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Ch IV
Specialist Maximus Goldenplaith rides on golden warmth. In his left hand, he can just feel the injector used to put the morphine into his leg. He could let it go. He could do lots of things. Instead, though he is still and peaceful and closer to God than he has ever been; that or, he has never been this high before. He feels the H in his veins like fire. But not a burning fire, one that seeks to destroy, but a soothing warmth that licks and heals. He is asleep. So this may be a dream. But he is not dead. And neither is she.
Hello Max.
She is amazing and looming. Red and glowing. Yellow sparks pour from her as if she were being made right there in front of him. She was so large she was the sky and the moon and the sun. She had a gravity that pulled his attention. If there was more to see in this dream he wouldn’t know because she fit every bit of his sight.
"Who are you?" he asks the words in a whisper. He is almost afraid that she won’t answer but she does.
I am the Mother of All.
“The Mother of God?”
She doesn’t answer but the warmth grows and grows heading toward ecstasy until he is disturbed by the squeaky voice of one of the new privates. It mumbles and talks over her. He is afraid to miss her next command. She is the vessel that holds his lord Jesus Christ.
Whether he admits it, since birth, he has been trained to wait for the coming. He would have left the West Coast to get away from that bullshit if the government didn’t draft his high school dropout self.
The End is Neigh! Fucking bullshit, especially after what he saw hell in Vietnam. If Jesus is waiting for something worse than what The U.S. Military did to that country he’s never coming. His mother’s group were willing to do things to make this happen. If those small atrocities couldn’t compare.
I want you to rebuild my shrine in the mountains.
But then she goes all wrong, like a dream that’s ended because sleep was disturbed.
She is still talking but her voice is booming and large. He can’t pull the words free. The buzzing warmth in his veins grows. It is almost orgasmic. He has always known Jesus would one day come to him. He thinks of the old promise, the bedtime wish his mom promised him, “If anything happens to Daddy or me, expect Jesus to come. He will take care of you, Max. Jesus provides. Remember that, Jesus provides.”
Thoughts of his mother shuffle over each other. Overlapping. All of the promises.
From birth to her grave. When the memories fade he is left looking at the same Jesus he has been looking at images of all his life. Bearded, rosy cheek, blue twinkling eyes, tall; wearing thick white wool robes.
He approaches Goldenplaith and lays a hand on his shoulder, you need to find me. His voice is warm. Not fatherly but filled with uncompromising love.
He is not having a dream, per se. He feels the hand on his shoulder like a red-hot iron.
“Where are you,” he screams.
You will always know what to do to find me. I am in your blood. I am in your heart and brain. I will show you how to find me whenever you want. To find whatever you need.
He had used the moment he was alone on the LPOP. His opinion has always been three hours is no amount of time to endure cold, wet, and sleepiness without help. The irony is he is getting high off the army's own supply. Not anything like the street shit. If they sold the shit the army put in med pouches the lines would be a mile long. But never as good as this shit never.
Vietnam introduced him to the comfort-first mentality, where fear and uncertainty were distractions, it took some help, but he learned. Morphine was a great motivator. A great pharmaceutical time machine. And now back in Asia just on the other side, he was a little more than a year away from his ETS, again. The dreaded service end date. After that, he'll be a civilian again. So, he plans on doing as little as possible, except look for alternatives, until that final day comes. You’re not dead until you’re dead. He remembers that last night with his parents so vividly, the smell of joints burning, coffee dripping into a decanter. Dirt and body odor, tooth decay. Men and women who saw a problem and came up with a solution, albeit a stupid one.
To escape his fundamentalist relatives the second time it took some forged documents, a waiver, and a letter from an old commander to get him back in. “I miss the military, not the Nam. Promise.” But it started almost as soon as he got off the plane in Frankfurt. Took him a month to find Pedan Barracks. He got lost in Frankfurt and then wandered down the Rhine for a bit. Learned where the cracks were in German society. Cracks where the shit oozes out. He wasn’t worried about being AWOL because he’ll have an excuse, another unit picked up. Took me all the way to Munich, sorry captain. He moved from troop to troop. It helps to keep the feet itchy to avoid too much of a reputation. Eventually, he made it to his new command and he got stood at attention in front of the first commander.
The captain looked at Goldensplaith’s CIB, insisted on a war story, and dismissed him after a few good ones. He did not tell him the one about the time he fell out of a patrol, took a nap, and avoided being wiped out by a Viet-kong ambush. The good times.
His CIB made him a God in an army where the only fighting was done about theory based on losing war. He built up so many excuses and profiles, left grudges in his wake like boobytraps, and hastily made deals that the last eight years have been a battle.
Still, stripes remained elusive. Stripes meant he could stay another ten.
