Juiceboxers, p.7
Juiceboxers, page 7
Plinko watched as the troops fucked around with push-up competitions, awaiting the arrival of Warrant Berman and the sergeants. Zolski was drinking an Iced Capp. Bockel and Krug flipped through a porn mag together. Yoo sat with a Tupperware container in his lap, shovelling food into his mouth with chopsticks.
“What’s that fuckin’ smell?” Krug said, turning to Yoo.
“What smell?”
“Dude, it’s coming from your food.”
“Maybe it’s your dirty butthole.”
“Seriously, what the fuck are you eating?”
“Kimchi rice.”
“What’s kimchi?”
“It’s what I’m eating.”
“What the fuck is it?”
“It’s mind your own goddamn business.”
“Yeah whatever. Is it from Edo Japan?”
“No, it’s not from Edo Japan.”
“If you don’t tell me what it is, I’m just gonna start calling you kimchi.”
“Go for it. See if I give a shit.”
“Okay you little kimchi bitch. Kimchi bastard.”
“Stop calling me kimchi,” Yoo said.
“Kimchi dicklicker,” Krug said.
“Dumb fucker. Racist marshmallow.”
“Who the fuck are you calling a marshmallow?” Krug said, lifting his shirt and slapping his stomach. “I was made for war, motherfucker. See these abs? God of war, baby. For shizzle my nizzle.”
“Go eat a twinkie, you shit magnet,” Yoo said. “You smell like a brandy bean.”
Krug wandered off, laughing and howling like a coyote.
Plinko picked a piece of lint from his beret and stuck it in his mouth. “How many people do you think are here?”
“Forty-one,” Walsh said. “I counted.”
“Do you recall how many spots are in the platoon? Like how many of us are going to get to go over?”
“Thirty,” Abdi said. “Plus the sergeants and platoon leadership.”
“Frick,” Plinko said. “That’s not a whole lot of spots.”
“You’ll be one of them,” Walsh said.
“I hope so.” Plinko chewed his lip. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had to stay.”
“We still have time to back out,” Abdi said.
“What?” Plinko said quickly. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Abdi said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried,” Plinko said. “Who the hell is worried?” He was worried. He did not want to get left behind, certainly, but also wanted everyone to go over together. It wouldn’t feel right if they didn’t go over together. It would feel like only wearing one sock.
Plinko stood from his seat and walked around.
“Look who it is,” Krug shouted. “It’s old Plonk-o. Are you fuckin’ ready?”
“For what?”
“For the goddamn, motherfuckin’ war.”
“I guess.”
“Plonk-o, you don’t seem ready.” Krug leaned over and flicked Plinko in the penis. “You look like a jar of fuckin’ peanut butter.”
Plinko bent over and threw up a little water on the floor. “What the hell.”
“Wake the fuck up. I’m doing you a favour.”
“Doesn’t the thought of shooting someone get you even a little wet?” Zolski stared down at Plinko like a concerned doctor.
“Not really. I don’t know. My dick hurts.”
“It makes him hungry. But don’t worry, Plinko. If you get cut, you can stay in the House of Guns while I’m pulling trigger in Afghanistan.”
The doors to the drill hall opened and Warrant Berman swooped in like a refrigerator on wheels. The troops jumped up from the bleachers to greet him.
“Okay, troops,” Warrant Berman said. “I don’t know which of you buttheads started the California rumour, probably Plinko, but it ain’t happening. For the training, it’s always been good old Wainwright. So, pack your shit together tonight, make sure you got everything on the kit list, extra undies, extra soap, extra smokes, extra razors, baby powder for the nuts. Pack heavy ’cause we’re gonna be in the field for two months and we’ll have a whatchamacallit home base, so you won’t be carting your crap with you every day. We leave tomorrow morning.”
“Wainwright is the fuckin’ asshole of Alberta,” Krug said.
“You, Krug, are the asshole of Alberta,” Yoo said, from the back. All the troops laughed. Warrant Berman didn’t verbally acknowledge the interjections, though his face was white as toilet paper.
“Troops,” he said. “I want you to be ready. Like actually, no shit, legit ready. No fucking around, ya hear? Pack properly. Now get the hell out of here and come back tomorrow evening at 18:30. Dismissed. Fuck.”
