Cool Kids

Cool Kids by Echosmith's has a very Susan Vega feel to it and I like it. A lot. More than is appropriate for a 41 year old man. Not just for the Susan Vega-ish wispy music and beat, a comforting combination of steady beat and up notes, horns or whatever, over laid with the cool, edging on dispassionate, vocals, but for the feelings and memories that it brings up in me.

I was not a cool kid. I know everyone says that, especially the fucking kids that were cool, but when I say that I mean it. The group I was in was called The Nerd Herd or just The Herd. All of us were jokers, artists, intellectuals and geeks that refused to completely grow up. We refused to play their game all the while sitting on the sidelines hurling verbal frag grenades. Eyes full of desire for what they had. With two notable exceptions we were all lower middle class, if not white trash. We wanted so much more but some of us were already learning that we just were not going to get it. We were full of rage and hate. We weren't the bottom rug, someone always has it worse than you, but we were close and we knew it. I guess that's one reason we stuck together. Of course there was in fighting but if an outsider fucked with one you fucked with all of us and you only did it once. 

You couldn't pay me enough money to relive high school again. Not that my 20s were that great but at least I had access to alcohol and alcohol numbs the pain oh so well.  In that way I can definitely relate to the lyrics, but that's minor. It reminds of summer vacation. It reminds me of reading well into the afternoon, the only light in the loft coming from the windows. Outside the green white and black oak treetops shimmered in the sun, framing the barn at Kimler's ranch, and Susan Vega's 'Tom's Dinner' was playing on my boom box. I would spend entire days in the woods most summers. I'd take my BB gun, a book, and my Walkman and be gone until dinner, then back out until dark. I developed a lot of skills that I know helped me, and continue to help me to this day, out in the foothills with just my dogs. And sometimes Susan Vega. 

Gun

The door banged open. I rushed forward, hooking right, rife coming up, SAFE off, rear sight coming up to my right eye, as the breechman cleared the door. The courtyard walls were thick. Very thick. I was going to have to take three, maybe four, steps in before I could clear the  walKIDSKIDSKIDS! FUCKING KIDS EVERYWHERE! Clogging the door and jamming me up. I could feel the weight of my fire team pushing against me. One mag from an AK and we were all done.
Just as suddenly they were gone as a military aged male slid to a stop in the door. He bent at the waist, raigained his balance, and began to straighten up, as a Glock pistol tumbled from his waist band, the world suddenly gearing down into slow motion as I watched the pistol fall.  As soon as it hit the ground I was back to real time. "GUN!"  I bellowed. Finger on the trigger, muzzle inches from his face, as I looked in his eyes.

Better Times Than These

The moon shone like a blind eye, edge hazed by the humidity. In between cigar shaped clouds drifted north casting aircraft carrier sized shadows on the field of cattails where C for Charlie company was waiting in its release point. Second platoon was off to our three o'clock about a hundred meters away with headquarters platoon sandwiched in between. The FRAGO I had just received from SFC Richard "Big Dick" Eaton said when battalion gave the word the plan was for all three platoons to come on line at the edge of the cattails then move into our blocking position. The chances of fratricide were in the single digits. I could fucking hear the transmissions from the CPT Elson's RTO.

 I moved down my fire team telling the guys the plan. everyone was soaked and shivering, all knee deep in a freezing slurry of sucking mud and water. It had started raining on us the first night and hadn't stopped for three days. The wet constant low fog, and wind had brought temperatures down into the 30s at night. I had never, in all my life been so completely wet for so long a period on dry land. The squads built super hooches next to the bonfires they lit with dental forms they were supposed to fill out for battalion. Short of running lines there was none of the usual assembly area activities. No fighting positions, no range cards, no wire. Nothing but a shanty town of woodland and olive drab shelters strung up beneath the trees. In the pursuit of warmth and an attempt to get dry the battalion had gone totally admin. Fuck. Yeah.  Did I mention that this was mid May. In Southern California? Camp Pendleton to be exact. Nobody had packed for this kind of shit. All you had to look forward to at the alpha alpha was a sodden Gore-Tex jacket and a mushy poncho liner. It sucked.

2nd Squad poncho super hooch. 

Duplantier shifted, making room for me, as I took a knee in the mud. "What's goin on, D?" He shifted his head just right, the moonlight highlighting his camouflage painted angular face in perfect profile. "You know," eyes slid towards me, mischievous smile on his face,"hang'n out. Like two balls in a thong."
 "Nice. Well done. Good timing, what with the eyes an' smile an' moonlight. Very Coppola."
 "Thank you, CPL D."
I gave him the FRAGO and he listened as intently as he always did. Duplantier wanted to get everything right the first time. That drive made him the most promising Soldier I had. His heart is what made him a good man and a damn good friend.

PFC Arnold Duplantier II

After I finished we sat there, listening to the sounds of Soldiers waiting in the dark. The sadness slid in, strangling sense of utter loss, and what was flaming into hate. I sat back on my heels and began telling him about it. How I was feeling, what it all made me feel like, my thoughts on the baby and on her and how it all made me feel absolutely powerless.

