"Beware," she said, touching her nose-ring conspiratorially, "they're a bunch of weirdoes."
I stepped outside and cringed at the eye-seering sunlight. No wonder she'd gone nocturnal and goth. Anyone with a brain would fear the Sun here.
I shielded my brow and surveyed my surroundings. The camp was in a clearing overlooking a dense green forest of rolling hills that extended to every horizon.
Camp Winsome didn't fit its name: there were half a dozen oversized canvas tents in a cluster on the hilltop; the grounds were rough, but neat and well policed; there was no garbage in evidence, no stray animals or indigent people; and I couldn't smell the privies. But it seemed neither whimsical nor happy.
Besides the Headquarters tent behind me, there was an administration tent, both set off from the others by a ring of rough pink stones. Across the compound were the sick ward—marked out by the red cross—and three other olive drab structures arranged in no particular order. My nose told me one of them must be a field kitchen.
Troop 421 was split up into four camps; I found my tent on the other side of a little valley, opposite the two tents on the south slope of the big hill. There was another all alone in a clearing to the East, for the girls.
As I made my way to my new dig, it started to rain out of a perfectly cloudless sky; big warm drops that felt like tears ran down my face and arms. I put down my bag and held out my arms, enjoying it.
It started coming down harder, pelting the ground in ragged waves and stinging my face. I shrugged and hurried along, glad my uniforms were all packed in vacuum bags; they insisted on Ophiuchus.
I got to my tent and worked my way past a black woman and a tall white woman, about six feet tall, trying to smoke a nappy-looking stump of a cigarette under the rain fly.
Inside it was dank, lit by a dim lantern hanging from the central post. There were four rows of bunk-beds on each side. All but a few showed signs of occupation.
There were three people at a card table and several in their bunks. "I'm Dani," I said, to everyone, but no one in particular.
"Hi Dani," several said at the same time. It had the air of Alateen.
The three at the table were all boys—one with gorgeous blue-black skin and a head full of short, tight curls. He wasn't wearing a shirt. The other two were Caucasian, one built like a rib dinner in the desert, the other tending toward chunky.
They were playing poker, it looked like.
"Hi," I waved at them, hoping to break the ice. "Is there a bunk for me here? The, uh, monochromatic soul-sucker in the CQ said there was."
"Did she," A voice asked from behind. I turned in time to see a girl climb out of her bunk. She did it like it was an art form, as if she'd practiced it endlessly at truck stops around the nation.
She was petite, but not as small as me, and could have been anything from a well-preserved thirty, to a rode-hard-and-put-away-wet fifteen. He hair was wild, like it had been cut with a razor knife.
She was wearing cut-offs and a short sleeved blouse like mine, but hers was unbuttoned and tied in a bow across her sallow—not to mention shallow— cleavage.
Classy.
I'm Dani," I repeated, holding out my right hand. She just looked at it.
"I'm Jemmi, and we'll all be fine just as long as none of you bitches touch my stuff."
"Wouldn't touch no fellow traveler's junk," said the tall woman slipping in from outside.
"Me either," I admitted. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"So were do I sleep," I asked earnestly trying to steer the situation out of the realm of pugilism.
"Face down in the gutta, for I care," the tall one tittered, and the assembly laughed like a studio audience.
This was like the BLT all over again.
I walked the length of the tent, looking for an empty bunk. I got to the end and saw my suitcase on the top bunk. My duffel was there too, or at least a duffel, and a cardboard box, looking the worse for wear, and my toiletries kit.
It made it.
I threw my newest bag up on the bunk and dug into the box. It contained my Grip and all of its fixtures.
Everything was gonna be fine. I had my life back.
***
Dani's Journal, 07 JAN 77,
I'm writing this in Puerto Rico; it's ninety-nine degrees and the sun has already gone down.
I've had the most incredible...adventure is all I can think to call it; I got to go to space as a translator. I'm not sure how much I can write about it. Commodore Cannesmore said I couldn't talk about it, but this is private correspondence. I already know it.
But it seems like a dream now, a larger-than-life dream with exaggerated details and picture perfect recall. I didn't even have time to get settled in and now I'm back on Earth. I would love to go back, but I don't think I could live there. The pace is too fast.
That's retreat. I've got to go. Everyone has to muster in and out every day.
***
The next morning I Mustered In (with capital letters). It was a sort of ceremony, writing my name on the Troop roster, getting my 421 pin, pinned on by my squad leader—none other than Bellatrix from the orderly room.
I learned her name was July Lunch, and everyone called her tent—our tent—the Lunchbox. There were maybe eighty of us in Troop 421, in four squads. One squad held the jocks, the other, the rest of the normal boys. Almost all the girls were in the third squad, and the freaks, like me and Jemmi and our squad leader, were in number four.
July compounded the matter by making me her assistant squad leader, on account I had rank on everybody else. I felt like a kiss-ass, and I never kissed anything.
It was Saturday, but since the Troop broke Camp Winsome in Florida on Tuesday and set it back up in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, the week was short. We needed the training time.
