The Children's War

by C. P. Boyko

  They walked downhill into a less affluent neighborhood. Night had now fallen, and the town was so silent that they could hear a truck being started miles away, could even track its course through the streets. Boorq stopped suddenly, punched Narran’s arm, and pointed at some figures lurking in the shadows. “Ask them where we can find some food.” —Narran slowly aimed her rifle at the group. —“What the fuck!” cried Florze, batting it down. —Narran was flustered. “I thought you said to cover them.” —The figures, meanwhile, sputtered “Friend, friend!” and scurried away into the darkness. Boorq, like a predator provoked by the flight of its prey, sent a careless burst of automatic fire after them. The noise and power of her new weapon was intoxicating, but she noted that the muzzle had a tendency to rise. She tried again with the weapon turned sideways, and now achieved a satisfying horizontal spray of bullets. Godbeer also fired a few shots, equally harmlessly. —“What the fuck,” groaned Florze.

  Boorq thumped her on the shoulder and gestured at the nearest apartment block. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s reap the rewards of gratitude for ridding their neighborhood of collaborators.”

  The door was unlocked, but feebly barricaded by an overturned armoire. They pushed past this into a dark, close stairwell, in which only Narran felt more comfortable. Florze clapped her hands and shouted, “Friends, friends!” Culverson produced a red-tinted flashlight, which was supposed to preserve one’s night vision, but which probably only achieved this effect by emitting little light. Boorq squeezed Narran’s elbow, and gestured her up the stairs first, because she spoke the language. Godbeer, unable to see anything, came last, gripping Florze’s tunic.

  On the first landing, Boorq knocked politely at a door. “Friends,” said Florze. The doorknob turned immediately, but there was a long pause before the door was pulled open.

  A stooped and wizened man stood clutching a candle in one hand, and in the other a bedsheet whose symbolism he had forgotten. The five soldiers pointed their five rifles at his chest.

  He raised his arms. “We haven’t got much, but of course you’re welcome to anything you can find . . .” —“Shut up,” cried Boorq. To Narran she said, “Tell him we’re hungry. Ask him if he’s got any food.” —Florze muttered that they weren’t supposed to loot. —“All right, ask him if he wants to give us any food.” —The old man said, “There’s no need for guns. It’s just my wife and our grandson and I and we’re all unarmed. We’ll cooperate, of course . . .” —“Clip the gabble,” said Boorq. She nudged Narran. “Ask him!” —Narran, who thought she was being ordered to shoot, whimpered, “He’s just an old man.” —Boorq pushed the door farther open with her toe. “Ask him if there are any snipers here. Ask him if he’s shot anybody today.” —Another door on the landing opened or closed behind them; Culverson wheeled around. “Don’t move!” —“I can’t see shit,” said Godbeer. “I’m lighting a heat tablet.” —“Guys,” said Florze, “this was supposed to be my detail.” —A woman’s voice called out from within the apartment. “For God’s sake, Solley, don’t block the door or you’ll give them an excuse to shoot you.” —The old man staggered back a few steps. —“Who was that?” said Boorq. “Who else is here?” She asked Narran, “What did she say?” —“Narran!” cried Culverson from the landing. “Tell these people to come out here with their hands visible and no clever stuff.”

  —Boorq said, “What are you doing? We got our hands full with this situation in here.” —“Oh God,” moaned the woman, as Godbeer began striking matches. “They’re going to burn us down.” —“What the fuck did she say?” —Narran lowered her rifle with resigned defiance. “Fuck you, Boorq. You’re not my sergeant. You do it.” —“What are you talking about? I don’t speak the fucking language!” —From a higher floor came a child’s scream: “Go away! There are no bad people here!” To the jumpy soldiers, this sounded like a war cry.

  —Now Godbeer managed to light the heat tablet, and the stairwell began to fill with smoke and suffocating fumes, which caused her eyes to water and blinded her further. More doors opened and closed, and more voices were heard. —“Guys,” said Florze, “come on.”

