| Writing Samples - Short Stories "The Bad Hitch" |
| The Bad Hitch Short Story by Glenn A. Bruce September came and went for Lance Corporal Sherry Purvis. Her military-appointed lawyer had promised early release on bail by the end of summer, but here it was officially Fall plus one month and Sherry was still pacing the same eight by ten foot cell she had occupied since early February. Many, many times she had asked herself how she got here in the first place, and just as many times she had no answer. Sherry’s unit had been patrolling a particularly violent neighborhood south of Baghdad looking for a small band of insurgents which had been reported by a young boy as the six who had murdered his favorite uncle. The boy called in on a neighbor’s cell phone, his voice shaking with fear that the renegades would learn of his call and kill him as well. Sherry’s commanding officer, a Captain Jennings, assured the boy that he was safe, that the U.S. Army would protect him, and further, that the soldiers in his platoon would find the bad men and kill them before they could hurt anyone else. Ten minutes later, Jennings received another call saying that the boy was dead—murdered by the same six men who had killed his favorite uncle. Jennings was so angry, he circumvented procedure to load up the Humvees with his men and woman—Sherry— and go looking for the band of murderous insurgents that minute. With no real plan, the whole operation felt hinky as hell to Sherry, who had had it drummed into her that a soldier always goes by the book to the letter! But what was a Lance Corporal to do? Amazingly, the soldiers stumbled on the band of six in less than twenty minutes and a firefight ensued. Sherry’ s best pal, Ernie Meadows from New Jersey, got hit in the neck during the first salvo and was dead before he hit the ground. Another soldier who had just joined their team took a minor wound to the shoulder, but was able to continue fighting. Several bullets crashed into a wall right next to Sherry, and some brick dust got into her right eye, blurring her vision slightly. Then Jennings gave the order: “In!” That was all he said, all he had to say, and in they went. The house was small, dark and musty, but well-appointed for the area. Despite the adrenaline pumping through her veins like a wildcatter’s dream well, Sherry noticed the lovely Persian rugs and delicate tea set on the table even as the gunfire erupted around her. Her team was on a mission of misplaced mercy and dead bodies were imminent. Sherry did what she was trained to do, what anyone in a similar situation would do when the men she depended upon for survival, to continue her own life, began firing: She began firing. The tea set exploded. Framed photos on the walls rained shards of glass. Furniture ceased to exist. The Persian rug soaked up blood like a new sponge. Everyone was dead—six militants, and a family of five. A review board determined that Captain Jennings had failed to follow procedure—but only as far as putting the operation in motion. Otherwise, he had lead his men, and Sherry, brilliantly. In nothing short of record time, he had located six armed, murderous thugs, insurgents probably, and taken them out. Jennings had no way of knowing that the men who were shooting at him, who had killed one of his men and wounded another, had taken refuge in the home of an innocent family. So, when he acted quickly and decisively, ordering his men, and Sherry, to rush the refuge, Captain Jennings was doing exactly what was expected of him by the U.S. Army who had sworn to protect a little boy. The dead, innocent family of five was, as always, only collateral damage. To be expected. What was unexpected was the indignation by the neighbors of the collaterally damaged family, their extended, still living family, the local government—such as it was—the Arab press, the international press, the American press, and most amazingly, the President. Of the United States. The Commander in Chief! The next thing Sherry knew she was not the heroine her fellow soldiers had been calling her and the other heroes of her platoon; no, she was a prisoner, being held on five counts of murder. She was not a heroine at all, it seemed, but rather a villain. Or a scapegoat. In a whirlwind of chaotic “investigations,” following the incident, Sherry was questioned nineteen times by seven different groups of interrogators. Two of those groups were Iraqis. Her platoon mates received the same treatment. But apparently, they told different stories than hers. When the winds of outrage died down and the chaff of secondhand information was well strewn, a story emerged—or was created—of great courage and cowardice. The consensus of the military men who stormed the refuge house was that Lance Corporal Sherry Purvis had frozen up. In that split second that determines the positive or deadly outcome of a tight military operation, Sherry had hesitated. While her fellow soldiers were engaging, immediately, with the enemy, Sherry stood by idly. Then, and only then, startled by the burst of weapons fire around her—after her comrades had already killed the six insurgents, did Sherry open fire, killing the five innocent family members. Not the story Sherry had relayed. When questioned directly on this version of the events, Sherry could not “truthfully say”, as she was asked to, whether or not this had happened. The small, dark rooms were full of blurred movement, hideously loud gunfire, blinding smoke, acrid smells, copious amounts of blood. And body parts. Several of the victims—and she did make the mistake of referring to all of the dead as “victims”—had been so viciously shot up that hands, arms, legs and a head had been torn away from the lifeless bodies entirely. Sherry wasn’t sure who was who in the melee and had no way of recalling such. One of the J.A.G. prosecutors, a bland woman with an unctuous smile, asked Sherry if she considered all of the enemy as “victims?” Sherry replied, “Only the dead ones, I guess.” This answer seemed to be the one that sealed her fate. Whatever her fate was to become. But were not dead and wounded soldiers, all soldiers in any conflict, victims of war? We looked at our dead soldiers as victims. Didn’t we? We mourned their loss. We grieved with and for their families. We hung flags at half-mast and played taps with great sobriety. We fired seven and twenty-one gun salutes. We buried our fallen comrades with sad lament. Didn’t the enemy do the same? After World War II, did not our surviving soldiers—heroes, all—travel across the oceans to meet their counterparts in Normandy and Iwo Jima with respect and sorrow? Did they not shed tears over their losses, as well as the overpowering sadness and unending horrors of war? And this over a war that pretty much everyone on the planet felt was a necessary war! Not a war that more than two-thirds of the victorious countries thought unnecessary, unwarranted and maybe even illegal? Hadn’t all of this been aired on television and viewed by just about everyone in America? Didn’t this smarmy prosecutor-ette own a television? Probably a wide screen plasma model! None of it made any sense. Why would the Army single out a single woman, a Lance Corporal with a clean, if not exemplary, record. And so what if Sherry had not sought every opportunity to advance in the military? She and just about every other soldier she knew had enlisted for the college money. She had only ever met one or two gung-ho sociopaths who had actually joined for the opportunity to kill! Who wanted to go to war. Then it came out that Sherry had had an affair with an officer. A scarlet-O was tattooed on her, never to be erased. The man, a lieutenant she met in her first deployment, was only a year older than she, was single, and was from her home state of Missouri. They had a lot in common. They got along well. They talked about getting married and having kids. Then his Bradley got hit by a roadside I.E.D. and any future they had considered was moot. But by the time the Pentagon leaked the story, Sherry was a hussy! A tart! A slut! A little Army whore gold- digger, wooing a poor Lieutenant away from his betrothed, Back Home. “He was engaged?” Sherry asked the handsome black prosecutor who was kindly badgering her. “He never told me that.” To the contrary, the young lieutenant had told her that after the war he was thinking that he might like to marry Sherry. Now, she was being told that he was already promised to another? This tidbit of bad news was almost worse than finding out she was being blamed for the murder of five, innocent family members! Barry was engaged?! Sherry paced her cell, often for hours at a time, trying her hardest to understand how any of this was even possible. When the incident in South Baghdad occurred, she was nearing the end of her hitch—just nine weeks to go. But here it was, almost November, some six months later, and Sherry was pacing, alone, in a military prison in Saudi Arabia—a country where women were not allowed to drive. Because Sherry was a woman, being held in this backwards desert empire, she was sequestered in a wing away from the male detainees. So, the only people she ever saw or conversed with were the MPs who brought her meals, led her to the showers every third day and guarded the doors while she bathed, and lawyers, most of whom were trying, it seemed, to get her sent to Leavenworth, at best, and at worst, get her sent to Leavenworth to sit on death row while she awaited a public beheading. Jennings, Sherry had read in a rare Stars and Stripes, had received a silver star and a promotion. She noticed, however, at the end of the article, almost as an afterthought, the writer—or propagandist, as she preferred to think—mentioned that Jennings had also been transferred out of active duty. No doubt a placation for the Iraqis. Damned Iraqis, she found herself thinking. We come over here to help them, to liberate them, and they hate us for it. They condemn us for it! They try to kill us for it! Then, that would pass and she would find herself hating her own President for starting this damned war to begin with. Who did he think he was? God? And then singling her out for international damnation! Eventually, that too would pass and she would focus her rage on the J.A.G. prosecutors and the D.I.A. investigators and that damned Sgt. Minors, the prick who always slammed her tin plate on the floor, called her a traitor, and tried to peep on her in the shower. Thank God! there was Corporal Timmet. He was as kind a human being as Sherry had ever met. What in the name of Hell! he was doing in the U.S. Army was beyond