The gut-crippling clutches of hunger were far outweighed by the prospect of suffering the wrath of a DI who felt you had wronged him. Some of you sneakier souls are thinking, don’t those camis have dozens of pockets? Yes, they do. Then why not shove your uneaten food in those and eat them later? Any former Marines want to answer this one? Because, my dear reader, DIs know about pockets and they know about what lengths a desperate starving recruit will go to. You would be treated less harshly in the real world if you had just killed a cop and his partner caught you first and was alone with you for a half hour before his back-up got there.
Some of you may scoff at that analogy, I had to stand at the position of attention while the recruit next to me suffered the wrath of two DIs for trying to heist a jelly packet that he had shoved down his trousers. By the time they were done with him, well let’s just say that the jelly packet would have been the only thing he would have been able to eat.
***
I ended up with a beef stew MRE packet. Think Dinty Moore, but gross. The fat congealed at the top of the packet was the thickest part of the whole meal, including the mystery meat. I ate everything, I was famished. I looked over to BT, who was still sleeping. It left me wondering if getting Tomas into the mix was a good call or not. I had no viable alternative, but still it nagged at me; knowledge is power and now Tomas had some. Life was already precarious. Why I felt the need to keep digging holes around the lip of the precipice was beyond me.
I could hear Deneaux in the next room trying to comfort Mary. It was like listening to a snake tell its prey that everything would be alright. Sure, for the snake it would be. I was staring so hard at BT, I wasn’t even looking at him anymore, if that makes any sense. I never noticed when his eyes opened.
“You scare me sometimes,” BT said, his vocal chords sounding coarse and dry.
I quickly pulled my thousand-yard stare back in. “Yeah, well you do that to me all the time.”
“So we’re here a few more days?” he asked as he pulled himself up to a sitting position.
“What’d you hear?” I asked him.
“Enough to know that you must have stomped all over Deneaux’s prized azaleas. She does not like you.”
“It’s more than that, I agree she’s not a fan, but there’s something more. Do you have enough strength to head upstairs?” BT nodded. “I figure the old bat has ears like one.”
Josh laughed.
“Josh is everything all right in there?” Mary called.
“You really shouldn’t let him get too much influence from Michael. He sets bad examples,” Deneaux chirped into Mary’s ear.
“Tell me again why you decided to come with us?” I asked, before she could respond, I continued on. “Or better yet, why did I allow you to come with us?”
I could hear her over-exaggerated heavy sigh from where I was.
“Mom, I’m fine, we’re going to play with my Lego’s again,” Josh said, winking to me.
“Be careful,” Mary said.
“From the Lego’s?” Josh asked, completely confused.
“You know what I mean,” she answered.
Josh shrugged his shoulders and mouthed, “No, I don’t” to me.
“I do,” I soundlessly worded to him and then waved him to go upstairs.
BT followed, the big man was moving slowly and had to take a break halfway up the stairs.
“You alright?” I asked him from the top of the stairs.
“I didn’t know you cared,” he said a little more heatedly than perhaps he meant to, as he apologized when he got up to me. “I’m sorry, man, I feel like I’ve got the flu, without all the phlegm.”
“Gross,” Josh said. “Come on,” he said, pushing the door to his room open.
BT almost crashed into a rendition of a B-1 bomber as he headed straight for the bed to plop down on it. Josh’s bed creaked and groaned from a pressure it had not been designed to bear. Josh and I stared for a few seconds waiting for the resultant collapse.
BT, getting wind of what we were doing, spoke. “It’ll hold,” he growled, and as if intimidated by his words, the bed did as it was told.
“Can I stay?” Josh asked. “I know you guys came up here to talk and get away from the women, but I’m a man too, so I should be here.”
“It’s your house, my man,” BT said. “I don’t see why not.”
I was more inclined to send him packing for a few minutes, but I don’t think he was going to do any heart to heart talking with Deneaux anytime soon.
“What’s going on, Mike?” BT asked. “I caught some of her conversation with Mary, but I kept drifting in and out. All I could really tell is that she wants to get out of here as quick as possible.”
“It’s nothing concrete, BT, but she’s trying to cover her tracks.” I related the story of finding Brian and how he was facing away AFTER she had called him, and how she now was in possession of Paul’s rifle. I also mentioned how she had said she was alone, but the house she was staying in provided clues to the contrary. “It’s nothing but a suspicion, but she did something she’s trying to cover up and she wants us to leave the scene of the crime before we turn up any evidence.”
“Brian’s dead,” BT said wiping his hand down his face. “Man, I almost don’t want to go back to your brother’s and see what this does to Cindy.”
“I cannot leave here until I know about Paul. There’s no way I could look Erin in the face and tell her that I have absolutely no clue what happened to her husband and my best friend.”
“So Brian was a zombie? Why lie about anything to do with that then?” BT asked confused. “Could the bullet have spun him around or anything?”
I looked over to Josh before I replied. “Exit wound was on his face.”
“Gross,” Josh said, I agreed implicitly.
“She’s acting so shifty, even more so than usual. I don’t have a good feeling about Paul.” I hitched a little, I’m still mostly human I thought, I’m still entitled to have feelings. “I’ve known him for thirty years. I owe it to him at the very least to find out what happened.”
“You’ve got to prepare yourself for the real possibility that he is no longer with us,” BT said tenderly.
“I know that man, I do. With a rifle, Paul wasn’t a huge threat; well without…” I didn’t, I couldn’t finish the damn sentence.
“I’d like to head out with you in the morning,” BT said. “Help look for him.”
“Me too,” Josh threw in before I could even tell BT no.
“No, on both counts.”
“You gonna stop me?” BT said, trying to rise up off the bed and use his height advantage as a mitigating factor.
“BT, Josh could stop you right now.”
Josh looked over at me like maybe I shouldn’t be throwing him under the bus quite like that.
“Dammit, Mike! I’m as weak as you right now,” BT said, cursing. “I can barely move.”
I didn’t rise to his bait, I did think about putting him in a headlock though, just because I thought I could probably take him. But merely to gaze upon the man is to feel intimidation. “You sure you never played in the NFL?”
“Why? Because I’m big and I’m black?” BT said with some force.
I thought about it. “Well, yeah.”
He laughed. “Played some college ball, had some pro scouts interested. It never went any further.”
And he dropped it, I don’t know if there was no more to add or he didn’t want to talk about it.
“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Josh asked.
“No way, kiddo,” I told him. “Your mom, if given the chance, would throw me out into the street in front of a convoy.”
“A what?” Josh asked.
“A bunch of trucks,” BT clarified. “And he’s right. It’s too dangerous out there for you.”
“I’m almost twelve,” Josh said, making it sound as authoritative as possible.