  “Hello,” called a voice. “You are for wanting the booze, okay? I will show you for where to finding the booze.” The owner of the voice descended the stairs slowly with his hands held out before him. His undershirt and baggy pants, his receding hair, and his cumbrous, accented infrapodean reminded Culverson of her father; she lowered her rifle in distaste.

  His offer, as it was translated and circulated among his neighbors, prompted a flurry of protest. That afternoon, the fleeing suprapodeans had urged the local populace, by radio announcement and handbill, to destroy all stocks of liquor, because there was no knowing what atrocities the barbarous and bloodthirsty invaders might commit if under the influence of alcohol. The man in the undershirt did not doubt this characterization any more than his neighbors did, or indeed than the propagandists who had in good faith broadcast it. But he did not care what these soldiers did outside this building, where his children were; and he hoped that a gesture of goodwill might placate the new occupiers, drunk or not. For the past year, he had been meticulously courteous to the suprapodeans, and they had never given him cause to regret it.

  “Booze, okay,” said Florze, matching her diction to her interlocutor’s. “But food, too, okay. More okay.” —“Okay,” said the man in the undershirt. “Food and booze okay. I’m for showing you. You will for following me.” —“Hey, Boorq,” said Florze. “Come on. This guy’s taking us to get some food.”

  Boorq did not like to leave without having requisitioned something. Her gaze flailed about in the gloom; at last she snatched the bedsheet from the old man’s grasp, tossed a requisition chit onto the floor, and hurried down the stairs after her comrades. (Later that night, after much deliberation, the old couple wrote in the chit’s blank, “Twelve loaves of bread”—and added it to the stack of other IOUs, which they supposed were now worthless.) In the street, Boorq saw that it was just an ordinary bedsheet, and tossed it in the gutter.

  With solicitous backward glances, the man in the undershirt led them down winding streets to the former police station. He halted on the far curb, gestured at the building enticingly, and explained that until a few hours ago it had served as a barracks and warehouse for a company of garrisoned troops. Surely it was brimful with booze.

  The soldiers conferred. Was it a trap? Boorq, bridling under Florze’s leadership, professed to think so. Culverson pretended to agree; she had traveled these thousand miles to escape and appall her parents, and she resented this man’s meddlesome assistance, so like her father’s. Godbeer pretended to disagree; she was so tired and fed-up that she positively welcomed a firefight, which at least might provide an opportunity to lie down. Narran, wrapped in her sleeping bag, shrugged.

  Florze fired a few rounds into the side of the building. The man in the undershirt sank, cowering, to the pavement, but otherwise there was no response. “Combat-pragmatic reconnaissance negative,” said Florze. Then she squeezed Narran’s elbow and motioned her across the street first, because she spoke the language. Narran did not argue; she was still disgusted with herself for having failed to shoot the old man. She shambled up the front stairs, tucked the sleeping bag under one arm, and readied a grenade. Then, leaning heavily on the door, she slipped inside. After a few moments, the others followed. The man in the undershirt hurried home, regaining stature as he went.

  The building, inexplicably, had electricity. After ascertaining that the windows were blacked out, they moved from room to room, untactically, switching on the overhead lights. Had the rooms been bare, they would have been awed by the size, age, and opulence of the building itself. But the rooms were not bare.

  As excitement overtook disbelief, they scampered about opening cupboards, drawers, and boxes, and calling out to one another their discoveries. There was no need to hoard anything, for there was more of everything
than five of them could carry.

  “Powdered milk!” —“Sweet canned milk!” —“Bandoliers!” —“Powdered eggs!” —“Dried carrots!” —“Brand-new e-tools!” —“Actual potatoes!” —“More concussion grenades than you’ve ever seen!” —“Pinto beans!” —“Garbanzo beans here!” —“Peach Melba!” —“Load-bearing vests!” —“Looks like dehydrated soup!” —“Some kind of pork jerky!” —“Plastique! Cases of it!” —“Tomato sauce!” —“Rice!” —“Boots!” —“Tuna!” —“Corn!” —“Peas!” —“Sugar! Real sugar!” —“Cigarettes!” —“Coffee!” —They shouted themselves hoarse, pausing only to plumb one another’s astonishment. “Did you hear that I said boots?”

