Revealing Revelations

by Ric Nero

  She nods her head. “Yeah, I’ll do that in a few hours.” She raises her hands in the air to stretch as she yawns.

  “The way you’re looking it might be tomorrow when you come and get them,” I tell her.

  She drops her hands. “I’m sorry, but yeah, I am that tired,” she said. “Alright then, Tommy Boy.”

  “Okay,” I replied. We both walk off. We part ways heading back to our separate POD areas. We had put no more than twenty feet between us. THUMP! The ground shakes, making me stagger a bit.

  “Red Rain! Red Rain, head for cover!!” other soldiers yell out while we all scurry like roaches to the small cement bunkers, heading for the cracks and crevices when someone turns on the kitchen lights. The thump sound must have been a dud mortar round, because if it wasn’t, that thump sound would have been a boom instead. I know the routine, head to the cement bunkers and get accountability. But I was on the other side of the camp, I knew no one except Green. At this point, I’m ready to run for cover, but I turn my head and look for Green.

  “Green, Green!!” I yell out.

  I hear the others scream at me, “Get over here and head for cover!” But the only thing on my mind was where’s Green? That’s when I saw her, shoulders and arms swinging in motion and legs still moving as though she was walking and nothing had happened. “Green!” I yelled out running towards her. “Green!” I yell out again. I hear the incoming sirens going off at this point, but I didn’t care. I just kept watching her as her body falls, crumbling to the ground. I make it to her body, everything was just as I had just seen it a few moments ago. Except at this point, her head was gone and blood stained her shoulders. I get dizzy and pass out.

  Next thing I knew, I woke up hysterical in the infirmary asking about her. “Where’s Private First Class Green, where is she?” I ask trying to get out of the hard bed. They try to restrain me and explain that the thump I heard was indeed a dud mortar, but the trajectory of where it was fired from and where it landed ten feet in the ground, decapitated her and she died instantly.

  “Instantly!?” I asked myself, “What are they saying?” I remember seeing her so full of life, how can that be taken instantly? All I remember doing was balling up, crying, and yelling, but none of that brought her back.

  I wake up in my bed and hear faucet water running. Someone obviously was in my room, but I can’t see who’s at the sink because a pair of wall lockers divides the room in two halves. My side was by the door and the opposite side was my Hispanic roommate who was never there. I sat up realizing I was drenched in sweat.

  “Who’s there?” I ask loudly. Even though, I had a roommate he was hardly ever here. I hear squeaking from someone turning the knobs ceasing the flow of water. A head peaks out at the top of a six and a half foot wooden wall locker. The head ducks back and the person came back out revealing himself. A young Caucasian guy with a buzz cut, wearing a gray top and black shorts P.T. uniform with a brown towel around his neck. It was Noorak. He was a farmer from Wisconsin that joined the unit while we were doing R.O.T.C training at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, a few months before we made it in theater. He lived on the opposite side of the barracks, but we shared a bathroom, so he must’ve walked from his room through my bathroom door.

  “Tommy Boy, I ran out of toothpaste, was wondering could I borrow some?” he asked with blue eyes going from left to right suggesting a sense of corny humor. A toothbrush was sticking out of his mouth with toothpaste foaming out of the edge of his lips.

  “Is it too late to say no?” I ask.

  “No, not for the toothpaste,” he said. “But the toothbrush, on the other hand, I’m not too sure you want back. Gingivitis, halitosis and other oral diseases.” He explains the list of potential risks that I’d be taking if I did ask for it back. Slapstick comedy was something I never did get. I re-examine the visible part of the long purple and white toothbrush hanging from his mouth. It’s definitely mine, or at least was for that matter.

  “I’m surrounded by jack ballers,” I say frustrated at the fact that he had the nerve. We bumped heads numerous times in the past, but once you make it through life or death situations for fifteen months you even look at a man you despise at one point like a brother.

  He quickly pulls the toothbrush out of his white foamed toothpaste lips. “Well, Thomas, I would get my own, but the clubs are just now getting started. And I really didn’t want to be too late,” he says while waving my toothbrush around.