Ten years later and everything he had “worked” for was almost gone; if he weren’t sitting in a water-drenched ranger grave with a chubby pogue. It’s the best he could have hoped for. When he gets rotated back to Germany he will be in over eleven years. And with that and the combat experience of two wars he might still make a go at twenty.
One day he wishes to thank Saddam, in person, for all this. He hopes the war goes on for decades so he can ride this wave the whole time. He recognized immediately his mistake the first time, he happily left the service when his two years were up. This war there will be no mistake, he knows the most crucial part now, never leave. The Army is home now. It has everything he could possibly ever need.
To get this score, he aimed for a private scribbling words on a pad of paper. Letter home. He sat close and could feel the young guy tense. Then he started, “Nobody wants to be having a hard time, be thinking too much about what waits over the berm and that somewhere behind, where the rear echelon motherfuckers roam, bodybags may have already been earmarked by fate, especially for him.” So that’s what Goldenplaith talks about. He talks into the Private’s ear. Like he and the private are friends. He talks dirty and loud and laughs in horrible guffaws until he has the morphine from the soldier's first aid pack tucked in his cargo pocket. He leaves a marker to show he had been there though, by pulling the pocket inside out on the load-carrying vest, because the plan doesn't work without the dude going down for a crime. He needs to be kicking and screaming on his way towards some kind of administrative action. The Army loves their administrative actions so it is a win for everybody.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
He has more of his Germany stash and the Army shit to wake up to in the morning. And that’s all a junkie needs, a plan for tomorrow. Except this isn’t his first time with Army shit. It’s never this good. He honestly thought he’d be able to do a bit more and be fine on duty wrapped in the extra sleeping bag he nabbed.
Jesus switches back and forth morphing slowly from one to the other. Find me, she says before being replaced with Jesus who says, You are my John, my sword.
He prefers Jesus to be fair to the pretty red lady. He always felt like he was supposed to be more important than a shovel pusher or munitions loader.
Life showed him what to expect early when his older, by four years, brother came back in a pine box from Southeast East Asia. Goldenplaith keeps the folded-up flag in his kit bag, he always brings it with him no matter where he goes.
He never had much before he joined. Or after for that matter. The Ridge did try and give him Jesus. Jesus is the why his family killed for. There was only one way to worship too, the Ridge-way.
After his brother was killed in action, his parents activated their terrorist cell and began blowing shit up. With their first bomb, they took out a federal building in Charleston. Killed a bunch of FBI agents, some kids, along with a beloved deli.
They did not last long after that, but they didn’t need to be active for long.
Building after building, almost everything on their hit list. All within a few hour's drive of Huntington, West Virginia, and until the last of their group was taken out. They had a pact, do not get arrested. And they honored that pact right down to the last person to fall. His Mom. If success had continued for them they would have ended up in D.C. and there all hell was supposed to break loose.
But it didn’t.
They left him access to their place out in the hills. Off the Ohio River, a perfect, isolated haven for strict fundamentalists. Only thing he got.
Maybe it’s time you go back there. They might like to know you’ve discovered Jesus waiting to be rescued. Rescued to usher in the end of mankind's time on Earth. You are to send them disciples. Send them the ignorant, and I will be their knowledge. Send them the addicted and I will be their drug. Send me the lazy or broken and I will find a use for them.
Our Lord Our All-Mother.
He never thought he’d go back there again. If the Army works out, he is set; otherwise, he’ll need to make plans, but not for that place.
Land held by rumor, a group of family protecting it, looking after the place. Almost like stepping back into time. Trailers without electricity. No indoor plumbing. Every home had a garden and there wasn’t any need to go to town ever. Town comes to them. Winding roads and hidden homes, he got up to 13 there and should have been in the 8th grade, but the Ridge didn’t do things like that. They did educate but the education was reading the bible and repeating the group think, aloud and often. Memorization not being the goal, but living the ideal of the message. Beatings. Capital punishment all promised if the Reverend thought you failed the group. Funny how out of all the extremists his old ass was the one to survive. He still has it, every single word trapped in his noodle. The goal was to repeat it perfect and Goldenplaith was never perfect and has the scars to prove it.
And again Fugger nudges him and Goldenplaith has to fight hard to let him live.
No, stupid, he is also one of the Lord’s children.
If Goldenplaith could guess at the private's number one wish, it would be for an official excuse for no PT. He could help him too. Point out it's the back, private. Doctors don’t want to fuck with it. Surgery is done by quacks. You get good pills and a permanent profile and eventually, if you can prove it, government support like a Medal of Honor winner.
He hasn’t offered. That's peacetime army shit. War is a time to watch your own back, never volunteer, but always look busy, and aim to not go home this time.