  They found sacks of flour, tea, and salt. They found shoelaces, and runcible spoons, and stainless-steel toothpicks. They found mustard, and pepper, and onions. They found complete uniforms, in a variety of extra-large sizes, that had never been worn. They found crackers, and cookies, and chocolate. They found handguns, and rifle oil, and muzzle flash suppressors. They found, in drums that had never contained anything else, gallons of water so pure it tasted sweet. They found no alcohol, and did not miss it.

  “Blankets,” said Narran, pulling one from a box. It was dry, clean, soft yet sturdy, and so new that its nap was unruffled. She swaddled herself in it and subsided onto a bunk, whose squeaking mattress springs sent exquisite shivers through her body.

  Fading exhilaration left Culverson’s nerves jangled. To keep from crying, she tried to be angry. “Why are these assholes so well equipped? I thought they were all supposed to be so weak and hungry and demoralized. Look at all this shit. It fucking demoralizes me.” —“Not me,” said Boorq. “Think about it. Would we have retreated if we were living like this?” —“We wouldn’t ever retreat,” said Godbeer. —“Exactly. These bitches,” said Boorq, “are a bunch of chinless sissies. We’ll wipe them out.”

  Florze lighted a stove and began tossing ingredients into a dixie. Meanwhile, outside, the locals watched the building from a distance, expecting every minute the explosion of booby-traps.

  Love on Leave. —T.P. and The Professor lay shivering shoulder to shoulder in a bomb crater, looking up at the imperceptible but undeniable progress of the stars.

  “What makes them sort of different colors?” asked T.P. —“Refraction,” said The Professor. “Like with a rainbow.” —After a silence, T.P. said, “Oh.”

  Miles away, the drumfire of machine guns and artillery ceased for a minute, and the two soldiers tensed, their senses straining and groping. When the bombardment resumed, they relaxed, and T.P. asked The Professor how far away the stars were. —“What’s the longest road you know?” —T.P. named the highway passing through her hometown, which was for her a symbol of bidirectional infinity. —“Well,” said The Professor, “take that and multiply it by a million.” —T.P.’s lips slowly parted. “Gosh.” —Solemnly The Professor added, “And multiply that by a million.” —At this, T.P.’s imagination bridled; she felt as if she had been told that the most handsome man on earth possessed a hundred perfect faces.

  Because they were on listening-post duty, they spoke in whispers, with long pauses between sentences. Consequently their thoughts had time to stray, and the conversation had a dreamy and desultory quality that reminded each of them of bedtime conversations with siblings, and which made them feel, despite the cold, almost cozy.

  “Hey, Professor?” —“What.” —“Does it hurt to get shot?” —“Sure as shit it hurts,” said The Professor, who had never been shot. “It hurts like hell.” —“But sometimes it doesn’t, right? Sometimes you go sort of numb, isn’t it?” —“If they hit a nerve, maybe. But if they hit muscle, or a bone, or an organ . . . Don’t even.” She told T.P. about a soldier from an adjacent company who had been shot in the guts, and whom the stretcher-bearers, pinned down by enemy fire, had been unable to retrieve for two hours. “The whole time, she only stopped screaming to catch her breath. She was begging us to drop a mortar on her . . . That shit was fucked.”

  This only confirmed the fear that T.P. had been hoping to dispel, namely, that anything, even death, even abrupt and total nonexistence, was preferable to certain kinds of pain. She tried another tack. “Well, what do you think is the best place to get shot?” —“I can tell you the worst place: the tits. I knew a woman who rolled onto a mine. Her right tit was literally vaporized. The pain . . . It just broke her mind. Like an instant lobotomy. From that day forward, she was just a baboon. Worse than a baboon. There was nothing there. She was gone.” —“You mean, she was numb?” —“No, lady. The opposite of numb. She hurt so bad, her mind just ate itself. Her brain just went up in flames and never stopped burning.”

  T.P. persevered. “But sometimes you just pass out, right? If the pain is too bad.” —The Professor’s shrug was a kind of sneer. “Maybe in movies.”

