Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

Sinclair followed the colonel toward a vehicle that was waiting for him near a row of containerized housing units. “Where might they be needed?” he asked.

“I’m guessing Anbar Province, but I’ll know more after my meeting at HQ.”

“Al Anbar Province? We’re abandoning our projects in Tikrit?”

“We’re not abandoning anything yet, Sinclair. Did I say I’d have more information after my meeting at HQ?”

“Yes sir, you did. It’s just that we’ve collected some books and other supplies for that school we’re building on the outskirts of Samarra. I thought the men could drop them off on their way north.”

Some months before, Sinclair had joined forces with a construction unit that was building a school in its spare time. He saw it as a way not only to make a lasting contribution, but also to foster cohesiveness in his cobbled-together logistics unit, which increasingly seemed to be made up of misfits transferred out of units where they had gotten into trouble or failed to fit in. And the unit had gelled — at least it was gelling. Now Velcro only had to say, “Look sharp!” for whomever he was addressing to jump away from the computer where he was playing solitaire or trying to discover what his girlfriend was doing behind his back and say, “Yes sir! What can I do for you, sir?”

Now and then he or Velcro laughed and said, “Don’t forget that we were transferred in from other units too. What does that say about us?”

“Good,” said the colonel as he got into the waiting Humvee. “Building infrastructure is an important benchmark. But the strategy is changing, which means the kinetics will have to change as well. This isn’t just about winning hearts and minds, Sinclair. This is about searching out the bad apples before the rot spreads. This is about clearing neighborhoods and safeguarding residents from violence and intimidation. We’ll have to wait to see if and how your school fits in.”

“Finishing what we started is important to the men.”

“No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy,” said the colonel. “Do you know who said that?”

“Yes sir.” It was Moltke the Elder, but it could have been Penn’s father, who never tired of stressing the Darwinian need to adapt.

“What we started is a war,” said the colonel. “Not that we started it.”

“Yes sir.”

“Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult,” said the colonel.

“Clausewitz,” said Penn.

“The little things are the big things.”

“I don’t know who said that, sir, but the school nicely illustrates the point.”

“I said it, and you can quote me. I’ll let you know about the school.”

The colonel squinted at something over Penn’s shoulder. Then he signaled the driver and shouted above the noise of the revving engine, “The stop-loss is bound to hit some of the troops pretty hard. Don’t let them sit around bemoaning their fate. Don’t let them skimp on safety. Tell them they have the rest of today to get it out of their systems, and then you expect them to buckle down. I’ll let you know where to send the convoy. And give any troublemakers something to do!”

The wheels of the colonel’s Humvee dug in and then spun free, causing it to buck forward while the wind sent a column of dust spiraling across the yard. Sinclair stood watching the vehicle drive off and trying to get the grit out of his mouth and eyes and deciding he’d continue with the convoy briefing just in case they got lucky and were able to finish the school and also trying to ignore his father’s voice, which suddenly intruded on his thoughts.

“You make your own luck!” his father liked to say, as if luck and opportunity hadn’t both come up sixes for him and his children, all boys, all athletic, all destined to follow the trajectory of Sinclair success — all of them quick to shout out “Buy!” or “Sell!” or “Anti-fragility!” which was an investment strategy that not only withstood a turbulent market but performed better under such conditions, just like the Sinclairs. Of the four brothers, only Penn had no interest in finance or the family business, but he had internalized the lessons about running down the hall and shouting, “Follow me!” What he had learned was that people tended to do it without asking where they were going. It was a useful skill for a leader, although unlike his brothers, he had a tendency to overthink things, the way he was doing now.

Facta, non verba, he reminded himself. Deeds, not words.

This led to a thought about how the word “fact” was more closely allied with actions and fabrications than with bits of discoverable truth and how words sometimes contained elements of their opposites, which was the kind of insight he loved and the kind his father hated. “Interesting thought,” his old man would say. “But who’s going to pay you to think it?”

Deeds, not words, Penn reminded himself just as Velcro came up and said, “I’m a little worried about the troops.”

2.3 Danny Joiner

Their tours were being extended. That’s what the colonel’s long-winded meandering had been about. That’s what the muffled grumbling in the front rows and the funny silence meant. The news reached Danny Joiner where he was sitting in the shade of a makeshift shower stall taking his weapon apart in order to clean and oil the action for the third time that afternoon. He had been absorbed in this task and only realized something was going on when Pig Eye ran around the corner of the yard shouting, “Can they do it? They can’t do it, can they?” As if somebody had a definitive answer as to what the U.S. Army could and couldn’t do.

Pig Eye was desperate to get home, and with each passing day, new fantasies about his wife’s infidelity blossomed in his brain. “Extending our tours would be illegal, wouldn’t it?” he whined. But they were talking about the people who both made the rules and interpreted them.

“What planet you livin’ on, man?” asked Specialist Le Roy Jones, and Staff Sergeant Mason Betts, who was their squad leader and who happened to be walking by just then, batted the side of Pig Eye’s head with an open palm and said, “Toughen up, man,” before he disappeared into the shower stall.

Everybody had some factoid to contribute, some phrase from their enlistment papers, some personal theory of right and wrong honed on the steel of their childhoods, some favorite chapter or verse guaranteed either to make sense of their personal situations or to start an argument if not a war, until Le Roy got everyone’s attention by whispering, “Slave labor, that’s what it is!”

The whisper passed through the unit like a pressurized stream of combustible gas. Le Roy kept whispering, “Slave labor,” over and over again to anyone who came within earshot. He said it to Danny just as Danny was trying to convince himself that the trickling sound of water from the shower stall was rain. What he wouldn’t give for a downpour — send in fucking Katrina if that’s what it took to break the heat that sucked the spit from his mouth and the sweat from his pores and the glaze from his ever-aching eyeballs.

“Jeezus, Le Roy,” he said. “Can’t I have some peace?”

“You heard, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Then why are you just sitting there?”

“What am I going to do about it? You tell me that and I just might consider it. Meanwhile, I’m oiling this rifle so if I ever need it, it doesn’t jam.”

Le Roy ran off to find someone more excitable to talk to. When Betts emerged dripping and the water sound abruptly stopped, Danny tried to sustain the daydream — wet dream, he thought — ha! That brought to mind his girlfriend Dolly, who was waiting for him at home just the way Emmie was waiting for Pig Eye and E’Laine was waiting for Le Roy and someone was waiting for all of them: girlfriends and parents and wives.