* * *
The school bus was ready to leave at 18:30 the following evening. Plinko was one of the first people on the bus. He watched as the new private, fresh off basic training, sat at the front of the bus by himself, also hoping to go to Afghanistan. No one had bothered to learn his name yet. His skinny face was sunburnt. Clusters of pimples on his forehead and cheeks like the markings on shot-up targets. The peach fuzz on his upper lip might charitably be described as chia pet, Plinko thought. He was probably not an adult yet. He looked maybe sixteen but had to be eighteen or they wouldn’t have let him sign up for Afghanistan. Plinko sympathized with the new private but had already forgotten how eighteen felt and didn’t particularly want to remember.
“Can I run to McDonald’s and get a burger?” the new private said, shifting in his seat.
“No, you cannot go to McDonald’s for a burger,” a sergeant by the name of Desjarlais said. “You should have thought about that before getting on the bus.”
“Yeah, fucking new guy,” Krug said. “Who the fuck are you anyways? You can’t go unless you buy burgers for everyone.”
“And fries for me,” Zolski said.
“And an Oreo McFlurry for me,” old Corporal Ainsworth said. He had a bushy moustache — one that wiggled when he spoke and bristled like a hedgehog when he smiled. Everything he said seemed funny.
“Damn,” the new private said, slumping back in his seat. “I only got ten bucks.” The soldiers roared with laughter and still did not know his name. The bus lurched ahead and the soldiers at the back cracked beers. Plinko sank into his seat and drank in the musty scent of togetherness.
By the time they stopped in the town of Viking for the gas station and a pee break, most of the soldiers had fallen asleep. Krug was sharing a cloudy Nalgene of beer with Zolski and old Corporal Ainsworth was snoring, his Adam’s apple protruding like a golf ball. An hour later, as they passed the checkpoint leading into the Wainwright base, Zolski was passed out, his head tipped back at an exorcist angle, his mouth open so wide any one of the soldiers could have reached down with a long finger and touched his heart. The bus rumbled to a halt in front of the Wainwright shacks. Plinko woke and looked up and saw Sergeant Desjarlais standing over Zolski.
“Okay, troops,” Sergeant Desjarlais yelled. “Wake this asshole up.” Bockel and Krug and a few others took turns poking him with rigid fingers. When Zolski finally emerged from the chrysalis of boozy sleep, he looked like he might be in the process of dying.
“Your face looks like shit,” Bockel said.
“Like a fuckin’ smashed television,” Krug slurred. Zolski was too drunk to say anything by means of retort.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Zolski moaned and ran into the barrack building, promptly throwing up all over the urinals and crumpling on the sticky floor. Walsh walked over to Zolski and helped him to his feet. Zolski’s combat pants were around his ankles. His army-issue boxers were wet with urine. He collapsed on the plastic mattress of a bunk that had already been claimed by the new private.
“What should I do?” the new private said, looking over at Sergeant Desjarlais.
“Good luck trying to wake him up. I suggest you find a new bunk. And maybe a burger.” The private grabbed his ruck from under the bed and tried to pull his ranger blanket out from underneath Zolski, who was already snoring.
“And Krug,” Sergeant Desjarlais said. “You and Zolski were thick as thieves together in the back of the bus with that bottle, so you can clean up his puke.”
“That’s not fuckin’ fair. I didn’t do a goddamn thing. I just had a few little sips. I’m not puking my guts out like that idiot.”
“Do you want to go to Afghanistan or not?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Then do what I say.”
By noon the next day, Zolski was no longer drunk but lamenting his wicked hangover: “I’m never drinking again,” he told Plinko. “Never, never, never.” All the soldiers were on the range, firing the big machine guns. Berms of mounded earth rose before them like the slag heaps of Mordor. The troops had been firing for hours already. The barrels of the guns seemed to glow red as the devil’s toenails and long wisps of wet steam curled from the barrels into air. The last of the targets popped up and the soldiers filled it with holes.
