Calliope: Voice of the Writers
The Great Novel Race 2008:
Untitled
by Joshua Bumgardner
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Chapter 3: Sleepy
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“Goldenplaith?” Underwood squeals.
The initial thought in the Specialists head is, Oh mother fucker; leave me alone. A sad regret bubbles up after.
He had been dreaming of his uncle’s pig farm in Pahrump Nevada. The private’s squeal fit. In his dream he was watching his older brother castrate a boar for continued escape attempts. The boar was stoically silent it was his favorite sow making all the noise.
It always amazed him that humans and pigs could sound so much alike during the right circumstance.
But sleep only creates a thin veil for reality to hide behind.
An intense sadness bubbles to the surface.
His mouth forms the word what, to answer Underwood, but out of grief, and without asking permission, so he chides back the response from issuing.
Squeezing his eyes shut against the involuntary desire to open them he doesn’t answer. Finding a purpose to do so is the reason he doesn’t. He knows how people think.
Goldenplaith is the biggest dirt bag ever to be dropped from a mammalian womb. That’s a huge statement if looked at properly and it’s pulled directly from how he feels about himself right now. He has evidence. The proof being he can’t remember a single instance where he walked away from a relationship having affected the other person in it positively, or without a fight or accusation or refusal, or some negative reaction that he did not have to manipulate himself out of again once committed. His closet has no skeletons because it all happens publicly for some reason.
He reconciles himself with the thinking that it’s a visual thing. And there is nothing he can do about it. It being Natures little practical joke on him.
His eyes are beady black soulless orbs that have the power to send anyone attempting to look deep into them turning to search for something more appealing for their gaze to land on. His nose slopes from his face like a ski jump. His chin is pointed and constantly jutting out from his thick neck like a vultures. And his body contains the strength of two normal sized men, even though he has not done one bit of working out since the mid eighties.
And for some unknown quirk of fate he was blessed with the worst facial hair growth imaginable. Not that it only grows fast, because it is insanely fast, fast enough to be clean shaven one minute then a shadow the next. What makes it worse is the seeming lack of symmetry that he didn’t notice until four days ago when he got permission to grow it.
His excuse in getting this no shaving profile was razor bumps, small swollen red irritated pustulations that were real this time and not a figment of some excuse he concocted to get out of doing something.
“Goldenplaith?”
Again?
The uncomfortable feeling of not knowing this privates name issues forth. He can see his rank written right above his on the duty roster putting them together from 0300 to 0600 on the LPOP, but not his name. Maybe he would know it if he hadn’t taken the effort to stop learning peoples names years ago.
Conversations with other people usually happen in his head first. Then carefully chosen words bubble forth, usually he choices wrong and the situation blows up.
“What private?” He says on accident. Again his mouth works without permission. Something deep inside him must long for attention or some other excuse to converse with someone who will not understand him anyway.
“umm, my NVG’s died.”
Goldenplaith misses the private’s statement and knows it instantly. He doesn’t care enough to ask the twenty year old to repeat himself. There would be no point to it. What help could he offer when he can’t even help himself at the moment. He has never felt like this in his entire life. This feeling of not being present to his situation. He feels behind somehow. Like he is trying to catch up with the world around, but the world around him keeps speeding up to avoid him further. That’s the way it’s been since VII corp.’s boots hit the tarmac three weeks ago. He has found himself below the radar ever since. Invisible to all who would normally try and make his life a bit more interesting and challenging. Maybe that’s why he pursued the profile, to draw attention by subconsciously allowing his body to form the razor bumps.
The no shaving profile is a new thing for him. He knew it was out there for people to use if needed, but he never saw any benefit from it.
Now though for some reason his body wouldn’t allow him to put a razor to his face. And the result is half his chin a quarter of both cheeks a tiny smudgy mustache under his nose which looks like a cross between Hitler’s and the villian guy who ties girls down in front of trains. His beard is thick and wiry, comb-able even. He likes to think of it as Rasputin style, and can’t help wondering how he is able to get away with it.
Besides being rolled up in his sleeping bag like a burrito and snoring through this guard shift and the four days of super long growth on his face, the man, the soldier, the ten year Specialist, it would seem has forgotten the Army has allocated showers for use at the battalion area as well.
They are free.
They are plentiful.
They have never hosted a single granule of dirt collected by Goldenplaith’s body. That’s something new as well. He feels so vulnerable naked. And the result is a nicely developed smell. Not that anyone would notice in this rain. It seems to be doing fine at keeping the smell at bay. But beneath the poncho, in the 98 degrees of incubating heat, the smell is intolerable, even to Goldenplaith who contemplates showering whenever the next chance presents itself.
Contemplates.
Not decided.
He can sense the kid looking at him expecting an answer. He feels pressured to say something, anything to get the private to leave him alone.
His mouth emits “So?” conversationally as if there was a lull in the conversation and he just can’t find the words or the strength to continue on. More like a precursor to saying I gotta go, or something.
“And I don’t seem to have my glasses.”
He hears something about glasses and automatically assumes its nothing getting annoyed with being bothered over nothing and opening his eyes for the first time to the sting of freezing rain. Goldenplaith does not consider himself evil, or maligned for any action he has ever taken part in, but something deep within tells him he should be paying better attention to what this kid is saying. Paying attention better to the world around him.
His first war and he can’t seem to keep his eyes open longer then a few minutes. Finding secluded places to nap at all times of the day is his current challenge. The funny thing is that nights are proving the most difficult time to find sleep.
And even funnier now on LPOP duty he is back into sleep mode, blessed relief from the tossing and turning he succumbs to when he tries to stretch out on the thin canvas cot bundled tightly in the issued sleeping bag built for someone much smaller then he.
Itching at the forefront of his conscience thought is the idea that he should be aware and actively participating in this duty. But he has never participated in any activity in his ten long years of service.
It’s not really a question of why not now, more of a can’t do it solution.
He just can’t seem to make it work.
He cant seem to remember anything, other then how to get out of knowing stuff.
“So what should I do?”
This time Goldenplaith hear what is asked and instead of sadness a hot white anger rolls up to a full boil in his chest.
What to do? Like he knows what to do.
Probably find your self some knee pads. Like he did back in 81 smoking pot with his company’s NCOs. That’s how his education began. But those soldiers were long gone, Vietnam era, the Nixon military, swept under the carpet in the hopes they all get forgotten.
Vietnam.
Mention it and get a scowl.
But none of that really matters anymore.
He is on his way out also. His time in the Army has come to an end. This is his last hurrah, or so said the new company commander after Goldenplaith visited the retention officer prior to Iraq Invading Kuwait.
Son of a bitch actually said he had choices but none of them include the military.
Then Saddam saved the day. Selfishly Goldenplaith is hoping this war lasts a really long time.
No one was allowed to leave.
No one will be allowed to leave.
Tours of duty are extended indefinitely.
He was allowed to remain, this time by luck and no force of will of his own.
What else can you do asshole. What ever the fuck your problem is. Do…
“Nothing.”
It’ll work itself out he thinks as he rolls back over on to his side with a snort and tries to shut off.
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