Goldenplaith smokes a pack a day of Camel Lights a day and is jonesing for one. By far he is the worst soldier in second troop at PT. So far his main contribution to the military is malingering. And Goldenplaith treats that occupation with reverence and knows if there is too much weight on the teeter-totter, it won’t teeter-totter no more.
And he likes to teeter-totter.
Malingering isn't just avoiding work but avoiding the appearance of not doing work. Take sandbag duty. Goldenplaith likes getting lost in the crowd. Handing of shovels after only one or two stabs at the dirt. He was an expert at handing it away moments after getting it himself.
It’s an act easier for an E-4 especially after he points his CIB at them. But Goldenplaith did the dance better than most, fooled the NCO in charge of a detail by annoying the shit out of him with complaints about how he fucked up hid detail was, “This shit will get some killed, huh sir? Man, we should safety vests on at the bare minimum if we are going to work this close to the road, huh sir?"
The lieutenant was an idiot because all lieutenants were idiots. A sergeant would find a Private and grind his ass and promise hell on Earth for failing, whether he did or not. A lieutenant will look like he is about to cry and then beg Goldenplaith to go get whatever he needs.
His excuse worked for digging and standing and walking. His back “problems” with lifting more than five pounds. Just so happens that his LCD, weapon, and helmet weigh under that, or so he was told by his senior NCO, "Keep wearing it." So he did.
For him, the night is cold and wet but peaceful. It reminds him of hunting boar.
And then he is home in the hills with his big brother doing just that. Its night. No moon. Dark as pitch. A soon-to-be dead boar between his brother's knees.
“You know Max, sometimes it's moments like this. Finding the thing you most want, that makes it all worth it.” Then a hunting knife flashes down, resulting in violent squeals from the trapped boar.
“The lord giveth if you are ready and when you are not. Remember to wait. He says tossing the full scrotum into the dirt by Goldenplaith’s feet.”
“Goldenplaith!” Underwood squeals and Maximus responds by reaching out to end the private right there. The dream had him home. A place he hadn’t thought about in decades, since before Vietnam. Was it a dream? It felt so real.
“Tell me your message, lord.”
Instantly he is rewarded with millions of flashing images. A history. The history of Soya and the Upu all of it and the giant crash into Earth. Except for Goldenplaith Soya was Jesus. And Jesus needed his help to get freed.
The thoughts soothe like nothing ever has. Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming Goldenplaith sits up. Fugger calls his name again. He could pretend to still be sleeping. But doubts the private will think he is doing it sitting up. Does he miss the Ridge? A horrible and wonderful place all at once. Then a third interruption.
His mouth forms the word, “what,” to answer Fugger. He squeezes his eyes shut against the involuntary desire to open them.
Goldenplaith’s eyes are beady, black soulless orbs that have the power to send anyone attempting to look deep into them turning to search for something more appealing for their gaze to land on. His nose slopes from his face like a ski jump. His chin is pointed and constantly jutting out from his thick neck like a vulture. And his body contains the strength of two normal-sized men, even though he has not done one bit to influence this since the mid-eighties.
“Goldenplaith?”
"Again, what?"
“Umm, my NVG died.”
"So what?"
"Well I can't see," he whispers back.
"There's no point. Nothing to see. Nothing. It's fucking nighttime and God is pissing on us. What help could those pieces of shit be? I can’t help you see kid, you're on your own, with that crap." Even if Goldenplaith did care, he would still be on his own.
"So..."
“Forget about it."
But instead, the kid repeats himself, "I don't have my glasses.”
Goldenplaith hears something about glasses and instantly gets annoyed with being bothered over nothing and opens his eyes to the sting of freezing rain.
“Try taking a nap dipshit. Like you can do anything about what’s going to happen.’ He’d usually add something about the chaos of the universe, but that something about it feels too spot on.
Goldenplaith does not consider himself evil or maligned for this, but something deep within wants so deeply to return to his dream about Jesus. With that, he yawns and he doesn’t want to keep his eyes open longer and lays back down. He stretches out inside his water-retardant sleeping bag rated for thirty-two degrees. Nice and toasty he starts to drift off again.
“So, what should I do?”
This time Goldenplaith does hear what is asked and instead of sadness, a hot white anger rolls up to a full boil in his chest.
"What can you do, asshole? Whatever the fuck your problem is. Whatever the fuck your name is. Do nothing. It’ll work itself out," he hisses and rolls over onto his side with a snort and tries to shut off his brain. But adds, as an impulse, “Or I’ll kill you. The decision’s yours.”
And with the threat The Universe, also known as Soya Yee, stops trying to take control of Specialist Max Goldenplaith because he keeps taking her over and adding his own flavor to his devotion to her.