The
Chickasaw
Home Short Stories Poetry Articles Humor Links
Love in a Far
Away Place
A Short Story by
John
R. Guthrie
Madam President said
in her first State of the Union Speech early that year that it was seriously
against the dignity of women that a female could be Commander in Chief but not
be an infantry fire team leader. She issued an executive order, and six or
eight weeks after that, PFC Stella Wright came in on the transport chopper
along with a dozen pallets of assorted MREs and
crates of ammo. The Marines were bivouacked outside
After
As the chopper
headed toward its landing zone, Sgt. Striver twisted around and looked down
through the porthole behind him. He saw a pack of wild dogs hunting. There were
four of them. He’d seen them in
Lima Company was
soon sent on a search and destroy mission up into the mountains. It’s high
desert there, with boulders all over and a few scraggly pines hardly tall as a
man. The troops were spread out, advancing up a slope when Sgt. Striver heard
the splat of an RPG going off, shrapnel rattling like a hailstorm on a Quonset
hut against the field of boulders to the front. Nobody was hurt. But the second
one took out Stella Wright's fire team leader as well as the rifleman in front
of her. Before the smoke and dust had cleared, the two terrs
that had fired the RPGs stood up and started boogying
down a draw that led down into the valley.
It was Stella who got up, cool as if she were on the
firing range, firing from the shoulder. Cr-r-r-ack!
She missed. She fired a second time; a third. She sent both of them to paradise
with those last two shots. Good shots, too, from nearly a hundred meters.
This sort of
outstanding conduct and proficiency on Stella Wright’s part continued, and with
Brown and Rivera dead and the replacements coming in way junior to her, she
became Lance Corporal Wright, a fire
team leader. Then, after the final shoot-out during the liberation of the Takriti oil field, a roadside bomb took out her squad
leader, and at that point the captain gave her a meritorious promotion. She was
Corporal Wright, squad leader, 1st
Squad, 3rd Platoon.
She came over later
and said to Sgt. Striver, “Thanks. I wouldn’t have made corporal without you.”
Then she gave him a copy of her official promotion photo. Striver looked at it.
She was smiling and happy. And Pretty. He found himself taking it out of his pack
and taking another look every time he got a break. And for some reason, he
still has it.
By then, Sgt.
Striver’s attitude about her had done a 180. Sure, she was short, but Chesty
Puller with his five Navy Crosses was also. The Commandant of the Marine Corps
himself would look like an extra from the Wizard of Oz if it weren’t for that
Marine Corps uniform with a Congressional Medal of Honor on it. He finally said
to himself, “It’s not the height of the package, it’s the firepower inside,”
which he thought sounded pretty good, like something an officer might say, or
something you might read in a training manual.
The platoon sat eating Meals-Ready-to-Eat
during a patrol that took them through the
"Mind some
company?"
"It's a free
country,” she said, looking up at Striver, which sounded strange because
Stella and the Sgt.
were both from down south. She was from Sharpsville, a little burg in upper
She looked dead at
him for what seemed like a long time with that level gaze. It made him feel
funny inside; those eyes of hers, big as a full moon over the Persian Gulf,
hazel, amber, depending on the light.
Striver was unsure if she though it was funny or maybe she was pissed
that he asked. She took another bite or two from the Ravioli, Dehydrated, With
Sauce, it crunching as she chewed because she hadn’t bothered to re-hydrate it.
She finally said,
"Lots of people from where I am go in the service. My Daddy was in the
Corps; second Iraqi war. Got a Purple Heart in the liberation
of
Striver laughed.
She continued, “Also, I figured I could get some money for college this way.
Striver said, “I
lived with my mama in a trailer on the outskirts of
He stopped here,
looking close at Stella to see how she’ reacting. She just nodded a little, “Yeah, sounds familiar.”
Striver continued,
“She did what she had to do. Which bummed me out when I was
11 or 12. But I realized eventually that the rent had to be paid. And
that she was all the mama I had, and better than no
mama at all.”
It was time to move out. As she got up and
walked away, Striver watched. She looked good from that angle too, definitely
more hydraulic than your standard
issue Marine. He had a real woody, a definite indication that his feelings for
Corporal Wright were more than ordinary camaraderie
he felt for all fellow Marines.
