The Slip Away: Book Two of the Ved Ludo Series

By K Austin

So here you are, considering the purchase of the next Ved Ludo novel. You are trying to determine if this, the second book, will be of the same quality as my breathtaking first ... Some of you are upset, bewildered by the unexpected tragedy in The Exodus. Your emotional response is merited. I never forewarned you of Rule #17: develop characters that your audience will invest in, and then kill them unexpectedly. For that, I apologize.

Nothing about this venture has been done traditionally. From the writing (and my reckless usage of commas), to the publishing, editing, and even selling of this entity, everything was done in a nontraditional way. Though I don’t wear black leather, or, God forbid, tassels, have a braided beard, or own anything made of pewter, I am the last literary rebel. In order to stand apart from the rest, at no time in this sequel will there be appearances by vampires, trolls, wizards, werewolves, or spacemen of any sort.

Prepare yourself for a closer look into a man’s mind than anything you touched on at volleyball camp. I will bring brutal honesty to your bedside, strip it bare, and flog it with the abundance of adjectives and adverbs within. I will take you deep within the mind of a beautiful disaster, making you understand the cruelty of love and sex, the fear of commitment and freedom, and what it’s like to dance along the perimeters of morality.

I am Ved Ludo, and when you finish this story, you will beg me for more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K Austin
• Release date: Feb 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466068292

Book preview

The Slip Away

Book Two of the Ved Ludo Series

K. Austin

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.

The Slip Away

Copyright 2011 by K. Austin

Smashwords Edition

For the Black Frogs

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Big Star Jeans … thank you. No matter how fat I’ve gotten over the two years I’ve been diligently writing, you continue to make me at least presentable. Even though I could buy a moderate palace in most third world countries for the same price as a pair of your wonderful Pioneer jeans, I’d much rather have the jeans.

Göt 2b glued blasting freeze spray … thank you for taming the wild nature of my extremely oily, thinning hair. I will hang on to my youth for as long as I can rely on your trustworthy product, and then, when you can no longer make me look reasonable, I will shave my head and jump off a bridge.

Suncloud Sunglasses … thank you for making my eyewear look expensive, even if it only costs fifty bucks for well-made polarized and relatively stylish sunglasses. Also, I appreciate the fact that you don’t make horrific styles like some of your competitors, such as the ones with the orange lenses, angular ear arms and rimless bottoms.

To my ever present, most cherished possession, my iPod classic … thanks, man.

My 2000 BMW540i, you are still the coolest car in the world, even if you cost a fucking fortune every time you break down. When you are running properly, you are timeless and classic.

To my newly acquired 1998 IBM ThinkPad, I’m not really in love with you like I wanted to be. The fact that you miss most of the a,h,t, and especially, space bar keys, really annoys the shit out of me. However, I ordered a case, a new battery, a new keypad, a cooling mat and an extension cord for you, so I’m stuck with you now. I hate Craigslist.

To my new fake glasses, you are super cool! I look forward to posing for pictures with you on my face, making me look exceptionally cooler than I am in real life (and somewhat studious as well).

Parliament Lights, Tramadol, Zoloft, marijuana, Starbucks’ Venti Hazlenut Breve Lattes, Jack in the Box tacos, Madeleines, Skoal Wintergreen Xtra long cut, Canadian Mist, and, finally, Soma, thank you for shortening my life, but making it more worthwhile. Though I’ve given you all up for periods of time, know we will always be the best of friends.

To Facebook, thank you for reminding me just how uncool I really was. I would delete you entirely, but I’m not cool enough to be that bold. Damn you.

And to the Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch, whose baristas are certainly tired of seeing me in my fake glasses, absorbing an entire table for hours at a time, I thank you sincerely. I’m sorry that I’m cheap and buy the English Breakfast Tea so I can get a free refill of the most plentiful substance on earth. I mean, with coffee refills at $0.69 a cup … we aren’t out here writing novels because we’re rich, ya know.

To the living … Mark Poole, Cherra Wilson, Kathy Markley, Frank Radke, Joe Liley, Diane Kraft, Sara Kramer, thank you for reading chapter by chapter, via email. (And still buying the books when they’re published for full retail prices.)

To my wife, Emily; my son, Levi; my dogs: Ollie, Laz and Jake (Mr. Nice); and the cats: Pretty Kitty, Sashi, Annie-Nannie-Nannie, Miss Jibbs, I love our home in the mountains. Living remotely and at 9,000 ft. wouldn’t be possible with just any combination of personalities, but together, we make it look easy.

