Read by Will Teller
Here’s a little secret: The Marine Corps needs enemies. It lives for them. Whether it’s banzai charging Japanese, Chinese hordes or boogeyman Viet Cong—it doesn’t matter. And when it can’t find an enemy? The Marine Corps eats its young. And for Lieutenant Colonel “Mad Mike” Madigan, Battalion Commander Lieutenant Francis Keane is perfect.
It all starts back in August of ’91, just before the first Persian Gulf War, on deployment to Okinawa, when one of Keane’s Lance Criminals punches out an NCO over a bargirl. “Alcohol related”, as the logbook duly notes. Keane saves his ass from the brig. Mad Mike goes high and to the right. Because when the old man says ‘circle the wagons’—you circle the goddamn wagons.
As payback, Keane suffers every shit job and indignity, until finally exiled to the BOQ, the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters and put in “hack”, a kind of house arrest, for violating the 7th General Order of the Sentry—“to talk to no one except in the line of duty”—while serving as Officer of the Day. And so, into exile Keane goes, like some Biblical mystic, alone and barefoot.
Yet Mad Mike’s humiliations seem only to intensify Keane’s fame. And it’s the way Keane bears his wounds, bordering on insubordination, that makes Mad Mike absolutely lose his shit. Keane is like the limestone caves riddling the mountains surrounding their Okinawan base, where doomed Japanese took cover from the Marine fury during the war, to be blasted out by satchel charges and flame throwers. Mad Mike is going to bunker buster the son-of-a-bitch.
*
That February, on the eve of the ground war in the Gulf, that most blessed of Marine events since the ruin of the Viet Cong at Hue City, Mad Mike finally gets his chance, dispatching Keane and his Marines to a vacant grid coordinate, miles from the battalion now assembling along the Kuwaiti border, to load 55 gallon drums of oil onto a five-ton truck. And with each drum weighing almost 500 pounds, it’s clearly a setup. They have no forklift. No special equipment. No tools other than misappropriated youth.
And, best of all, there will be no Combat Action Ribbon for Keane and his men; instead Mad Mike’s personal ‘fuck you’—like a hitman’s shot to the face at point blank range.
Now stripped to their t-shirts and soaked with sweat as they work, Keane’s Marines shiver in the sharp air. They talk loudly as the January sun dissolves behind an oily veil. It’s cold, dawg! They laugh; laughing off the casual brutality of being Marines; their bosses referring to them as “bodies” instead of “men”; the long absences from family. The comical pay. Yet they don’t begrudge the Marine Corps their deal—not at all. It’s far preferable to anonymous lives installing cable or drywall, invisible men from the American fringe, lives flaring hot then going cold—for now, at least, they are Marines. And if that demands a ruined back or a nagging limp from loading oil drums in a far off desert, well then, so be it.
Keane lends his own back to the task just like anyone else. One more swingin’ dick. Just another body.
Then something shifts in the air, almost imperceptibly. The Marines snap to; focusing like dogs catching scent of a threat, noses twitching, tails erect. In the distance: the sound of a groaning diesel engine.
Keane stands carefully, using the truck bumper for support, an old man at twenty-five, and goes forward to meet the yet-unseen vehicle. Whatever, whoever it is … it isn’t a good thing.
The diesel rattles closer.
As the vehicle materializes in the pearly smoke, the Marines mass behind Keane instinctively. The Humvee’s blacked-out headlights burn flatly in the sandy gloom, stopping abruptly, as if surprised to see Keane and his men. The engine cuts with a severe finality.
The passenger door bangs open and Mad Mike tumbles out in a pale fury. Behind him, Corporal Lowe uncoils his long frame apologetically from the driver’s seat. He cautiously surveys Keane’s platoon, calculating the odds. Mad Mike is finished with the pleasantries, the possum-playing, the eggshell-walking. That shit is dead. Dead as dirt.
Mad Mike stands with hands on hips and squints, a straight-to-video Wyatt Earp before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
“Jesus Christ. Buncha goddamn shitbirds …” He spits tobacco into a plastic water bottle. “… just dickin’ around. You all waitin’ on the Good Humor man?”
The Marines stare dumbly.
“Speakin’ of, where is he? Lieutenant Shitbird?”
Keane swallows hard, his throat stricken by fear as much as dehydration. “Here, sir.”
“What the fuck was that? Sound off like you got some balls, Lieutenant…”
“HERE, SIR!”
“Get over here.”
Mad Mike stabs the air with a cocktail weenie forefinger. “Right here, lad. Where I can see you …”
Keane obeys.
Mad Mike is a Kodiak tobacco man, the wad packs his lower lip defiantly; jaw set like a cartoon bulldog’s. His wintergreen and MRE coffee-sour breath blows hot in Keane’s face.
“What kind of goat-fuck you got goin’ on here, Lieutenant? I come all the way out here to check on your slippery ass and lo and behold: nobody’s wearing helmets, no flak jackets, there’s no security—you think you’re at the goddamn beach?”
Keane stands and stares; his mind an embarrassing and sudden blank.
“I asked you a question, Lieutenant. You come to attention when speaking to your commanding officer?”
