Fobbit (42 page)

He swallowed bile, then began: “Abraham Lincoln Shrinkle was born on July 3, 1979, to . . .”

33

HARKLEROAD

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Dispatch from a War Zone, Day 294

Mother,

Brace yourself. What I am about to tell you will cause you no end of consternation and palpitations. This news will undoubtedly bring you to your knees in despair, wailing and begging God to shed mercy on Eustace L. Harkleroad, your one and only son.

This will, in fact, probably be worse than the time you burst into my bedroom thirty-five years ago to discover me touching myself in inappropriate ways (as I beclaimed at the time and still do today, it was a one-time-only weakness—I was unable to resist the charms and attractions of Ms. Raquel Welch in that month’s
Playboy
—so please give it a rest, Mother!).

Yes, it’s worse than that. Worse even than the time I voted for Jimmy Carter.

It gives me no pleasure to deliver this news and I don’t know quite how to do it, so I will just plunge in feet-first.

I have been fired. Let go, down-sized, stripped of my rank, pilloried, lashed to the mast, whipped, and thrown overboard.

Are you still there, Mother? I do hope Pap-Pap was taking a break from pruning the magnolias and was present when you clicked open this e-mail and that he was quick with the smelling salts. I know how you get in moments like this, Mother.

Believe me, I would much rather have told you this in person, looking you straight in the eye, catching you when you fainted, etc. But circumstances prevent me from doing so. No, Mother, I have
not
been clapped in leg irons and thrown into Abu Ghraib! (Though, truth be told, that would probably be preferable to what I’m now going through.) By “circumstances,” I mean I am about to be embroiled in an international incident and the news media will soon plaster my name and face all over the airwaves, slandering me at every turn, smearing the good reputation of Eulalie Harkleroad’s only son. Out of courtesy, I wanted to give you advance warning of the coming storm. It is a
hurricane,
dear Mother. A hurricane of global proportions that could very well leave the Army in shambles. Though I am only peripherally involved, I have no doubt “Eustace Harkleroad” will soon be dripping with scorn from Tom Brokaw’s lips and it will not sound pleasant to your ears, dear lady.

What, you ask, has brought about this calamity to the Harkleroad dynasty?

Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to fully discuss the details at this time. Suffice it to say that whatever you hear about me has only about a teaspoon of truth to it. I have been caught in a net that’s been cast wide here at Headquarters. There are forces at work against me even as I type this. Men walk the very halls of this palace intent on doing me no good, thinking up ways to slander my name and crucify me on the cross called Scapegoat.

A man—a certain rogue Captain S. whom I’ve mentioned before—a lousy leader of men, a ne’er-do-well who done wrong—was the catalyst for an international scandal and
I
, for some reason, have gotten myself tangled in the bear trap. Even now, I can feel the jaws biting my ankles and, try as I might, I just cannot shake myself loose.

All will be revealed in good time, Mother. But for now, rest assured I am doing all right. In fact, things have actually gotten a little better in the short time I have been stripped of rank and responsibility. For one thing, I have a lot more time to spend sitting in my trailer, catching up on all those Find-a-Word books you sent, as well as taking leisurely strolls through the Forward Operating Base, feeding the geese, and generally getting a new lease on life.

I am down, but I am not out. Not just yet.

As such, if you could see fit to send a case of Moon Pies to me as soon as you can, I am sure that would go a long way in easing my distress.

I remain your ever-loving son,

Stacie

Harkleroad’s finger hovered over the
SEND
button as he hesitated over this particular e-mail. Did he dare send such a whopping fabrication to his mother, only to possibly bring on conniptions of such magnitude that they could eventually lead to her actual demise? Was it not completely un-Christian of him to put her through such agony?

Yes, of course it was.

His finger curled back away from the keyboard and he set his hand on the desk, staring at the lies he’d just typed.

Because the truth was, he had
not
been pilloried, he had
not
been stripped of rank and responsibility. Not even the slightest clank of leg irons reached his one good ear. He was still Lieutenant Colonel Eustace L. Harkleroad, Seventh Armored Division Public Affairs Officer, leader of men and dictator of media relations.

The truth was, he was still standing on the periphery of the scandal that was sure to break over his head at any given minute. Though a week had passed, the news media had not yet sniffed the wind and gotten a whiff of the stink issuing from the Australian pool. Harkleroad was still in reprieve mode.

But not for long.

There were rumors whispering through the marbled halls of the palace. Even now, he could hear the bloodhounds baying and the wolves scratching at his door. Soon, he had no doubt, they would burst in—tar bucket in one hand, sack of feathers in the other—and his career would be over. It was only a matter of hours. Maybe minutes. He would have to—

At his office door, a cough.

Harkleroad looked up and saw the chief of staff standing there, hands on hips, laser eyes boring through the air in his direction.

“P. A. O.” The chief said it just like that—turning three letters into three curse words. “What are we going to do, PAO?”

“Sir?” Harkleroad snuck a glance at the unsent e-mail on his computer screen. A trickle of tears stole into the space behind his sinuses as he thought of his mother crumpling to the floor.

“What. The fuck. Are we. Going. To do.”

“With Captain Shrinkle, sir?”

“No, with Fred Flintstone screwing Betty Rubble. Of goddamn course with Captain Shrinkle!” Colonel Belcher’s cheeks billowed and he did not look well, not well at all. “This is a shit sandwich someone is going to eat, and the command group has unanimously decided that someone will be you, PAO.”

Harkleroad gulped. “Well, sir, uh, for one thing, I have my staff working on a series of press releases focusing on plausible deniability.”

“I don’t give a gnat’s fart about your little press releases. They’re the least of our concerns right now. Small potatoes next to the
New York Fucking Times
. THAT’S what I’m talking about, Harkleroad. What do you plan to do with them? THAT’S what we want to know.”

