over the carpet and we had to carry him out.”

“He belligerent?”

“Nah,” Ted says. “Kept apologizing. Just couldn’t walk anymore.”

“Shit,” she says and gets back into her car. “See you later, Ted.” But Ted had already closed the doors.

Eventually she pushes the man into the backseat. But he can’t talk, only mumbles. And he doesn’t know where he lives.

Matson is pissed. All the clubs are closed and there’s no traffic on the road and this is the time she likes to get a candy bar and Coke from the shoppette and then go hide in the WWII barracks until the end of shift.

“Are you kidding me?” Matson says. “You don’t even know where you live?”

The man only mumbles, stretches himself across the seat face down. She wonders if she should take him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped. It would serve him right. But then she thinks of all the paperwork she would have to do if she did that. Thinks of the hours she would have to sit at the hospital waiting for him to sober up so she could take him back to the station. She parks the car, gets into the backseat, goes through his pockets, finds an ID. She thanks Christ it’s current and has his current address, a housing area way on the other side of post. She calls into the dispatch with her beginning miles and her destination.

“Roger, 3-3-9,” the dispatcher says. “Lawman clear, zero-two-forty hours.”

She drives fast but not fast enough. There’s a retching in the back and then the sick smell of vomit which makes her want to vomit. “You fucking shitbag,” she screams and opens the windows. “What the fuck is your problem?” She wants to stop and beat him with her flashlight. But more than that she just wants to be done with him.

She finds his house and stops outside. She tries to kick him awake but he is soundly passed out, his face resting in brown and green puke. She decides this guy isn’t her problem. He’s living in quarters which means he’s got a wife asleep in the house. She’ll go wake this woman up, make her deal with this mess.

Matson sees something taped to the door. It looks like a note. It is a note. A sheet of notebook paper ripped from the book. Words scrawled in angry black marker. “SLEEP IN THE CAR, ASSHOLE!”

“Great,” Matson says. “Fucking great.” She knocks on the door. She bangs on the door. She kicks the door. Finally, a light from the inside.

“Didn’t you get my note?” a woman screams from the other side. “You ain’t coming in here. Not tonight, not ever.”

Matson sighs. “Ma’am,” she says. “This is the Military Police. Open the door.”

There’s silence. Then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Then clicks as the locks are turned. The door opens slightly, a chain across it. The wife is red-faced and puffy.

“Ma’am,” Matson says. “I’ve got your husband out in the car and I need you to collect him or I’m taking him to jail.”

The wife considers this. Her shoulders slump. “No,” she says. “No, I’ll get him. Let me put on my shoes.”

Matson and the wife each grab a foot and yank him out of the car. His head hits the pavement. “Oh, shit,” Matson says.

“Don’t worry about him,” the wife says. “He’s got a hard head.”

They roll him through the door and onto the kitchen floor.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” the wife says. “Every fucking night with this guy. My daddy told me not to marry him and now he won’t talk to me.”

Matson looks around the house. It’s neat and clean. It looks like they have kids. At least one. “That’s sad,” Matson says, tired of these stories and wanting to get back on the road, wanting her candy bar and Coke. “Don’t you have any other kin? Maybe some friends who’d help?”

The wife shakes her head. “Maybe I should let you take him to jail,” she says. “But that would probably make me feel worse.”

“Well,” Matson says. “He’s in the house now so I’ve got no cause to take him to jail. But I could give you a pamphlet with some numbers to call if you need help with all this.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for bringing him home I guess.” And she opens the door for Matson to go.

“Actually,” Matson says. “He’s puked in my car so I’m going to need you to clean that up.”

The wife closes her eyes, pinches her nose. “Of course,” she says. “Let me just get a bucket.”

Matson looks around the house again, the man snoring and dreaming on the floor, his wife filling a bucket with soap and water. And she’s glad she isn’t married. And vows never to be married.