  T.P.’s thoughts in recoil returned to her other pole of fascination. “But you can still fuck with one tit, can’t you?” —“Sure,” said The Professor, “but you only get half turned-on.” —T.P. considered this. “But it would still feel good, wouldn’t it?” —“More for you than for him,” The Professor laughed. Then she became confidential. “The fact is, men don’t care so much how big your tits are. What’s more important is how hard they are.”

  T.P. had gleaned from conversation and observation that hers were, if anything, slightly above average in size; she now resolved at the earliest opportunity to gauge, with a man’s sensibility, the solidity of her breasts. She resolved, too, with a yearning intensity that was like a supplication, to fuck at least one man at least once before she died or was irreparably mutilated in combat. With all she had learned from The Professor, she felt confident that she would have little trouble seducing a man when next she saw one. Indeed, she felt that even without The Professor’s advice, she would have had little difficulty. There was no mystery, really. Combat had enlightened her: life was too short for coyness. Though she had never been exactly shy with boys back home, she realized that she had not been nearly insistent enough. She now knew just the tone—confident, playful, and desirous—with which she would ask a man to join her for a drink back at her place. She was not ugly; she had if anything slightly larger than average tits; men must desire her too. All the fumbling, oversensitive equivocation that had characterized her relationship with Michal seemed to belong to a previous life. She was a woman now; she must ratify her womanhood.

  A thought bothered her. —“Does fucking feel better if you, you know . . . love the man?”

  The Professor was a long time replying. She did not want to belittle the brusque dalliances that constituted her own sexual history, nor did she want to dishearten T.P., who was unlikely to find love on their upcoming leave. On the other hand, she was reluctant to mock her friend’s romanticism—but she felt that displaying the same weakness would be unsoldierly.

  For the five months preceding T.P.’s arrival, The Professor had been without friends in the First/Fourth. At the beginning, she had been affronted by the platoon’s aloofness (which was in fact a kind of initiation that they had all been through) and offended by the nickname they gave her (which was in fact neither sardonic nor anti-intellectual, but merely descriptive: she was often seen reading books, and had been heard in unguarded moments to use polysyllables without irony). She had signed up for danger and heroism, and had been handed toil and tedium; she had anticipated pain and blood and tears, and had found only discomfort, dirt, and sleeplessness; she had expected help and camaraderie, and to her surprise discovered loneliness.

  When T.P. arrived, The Professor was, unwittingly, the first to address a friendly word to her. One night together on sentry duty, she told her to switch her selector lever to burst. —“Okay, sure. Why?” —“Then you’re guaranteed a tracer.” —“Oh yeah. Hey, thanks.” —This brief exchange established the pattern of their friendship. For whatever reason, and to The Professor’s initial
embarrassment, T.P. adopted her as mentor. Perhaps because The Professor was from a city, or because she was a year older, or because she wore her forage cap at an idiosyncratic slant, or because she was not a virgin, or because she was called The Professor, T.P. assumed that she knew everything there was to know about life. And T.P.—called Teacher’s Pet by the platoon—was hungry to learn it all. She asked The Professor about algebra, and gardening, and jazz, and fishing, and architecture, and comparative religion, and world history, and electronics, and fashion—and men; and death. The Professor told her what she knew, and embellished it with what she could guess, what was plausible, and what would be best for T.P. to believe. She humored her, sensing that any uncertainty or confession of ignorance would surely injure T.P.’s curiosity.

  “The fact is,” she said at last, “that from a strict sensation point of view, every cock feels about the same—that is, equally good. But the ideas and feelings that go on in your head while you’re fucking, and of course before and after, are generally, yeah, I guess, a little nicer when you actually love—actually like the man.” The treacly, burdened word that she had let slip triggered a reaction: “Of course, there’s something to be said for fucking sons of bitches you hate, too. You can get right nasty.”

  “Yeah,” said T.P. But she thought, on the whole, that it would probably be best for her to fall in love. Would forty-eight hours be enough?

  The night before they were scheduled for leave, The Professor gave her a caveat. “Don’t feel bad if all we can find is whores. There’s no shame in it. Lots of women lose their virginity that way.” —T.P. nodded, determined not to settle for a whore.