Preterition

A longer story about the peacetime Army, circa 1995. This one’s still got a whole host of problems — huge clichés in the language, missing back-story, triteness in the character relationships, stereotypes — partly because it’s one where I’m trying to talk obliquely about the weirdness of my experience of gender and race relations in the Army in the South, but largely because it’s one that’s pretty close to the bone for me. But that closeness to the bone is also why I’m posting it, I guess: not one of the best things I’ve written, but one in which I’m rather heavily invested. As always, I’d be grateful for feedback and critique, and hope you might enjoy reading.

Victory Week

Trucks to dispatch and missions to fill: Ginny Barnes was in uniform. Scaipe was in street clothes. She’d wanted to give him a break.

It was Friday, the final day of Victory Week, and Scaipe was wearing battered cowboy boots and a sleeveless black Misfits t-shirt and faded jeans with the knees frayed through, white-boy redneck hip. His arms were as skinny as the rest of him in the way where there’s no fat to hide the slim muscle, streamlined divisions of deltoid and tricep. He had blond hair cropped a quarter-inch short all around and dark brown eyes in a tan and angled face that looked too lean to be not yet twenty. He wore his wallet on a chain.

In addition to imposing mandatory counseling, extra duty, and forfeiture of pay, the disciplinary action against Scaipe forbade his leaving the battalion area unescorted. Ginny was Scaipe’s squad leader and Scaipe had asked her if she would let him go up to the field once, just one time, even if the CO didn’t want it, because it was the last day of Victory Week and everyone else was up there.

There were many cars, and Ginny had to park far away. “Lock your door,” she told Scaipe. “Hold the handle up.”

“Don’t worry, Sergeant B.” He didn’t slam it.

They crossed Gulick Avenue and walked towards the parade field that took up most of the middle of Fort Stewart’s main post. Tall pines shaded the street, but the air already had coastal Georgia’s heavy heat that hit you in the chest and drew sweat in seconds.

She watched him light a cigarette.

Ginny had always found herself uncertain with him, always feeling the need to be harder on him than she wanted to. His demeanor invited it, too-gracious obedience with an edge of sarcasm, like rank was a joke for him, and she had originally attributed it to racism, to him being just another young and stupid hick — which he was, she told herself — but he acted that way towards white NCOs as well. With the disciplinary action, he’d been knocked from Private First Class down to Private.

“You got to do that, Scaipe?” she asked.

He shrugged. There was the trace of a smirk that she felt was being put on for her benefit — but it felt false, like an act. “You want me to put it out, Sar’nt?”

Ginny sighed. “I swear, Private, sometimes you get on my last nerve.” She wrinkled her nose. “Go ahead. Just blow it away from me.”

Scaipe’s disciplinary action was called an Article 15, and it was punishment without the trouble of a court martial. He was punished for a number of things: disobeying direct orders, disrespect, failure to report to formation, and testing positive on a urinalysis. The battalion commander had declared him to have ‘behavioral problems.’

He had been ordered to weekly meetings with the chaplain, and then a civilian therapist who worked for the Army, on post. The CO, Captain Villacrusis, privately told Ginny — with the slightest curl to his lip — that Scaipe was her opportunity to excel as a sergeant and a leader.

Cars drove past with their windows down and stereos loud, civilians, cars with license plates from distant counties, rusted old Coup de Villes and jacked-up GMC Jimmys from Bibb, Bulloch, Treutlen, Clinch, Toombs, Tattnall. They’d come for the free concert, playing the music in anticipation: Tears on My Pillow blasted versus Take This Job and Shove It, Jimmie Mack versus Jack Daniel’s If You Please, Heat Wave versus Now I Lay Me Down to Cheat. Martha Reeves was playing in the afternoon, and David Allen Coe before the fireworks that evening.

Independence Day wasn’t until Monday, but Victory Week itself was celebration enough for fireworks. Victory Week was the 24th Infantry’s annual combination of carnival, spring break, and company picnic. No generals scheduled training deployments during the first days of July, no Liberty Thunders or Vanguard Strikes. The rail yards were still, and rows of desert-tan conexes and shipping containers sat empty on the docks of the Savannah River.

It had begun on Monday with a twelve-mile run, eight thousand soldiers making a slow early-morning circuit of Fort Stewart in a single long formation four soldiers wide. It had been designated a fun run, and some units let their soldiers run in civilian clothes, while others stayed with the standard gray shirt and shorts. Others still had devised their own uniforms: the battalion that ran in front of Ginny and Scaipe’s was all in camouflage pants and navy blue t-shirts with the word GRUNT across the chest in bold yellow capitals, and each soldier had been ordered to wear whatever headgear he chose, a blue calico lace-trimmed bonnet on one, a tasseled fez duct-taped to another’s stubbled scalp, sombreros and shower caps, and a floppy blue foam cowboy hat four feet high. Ginny and Scaipe had watched it bob in time with the cadence, ranks ahead of them.

