Orphanage

by Robert Buettner

  The Reformed Me enjoyed small-unit tactics. You see, one soldier with a rifle is just a serial killer with a hunting license.

  But even a squad of twelve can multiply its combat power if it’s properly coordinated and armed. The mission succeeds, and fewer GIs come home in bags.

  Our instructors said stuff like “Today you will become familiar with the force-multiplying capacity of crew-served weapons integral to the Infantry platoon.” In other words, why a machine gun was good even though it took two soldiers to carry it.

  Our training now involved more field maneuver and specialized-weapons familiarization. Firing the M-60 Model 2017 was even grander than humping all forty-five pounds of the machine gun cross-country. The loader has it even worse because the ammo’s even heavier. For the rest of tactical training, I carried the machine gun. My offers to let others share the fun fell on deaf ears. Esprit de corps went just so far. I shut up and got used to it.

  After a few weeks Walter whispered during noon chow, “One of the guys said you were okay, Jason.”

  We were eating in the field, seated backs against trees amid dead piled leaves in the perpetual twilight draped over Pennsylvania—and Earth—by stratospheric dust. By the calendar, it was summer, now, but felt like dry winter. I missed green leaves.

  I squeezed brown glop from a foil pouch into my mouth and swallowed. The slightly less antique successors to C-rations were MREs, Meals-Ready-to-Eat. Three lies for the price of one. “I already know I’m okay, Walter.”

  “But it’s the first time I’ve heard anybody else say it I think that’s good.”

  So did I. Good or not, the world worsened.

  The pancake-flat stock market stayed that way, so retirees like my short-term foster parents, the Ryans, couldn’t five off their investments. The Armed Services maxed out in taking new recruits like us. There were only so many holes soldiers could dig just to fill them up again.

  For all our bitching, GIs were eating okay, and the enemy had left humanity with fewer mouths to feed. Civilian fresh food was rationed, supermarket prices were sky-high and going higher, and there was an active black market in things like apples and coffee. Even in places that hadn’t suffered like Pittsburgh.

  It looked like my machine gun’s principal utility after training ended would be dispersing food rioters. An M-60 Model 2017 was a Vietnam-era blunderbuss sleeked up in post-Afghan neoplast. But it could turn a rioting crowd into a Dumpsterful of guts. Pulling that trigger didn’t bear thinking about.

  Still, I figured to graduate in two weeks. They’d given us each a pack of old-fashioned postcards engraved with the Infantry crest. Graduation ceremony announcements to mail out to our loved ones. Refreshments immediately following in the mess hall. Maybe goodies would be ham and limas and everybody’s mom would have to hand-walk the horizontal ladder to get in.

  At first I cried, being short of loved ones. Then I sucked it up and sent a card to Druwan Parker. I’d only known him a day before he broke his leg, but he was the next best thing to family. I mailed one to Metzger for grins. He had made captain, deflected two Projectiles while flying in space between Earth and the moon. His smiling face and chestful of medals made the People homepage. I sent a third announcement to Judge March. I figured it might make the old boy smile before he clapped some other delinquent in irons.

  An M-60 gunner—I had become quite the dead-eye— was a specialist fourth class. After Basic, I’d be assigned to a line unit.

  I might even live dormitory-style with a roommate and regular heat and a John with a door. After Basic Training, that sounded like promotion to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  A few months ago I was a homeless orphan looking at jail time. Today, I was collecting a paycheck I didn’t even have time to spend, learning about things I hadn’t even known existed. I had three hots and a cot and belonged to an extended family the size of the US army.

  Life was sweet.

  I thought.

  Chapter Nine

  We should never have even been at the hand-grenade range on the training cycle’s last day. But there we sat in bleachers, while Ord lectured up front. Behind him a trench maze zigzagged down to a line of four sandbagged pits.

  We would soon waddle through those trenches to the pits, from which we would hurl live grenades. Ten yards downrange beyond the pits, splintered, dead tree trunks stood. A grenade exploded into four hundred shards of metal shrapnel. If the trees weren’t reminder enough that this was live fire, at our backs idled an ambulance, medics dangling their feet over the tailgate.

