By: C. W. Lawrence
I leaned into my shovel, pulled my scarf down, and took a long pull of the harsh winter air as I scanned the land around me. Snow and mud. Always snow and mud, everywhere this deployment has sent us. The air was a dry shock to my lungs, but the fresh oxygen was a beautiful, life-affirming ache. Still, much better than sucking in my own breath through the sieve that’s usually wrapped around my face, all moist from my own spit. Plus, the low temperature killed the pungent stink of whatever microbes hibernated in the dirt here. Awful stuff on laundry day; even if you cleaned it, it still smelled faintly like it was puked on.
A wet splat hit the ground next to my foot, and I turned to whoever was about to get a thorough chewing-out. Private Weston stood there, his M-16 tucked to his chest with the muzzle aimed straight at the ground. He wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand before yanking his scarf back up. The air was too cold to comfortably smoke, so most of the troops chose chewing tobacco to fuel their nicotine addictions. “What’s up, Hall,” he said more than asked, his voice muffled through the cloth. “Any word from up top?”
I rolled my eyes. Almost getting my boots coated in slime was maddening, but I let it slide. Private Weston was the sort that knew spitting on someone’s kicks was rude while not understanding there was such a thing as too close. That, though, was the least of my annoyances; I motioned to the outpost before us at the things that led to the true headache—where there wasn’t snow or mud, the two would meet and birth a half-frozen brown slush. Where there was slush, there were Humvees and Strykers belching out diesel smoke. Not far off from the motor pool, bundled up troops marched in drill formation. Here and there, locals were either cleaning facilities for way too low a wage, or they were hustling and selling the younger joes movies and video games. Overpriced bootlegs and pirated software, of course—the movies were all recorded in theaters on cell phones, and most of those flash drives with the games were definitely cybersecurity violations. But reliable internet and download capabilities weren’t up yet, so entertainment was found where it was offered. “Not that I heard,” I said, finally answering his question. “But were I to guess? Hurry up and wait. Same standing order back when we were at Vostochnyy Gorod.”
Weston laughed. “Not the adventure the ads sold us, battle buddy.”
“Storm in, clean up, then look busy for six months.”
“And get yelled at for not looking busy enough.”
I ran the numbers in my mind. Two years of being deployed to Russia after international relations fell apart. America was now involved, ostensibly to provide aid but everyone knew the real reason was the giant pile of nukes under Moscow’s thumb. No more nine-month stints like in the wars in the Middle East; we were back to something resembling the sustained deployments of our great grandfathers — we had a dedicated timeline of three years to accomplish our mission, to fight until either we win, or we lose.
Or we get shipped back home in a decorative box draped with a flag blanket. Limited Edition G.I. Joe: still in packaging, no longer mint condition.
A gentle sprinkling of snow began to descend, and a plump snowflake chilled the bridge of my nose as it landed and immediately began to melt. I brought the back of my hand up to wipe it away, and I saw the tiny, rainbow-patterned string bracelet Kaylee had made for me. In the care package, her mom said it was part of a pre-K art class. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be wearing any non-approved jewelry, but it was easy enough to hide.
Kaylee turned five a few months ago; that perfect age where snow would be the neatest thing for a Florida kid to see. A month into being deployed to this frigid hellscape, I made a decision: once I got home, Kaylee and I were moving from Jacksonville to somewhere less cold. Maybe Ecuador, or Death Valley.
Two years in.
One year still to go.
Next to me, Weston chuckled. “Check it out.” He motioned across the field of deep-cut trenches left by the vehicles, over to the hastily erected cinder block buildings built around burned lumber. Next to the construction, Colonel Merick and one of the local village elders were chatting. The elder, standing next to a younger fellow, was flailing his hands about and spouting Russian, a language I just couldn’t figure out to save my life. I’d seen this routine from a distance to know what was going on, though: the younger local would regurgitate whatever the elder was saying, except in English; Colonel Merick would respond; the local would translate to Russian; back; forth; back; forth.
Merick’s uniform was to the nines, and he looked absurd. Everyone else’s was either streaked with mud and soot and grease, or stiff from where sweat had frozen into the fabric. Meanwhile, Merick’s was the same outfit as the lowest ranking joe, except it looked like he’d bought it from the post exchange that day and yanked all the price tags off on the way out of the store. Even from a few dozen yards away, I could see perfect ironing creases in his trousers. Ironing that particular uniform was against regulations. I learned this early on the hard way and paid for the mistake by doing push-ups until I vomited.
“How long you think the colonel’s gonna be here?” Weston asked as he tucked his gloved hands into his armpits and jumped around to fight off the chill.
“Hopefully not too long. He’s probably making sure the locals aren’t too pissed at us for setting up shop. He’s gonna make sure the officers know what’s happening next, then he’s gonna hop back in a chopper and fly back to Vostochnyy Gorod so we can get back to work.”
