The Subtle Art of Brutality

“But you’ll help?”

“That’s what I do.”

“Find my baby girl, please. This is all my fault and I do not want her paying for my mistakes.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” I crush out my smoke and eyeball the bitter conditions outside. The sun has not been resurrected yet. The wind had become emboldened. I tighten my coat against its machinations and lay cash on the table.

“I’ll be in touch,” I say with finality.

“Where are you going now?”

“I’m going to shake down Pierce White.”

9

A note on the Vietnam War: not too long after Walter Cronkite told America and ostensibly the world that the Tet Offensive in Vietnam had failed when it hadn’t, the war drew to a close.

Seems our New World Benedict Arnold cast quite a wake. People listened. It’s all ancient history now. I was a sophomore in high school then. With the falsely preached abysmal failure of the Tet Offensive, the politicians running the war quickly lost their intestinal fortitude. Which is why generals are supposed to conduct war, but don’t tell Congress that. A month or two later, troops began to drift in back home, being peeled away from the frontlines in thin but consistent layers. It took America almost eighteen months to call all her boys home.

They stopped drafting when the first soldiers were recalled. When the last shipment came home to one degree of humiliation or another, to spitting and protesting, to joblessness and insults, I was a senior in high school.

The timing was a thing of unique coincidence.

A note on my war: the continent of Africa is nothing if it is not embroiled in dispute. Governments of nations constantly trading hands—many times through a blood spill—inhospitable conditions, violent seasons, thousands of miles dominated by nature and her fangs, broad groups of people who refuse to get along.

There’s nothing like a superpower nation broadcasting its failures over the news to invigorate its enemies. With ample footage of stupid hippies smoking dope and fucking one another in the dirt and rain, protesting the military with cart blanche, a small rebel army in the northeastern corner of African decided to strike while the fire was hot. Think the Rwandan Genocide. Same thing.

They were a half-militarized band of tribes, trained in part by Soviet defectors turned mercenaries and even some Arab military. They were collectively held together in part by religion, but mostly by a need to feed their power thirsts. It seems any third-world gang of monkey-fuckers will wear the same color beret, pick up a machete or mostly-functional AK-47 and begin slaughtering one another over some ancient blood feud or tribal rivalry.

Mostly they want to rape and pillage and butcher those who didn’t belong. So the enemy scavenged what munitions they could from the Soviets and started their death-mongering.

The new U.S. administration was eager to show the world it could still smash an opponent. The black eye left by Vietnam was still grotesquely swollen. This would be a quick fix. It would save face. And it was fine with me; rapists and child-murderers never warranted much beyond a horrific death as far as I was concerned. It’s all ancient history now.

I barely graduated high school on my eighteen birthday; the last Friday in May. Come Saturday: my draft notice. Marines. Boot camp started up the following Tuesday. Seems like the war machine issued one too many DD214’s between Vietnam and the African Conflict. I was infantry. They needed a lot of those guys.

It lasted for seven months, one week and three days before we had pummeled them into submission. It was never hard, per se, but there were so many of them.

I took two things from the war. One, since our enemies were plain clothed and looked just like everybody else, I got used to the idea of hunting for prey in a pack of lookalikes. It’s the same on the street: criminals don’t wear uniforms and march in order. They look like the very people they rape and rob.

Two, I learned that killing a man who is asking for it is only as hard as pulling the trigger.

Both have served me well.

First, I need a car.

The snow is a prizefighter: won’t quit and laying it on thick. By the time I wind up at the rehab clinic my feet are numb. I stay outside; I just lit another cigarette. Waste not, want not.

Cell phone out. I dial the number.

“Hello?” the receptionist says. Looking through the front window, I can see her behind her small desk. Red hair, bold green dress and just, in general, rather hideous. Her tone huffs, annoyed. She sounds extremely thrilled that her life led her to answering phones in an addiction rehabilitation clinic in a bad part of a bad town.

“Jeremiah Cross, please.”

“One moment.”

The hold music is New Age jazz done on synthesizer. Instead of relaxing me it stokes a deep, stomach-acid fire of annoyance. I almost hang up. Twice. I hear Jeremiah paged over the speaker system, while on the phone some retard with a basement and a jazz dream flits his fingers over plastic ivories as he maims bar after bar of some lost 8th and Vine song.

God I hate New Age anything.