  Would the medics give me oxygen if I told them I couldn’t breathe? Every one of us trainees was tight about this. But for me it was worse. All I could see was Arnold Rudawitz’s fingernail, cherry-bombed and dangling bloody from his index finger as he ran screaming to his mom while she barbecued Fourth of July chicken.

  Normally, Basic Training climaxed by playing war out in the boonies for a couple days, sleeping in tents and foxholes, and eating only rations we carried. Kind of a doctoral thesis of dirt grubbing.

  But one Basic Training rite of passage is to throw a live hand grenade. We hadn’t. The army was supposed to have sent Indiantown Gap live grenades long ago. For twelve weeks the grenades were expected momentarily, like the Russian coal that arrived late and the physical-training gym shoes that arrived never.

  So we had already completed our final field exercise, and we had the last day to kill. I can’t believe I just wrote that

  Everybody wore helmets. Except the drills, of course. They swaggered around in their Smokey Bears, as if a felt hat would intimidate a short-fused grenade. They dragged rope-handled wooden boxes of grenades forward into the pits, then returned.

  Walter whispered, “A guy last cycle got one with an instantaneous fuse. He was lucky. It only blew his arm off.”

  A guy behind us said, “I heard the primers are so old there are lots of short fuses.”

  My heart battered my ribs as I saw again Rudawitz’s bloody finger.

  I felt Walter’s shoulder warm against mine. Goofy as he was, I had come to depend on Walter. He was always there, and I always knew what he was thinking, like Metzger and me. I suppose to people who grew up with siblings that’s normal. To me it was amazing.

  A drill demonstrated grenade-throwing. The grenade top has a spring-loaded hammer in it that’s held back by a lever that curves along the grenade’s body. A pin hoick the lever down. You pull the pin while you hold the lever with your thumb. When you throw, the lever flies off, the hammer snaps like a mousetrap and sets off the primer. Four seconds or so later, the primer detonates the main explosive. Wire wrapped inside and the ball-shaped metal casing blow to pieces. They gut everything for a five-meter radius.

  My vision blurred. All I could see was blood and severed fingernails.

  I had done many new, scary things in Basic. But I couldn’t throw that live grenade. Yet I had to or fail to graduate.

  “Jason? You’re shaking. Are you alright?”

  “Yeah.” Until about a minute from now, when I’d puke.

  Against my shoulder, Walter shook. “I know how you feel. About now it would be nice to have Prozac.”

  Yeah. I slipped my hand into my trouser pocket and touched two pellets. I had worn these fatigues the first training day. My two leftover Prozac lIs still lay in there. I fingered them. Flattened by countless launderings but still potent inside their indestructible plastic wrap, they defied the zero-drug-tolerance regs.

  My hands trembled. I’d drop the fucking grenade right at my own feet. If my hands would just stop shaking for twenty minutes, though, I’d be okay. I’d waltz through the trench lineup, into the throw pit, march back out and back to barracks to brush down my Class-A uniform for graduation.

  The drill showed how the exercise would work while the breeze twitched his hat brim. He held the grenade in one hand with his thumb pinning that lever down like his life depended on it. Because it did.

  He stuck the finger
of his nonthrowing hand through the ring that was attached to the pin that held down the lever.

  The drill said, “Short fuses are extremely rare. A bigger problem is trainees dropping the weapon. Don’t!”

  Easy for him to say. I truly could not breathe. The drill stood in a throw pit and jerked his grenade’s pin.

  While everybody concentrated on him, I skinned the plastic off the ‘Zacs and smeared a hand across my face. I gagged them down, dry.

  The drill threw. We all ducked and covered while he dropped behind the sandbag wall.

  Nothing happened.

  Well, nothing happened for the longest four seconds you ever heard.

  Boom!

  Dirt and spent shrapnel rained on those of us forward in the trench.

  Up ahead, the drill stood and dusted himself off.

  I smiled as the Prozacs’ tingling glow spread through me.

