Fobbit (20 page)

Please train your minds and tongues accordingly.

Regards,

Harold Gunderson, Brigadier General, U.S. Army

Chief, Public Affairs Division

Multi-Allied-Forces Iraq

14

SHRINKLE

S
hrinkle had earned a reputation around the FOB as the Care Package King.

It started with a trickle of boxes from his mother, her friends at work, and a few of his online friends (those who posted regularly to the American Civil War reenactors group at northVsouth.net). Then Shrinkle had learned there was a multitude of organizations back in the United States—mothers of deployed soldiers, mothers of dead soldiers, prayer circles at churches, Girl Scout troops, Harley-Davidson Vietnam Vet clubs, the Vermont Republican Purple Ladies, you name it—who had made a nonprofit cottage industry of collecting items that would “bring the comfort of home” to “our men and women who have placed themselves in harm’s way.”

Most Americans had no concept of what it meant to live in a world of car bombs and mortar threats and severed arms cocked in the grass beside the road. But, Abe was certain, most of them
wanted
to know. They wanted to empathize with him and his soldiers and they felt slack and helpless sitting back there in the land of cheeseburgers and Paris Hilton perfume. They wanted to say or do something, so they reached out a hand in the airport or they mailed a package of chocolate chip cookies to a person they would never meet, and still they knew it wasn’t enough, but at least it was
some
thing.

And so, across America—but especially in the central belt of the Heartland—men and women, boys and girls, young and old, armed with plastic baggies and black markers, formed assembly lines and packed boxes full of donations that had flooded into the collection center. They spent hours upon hours each week carefully nesting baked goods and toiletries into boxes bound for soldiers they didn’t know from Adam (or Eve). They pulled the names off the Web sites they’d built, which allowed soldiers to sign up to be on the receiving end. It gave these mothers and fathers, these teachers and students, these pastors and their flocks, hot butterflies of happiness inside their chests and though they didn’t truly understand what was going on over in Iraq and really had no idea what it was like to wear eighty pounds of body armor in the 120-degree heat, it helped salve their collective guilt over the way America had treated the boys returning from Vietnam. Along with the yellow-ribbon stickers on the backs of their cars, it was a way for them to show the rest of the world—Democrats especially—they really knew how to Support the Troops. It was incredible how the screech of pulling tape across the flaps of just one box could bring spiritual harmony to a person, make her feel like she was doing Something that Mattered.

Once Captain Shrinkle stumbled across this network of do-gooders, there was no stopping him. In truth, he was supposed to share what he got with the rest of his company but he’d always been a hoarder and this just fed his hunger—like grabbing an addict by the hair, tipping back his head, and pouring baggies of cocaine into his nostrils. It wasn’t until much later (long after his bad death) that the rest of the battalion realized the extent of Shrinkle’s greed. Each day he received anywhere from two to ten boxes of items carefully packaged by happy-hearted patriots in Omaha and upstate New York. Many days, he made multiple trips between the company mail room and his trailer, wading through the ankle-deep gravel with a load of boxes.

Here he is now, moving earnestly across the rocks for another armful. His boot steps, rough and determined, sound like someone punching a box of Corn Flakes. Other soldiers give way, parting on either side of him; they know he is a man on a mission. He has that look in his eye.

On this day, despite all that has happened to him recently (the piss-pants embarrassment of Quillpen, the oh-crap-what-did-I-just-do grenade toss at Adhamiya), Abe whistles a peppy Glenn Miller tune (something he’s picked up from a big band CD that came in a recent care package). At this particular moment, he loves this war and all its bennies, he loves the time of day with its slow-boiling sunset, and he loves the way the rocks sound beneath his boots.

He even loves the corrugated-steel shack that serves as a battalion post office. Truth be told, he has a bit of a crush on the mail clerk, despite her thick glasses and the oily patches of acne high on her forehead. If time and circumstances were any different, Abe wouldn’t give her a second glance on the street. Here, however, he wants to sweep her off her feet and waltz around the gravel path with her in his arms as he hums “In the Mood” (or maybe “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”).

Here she comes now, glasses askew, staggering out of the back room beneath the weight of five boxes. One of them is almost certainly full of books—a set of encyclopedias from the feel of it. She hoists the boxes onto the counter, then steps back and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, further enraging the pimples to an angry red. She is breathing heavy and, of course, this stirs Abe’s lust.

“Sir, I gotta ask: has there been a day when you
didn’t
get any mail?”