For the remainder of Victory Week, Fort Stewart had ceremonies, games, parades, and athletic competitions. Carnival rides were set up, a Ferris wheel and a carousel and others, and the units had vehicles — tanks, cannons, trucks, helicopters — on display, for children to climb over and under and through. Soldiers brought their families in to the parade field to see the vehicles, to ride the rides, to watch the award ceremonies and truck rodeos and shooting matches and volleyball tournaments and boxing smokers and baseball games. After the week was over and the three-day weekend for Independence Day, it would be back to training and readiness.

Ginny scented the sweet outdoor smoke-smell of grilled meat as they approached the parade field. There were stands set up with burgers and hot dogs, stands with fried chicken and barbecued chicken, stands with pizza, pretzels, deep-fried catfish, smoked turkey drumsticks, watermelon, shaved ice, funnel cake, Texas barbecue, Carolina dry barbecue, cornbread, corn dogs on sticks, gator meat on skewers, pickles, pickled pig’s ears, candy, cotton candy, popcorn, popcorn shrimp, steamed shrimp, fried shrimp, grilled shrimp, and an immense constellation of beers and soft drinks. She and Scaipe stopped by one. “You hungry, Scaipe?” she asked. “You want some funnel cake?”

“Nah,” he said. “Can’t stand sweet stuff. I’m not hungry.” He put his hands in his pockets.

“You sure?”

“I don’t have any money, Sarge,” he said. “You know they took my pay.”

“C’mon, Scaipe. I’ll get you something.” She immediately regretted it: she’d already cut him enough slack. “Long as you don’t try asking for beer,” she said, as if it would make up for it.

He looked at her queerly, trying to figure her. “Corn dog and a ginger ale?” he asked.

She took her wallet from the pocket of her camouflage fatigues and counted her money. She did her best to make her actions brusque.

They walked away from the stand with Scaipe sucking on the straw of his drink, the already half-eaten corn dog in his other hand. Ginny held her purchase in a piece of wax paper. Scaipe nodded at it. “Sarn’t. What’s that?”

“Pickled pig’s ear.”

Scaipe coughed on his drink. “You put that in your mouth?”

“It’s good, Scaipe,” she said, chewing. “You ought to try it.”

“Sarn’t B,” he said. “I’m not trying to be rude or nothing, but,” nodding again at the piece of pickled meat, “I wouldn’t put something like that in my mouth.”

Ginny took another bite. This hick kid: she had the sudden desire to embarrass him, to see his face flush hot. They continued to walk towards the area where the various units had set up booths of games and activities. “You eat pussy, Private Scaipe?” she asked.

He startled her by grinning. “Hell yeah, Sarge,” he said. “You know we like that.”

She glared at him. “ ‘We,’ Private?”

She saw the realization of what he’d implied flash across his face. “No, Sergeant. No, I wasn’t saying that.” He tried to explain. “I mean, you know what people say. Like about black — ”

Sharply: “Some people know better, Private.” Still he didn’t blush.

There were booths where you could toss a hoop around a bottle neck and win a goldfish, toss a quarter on a plate and win a squirt gun, have your face painted — many of the older children wanted camouflage — or a fake tattoo put on your arm. There was a dunking booth where several of the division’s command sergeants major had volunteered to be victims. It did brisk business. “Don’t even think about it, Scaipe,” Ginny said as they passed.

The medics had their own booth as well and were making artificial wounds, and demonstrating how to treat them. Young boys huddled around, rapt. An older white woman, a platoon sergeant, was in charge of the crafting of the counterfeit wounds: she sat behind the patients’ stretcher surrounded by small bowls and bottles and containers with gelatin, plastalene, liquid latex, castor sealer, spirit gum, petroleum jelly, food coloring, powdered charcoal for burns, mortician’s wax, plumber’s putty, grease paint, and various shades of makeup base and powder. She would mix them, sculpt them, add color to match the victim’s skin tone, and mold the moulage onto arms and hands and necks and faces. Water, cocoa powder, corn starch, glycerin, and red food coloring combined in several large jugs for blood. Her booth’s menu: gashes, exit wounds, lesions, compound fracture punctures, abrasions, third-degree burns, cuts, bleeding sores, abscesses, burst blisters, lacerations, and cauterized projectile wounds, a delicatessen of tissue pathology.

Ginny and Scaipe watched child after child leap from the stretcher and run to friends or parents, crying excitedly, “Look at me! I’m hurt!” They watched as the platoon sergeant, inspired, did a child’s entire face, giving him a shredded larynx and peppering of shrapnel burns and the bluish terminal cast of cyanosis.