To Pearl Jam, Chevelle, Joe Purdy, The Features, The Black Angels, Widespread Panic, The Grateful Dead, The Black Crowes, and that one song by Marc Anthony that I’m too embarrassed to mention by name, thanks for the soundtrack that I’ve been writing to since the beginning.

To my wonderful family, who I sincerely hope never read these pages, know that I love you all dearly. I do not take for granted the perfection of Kinderhook, the loving conditions that we grew up with, and paths we have followed since.

This book once contained some wonderful Pearl Jam lyrics that my publisher demanded I remove. It breaks my heart to cheat you, the good people of the world, such poignant words.

To Kathy Markley … my friend and partner, thank you for seeing the other side of things. Your tireless effort (working on a percentage, nonetheless), makes me hope this thing actually sells, or I’ll have to advertise one of my kidneys on Craigslist. I love ya, Sass, for everything you do, and everything you have been to me during this process.

Special thanks to Glenn and Cathy (Shoe) Stroud. Without the financial backing needed to produce books en masse, we might not have ever gotten the ball rolling. I am profoundly thankful to you both.

Frank, make me rich.

Mom, I’m serious … you’ll love me more if you don’t read this.

Long live the days of the clear blue skies …

Chapter 1

Slipping Away

Shadows are long and unrecognizable, well, unless you know exactly what you are looking at. They are just as abstract as clouds, and if you stare at them long enough, they become many things. The space that a shadow fills is a void. It’s not a painted something. It’s an empty something. Colors and heat disappear as the nothing takes over the something, leaving it without identity. The shadow has no identity.

Living in the shadows is simply living in the void. When colors are painted black, they do not reflect in our eyes any longer. When the colors are gone, when the emotions are blocked out by the absence, the will to survive drifts aimlessly away. What we hold so close to ourselves, the one bare desire to survive, plays out in our daily life more routinely than the need to pull in oxygen. Without the will to live, regular people become dangerous people. We count on people’s desire to live, assuming it to be essentially the most similar quality that we share as a species.

Suicide was never the answer, but I have never questioned the nobility of it. The sheep, all walking in their own shit, babble something about it being cowardly as they eat from the hand in order to simply shit some more. They babble about their self-righteousness, while bathing in their own shit, yet if you disagree, they will put up some sort of biblical argument.

Suicide, my old companion, has always been my secret friend. I have always felt so connected to death that it hasn’t frightened me the way it frightens them. In the closeness of death, when it comes right out and touches you, when you can see its face, you realize that it is not the face of a monster, but the face of your family. When death becomes something that loves you, something that understands you, the fear disappears. Isn’t that the case with most things? Isn’t it true, that we fear most what we understand least?

Walking hand in hand with my mortality has always made me wiser. When I learned what death really was, I felt privileged rather than threatened. I knew where my beloved was now; I knew not to listen for hauntings, or for things rattling around in a room that bears no breeze. I knew that death was, for the worst of it, unconcerned with the living. I knew that as that airplane broke her into pieces, her tears would be for naught. The coming apart, well, I’m not going to tell you that is a friend of mine, but the silence, the drifting … out there is little concern for things cherished here.

I could tell you of a cold and calculated Ved walking through the world silently without a smile and without a sense of people, but that would not be the truth. The truth is never as interesting as the lie, but that may be more applicable to the storyteller than the seeking audience. The truth … the lies … they are all temporary. The worst part is the recovery; getting better is actually worse than being touched.

I didn’t take too long to recover from the loss of … well, you know. I knew that now she wasn’t thinking about me. I knew now that none of it mattered to her anymore, and I felt like an asshole trying to convince myself that she was looking down on me, watching out for me … That’s just not the truth of it.

Anyone who has come close to dying, or especially those who have died and came back, will tell you something that you should remember, something you probably have heard but didn’t really hear. They’ll tell you that when they died, they experienced peace, an overwhelming peace that transcends anything they have ever felt before. They’ll tell you that as they lay dying, they thought of their kids; they cried, longing to kiss their kids or their spouses one last time, but in death, they’ll not mention that. Death comes as a warm hand, connecting to them, and electrifying them with peace and … forgetfulness?

