I was down by the Fake River. Kovak was with me. We were walking around. It was night, the weekend after Emily. We had our first full weekend pass. It was Friday.
Kovak was an Air Force brat from Nevada who’d had some bad luck on account of he liked speedballs too much. Then he’d joined the Army. He was 23, so he’d made the liquor run early that afternoon. I’d put away a fifth of Seagram’s gin already. I missed Emily. Longing devoured my liver; I felt like Prometheus with his fucking birds. Now it was getting late and I thought I ought to eat something.
We passed what was advertised as a pub and grille. You could see inside. There were bagpipes on the walls, different types of flags, whatever. There were waitresses in plaid skirts. I didn’t care. They had a veggie burger on the menu so I wanted in, but the guy out front, who was wearing a kilt, wouldn’t let me in because I was only 20. I said I wasn’t trying to drink, I just wanted the veggie burger. Still he said no. I said I’d order one to go. He wouldn’t let me do that either. I got inarticulate. I told Kovak to go ahead without me. I almost walked backwards into the Fake River, but I was lucky and didn’t. I took the stairs up to street level, and the Alamo was there. A bum asked me for a cigarette. I gave him one and I told him about how I’d got fucked around on the Fake River. He said they were dirty motherfuckers for fucking me around like that. He was wearing an old Expos cap pulled down low and I couldn’t see his eyes, but he sounded sincere. He said there was a Denny’s nearby. I said Denny’s was good. I asked him if he wanted to go get some Denny’s. He said he didn’t have money. I said I’d pay.
We got a booth in the smoking section, and the waitress took our orders right away. I was talking-drunk, so I asked the bum about his situation and how he’d got to be a bum. He said his life had got fucked about the time he went to prison.
“What were you in prison for?”
“Murder.”
The pancakes arrived.
“A fool raped my sister. So I shot him dead.”
“That’s understandable.”
The bum was on parole, and his parole officer gave him a hard time because he didn’t have a job. But he couldn’t get a job because he was mentally ill.
“Leave your parole officer to me,” I said. “I’m in the Army. We’ve got a lot of juice these days. What’s his contact info?”
He gave me his parole officer’s name and telephone number. We parted ways outside the Denny’s. I assured him I’d have things straightened out for him soon.
* * *
—
MONDAY AFTERNOON Ms. Grey told us about the bad weekend she’d had. Life Flight had been called out to a barbecue party in the countryside. A young woman, the mother of young children, crashed a four-wheeler into a barbecue pavilion at a campground and hemorrhaged in her head and died on the scene in front of the whole barbecue party. Her head turned purple. A lot of bad swelling. Kids there and everything. Ms. Grey said things like this happened all the time.
We filled out our wish lists. I’d given it a lot of thought and had decided I’d like to be stationed at either Walter Reed Army Hospital or Aberdeen Proving Ground or Brooke Army Medical Center or, should those fall through, Fort Drum. Harold Ramis had said Fort Drum was a bad time. But it was near Elba, so it was near Emily, and if it was as bad as it was supposed to be I was a shoo-in.
I called the bum’s parole officer that evening. I wanted to leave a message, put the ball in his court as it were. I said who I was, and I said I was in the Army and I’d taken an interest in the welfare of one Mr. Charley Pride. I said Mr. Pride had some bad mental illnesses he was dealing with and he couldn’t rightfully be held accountable for his not having a job and I was prepared to go through the proper channels if the situation wasn’t resolved soon.
* * *
—
THERE WAS a lot of fucking around with mannequins. There were mannequins that were just trunks with heads. There were entire mannequins with arms and legs. There were mannequins with rubber lungs. There were mannequins with rubber bone sticking out of their legs. There were mannequins that could squirt fake blood. There were even little baby mannequins with cherubim faces. Any mannequin you could think of had been provided for the training of Warrior Medics, and we crawled around on the floor, going from mannequin to mannequin while the cadre read scenarios to us:
“Blood pressure dropped to seventy over twenty.”
(You pretended to start a line on the mannequin and push imaginary fluids.)
“Your patient is vomiting.”
(You rolled the mannequin over on its side and cleared out its make-believe airway before it make-believe aspirated on make-believe vomit and make-believe died.)
“Sucking chest wound.”
(An occlusive dressing was the thing for one of those.)
“Patient shows tracheal deviation.”
(A make-believe tension pneumothorax called for a make-believe needle chest decompression on the midclavicular line of the make-believe third intercostal space.)
“Severe facial burns around the mouth and nose.”
(A mannequin like that would need a make-believe cricothyroidotomy.)
Eventually we did stick one another’s real-life veins with 14ga needle-catheters, and we drew one another’s real-life blood with butterflies. I drew some of Harlow’s blood. She didn’t like needles; they made her tremble.
She said, “Please be gentle.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I tried to be good. But I was fucked up. Emily’d got a job as a shot girl, and I got wasted. I was kicking around a hallway on one of the floors of the Fake River Hyatt, and Kovak was helping me to not get arrested. I kept saying how it sounded slutty as fuck: shot girl. And Emily wasn’t picking up her phone. I said, Kovak, doesn’t it sound slutty as fuck? He said he didn’t know what to tell me. I said he was a useless motherfucker. I said, If yer just gonna say useless shit I’d rather you shut the fuck up.
Then I saw Harlow coming down the hall. She was with five prior service, all dudes. She asked me what I was doing. I said the Fake River was shit because they carded everywhere. She said, Really? She said she didn’t get carded. She asked if that was Kovak. I said yeah, that was Kovak. She said, Hi, Kovak. Kovak said hi. The prior service got impatient and they were dicks about it. I told the one that he was a rapist. He asked me if I was supposed to be Captain Save-a-Ho. I punched him in the mouth. He got ahold of me. I tried to get around him so I could choke him out, but I only got him in a headlock. I was at a loss for what to do then. I tried running his head into the door but it didn’t work; I couldn’t get enough momentum. He said, Let go of me. And his voice was all froggy and it made it so I couldn’t concentrate. This fucking rapist was once a child, I thought. His friends were on me. I got punched in the jaw, and it clicked for days after. Kovak tried to help me and he punched me in the neck. A woman was shouting behind the door, “I CALLED SECURITY.” We all scattered. Harlow and Kovak and I ran down the stairs and out of the hotel. We went back to the Fake River. The Fake River was shit. It was Top 40 music. It was stale Bud Light and it was cargo shorts. It was quesadillas and Axe body spray. It was everything I was guilty of.
Harlow had a glow about her. She cleaned up nice. She asked me for a cigarette and I held out the pack and she touched my wrist. I held out a lighter for her, and she held my arm at the elbow when she leaned toward me. We walked for an hour before we felt like it was safe to go back to the hotel. She stood real close in the elevator. The room was on the seventh floor. Kovak ordered a movie on pay per view. I made a gin and tonic. Harlow wanted one as well. She sat next to me on the edge of the bed. She kept brushing her tits against my arm and breathing on me on accident. I told her that I had a girlfriend and that it was serious. But we’re scared, she said, and it’s okay to do things when we’re scared. I said I was sorry. She fucked Kovak in the bathroom. You could hear she was really going. She liked dick a lot.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN