The Nix(114)

Anyway, they don’t talk politics much. None of them do. It’s sort of beside the point.

One time Chucky tried to get them to open the portals in the Bradley so that during the trip he could watch the horizon and keep his bearings, which he said would help with the dizziness and vomiting. But that argument went nowhere because if the portals came off then it wouldn’t be dark inside the Bradley and they couldn’t sleep, and also because the portals are covered with armor, and no one wants to sacrifice any armor at all given the number of mines and bombs and snipers they’d encountered thus far. Chucky pointed out that the Bradley was equipped with several M231 assault rifles that are expressly designed to fit through the portals (they are basically M16s without the front sighting assembly, which is too tall to fit inside the portal, and a much shorter stock, because the inside of a Bradley is pretty narrow) and Chucky asked didn’t the mere existence of the M231 imply that they should have the external portals open so they could shoot through them? Bishop said he was impressed with Chucky’s logic, even if it was transparently self-serving. Anyway, the commander of the Bradley, whose name is actually Bradley but whose nickname is “Baby Daddy” for the several families back home he joined the army to get away from, decided that the armor would stay. He said, “If you have protection you’d be a fool not to use it,” which was pretty funny coming from him.

So one would think with the vomiting and the brittle knowledge of world events and the constant whining about the closed firing portals that Chucky would be a prime candidate for pariah status. Given how many times they have to go somewhere in the back of a Bradley, Chucky should be very unpopular indeed. But that’s not how it works. Chucky is roundly loved and adored and has been ever since this one midnight raid on a suspected enemy compound when his night-vision goggles broke, and instead of falling back like any of them would have done he kept on opening doors and clearing rooms with a goddamn flashlight. Which in an operation like that might as well have been a giant neon sign that said Shoot Me! Seriously, the courage of this kid is off the charts. He once told Bishop that the only thing worse than being shot at is when the people shooting run away. And Bishop really thought that Chucky would prefer the enemy stand still while trying to kill him rather than not try to kill him at all. So everyone loves Chucky. And it’s clear they do because they keep calling him Chucky, which is a nickname that maybe to an outsider sounds cruel for the way it ribs someone for his greatest personal flaw, but what it actually does is acknowledge that they accept this person and love this person despite that flaw. It’s a very male way of expressing unconditional love. All of this goes unsaid, naturally.

Plus there is the thing about the girl. Chucky’s primary conversational topic: Julie Winterberry. Everyone likes hearing about her. Hands down the most beautiful girl in Chucky’s whole high school, the girl who won every relevant queen-type prize a girl could win, who ran the table four years in a row, a face that launched a thousand erections, a girl whose beauty didn’t cause the usual nervous sniggering among the teenage boys but rather an almost physical pain that biting the inside of one’s cheek was sometimes an effective cure for. The boys were despondent if she did not look at them, shattered if she did. Chucky has a photo, a senior portrait, that he passes around and everyone has to agree that he is not exaggerating. Julie Winterberry. He says it with church-like reverence. The thing about Julie Winterberry is that Chucky had always been so intimidated by her beauty that he’d never spoken to her. She didn’t even know his name. Then they graduated high school and he went to basic training, where he had the most punishing drill sergeant in the history of the U.S. Armed Forces, after which he figured if he could overcome that *, he could talk to Julie Winterberry. She didn’t seem like much of a challenge anymore, not after basic. So in those few weeks he was home before deployment he asked her on a date. And she said yes. And now they’re in love. She even sends him dirty pictures of herself that everyone begs Chucky to show that he will not show. People are literally on their hands and knees, begging.

What everyone likes about the story is the part where he finally asks out the girl. Because the way Chucky tells it, it’s not like he had to work up the courage to do it. It’s more like it no longer required courage to do. Or maybe he discovered that he had plenty of courage all along, inside him, ready to be used, and everyone likes imagining that. They hope the same thing has happened to them, too, because they are occasionally terrified out of their minds over here, and they hope when the time comes for them to be brave, they will be brave. And it’s nice to think that they have this well of courage inside that can get them through the impossible things ahead.

If a kid like Chucky could land a girl like Julie Winterberry, surely they can make it through one lousy war.

They ask him to tell about it especially when they’re on clean-up, which is just about the biggest injustice of this war, that soldiers sometimes have to clean up the remains of suicide bombers. Imagine hunting around for body parts with a burlap bag oozing slop that looks like the inside of a pumpkin. And the road is baking in the sun and so the random pieces of flesh aren’t only sitting there but actually literally cooking. That smell: blood and meat and cordite. When they’re doing this, they ask Chucky to tell them about Julie Winterberry. It passes the time.

Eventually Baby Daddy struck a deal with Chucky that he could ride up top next to the gunner. Of course this is against regulations because a person standing where Chucky stands interferes with the movement of the M242. But Baby Daddy was willing to go against regulations in this one instance because it’s better than having to smell Chucky’s puke every time. So Chucky gets to ride up top where he can watch the horizon in that way he needs to do to avoid motion sickness, with the tacit agreement that if any shit goes down he needs to drop into the cargo area pronto. Which he’d have no problem doing because no one wants to be near the M242 when it’s firing. That thing can tear up an SUV like it’s tissue paper. The bullets are as long as Chucky’s forearm.