Is the burden of caring simply an attribute of the living? If that is the truth, if death brings us absence of concern like a warm blanket, does that mean we are misled while we are thriving? I have been this close to the dead four times in my life, close enough to know. I have been this close to my own death three times, shaking hands gripping the trigger and begging God to be merciful, begging Him for one more inch of movement from a nervous and trembling finger, only to hear my prayers echoing off the empty walls of my surroundings. No, don’t tell me that suicide is cowardly. That is just the words of sheep walking through their own shit, so concerned with a handful of grain that tiny brains cannot grasp the enormity of the afterlife.

To say I had a death wish would be both true and untrue. In my mind, I suppose it is true, but then my idea of death varies from yours. You would think I wished to die, and that I lay awake at night dreaming of the one I lost and longing to be with her, but that’s not it. My death wish was more passive than that. I didn’t cry. I didn’t write poetry and cut myself with razorblades in order to feel something; instead, I vanished into the shadows, into feeling nothing. I moved in, with bags packed like a vacation to Bermuda, settling in comfortably. In nothing, I was two-dimensional; I was alive and dead, somewhere in the limbo between them.

I didn’t have a hard time being funny, being light, and talking to people the way I had always done. That was second nature to me, effortlessly simple. I didn’t need a therapist to talk me off the ledge. I didn’t dream of Heaven. I didn’t fear a Hell. I just was.

People who knew me reached out to me, unable to believe I was OK. They’d tell me that they understood, and they’d relate to me with stories of people they’d lost, which were somehow supposed to make us brothers in survival. I endured all of it I could, but my award winning performances wouldn’t satisfy them. They continued, the worst of them offering me assurances of their prayers, telling me, I’m praying for you, buddy, and things like this. I knew the truth of it was complicated, and they had a hard time with knowing I’d lost someone to death; it made them unsettled; it brought them tremors of fear, wondering if they would be the next to lose.

Death reminds the living that it’s out there waiting. Death makes them afraid. I was so tired of comforting words being whispered to me while an arm was wrapped around my shoulder or a hand drew small circles on my back, tapping occasionally. They were all so vulgar in the way they distanced themselves from the loss of life, as if death had no means of attaining them. I found it insulting to be talked to as a survivor. I wondered if in the afterlife there was any difference between a long life and a short one. I mean, what are a few years longer on earth when the scope of eternity cannot be measured?

I presented the same man as before when I walked out the door and onto the stage. Eyes watched me closely, wishing to see the tiny details they assumed I was trying to hide. They’d look at me long when the same gazes used to be quick. Even people who hadn’t known me before, the ones who heard of my loss, watched me for signs of falling apart, but my recovery was simpler than that.

I came to terms with my life. I came to understand my death, and the dreams I’d been having stopped entirely. There were no more visits from her, at first. I didn’t relive the days passed anymore, I didn’t remember her, and I didn’t even miss her. My pride, that had always been too large to fit quietly into the tiny box I’d built to house it, now encompassed me. My pride was to blame for my lack of emotion, as I knew her to be gone. Not invisible but present … gone. She was enlightened now. She understood the depths of the afterlife; the mysteries revealed. She knew too much to ever come back, and I knew too little for her to ever relate to me again. It was simply over. I’d lost the key ingredient to being a normal human being; I’d lost the concern for my own mortality.

When what you know to be true separates you from the rest of the population, you become something of a sideshow. People who were abducted by aliens cannot fit any longer into the small circles of humanity. The people around them are afraid of the contagious nature of crazy, fearing it more than loss of limb. Crazy people are dangerous simply because their focus is placed in other directions. When one person differs on a primal level from the rest of the pack, they are quickly ousted, castaway, ostracized.

To speak of what I now knew would be suicide. No, I’d still live and breathe, but when I did so it would be under the watchful eyes of the people closest to me. They needed to see me grieving, they needed me to be predictable; so I compromised with them and gave them normalcy without predictability. I didn’t cry; in fact, I don’t think I ever did.

I welcomed the fog and rain to my day, and when I awoke with a hangover, I thought to myself that there was never anything so beautiful. The rain fell steadily on the parking lot outside my window, cleansing the planet, while small streams of it flowed unobstructed down the ancient windowpane. I looked through the streams of water onto the blurred landscape of black asphalt and faded tan buildings. The streams of water were moving from left to right. I adjusted my eyes, following the water as it moved sporadically through the streetside gutters.