  “You’re okay. I got a pack from the Post Exchange by the airfield anyway,” I said, swinging my legs over to get out of bed.

  Noorak put the toothbrush in his mouth and resumed brushing his teeth.

  “What time is it, Noo?” I ask standing to my feet leaning back slightly while stretching my hands in the air.

  He lifts up the opposing arm the toothbrush is in and looks at his watch. “Ten-thirty,” Noorak answered.

  I remember what Shane said about meeting him and I only had a half hour left. I drop my hands and rush past a foamed-mouth Noorak.

  “You headed out too, Thomas?” Nooak asks me.

  I open the medicine cabinet that’s to the left and grab a brand new toothbrush and turn on the faucet. “Coo Coo’s nest,” I answered, reaching out towards Noorak with my left hand.

  He drags his feet as he walks towards me as he digs in his pocket and hands me the red and white Colgate tube. I guess he had plans on actually keeping that too. I bent down and begin to brush my teeth. I look into the mirror and see him now in the refrigerator.

  “No liquor, no beer, huh?” he asks, moving out of the way of the closing refrigerator door.

  I pause the horizontal strokes on my upper row of teeth to answer him. “You know I don’t drink beer. It tastes like panda piss. And I’ll pick up some liquor later.”

  He walks over and stands beside me. “That’s right, I remember. It’s too much yeast in beer and you don’t want that beer belly,” he said.

  I rinse out my mouth and stand up to let him use the sink. I grab a towel to the left of the sink to dry my mouth and throw it to Noorak to use.

  I rush all around the room pulling out shirt, pants, socks, shoes, iron and ironing board. I ask Noorak to iron my shirt for me while I jump in the shower. Being late was something I wasn’t known for, besides, I don’t want to keep Shane waiting, he seems like he has answers to all this. Why we left American soil to fight in a country that did us no wrong, why we had to risk our lives, and take lives…? Why did Green have to…?

  The next twenty minutes were a blur between taking a shower and getting dressed. I get in my car, open my sunroof and turn my music up. “I love the nightlife.” I tell myself as I drive a short distance to the Coo Coo’s Nest.

  Coo Coo’s Nest

  Killeen, Texas

  1/13/08

  I pull into the small parking lot around the back of the club and get out. I walked around the brick building to the front entrance. I hear a lot of commotion inside the closer I get to the front door. But it’s a Friday night in Texas. Some things are just to be expected, I tell myself. Then all of a sudden, right before I get my hands on the green door in front of me. Bang! The door flies open, two entangled men burst through banging the heavy green door against the brick wall it’s hinged on. Startled, I jump back as two belligerent drunks land on the ground before me and try to get a better grasp of what’s happening.

  Everyone who follows them out of the bar circles around the two and begins to yell in excitement, rushing from inside the club outside – drunk, staggering and holding drinks and bottles of beer to see how things will unfold.

  The two tussle around in the dirt getting in a good punch here and there then roll in the dirt again and the pattern repeats itself. I even sneak in a punch myself due to almost being knocked over with their grand entrance, or grand exit I guess you could say. I get a good look at them, a darker skinned guy and… “Shane!?” I yell out in uncertainty.

  “What?!” a woosy drunk voice answers back.


  “I should’ve known,” I say to myself, rushing to the middle of what now is a crowd around two drunken fighters. I try to separate the two, and as soon as I wrestle to get the bloodied yin and yang apart from one another, they both stop and start laughing at one another.

  I look at Shane in his well-ironed black button up and jeans, both of which are now slightly stained from a blood dripping lip. And a tall Haitian with a swollen eye, who towers over both of us in a black tank top and black jeans with a skull belt buckle.

  “Ha ha ha ha.” The two continue to laugh at one another like madmen while everyone else who once crowded around yelling out comments to add fuel to the fire, now walks back inside. At this point, I’m confused and beginning to get frustrated.

  “Shane,” the tall Haitian says as he begins to pant heavily, hunching over and grabbing his knees. “I told you that tail was mine.” He smiles revealing a gold tooth on the right side of his mouth.

  “You ain’t have jack squat, Captain!” the ever confident Shane replies.

