Dear Shelby,                                   

 #15? 16? I lost count

 

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There’s a joke going around that the military finds the worst, most inhospitable places to be forts—except for the Air Force, they call ‘em bases. The army found Jurassic Park in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The rainstorms are relentless, but that makes the clouds so gorgeous. I’ve never seen such pretty pinks and blues, though they’re not as beautiful as you. The clouds cover the stars most nights. 

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It’s also hot and sticky, and there is mud and sand everywhere. When you crawl, you sink into the mud, and the wet sand clumps up in front of you. It scrapes its way down all your pockets and sleeves. There’s sand at the bottoms of all the washers and dryers, and all over the floor. The pants are button-up, and the insides become like sandpaper. I have armor pads—but from all the running, jumping, and crawling, they twist all the way around and block my joints. But here is better than boot camp at Benning, so I hear. I’m writing to you while I wait for my laundry. 

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We just got back from our field exercise. It was 90 degrees when we woke up to leave—at 1 am. They said it was because of the humidity. It was hot, but dry heat is different from humid heat. We were also under hurricane watch. There was rain and lightning, so we had to stop under protection every few miles. The storm seemed to be chasing us home. Hope the letters I wrote get to you in order. I dropped three in the chute on our way back. I wrote when I could, but I forgot what number I was at. If this one is supposed to be letter 16, label it 15B or something—I’m gonna call the next one 16.  

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I don’t know if I explained how bad the masks have gotten yet. They issued us these dinky little white-cloth masks that just got absolutely ruined. They get damp from all the sweat so we can barely hear each other talk, and they sag from holding all the sweat. Running with your mask on is like worse waterboarding. I had to strain and squeeze the sweat out of mine yesterday. Sure, I can sneer at the drill sergeants as much as I want but it’s gross. 

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A while after we got them, they turned from white to butterscotch yellow. It doesn’t matter how much bleach you use. I think the more you scrub, the deeper the stains get. Now some people’s masks are the shade where yellow becomes brown—like layers of tar built up on the dash of a smoker’s car. They wanted us to wear the same masks for uniformity, but they said we can wear different masks now. Now the black market has stamps, cough drops, and masks. No one really shares these things. Please send me some if you get the chance, love you. 

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Dear Shelby,                                                    

#16 I think 

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You have to find something to keep you sane here. Standing still for hours sucks, but if you see it as meditation, it’s self-help. Mail call helps me, mostly because of how much I miss you, but I know for some it’s the worst. Probably ninety percent of the people here are still in high school. They’re spending their last summer break here. I’ve heard about people breaking up over letters, parents not writing back. It sucks. While that’s going on though, there’s people getting 10 letters a day from each family member. I feel some shame because I’m one of those people. The jealousy is as real and palpable as the humidity. 

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But lately, we’ve all been excited because of this guy Dawson. He’s got these fat stacks of envelopes in his locker; they’re practically ripping at the seams. When they throw his mail, it hits the floor like an anvil. His parents send pages of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone—and he gets a chapter a week. 

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They print them off on full-page pieces of paper. I guess he’s been getting them for a while, but it wasn’t till now when more people noticed. At first, we would just ask him for them, but now there’s a system in place for the story to spread around. We’re trying it out tonight. Books are contraband so we gotta be smart about it. The sergeants could walk in during the day and catch us. It has to be at night. Plus, we all think it’s cool that we’re doing this. We’ve been going to the ranges all the time because we’re in white phase now, which is when you do all the weapons qual. I regret getting a watch because now I know that I spend six hours sitting on the bleachers and waiting to shoot. Things are very boring and draining, this is exciting. I’ll let you know how it goes, love you. 

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Dear Shelby,                                          

 #17

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We tried distributing the Potter bible last night, it was a little hectic. We passed the crumbled pages from bunk to bunk. We aren’t allowed to have a stapler or paper clips because someone could kill themself, so the pages are loose.  If someone didn’t want to read it, they just passed it on. You couldn’t read too slow or the person in the bunk next to you would get impatient after a while. Dawson didn’t care how long it took because he already read them. There’s definitely a better way of doing this, though, it really was quite the scene. When the lights are off it is pitch black and freezing cold. We’re supposed to sleep in our PT uniform: black and yellow shorts and a t-shirt, but some of us sleep on top of the covers so we don’t have to remake our beds. I’ve seen guys wearing green fleece jackets and hats to bed. It’s funny but I hope we don’t get in trouble for it. 