“How long you think we’re gonna be here? I’m getting real tired of breaking everything down and moving as soon as it all looks good.”
“Hm.” I glanced around. Off to the right of where Merick was winning the hearts and minds of the locals, I saw the glow of a fire. It was benign; nothing like the fires from a week ago, when a bunch of incendiary mortars rained down into the outpost. Most missed, thankfully; just a bunch of structural damage and two fatalities. The buildings were currently being rebuilt, the funeral services were quick, and the war waged on.
No, this fire was just a barrel filled with lumber and surrounded by joes— the designated smoking area. The smoke shack, minus an actual shack. One particular soldier sitting near the fire on a cinder block caught my attention— the joe with her cold weather cap in her lap, her bright-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, her scarf pulled down, her smile radiating as warm as the fire. Lieutenant Kinsey.
Kinsey knew things. She liked talking to me, and she knew how to word the conversation so that no loose lips led to any sunken ships.
I looked back at Merick. The troops hanging out were well within his line of sight, and he wasn’t making any moves to bust it up and tell everyone to get back to work. As good a sign as any to take a break.
I nudged Weston and pointed at the smoke shack. “Need some more nicotine in your system?” I asked. “I can probably pick the el-tee’s brain a bit, see if Merick’s put anything out.”
“I need that fire more than the smoke, but I’ll bum one if you’re offering.”
The smoke shack housed the same hodgepodge of jobs and rank that always lurked there—the same crew that frequented it in Vostochnyy Gorod, and in Ozernaya Derevushka a few months before we moved into the Gorod. Even non-smokers knew about the shack: amid the acrid tobacco ash was the closest thing to a chill-out zone in the outpost, where the rules loosened up a bit. So long as you didn’t say or do anything stupid that broke military curtesy, a junior enlisted could talk it up with an officer without getting destroyed for not following proper protocol.
Lt. Kinsey smiled as I approached. She leaned forward, closer to the fire, closer to me, and her eyes lit up. I hated how I always forgot how blue her eyes were, as blue as the depths of a lake, unless she was so nearby. A cigarette dangled between her index and middle fingers, and her weapon lay on the ground, the sling wrapped and secured around her foot. “Digging ditches too much work for you, Hall?” she asked.
“You know us junior enlisted, el-tee,” I said. “No brains for thinking, just backs and knees for ruining.” I pulled up a cinder block to a respectable distance and angled my seat towards her as I sat my weapon and shovel down. “I figured Weston and I deserve a quick breather.”
She grinned. Part of me hated to see it. Maybe in another life, one without the war, I’d have made a move. Maybe go see a movie, maybe check out some local band that kinda sucks but it’s at a cool venue. Maybe she’d have even been down for it. Our uniform, though, meant such actions would jeopardize our careers. Smoke buddies would have to do.
“So,” I said as I lowered my scarf and fished out my pack of smokes. I pulled out two, one for me and one for Weston. “What’s the word on how long we’re gonna be in this ice box?”
Lt. Kinsey shrugged. “Russia’s cold, Hall. You should be used to it. But how long we’re gonna be at this new outpost depends on a lot of stuff.” She took a drag and breathed out a cloud of smoke thickened from the chill air. “You ask me? The sooner we leave, the better, and here’s hoping the next spot’s further South. I’m a Cali girl— I like my temperatures temperate.”
I laughed. “Right? Ain’t enough layers of clothes for this place. I’ll take the damn Florida swamps over this.”
She gave a warm chuckle.
A child shrieked near Col. Merick, and every soldier either gripped their slung weapons or they reached for them and snapped their heads toward the cry. En route to this new outpost, we’d learned that child soldiers were now part of the war.
The kid looked maybe seven and was running around the feet of the elder in talks with Merick. The colonel looked annoyed, but the elder laughed and tousled the boy’s disheveled hair. With a strength and ease that did not align with the old man’s perceived age, he scooped the boy up and held him on his hip and continued the negotiations.
The tension in the smoke shack eased down, weapons lowered, and the low murmur of conversations resumed. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath and had to tell myself to relax. Taking out one child soldier in this war was enough. No need to give my future therapist more work.
Lt. Kinsey, hands shaking, took a heavy drag. The shakes eased, but didn’t disappear. “So uh,” she said, forcing a smile, “you hear back on your little girl’s preschool play yet?”
I snorted. What a wild segue. “Yeah. The day before we left the Gorod, matter of fact. Her mom said she was the cutest Big Bad Wolf to ever huff and puff. She said she’ll send a video of it. Hopefully it’ll be there when we get some internet up and running.”
“She still pushing for more money?”