Plinko wiped his face. He was ready to be done with the shooting and thirsty as heck. He was also ready for dinner, his favourite part of the day. At dinner, just sitting with your buds on either side, maybe drinking a cold Coke and picking away at a bag of dill pickle chips while the sky pretended it was a psychedelic screensaver. God, life was good sometimes. He looked over at Zolski, who had dropped his rifle and was itching his armpits with the frantic determination of a rabid coyote. He was acting stranger than usual and Plinko turned his head away. If you looked at him funny, he might just jump up and bite you in the throat. Hungover soldiers were like that.
Nine
The next day they moved into the bush. Home was now a patch of empty field that smelled of dead grass and trampled earth, like the soccer fields of Plinko’s youth. During the day, the soldiers drove around the very large training area in G-Wagons that looked like luxury SUVs but were painted green with gun turrets and had radios instead of stereos. They shot a lot. The heavy boom of the 50 Cal, the C-6 and C-9, the whoosh and boom of the Carl G, the 9mm Browning, the metallic intake of air and dendrite ping of grenades. At day’s end, the soldiers fell out of the vehicles exhausted and limping like wounded animals, gun-buzzed and ready for bed. Plinko watched the sunset wash the world in all the possible colours, his fingers sticky with cigarettes and dirt. The smoke lazed above his head like a halo, like hope or burning rubber. Before he even remembered closing his eyes at night, the sun shone on everyone’s sleeping bags and Sergeant Desjarlais was shouting right above him — “Wake up, beauty queens. Woo-hoo, wake the fuck up. Another day at the zoo, tabarnak.”
Hours like stones on a gravel road. Other than week-old copies of the Edmonton Journal and the Sun, they heard little from the outside world. One soldier had a fancy laptop in an indestruc-tible-looking case but no Internet. Plinko smoked at a picnic table by himself and observed from a distance as a group of soldiers huddled around Krug’s portable DVD player and watched porn. They laughed and imitated the sounds and touched one another like drunken lovers. Plinko did not understand porn. He knew what was going on but did not feel the things he was supposed to feel when he saw random naked people poking and prodding and grunting and pinching. He certainly felt nothing sexual, just tired. Rain started to fall and the soldiers retreated back to the big tent and their cots, some of them nursing incidental boners which they dealt with in the privacy of their own sleeping bags. After dark, when everyone had drifted off, Plinko sometimes stayed awake, listening to the sounds of sleep around him. As an only child, he had never shared a room growing up. Having other people around all the time was a wonderful thing.
The weather in the training area was a confused cocktail of sun and snow. Plinko felt confused, too. The war in Afghanistan ahead loomed like a magical mountain, the peak shrouded in clouds of private mystery. The thought of going to Afghanistan felt like fall, the start of school, the terror and thrill, like sticking your nose in a glass of water and smelling nothing, but a nothing so full of something it made him want to call his parents and tell them he loved them.
But this was a real war. More soldiers were dying in Afghanistan. This wasn’t floor hockey in the drill hall on a Wednesday night. This was maybe getting killed. All kinds of fears were flying around, both vague and specific. But not even Plinko could sustain the feelings of fear for very long. The darts of fear fell from the board and onto the floor, swept away by adrenaline, boredom, and innumerable cans of Red Bull. Sustaining urgent feelings in the Wainwright wilderness was hard because life was just too normal. Zolski got caught masturbating in the blue rocket toilets. Bockel and Krug ripped the door open and took a photo because that’s what army friends did. The magpies and crows lived the autumn of their normal lives on the shredded grass out by the portable shitters in the training area, cocking their heads at the shrieks coming from the tents. Grey hawks circled the skies on drafts of warm wind, blown slantways across a very normal prairie.
Everything about their current military existence — the dirty SUVs that smelled of sweat and old farts, the leafless trees in the training area, the oiled weapons and CADPAT uniforms, the blue rocket shitters that smelled of actual shit, the cold metal of dog tags against bare chest, the crap taste of Individual Meal Packets, the sick growl in the basement of their stomachs when they thought of McDonald’s cheeseburgers or Pizza Hut, the unidentifiable and ubiquitous quiddity of military life — everything was tangible and real. But to Plinko, it sometimes felt strangely fake. When the world was silent and soldiers were sleeping and he was fiddling with a bit of string or chewing his lip and thinking about the grass or listening to the fetal hum at the heart of the world, something felt fuzzy and off, like a poorly tuned radio. He wondered whether they were all being fed a fuck-all, empty, bullshit burger. Why were they going over to Afghanistan? Why was he going over? Everyone seemed to know except for him. Oh well, he thought. I’m here now.