Keane stiffens to attention.
“It’s just us out here, sir. We need a forklift …”
“Shut your goddamn suck, Lieutenant.” Mad Mike laughs darkly, as if remembering a private joke, and spits into his water bottle again, chasing it with a big-league slug off a can of Coke.
“You know what pisses me off most? Excuses. Especially excuses made by know-it-all sea-lawyer Lieutenants …”
The words are damp, with special emphasis placed on “Lieutenant”, reinforcing Keane’s sub-shit status; just one more insubstantial goat turd in a desert full of insubstantial goat turds. Mad Mike tosses the Coke can; matter-of-factly unholsters the .45 strapped to his chest.
“You know what this is?”
Keane stares at the weapon. “It’s a forty-five, sir.”
“No fuckin’ shit. You know what else this is? My authority. Says I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
Mad Mike chambers a round.
“You understand who’s runnin’ the show here, right?” He raises the pistol above their heads. It bangs suddenly—three times—like a judge’s gavel; the spent brass clinking onto the packed sand. “I am.”
He points the pistol accusingly at Keane.
“I find you guilty of being a disloyal fuck. Gimme your bars and get in the back of the Humvee, Lieutenant. I’m relieving you of command.”
Keane clears his throat. Considers his words.
“Sir? My father always said: you point a weapon at a man, you better be ready to kill him.”
Mad Mike leans in to Keane, his attention feral, almost carnal—under different circumstances, possibly a prelude to a kiss. But there will be no kiss. Warily, Keane waits for the ‘punchline’ as Mad Mike lets out a long, slow belch—turning to smile a pleased smile at Lowe, then back at Keane.
Wild Turkey and warm Coke: the specialty of the house, official drink of the Persian Gulf War, courtesy, no doubt, of the degenerates running the AT&T tent back at Manifa. The tang of booze lingers stubbornly in the crock-pot slurry of Mad Mike’s breath.
“That is what I think of you … and your old man …” Mad Mike attempts to re-holster his pistol. After several tries, he gives up, holding the pistol in his hand. “Fuck this dickin’ around.”
Keane dares a look at Mad Mike, a cut shorter, twenty years older and a thousand beers heavier, this raw fact slow to take hold as the first dregs of sobriety stir in Mad Mike’s head.
“Give me your bars and get in the back of the vehicle, Lieutenant. Now.”
Surely this order is rooted in an ingrained faith in the established order of things; the trappings of a rational society, a place where citizens stop at stop signs, said “Please” and “Thank you” and all Marines, well-trained, respect small pieces of metal on an officer’s collar, denoting status and rank.
This is not that place.
Keane remains silent. He smiles, with directness and simplicity—acknowledging, for a brief moment, their shared intimacy. Mad Mike waves the pistol impatiently, as if swatting an annoying bug.
“Let’s go, Lieutenant …”
Keane slaps the forty-five from Mad Mike’s hand, ejecting the round from the chamber and the magazine from the grip. He launches the magazine into the wind, watching as it sails off.
Mad Mike’s right eye twitches — almost imperceptibly. Like a drill instructor to a new recruit, Keane presents the weapon butt first to Mad Mike, whispering: “Muzzle discipline, sir.”
There is no return; Mad Mike at least understands that. He steps back from Keane, lets a defiant stream of Kodiak fly into the dirt, and announces into the darkening air: “I don’t have time to hold your hand, Lieutenant. I got a war to win. A nation to liberate. Bad guys to punish. Get that vehicle back to battalion. ASAP.”
Mad Mike wheels on his boot and bee-lines for the Humvee, barking at Lowe: “Saddle up!” Lowe refolds his body back into the cramped vehicle as Mad Mike stares straight ahead and the Humvee jars awake, does a slow U-turn and disappears into the orange-rind twilight, back to the war and the glory.
Keane watches as the Humvee melts away, its uncertain diesel growing fainter until finally, all is silent again. He turns to his Marines; they regard one another as from opposite shores, across a great gulf, in terms of rank, certainly, but also in terms of race and even class. But they understand something about each other—indefinable; something that cannot be put into mere words or even spoken aloud. Something ancient. War is inevitable; without end. You choose your sides. There are no guarantees. There will always be another Mad Mike. He’ll be there—always. And like the Marine Corps itself, Mad Mike is as immortal as the snow-globed desert dusk now surrounding them.
So while the night wind snakes across the dusty floor, Keane eyeballs the oil drums, just dark shapes now, and spits.
(c) Brian O'Hare, 2020
Brian O’Hare: The mythology of the Marine Corps always fascinated Brian — its dark promise led to the U.S. Naval Academy and six years as a Marine officer. Yet mythology often clashed with reality, driving Brian to write — to reconcile the paradox. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, he lives in Los Angeles.
William Teller is an actor, singer and storyteller. He has appeared on stage and film in dramas, comedies and musicals, and has even had a spell as a ‘scare’ actor at Blackpool Dungeon. He enjoys bringing characters to life. His storytelling skills have been displayed in festivals and fringe events, and he also lends his voice to audio and radio drama, and presented a daily radio magazine show for a community radio station.
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