A short distance away, several of the children with squirt guns and camouflage faces invented an impromptu war game, where they would run and chase and shoot one another, and the ones with wounds would die any number of spectacular deaths, full of moaning and grand overacting. Six or seven lay on their backs on the field’s grass, bleeding fake blood from fake wounds and sometimes shouting, “I’m dead!”

One with a bullet hole in his forehead stood apart crying. Ginny wondered where his parents were.

Scaipe sipped from his ginger ale. They leaned back against the rear of the medics’ booth in its scant shade. They watched the kids. Scaipe lit a cigarette. “Sergeant?” he asked.

“What?”

“Could we go over and check out the carnival rides?”

“I thought you didn’t have any money, Scaipe.”

“I know,” Scaipe said. “I — ” He didn’t know how to finish. “I could pay you back,” he offered.

Ginny hid her amusement. She nearly liked him when he was this way: shy, uncertain. “Aren’t you a little old for carnival rides?”

“Sarn’t B,” he said. He sounded surprised. “You ain’t ever too old for a Ferris wheel.”

“You want me to go on a Ferris wheel with you, Private Scaipe.”

He smiled. “Come on, Sarn’t. It’s not like I’m buying you a teddy bear.”

“Not with my money, you’re not,” she said. She considered it. “All right, Scaipe. One ride.”

The rides were noisy. Lynrd Skynrd blasted from speakers all around, children screamed, and there was the constant whir and roar and clattering racket of motors and gears and wheels on tracks. Ginny made a face. One of the rides had a high, wailing whistle that sounded like a siren.

They were standing in line for tickets when Scaipe gave Ginny a gentle tap on the elbow “Sergeant B,” he said. He pointed towards the parking lot, where Ginny could see a short man in camouflage with silver bars on his collar walking towards them. “The CO.”

Captain Villacrusis was thick in the arms and chest and hips, his hair gone prematurely gray. As he approached, Ginny snapped to attention and saluted. “Sir.”

He returned the salute. His lips were compressed into a thin, straight line. “Sergeant Barnes,” he said. “You care to tell me why you got a soldier on restriction and extra duty and you’re taking him to the carnival?”

“I thought a little MWR wouldn’t hurt, Sir,” Ginny said. The Army’s acronym for Morale and Welfare Recreation. “He’s done good this week. He’s been to formations, he’s worked hard. Sir.” Lamely.

The CO had his hands on his hips. “Under normal circumstances, Sergeant, I would leave that to your discretion. However — ”

“It’s my fault, Sergeant,” Scaipe broke in. “I didn’t — ”

“At ease, Private,” the CO said. His voice was low and cool and controlled. “You were not asked.”

“Sir?” Ginny said.

“Sergeant Barnes,” he said, “I got a call from the battalion commander this morning wanting to know why Private Scaipe has skipped his past two counseling appointments.”

“Scaipe?” Ginny asked. Scaipe stood at parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back, and stared at his feet.

“Disobeying a direct order from the battalion commander, Private Scaipe. Sergeant Barnes, you take your soldier back to the barracks, you get him in uniform. He now has a counseling appointment in Building 622 at 1400 hours. You will ensure he keeps that appointment, and you will ensure he keeps the battalion commander off my ass. Is that understood, Sergeant?”

Ginny brought her heels together and saluted. “Yes, Sir.”

He stalked away.

She wanted to chew him out, to scream at him, to shake him, to punch him. Families passed by and stared at them, the young white soldier in civilian clothes locked up at parade rest and unable to meet her eyes, the heavy black sergeant with her hands in fists at her sides. “Scaipe,” Ginny said. “I’m too tired for this bullshit.”

They were quiet in the car, driving back down Gulick to the barracks, until Scaipe said, “My dad, my real dad, was in Vietnam, Sarn’t B.” She looked at him, briefly, and turned her eyes back to the road. She listened. “He was a Ranger, Airborne, all that. He got out after Vietnam, he came back and didn’t know what to do. The only thing he was good at was killing people.” He paused. “He was a smoke-jumper, for a while. Fifty bucks a day, he’d jump out a plane, parachute into a forest fire. He saved some money, decided he was sick of smoke. He wanted to have a farm. He took his money, took out a loan, and the VA helped him out. He started a bee farm. I remember it, too, the way it always smelled. He’d sell honey to the government, had it in these metal buckets, drums, the seals all dried black and crusted from all that sugar. Ants everywhere.”

Ginny pulled into the parking lot. She turned the engine off.

“He wasn’t no good at it, though. He didn’t know what he was doing, how to run a farm. He couldn’t make no money. He started raising sorghum, for molasses. I couldn’t stand the way that farm smelled, Sarn’t B. It smelled sick, like when you burn cake frosting.”

