Dogface

"Tony Tomasetti and I shipped out together," Dex began the session. He looked down at the table, clutching a calico cat. "We left 'Toga practically--"

"'Toga?" the doctor named Ryer asked.

"Saratoga. 'Toga for locals."

Ryer nodded.

"Tony and I shipped out right after graduation. You know, the buddy system, bring a friend; doesn't fuckin' matter. We both went to Ft. Leonard Wood for basic and AIT."

Ryer nodded.

Dex looked up. "'Toga is an okay town in New York. It's got some stuff going on for rich folks, golf courses, and horse racing tracks. Tony and Me didn't come from those kinds of families. We played stickball in the yard, always had to make sure we got home before dark to keep our dads from beating our asses. We weren't "college-bound." So, we left for the Army. We signed up to be Sappers because it sounded cool. What kid doesn't want to blow shit up?"

Dr. Ryer nodded.

"We got to Leonard Wood, and we just waited for days. Then it finally happened; we got our Drill Sergeants, they did their thing, yelled at us. They kept us up; woke us up early. We had one, a high-strung little stocky fucker named Kingsley. He'd pace like a caged tiger, back and forth, short little ass legs moving fast and a big loud voice. You'd never know looking at him. There was another platoon in our company. They had this gigantic-ass drill sergeant. He had to be pushing six-four; he was all muscle. Real name was Miller, but they called him Dogface--because He was a Marine before. No clue why he switched.

"Dogface and Kingsley were buddies. They were always having some back and forth. Dogface would nudge him and whisper. Kingsley would start laughing, practically crying. Dogface with these lumbering strides, and Kingsley, tiny little legs scurrying; it took Kingsley like six steps to match Dogface's two. Shit was funny as hell to watch. Basic is full of stupid shit like that when the training isn't going on. And half that shit is part of the training. I think it makes you crazy, the process. They want to break you down, remold you. It needs to happen to do the job, the shit of it is they take thirteen weeks to break you down and remold you, and they cut you loose when you retire or your contracts up, and it's just over. No breaking you back down and molding you to live with civilians again; you must deal. Some deal better than others." Dex stroked the back of the cat's head. Ryer could hear soft purring.

"You know, it's not something new either. I go to this local bar because they let me be me; they let me sit alone and bus my table, order my beers at the bar, and bring it back on my own. Or specific servers will sit and talk, be friendly, and such. There's an old gulf war vet there that has gone pretty much off the deep end; some weird shell shock thing. He's into conspiracies, and everything is an inside job and shit like that. He gets intense, and it makes people nervous. That happens when you start shouting crazy things in a bar. But that's a tangent. My point is that we're dealing better now than he is--some of us. It's not something you can standardize.

"Tony loved it. He got off on it. Pretty much from the start, the obstacle courses, rappelling, getting gassed. Nothing bothered him. He would do all the stupid tasks. He made it a game for himself, putting the rifles back together fast as shit, putting together demo charges like lightning. He ate it all up. He was sitting on the edge of the seat when Kingsley came into the chow hall screaming about how some crazy, bat-shit Arabs shot up a French magazine.

Kingsley was doing his frantic pacing between tables filled with kids--most of us were closer to childhood than actual adulthood. But that shit was about to change. We were about to grow up real fast. That's what he's telling us.

"'Privates, you're about to get some. I can feel it. It feels like it did back in 2001, I was watching the world, and then the Towers were hit, and I was just like you, a little Private sitting in Lost in the Woods. One day we were at peace; the next day, Private Kingsley would get some. And that's going to be you now, Privates. I've been fighting for 15 years. The government says we're in a drawdown, but Privates, we've never left. Now Privates, mark my words, we're going back. Better steel yourselves. Better take your training seriously. Because, Privates, it'll save you. Not all of you. I won't lie. Some of you are going to die, Privates.'

"Kingsley holds up his arm and pulls down his sleeve; there's a tattoo of dog tags on his forearm, a handful of them. 'Privates, these were my brothers. They're dead now. This tattoo is how I remember them. They live on in me and the knowledge that I give to you. So, it would behoove you to listen. Privates, I'm fucked up. I don't give a shit about my blood family, my old state; that shit doesn't matter anymore. You'll understand. You're about to know what I mean. Your family isn't going to be your family anymore, Privates. Those guys sitting next to you are your family now. Your folks won't even know you anymore. Trust me, Privates. You're my family now, too. Well, almost. When you finish your training, then we'll be family, and that's all that matters. Forget your girlfriends. Forget your mom's. You're going to get some, Privates, and it's going to define you.'

“I looked over at Tony, and his eyes were huge. Like saucers. I saw that look before when we'd play Pop Warner football for the city. Then again, in High School. He was the QB, and occasionally, it would come down to the last drive, and he'd step into the huddle with that look in his eyes, and I just knew we were going to win. He's not taking his eyes off Kingsley, and I know he's thinking about what's about to go down, not sure yet if it's going to be Syria or Libya, Afghanistan, or Iraq all over again. Not that it particularly matters. You go where you go, and you do the job.