The black asphalt looked new in the rain, so black, so dark and dead to sensation, so strong and durable. The hundred or so cars parked in the spaces (marked with old sun faded lines and peppered with garbage), sat completely still, shrugging the water off their backs. When the wind blew, the rain traversed the lot with a violent rage, making a cloud of gray water swirl in circles, like a child dancing to the music of an eternal lifetime of optimism.

I closed my eyes, forcing the thoughts away.

Turning around to look at my new room, I was never so alone. The other occupant of room 131 was gone for the weekend, or so I was told. I think that had initially comforted me, but an hour or two later, I realized I was living uninvited in someone else’s space, and without his knowledge.

I admit that the first thing I had done was search his shit. I wanted to know who this guy was, and I didn’t want the oral introduction. I wanted to know who this guy was. I wasn’t planning on employing my gift for the cause; I was going to use it for my own purposes, as destructive as they may be. It was my gift, and it would serve my cause from now on.

I found his uniforms with the name Derrick sewn onto to the BDU shirts. That didn’t mean anything to me, but now I had a last name to apply to the face I had created for him in my head. He was a country fan, and a rap fan for that matter, judging by the compact discs I’d found scattered atop his dresser. I saw some terrible garments tossed into his wall locker sloppily, and decided immediately this had been a mistake. Whoever Tom Derrick was, he was a slob who had bad taste in both music and clothing. Cross Colors, baggy SilverTab jeans, Chuck Taylors, and dirty white socks were just the beginning of the horrors. Beyond that, he had a Scarface poster that screamed of mediocrity, like mediocrity wrapped up in the search for identity. There was an acoustic guitar that I imagined was used to sing Boyz II Men songs, and a Harlem Globetrotters basketball that sat on his pillow as if he’d been tossing it into the air while lying on his back in bed.

This was a mistake, a disaster. Whoever this kid was, he wasn’t going to like me very much; I would make sure of that. Confidence and indifference were a dangerous combination for a young soldier, making it conceivable to do unspeakable things without a hint of conscience. I lacked morality altogether, but I suppose when you are contemplating suicide, this is the proper state to be in.

I didn’t want to help anyone in the self-discovery process. I would rather have a roommate who had already discovered he was moronic; someone resigned to being plain and monotonous instead of trying to achieve some higher self. What I saw as I scanned the room over and over again were the signs of a regular man, a man who had never accepted his individualism for that; instead, he was a man in transition, and I hated him for it.

My new roommate was gone by the time I showed up to the 82nd Signal Battalion to report to my first permanent duty station. Signal means communications, and though I didn’t really have any idea what a communications unit did on a day-to-day basis, I was glad to at least know where the end of the road was for me. I’d arrived on a Thursday, only delayed thirty-six hours to attend the funeral. When I’d flown back into Fayetteville, NC, I’d grabbed a cab and headed straight to post. I hadn’t cleared my unexpected trip to the Midwest with the Army; I’d just gone.

However, I’d beaten the bus from Benning to Ft. Bragg, making my disappearance unnoticeable. I reported to reception battalion and spent Thursday night with the rest of my mates from Benning, then reported to Captain Dillinger in Alpha Company at 82nd Sig on Friday morning at 0800 hours.

The 82nd Sig was a small battalion situated in one barracks building. Where most battalions occupy up to five buildings, we were one very small family. I noticed from the front, entering that Friday morning, that the building looked horrible. The grounds were as well kept as any other, but the building itself looked to be sixty years old, in disrepair, and lacking any cool architecture that might have made it look naturally older. This was pretty standard for the enlisted barracks; none that I’d seen thus far into my military career had any real oomph to them. The officers’ quarters, on the other hand, were all red brick and looked to be a hundred years old in a cool way. They weren’t perfect either, but the nature of those buildings made a little disrepair look warming, whereas the enlisted barracks and company areas were simple stucco buildings with ugly metal trimmed windows. Cracked foundations, rusted hand rails on the steps, sloppy paint jobs, and grass that’d worn thin before dying altogether, leaving ugly brown dirt spots that now, in the rain, looked like fucking quicksand—were some of the things I observed. Other than the lack of trash and the well cared for flowers and bushes, the place could have passed for abandoned.

Upon entering the building, I asked a couple of E-4 specialists where the office was. After getting directions, I headed down the long hallway toward the CO (commanding officer) and first sergeant’s office. I recognized the smells immediately, identifying Army issue floor wax and Simple Green as the two main culprits. Beyond that there was the distinct scent of Glade-plug-ins, fabric softener, and something cooking in the DFAC. The hallway was a bland white in color, as if it had been bright white years ago, but had been scrubbed into an off white by diligent hands over the course of many ages.

