Cherry by Nico Walker

Author:Nico Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

One of my jobs was to get the pus out of the abscess on Sergeant Bautista’s ass. He was a big guy and he had a big ass. He was from New York City. Neither one of us was wild about the arrangement but it couldn’t be helped. I’d go see him in his room around 20:00. He’d be playing Madden, and he’d lie on his stomach with his pants down past his ass and I’d take yesterday’s sterile gauze out of the abscess on his ass and clean the pus out of the abscess.

“It doesn’t smell as bad as it did yesterday,” I’d say.

“That’s good,” he’d say.

I’d say, “Yeah, that’s a good sign.”

Then I’d put some sterile gauze in the abscess, folding the strip of gauze triangularly and poking it down into the hole with tweezers.

I’d say, “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

And I’d go and hand out the shit pills.

Also sometimes guys got crotch rot.

Mostly this was all I ever did.

I was not a hero.

A month before he was immolated on Route Polk, Sergeant Caves found a haji dog wandering around the company area. The haji dog was just a few weeks old. He could fit in the palm of your hand. He needed food and Caves gave him food and adopted him as his own and called him Sonny.

After Caves got killed, First Platoon took care of Sonny, and Sonny got to stick around. Sonny was well liked because he was a very good dog, courageous yet of a gentle nature. And when our company’s dismount patrols left the wire in the daytime it wasn’t out of the ordinary to see Sonny going along up and down the line.

Then one morning some POG from Foxtrot Company, name of Sergeant Teague, was out taking her walking exercise around the perimeter of the FOB and it took her past our company area. We’d just as soon as she didn’t come around; she looked a lot like a fucking gargoyle. Anyway. Sonny barked at her and she got so traumatized from it that she went to the battalion TOC to complain about Sonny. And it followed that two heroes from HHC (officers) volunteered to come down to Echo Company and shoot Sonny. When they got there they found him resting on his favorite spot, beneath the shade trees by the horseshoe pit. They walked right up on him. Sonny didn’t try and run because he wasn’t afraid of soldiers. Maybe he thought they had come to give him something to eat, perhaps a cheeseburger. Instead they shot him in the snout. He got away and tried to hide himself under some boards. The two officers had to drop down into the prone to finish him off. They were wearing their ballistic eye protection so it was all on the level.

I don’t remember exactly what I was doing when this happened. But I wasn’t there. Probably I was kicking some doors in somewhere. Nothing dramatic or whatever. Just doors. I’d kicked a hundred doors in.

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