He had lost his job, the store no longer economically viable, and the company gave him a severance which he blew on an Amtrak ticket because he had never ridden a train before. Well, not a proper train anyway. He once rode the train around the zoo with his mother and sister when they had come in from Iowa to visit. But it only went in circles, past the lion and elephant cages. It wasn’t the same as this train which had a destination as exotic and far away as California.

This train—silver and sleek and running on diesel fuel—was very modern indeed. But he wondered what the big deal was. It stopped often. At every small town between Chicago and LA, picking up and disgorging passengers. It also stopped in the middle of the night, in the middle of the day, shunted off to sidings so the Union Pacific hauling two-miles of coal and oil could roar past. The doors sealed shut so nobody could wander off to be left on the plains waiting. If he had booked with Southwest he would’ve been in LA three days ago. It was only a six-hour flight. He would’ve been given pretzels and Dr. Pepper. Probably there would’ve been a movie to watch.

He had spent the extra money for his own compartment. The suckers out there in general seating, it was like riding on a bus for six or seven days or how ever long it would take to reach LA. His bag held nothing but clean underwear and socks and an extra pair of pants. And six bottles of whiskey. He was happy to have the whiskey, had to admit you couldn’t carry this much whiskey onto a plane. The TSA would’ve thought him a terrorist and renditioned him to some third-world hellhole never be seen again. Not that James cared to ever be seen again.

But he had to be somewhere, had to be doing something. So he drank whiskey from the bottle and watched the sun bake New Mexico. His bare feet on the window making smudges the conductor would come by in the morning and wipe away.

He knew it was very hot outside because it was hot inside. The train when idling not providing air conditioning. He took a long swig of whiskey. Coughed. Fell asleep.

***

Sweating, he woke. The train moved slowly along the aging track. California seemed an impossible nightmare. Why was he on this train? Why wasn’t he back home looking for a job?

But he had no home. His girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, asked him to leave after he got fired. He wasn’t sad to be fired. Working ten-hour days dressed in black slacks and a white shirt trying to convince people of the efficiency of this lawn mower over that lawn mower. And then the store closed and he realized that this shitty job was the only thing that gave his life any meaning. The company gave him $500 to go away quietly and he filed for unemployment and slept until late afternoon on the couch in his underwear and fell behind on his student loans payments. He stopped shaving, stopped brushing his teeth or brushing his hair and she finally told him he had to go.

The train picked up speed, swaying gently back and forth. A soft knock on his door and he stumbled to open it.

“Dinner is served.” The conductor, an aging man with regal white hair, walked away. Knocked on the next door.

James threw some water on his face, checked his whiskey inventory. Two bottles left. Christ, when did he become such a heavy whiskey drinker? He put on his pants and a fairly clean shirt and lurched his way toward the dining car.

***

There was a line. There was always a fucking line. He waited.

Eventually, he found himself at the front.

A friendly waiter named Walter who sometimes gave him free whiskey motioned to him and sat him down across from a beautiful woman reading a magazine. James smiled and thanked Walter with a ten-dollar bill.

“Hi,” he said, sitting down. “What’s good tonight?”

She looked up from her magazine, blue eyes and brown hair tied into dreadlocks, and gave him a tight smile. The food on her plate untouched. She went back to reading.

He ordered a chicken ceaser salad and looked out the window, watched Arizona race by. The sun was setting and a full moon rising and he watched the red rocks turn pink and the stars blink on. He ate. And she left.

A man with grey hair and grey teeth sat down across from him. Asked him about his insurance.

“I don’t have insurance,” James said. “I think it’s a scam.”

The man looked hurt. “It’s no scam, young man. You need to insure the things you love.”

“There’s nothing I love.”

“What if your car gets damaged?” the old man said, cutting into a steak. “What if, God forbid, you were to die on this trip. Who will take care of your family?”

“I have no family. I have no car.” James felt lonely for his cabin, lonely for his whiskey, lonely for his loneliness. He stood up, dropped two fives for a tip, walked away.

***

James had never seen an ocean before. Only a great lake. His friend out in LA told him a lake was no ocean. Told him the ocean would change his life.