“You know it. She says it’s for Kaylee’s school stuff. I emailed my lawyer the deets, so now I gotta wait and see what they say.”
Lt. Kinsey rolled her eyes. “Hurry up and wait for the baby mommas and lawyers.”
“A bank account’s worst combination.”
At the other end of the smoke shack, Weston was regaling a laughing audience with a tale. I couldn’t make out the words, but his hand motions and pelvic thrusts gave me more context than I cared for.
“It’s good to see morale’s still high,” Lt. Kinsey said, a tinge of sadness in her soft voice. I shrugged.
“Well, we do what we can with what we got.”
“We’d have had more if some of us made better calls.”
I glared at her. “Hey, none of that. You made that call with the info you had. It saved us a week of driving through a bog.”
“And it cost us four joes and a humvee.”
I sighed. “Well, we can’t change that. But then we got here, the place we were heading to anyway, and got hit by mortars we didn’t expect the insurgents to have. You know what they say: ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy.’ And you got a commendation, which means brass thinks it was a good call.”
Lt. Kinsey smiled. “You know Moltke married his sixteen-year-old step-niece?” I cocked my head. “Who’s Moltke?”
“Helmuth von Moltke. The Prussian general who said that old ‘contact with the enemy’ chestnut. I did a report on him back in my undergrad.”
“Oh. I just sorta thought that was something the Army always said.”
“Nope. The Army ain’t that clever.”
The laughter from Weston’s story crescendoed. His arm was around another junior enlisted, a burly kid named del Toro that everybody just called Bull. Weston had Bull’s vape pen and was holding it like a microphone in a man-on-the-street comedy interview. Bull was blushing and smiling. Kinsey watched them, a bit of the sadness in her face replaced with… something. Hopefulness, perhaps? Something that said she was done feeling bad for the what- could-have-beens of the mission.
Done for the moment, anyway.
“So, Specialist Hall,” she said as she flicked her cigarette butt into the fire, “what’s really got you here at the smoke shack?”
I chuckled. “Is ‘talking to my smoke buddy’ not a good enough answer, ma’am?”
“Nah, you and Weston only come over here together when you’re snooping for some scuttlebutt. So, fire away.”
I flicked the butt of my own cigarette into the fire and fished out another and lit it. “Just curious what the plan is. Nothing juicy like movement dates or locations. Just ‘should we settlein, or keep our bags packed? We were at the Gorod for a good while before we had to mobilize again.”
I offered her a smoke, my Southern manners trumping the knowledge that she would refuse. As expected, she politely declined. It was gauche for a higher rank to take anything from a lower rank: buy your own shit and don’t bum off the joes with less income. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “We gotta gauge how willing the locals are in helping us set things up. That’s why the colonel’s here.”
“Hm.” I lit up and breathed in burning that eased into relaxation.
“If it makes you feel better, word is Col. Merick hears the joes wanting to catch their breath, and he understands the value in letting them. Yeah, the weather here sucks, but this is a really good staging area, surrounded by mostly pro-American locals. We could potentially dig in for a while.”
I looked over at the construction of the new buildings on top of the fresh ash of the mortared ones. “Pro-American, huh?”
“Mostly. Not everyone’s gonna like it when you barge in uninvited.”
I sighed and looked down, into the fire and coals within the barrel. Another year.
“Hey.”
I looked up. Lt. Kinsey’s blue eyes. Blue like a lake. Blue like a deep sapphire. She glanced at my cigarette and nodded— no, not at my cigarette. At the thin rainbow string bracelet tied around my wrist. The bracelet that I wasn’t supposed to be wearing.
“It’s just a year, Specialist,” she said. “Less than that, really.”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“We hurried up to get here. Now we just gotta wait for a year. We can stand in a bucket of shit for that long.”
“You smelled the mud here? We’re basically gonna be doing that.”
She laughed, and I realized everyone in the smoke shack was, as well. Everyone laughing at whatever it was that was getting them through the last leg of this, and I joined in the mirth and camaraderie.
Less than a year.
“Well,” I said as I stood up, stretched, flicked the rest of my cigarette into the fire, and picked up my weapon and shovel, “I’d best get back to the ditch-digging. Command ’ll be mad if the new latrines ain’t ready soon.” I motioned for Weston, who was wrapping up his own conversation.
“Hey Hall,” Lt. Kinsey called.
I turned my head. “Yes, ma’am?”
“When you get that video of your little girl, I’d love to see it.”
I grinned as I pulled the scarf back up over my mouth. “Sure thing.”
Yeah, I thought, I think she’d be willing to catch a show or two. And in less than a year, I’ll be out, and the uniform and rank rules of who I date will no longer apply.
C.W. Lawrence is a Kennesaw State University student and currently resides in Smyrna with their partner and their ancient cat.