They lectured us about drinking enough water and told us to cut out our bad habits, like smoking and drinking alcohol or soda-pop. And eat salty snacks.
They issued us two canteens, surplus from the Great War; one was for water—of which we were to drink two a day, as well as two glasses of water at each meal—the other for acetum or pickle juice.
Then they turned us out for a while until it was time for axes.
We went to lunch and picked at our food; it was too hot to eat, but didn't go immediately back to work. In the tropics, you take a break in the middle of the day or you die. Only mad-dogs and Englishmen didn't stop.
The Spanish call it a siesta, and it's a survival tool in the brutal heat.
We settled around a fire when the cooling breeze came in off the sea.
Right now, Lieutenant Nguyen was giving us a demonstration.
"If you use an axe," she said, holding up a single bladed example with a badly broken handle, "you will eventually break it."
She took it in both hands and broke head from haft. She threw it aside.
"Keep the handle. It's seasoned already and can be used for a smaller tool."
She pulled a spiffy hatchet off her belt and chopped at the stub of the handle.
"You want to get the pieces out if you can. You must save the metal wedges, otherwise your tools will be loose.
"If you can't get it out, burn it out."
She hefted the broken axe in her hand, looking at the fire and back to us.
"I wouldn't do this to a good axe, it could ruin the temper."
She tossed it into the coals.
"Fortunately for us, these aren't good axes; they're hammers with slim faces.
"That means you can't possibly anneal them further, and they file easily."
She had a tool roll handy with three files in it. She selected the roughest.
She chose another axe, this one double-bitted, and stuck it deep into a stump.
"Now it is stable, so I can file it. I'm working an edge into it, as shallow as I can go."
She worked in arcs, cutting grooves into the steel. She moved to a finer file and then to the finest. When she was done, she handed it around.
"That's not shavin' sharp, but it'll do for good and fast. Can't have everything."
When it reached me I compared the edges. Nguyen's quick edge wasn't anything like the cheeky factory face and edge, which was so fat you could call it jowly.
"Now that you've seen it, we're gonna all try it. I have two more double-bit axes, four singles, and a half dozen hatchets. Not all of them are new, but they all need a sharpening. That'll keep you busy.
"Get 'em good and sharp, because, come Monday morning, we're cutting wood. Everybody gets a machete, and you will keep it with you at all times when in the Boonies; it'll save your life."
She handed out the axes and we sharpened away.
***
I thought I would have a free evening, after all that, but the Lieutenant had other ideas. I was designated Spanish instructor in my squad. None of the others spoke a word of it.
There were books, and a workplan. I picked through them and salvaged a concise grammar and a dictionary in Spanish. They would have to do.
"You learn language," I told them, tossing the workbook onto my chair, "by speaking it, not from books. Books can't tell you when you're wrong. Books don't correct your pronunciation.
"First lesson, morphology. That's a fancy word for how it's spelt, and how you pronounce it.
"In Spanish, you have five vowels. But they are not like English vowels. They are ah, ee, oo, eh, and oh. Don't think about the names of the words, think about the sound. Vowels in Spanish are short and tense, compared to the English long-vowels. I'm an O-o-oakie," I exaggerated for effect.
"You cannot change the sound of a vowel in Spanish without changing the word. It's not 'you say tomato'; there is one way, though it may change from place to place.
"Besides the vowels, there are roughly the same consonants as in English, with a few exceptions.
"In English, we have a flap instead of an 'R'. The proper Spanish is 'ere', pronounced with the tip of the tongue almost, but not quite, touching the alveolar ridge. That's that ridge behind your top teeth.
"But when 'R' is doubled, or starts a word, it is rolled, which is done with the tip of the tongue. Fer-r-r-ro-car-r-ril," I trilled for them. "Rail car."
"You can approximate it with English phonology by repeating the phrase 'I edited it,' as fast as you can.
"Sometimes you have to jump start it: Ar-r-r-r-oz, which means rice; or pe-r-r-ro, dog, which starts with a plosive.
"Besides 'R', 'L' is tricky. A single 'ele' is pronounced like an English 'L', but when doubled, forms its own letter and is pronounced 'ellye'. The word Armadillo, pronounced like -i-iyo. That means 'little armored guy' in English and names a curious shelled-animal like a possum and an anteater had a love child.
"The letter 'zee' or 'zed' to those from the commonwealth, is never voiced, or 'buzzed'. Thus sero, zero, and sor-r-ro, fox.
"Why aren't any of you taking notes?"
"You're going too fast."
"You should be starting with phrases."
"You're teaching it wrong."
"Okay," I said, putting on the brakes. "One at a time: you, this is slow, it'll get much faster; you, we'll get to phrases, but if you don't know how to pronounce words, your phrases will make no sense and you will sound like an idiot; and you, I'm not teaching at all."
"What, why not? How are we supposed to learn?"
"With your brains, but it doesn't hurt to take notes. I am speaking to you; it's up to you to learn it. Don't worry, I will correct you when you're wrong."
"That's the dumbest thing I ever heard."
"It worked for your parents."
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