“Yeah?” he had said, over the phone. “How?”

“I can’t explain it,” she said. “It’s the salt, it’s the waves. It’s the way it seems to spread out until there’s nothing left.”

“Lake Michigan is as big as an ocean,” he said. “Water is water.”

She sighed. “Water is not water.”

Anyway, medals. They were a big deal because they were shiny and colorful and if you wore your dress uniform to the bar back home, you could probably get yourself laid. And they were worth promotion points. The easiest way to get a medal was to change duty stations, to go from Fort Benning to Germany, or from Germany to Fort Knox. Sometimes, if you saved a dying baby, they might throw a medal your way, but generally that was considered only doing your job.

In Kosovo, I found myself in the middle of a swarming mob of angry Serbians. It was a strange place to be, but there I was. We were still a peacekeeping Army back then and instead of grenades and bullets and RPGs, they threw bricks and rocks and flowers pots. It was a very confusing time.

I don’t remember it, but something hit me in the face. Broke my front tooth clean in half. There was no blood, no bruising, it was strange. I must have been smiling at the Serbians, wondering why they were so mad, trying to show them that I was a nice person. At some point, I licked my lips, felt my missing tooth and leaned down into the truck. I tapped the commander on his shoulder and when he turned, I smiled and said, “What do you think, Sir? Can I get a medal?” “Goddamn,” he said, making me think it was much worse than it was.

Back on Bondsteel I went down to the medical tent where a dentist slapped a new tooth into my face and the commander put me in for the Purple Heart. It was, obviously, downgraded. I thought I might get an ARCOM for not spraying the crowd with two hundred 5.56mm jackets of lead. At least that was worth an AAM. But nope, a Certificate of Achievement. Signed by a light-colonel. It wasn’t even worth five-fucking-points. And certainly wouldn’t get me laid. Which made it absolutely worthless.

I liked telling this story in the backyards and on the balconies of the lazy Fort Knox. When some departing soldier was bitching about getting his ARCOM downgraded to an AAM. I would chuckle, finish my beer, get another, and say, “Boys, let me tell you about the time my Purple Heart got downgraded to a fucking COA.”

I still like telling this story today. But somehow, it just isn’t the same.

“They’re going to need a fucking Chinook to get that thing out of the ground,” Sergeant Woods says.

“I heard the Army picked this base as a training area because it has the worst weather in Germany,” Matson says. “I bet it’s sunny just ten miles up the road.”

“You hear a lot, don’t you?” Woods says.

“I heard the Army could make it stop raining,” Henry says. “But chooses not to.”

“Christ,” Woods says. “I can’t believe I’ve got to spend the next six months with you clowns.”

Henry wishes he had brought a magazine or a book. But Sergeant Woods told him to leave all that shit back at the barracks. “We’re going to be busy out there,” he said. “You ain’t going to have time to read.”

“Sure wish I had something to read,” Henry says.

Matson laughs.

“But no, we’re going to be too busy to read.”

“You want to read one of my magazines?” Woods asks, pulling a stack of porn wrapped in a baggie from under the radios.

“I should make an EO complaint on you,” Matson says.

“Shit, if you were going to do that you’d have already done it,” Woods says. “But do you feel harassed? I’ll put them away if you do.”

“Fuck you, Sergeant,” Matson says. “Do what you want. But if you want to masturbate you’ll have to do it in the rain.”

Woods opens the bag, pulls a glossy magazine out. “That’s what I like about you, Matson, you’re a male’s female. The commander, he wanted you for his driver, but I told him you were a shitbag who would only get his ass lost.”

“Thanks, Sergeant,” she says. “I didn’t want to drive for that dude anyway.”

“Yeah right,” Henry says. “You’d be warm and dry back in the rear if you were driving for him.”

“Who says I want to be warm and dry?”

Sergeant Woods flips carefully through the pages. “How many porn magazines do you think there are?”

Henry looks out the window, already knows where this is going.

“What?” Matson asks.