“Scaipe — ” Ginny began.

Scaipe took a breath and went on. “He had a Vietnam buddy, trans corps, like us. Couldn’t get work. He was doing short-haul in Texas, and he called my dad. Said he had an idea, a way to make easy money, trucking pallets of vanilla from Mexico.” Ginny leaned back in the car seat and looked at Scaipe, waiting for him to go on. “It went bad,” Scaipe continued. “My dad lost the money, the farm. Everything.” He paused again. “I don’t want to be in the Army, Sarn’t B,” he said.

“Scaipe,” Ginny said. “When you don’t fuck up, you’re the best damn soldier I got. You know the trucks better than I do. You got the best two-mile in the battalion. You’re a private, and you got E-6s asking you questions.”

Scaipe shook his head. “I don’t want to be here, Sarn’t B,” he said. “I started out, I wanted Airborne, Ranger, I wanted to reclass Special Forces. But I can’t stand this bullshit.”

“You can’t buck the system, Private,” she said.

He looked up, looked at her. “Sarn’t B, I can’t go see that therapist. He wants to tell me how fucked up I am, wants to tell me how it’s all about my dad not being there. Like he’s got the answers marked down already and if I don’t say them right I’ll flunk.” She saw him struggling with it, wanting to confess. “Sarn’t B, I make up shit,” he said. “I make up crazy shit to tell him.”

Ginny didn’t know how to answer. She rolled up her window. “Come on, Scaipe,” she said. “1400, you got to be up there.”

They got out of the car.

At 1400 hours, Ginny was leaning against the wall opposite the closed door to the counselor’s office.

Building 622 had no name, no designation; it was an agglomerate catch-all building three stories high and a quarter-mile long, where the Industrial Hygiene office occupied a space next to the Adjutant General section’s G-1 shop and the Army Career Alumni Program rubbed shoulders with the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Program’s offices.

She read the titles on the rack of pamphlet literature a third time. Your spiritual health. Facts about domestic violence. Wellness for military families. Coping with addiction. Stress. Coping with illness. When you return from deployment. Coping with death. She’d seen some of them, and others, in Scaipe’s barracks room.

The hall outside the office was dark and cool and quiet, the only sound the hum of a hundred window-unit air conditioners, the only illumination the light through the windows at either end, the shine of sunlight on floor tiles waxed bright and buffed a thousand thousand times, glazed white linoleum that this day lay unscuffed by soldiers’ booted feet. Aside from Ginny and Scaipe, and the counselor, perhaps a handful of other unfortunates, the building was empty. It was Victory Week.

Ginny pictured soldiers on the parade field, drinking beer and soda pop and dancing to the music, to Martha, throwing softballs and Frisbees, riding carnival rides and watching children with counterfeit wounds play and fight and clamber over cannons and copters and trucks and tanks.

The door opened. The therapist was a big man, bigger even than Ginny’s broad-shouldered height. At least six and a half feet and well over 250, with a thick grey mustache and eyes as clear and hard and empty as the outside summer sky. He was bald, his shining scalp pink and blotchy.

Scaipe came out, uniform pressed and combat boots shined, and went up the hall to the water fountain. “You the squad leader?” the therapist asked.

Ginny nodded. He handed her a plain brown envelope. “His records,” he said. “Take him over to Wynn, third floor. DMH. See the division psychiatrist.” He frowned. “You the only one?”

“What do you mean?” Ginny asked.

“You brought him here by yourself?”

“Yes. So?”

The therapist shook his head.

“Why am I taking him to Wynn?” Ginny asked. Wynn was the Wynn Army Community Hospital. The third floor was where Division Mental Health was housed.

The therapist indicated the envelope Ginny held. “Records,” he said. “It’s procedural. Division Psych needs to sign off.”

“Today?”

He nodded.

“He doesn’t like you,” Ginny said.

“I don’t much like him.”

“It’s not your job to like him,” Ginny said.

Their eyes locked for a moment.

Scaipe came back down the hall.

They drove up McFarland Avenue, up from Building 622, past the infantry and armor and artillery motor pools, all quiet, towards the hospital.

“Sarn’t B,” Scaipe said. “When we get done — you still OK for the Ferris wheel?”

The exasperation came up again, uncontrollable. “Goddamn it, Private, are you fucking stupid? You saw the CO ream me. He sees me with you up there again, I’ll lose twice the stripes you lost.”

She saw him blush. “I’m sorry, Sarn’t,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

She drove. At a stop sign, she dug in her pocket, and held out a five dollar bill.

“Tell you what, Scaipe,” she said. “After we hit DMH, you go ride the Ferris wheel. You go see David Allen Coe and the fireworks. You keep low, though, and I never said you could. What I don’t know won’t hurt me.”

