God Loves All His Children: Soldier Girls
Dank, muggy Florida night air wafted in through the crack in the window. Danielle Harris knocked on door 23, long shadows cast by the warm orange light of the streetlamp outside. Three minutes later it opened just a little, held back by the chain. A crooning voice floated out: "Greetings traveller. Speak the password and enter at leisure."
"Let me in you dumb bitch."
"Incorrect. You have two attempts left."
"This isn't funny. It's never funny. We do it every week and it's never funny."
"Incorrect once again. You have but one chance remai-"
"I could very easily kick this door down. You know I would, too."
After a few seconds of silence, the chain was undone with a satisfying crunch. Leah Morales opened the door, looking up at her friend, unimpressed. "You're no fun."
"Bitch, I'm tons of fun", said Dani, handing Leah a plastic bag. Inside was several paycheque's worth of hard liquor.
"Fuckin' A!" Leah exclaimed, passing to let Dani in. "You really went all out, didn't you?"
"Sure. I mean, why not?"
"Yeah. This is a special occasion, after all." There was nothing more to say about it after that.
Leah's apartment could have been better. It wasn't awful, but the creaky floorboards, cracked plaster and weird smells from somewhere left a lot to be desired. Leah said she didn't mind. She'd never known much better anyway.
There weren't a lot of personal touches either. Some might say the place was barely lived in. There were little hints here and there, however. Hints that someone lived their life in this space. A Surrealist painting on the wall, inherited from an aunt. A poster of Ziggy Stardust on another wall. Painted sugar skulls on the mantelpiece, flanking a framed, creased photograph.
Dani studied the photo, picking out her own face from the 42 present, then Leah's, then scanned the rest of the figures. The tall ones at the back, some with their rifles pointing to the sky, resting on their shoulder. Dani was among them. Directly in front of her was Leah, in the middle row, and in front of her were the guys kneeling. And in dead centre was the Big Man himself: Captain Aaron Weybridge, arms crossed, feet apart, his lined face betraying nothing but faint amusement. Practically all of them were without shirts. The women wore sports bras, but all proudly displayed their dogtags, and more importantly, their tattoos. Everyone in the platoon had one, in big, curvy letters: God Loves All His Children.
Captain Weybridge had died just the day before.
"Hard to believe the Big Man died in his bed like that" said Leah nonchalantly, fixing the booze over in the kitchenette. "Always figured he'd go out in a blaze o' glory like He-Man or Marx. You remember Marx?"
"Of course I remember Marx. Fucking tearing through the den, killed half the pricks before he even realized half his face was missing."
"No shit. Anything like that ever happen to you?"
"Last I checked, I still have my face."
"You know what I mean. That fight-or-flight crap, anything, ever?"
"Nah. After a fight, it'd always take a while before the adrenaline to get out my system. I'd be shaking for ages, then I'd always feel kinda, I don't know, empty."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Shit's crazy," agreed Leah walking over with a pair of shot glasses and a bottle of 80 proof Polish vodka. Pouring the shots and handing one to her friend, she raised the glass over her head. "To Weybridge."
"To Weybridge." The glasses clinked, and thus kicking the consumption of much alcohol.
Dani was 6 foot tall and beefy as hell. In the platoon, she'd had bigger biceps than most of the guys, and boobs the size of a baby's head. Now, frankly, she'd been letting herself go. She'd always been pretty heavy, but now her muscle was drifting closer to flab than she would have liked. She was only thirty, but everything was starting to droop. She pretty much looked permanently tired and her loose, jaw length hair didn't help. Sandy-brown and wavy, she'd never done anything much with it, but at least on tour she kept it tied back. Now it just looked dirty.
Leah didn't look much better, though Dani didn't say as much. 5'6", slender and soft-skinned, the Hispanic woman looked about as far from a warrior as was possible. Now, with her black hair down to her mid-back and shabby dress, you'd never guess she ever served. Never, if you failed to look at her feet.
On a ratty couch, watching shitty late-night TV, Leah sat beside her friend with her legs outstretched, unabashedly, resting on the low glass coffee table. Her prosthetic feet clicked rhythmically against the glass, as she chattered on and on, hopping between English and Spanish without even realizing it.
Dani stayed quiet, sometimes replying to something Leah said, but not offering anything of her own. Sweet Jesus, but it had been a while since she'd drunk like this. The room was actually swimming. She never puked from drinking before, but she reckoned tonight could be the night. Leah's voice seemed to come from far away. She never drank this hard, and she was beginning to remember why.
Captain Aaron had been like the dad of the platoon. Like a big, mean, grisly dad, and God help you if you pissed him off, because the rest of them certainly wouldn't. Despite that, he was always fair, never needlessly cruel and accepting of everyone as long as they did their jobs right. Dani remembered still her first earful from the Captain. She could almost hear him, so brutally eloquent, stringing curses and insults together in such a way that almost poetic.
Dani also remembered a different time, when the Captain had spoken softly She remembered how much worse it made it, for that man to talk like that. To say to her that there wasn't anything she could've done. To lay his hand, so gently, on her shoulder. To tell her it wasn't her fault, when it so obviously was.
Dani remembered why she didn't drink so hard anymore. Staring at Leah's fake legs, while she chattered endlessly, she remembered that when she drank, she remembered things she didn't want to. And the thing she wanted to forget the most was always the first thing she remembered. It could have happened an hour ago.
A regular patrol in Afghanistan. It was a hot, muggy day, and all had got maybe two hours of sleep, thanks to a false alarm the night before. Dani stepped down, and she was answered with an ominous click. Her guts dropped and a clod, sick feeling rose from that space and circulated within her. Time slowed to syrup. She felt like she was underwater. She saw Leah running toward her, looking like those lifeguards on Baywatch. Some part of her brain chuckled at such a dated reference, just as Leah leapt into her. Then a sound like the end of the world and Dani found herself on her back, streaked with sand and dirt. Leah was on top of her. Her legs were missing.
Leah was halfway through her newest drunken tirade before she looked over and noticed that Dani was crying, making no sound.
"Dani? Dan, Dani, Dani, what's-what's up? What's wrong?"
Dani couldn't form words for a while. Eventually she choked out "My fault."
"What are you talking about?"