The doors that lined the hallway were all brown. The offices were situated on one end of the building, and the rooms for the troops were everywhere else, making them all look the same. They were painted hastily and without being sanded first, evident because the paint looked thick and, in spots, had dried while running down the door. It looked sloppy to me, unprofessional, something I thought would be impossible in the Army where appearance was everything. When I got to the CO’s door, I knocked and waited for his reply. I was expecting him to say enter in a military fashion, and then I would begin the process of standing at attention, announcing myself as present and ready for duty, and awaiting detailed instructions on what I should do with myself. This had been drilled into us over and over again at McClellan, and had always been a very formal and scripted procedure. I wasn’t at all worried about forgetting my lines; too much emphasis had been put on this performance, so I felt pretty confident. I knew exactly what to say and when, when to assume parade rest, when to snap back to attention, when to salute, when to about-face and exit … the works.

As I waited in the hallway for an answer, I imagined him reading over my file, hoping that there wasn’t anything about the ladybugs in it. In my imagination, he’d be looking at my picture and thinking up the perfect spot for me in his company, smiling cautiously about the new soldier he had been entrusted with protecting for the next few years. But when he answered my knock, I realized this was going to be a little different than I had planned on. Yo … come on in, he said, sounding like a surfer or fucking Pauly Shore.

I thought I was in the wrong spot. Maybe this was a barracks door too, or maybe I’d gotten bad directions from that fucking E-4. Those goddamn E-4’s, always thinking it’s funny to pick on the new guys …

I said come on in. Jesus Christ, do I have to come out there and grab your hand? I heard Pauly say from behind the door.

I entered. Behind the otherwise very bland desk sat the tallest Oriental man I’d ever seen. Even sitting down, he looked to be six feet tall. He had a pleasant smile and what I considered to be very long hair, for military standards anyway. I hadn’t seen hair longer than a half-inch on anyone since entering the Army almost a year ago, well, with the exception of the females.

He stood up and reached out a hand to me. I was confused and immediately snapped off a salute, then reached for his hand in stumbling and awkward indecision. He’d gone from a shake, to trying to salute me back, but by the time he got his salute ready, my hand was back out in front of me to shake his hand. He reached for my hand, but of course I’d seen him salute, and my hand was no longer out in front of me, it was on my way to my head to salute …

Jesus. Make up your mind. You nervous or something?

I couldn’t believe the voice coming from him was his, even after watching him speak to me. It was eerie how much his looks contradicted his voice, not that I was expecting a broken English-Asian mix or anything, but he sounded like an eighteen-year-old kid from California.

Sorry, sir, I said, finally finding the position of attention.

Jesus Christ, man, relax. You’re making me nervous. You always like this uh … He leaned in to read my name tag, Ludo?

No, sir. Yes, sir … Once again, I spoke with perfect clarity.

Relax, Ludo. Take a seat. Jesus man, you’re not in basic training anymore. You need to act like a fucking seasoned trooper; this formal shit is gonna scare people.

Roger that, sir.

He sat down first, and then gestured for me to do the same. He grabbed an orange soda can from atop his desk, held it to his mouth, and spit something into it. Placing the can back down, he grabbed a file off his desk, put his feet on top of a larger pile of other folders, reclined in his ornate leather chair, and said, Ludo … I see you’re an NBC guy. Good, we need one.

Even after a few months of Nuclear Biological and Chemical defense training, I didn’t remember what NBC stood for immediately. I agreed anyway, deciding I could be anything he needed me to be.

I was seated on a bright orange loveseat made of tacky plastic that was as stiff as a board. I sat rigidly, trying to figure out how casual I was supposed to be with my new commander. I didn’t want to be disrespectful, deciding it was better he thought me too stiff and proper than too comfortable with him.

You just came from Benning? he asked, as if he didn’t know the answer.

Yes, sir, I said again.

How was it? Tough?

Not really, sir, I said, realizing I should have said yes to that.

Really? He smiled. You used to running in boots and BDUs?

No, sir, but I was an overfat in basic … I was hoping he’d know what I was talking about.

Ah … the hard way … I see, he said, grabbing the spit can again.

A woman in BDUs, obviously pregnant, came into the office without knocking. She looked at me, was surprised to see me sitting there, gave me a quick and thoughtless, Hi, and then turned to Captain Dillinger. Sir, the jump got bumped. The pilots complained about the daytime flight … They want to do it tonight at 2250 hours. That OK?