  “Captain!?” I said aloud filled with an unbearable amount of curiosity. I should have been able to tell earlier he was military because he shared the same haircut as me; low and even all over with sideburns that come to the edge of his ear. But, a captain, why would Shane have any misunderstandings with this officer anyway? Only a crazy person does the things Sergeant Shanahan does, but I loved the guy for being him.

  Hating to be in the middle of the situation and clueless as to what’s going on, I ask the question that I believed would clear some of this up for me. “Obviously you two know each other, so what’s up with the love taps?”

  Shane smirks at me, looking me up and down. “Shut up, Private, you’re late. Your superiors are talking,” Shane said. He pulled rank again and it got under my skin.

  At this point, I wanted to voice my anger, but out of respect of the captain, I chose to let it slide. The two mildly bruised half drunk men laugh at one another once more as I stand in what I thought was an all out brawl.

  “Welcome back, old friend,” a Haitian accent bellows out in a deep voice.

  “It’s good to be back, sir,” Shane replies with a hard sigh following his statement. Wrestling around must of made him fatigued.

  “I won this time, you remember the bet. Drinks are on you, just like old times, remember?” the captain asks, walking around me to greet Shane, wrapping his left arm around his shoulders. “Come, come let us celebrate we made it back again from a war that was never ours.”

  The two walk back towards the green door still ignoring me, until Shane glances back at me. “You coming?” Shane asks me.

  Reluctant to soberly follow the ‘under the influenced’ duo, I couldn’t leave Shane knowing he was well-intoxicated. He’s a big boy but I had to watch his back, he’d do the same for me.

  We walk inside and there’s three unoccupied bar stools in front of us at the shorter side of the L- shaped bar. Coincidentally, it was by the door for easy access if things got too far out of hand. I’m far from a coward, but the Army taught me how having a plan B can be the tide changer in battle. The smell of nicotine causes me to cough due to the cigarette smoke fogging the air. I never had the lungs of a smoker, even though I tried it a few times in my rebellious teenage years.

  There are three empty bar stools before us. Shane sits on the left and me on the right, which put the unnamed captain in the middle of us both.

  Shane raises his hand to get the attention of the bartender. “Bartender, let me get three triple shots of Belvedere,” Shane says with a slightly tilted head from what I imagine to be the alcohol taking effect.

  “And make it snappy,” said the captain.

  I’m too embarrassed to look at the reaction of the bartender after that comment. Instead, I look at the yellow walls that compliment the green cemented dance area that was probably six feet away from the longer side of the L-shaped bar. It’s packed with people of Haitian ethnicity. I, on the other hand, am African American so I might blend with the crowd, but Shane was just the sore thumb, I guess. But that was how he always liked things, anyway.

  Loud music consumes the club and the two continue to chat amongst themselves briefly and chuckle. Then Shane leans back to get a better look at me beside his friend and says, “Thomas, meet my friend, Chaplain Bazz.” He then turns to his friend and says, “Chaplain, meet Thomas a.k.a Tommy Boy.”

  I couldn’t believe it, not only is this guy a captain, he’s a religious Chaplain. Details always get better and better with Shane. But, what type of religious leader comes to a bar, gets drunk and fights on the streets? They aren’t even allowed to carry military issued firearms, peace keepers is what I called them. But I try not to put more thought into it, he’s still a soldier and a human.

  The Chaplain leans back and looks at me blocking Shane. “How ya doing, Thomas?” he exclaimed loudly over the music.

  “I’m good, sir!” I replied loudly trying to get over the music.

  He looked at me again. “We’re not on post or in uniform, so there’s no need for enlisted to officer etiquette, Thomas. Bazz will do just fine,” he said, letting me know I don’t have to show proper respect to rank.

  Shane grabs his drink off the bar top, and raises it slightly in a thank you gesture as he looks at the bartender. I hadn’t even realized the bartender came and left at all.

  “Come on,” Bazz says getting up from his bar stool. “And don’t forget your drink, Thomas.” He heads to the back quickly finagling through the dancing crowd, Shane follows.

  “The hell is this about now?” I ask myself getting up heading to the back as well.

