[72—Willy]

Nothing good ever happens on a Saturday, not in the Peace Corps.  That's when Repple Depple comes to town and makes your life miserable.

Friday, a helicopter came in from Rand and brought some medium-high wigs.  Big wigs might exist in the Corps, but they didn't wear uniforms.

This one was a REMF if there ever was one, from the scrambled eggs on the visor if his cap, to the fruit salad on his chest, and even the white shorts and patent leather shoe combo with the long white socks.

I don't think he knew what sun and burn meant together.  Oh well, he certainly wouldn't stay long enough to find out.

The scrambled eggs meant he was at least a colonel, or captain, in the Corps.  Since captain was the highest rank we had, it meant a mighty short list of suspects as to his ID.

Logic suggested it was Captain Willy Arbuckle, meanest sum-bitch in the Corps and Commandant of Camp Winsome.

He arrived with a staff, a Lieutenant and a passel of cadets or some such.  They went immediately to the CQ.  I didn't see them again until the next day, at morning formation.

***

I don't know what pomp and circumstance passes for formations in the military, but in the Peace Corps, it was usually short on ceremony.  They played the bugle and called muster.  Anything else was a bonus and done seat-of-the-pants as circumstances permitted.

This morning it was spit and polish.  Or at least spit.  The Lieutenant came to us the night before and said Odd-squad had better look good at Saturday formation or there would be vicious, excruciating, and completely forbidden retribution to any of us who made her look the fool before her C.O.

The bugle called out reveille and we fell in to neat rows and columns, about six by eight.

I was at the head of one column, on the end and to the right of our Squad leader.  I wondered what the brass was here for.

"I bet you're wondering what I'm doing here," Arbuckle pronounced, as if by saying it, we must be wondering that very thing.  He was carrying a swagger stick.  It occurred to me if you changed his white cotton to black vinyl, he'd look like a gay biker.

"It is the duty of the superior officer to notice every fault, and see every meritorious deed.  No fault should go uncorrected and no good-deed unsung."

Uh-oh.  Somebody's in for it.

"I have received a request, a notice really, that one of our own has gone literally above and beyond the call of duty."

I wish people would learn what literally meant.

"One of our own, in this very troop, Troop 420."

Somebody whispered into his ear.

"Troop 421."

He took out scroll and unrolled it.  Somebody was about to get noticed.

Oh, you brown-nosing schmuck.  I truly feel for you, you poor bastard.

"Be it known to all that Danielle Lynn Heywood,

did fly in orbit and earn hits

Astronaut Badge (Spacewalk), Crew Class, Silver

for hits contributions to the Commandant of Ophiuchus Space Station in her special investigations pursuant to her duties thereto pertaining. 

Done this 26^th Day of January,

 1977 anno domini

Fuck!  They were talking about me.  Astronaut wings?  What the Hell?

They came over to me.  It was inevitable, like the dream where you're being chased by zombies or monsters or something and you can't move your feet.

I thought I was going to throw up. 

As Arbuckle came closer, I became more convinced he was a she in drag.

By the time she stopped in front of me, it was obvious she was just a severe-looking woman who looked unfortunately like an even older man.

She was plum scary.

She was at least five ten and had such a sharp image you could shave with it and in it.  She had more medals than a pawn shop.

She waited while one aid handed her the award and another reached right into my shirt and took the frogs off my 421 button.

The Captain stepped forward and put her left hand where her aide had just been groping, and stuck the medal to my chest with the other.  She put the frogs in place with practiced ease and stepped back, rendering a sharp salute.

What the hell was I supposed to do?

I saluted her back.

Then they were off, serving up a bronze medal to one of the other Squad leaders and a ribbon to a corpsman serving in the hospital.

After that they disappeared.

I looked her up later.  Her name is Wilhelmina Arbuckle, and she's the most decorated officer in the Peace Corps.  One report said she'd been shot six times, on three different occasions.

***

Just about everyone in my squad thought it was cool, me having my wings.  It was a simple silver pin, oval with a little ankh-headed star-man carved into its face.  There was a single wing on the right side. 

The thing I liked most about it was that I didn't have to wear the 421 pin anymore.  Not that I had anything against my Troop, I just thought the way they handled the 420 thing was a little heavy-handed. 

Besides, I've always liked being beyond the bounds of normal.

But some people in other squads were not so pleased.  Noneso less than Christy Forbes, assistant squad leader under First Class Tobey Sanchez, of la Chimenea, the straight-girl squad. 

Sanchez was alright.  She and I were the only two people in the Troop fluent in Spanish.  I knew textbook Spanish better, but she was from the barrio.  We got along well enough teaching.  Besides our students, we also had to wrangle the English speaking locals who volunteered to help us teach Spanish to our Troop.

But Forbes hated me.  I wasn't sure why, but it started almost as soon as I got there.  What ill will she harbored for me, or its cause, I never found out but she couldn't be in the same room without glaring at me.

That day, she just pissed me off.

We were in the mess tent, enjoying a rare glimpse of civilization—those little cups of ice-cream with paper lids and wooden spoons.

Forbes watched me pass and said to her friend just as I walked by "I wonder who she had to blow to get that?"

I stopped.

"Don't worry," I said over my shoulder, "you'll get your chance.  You'll probably get both wings and the star."

I wasn't under any illusions; she was two inches taller than me and outweighed me by at least twenty pounds.  In a fair fight, she'd thrash me.

But I'd been toughening up lately, and I'd already put on twelve pounds, almost all of it muscle.  I could do a lot of things I couldn't last month.

I also knew one thing she didn't.

"What did you say," she asked, stepping up to me like she meant something.  She added "bitch" in a low tone as she stopped right in front of me.

I turned my front foot inward and shifted my weight onto the back.

"I said," I repeated in a low voice that only she could hear, "that you could suck-start a Harley-Davidson."

She grimaced and threw a punch at me, ill formed as it was, but I was expecting it.  I shifted my weight and spun out of her way.  Her blow went right past me, and she punched the Lieutenant square in the back of the head.

I kneed her in the crotch as she went by, but I doubt anyone else saw it.

I straightened up and kept on walking like nothing happened, still eating my ice-cream.