In a firefight near
the outskirts of Wakir al Abhim,
Cpl. Wright stopped a piece of shrapnel from a grenade. It raked across her
temple, cutting to the bone, knocking her off her feet and stunning her. She
couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. It was bleeding like, way bad, and she couldn’t
even wipe the blood out of her eye. For her, it was dreamlike, like something
was after her, and whatever it was was one bad
mother. You know you’re in deep shit, but still you can’t move. A round kicked
up the dust near her. She started thinking about how, on the rifle range at
Sgt. Striver came
after her. He grabbed her by her web belt and dragged her, grunting and giving
out little high-pitched “ummm” when bullets popped
into the ground around them. She watched his combat boots as he shoved against
a boulder for traction. She noticed that the boulder was gray, streaked with
rust color. He dragged her until they were behind the foundation of a house
that had been taken out in the B-2 strikes. He broke out his first aid packet,
wiping off the blood to see how badly she was hurt, whispering, “Stella, can
you hear me?”
She was choppered out to the field hospital where a Doc checked her
over, then a Navy Corpsman sewed her up. She spent two
nights there. Mild concussion, they said. When she came back, Sgt. Striver
said, “Stella, that’s good. An over-night after getting hurt automatically
qualifies you for a Purple Heart. Another tic on your
certified proficient hero list.”
At the time, it seemed that Sgt. Striver would at least get a Bronze
Star with a combat “V” out of his heroic actions in rescuing Stella under fire,
too.
Sgt. Striver found
it difficult to get Stella off his mind after that. When they were back in
garrison where there were showers, he starting taking his showers a
After they
liberated the town of
On 3rd platoon’s first liberty,
Sgt. Striver swung into a local establishment called Kasment. The establishment had, as well as Russian beer, the usual prayer rugs,
little teacups with complicated blue swirls on them, pistachio candy and such.
Striver was the
only customer that evening. He’d picked an out-of-the-way place on purpose,
wanting to get away from the troops, nurse a few beers and just think things
over. But halfway through the evening Striver had half a buzz on. He was
working his way through his fourth beer when Corporal Wright walked through the
door. He wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t either. And he didn’t really think that after
a few more beers, they’d end up smoking hash in an upstairs room.
There was nothing
in that room but a bed, a cot really, with a scrap of a rug besides it and a
hookah that looked like it came straight out of the Arabian nights. The pipe
bubbled like a teakettle when they took a hit. OK, they were violating a whole
bunch of regs, but they’d been in the boonies a long
time, and figured they were both along way toward becoming certified heroes
anyway. The Corps owed them a few.
Wright took a deep
breath, then said, “I appreciate it.”
She tilted her head
back as she spoke. Striver totally realized what a fox she was, her face toasty
brown from the Uzbek sun, lips deep colored even without any lipstick
“Appreciate it?” he said.
“When I caught that fragment,” she said, “you
got me out of the open, took care of me.”
She leaned closer,
shaking her head. Now listen! Striver had come to understand that Stella was a
looker, but that smile; jeez! Like when you’re huddled in your fighting hole in
the high desert, dark and shivering with the cold, then the next minute the sun
climbs up and all of a sudden it’s warm and bright.
She didn’t say
anything, just took another drag off the hash pipe, held it in and finally blew
it out. She was looking right at Striver. He checked out her eyes. He’d never
noticed before, but her eyes were not one color, really. They were brown with
flecks of gold. She said, “You know, I understand it now.”
“Cool,” Striver
said, not knowing what she understood, but pretty much willing to agree to
anything she said at that point. “What?”
“Oh, wow, how you
had to drag me to cover when I got hit, how I’d have done the same for you. I
see how it all fits together, like the universe, like
“Cool,” Striver
said again, trying to take it all in but not being too conversational any more.
She leaned over
toward him then, and laid on one him, him leaning back, her tongue limber as an
eel, and soon their camos were in a heap on the
floor. And more than he’d ever known or hoped, he
realized that Stella was a babe. An
original issue, hard body, US Marine Corps issue babe. Boobs a firm handful and shaped like the hills beyond the
plain. Her perfect muffin of an ass was hard, a Marine’s ass. Not that Striver
had ever felt any Marine’s ass but his own, but you know; hard and warm and
soft at the same time. They didn’t make it to the bed the first time. Just to
the rug there beside it.
That bed was a cot really, peeled alder wood that stood maybe a foot off the
floor with canvas slung between the rails and a lumpy pad for a mattress. It
had an olive drab Marine Corps blanket on it. How it got there, who knows?
Once they got into
the sack, Stella started shaking, shaking like she was freezing, though it was
warm in that room. Striver pulled the blanket up over her.
“It’s not that,”
she said, “I’m not cold. I’m not one fucking bit cold. Not once fucking bit.”
He pulled her closer, squeezing her as if he’d never let go, stroking
the back of her head.
“It’s OK,” she said. “It’s OK. It doesn’t matter.”
Then it was like they didn’t have to say anything, like they were
soaking the whole scene in through their skins. They fell asleep that way,
waking up from time-to-time to get it on.