"And while Kingsley is doing this crazy rant, some kids are plowing ahead, eating because they have a time limit, and they're just shoveling food into their faces, other kids look like they're about to blow chunks all over the chow hall, they stopped eating. Even the black kids--the scared ones--they're turning a shade of white and can't do shit. It's what they call going black. Not like the skin pigment. It's when the mind shuts down, and the body shuts down, and you curl up in the fetal position and start hugging yourself and rocking back and forth. And that's when you die. When you stop moving, I knew those kids would die if they didn't figure shit out real fast. If Kingsley wasn't blowing smoke up our skirts, which I didn't think he'd do."

'Privates, it's okay to be scared. I'm scared, too, Privates, and I know what's about to go down.'

"It was like Kingsley can fuckin' read minds or some shit."

'I know what's about to go down, Privates. But there is no shame in fear. Courage is being scared and acting anyway. Some of you are going to die, but most of you are going to live. None of you will ever be the same, and from today forward, all you have is each other and your brothers and sisters in arms.'

"The other DSs started kicking us out of the chow hall at that point. But that day pretty much set the stage for everything that would follow. We had a crew, all of us 12Bravos, all of us going to do combat shit while some of the other Privates would be working on trucks or "something safe." But nothing is exactly safe. The 12Bs knew we were going to end up fighting. We just didn't know where. The crew consisted of Me, Tony, a guy called Duran--a Mexican football player from California--Rojawski, an ox of a guy from some midwest state with no accent. Smith, from Connecticut, and a real country kid named Garrett, from Tennessee or someplace where they still eat possum in the 21st century. The crew trained hard. We were all Platoon leaders or some other basic leadership post. All shit that matters then but doesn't matter later 'til you're telling a story for folks who don't know any better. We stuck together, and we trained hard, and we studied together, quizzed each other. We were all awarded stuff at the end of training. Then it all went down. We got our orders. Expecting to hear Iraq, or to some 'Stan or another. It didn't happen. We all went to fuckin' Korea of all places."

Ryer was vigorously scratching notes. He paused. "Couldn't you have just started with Korea?" Dex looked at him. He looked down at the cat.

"Do me a favor, Dogface, answer me a question: is this guy fuckin' retarded? Are his intestines intermingling with his brain?"

Ryer stopped writing. "Did you just call your cat Dogface?"

"Sure, brought him back from The Desert. I'm supposed to talk to you. You said to start from the beginning. So, I started from the damn beginning. I first met Miller when he was a Drill Sergeant. And he had an immense impact even then, as did Kingsley. And so many more people who have no one writing down the shit they did. They were leaders of men. So much more than some Medal of Honor write-up that some stuck-up politician posthumously hands out. It's laughable; I know all my college words from guys around me dying. Guys who were more than some words on a page for some guy who is good at taking notes and supposing."

Ryer's face flushed.

"Fuck it, Korea's not that important."

“They deployed Tony and Me with some people we didn’t know that well. We ended up with an infantry company going to Afghanistan to fight the group that blew up the Paris magazine when we were in training. The same group started using trucks to mow people down all over Europe. We kept waiting to hear something about Disneyland getting attacked or some shit like that. Some guy in the States that liked them shot up a gay club. But the powers that be changed, which means the priorities changed. The new administration was more than willing to call it as they saw it. Meaning they were keen to take on an extremely violent minority where the last administration seemed content to appease. But that's all the politics that I'm going to talk about; it's not about the pinheads in DC that play war games with the lives of regular folks. It's about that willing few.

"Joke's on us; we come back stateside to start prepping to deploy. Who is sitting next to us? Fuckin' Dogface Miller. We did this funny double-take. The I-know-you-from-somewhere look you give a familiar face that is barely more than an acquaintance. He had to ask us if we were his boots or a brother platoon. He told us Kingsley was around here somewhere, too. And warned that if we hadn't got our shit figured yet, we were about to.'

"We sat in a theater on base and watched a bunch of briefs about rules of engagement—fitted us with gear. We shuffled through medical and dental. We started working on our 'quals'. Then we piled into these big ass planes, and we landed in-country, and we got to work.

"Sappers had cleared most of the routes we took multiple times over the previous fifteen years, but we still did it. We did security checkpoints, too. These kids would hang outside the base with a box of kittens. Like you'd see in the states. We'd see a little bit of humanity as we left on mission. That's where this came from." Dex picked up the cat a little; it dug into his jeans and resettled, still purring. "We'd build charges for breaching doors now and then when we had pretty good reason to think the enemy was hiding in some house.