  They walk through a yellow painted wooden door with a black plate with the word ‘Manager’ in gold letters. “Don’t tell me he’s an alcoholic, street brawler and now a bar owner too. Becoming a Chaplain must be all about pay grade,” I say to myself. I walk through as well and close the door behind me. Where I stood now was no longer an average bar. All scent of alcohol and nicotine is gone. The noise from the rowdy crowd and music is virtually inaudible. I look down at the full glass of vodka in my right hand verifying I was still completely sober to make sense of another surprising sight I found almost impossible to believe. There are multiple detailed wall maps from the ceiling to floor. Half opened file cabinets that contain manila folders and multiple landline phones. Comms equipment occupied a small portion of a large metal table in the center of a well-lighted room.

  Bazz walks to the wall map where Shane analyzes what looks like South Africa and says something in a low monologue tone.

  Shane looks at him then turns completely around with a confident look and says, “Trust me, Chap, he’s highly intelligent and very conscience, relax.”

  Bazz tilts his head way back and glass just as high as he finishes his drink.

  “Okay then, let’s get to it,” my heavily intoxicated squad leader says. Shane finishes his drink in the same motion as Bazz. The two walk to the table, sitting down at opposing sides. Looking at me with raised eyebrows.

  “Waiting on me I guess,” I said to the two. I quickly sit down at the table waiting for some type of explanation about this war room. Now sitting at the wide square metal table I put my drink on the floor, hiding the fact that I have yet to drink it because I wanted to be completely focused on what they’re going to tell me.

  They stare at each other in hesitation allowing silence to engulf the room.

  “You two obviously aren’t the two drunks I seen outside,” I said trying to break the ice. But now they just turn their eyes from one another and look at me silently.

  Shane, clearing his throat as he leans forward, puts folded hands on the table and comes out and says it. “Earlier you asked for answers, Thomas.” At this point he sounds completely sober and speaks with conviction. He was clear and focused.

  “America’s war secrets, right?” Bazz asks me leaning back in his seat folding his arms. “Let me ask you this,” Bazz continued on. “Who do you plan to vote
for in the upcoming election?” His question caught me by surprise I was uncertain what relevance my electoral opinion could have in this situation.

  “Actually, I didn’t plan on voting.”

  He unfolds his hands and places them on the table while he looks me directly in my eyes. “And why is that?” he asks me while glancing at Shane.

  “Well, Chaplain,” I said, right before he turned up a corner of his mouth and raised his hand high enough to visibly see it shake as a reminder that we can speak completely freely between each other here. “If the election was stolen back in 2004 due to a lackadaisical mistake of lost votes, then our votes never mattered to begin with. Votes are just a ploy to make the multitudes of America feel as though they actually have a say in the decisions of the country. I believe it’s to keep down anarchy in today’s times. If people see that they are under a dictatorship they’ll rebel. So they do all they can to enforce the word “democracy” to keep order, while they continue directing the show.”

  Bazz looks back at Shane, a slightly blood dried Shane snickers and now it’s all eyes on me. “Exactly!” Bazz says ecstatically. He rises from his chair and walks around with his hands folded behind his back, alternating his attention between the wall maps and me. “You just made it back from Iraq what, roughly a month ago?” he asks me.

  “Just shy of,” I answered.

  “So I assume that you have multiple questions from your grand tour. What difference did our being there have in terms of positive aspects? Why have I yet to see these so-called weapons of mass destruction? All the good soldiers that served this country, was this war worth them dying for?” he asks me while still orbiting the large table Shane and I both sat at.

  Asking that last question instantly brought tears to my eyes. Green, I thought about her constantly. She was a soldier, a human being and a friend. Her life was worth more than to be just another martyr for this so-called war on terrorism. Yeah, I lost other friends in fire-fights I wish I could get back. But, Green was different. Not because she was a female soldier, no. But because she was the only one I blamed myself for. Deep down I felt as though I killed her, and no matter what anyone said, her blood was on my hands. If I’d never stopped her to talk that long, she would have never been in the exact spot that put her in direct course of the mortar. A person who called me friend died because of a friend. Some friend I was. “I’m so sorry,” I say under my breath doing my best to hold back tears.