Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism Read Online Free PDF Page B

used the small yellow birds for target practice. They called the day crew woodchucks because they were always hammering shit at the FOB. Caleb and his buddies went into the woodchuck den one night and started dry humping them. Caleb was running around with a camera. “You better get protection!” The guys grabbed hard helmets, put them on, and started humping again.
    At home in Savannah, they all went to Hooters, without their wives, and they signed an army helmet and they hung the helmet on the wall. Nights, they went drinking at Kevin Barry’s Irish Pub, a bar in the historic district where the walls are covered in photographs of dead soldiers. Hunter Army Airfield is a ten-minute drive away and all day gray planes fly low over the bar’s roof.
    The commander of the Evil Empire was Major Stephen Reich, and the day he was late for a flight from Texas back to Hunter, the men worried, because he was never late, always by the book. A West Point graduate, your perfect army commander, a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done kind of guy. Except that time Caleb said Reich handed Saddam a photo of Jesus and nearly coughed up a lung he was laughing so hard. When Major Reich finally showed up, he was holding a wedding dress, lace and ribbons blowing all over his face. “Can you get this on the aircraft?” Major Reich said. “Don’t screw it up.” The crew nodded and wove the dress into the Evil Empire ’s soundproof ceiling so it stayed fresh.
    Major Reich was set to marry a woman named Jill Blue whom he met in Forsyth Park in Savannah, when their dogs pressed noses. He asked her out to barbecue. She said she wasn’t interested, and he said, oh, come on, what’s the worst that could happen?
    The wedding dress was her sister’s. It arrived at Jill’s door in a body bag. That’s all the men had.
    Four years after the war began, twenty-one-year-old Kip Jacoby showed up to the 3rd Battalion as a helicopter repairman and worked his way up, becoming a Chinook 47D flight engineer, eventually stationed with the Evil Empire . Six-foot-two and covered in Alice in Wonderland tattoos—mushrooms, rabbits, cakes—he wore oxblood, steel-toed boots and carried a Glock in his pants. Handsome and morbid in speech, always saying to hell with this and to hell with that. If you asked how he was doing he’d tell you to go poke his fucking eye out with a spoke. “I don’t give a shit about anything,” Kip said. “I’ve got mine.” He was the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to date your daughter. You either loved him or you hated him. Caleb loved him right away. Bored and on duty, Kip would call Caleb. “Just checking assholes,” he’d say, and then hang up. The two of them sat back-to-back in the chopper’s tail. Caleb was right gunner, Kip left.
    They both chewed Copenhagen snuff and, once, at a desert training exercise near El Paso, they ran out, which to these men was considered a first-rate emergency. Their buddy McCoy said he was getting off base to renew his ID, and he’d bring them both back a can. When McCoy returned, he teased them, said he’d only purchased one. McCoy chewed Red Man himself and laughed at the boys. He sent the single snuff can spinning down the tarmac. Caleb slugged Kip in the face. Kip lunged for Caleb’s leg, pulled it back so Caleb’s nose staked the asphalt. He was bleeding and stabbed Kip with his boot in the shin. Kip fell in a kneel and Caleb took off chasing the glinting metal, raging for nicotine. He ripped it open and Kip sauntered over. Caleb took a dip, handed it to Kip. He took a dip, handed it back. They were sitting side by side, grinning, the sun an orange smear on the horizon beyond the throb of twin-engine heat.
    •  •  •
    Caleb and Allyson hadn’t been having sex, but one night Allyson woke him and made love to him in such a way that if you’d walked in, not knowing, you might have mistaken it for rage.
    Weeks later she stood against the wall. Her nightgown glowed in the