Abe puts a finger to his chin and ponders. “Yes, I believe there was that Monday about two months ago when I went package-less.”

She laughs. “We figure you’ve gotten more than three hundred boxes so far. You’re the King of Care Packages!”

There it is. His title endorsed by a U.S. government postal clerk.

To her, he is just an oddity—charming, but deserving of muttered curses because of all the backaches from lifting and toting those boxes every single blankety-blank day.

To Abe, however, Little Miss Mail Clerk is an angel, delivering fresh supplies of hand-packed home goodies every afternoon, starting at 1600 hours.

See how he skips back to his hooch, pondering the mystery of the boxes in his arms. See that candy-store gleam in his eyes. At this point, he’s not even thinking about a terrorist’s brains splattered across the interior of an Opel sedan or a Local National enflamed against the undercarriage of a truck or the dying jingle of a jester’s hat. No siree Bob.

Abe’s dwelling, called a CHU (Containerized Housing Unit), is the deluxe long-term abode for the most privileged infantry soldiers on Triumph (and the standard housing for all regular Fobbits). If a realtor was showing off a CHU, she would be bragging about the linoleum floor, electrical outlets, and fluorescent lighting—“Just look at how the light opens up the space! Perfect for the first-time deployer looking to get a gentle start to his war!”

Each night, the tranquillity of CHU sleep is disturbed by low-flying Chinook helicopters whose dual rotors hammer the air without mercy. The force of the downdraft beats against the roofs of the CHUs and, lying there with their unsleeping eyes popped open, the Fobbits can actually see their ceilings flex. Each grips his or her mattress with both hands and wonders if they will be sucked into the sky, carried in this particular Chinook wind over the landscape of Baghdad, spinning like a carnival ride, the vomit of fear gagging the back of their throats.

Sleep easy, Fobbits! You’re going nowhere. Your CHUs rest on foundations sunk deep into the tough Iraqi soil. There’s no way you’re going to Wizard of Oz yourselves out of this war.

The CHU comes in three basic colors: white, beige, and the gold-brown of your average bowel movement. If they weren’t air conditioned, they would melt straight away into tin puddles, so most Fobbits fall to their knees each and every night, praising the foresight of the engineer who provided enough extra space in the corner for the large, boxy AC unit that rattles and drips without cessation. CHUs are large enough for two people to live in comfortably; four can be squeezed into one, but then it is very crowded, with much stepping on toes and groaning about the humid stink rising from just-removed boots.

Abe Shrinkle, for reasons completely unbeknownst to him, has been grinned upon by the gods. Whether by luck or (more likely) oversight by the billeting authorities, he dwells alone in his CHU.

It bothers Abe, pricks at his conscience, but what can he do? He’s been ordered by the battalion commander to remain with the rest of the officers and to avoid mingling with the enlisteds as much as he can. So there you have it: his happy solitude is in keeping with good order and discipline. Who is he to buck the system? To share his private space would be a violation punishable by UCMJ. At least, that’s how he figures it.

Abe keeps to himself, spending most of his time in the trailer, arranging the various contents of his care packages and whiling away the remainder of his time reading the W. E. B. Griffin paperbacks that arrive with predictable regularity.

On this day—two days after Abe accidentally killed a Local National by roasting the body beneath a truck—most of the boxes contain the usual assortment of granola bars, mixed nuts, hand sanitizer, and magazines (
Muscle & Fitness,
Vermont Life, GQ,
et cetera). The encyclopedia-weight package turns out to be a year’s supply of shampoo and conditioner, along with three oily fruitcakes in Ziploc baggies.

One thick envelope, however, is from a woman in Laramie, Wyoming—an oilman’s wife who fancies herself something of a poet. She has written to Abe several times and he has answered promptly and enthusiastically, their correspondence revolving around Wyoming geology and literature and the joys and frustrations of being an unpublished poet trapped in a loveless marriage. In this day’s envelope, Mrs. Norma Tingledecker has included two packages of jerky “made from genuine Cheyenne beef” along with another epistle (handwritten in lavender ink) about her “bluebird-soundtracked life on the High Plains.” Abe sits there and snacks on the Wyoming cows as he reads the two-page letter she’s enclosed.