  Ahead, the first trainee in line stepped forward into the sandbagged pit with a drill smack on his elbow. The drill unwrapped a grenade from a cardboard sleeve, talked the guy through everything while he looked him in the eye, then handed him the grenade.

  Somebody behind us shouted, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!” We all ducked and covered in the trench.

  I felt myself breathe, nice and easy. Beside me, Walter still seemed tight. I whispered, “Cakewalk.”

  “Sure.”

  Boom! It rained dirt clods. We all looked up as the trainee and the drill stood and dusted themselves off.

  The procedure was the drill tackled the thrower instantly after the grenade left the trainee’s hand and knocked him behind the sandbags. Evidently people had a tendency to watch the grenade fly downrange. Nobody understood why people did that, since there were no points for distance or accuracy.

  So, unless the thrower got a short fuse, then so long as the grenade even dropped a couple feet beyond the sandbags nobody got hurt. Your aunt Minnie could throw it far enough.

  We moved to the on-deck circle.

  I wasn’t exactly smiling, but with the Prozac II kicked in, I could do mis, now. The drill and trainee ahead of me moved up into the sandbag revetment. I looked over my shoulder at Walter, crouching twenty feet back. His eyes were wide. I gave him a thumbs-up, and he stretched a smile.

  Prozac or not, my heart pounded. Second Platoon’s drill hoisted me by the elbow. “Our turn, Wander.”

  The last thrower passed me on the way back, grinning and working his jaw to get the ringing out of his ears.

  In a few seconds that would be me.

  We moved into the sandbag revetment. I could feel Walter’s presence twenty feet behind me in the on-deck circle I had just vacated.

  My blood chilled. What if he fucked up? Walter always fucked up. What if I got through it and Walter blew himself up?

  I started to look back.

  The drill grabbed my shoulders and held my eyes with his. “Wander? Listen up!”

  “Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

  He was just running through the procedure, saying something. If anything happened to Walter, it would be like losing Mom again. Walter was my little brother.

  “Got it?”

  I felt myself nodding, then something heavy pressed into my right hand. Prozac or not, I shook.

  It was going to be fine. What was going to be fine? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I just wanted things to be over with.

  “Throw it! Wander!”

  I looked down at my hand. The grenade trembled there, but it looked different. I could see the little hammer quite clearly. There was no lever. It spun through the air and tinged against a sandbag. I’d pulled the pin and released the lever and the grenade was still here. How interesting.

  “Fuck!” The drill grabbed my wrist, and the grenade dropped from my flexing fingers.

  Not flew.

  Dropped. At my feet. It rocked there in the dirt, trailing a white-smoke thread from its top. The primer had detonated.

  I had dropped my grenade with us inside the sandbag wall. In four seconds I would die.

  The drill rammed into my chest and wrapped his arms, like a linebacker. Sandbags thudded against the backs of my thighs and we toppled backward, across the sandbag wall and out of the pit.

  Two thoughts floated across my mind. So this was what happened when a trainee dropped a grenade. The drill just knocked himself and the trainee over the sandbag wall. As long as grenade and people ended up on op-posite sides of the sandbags, nobody got hurt. I was going to live.

  The second thought was that Walter was running toward me, his mouth open, screaming. “Jason!”

  Behind him, a guy in the on-deck circle grabbed out at the place where Walter had lain.

  Walter dove headfirst, arms out like Superman.

  I saw his eyes, scared and proud at the same time as his torso fell across the grenade.

  Then the drill’s momentum carried both of us backward over the wall, and I saw only my boots silhouetted against the sky’s gray shroud.

  My back hit the ground, the drill’s shoulder drove down on my chest, knocked wind from me, and I saw stars.

  Chapter Ten

  Breath exploded from my body like a detonating grenade. I lay paralyzed and tried to suck air. The grenade must have been a dud, thank God.

  Plock. Plock, plock. Dirt clods rained down. One struck my cheek. Not a dud. The grenade had exploded. The drill lay across my body, so heavy his heart thudded against my ribs.

  The dirt on my cheek was warm. I wiped it away and held it in front of my eyes. It dripped red. Flesh.