“Sir?”

The chief’s mouth dropped open. “Don’t tell me you don’t know we’ve had a reporter from the
Times
calling us every fifteen minutes for the past hour, asking all sorts of questions about rumors they’ve heard concerning an American officer and pool parties and sex orgies here on FOB Triumph. Do NOT sit there and tell me you haven’t already started to take counteraction on this.”

“Sex orgies, sir?” It issued from Harkleroad’s lips like the aforementioned gnat’s fart.

The chief clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh, good
Lord
! Are you even in touch with your own staff, Harkleroad? Have they not been feeding you intel on this for the past hour?”

Now Harkleroad could see Staff Sergeant Gooding standing unseen behind Colonel Belcher’s sweat-gleamed head. He’d slipped quietly into view and was gesturing wildly for Harkleroad’s attention. When he got it—Harkleroad’s glance flicking over the chief’s left shoulder—Gooding pantomimed cocking a revolver, putting it to his head, then pulling the trigger. Then he mouthed something Harkleroad couldn’t quite make out—possibly, “I just came on shift and found out about it this very minute, but not in time to stop the chief of staff from coming over here and reaming you a new butt hole.” Gooding shrugged and softly retreated to his cubicle.

“Well, PAO?”

Harkleroad coughed. “Sir, I, uh . . . I
am
on top of it. You just threw me for a momentary loop, that’s all. The
New York Times
. Yes, yes, I’m taking care of them even as we speak. I have my staff on top of it like white on rice—” he prayed to God that Staff Sergeant Gooding had the good sense to be sitting at his desk, at least
pantomiming
a telephone call and the composition of a release “—and, and, I’ll, uh . . . have something to you within the hour.”

“You’d better, PAO. You’d better.” Belcher took two steps into Harkleroad’s office, leaned forward, then growled. “Because if you don’t, the Old Man will be shitting bricks sideways tonight.”

“Roger that, sir. No worries, no worries. I’m all over this one. In fact,” Harkleroad said, taking it one step further, “I’ve already given this whole mess it’s own special name.”

“Say what?” The chief’s eyebrows crossed like swords.

“I don’t know what the CG will think of this, but in order to stay one step ahead of the press, I’m christening it—” his mind whirred and clicked “—Operation Veiled Mongoose.”

“
What?!
”

“I’m—I’m still working on it, sir. If the CG doesn’t like that, how does ‘Stealth Rabbit’ sound?”

The chief choked and sputtered and most likely would have taken another three steps forward, planted his knuckles on Harkleroad’s desk, and given him a what-for if a junior G-3 officer, a weaselly captain with florid patches of acne down one side of his throat, hadn’t entered the office, cupped his hand to the chief’s ear, and delivered urgent news about another power plant sabotaged by Sunnis in Sadr City. The chief’s attention was diverted and Harkleroad was spared. Colonel Belcher and the acne-riddled captain turned on their heels in unison and left the office, the chief tossing over his shoulder, “Shit sandwich, PAO! Shit sandwich!”

When they’d gone, Harkleroad’s bowels went all loose and watery and he seriously thought about punching the
SEND
button on that e-mail to his mother, but decided to hold off for at least another hour. Right now, he needed to perform damage control with Staff Sergeant Gooding. Dead Soldier Number Two Thousand had become a monkey on his back, an albatross around his neck, a squirrel up his ass.

Thirty-three minutes later, Eustace Harkleroad stood in the middle of the Public Affairs cubicle, holding the third draft of a press release, which—he hoped—dexterously glossed over the events of the preceding week. Sweat sprang from his scalp and the meat of his index finger stung with a paper cut from when he’d grabbed the release too quickly off the printer. Overhead, the air-conditioning rattled and hummed but did nothing to cool his overheating body.

Staff Sergeant Gooding watched him. Major Filipovich watched him. From her porch swing in Tennessee, his mother watched him.

With this one thin sheet of paper as his sole defense, Harkleroad stood at the center of a growing inquisition.

The chief was back and—arms crossed, eyebrows raised—he was waiting for an answer. Had he come up with anything better than “Stealth Rabbit,” or whatever the fuck it was? And what about the
New York Times
? Had Harkleroad thrown them a bone, as ordered? Well, PAO? What about it?

Harkleroad’s throat had long since seized up, choking off the breathy croak of an answer.

The air-conditioning wheezed and banged. Outside, the war boomed and whistled with a rising fury.

Inside the palace, officers, NCOs, and privates from other staff sections popped their heads up and down over the cubicles to stare at Harkleroad, looking like faces bobbing on a gray ocean.

And now—
Oh, my gravy!
—here came the commanding general! He
never
ventured down here to Cubicle Land. Eustace Harkleroad knew this could only portend the beginning of the end. The CG threaded his way through the cubicles, his jaw chomping on something unseen—gum? a cigar? Harkleroad’s liver, which the CG himself was about to eviscerate? The CG was growling. That, too, was not a good sign.

The chief still stood there, arms crossed, skull gleaming, eyes blazing bright, burning lasers in Harkleroad’s direction. What would it be? Stealth Rabbit? Burping Walrus? Whisper Snake? This scandalous mess needed a label, a name to make it all sound hunky-dory. The CG would expect an answer in exactly nine seconds and Harkleroad had no idea what it would be. The light winked off the chief’s skull as he, too, turned to watch General Bright storm through the maze of cubicles, bound like a missile straight for Harkleroad.

At Harkleroad’s elbow, the printer belched Significant Activity reports, none of them sounding good. No, not good at all.

Staff Sergeant Gooding pointed at the paper trembling between Harkleroad’s fingers. “Sir? Are we good to go? Can I send it to the media?”