Scaipe nodded.

“But it’s got a condition,” she said.

Scaipe didn’t say anything. “The condition, Private, is this. You make up your mind. I want you in my squad. You don’t want the Army, though, I’ll talk to the chaplain; we’ll try and slide you out easy. You want in, you shape up and get your head out your ass. Clear?”

“Crystal, Sarn’t,” Scaipe said. He smiled tentatively at her, and stuffed the five into his pocket. “Sarn’t B,” he said.

“What, Private?”

“It’s cool,” he said. “You’re all right.”

They pulled into the hospital parking lot. “Don’t start, Private,” she said.

A sign on the wall opposite the third-floor elevators had a left-pointing arrow for Division Mental Health. There was a set of closed double doors.

The doors closed and latched shut behind Ginny and Scaipe. Ginny looked back at them. They had a combination lock.

“Sarn’t B,” Scaipe said. His voice high and tight.

She gave him a look, saw his hurried head-turning glances around. “Relax, Scaipe,” she said. “We won’t be here long.”

“Sarn’t B, I been in places like this before.”

“I said take it easy, Scaipe.” She walked over to the receptionist’s desk. A female lieutenant sat behind it. She was in camouflage with the medical service corps crest on her collar. Her name tag said Ramirez. She was pretty. “Ma’am?” Ginny said.

The lieutenant smiled. “Sergeant Barnes. You must be with Private Scaipe,” she said. Scaipe still stood by the doors.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Ginny said. The therapist must have called, to let them know she and Scaipe were coming. “These are his records. We’re supposed to get a signature?”

The captain nodded. “Scaipe’s going to have to talk to Colonel Williams.” Ginny frowned. “The Division Psychiatrist,” the lieutenant explained. “I’ll let him know you’re here. Have a seat?” There were four chairs around a low coffee table in an alcove next to the doors, and a rack of well-thumbed magazines.

Ginny went and sat down in one of the chairs. Scaipe was pacing by the doors. “Scaipe,” she called.

He came over and sat down next to her, resting his elbows on his knees. “Sarn’t B,” he said in a low voice. “I think you got to get me out of here.” He was shaking. “You know I been in places like this, Sarn’t B.”

“Relax, Scaipe,” she said. She kept her voice low as well. She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “You’ll be fine.”

“Sarn’t B, it’s bullshit. It’s always bullshit.” His words came faster. “They want you to answer right, jump through hoops; they want to tell you how fucked up you are. Please, Sarn’t B, let’s get out of here, I’ll go back to the motor pool, I’ll go back to the barracks. I won’t get you in trouble.”

“Scaipe,” Ginny warned. “At ease, Private. Relax.”

“Private Scaipe?” the lieutenant called. They looked over. A thin, gray-haired white man was standing next to the receptionist’s desk. He wore glasses and a white coat over his camouflage, with silver colonel’s eagles on the collar. He smiled at them, and walked over. Ginny and Scaipe stood up and saluted.

He returned the salute and extended his hand to Scaipe. “Colonel Williams,” he said. He seemed warm, pleasant.

Scaipe shook his hand. “Sir,” he muttered.

“Good to meet you, Private Scaipe.” He indicated a door at the opposite end of the hall from the way they had come in. “Let’s talk,” he said. Scaipe followed him with his head down. He looked back at Ginny once.

Ginny returned to the receptionist’s desk. Lieutenant Ramirez looked up and smiled again. “It’ll probably be a while, Sergeant,” she said.

“I thought this was just procedural, Ma’am,” Ginny said.

“Oh, it is. Evaluation.” Ginny didn’t know how to respond. “He’s your soldier?” Ginny nodded. “Pattern of misbehavior?”

“He’s a good soldier.” Ramirez seemed to wait for something more. “When he wants to be,” Ginny finished.

Ramirez nodded. They were both quiet a while. “You’ve seen his history?” Ramirez asked.

“He’s told me,” Ginny said.

“Everything?”

“Mother deceased. Separated from his father. Foster homes, juvenile hall. Rehab. Ward of the state.”

Ramirez nodded again. “You like him,” she said.

“No,” Ginny said. “But he’s my soldier.”

Neither of them knew what to say after that. Ginny went back to the table and picked up an old issue of Newsweek.

Time passed. The area was very quiet. Ginny was halfway through the magazine when the phone at the receptionist desk rang. It startled her. She looked over to see Lieutenant Ramirez answer it. The lieutenant’s eyes came up to meet hers. She gave terse answers in a low voice, hung up the phone, and immediately dialed another number.

Less than a minute later, the main doors burst open and two large white-clad orderlies rushed through and down the hall to the office at the end. The Lieutenant got up from her desk and went after them.