The number of soldiers diminished in a slow, Darwinian winnowing. One soldier tore his meniscus on a training run. Another gave birth to kidney stones and had to be rushed off to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead or kicked off the tour or some combination or whatever. One chose the certainty of good money on the rigs over the possibility of combat. Others found out that they couldn’t get time off from their regular jobs and left. The troops dwindled to thirty with no fanfare or official announcement. Those who remained were going to Afghanistan.
“What should we call ourselves?” Plinko said.
“Afghanistan Platoon,” Krug said.
“Good one,” Plinko laughed. “Very original.”
“You got a better fuckin’ idea?”
Afghanistan Platoon stuck.
* * *
Besides Warrant Berman, who managed the day-to-day activities of Afghanistan Platoon, the official commander was a fit but annoying thirty-year-old by the name of Lieutenant Glandy. He was the sort of person who might be working on a master’s degree in history at the University of Alberta, Plinko imagined. Plinko didn’t like him and neither did the other soldiers. He acted like an asshole and looked like one too. Lieutenant Glandy did not seem to care whether Plinko and the others liked him or not and made the platoon play soccer together for some indecipherable but nevertheless stupid reason — on the frostiest of all mornings, no less.
The game was fucked from the get-go. Structure didn’t exist. The troops shoved and huffed and dented one another’s shins with poorly-aimed boot kicks. This was kindergarten soccer but with soldiers, Plinko thought — a zombified gaggle swarming the ball with mindless momentum. The mass roamed up and down the frost-slicked grass like a distended tumour or a stomach freed from a body. The ball was lost and the mass collapsed, sweating and swearing, smelling like onions and armpits and ass. Krug latched onto the foot of a soldier who fell and kicked back at Krug’s face, connecting with a dull whack. Krug’s face was a streaming red flag. He punched old Corporal Ainsworth in the back of the head and Abdi pushed Krug to his knees. Zolski huffed and grabbed Abdi around the waist, elbowing him in the crotch, and standing over him until Warrant Berman jumped in. For a man who was square as a refrigerator, he moved faster than fast.
“Troops! What the fucking hell? Knock it off, you damn knuckleheads.”
Krug was bleeding from his nose and Zolski sat on his butt in the wet grass, bleeding into his hands. Everyone seemed hot and angry and aroused, and no one was satisfied, but the game was over. Plinko and the others wandered back to the tents and waited for food, hungry in a way that no amount of food could satisfy. Dinner was hot dogs and potato salad. The soldiers ate and everyone forgot about the fight. Warrant Berman even brought out three flats of beer and the soldiers cheered like Canada had just won the war.
“We want to be your children,” Plinko said.
“Adopt us,” Walsh said.
“We love you,” Abdi said.
“Solid gold,” Yoo said.
“Jesus Christ,” Warrant Berman said. “Jesus fucking Christ, troops. I already got two kids.” He turned away from the soldiers, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his combat shirt. “Enough of that now.” They loved Warrant Berman. With him, Plinko never felt he was going to get fucked over. Lieutenant Glandy, on the other hand, was like toilet paper in a public bathroom. Semifunctional but abrasive, sloppy and useless when wet. Glandy would spend time with the troops in the sun for combat boot soccer, but as soon as it started raining or snowing — and both had happened that week — he was nowhere to be found. He probably had a secret girlfriend in Wainwright.
Sergeant Desjarlais started tossing full beer cans at the troops, heavy as river stones. The privates and corporals became an orgy of jostling arms and hands. Plinko was laughing so hard he started to choke on a chunk of hot dog, but it was a funny kind of choking. The platoon was a joyful nest of baby birds craning their necks for malty sustenance. Some of the beers foamed and exploded and the sweet, spilled beer and roasted hot dogs filled the night air like all of Solomon’s spices, like the finest of perfumes. Plinko forgot about the mosquitoes for a time — and the soldiers dying overseas too.