Wyoming got its typical Father’s Day snow last week—in the north. But down here (in Laramie), it’s all burning blue skies and the golden tumble of leaves from the aspen and cottonwoods when the wind shakes the boughs. I saw a tiny warbler in the juniper bush outside my window two days ago; she’s on her way south—confused by the unseasonal snow, perhaps . . . The fishing, too, is magnificent . . . mostly because of what you can see and smell and hear when you’re standing in the middle of the warmish, slow-moving Platte River. Mint. Dew-frosted sage. The trilly scoldings of kingfishers and ravens. The careful sip of a rainbow trout . . . And in the fall, the farewell serenade of Canada geese, which breaks one’s heart with the reminder of seasons . . . I feel blessed every day to live in a place where nature still has the upper hand. Ah, if only I felt the same glorious surge of love for my husband, Ray. He’s a stinking, no-good bastard who always finds it necessary to stop at the Rockin’ R before he sloppy-stumbles his way home to an ice-cold dinner . . . But don’t get me started. No doubt you already have too much to fret away at your nerves and occupy your mind over there for me to be going on about Ray.

Abe clutches at her words. He doesn’t want to leave this letter and the sensory images it conjures. “A place where nature still has the upper hand.” Yes, yes, yes. He wants to go there so desperately—right now—it nearly doubles him over in pain. He rolls the jerky on his tongue, savoring it as long as he can.

He sighs.
No, I must remain here in a land where
evil
has the upper hand. It is my duty and proud obligation.

He carefully refolds Norma Tingledecker’s letter, tucks it back into its lavender-scented envelope, and turns to the next box, ripping away the tape, which resists with an angry squeal. More socks. Abe doesn’t have enough feet for all the socks he’s received since February.

Luckily for the Care Package King, he lives alone with this accumulated goodwill in his trailer, a single room which is—he’d paced it out—eleven by thirteen, wood paneled, tile floored, with one window, an air-conditioning unit, a metal wall locker, a two-drawer night stand, a small lamp, and a bed that came with a pillow, a comforter, and one sheet. He got lucky with the sheets—his were beige with an ivy pattern running along the borders; the KBR contractors had issued some of his fellow officers sheets with cartoon characters like Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears.

The entire single-wide mobile home was lined with Hesco-barrier blast walls. The Hescoes were seven-foot-tall canvas sacks with wire mesh on the outside and they had been filled with dirt by backhoes, then stacked like bricks around the FOB’s tin-skinned trailers. They were like sandbags on steroids and protected soldiers from shrapnel, bullets, and the relentless wind. From where Abe sat, he was enclosed in something resembling a womb. Nothing—except for the most determined, manic-eyed terrorist or the most randomly lucky mortar—would be able to penetrate.

Within the trailer, he was nestled inside an extra padding of baby wipes, travel-size Kleenex, and enough Louis L’Amour paperbacks to choke a horse. Thanks to Abe’s care package hoarding, wall space was getting squeezed to a minimum. After the first few weeks, he’d custom-built a large shelving unit along one side of the trailer and shoved his bed into the corner as tightly as he could just to accommodate his care package booty.

Over the months, he’d received dried fruit, microwave popcorn, paperback books, packets of ketchup and mustard swiped from fast-food restaurants, comic books, DVDs, a bar of blackberry soap, four boxes of envelopes, three cans of apple juice, two kitchen scrubber sponges, gel insoles for combat boots, nail clippers, chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, eye drops, bookmarks, pencils advertising local insurance companies, powdered drink mixes, tampons (from a site where he’d registered as “A. Shrinkle”), months-old copies of
Car & Driver
,
Cosmopolitan
,
Newsweek
, and
Organic Gardening
, combs, toothbrushes, butterscotch candies, rosary beads, photos from the 18th Annual Fireman’s Pig Roast in Eau Claire, breath mints, cheese crackers, raisins, Band-Aids, a tuft of pubic hair tenderly sealed in a Ziploc baggie by a Ms. Wanda Showalter (recently divorced) in Boise, cocoa mix with mini marshmallows, boxes upon boxes of Kleenex, a calendar with Norman Rockwell paintings, foot powder, jock itch cream, twenty-one bottles of Tylenol, crossword puzzles, fifteen copies of
The Da Vinci Code,
miniature American flags (made in China), antibiotic ointment, a studio “boudoir” portrait of Ms. Wanda Showalter (still divorced), a CD of Irish jig music, original cast soundtracks of
South Pacific
and
Cats,
thirty-six decks of playing cards, Christmas decorations that arrived in February, Hershey’s Kisses that came in one glob of melted chocolate and tinfoil, kazoos, a pair of slippers, stationery, Post-it notes (“From the Desk of Jack Cramer”), powdered laundry soap, saltwater taffy, sunscreen, and baby wipes. Oh, Lord, the baby wipes!