Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

“Honey? You want to lie down?”

Actually, I wanted a drink. But maybe I’d better not say that. “Naw. Get some chow.”

She smiled. “Okay, soldier. Make a mile first?”

“Check the map.” I unfolded it and found our motel. There was the Burger King across the way, but nothing else on the map for about twenty miles. “Let’s see what they’ve got across the street.”

“If it’s hands, we go someplace else.”

“Deal.” We rolled up yesterday’s clothes and repacked the bikes in about a minute. The air was cool and clean, and if it had been just me I would have gone on down the road. But if she doesn’t have breakfast she turns into something dangerous, so we crossed to the Monarch of Mediocrity.

In truth, Burger King wasn’t half as bad as McDonald’s. I got three little hamburgers and fries while she had some egg thing. On impulse I asked for a salad. The high-school girl behind the counter acted like I had asked for a human hand. Would you like guts with that? She wrinkled her nose and said it was breakfast time. Hamburgers, sure. Salad, no.

There’s something weirdly satisfying about hamburgers for breakfast. Some would disagree. Kit made a face when I squirted mustard and catsup on them. “Caveman,” she said.

“Og like meat. Meat with blood and the yellow stuff.”

“Your internal clock is off. Hamburgers and fries?”

“I suppose.” Actually, she knew I didn’t like regular breakfasts unless I fixed them myself. Eggs completely dead, no evidence of their actual origin… which isn’t all that appetizing, if you think about it. Og not eat that. It come from bird’s asshole. Cloaca. Same difference. An asshole by any other name, the poet said, would smell just as sweet.

The sun was still low behind us when we took off down the service road that paralleled 90. Not much traffic, no wind or weather. It would be a great vacation if we were on vacation. Riding alongside quiet bayous, wading birds oblivious to us, stalking breakfast.

But I couldn’t not think.

How deep shit were we in, and with whom?

Besides the Enemy, we were in at least shallow shit with the forces for good in the universe, Agent Underwood and her ilk. Presumably they would understand why we had dropped out of sight.

Kit was reading my mind. “Should we let somebody know where we are?”

“Maybe. Who would be safe?”

“God knows. If they’re tapping phones, they probably have our parents covered, and your agent. But you say they can’t tap a random phone from the 7-Eleven?”

“No way. Not unless they had possession of it first, got at its software.”

“So why did you destroy that one this morning?”

“Just caution.” I was on shaky ground—I’d researched it for High Kill , but that was four or five years ago. “They couldn’t tap the phone, but maybe they could track it. Given the information they could pick up from our parents’ phones.”

“Think so?”

“Well… at the very least, they could call us back and as soon as we answer, they know where we are.” Or where the nearest booster antenna is? “Wish I’d taken some engineering courses.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Amazing how little help quantum electrodynamics is in real life.”

We switched places; my turn to lead. I preferred following, since all I had to do then was keep an eye out for her and drop back when she came into view. I was a stronger cyclist, so if I was in front I tended to pull away steadily, especially if there were hills—power up and streak down. On the level like this, I had to keep an eye on the speedometer, keep it below thirteen or fourteen miles per hour.

If it were only about logic, it would be sensible for her to lead all the time. We found out in a couple of hours that that didn’t work; she pushed herself, trying to stay in my comfort range, and was dead tired by noon. Whether that was competitive or accommodating, I wasn’t sure.

It bothered me a little that she was upset by the direction the novel was taking. I wanted to stick to my guns, though. The first stuff I really loved reading was the horror fiction of the late twentieth, early twenty-first century—Stephen King and Peter Straub and those guys. Though it started with Poe, which must often be the case—books your parents let you read because they were in somebody’s canon, even if they were more dire in their own way than horror movies or slasher comix.

When I was in grade school I read to the other kids on weekends and in the summer. There was a construction site at the end of my road; when the workers weren’t there we’d crouch in the shadows with a candle and stolen matches, and I would intone Poe in the spookiest voice my short unformed vocal cords could manage. For the love of God, Montressor! In a squeaky voice.

I hadn’t thought about that in years. How much different is what I do now? The stories aren’t spooky, I suppose, except when they are.

If I’d known then that I was going to be a soldier, killing people and getting shot myself, I would have been thrilled. And then you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a small room pecking away at a keyboard. No, Montressor! For the love of God, no!

One of the guys in our outfit—I don’t remember his real name; his radio handle was Hotshot—he was going into the private sector after he separated, hiring out as a mercenary soldier. They were getting about triple our pay, doing stuff that looked less dangerous.

Still, we all agreed that he was fucking crazy. He laughed and agreed, too. But you could tell he really loved the work. His eyes actually gleamed; he smiled when other people looked grim. Loved guns and grenades—and guys, you had to suppose. In a thoroughly manly way.

Though that must be cyclic. One thing Grand-dude despised about the army in his day was the aggressive locker-room masculinity of it. Brutal hazing for anybody who was quiet or intellectual. I guess we had some of that; I took some ribbing for always carrying a book everywhere in Basic and AIT. But in actual combat all of the men were more quiet. More serious and introspective. Repeated exposure to death and suffering plays hell with your sense of humor. Or tilts it in a gallows direction, anyhow. Like putting a lit cigarette in the ruined face of a napalm victim, between his bright teeth. We laughed so hard we almost shit. But I guess you had to be there. It’s not so funny in the recollection.

Cyclic, cultural. When I taught the short workshop in Iowa, none of the kids had heard of the Grand Guignol. But then when I was their age, the image of an audience laughing at nipples being cut off with lawn shears was pretty extreme. They probably do it on soaps now.

Before I finish the book I should spend a couple of days watching daytime television. Kit is shocked by the things that go through Hunter’s mind, and life. But she’s no more mainstream than I am. Maybe they’re eating babies on prime time now.

To thine own self be true. I’d read Hamlet on my own before we got to it in school, and I Magic Markered that line. Embarrassing to find out that Polonius is a fathead, and the profound observation was a laugh-line to the Elizabethan groundlings. And it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. So if you’re a fathead, and are true to yourself, you say fatuous things. Quod erat demonstratum , we may have learned the same day.

“A penny for your thoughts.” Kit had pulled up alongside of me.

“Polonius,” I said.

“I’ve got to pee-lonius. Next billboard?”

No shops or gas stations for miles. “Sure.”

The next billboard was a weathered relic that some anti-abortion group had stopped paying for. A faded fetus claiming that it had a heartbeat at two weeks. Was that true?