Free Carnivore by Dillard Johnson

yet, and Sully kept screwing with me. He’d draw a circle in the sand around himself and dare me to cross it. “It’s my line in the sand. What are you going to do?” he’d taunt me.
    So I’d get him and I’d roll him up in the circle. I’d give him a big wedgie and I’d make him eat the desert sand, and then he’d do it all over again. I put his face in the sand again and said, “No more circles, right? We’re done with circles?” I’m not tall, but I’m stocky and have a lot of muscle underneath the padding. Plus, I like to fight.
    â€œYeah, we’re done, Sergeant Jay. We’re done.” And I’d let that fucker up and he’d rinse his mouth out and he’d draw a square. “You didn’t say nothin’ about squares.” So then we’d go again. That went on for about four hours. Me rollin’ him up, him drawing squares, stars, isosceles triangles, octagons . . .
    W hen we’d packed everything up in the States to ship over to Kuwait, I bought Copenhagen, Mountain Dew, gum—small everyday things. I always kept extra stuff inside the Bradley to square other people away, because, you know, when somebody runs out of their dip they’re really hurting. It’s always nice to be able to pitch them a can of dip or something else that lifts their spirits. That’s why I had the coffeepot in the Bradley. Guys could always count on coming over and being able to get a warm cup of coffee or play a video game. I was the senior Scout, and guys from the different platoons could come over, sit down, and relieve a little stress. We called it the Crazy Horse Café.
    Coffee wasn’t coffee. Coffee was normalcy. Coffee was a little bit of America in an alien place. Coffee was forgetting your troubles, if only for a few minutes. Just sitting there with your crew, your buddies, talking about nothing for as long as possible, which was never long enough. If you haven’t been there, you just can’t understand.
    I also bought a bunch of Mountain Dew for my guys. Mountain Dew was the Red Bull of the day, and I shipped a lot of it over there. I would always tell the guys, “Don’t ever drink the last soda. You can drink all the Dew you want, but don’t drink the last soda.” Well, we were getting ready to move into the desert before going into Iraq, and I looked in the Bradley and saw the last Mountain Dew was gone.
    â€œWhere the fuck is the last Mountain Dew?”
    Jason Sperry, my driver, and Sully were up in front. I asked them, “Which one of you fucking guys took it?”
    They both chimed in, “It wasn’t us.”
    I said, “Get them shovels.”
    â€œAwwww.” So they’re diggin’. “How big?” they asked me.
    I told them, “I want to be able to put the Bradley hull down.” I was really pissed.
    They said, “What?”
    I said, “Hull down. I don’t even want to see the turret anymore. I want you that fucking deep.” In case you’re wondering, a Bradley is just over nine feet tall.
    So they’re digging and digging and digging. About 35 minutes later, they walked down to the tent. “Sergeant Jay, we found your Mountain Dew and you owe us an apology.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou owe us an apology.”
    I said, “All right. Explain this to me.”
    They walked me over to the Bradley, and they had a half-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. You could tell where they crawled underneath the Bradley and stuck it underneath the ramp, at the gap of the ramp. They just set it on the ground there, and they’re pointing underneath the ramp: “Look, there it is. It fell through the gap.”
    Well, I’m the guy who shipped over all the Mountain Dew from the States, and what I shipped over was cans. I told them, “Uh, guys? That last Mountain Dew was in a can.”
    â€œNo, Sergeant Jay. It was in a bottle.