Ginny tossed the magazine onto the table and stood up. The lieutenant came back up the hall. She looked upset. “I’m sorry,” she told Ginny.

“What?” Ginny demanded. “What’s going on?”

Ramirez didn’t answer. Ginny heard the door at the end of the hall close a second time. Colonel Williams came up to the desk. He didn’t have his glasses on. He sighed, and looked at her. He had to squint to read her name tag. “Sergeant Barnes,” he said. “You’ll need to call your unit.”

Her heart quickened. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Where’s Scaipe?”

He jerked his head down the hall. “This way,” he said.

The colonel held the door open. It was a small room with two chairs and a bed. One of the chairs was toppled on its back. The bed had no sheets. Scaipe was on his back on the mattress, spread-eagled. He bucked and writhed, cursing, screaming, as the two orderlies tightened leather restraints on his wrists and ankles. The colonel’s shattered glasses lay on the floor. Scaipe’s eyes were shut tight, clenched, and the muscles in his neck stood out in sharp relief. He howled, bestial.

Ginny looked at the colonel. She had no words.

The orderlies finished and left, and the colonel let the door shut. It locked automatically. There was a clear Plexiglas window set in the center, at head height, through which she could still see Scaipe straining against the leather straps.

“Your unit will set up a guard roster,” the colonel said. It was an order. “To make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. We don’t have the personnel.” He turned to walk back up the hall. “You can use the phone at Lieutenant Ramirez’s desk,” he said.

Ginny was numb as she dialed the number. “It’s Sergeant Barnes,” she said. “Give me the commander.”

“Villacrusis,” the commander said.

“It’s Sergeant Barnes, Sir.”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“I’m at DMH, Sir. At Wynn.”

“Scaipe’s with you?”

“That’s what I’m calling about, Sir.”

“Where’s Scaipe, Sergeant?”

“Sir — they want us to set up a guard roster, Sir,” she said. “Somebody has to be here with him.”

It was clear that he didn’t understand. “Guard roster?” he demanded. “Why? What the fuck do we have to guard him for?”

“They’ve got him strapped down, Sir,” she finally said. “They’ve got him strapped to the bed.”

She and Lieutenant Ramirez took turns, or sometimes sat in the room together, the chairs side-by-side just inside the open door. Scaipe’s watch, belt, boots, socks, dog tags, keys, cigarettes, lighter, wallet, and outer shirt had been taken. He thrashed and screamed sometimes, and cursed Ginny and Ramirez and begged to be let go and wept, fighting the restraints.

He finally quieted, and Ramirez asked him if he would let them loosen one limb at a time, let him move it around, so he wouldn’t cramp. Scaipe nodded. He’d be good, he said.

He was. He was quiet, subdued. He moved his right leg around, then his left. He asked Ramirez if they could take the rest off. He called her “Ma’am.”

She shook her head. “We can’t do that, Private Scaipe,” she said. “Colonel’s orders.” She turned to Ginny. “Why don’t you go downstairs, Sergeant,” she said. “Your unit’s going to take a while. Get something to eat, get some fresh air.”

“I’m all right, Ma’am,” Ginny said. “I’ll stay here. You need to go?”

Ramirez smiled. “I bring my dinners. We’ve got a microwave here.” She looked at her watch, and then at Scaipe. “That’s a ways off, though. You ready for an arm, Private?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Scaipe said to the ceiling. He craned his head sideways to look at them. “When can I leave, Lieutenant Ramirez?”

“You’ll have to talk to the Colonel,” Ramirez said. She walked to the bed and re-fastened the strap’s metal buckle around his left ankle, drawing it tight. Scaipe didn’t move. She knelt down at the head of the bed. “You OK, Scaipe? You thirsty?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Scaipe said.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she said. “We keep ice in the refrigerator, behind my desk. There are pitchers and cups in the closet.”

“Got it, Ma’am,” Ginny said. When she came back with the pitcher and cup, Ramirez was massaging Scaipe’s free wrist. It was red and raw from the strap. Scaipe was talking to her, speaking in a low and hesitant voice. He sounded frightened. Ramirez looked up as Ginny walked in.

Scaipe sat up as far as he could with his right arm still strapped to the bed, and rested his back against the bent steel tubing that was the bed’s headboard. He took the cup in his left hand and drank, draining it. “More,” he gasped when he finished. “Please, Sarn’t.”

Ginny poured him another cup.

“Not too much,” Ramirez warned. “We have to get the orderlies for him to piss.” Scaipe handed the cup back to Ginny. Ramirez rubbed Scaipe’s shoulder, gently. “You’ll be OK, Private.” She looked at Ginny.

Ginny put the pitcher and the cup on the floor next to the bed. Ramirez said, “Stay with him a while. I need to be back at the desk.”

