Tough Day for the Army
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Authors: John Warner
TOUGH DAY FOR THE ARMY
Yellow Shoe Fiction
Michael Griffith, Series Editor
FOR THE ARMY
stories
John Warner
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BATON ROUGE
Published with the assistance of the Borne Fund
Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright © 2014 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
LSU Press Paperback Original
First printing
DESIGNER
: Michelle A. Neustrom
TYPEFACE
: Adobe Garamond Pro
PRINTER AND BINDER
: Maple Press
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Warner, John, 1970â
   [Short stories. Selections]
   Tough day for the army : stories / John Warner.
       pages ; cm. â (Yellow shoe fiction)
   ISBN 978-0-8071-5802-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) â ISBN 978-0-8071-5803-6 (pdf) â
ISBN 978-0-8071-5804-3 (epub) â ISBN 978-0-8071-5805-0 (mobi)
   I. Warner, John, 1970â II. Title.
   PS3623.A86328A6 2014
   813'.6âdc23
2014011185
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, circumstances, and events are the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual occurrences, institutions, or individuals, living or dead, is coincidental.
These stories have appeared previously (sometimes in radically different form) in the following publications: “Return-to-Sensibility Problems after Penetrating Captive Bolt Stunning of Cattle in Commercial Beef Slaughter Plant #5867: Confidential Report,”
Ninth Letter;
“Monkey and Man,”
Bull: Fiction for Men;
“Corrections and Clarifications” and “My Best Seller,”
Swink;
“Second Careers,”
The Morning News;
“Homosexuals Threaten the Sanctity of Norman's Marriage,”
Pank;
“Notes from a Neighborhood War,”
McSweeney's Internet Tendency;
“Tuesday, the Bad Zoo,”
Zoetrope All-Story Extra;
“What I Am, What I Found, What I Did,”
McNeese Review;
“Poet Farmers,”
Chicago Reader;
“Tough Day for the Army,”
Tarpaulin Sky, McSweeney's Quarterly;
“A Love Story,”
Printers Row Journal.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
For my teachers: past, present, and future
I really do believe we can be better than we are. I know we can.
But the price is enormousâand people are not yet willing to pay it.
    â
JAMES BALDWIN
I'm not proud, but I'm not an animal either.
    â
MARK BROOKSTEIN
Corrections and Clarifications
Homosexuals Threaten the Sanctity of Norman's Marriage
What I Am, What I Found, What I Did (Attachments Enclosed)
TOUGH DAY EOR THE ARMY
Nelson was worried about his balls, and because Nelson was the kind of person who tended to put his thoughts into words, he leaned over to the cubicle next to him and said to his friend/coworker, Jürgen, “I'm worried about my balls.”
Jürgen held up a finger, signaling that Nelson should wait. Jür-gen spoke into his headset mouthpiece, asking if Mrs. Luffnagel was home. “Hello? Hello? Mrs. Luffnagel?” He punched the ESC key on his computer and leaned back in his chair to look Nelson in the eye. “Answering machine,” he said. Nelson and Jürgen worked as interviewers for Survey Circle, Inc., Marketing Researchers. The computers in front of them were engaged in predictive dialing, calling many numbers at once, trying to find one with a live human on the other end so Nelson and Jürgen and the twenty-five other workers on their shift could ask questions. Tonight the questions were about fast food; how much, how often, what kinds, degrees of satisfaction, when they anticipated visiting next. Nelson sometimes thought about inserting “having intercourse” into the script wherever it said “eating fast food,” but he knew that would be juvenile, and besides he needed the job.
Each week fewer and fewer of the numbers seemed to hit, so Jür-gen and Nelson had plenty of time to talk.
“Why are you worried about your balls?”
“Radiation,” Nelson said. “From cell phones. Turns out they cook your balls if you keep your phone in your pocket. I've been carrying my phone in my pocket every waking hour for the past four years. The rats in this study I read about got âmarble-sized' tumors in less than three months. I can't even look at what's going on down there. I shower with my eyes closed.”
“How did the rats keep the phones in their pockets?”
“I dunno. I guess they like taped the phones to their junk.”
“Sounds cruel. You know what you should be worried about?”
“What's that?”
“Your deodorant.”
“Oh yeah? Why's that?”
“Aluminum chlorohydrateâit gives you Alzheimer's.”
“Fuck.”