When I was done he looked at me "We all knew something was up with you. I won't tell no one though. But if you wanna talk about it later, CPL D, you know, go out and get a beer let me know."

He never told anyone . He gave me someone to talk to about what had been eating my insides for over a year. His gift to me way his friendship, trust and loyalty. All the things that form the core of a Soldiers heart.

Happy Birthday, my friend

.

August 1998

She lay on her back, wrapped tightly in my poncho liner, to my left, asleep. The book I was reading made a tent on my lap. I wasn't reading it. I was pretending. No information was being taken in, I was  simply scanning the same line over and over. Checking my watch I saw that I'd have to wake her soon for another pain killer. I gently got off the bed, setting my book down. The sunlight coming through the blinds was warm.

In the small kitchen I crushed the pill into a grainy white power with the back of a spoon. Because of her religious beliefs she was opposed to taking anything. No aspirin, no doctors, no perception pain killers. I didn't care. She was going to take this, mixed in a light tea. I tried not to think, just listen to the rush of traffic outside and the chalky crunch under the spoon. The microwave hummed behind me.

"They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
Then I walk down to buy her flowers
And sell some gifts that I got
Can't you see
It's not me you're dying for
Now she's feeling more alone
Than she ever has before"

This song comes out of fold space, exploding into my head with a blinding flash of light.

... And I'm on the floor...
... And I'm sobbing...
"I'm sorry. So, so, so sorry... "

Iraqi Gold Mine

"Will you look at that shit." It was a 3rd ID Soldier sharing the same side of the table with me. He wasn't talking to me but I was close enough to hear. The two Specialists with him twisted in their chairs, following his intent stare. I looked as well. The target was a shaply female Soldier, DCU fabric nicely contoured to her ass, the seam disappearing at the joining of her thighs.

The four of us watched her move down the serving line, over to the salad bar, set her tray down, and go back for something to drink. Even though it was after midnight and the chow hall was nearly empty she didn't seem to notice us watching her every move. She had an enduring habit of pushing a stray strand of her brown hair back over her left ear.

None of us said a word until the female sat down. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the Soldier who had spoken. He was still watching her as he shoved some fries in his mouth and began chewing with neither relish or pleasure, "Bitch is sitting on a gold mine and doesn’t even know it."

Area 51, East

It's a little known fact that the U.S Army has it's own Area 51. F.T Bragg NC is the home of Special Operations Command. Soldiers with reputations that would even make great Achilles think twice are forged in under the pines, born from the red clay and sand, tempered by the humidity. Like The Immortals of Greek legend they inhabit their own Mount Olympos, Smoke Bomb Hill. But even they are not the pinnacle. Above and beyond them are The Titans of the Warriors Pantheon. The D-Boys. Delta Force. They live amongst the mortals, hidden in plain sight, their compound locked away behind fences and access gates, guarded day and night by unmarked SUVs that ride low on their suspension. 

Away from this mysterious domain is the world of the mortals. Those poor creatures that exist, scratching away, to make a mark in this life. They toil, they triumph, they fail. Those poor fools are the 18th Airborne Corps. But it doesn't stop there. Bragg has a Hades as well. It's called Division Area. Division Area is where the 82nd Airborne Division resides. In the 90s it was the ghetto of Bragg. Fifty plus year old barracks where the hot water frequently failed. The unfortunate Leg that found himself unaccompanied along Ardennes soon learned to keep his eyes straight forward and ignore the cat calls of the young toughs who's territory this was. Like the youth of bad neighborhoods the lower enlisted of the 82nd had a reputation and even more to prove. 

Just across Gruber Rd and West of Division headquarters on The Hill is the 82nd's backyard, Area J. Acres of scrub, Carolina pines, red clay and sand that have been used as training grounds for generations. Area J is a kind of no man's land, units don't have to reserve it like a range, they can just go there, anytime, and conduct what training needs to be done, be that squad, platoon, or company level. 

One overcast day late 1995 my platoon was police calling a grid square as our daily mission on Support Cycle. The clear plastic trash bags we carried were bulging with MRE trash, papers, and plastic. When they were full we would carry them to nearby Firebrake 6 for a cargo HMMWV would pick them up. 

"Ah what the fuck is this?!" Hibbin was down in an old machine gun fighting position, his voice muffled as he reached into an uncollapsed section of the overhead cover. He emerged with a half of a Katana sword. The blade had been snapped off about halfway up. We passed it around as Hibben rooted around for more. One by one his searching brought out a Nazi flag, a faded and water logged gay porn magazine, and a nearly empty tube of 'Hot & Spicy' butt lube. The platoon stood in a half circle, the items layed out in a neat row before us. Finally, in his Pennsylvania accent, Chris Housenick broke the silence. "Area J. The Area 51 of FT Bragg." 

Area J: Here Be Weirdness