“These magazines. I mean, you’ve got the big three—Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler. And they all have their sub-magazines. Then there are all the fetish magazines. So what do you think? Fifty? A hundred?”

“I have no idea,” Matson says.

“Let’s say a hundred,” Woods says.

“Okay.”

“And each magazine has at least three girls, sometimes even four or five.”

“Okay.”

“And most of them publish at least once a month.”

“Are you coming to a point?”

“My point is, where are all these girls? There must be thousands, hundreds of thousands. Why haven’t I met any of them yet?”

Matson sighs. “Are these the thoughts that plague your mind, Sergeant?”

“Sometimes.”

“What’s your wife think about that?”

“My wife? She’s back in Kitzingen.”

“And she let’s you look at porn?”

“She’s back in Kitzingen,” Woods repeats. “If she was here I wouldn’t need these magazines now would I?” He turns to the back pages, Henry looking over his shoulder. “Damn, look at this. I wish my wife would let me fuck her in the ass.”

“You mean she doesn’t,” Matson says.

“Hell no. And believe me I’ve tried.”

“Why aren’t you happy with her vagina?”

Woods shudders. “Matson, you know I don’t like that word. But look at this. Doesn’t she look like she’s enjoying herself?”

Matson looks at the picture, all glossy and airbrushed. “She’s in pain. She probably gets paid extra for that.”

“In pain?” Woods says, looking closely. “How can you tell? She’s smiling.”

“It’s in her eyes,” Matson says.

“You’ve never taken it up the ass, Matson?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s none of your business,” she says. “Have you?”

Woods looks offended. “Hell no,” he says. “I’m no fag.”

“But you want to fuck your wife up the ass,” she says, shaking her head. “You should let her stick a dildo up your butt, see how you like it.”

Woods closes the magazine, puts it away under the radios. “If she loved me, she would let me.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Matson says. “Any guy tries sticking his dick up my ass, whether I’m in love with him or not, I’m breaking his nose.”

“You hear that, Henry?” Woods says. “Don’t try to fuck Matson up the ass.”

“Har, har, har,” Henry says. “I’m going to take a piss.”

“Be careful out there,” Woods says.

The rain is slowing and the mud sucks at Henry’s boots. He claws his way to the back of the truck and pisses on the tire. Back in the truck he huddles close to himself and breathes into his hands. It is getting dark and colder. Matson is napping, using her helmet for a pillow. Sergeant Woods looks at a map as if he knows where he is. The rain finally stops and the sudden silence is eerie.

“Shit,” Woods says, folding the map. “Now they’re going to want us to do shit.”

I am writing to express my discontent with my current subscription. I am living in Topeka, Kansas, and look forward every week to the new issue. I love the reporting and the essays, the Talk of the Town. The fiction? Hit-or-miss. Try not to take yourselves so seriously all the time.

Anyway, the new issue, by the time it arrives in my mailbox, is the old issue. It usually arrives so late I cannot even submit to your fun Caption Contest. I’ve been a subscriber to your fine publication many times over the years and when I lived in Iowa City or San Francisco the current issue arrived even before it showed up on newsstands. So I wonder, What is the problem of getting it to Topeka in a timely manner?

Your disdain of the Midwest is well-known. What is it Harold Ross said? This will not a publication for the people of Dubuque? But he was wrong, is wrong. There are many people in these fly-over states who cherish good writing and good reporting and good wit. But if you cannot make your magazine arrive in Topeka before all that is new is old, I’m afraid I will have to cancel my subscription and demand a refund for the remaining issues—my subscription expires in January of 2012.

So, I give you a month. Please do try better. Because I really do not like having to go to Barnes & Noble every week, they always try to sell me a Nook. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.

Very Sincerely,

Robert R Herring

PS: and please don’t think I’ll buy your magazine from Barnes & Noble. Nobody buys magazines from those stores. We sit in the nasty—or in Topeka, the quite comfortable—chairs and read it from cover to cover while sipping a mocha. And then put it back with our greasy fingerprints smudging the print for the next person to find.