After that night,
they found their private moments here and there. And when they didn’t find
them, just their fingers might touch when Striver was handing out ammo or
rations, or maybe she’d brush up against him when they were humping ammo off
the supply chopper. For Striver, touching Stella, or her touching him, was like
touching a bare electric line. Once she mouthed. “Love you,” when they were on
a break and nobody was looking. Striver though he’d do a Chernoble
when she did that. He mouthed the same back.
That was all before
that last patrol. The platoon, reinforced with elements from Weapons Company,
marched eastward into the mountains north of
The three planes,
cruciform because the wings were fully extended from the low-speed bombing run,
were curling straight back over the hill where the house had stood. The
afterburners cut in, flame streaming from the exhausts. They climbed nearly
straight up, wings configuring back as they went. Striver spoke to Cpl. Wright,
“Until you’ve seen a bombing run that beautiful, you don’t know what awesome
really means!”
The Marines
advanced into the area there the bombs had hit. It was a total buzzard fuck. Guts, arms, legs, pieces of people of varying sizes and shapes all
over the place. The smell; Christ! Striver remembered when his grandpa
killed chickens, he’d gut them and put the innards and
feathers in one smelly pile. Then he’d roll up a sheet of newspaper and singe
the pinfeathers off, which smelled like burning hair. The stink as they moved
in was like chicken killing time; gut piles and burning feathers.
Stella was right
beside Striver beside when he saw this lady. Well, half a lady, the top half,
with white clothes painted red now. She was like, maybe Stella’s age. Gold bracelets on her wrists, fine stuff.
“Hey,” Wright said,
smiling at Striver, “she must have been like an Uzbek babe.” Still trying to keep it light, Stella added, “At least till
very recently.”
Striver was shaking
his head, saying, “Doesn’t compute.”
Not ten yards away
from the half babe there was a guy, young guy. He had a suit on. A three-piece suit. His glasses, gold wire frames, round
lenses, were still in place. Not a mark on him, but very, very dead. “Sweet
Jesus,” Striver takes it all in, then said, “It’s a
wedding. A fucking wedding party, and we’ve blown them
all away.”
They kept looking.
Inside the ruins of what had been the farmhouse, there were more pieces of
people. Striver was leaning on the side of a masonry wall, chest heaving,
taking big breaths, trying to keep from blowing lunch.
“You can’t make an
omelet without¼,” Stella started
to say, by way of comfort and reassurance. Then they heard something, a
high-pitched wailing.
Striver lets out
an, “Oh, shit”, and he rushed over to look inside what was left of the house,
Arms, legs, and other body parts, but nearly all like, kid-sized.
Just above a
whisper, Striver said, “A nursery?”
Something was
moving in the mess, in the gore. Striver stepped in, bent over, reached down, picked something up. The kid, a little kid, walking sized
maybe, was crying, but not loud. It was gray instead of normal brown. Both arms
just bloody stumps. The cries were getting lower and lower.
Striver was sitting
on the ground, and he’s crying too, still saying “Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit.
We didn’t do this. Oh God, we didn’t do this. It’s a room full of kids waiting
for the wedding cake or whatever the fuck they get here at a wedding¼”
Stella said to him,
kindly and patiently, “Look, Sergeant, sometimes when you set out to bring
freedom and democracy to people, it doesn’t turn out like you thought it
would.” The rest of the platoon was moving up. It was time to advance and
Striver wasn’t saying anything so Stella started yelling, “Move out, move out.”
They were in a combat situation, and Striver wouldn’t get up and move out. And
he was still shaking and carrying on, like, really wierding
Corporal Wright out. She totally lost a lot of respect for him right then.
Stella said to herself, he’s sentimental? Sure, we’re all sentimental. My eyes
mist up when I hear the Marines Corps Hymn, or the Star Spangled Banner, or
maybe when I see one of those old dude Marines come back to get a medal pinned
on or something. But this was like, his thought
processes, had become totally unwired. Totally
unprofessional and highly unsat, especially with the
platoon, now leaderless, moving out.
Sergeant Striver, Private Striver, once they returned to
base, was on the next transport plane for duty in the Arctic Oil Reserve
Security Detachment. A day or two later, the old man saw Corporal Wright as she
walked across the compound. The Captain is one serious ass-kicking Old Corps
sort, the stuff of legends. He’s a mustang, which is to say he came up through
the ranks, starting from private in the Iranian Conflict. Silver
Star at the battle of
“Sort of, up to a
certain point, Sir.”
“You OK, with him
gone and all?”
“Yessir, Captain, I’m copasetic.”
And all the time
Stella was thinking, Striver? Striver was OK. But I’m a Marine. And a
Marine loves the Corps.
-End-
With appreciation top first publisher Harvard Square
Commentary (see links).
The
Chickasaw
Home Short Stories Poetry Articles Humor Links