Ginny pulled the chair closer to the bed. She didn’t know what to say to him. He looked up at the ceiling, then turned his head to the window. It faced the parade field. Ginny could see the Ferris wheel and the tops of some of the rides, and the back of the stage where Martha was playing. “Sarn’t,” Scaipe said. “You’ll get me out of here, right? We’ll go back?”

“Scaipe,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Sarn’t,” Scaipe said. “I can’t stay here, Sarn’t. You got to get me out of here.” He sat up, pulling his right arm against the strap.

“Scaipe. Lie down.”

“I can’t stay here, Sarn’t. I been in places like this. You said I could go back.” He yanked harder.

“Lie down, Scaipe,” she said, more loudly. “Don’t make this hard. Don’t be dumb.” The buckle was slipping. Scaipe held the buckle with his free hand and whipped his arm against it. “Goddamn it, Private, lie down!”

Scaipe shook his head. He had his jaw set tight, scowling. The buckle slipped, and his arm came free. “Fuck you, Sarn’t,” he said. “I’m getting out. I won’t stay here.”

Ginny stood up. Scaipe was working the buckle on his right ankle. “Goddamn it, Scaipe, I gave you an order. You’re not going anywhere. You get your butt back down on that bed.”

His ankle came free and he hopped up, his left leg still hobbled to the bedpost. “Sarn’t B,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m not staying here.” He uncoiled one of the restraints from the headboard and held it in his hand. He wouldn’t look her in the eye.

Her temper surged up, boiling, and she was suddenly shouting at him, ordering him to get back down, when he made a fist and punched her in the chest.

She stumbled back, more from shock than from the slight force of the blow.

He let the metal end of the leather restraint fall from his hand, holding the other end, so it dangled from his hand like a whip.

Her anger exploded. “Private Scaipe,” she bellowed. “You sit your ass down right now — ” She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked around.

Lieutenant Ramirez shook her head. “Out, Sergeant,” she said. “He’s armed. We’re calling the military police.”

The door latched shut.

She was breathing too fast. Lieutenant Ramirez strode quickly back up the hall to the desk.

Ginny would not look back in the room. She heard Scaipe scream, heard the crash as he overturned the bed, and another crash. The door rattled behind her.

Ramirez was on the phone. Her voice was surprisingly even. “DMH,” Ginny heard her say. “Yeah. He’s armed.” A pause. “No, he’s got the restraints.” She laughed. “OK.” She hung up, and turned to Ginny. “They’ll be here soon,” she said. She saw Ginny’s face, and concern crossed hers. “It’s OK, Sergeant,” she said. “He’s just scared. It happens.” She rolled her swivel chair over to her. “Sit down,” she said.

Ginny sat. Ramirez leaned against the desk. “I know,” Ramirez said.

The military police arrived. There were four of them, all tall, all in camouflage with the leather shoulder straps that said MP in large white letters. “Weapons, people,” Ramirez said. They removed their holsters and nylon web belts with the nightsticks and pepper spray and handcuffs, and placed them in a closet behind the Lieutenant’s desk. Ramirez locked the closet.

A white E-6, a staff sergeant, was in charge. His name tape said Holmes. “Where is he, Lieutenant?”

Ramirez pointed down the hall. “I’m getting the orderlies now.” She picked up the phone.

After the orderlies came, the eight of them gathered around the door. Ramirez gave wool Army blankets to the two largest MPs. “Just take him down,” she said. “Not hard, but be careful.”

Holmes peered in the door’s window. Scaipe flung the pitcher at it. It bounced off and the water went everywhere. “Shit,” he said. “The floor’s going to be slick.”

Scaipe screamed at them through the door. He was sitting on the window ledge, a leather strap in each hand. The steel frame of the bed was upside down on the floor, and there were gashes in the walls. “Faggots!” he screamed. “Chickenshit bastards! Cunts!”

Holmes looked at Ramirez. “You sure you don’t want to just let him cool down?” he asked.

Ramirez looked at Ginny. “Sergeant Barnes?”

Scaipe took one of the restraints and whipped its metal end against the safety glass of the outside window, the window that faced the parade field. It bounced away. He whipped it again. The glass starred and spidered.

“Shit,” Ramirez said. “He’ll have glass. Take him down now.”

Scaipe began to beat at the glass, whipping the buckle into it. The cracks spread. Ramirez opened the door and they piled into the room.

The two MPs in front had the blankets held high and wide to protect against the restraints’ buckles. They rushed Scaipe, wrapped the blankets around him. Someone yanked the restraints away. They all toppled to the floor. There was water and splintered glass all around. Scaipe squirmed terribly: kicking, cursing, spitting, biting. Ginny wrapped her arms around his right thigh. He bucked furiously. His foot caught one of the MPs in the face, splitting his lip. “Next room,” Ramirez yelled. “Get him in the next room.”

