Free Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin

clouds and the sky. They had a different kind of cold in Hungary than in America. A dry freeze penetrated everything and sucked all the moisture from his skin. The fatigues were useless, but Brutus didn’t really mind the cold, not as much as most people. It was definitely going to snow.
    Word on the street was that these marines from Budapest had the coziest gig in all of Europe, which was to say the coziest gig in the world. They patrolled the embassy in a city that wasn’t exactly a hotbed of international terrorism—not yet anyway—and lived in some kind of mansion up on Castle Hill that overlooked the Danube and the parliament building. Apparently they had their own private bar complete with American whiskey and a pool table with red, white, and blue felt. Brutus had to hand it to the Hungarians: talk about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. He found himself sympathizing more and more with the natives as his dissatisfaction with his own government grew. He took exception to the army’s division of labor and, as an intellectual exercise, even flirted with Marxism now and then, but had yet to consummate the relationship. His presence in Hungary provided further evidence ofcapital’s international expansion. That he had learned to appreciate the
Manifesto
while in the army made him understand why so many brothers had converted to Islam while in prison back in the sixties.
    The marines were out of uniform but neatly dressed. They walked like roosters in a mating ritual, and each carried a big bottle of Jack Daniel’s and grease-stained paper bags from McDonald’s. There were five of them—a white guy, a Latino, and two brothers, along with a white staff sergeant, who said a few curt words of introduction. Brutus did his best to appear engaged. When the staff sergeant got done flapping his gums, everyone divided into groups and went inside. Though it wasn’t expressly discussed, they split up along racial lines. The Latinos went to one room, the two sets of black people to two others. The staff sergeant and all the white men took the generals’ executive lounge. Brutus followed an Uncle Sambo Marine named Doornail down the hall.
    Everyone in the military got a nickname in basic training; it was one way to strip a man of his identity and replace it with one incapable of independent thought. No different than a slave being forced to adopt his master’s name. Brutus already had his nickname when he signed up, and somehow it got picked up on the inside. His friends had called him Brutus as long as he could remember. The name was the only thing that he ever got from his father, but that didn’t prevent Joan from calling him Fancy Lad, on account of what she considered his anal retentiveness, but what Brutus thought of as simple self-respect. He hated Doornail immediately for that very reason. No self-respect. He was another military nigger, America’s modern equivalent of the house slave. Shuckin’ and jivin’—and all too often dying—for the Man.
    Brutus had joined the army in the first place because he had heard that it was easier for a black man to excel in the military than in any other profession. Without a college degree, he couldn’t find decent work back in Philly, so he had enlisted. He did his research. The military was the firstAmerican institution to get completely desegregated, and it was just about the only occupation where someone could advance on the basis of ability, regardless of race. But that was before he had read Fanon and
Captain Blackman.
Of course things didn’t pan out the way the government had promised. Racism ran uncontested in the military just like everywhere else. Brutus had been passed over for promotion a bunch of times while white and even Latino soldiers of lesser talent moved past him. He came to realize that the army was just the Man’s personal bodyguard, obligated to take a bullet so privileged college kids could continue to make money working at their