Sunday, August 24, 2014

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction submission.

This post on this spiritually-expired blog has nothing to do with New Orleans or traveling.  It is for participants in NYC Midnight to view a recent submission to its flash fiction contest since my other links on the forum failed.  Please leave feedback on the forum post, thanks!

Dig a Sheet-rag a Hole.

Training with dead men sucks.  Louis lost his arm in a factory and can’t do a pushup, while Carlos won’t stop vomiting up his last meal, an infected cheeseburger that killed him.  Ronnie burned to death after he dumped half a can of kerosene on his outdoor grill.
I train hard. Run, climb, read.  I get high marks on the tests.  The ones around me, the living ones, they do the same. We want to graduate boot camp on top.  But the dead guys, the ghosts, we feel they slow us down.  The officers call them sheet-rags, like, hey, ghost, where’s your rag costume?
            Sergeant Miller says the army is an equal opportunity employer.  Discrimination against the dead is unlawful.  But we know how he really feels.  He has no use for dead men in the squad.  
             On the second week we practice different field positions at the shooting range. I’m stationed next to Jose.  He’s missing his left eye.
            “Someone shoot it out?”  I ask.
            “No,” he says.  “I was home for college break and mowing the lawn for my dad.  The blade kicked back a small rock.  I didn’t blink in time.”
            “It killed you?”
            “No, that was next year. Drunk driver.” 
            “I’m sorry.”
            “Don’t be,” he says and smiles.  Jose is upbeat, unlike the others.  Like Thom. Thom died of lung cancer at forty-three and won’t stop talking about it, how unfair it all is, which is true.  It’s just we don’t want to hear it all the time.  It’s depressing.
            “At least you can do things as a ghost,” I once told him.  “Not everyone is so lucky.”
            “If I could be so lucky to just rest,” he said.  “Instead I have to pretend to be alive.”
            Jose struggles with marksmanship, not a surprise.  After an hour of practice Miller tells us to clear our rifles. 
             Jose tries to release the magazine. 
            “Check the catch button,” I tell him.
            His rifle fires down the line and strikes Ronnie in the gut.  Ronnie drops his weapon and rolls over moaning. The dirt sticks to his still-burnt skin.  There is no blood. The trainees around him, the living ones, start laughing.
            “Who the hell just fired?”  Miller says.
His face is deep red like he might re-kill a man.   All the rifles are cleared except Jose’s.   Miller snatches it from him. 
            “You lose your brain through that miserable hole in your face?  Goddamn..  You’re lucky you shot a sheet-rag instead of a real, living, breathing human being, someone who would actually be of use to his country.”
            Jose lowers his eye.  Miller dismisses us.  Ronnie’s dead friends help him to the infirmary.
            Nobody sees Jose leave that night.  It’s something the dead can do that we can’t, just leave, and in this way, nobody really has authority over them.  More than anything, I think that’s what scares us most. 

             I don’t sleep that night.  I think about my dad and brother, if their ghosts are out there and what they’re doing.   Driving around, looking for a drink, maybe.  I wonder if he blames my dad for it all.  Then I smell smoke.  Thom is smoking a cigarette in the bunk below me.  
            I crook my head down to look at him.
            “Why are you here?” I ask.
            He shrugs.
            “I’m not trying to be mean.  I want to know. What’s in it for you?”
            “Discipline,” he says. 
            “Yeah?”
            “ I smoked and drank ‘til the day I died.  I never had much discipline.  Had even less after cancer.”
            “What about the others?”
            “I don’t know.  Stability, maybe, routine.  A lot of us don’t know what’s next, why we’re this way while the others get to rest.   I guess soldiering makes sense.  You?”
            “The same, maybe. I don’t know,” but I did know.
            Thom holds out a cigarette and match.
            “Screw it,” I say.
 I light it, inhale hard.  The heat purrs in my throat, and I hold it in there and forget everything I want or worry about, family, love, violence, boredom, liquor, just the nicotine is enough.  
            The lights flick on.  We crush our cigarettes and stuff them under the mattresses.  Sergeant Miller enters. Everyone snaps out of bed to salute him.
            Miller is in full uniform. I wonder if he also never sleeps.  He stops at Thom’s bed.
            “Smoke?” he asks.
            “Smoke, sir?”
            “Smoke. I can smell it,” he says.  
            “It was me, sir” I say.
            I reach under the mattress and pull the butt out. 
            “It’s a bad habit, sir,” I say.   
            “Covering up for a sheet-rag, eh?  Get dressed and meet me out front.  Both of you.”
           
            We follow Miller behind the shooting range where a jeep is parked in the rough bluegrass, its headlights illuminating a dead man sitting on a bucket.  It’s Ronnie.  There are two shovels next to him.  Ronnie is smiling and rubbing his belly-wound like he’s got a baby in the bullet hole.
“Ronnie here feels like that bullet did it for him,” Miller says.  “That he’s now ready to rest.  Says he just wanted to die with honor, not be killed by a damn Coleman Grill.”
Ronnie smiles at us.  He looks like shit. 
            Miller points to the shovels. 
            “Six by six by two should be big enough.”
            “Why can’t he dig the hole, sir?” Thom asks.  
            “Does he look like he can dig his own damn grave?  The man wants to rest for eternity, and you want him to dig his way there in his last hour? Christ, Thom, he’s hardly got any skin. Have some heart.”
            We stand back-to-back and start digging, the living and dead watching from each side.  Miller lights a cigarette.  He gives one to Ronnie.  They both smoke, keep smoking for hours while we dig, until we’re three feet deep, dirty, sweating, until we can’t remember who’s who, who’s dead, who’s alive, who has authority over who.  Who we’re digging this hole for, but still, we keep digging.   

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