New pony tale: "Loyalty" (but really about The Things They Carried) · 11:13pm Aug 31st, 2013
I posted a new story: Loyalty. Dash and Applejack, with Derpy in the background. 560 words, so it goes into Pony Tales, and you won't get a notice for it unless you're following that story collection.
I wrote it after reading the story in Tim O'Brian's The Things They Carried where he meets up with his unit again months after he's been sent to the rear. His story is better. Really, instead of reading "Loyalty", you should download The Things They Carried and read that. Books like that remind me why good stories are worth searching through the crap for, and that the best writers are alive today. Shakespeare never wrote anything half that thoughtful, meaningful, or powerful. I can tell that it is, even though it wasn't written for me.
(I don't know if it's true, in the way O'Brien talks about stories being true. O'Brien keeps saying, "If you weren't there, man, you'll never understand." Every soldier he writes about is destroyed by the war, in one way or another. It fits too neatly with the Hollywood Vietnam narrative of Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter.)
That's an Amazon associate link, so I get paid if you buy through it. That makes me a professional blogger. Over the past nine months, I've earned $2.97.
In fact, forget my story. Here's a few quotes from The Things They Carried.
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots--2.1 pounds--and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him away across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He's nineteen years old - it's too much for him - so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back.
We've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
Is it true?
The answer matters.
You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and maybe it did, anything's possible - even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, 'The fuck you do that for?' and the jumper says, 'Story of my life, man,' and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead.
That's a true story that never happened.
...
Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it. It's always a woman. Usually it's an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics. She'll explain that as a rule she hates war stories, she can't understand why people want to wallow in all the blood and gore. But this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad. Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, she'll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell.
I won't say it but I'll think it.
I'll picture Rat Kiley's face, his grief, and I'll think, You dumb cooze.
Because she wasn't listening.
It wasn't a war story. It was a love story.
Hey, congrats on hitting the featured box with the story! Will give it a look right away.
Wait, you work for Amazon?
I sincerely hope that $2.97 isn't the only money you've earned in the last nine months.
'he' should be 'she'. Unless there's some hidden meaning behind switching RD's sex?
1320371 Wait, you don't work for Amazon? Prepare to be assimilated.
"Amazon Associate" is a thing anyone can add to their Amazon account. It gives you a referral code so that you can copy links off things on Amazon and get a referral fee if someone buys something thru it.
1320407 Gah! I did it again.
Sorry, Dash.
1320408
No, actually I DO work for Amazon. I have seen that book several times recently in the warehouse. I actually work in the largest warehouse in the network.
So BH just edited in those quotes. I didn't recognize it by the title, but now I remember that I actually read that book in high school. I'm going to have to go find a copy at my library, because that's something worth re-reading again.
Wow, fuck this guy. If even Alexander Solzhenitsyn can avoid falling into this morass of mindless, fashionable cynicism, Tim O'Brien's got no excuse.
1321422
Amusing statement out of someone with Kierkegaard, father of modern despair, as his username.
Come now and join us.
Bring for the weekend
Ability to read a map
(This corresponds to shaving kit and pyjamas)
Bring Unfear of death
(This corresponds to the formerly seven now five packs of
nationally advertised brands issued at the PX with cheerful
banter in the basement of the Scribe)
Bring knowledge, subtlety, side-slippering, hardiness, fortitude,
quick and sound decisions, and the ability to abandon
knowingly and soundly all hope of every kind yet stay and
fight.
(This corresponds to a present to your hostess; a trifle
well-selected with semi-impeccable taste)
Bring fuck-all,
Bring worthless
Bring no-good--
they can be carried as banners.
Or in the pocket.
But bring them to where we go now.
--Ernest Hemingway, "The Defense of Luxembourg"
(The Defense of Luxembourg was a WWII battle now known as the Battle of the Bulge. Also: Hemingway wrote poetry. Who knew?)
I read "How to Tell a True War Story" in English class today (not the full story, unfortunately). I've always found it rather exciting to know the stories we pick up in class--they're rarely recognizable. Off to read Loyalty, I suppose. I'll see if I can find The Things They Carried some time in the future.