her. But it was probably why he was here instead of active combat. Anyone could see he didn’t have the heart for killing. Wayne—Corporal Timmet—would say, “You ask me, you’re gettin’ a raw deal, here.” He wouldn’t say it loudly, because you never knew who was listening, or how. Maybe there were hidden microphones or microwave listening devices everywhere. He had only just arrived in the last few weeks, but was a breath of fresh air. He was so down to earth and up front. He was the only guard who really took any time to talk with Sherry. Just to sit down and chat. Apparently, his superiors didn’t mind, or didn’t know. He once told her that he would tell his Captain that he was taking out the trash, or washing the General’s jeep—some lie so that he could spend a few minutes with his “favorite prisoner.” After so many months of abject loneliness and stark lack of contact with the outside world, Sherry felt her endorphins kick in every time she heard Wayne’s footsteps in the hall. He walked lighter than any of the other guards. He didn’t tromp down the hall in his combat boots, like that prick Minors, or any of the other stone- serious guards. Wayne “walked like a normal person.” That’s what she told him. And he almost blushed. Thankfully, he didn’t ask her anything about the incident for almost two weeks, not until he sensed that she was willing to discuss it. By that point, Sherry was hungry to discuss it! The only people she’d been able to tell her story to were the damned, greedy prosecutors and others eager to make hay while the sun was out by making her the object of scorn—and get their superiors off the hook. “Bastards are out to get me, Wayne,” Sherry would tell her laid-back listener. “Yep. Ask me, you’re gettin’ a raw deal, here,” he would say. “I honestly don’t remember what happened,” Sherry would say. “Believe me, I’ve gone over it a million times in my head. Sometimes, it seems like I go over it a million times in a day, for days on end. But every time it comes out the same: We went in, there was a half-second of quiet, then someone fired, then everyone fired, and I fired with them, just another half-second later. “Then, everyone was dead,” she ended. “That’s it?” Wayne would ask. “That’s all,” Sherry would answer. And for the life of her she couldn’t figure out why her fellow soldiers had ratted her out. Wayne asked, “Why would say they ratted you out?” “What do you mean?” “Well, I mean, ratting someone out usually means that they did something wrong and you’re telling someone else that they did it. You’re ratting them out on what they did that was wrong.” “So?” Sherry didn’t get what he was getting at. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why would you say they ratted you out?” This was the first moment that Sherry had her suspicions about Wayne’s integrity, his true purpose there in her cell, his friendly conversations, his questions, and why he was the only one of the fifty or more guards she had seen at one time or another during her six months of incarceration in Saudi who ever deigned to converse with her at all! She considered her next answer carefully. Then she said, “Because we all did it. We all shot everyone. We all did the wrong thing—while we were doing the right thing. But I’m the only one getting blamed for it.” Sherry eyed Wayne very closely to try and read his thoughts. But Corporal Timmet—if he even was a corporal—was not one to show you very much, she decided. So, she waited until he spoke. “Well,” he finally said, “maybe it’s because you’re a woman. Maybe they didn’t like you being there. You’re not one of them.” “I’m a soldier, trained just the same way they were.” “But you’re a woman.” “They don’t like women?” “Not with guns.” Sherry felt both regret and revulsion—at the whole thing. That she had joined the Army, that she had learned to kill, and had killed. That she had befriended men who would, apparently, turn on her because of her genitalia. That she had no better memory of what had really happened in that house that day. That she hadn’t maybe even ratted out one of the other guys in her platoon, maybe the new guy. That she had opened up to Corporal Wayne Timmet who always had the convenient excuses which now in hindsight seemed so completely unlikely to be believed by anyone, much less the Captain in charge of this military prison! “Wayne,” Sherry told her sole confidant, “I’m tired. I think I’d like to take a nap.” “Sure,” Wayne said, standing. He started to leave, then turned back. Sherry was now lying down, facing away, towards the blank wall. “You know,” he said, “two of the guys, Rowland and Simms, said the same thing.” Then, he left, and never came back. Sherry stared at the wall for twenty minutes before she finally broke down and cried—the first time she had cried in her entire six months in this desert shit hole. Two months later, Lance Corporal Sherry Purvis received a dishonorable discharge and a demotion. She was processed and de-briefed in 24-hours and was on a plane back to Missouri—at her expense—the next day. The press barely reported the story, except to say that it was over. The Pentagon made sure of that. Sherry had mixed feelings about her service duty and Wayne Timmet until the birth of her first child two years later, a girl named Amanda. Then, her priorities changed. |
