A Private Little War(9)

“Kumbay-fucking-ya,” he said out loud. He’d heard that George Stork had shot one of the friendlies in an argument and figured that this was the logical conclusion of that probably unwise action. He counted the abos and that was simple: the normal number, less one.

Ted knew that today, tonight, maybe tomorrow, another call would come. An official call, laying out the bad news in the simplest terms, the most mechanical of language. It wouldn’t come to him, but he’d hear of it. These were the ways things worked. The call would come and then he would know exactly how fucked they were. Right now, he could only guess. An educated guess, but still. If someone were to stop him right now and ask him, Hey, Ted. How fucked are we? he could say several things.

He could say, We are somewhat fucked, I think.

He could say, We’re pretty well fucked.

He could say, We are not fucked at all. Nothing is fucked here.

He could say, We are so fucked you don’t even know.

All of those things would be equally true. All of them would be equally untrue.

When he’d gotten his call, the message had been only this: The accounting division at the London office needed an updated roster of all active-duty employees currently involved in the Carpenter 7 operation. This was to include all combat personnel, all operational and support personnel, all outside contractors and civilians under recurring payment arrangements, and all management-level employees. Those who were dead or rotated out-of-theater were not to be included in this list. This was not a personnel roster, but a duty roster, understood?

Understood.

Upon receipt of this updated roster, all pay and benefits occurring from employment by Flyboy Inc. would be suspended, pending executive review, understood?

Understood.

“Are you sure?” the assistant clerk on the other end of the line had asked him.

“Are you fucking questioning my hearing?” Ted had asked. “Are you saying I can’t fucking understand what you’re telling me without it being spelled out?”

“No, I mean it says here that I’m supposed to ask if you’re sure you understand.”

“It says that.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ted had sighed. “I understand. Just tell them that I understand.”

In the time since that call, Ted had not organized a roster. He had not included all combat personnel, all operational and support personnel, all outside contractors and civilians under recurring payment arrangements, and all management-level employees. He had not made a list and would not be submitting it to the accounting division. Instead, he counted tent poles and gallons of clean water and rolls of shit-paper. The counting he was doing was purely for his own edification. He had to know where things stood. He felt that he needed to get a handle on things—on the situation, as it were—and to know with some specificity how many bullets, how many beans, how many grains of rice and dead abos and days and hours and minutes there were, just so he could know. It was important, or at least felt that way. Also, he couldn’t think of anything else to do.





The night was the night. Then there was the day. Carter’s roster position came up and he flew. He and Fenn talked about girls and then they talked about weapons delivery packages and then they talked about a movie that neither of them could completely remember, but they told the story of it to each other until they realized they were each talking about a different movie and decided that their version, with the two movies mashed together, was better than either of the original stories had been. When Fenn went up to fly his patrol, he killed three horses (or what passed for horses here) and two indigs and a cart, but that was only a fraction of what his squadron had killed in total. Carter killed nothing. Some days are lucky and some are not.

Then it was night again. No one flew at night. Carter and Fenn went to find some amusement among their mates but ended up disappointed. In his tent, on the soft edge of sleep and dreaming of sleep, Ted counted seconds because there were no sheep in this godforsaken place. When he got to ten thousand, he started over again at one.

And this was the way the days accumulated, like wet stones dropped into a pail. Eventually, it would become full. Eventually, it would overspill.





THIS WAS LATER. A day, maybe two. Sometimes it got hard to keep track.

In his tent, Ted sat on the edge of his cot like a windup mannequin mostly run down. He sagged in every way a man could—his shoulders sloped and his head hanging like a weight between them, arms dangling like dead limbs on a lightning-struck tree, feet scraping at the wood flooring, spine bowed.

He was exhausted. His lamps were all extinguished. In the dark, every edge of the simple geometry of his quarters shone silver: a bed frame, desk, chair back and stacked gun cases, metal shelves. There was a gentle loveliness to the collected starlight, the diffuse moonglow filtering through a scrim of clouds. It was an enchanting hour. But Ted saw none of it because he sat with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and carefully to keep from coughing while tracing in his mind the white plastic bow of a hospital bed rail he’d once gripped until his knuckles were as pale as it was. Pretty thing. Perfect. He’d had a long night already. Something in him knew that it wasn’t over yet.