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When Harry Potter came my way, I huddled under my thick, wool blanket and used my flashlight to read. It was just like the scene in the movie where he reads under his blanket. I used the red lens because it was easier on my eyes, and so the light doesn’t shine through my blanket. My imagination was never so active. Broomsticks and wands were bouncing from the shadow of my flickering flashlight. Even when I passed it off to the next person, the story went on in my dreams. 

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All we get to read are training manuals. Dawson’s like a drug dealer. There’s a sort of book club forming, with these buff, manly soldiers whining about spoilers. Word spreads around the barracks fast in the morning. I know they might be considered kids books, but I think they’re good. Maybe it’s just because I have nothing else to read, and I haven’t read anything outside of textbooks for months. It was a good break from everything, fleeting as it was. 

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To tell you the truth, I never read Harry Potter before. I know I told you I did, but that was because I liked you and wanted to have something in common. Plus, it’s like someone admitting they’ve never seen Star Wars, sometimes it’s easier to just lie and move on with it. Don’t worry though, I’ve watched Star Wars. Watching the movies was enough to get me by. I think I’ll read Harry Potter when I get out. 

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Dear Shelby,                                      

#28? I lost count again

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Send me a picture of a cat hanging from a tree that says “hang in there baby.” We all agreed that we couldn’t read during our guard shifts because we could fall asleep easier, and we should really be cleaning instead, and we could be caught—and we did! I guess someone decided to read while they did their guard shift and when the drill sergeant came to check on us, he saw them reading it. They flipped the lights on, and we all jumped out of our beds. Me being on the top bunk, and so tall, and so tired, I bumped my head hard on the ceiling on my way down. 

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I looked around at everyone, standing in front of our bunks and trying to open our eyes. At least half of us were wearing jackets, hats, or pants—one guy was wearing gloves. Yeah, we’re in danger. Everything that’s supposed to make life easier leads to pain. 

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Anyways, DS Lawson was already at his boiling point with catching us reading contraband. I’ve never seen someone so angry about clothing. He used something we like to call cheat codes: Middle is planking, left and right are side-leans, up and down are for push ups. He was barking out, “up, down, left, up, down, middle, right, GO!”  Go means jumping jacks. He was shouting the commands so fast and randomly, we couldn’t keep up. We were basically just rolling around on the ground. The people wearing the winter clothes couldn’t take them off. Things could’ve been worse. It was a pretty funny scene. 

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Then he said “gas…gas…gas,” and we all scrambled to our lockers for our gas masks. If you didn’t put them on in 8 seconds, you were dead. The filters were popping off and bouncing everywhere because we were practically throwing them out of our lockers. The strap broke on mine, so it kept smacking me in the face while I jumped around.  He did the cheat codes on us again for a while. 

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Then he lectured us about how stupid we were (not that I disagree) and told us that we were being evicted from the barracks. He got some other sergeants to come in and they dumped all our lockers. They confiscated Dawson’s mail—it was like a drug bust. They went around mindlessly and savagely yanking stuff out of the lockers. When everything was dumped, DS Lawson spotted a coffee packet on the floor. There were packets of peanut butter, juice mix, sugar, and coffee scattered around—some of the stuff was from our first week. Someone in our platoon was hoarding MREs in their dirty laundry bag. 

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It was 3 am by this point. The guys in 2nd platoon, who sleep on the floor below us, said we kept them up all night because we shook the ceiling. We stomped downstairs to the pit outside. DS Lawson got a barrel to burn the pages—one by one—while we did all kinds of exercises. They pulled out a megaphone and started playing some wacko screamo music through it, which came out of nowhere.

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It was an hour of exercises, maybe 10 minutes for a break and a scolding, then we did it over again a few more times. I guess they had limits on how much they could punish us. Then they woke up the females in our platoon and had them come out. They were pretty upset. And then another drill sergeant came up to yell into our ear, but you could hardly tell what he was saying with all the noise. He was probably just tired. It was something about who had the rations, that’s for sure. But no one knew who it was, and whoever it was didn’t want anyone to know. 

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After a certain point, you get numb to the exercises. Luckily, we didn’t have to do PT that morning, and breakfast was good. When DS Lawson wasn’t looking, I gave Dawson an extra piece of sausage. It’s funny their names are so similar. Everyone’s upset with Dawson, rather than the guy who got caught reading. I hope that one guy isn’t still hoarding food, whoever he is. I guess none of the clothes had a name on them. Maybe I’ll try investigating that now since I don’t have Harry Potter. Shame we have to wear our full gear for guard shifts now. 

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With love, 

Joel