They hoisted him, clutching legs, arms, neck, chest. He screamed. They hauled him into the room next door and flung him down on the bed, face down, pinning his arms and legs. One of the MPs, the one with the split lip, mashed his knee into the back of Scaipe’s neck, pushing his face into the mattress. “Fucker,” Scaipe screamed into the mattress. It came out muffled, terrified, furious. “I can’t breathe!”

“You can talk, you can breathe,” the MP said.

Ginny was still holding Scaipe’s thigh. She looked at the MP. “Ease off,” she said.

“He’s fine.”

“I said ease off, Corporal.” The MP gave her a look, but let his knee go. Scaipe picked his head up and howled again.

Scaipe continued to thrash and buck. “Tranqs,” Ramirez told one of the orderlies. “Get me the goddamn tranqs.”

He handed her a syringe. “Sergeant Barnes,” she said. “Get his pants.”

Ginny reached under him and undid the waist button. She yanked his pants and his underwear down, exposing his buttocks.

Scaipe screamed again and clenched his buttocks. “Come on, Scaipe,” Ramirez said. “You keep them tight, it’ll hurt worse.”

“Fuck you, cunt!” Scaipe screamed.

“Come on, Private,” she said. “Come on, you got a nice little butt, Scaipe. You squeeze up like that, it’s going to hurt.” She looked up to Ginny and the MP opposite Ginny. “Hold him,” she said. “He’ll break the needle if you don’t.”

She jammed the needle into the fleshy portion of Scaipe’s right buttock and depressed the plunger. Scaipe struggled, and then, that suddenly, relaxed.

Ginny pulled his pants back up for him. She felt ashamed. “Turn him over,” Ramirez said. “Turn him over and tie him town. Put one across his chest.” She ran her hand over the back of Scaipe’s head. “You’ll be OK, Scaipe,” she said, softly.

Later, Ginny sat in the chair by the door of the new room. The MPs and orderlies had gone. The view out the window was the same: the parade field, the stage, the Ferris wheel. Scaipe’s breathing was deep and regular.

“Your unit called,” Ramirez said. “You’ll be relieved shortly.”

“Thanks,” Ginny said. “Thank you, Ma’am.” She rocked in her chair. She wished for something to read.

Scaipe moved. He turned his head to face her. “Sarn’t B,” he croaked. He licked his lips, cleared his throat.

Ginny looked at him. “Scaipe?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry it got all fucked up.”

Ginny pulled her chair over to sit beside the bed. “It’s not your fault, Scaipe,” she said. “You’re a good soldier.”

“I’m not, Sarn’t,” he said. “You think I’m good, you think we’re all good. We’re not, Sarn’t B.”

“No, Scaipe,” she said.

“Everybody told me stuff, Sarge. Everybody knew I was the fuckup, so they could tell me stuff. They wanted to help me, and they told me all the bad stuff they did so I’d feel OK. Everybody in the company, Sarge. They were always wanting to talk to me.”

“Scaipe,” Ginny said. “It’s OK.”

Scaipe struggled against the tranquilizers, his eyes unfocusing and focusing again. “You want to know what they told me, Sarn’t B? I know it all, all of it, what everyone did.”

“Scaipe,” Ginny said.

He was out.

It was dark when Dillon came to the door. He was an E-4, Ginny’s assistant squad leader. He was Scaipe’s roommate in the barracks. He saw Scaipe strapped to the bed.

“Sarn’t B?” he asked.

Ginny looked up, and stood up from her chair. “Dillon,” she said. She looked at Scaipe too. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

“CO’s on his way,” Dillon said.

“You next on duty?”

He nodded. “The squad wants to know if they can come and see him.”

Ginny shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not except for guard duty.”

There was a flash and a distant pop outside the window. Both of them turned to see the first blaze bloom over the parade field, a huge neon-blue chrysanthemum, falling.

“Dillon,” Ginny said. She went to the bed’s foot. “Get the other end.”

“Sarn’t?” Dillon asked.

“We’re going to move him,” Ginny said.

Ramirez came to the door. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t do that.”

“We’re not doing anything, Ma’am,” Ginny said. “We’re just moving him so he can see.” She and Dillon hoisted the bed and walked it to the far corner of the room, to the point where Scaipe would be best able to see the fireworks. They put it down gently. “Lieutenant,” Ginny said. “I told him he’d see the fireworks tonight.”

Ramirez nodded. She and Dillon and Ginny watched out the window. Ginny leaned over. “Scaipe,” she said.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Ramirez said. “Your relief is here. You’re free to go.”

“Scaipe,” Ginny said again. She waited for him to move his head, to answer, to say something, anything, to look towards the window: to do that much, at least.