“You sleeping again?” Matson asked.

He opened his eyes and smiled. “I wish,” he said. “Maybe I could be dreaming myself in Hawaii.”

“Yeah right,” she said, sitting down. “Your luck, you’d be dreaming you’re right here and wake up colder than you are.” She blew on the warm drink in her hands, steam billowing around her face.

“What’s that?” Henry asked.

“Hot chocolate,” she said.

“You didn’t bring me one?”

“I thought you didn’t like hot chocolate.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I asked you once back in Ansbach if you wanted a hot chocolate,” she said. “And if I remember correctly you laughed at me.”

“Ansbach?” Henry said. “That was in the middle of July. Who drinks hot chocolate in the middle of July?”

“Hot chocolate is good anytime of the year,” she said. “Go get some hot chocolate if you want, I’ll watch your weapon.”

Henry looked back at the truck where the hot water was set up. Sergeant First Class Wainwright, a short round black man, was laughing and filling his cup, catching up on platoon gossip from his squad leaders.

“I better not,” Henry said. “I’ve been on Sergeant Wainwright’s shit-list since First Sergeant caught me sleeping through stand-to yesterday.”

“That’s right,” Matson said. “I forgot about that. Only you, Henry, would drag your sleeping back out to stand-to.”

“Well it was cold,” Henry said. “And they stuck me on a three-hour radio guard the night before. If I didn’t sleep during stand-to, when would I sleep?”

“I don’t know,” Matson said. “Why don’t you learn how to sleep standing up in the turret?”

“I would, but you’re such a shitty driver I’m afraid for my life most of the time.”

“Fuck you, Henry,” she said. “I’ve got a driver’s badge.”

“So do I,” Henry said. “And I ain’t even a driver.”

She laughed and handed him her tin cup. He drank slowly, the cup warming his hands, and handed it back to her.

“What’s today?” he asked. “How much longer are we out here for?”

“We’ve got three days left,” she said. “Today we attack headquarters platoon.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Why can’t we just do convoy security all day?”

“Because the gods want us to run up a hill fully loaded.”

Every three months the company came together in Bamburg for a field training exercise and evaluation. The platoons were spread out over the training area, but the headquarters platoon—cooks and mechanics and paperwork pushers—spent the week playing cards and sleeping in heated tents on the crest of a hill. And during the exercise the platoons would be made to assault headquarters, running up the steep mud with machine guns in their arms and radios on their backs. The mechanics and cooks would throw batteries and bread at them as if they were grenades. It reminded Henry of playing cowboys and Indians as a kid—nobody wanted to die. “I shot you, you motherfucker,” Matson yelled at the new commo girl last time. “You know I shot you.” The girl, only eighteen and fresh from a Carolina farm, poked her head up from behind a tree, fired two blanks off, and shouted, “No way. You shot over my head.” Henry couldn’t understand it. Why wouldn’t you want to die charging up this stupid hill? As soon as anyone even fired in his general direction he would fall down dead.

“What are you doing, Soldier?” an E-7 with a white band tied around his helmet asked.

“I’m dead, Sergeant,” Henry said. “Got taken out by that machine gun up yonder.”

“Did I tell you you were dead?”

“No, Sergeant.”

“Then you’re not dead. Now hurry up this fucking hill.”

Fucking Army, Henry thought. Even the dead don’t get to rest.

“What time are we supposed to start that?” Henry asked.

Matson was staring out over the land. Flat fields like Kansas, trees like Washington, snow like Michigan. “What?” she said.

“The assault on headquarters,” Henry said. “What time is that kicking off?”

“Oh,” Matson said, looking at her watch. “Sixteen-hundred. And then there’s a company formation followed by chow at 1800.”

“Shit,” Henry said. “A formation?”

“Yeah. I guess the commander wants to promote some people.”

“What time is it now?”

“0745.”

“Jesus,” Henry said.

“Yup,” Matson said, drinking the rest of her hot chocolate.