I looked at her a second longer. She was an E-3, PFC, and she was so casual with him. It made me wonder if it were his baby growing inside her enormous belly.

Fucking Air Force … Fine, but I hate jumping at night. Those guys know it too … I swear to God, Kelty, they do it to me on purpose, he said smiling, then grabbing the can again.

OK, sir, I’ll tell them. I’ll tell ’em you’re pissed about it though.

Hell yeah. Tell them I’m throwing shit around in the office. He smiled.

Roger, sir. She smiled. She looked at me. New NBC guy? she asked pleasantly.

Yes, ma’am, I said, instantly realizing I’d just called a private first class, ma’am.

She smiled at Captain Dillinger. FNGs huh?

He smiled back. Yeah, whaddya gonna do?

After she’d shut the door that led directly into another office, I had to ask, FNGs?

Fuckin’ New Guys. He laughed out loud.

Captain Dillinger had Private Moses show me to my office. I didn’t even know I would have an office, so I was shocked. I kept asking him, Are you sure I have an office? to which he replied, Yeah, man, you have an office.

The office was decent size, had a big gray desk in the middle of the room, and over a hundred M-40 chemical masks hung on the wall. Dust clung to each of them, and some of them showed hand prints where the dust had been rubbed off by fingers. Maybe someone had hung them up, leaving clean spots where they’d handled them.

I was never a good student, and AIT hadn’t been any different. Advanced Individual Training took up the majority of time we’d spent at McClellan. Basic was eight weeks long, and the rest of the time had been spent in classrooms learning the craft of NBC defense. I’d paid so little attention that I couldn’t remember a single thing I’d learned as I stood there realizing I was responsible for the entire company. I was supposed to train them, inspect their masks, put them through the gas chamber semi-annually and generally be available to answer any and all of their questions. Fuck.

I was such a terrible student; I didn’t know anything. Most of us weren’t put into a unit like this; usually new NBC guys went to a chemical company full of NBC guys, where we would cut our teeth over the next three years … Now I was supposed to take control of this room, this company?

After my tour of the NBC room, Moses took me back to Captain Dillinger’s office. Dillinger told me that I was off for the weekend, but I needed to be ready for a jump at 1600 hours tonight.

Jump? I asked

Yeah, you know those wings on your chest? he asked, still smiling. What was this guy, the fucking Joker? He was always smiling … Worse than that, it looked like a genuine smile every time. I would have preferred to be yelled at. With him, everything was spoken like it was a joke. I’d obviously known that I was in an airborne unit, but I didn’t think I’d be jumping on my first day at my permanent duty station. I guess I’d thought that there would be a break-in period: some time to shake hands and get to know my company. Apparently not.

OK, sir. I’ll be ready, I said, trying to sound confident.

If I told you that I loved jumping, that wouldn’t be true. It was a scary deal, and I knew that this one was an 82nd jump, which meant in the dark. The five jumps I’d done at Benning were all in the daytime without heavy equipment. Now I was jumping 82nd style, heavy, in the dark, and sixty-man chalks. I was terrified about doing this, but I couldn’t let on to that. I figured it was better to just get it over with and be done with my first division jump. It had to get better than this afterward. I mean, how much more stressful could it get?

Oh, besides your cherry blast, we leave for JRTC on Tuesday. You know what that is? he asked.

I was confused. No, I didn’t know what JRTC was, and what was a cherry blast? I asked.

He laughed hysterically at this. You don’t know what a cherry blast is? What are they teaching you at Benning these days?

I didn’t answer. I was tired of him already, and that creepy, cheeky smile of his.

A cherry blast is your first jump in division. Like popping your cherry … You wear a red helmet to let everyone know that you’re the most dangerous person on the plane. No one wants to jump before you or after you. It’s an initiation thing … JRTC is a thirty-day field problem. We fly to Louisiana, jump into the field, live in the woods for thirty days, and then jump back into Bragg. It sucks. Thirty days in the jungles of Louisiana, he said, making air quotations around jungles. He continued, I know it sucks, not knowing anyone, but you’ll meet people when we get there. It’s a big deal. We go once a year. It’s hot, humid, full of bugs, and just generally awful. You’re gonna love it.