"Shitty thing is the enemy isn't so stupid. We'd like to think of them as a bunch of dumb, backward bumpkins who think a camera will steal your soul. These are the same people that gave us algebra and numerals. Shit, they're probably more intelligent than we are, just not as technologically advanced all the time. They're undoubtedly clever little shits. You start to figure it out while you're there. Shit that is usually happening isn’t folks that are milling about stay inside. It's like the world stops breathing. Then there is violence of action, and all hell breaks loose for a bit before it all calms down again. You know it's about to go down, though, that's the thing.

"We were headed back to base, and the whole place was quiet. We saw the kid with the box of kittens up ahead, and they're out of the box walking around, and he's trying to put them back in the box. We're driving slow, heads on swivels, looking for where it's going to come from when the first truck gets shot. It might have been the driver panicking and hitting the brakes; it might have been something else, but they lit it up. The driver probably could have just sped through it, but he didn't. The gunner finally started returning fire, and suddenly, the kid was running toward the stopped trucks with the empty-looking box.

"Dogface rolled out of the truck like it was nothing, and he shot the kid in the chest, then the box blew up, and shrapnel and pieces of the kid are flying through the air. Then Dogface was shot to hell, our gunners returned fire from their mounts, and then it was over. We grabbed Dogface and dragged him back into the truck, and the trucks sped back through the gate.

"We all piled out of the trucks pumped full of adrenaline and fear. Docs came running to take care of a gunner and Dogface. I looked around and saw the rest of the squad checking themselves out. Guys were checking to see if their balls were still there, or maybe that they didn't piss themselves. Tony had been driving the other truck. He was crying and rocking back and forth. His TC was yelling at him, and Tony wasn't looking anywhere but inside his head. He was in that black phase where the body shuts down. Fucking Tony Tomasetti. I would never have thought it would be him.

"Dogface died. The gunner lived. I couldn't sleep, so I walked around the base a little. I got to the gate area, and this little kitten was walking around and begging for food mostly. Folks telling it to go away or gently scratching it. Others were not paying the kitten any attention. I walked up to it, and it gave me this cute ass little meow. So, I picked it up and brought it back to my little corner of the base. Tony was there; he had stopped crying; he wasn't talking. I sat down near him, holding the kitten.

"'I killed Dogface,' Tony just says it. I start to protest, and he just repeats it. 'I killed Dogface because I panicked.' Then he looks at the kitten. 'That thing'll give you fleas, and you'll be itching in your armor.' I look at it again, and it's looking back up at me with blue eyes. 'It doesn't have fleas.' I said to the kitten, 'you don't have fleas, do you?' It meowed at me. 'Ah, shit, what are you going to name it?'

"I didn't answer all that fast, but I said, 'Dogface,' which might have been in poor taste, but at the time, I was thinking about how ironic it would be to have a cat named Dogface. So, I gave it pieces of my MREs, which are close enough to cat food most of the time anyway. I wasn't thinking about how I would bring it back stateside, but it turned out there were organizations that would help for some money. So, I paid them, and they got the kitten fixed, all the necessary shots, and delivered her to my home of record. When we finished the deployment, I got in the back of the big ass plane again and went back home. It's not like we were flying commercial.

"We knew we'd be landing in Bangor, Maine on our way back stateside. It was like an eight-hour drive from 'Toga, so I told my folks, who came to see me. They brought Dogface; it turned out she didn't have fleas. I couldn't keep her when I was out-processing, so my family watched her 'til my time was up. Then I went home permanently. Tony stayed a little longer; then he came home too. But he wasn't the same guy; he wasn't sleeping; he drank too much. I mean, I drink too much; sometimes, we'd drink too much together. Get to talking. Get to remembering. One day Tony says, 'you know, that kid was taking the kittens out of the box, setting them to the side so that they wouldn't blow up too. Who does that shit? Blows themselves up trying to kill people, but saves cats?'

"I don't have an answer to that. Nobody does. Who uses kids and women to fight battles? Who hides behind the innocent? That's why Tony wasn't sleeping. He wasn't functioning; he no longer had a purpose. All the questions and memories and bullshit swimming around in his head. I'm fucked up, but I'm sleeping. I have a purpose. Drinking just helps kill the memories, which are tough sonuvabitches to kill. But guilt has a way of killing your reason to be. It killed Tony's; the rest of the world moved on without him, so he well, you know. That's why you're talking to those of us still around. He kept seeing that kid blow up. The parts of him traveling through the air and splattering all over his mentor. Tony said a lot: all he had to do was keep moving, and everyone would be okay, which may or may not be valid. We don't ever know shit about what's going to happen.

"We know shit's going to happen; it's how you move on from the shit and learn to deal that means you grow. Either way, memory never leaves you alone. I'll always remember Dogface, Tony, Rojawski, Kingsley, and all those guys, even if I never see them again in life or death. I can't forget them. But I have a purpose, even if it eats stinky food and shits in a box."