Lance Riggins, one cube over from Jürgen, leaned past the cubicle walls, showing his cinder-block head, face as broad as a cereal box, and glared at Nelson. Nelson flipped him the bird in return and mouthed, “Screw you.” Survey Circle, Inc., was owned and operated by Mormons, which made sense because they were located in Provo, Utah. Ninety-five percent of the employees were Mormon, almost all of them students at BYU, which meant nasty looks if you said “Fuck” and no coffee machine in the break room. Nelson and Jürgen got hired because Survey Circle, Inc., needed to keep a certain percentage of non-Mormons on the payroll so the federal government didn't come down on them for discrimination. Nelson and Jürgen had, for all practical purposes, total job security, since there were very few non-Mormons in Provo, and an even smaller percentage of the non-Mormon Provoians had a desire to work for Survey Circle Marketing Research, Inc. A Venn diagram would show a very small intersection, with only Nelson and Jürgen inside.
Nelson and Jürgen were supposed to be in Park City, not Provo, teaching snowboarding to hot college chicks on vacation, but Nelson and Jürgen failed the drug test because they both liked pot, becauseâ what the fuck?âthey were snowboarders. They didn't anticipate the piss test, but there's insurance involved and shit, and they took it anyway, certain they would fail on the merits, but hoping for some kind of clerical error in their favor. But now they were “flagged,” as in no jobs teaching snowboarding in the state of Utah, period. The work they could get was at Survey Circle, Inc., which didn't have a drug-testing policy because Mormons don't do drugs because if they did they wouldn't have any space reserved for them in the celestial kingdom, which Nelson understood to be a kind of endless family reunion lit up by the very bright light of God.
Nelson had no truck with the Mormon view of the afterlife. He had zero interest in meeting up with most of his relatives for an afternoon, let alone eternity, except his mother, who died when Norman was three, so it's not like they'd even recognize each other anyway, unless in the celestial kingdom everyone has name tags, or somehow just knows who is who. Norman left home just under a year after his father had sneered at the long hair coming out from under his ski cap and said he looked like a “faggot.” Jürgen came with because why not? Sure, Jürgen had been accepted to Dartmouth, but Dartmouth was older even than the United States of America and wasn't going anywhere, and the chance to move three-quarters of the way across the country with your best and oldest friend to teach hot chicks snowboarding presented itself exactly once.
Vermont was good for snowboarding, but bad for Nelson because it was filled with people who did not understand him, most specifically his father, who knew Nelson wasn't a “faggot” because Nelson's father had walked in on him having sex with Nelson's father's (presumably now ex-) girlfriend. Nelson's father had been understandably upset on that occasion, but while it was the two of them (Nelson and Christine) doing the horizontal mambo, it was Nelson alone who got his ass kicked because his pops was an honorable man who wouldn't hit a broad.
Nelson wasn't in love with Christine, but he thought he might be in love with Chelsea Stubbins, who happened to be Lance Riggins's girlfriend, and also happened to work at Survey Circle, Inc. Nelson understood that one of the reasons he smoked a lot of grass was that he liked to get high, and that another one of the reasons he smoked a lot of grass was because he possessed a barely suppressed rage that only a nice indica/sativa blend could tamp down to manageable levels.
The rage, Nelson was sure, was thanks to his father, who used Old Crow as his own suppressor of choice, but Old Crow only worked when he'd drunk so much that he passed out. Up to that point, the alcohol seemed to be a rage amplifier. Mostly his father raged at things on the television, but every so often, Nelson got caught in the crosshairs.
Leaving helped.
Except that he found himself thwarted in his desire to date and make love to Chelsea Stubbins by the likes of Lance Riggins, whose very blond perfection kindled Nelson's rage. Lance Riggins had a jaw, prominent, and abdominal muscles, also prominent, as illustrated by his offer to let anyone who wished to punch him in the stomach. Chelsea Stubbins had the face, beautiful, and the tits and ass, incredible. Also the Mormonism, which meant nobody save her husband was going to be making love to Chelsea Stubbins, particularly not Lance Riggins since that was a double Mormon whammy. It's not like Nelson was eager for Chelsea Stubbins and Lance Riggins to have sex, but for Chelsea Stubbins not to be having sex really was a shame, like owning a Ferrari but keeping it in the garage, which was the kind of dumbass thing Nelson's old man would say, which didn't make it wrong.
Nelson saw Chelsea Stubbins and Lance Riggins get up from their adjoining cubicles and head for the break room. Lance Riggins bumped his shoulder into Chelsea Stubbins, sending her briefly off stride, and she laughed and skipped to catch back up with Lance Riggins. Nelson watched this and felt the rage boil in his fists. He pulled a sheet of scratch paper from the printer on his desk and started drawing on it with a marker.
“What's up?” Jürgen said, peering past his cubicle wall.
