Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan, year 1

XXIII

I've just reread all I had written. Especially when the Icelanders came to the Company, because it's the only thing I don't remember. Pity, because that must have been spectacular, the death of the two scumbags.

On the other hand, by rereading the rest, I can put in images and then, yes, memories that are really mine.

The penultimate chapter is not my writing. Kris? Erk? Tito? Who else? It doesn't matter.

Oooh, the last chapter. Oh my goodness, so sappy, so saccharine, so ridiculous, damn it... What really went through my head at the time? I'm going to say it's because of the head injury...

* *

From the moment I opened my eyes, Erk healed my head again, thinking he could give me back my memories. But well, so far, no luck. I mean, everything came back, except for those minutes the day they arrived. Between the gunshot, which I remember, and the graves. Because I also remember bugging when seeing the giant shirtless. It was the first time I'd seen the whole luminous bird. Well, almost, since the bird's tail disappears under the belt of his pants.

After one single day where, like Erk, I couldn't stand sitting in bed doing nothing, Doc kicked me out, ordering me to see her or the Viking if my vision was blurry, if I was seeing black midges, or white sparks or if I had a headache.
- What if I have all of it at once, Doc? I said innocently.
- In that case, there's only one solution.
- Oh? Which one?
- Removal.
- Removal... of what? I was mighty suspicious.
- Of your head, Archer.

I didn't find her joke funny.

I went back to the room I shared with the others NCOs: the two sergeants, Curly and Shorn, and two other corporals, Stig and Dio, a tall Senegalese. The fourth corporal is Mac, the Italian. Even though she is married to Bloody Mary, there is no room to spare for a couple, so she sleeps in the girls' room, the only one with eight berths.

So, if you count right, you'll know that Lin said there were six of us to each room and that here, with Mac in the girls' room, we're down to five. Well, berth number 6 is for Fatso. Since his room is now the Company's office, he's sleeping with the NCOs.

Why a NCO room: because when one of us is needed, the guys know where to find us.

And why is Mac not sleeping with us, since the showers are mixed? Well, because we have to be able to talk between guys, just as they need to talk between girls. Seems it's important for our psychological balance to be together. It suits me. There are things the girls don't need to hear. Nor see. And I imagine it's the same on the other side.

We received the bikes the day I opened my eyes. Erk and I, with little use so far, war wise, found ourselves repainting them, each our own. He had placed me just in front of the flagpole. The problem is that, at the foot of that mast, on a stake a little over a meter high, is my helmet. The one that was shot through.

So right now, while I paint one of the twelve Kawasaki bikes, I can see my holed helmet.
- Erk?
- Yes? He is focused on his painting, he sounds somewhat distant.
- Why is my helmet there?

He stops, stares at me. Damn those eyes! Real lasers. I can't look away. Then his smile lights up his face and I forget my question. How the fuck is he doing that? I'm not sexually attracted to guys, otherwise Tito and I would have been a pair a long time ago, but in front of the Viking, I feel like a maiden... I think that if he confessed to me all at once that he was attracted to me and offered to lay with me, I might say yes. I get sidetracked and digress, as always with the Icelanders. Fuck!

Anyway, he smiles at me, I lose my train of thought. Like me, he's wearing his bush hat, because the sun is quite punishing. All I see is his mouth and his damn smile. And his two eyes that pierce me.
- Your helmet, Archer, will serve as an example. I found out that some of you are a little lax in wearing it properly. Too bad you're the one who got it.
- It looks a bit too much like a tombstone, you know, like in the old movies about the first Vietnam war, or something. It's a bit macabre.

He looks at me, thoughtful.
- If you want, I can put a sign: "Here lies Archer's memory, killed in action"
- Pfft, jackass!

It makes him laugh.
- Erk?
- What else, mate?
- The bikes? They're a bit too... plain?

His is done, so is mine and it's true that they look good on the sand, but when I think about it, there are fifty shades of ocher on the ground here.
- I tend to agree with you. Let's see if we have any black or gray paint, we'll play Michelangelo.

We found some gray paint, mixed it with the ocher paint, with variations, and we had fun smearing the bikes haphazardly. For sure not two are the same. Erk impersonated Dali, wiggling his mustache and rolling his R's, and Lin, passing by, shook her head, grumbling that it was high time those two assholes were back on patrol.

I took this down time opportunity to ask Erk questions.
- Erk, a silly question for you. I don't know why, it's been growing on me since that morning: how did you manage to put your hair in a bun one-handed?

He looks at me with wide eyes, flabbergasted, then he bursts out laughing.
- I have a little brother.
- But.. he was at the mess long before you were...
- He woke me and had combed my hair and done the bun before he joined you. I just had to freshen up, get clothed and drag myself to the mess hall... And to answer the question you are not asking yourself, he was the one helping me shower at night.
- Oh.

I fell silent for a while, staring at him. He had some paint on his right cheek. Since I had stopped painting for a while, he looked at me strangely.
- What's wrong mate?
- Tell me, why did Lu– Higgins shoot your brother? Do we know why?
- Not really. Lin thinks she didn't adjust to the way we operate and that asshole bounty hunter must have made her an interesting offer, like split the bounty, if she would help. Or he had promised to get her out of Afghanistan. But I wonder if there isn't some deeper.
- How so?
- Do you find it rational to believe that shooting your senior officer will allow you to return home while being safe from the effects of the warrant?
- No, not really. Indeed. Maybe she was psychologically unbalanced?
- Yeah... or else... No, that doesn't make sense.
- What?
- I was wondering... You wouldn't know if, by any chance, she had an affair with the former Captain or the Lieutenant?
- The Lieutenant, no. He was a sadist, a bully, and the girls avoided him like the plague and cholera combined. Our homos too. Even some guys lighter or smaller than him. Gender didn't matter to him, as long as it relieved him. And he had a sex drive the size of the sun. He cornered Tito once, and it's a good thing he's always armed, that one. Otherwise... I let a moment pass. See, this guy would have loved Kris. Because he's your brother.

That sentence was a bit risky, but I wanted to get the point across. That guy had been using friendships to hurt, and he'd gone after Tito to hurt me. Erk didn't seem to react.
- Bad guy, then. Ah, his voice is a bit flat. It touched him...
- Yeah, a scumbag. A real bastard. The Captain, on the other hand... A little more proper for that, but he sometimes would use his rank to get what he wanted. Why?
- Because I thought she might have wanted to avenge them, but those responsible for that are Lin and I, not Kris.
- Unless she wanted to make both of you suffer, as she would have suffered from the death of her lover. There maybe be jealousy, too.
- Ah? Towards whom?

Here, I hesitate a bit. Because Erk never knew of Tito's and Baby Jane's tenderness when we first came home from the SRH, when they watched over him at night. And then Erk had never done anything towards her.
- Baby Jane.
- But why?

And I tell him about that night. About the little English porcelain doll of a girl who took turns in sick bay to talk to him and reassure him. About the looks she gives him as soon as his back is turned.

He blushes and the thin scar on his left cheek, received while escaping from the SRH, appears.
- But I haven't done anything towards her...
- I know you didn't... Let's say Doc is the first one and you waited to be out of recovery to...
- No, that's not quite it. I couldn't throw myself at the girls as soon as we arrived, that would have been mighty inappropriate. But I don't understand why she would be jealous of something that didn't exist...
- What can I say? The female psyche is way too complex for us, don't you think?

And on that macho comment – shame on me – we laughed and went back to slathering ocher paint on black and green bikes.

It was a very strange visitor who interrupted our artistry.