A Private Little War(46)

The three of them, Carter, Fenn, and Cat, shared their unlovely tent accommodations the way the British and the Germans had once shared the Somme, gaining and losing ground by inches, creeping around in the night to seize, here and there, tiny bits of valuable personal real estate.

Captains Fenn and Carter got along well—a relationship substantially lubricated by drink and common misery. Carter and Cat had an understanding based on conjoined need. Cat needed Carter because Carter provided it with a warm, safe place to sleep, some measure of entertainment, company when it was desired, and the odd scrap of food when the hunting was poor. And Carter needed Cat because Cat gave him something to like about Iaxo that wasn’t all tied up with dying.

But Fenn and Cat did not get along at all. Though Fenn’s dislike of the creature was rather diffuse and generalized, Cat’s dislike of Fenn appeared heated, passionate, and dire. For reasons beyond the ken of the tent’s two human occupants, the animal loathed Fennimore Teague more than any other thing on a planet that, in Carter’s opinion, was just full of detestable things.

But Carter liked the bug-eyed little monster, and Cat, for its part, tolerated Carter to the extent that it did not sneak into Carter’s bed at night and try to kill him as it did at least once a month with Fenn. Carter always found this hilarious—seeing his friend leap up half-naked in the middle of the night, screaming bloody murder with Cat attached at the teeth to one of his legs or the back of his neck. Fenn, needless to say, did not see the humor in it, though it was perhaps a measure of his friendship with Carter that he hadn’t yet simply put the barrel of his sidearm to the thing’s head one night while it was sleeping and blown its brains into the dirt.

So that had been it. Carter’s entire list—the total extent of what there was in Carter’s mind to recommend Iaxo—came down to Cat and the war. Everything else could burn for all he cared. The summers were hot, dry, and short. The winters brutally cold. The drugs were revolting, the food primarily inedible, the landscapes just familiar enough that every little difference between Iaxo and Earth stuck out like a cockroach on a birthday cake. And the way Carter saw it, the battles between the two antagonistic gangs of abos that called Iaxo home had been entirely savage and Neanderthal undertakings until the company had come along to civilize them.

And even still, they were mostly nasty affairs. Bunch of fucking monkeys poking each other with sticks and bashing each other with rocks, he would say. The indigs themselves—both sides—were dirty, simple, smelled bad, and seemed themselves possessed of only two emotions: murderous rage and adoration. As Carter would readily admit, this might have been because he’d only ever seen them in two positions—either bowing to him in passing or in the bead of a gun sight—but this didn’t make his essential belief any less true. And even if he’d never cared to know them in any other context and detested the miserable little world that’d created them in full, it had always been his proudly stated position that he was here only for their money and their blood, in that order. Nothing more.

That was another list, of a sort. Not a nice one but, really, none of them were.





Lying in bed, Carter coughed. He had a taste in his mouth like he’d been chewing nickels wrapped in lemon all night. He rolled over and spit into the dirt next to his rack, wishing to God he had just one cigarette. Just one. He felt the aching tightness of need in his chest, the itch in the back of his throat, the dampness of his palms from wanting. He thought to himself about the one that Ted had given him last night or yesterday or two days ago or whatever it was now. How that’d been cruel, really—just one being enough to retrigger the frantic yearning, certainly not enough to put it back to bed.

Rolling onto his back again, he stared up at the tent canvas. He crossed his arms behind his head, then threw one over his eyes. He was cold, so he dragged his blanket higher. Looking down the length of himself, he saw the toes of his boots poking up, uncovered. He’d slept in his boots. In most of his gear. Again. Pig, he thought.

But then, past the tips of his boots, he saw something else. On the trunk at the foot of his bed were two cartons, each about the size of two bricks, shrink-wrapped in black plastic and labeled as TINNED MEAT in large, white letters. For an instant, he thought they were a mirage, that maybe he was still dreaming.

Quick, he told himself, just close your eyes and wish for fresh eggs, orange juice, a nice, fat beef steak, and a teenage prostitute to bring them to you, but it was no good. Tinned Meat was like abracadabra to him—powerful magic words. Tinned Meat was how cigarettes were labeled when they had to be shipped through the colonial customs blockades. And just then, he wanted tinned meat more than anything. More than love or money or a steak or real orange juice or pussy or even another breath. It was like there was a hand grown from the middle of his chest, already reaching, and dragging him along after.