I wondered if crying was inappropriate. I’d heard of JRTC, but I didn’t know it was that bad. Joint Readiness Training Center in Ft. Polk, Louisiana, was supposed to emulate Vietnam, and truthfully, I imagined that the climate was probably very close. I’d never been to Louisiana, but I’d seen pictures of the Bayou, always with thick clouds of humidity hanging in the air above the very green landscape. Oh, OK, I said, looking at my boots.

Oh, come on, Ludo. You’re in the Army … Isn’t this what you came here for, or are you here for college money?

Now I smiled. No, sir, not for college; in lieu of college.

Aah … one of those. All right, Ludo. Be out front at 1600 hours. We’ll form up by the flagpole and then roll over to Pope.

Pope, sir?

Pope Air Force base. Jesus, you are a cherry. He smiled. Be ready for a little hell tonight. These guys love to fuck with the cherries. You’ll make it through. Some guys have to be a cherry for weeks before they get their first jump in. You’re lucky; you’ll be initiated tonight. By the time we roll out for Ft. Polk, you’ll be a regular trooper. Welcome to the Sig, Ludo.

He pointed at the door with a quick upward head jerk. I guessed that this was my cue to hit the road. I stood at attention and saluted. He did the same. I walked out of the office, where Moses was waiting to show me to Derrick’s room.

Cherry blast tonight, huh? Moses asked.

I guess so, I said, trying to act dismissive.

Just suck it up. They’ll fuck with you a little bit, then afterward they’ll give you your blood wings, and then it’ll all be over, he said sympathetically.

Blood wings? I asked.

Yeah, they’ll take a pair of pin wings, leave the backs off of them, and everyone in the company will take turns punching them into your collar. It’s what we do here in division for cherries and for promotions. Every time you get new rank, they do the same. It’s tradition; everyone does it. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

Apparently, I was standing above a hole full of bad news. It was more like an abyss of bad things to come, and each time I wondered how much deeper shit I was in. Every time I told myself the worst was over, there was another thing to fear. The cherry blast was the first, and I was nervous about that, but JRTC took the cake. A month in the field with a bunch of strangers?

I’d have no friends, no job to do—or at least no idea about what to do in the job I had. I could look forward to being the FNG for the entire month, constantly being tested and picked on by these guys who I didn’t know … I calmed myself with the happy thoughts of dying on my jump into JRTC, or what they all called, the box.

Hey, what’s Derrick like? Is he cool? I asked cautiously.

Cool? No.

Wait, what does that mean? I asked.

He’s a nice guy, but he’s kinda … You’ll see. He’ll be back on Sunday night. His parents live in Myrtle Beach. He goes home to his parents every weekend. He shook his head as if it was still hard to understand.

Entering Derrick’s room, I noticed for the first time that it had begun to rain. The dismal parking lot outside my window reflected my desire to bolt. If I’d had a car, I might have run.

After Moses left me in my new room, I sat on the empty bed that Derrick was using as a storage spot for all his dirty laundry. I began tossing his shit onto his bed, hoping it wouldn’t piss him off, but what else was I supposed to do with it? I couldn’t expect him to have cleaned the room. He probably didn’t know he was getting a roommate. As I sifted through his nasty clothes, I grabbed a T-shirt, noticing it was crusty. When I looked at it there was a white splatter across it that had dried, leaving a petrified semen stain. I was holding on to another man’s semen. That’s fucking perfect.

An hour after I’d gotten to my room, there were suddenly voices in the hallway. I’d had the TV on while I unpacked my duffle bag, trying to figure out how to tell the guys from Benning I wouldn’t be able to make it over to hang out tonight, when I heard them. At first it was one guy, screaming nothing in particular, then more and more voices. I looked at the clock realizing it was lunchtime. I was starving, but feared having to sit by myself in the DFAC. I listened to the noises in the hallway attentively, feeling like an outsider. They were so foreign to me, all these people referring to each other by name, harassing each other, and having a good time just outside my door.

I sat on my bed, listening. Finally, I stood up and tiptoed (unnecessarily) across the hard concrete floor to my door and locked the deadbolt as carefully and quietly as I could. When the door was locked, I relaxed a bit, sat back down on my bed, and thought of the people from McClellan.

I thought of Jenney. She’d been at her permanent duty station for a month or so now, so this process was behind her. I wished I could talk to her, but I knew that wasn’t an option. I’d chosen Johansen, and now Johansen wasn’t … Well, I couldn’t talk to her. Jenney had heard the news about Johansen and the story I’d gotten was that Jenney had said something along the