  I tried to scream, but I still had no breath. I couldn’t hear anything anyway. Ruptured eardrums?

  A silhouette jerked across the sky. A Smokey Bear hat. Fourth Platoon’s drill vaulted the sandbag wall alongside us. “Jesus. Fuck.” It sounded like he spoke through a pillow.

  He yelled, “Medic! Get the fuckin‘ medic!”

  Walter! I shoved the drill off me, sat up, and rolled to my knees. Other heads bobbed on the opposite side of the sandbag wall. I scrambled up, pulled myself across, and looked down into the revetment

  Smoke swirled around people kneeling beside Walter. He lay facedown where he landed, his arms still stretched out. His cheek rested against the earth and his eyes were open. He looked fine, though his glasses were crooked, the way they got, even with that elastic band he wore around the back of his head.

  Except that below his belt he was gone.

  Just gone. He was just a head and torso, like a GI Joe doll thrown in the trash.

  Somebody was screaming, over and over. It was me.

  Chapter Eleven

  The medic knelt beside me and pressed me back against the sandbags. “Easy, man! You’re okay.”

  He inspected me. Somebody else looked over the drill who had knocked me out of the sandbag pit and maybe saved my life. To the extent Walter hadn’t.

  “Not okay! Walter’s dead!” I wept.

  A voice drifted from beyond the medic’s shoulder. “This one’s uninjured?” Ord bent forward, hands on knees.

  “Yeah, Sarge. Shock, bleeding from the nose and ears. Maybe lost an eardrum. The other kid you saw…” The medic leaned toward Ord. “Sarge? This one’s on something.”

  Ord stiffened. “What?”

  “Look at his pupils.”

  “He’s just agitated.”

  “No, Sarge. Maybe just Prozac n. But he’s on something.”

  “I was scared. I didn’t think I could do it. It was just two pills I had left.”

  Ord grabbed my shoulder and squeezed, hard. I couldn’t tell whether he was mad at me, or he was trying to get me to shut up. I shut up.

  The medic said, “You know regs, Sarge. I gotta write this up.”

  Ord crossed his arms over his chest. Behind him they were loading a bag onto a Utter. Walter.

  I couldn’t breathe. The medic held my cheeks in his hands and made me look at him. “You just took Prozac? Like within an hour? Nothing else?”


  I nodded.

  He slid my sleeve up, I smelled alcohol, and felt a needle prick my forearm. “This will calm you down, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You may not thank me later.”

  Things got fuzzy.

  The next thing I remember was the infirmary ceiling. White-painted boards strung with naked lightbulbs. A plastic IV sack full of clear liquid hung beside me and connected to my forearm with a tube. I lay in a room as white as the ceiling, rowed with a half dozen empty beds.

  Double swinging doors at the ward’s end were half-paned in frosted glass. Two silhouettes moved gray beyond the glass.

  “You should have washed him out weeks ago, Art!” The speaker had Captain Jacowicz’s square-jawed profile.

  “He’s bright, sir. He was coming around.” Ord.

  “He was an accident waiting to happen!”

  “Sir, they’re all accidents waiting to happen. It’s our job to make them soldiers, not wash them out.”

  “And Lorenzen? What kind of soldier will he make, now?”

  The silhouettes didn’t move.

  “You’re right, sir. It’s my responsibility, not the trainee’s.”

  “Bullshit, Art! You’re too good a soldier to bust your career because a druggie disobeyed standing orders. With your age and record you should have been a division sergeant major driving a desk years ago.”

  “I prefer field assignments, sir.”

  “Well, I prefer to lay blame where it’s deserved. And that’s not on you. Even if you did fuck up. You know the procedure. He gets admin or a court. You know I’ll keep an open mind. But if he chooses administrative punishment in front of me, I’m presently inclined to take it to the maximum. That’s still a lot better deal than he’d get in a court-martial, if I’m giving odds.”

  “Sir, a court would require presentation of evidence—”

  “Evidence? He told the medic he was on drugs!”

  More silence.

  “I never expected you of all people to have trouble understanding an order, Sergeant. Explain his options to him as soon as he’s coherent.”