Thanh Ha

First lieutenant.

It always seemed to Alec White that those words had met his ear only yesterday - now, here he was, an uncounted number of months later, nearly devoid of the white picket fences and gingerbread houses and quiet Sunday mornings of Greene, NY. One minute, it seemed, he was on long walks with Jean and coming home to feed the cat and being squawked at by Ma that your room's not clean, you're not going anywhere until that cesspool of a living space is immaculate.

Immaculate. Fuck.

He was used to being scolded for getting a grass stain on his pants. Knocking over a flowerpot. Drinking orange juice too fast because it'll all slosh around in your stomach and you'll end up with an ulcer. Wives' tale, that one was, he swore. He shuddered to think of what Ma would say. Here you didn't worry about grass stains and skinned knees and flowerpots. And you didn't worry about drinking your juice too fast because whatever juice you got was often the only juice you got for awhile, so really nobody minded if you drank it with no manners because they understood.

Here you didn't worry about those things. Here you worried about whether or not you'll live to see the sunset; here you worried about whether your leaders are going to survive the nightly ambush; here you worried about whether the damned Greenies were going to turn on you just like they did with the other ones and string you up on a tree. Here you worried about land mines and malaria and fatal wounds and the fact that you had to depend on men you otherwise would have despised.

Real bother, it was.

It wasn't an easy thing, getting them all together. The fact that he was younger than all but two led to more than a little bitterness on their part. Nineteen, they'd say. He's a kid. He don't know nothin'. Todd Anderson was a kid, too, but clearly, only seventeen, and always carried around an illustrated Bible and so the crew looked out for him without question, like a baby bro. And Zach Jonas was eighteen; closest to Todd out of all of them. They'd been old friends, and Todd was just barely younger than Zach. But then next came Alec in line, nineteen years old, just a kid, don't know nothin'.

He could hear Nowhere Man floating on the air coming from Will Baker's tent, and not surprisingly, he could seem to relate. In the middle of a nowhere desert with not even a real idea of what they were here for, what people they were supposed to kill. Just everyone, Jake Hamilton had said, kill the bastards, it don't make no difference to them if they're dead. He shuffled on his knee over to the tent and drew back the curtain, and Johnny Sanders and Jake Hamilton and Will Baker and Zach Jonas were there playing poker, with Todd looking on with his big blue eyes and trying to learn what a full house or a royal flush meant and how to raise a bet and to how much.

The old record scratched, and Alec wondered again why and how Jake had even managed to bring the old player, so bulky with the speakers and everything. Soon Let It Be was floating along the air from Nowhere Man, and Alec crawled into the space once Will moved to the right. Each murmured a quiet hello, and Alec stared blankly for a moment before he sat up, rubbing his palms together. "Deal me one."

Johnny cocked a brow, and two weathered fingers plucked the cigarette from his mouth. "Hamilton's dealing." His eyes shifted. "You sure you wanna?"

A glance to little Todd in the corner with his Bible, and Alec faked a grin. "Yeah. Give it."

There was silence for a moment, save the clanking of shot glasses and a near-silent offer of bourbon. One face was missing - and it didn't take long for the lieutenant to notice.

"Where's Gerald?" he queried nonchalantly, and the remaining exchanged glances.

Jake, dealing, didn't look up. "I ain't playin' cards with no niggers. Get 'em all bent up or cheat or somethin'." He reached for his glass after flipping the last card in front of Alec's lap. "'Sides… damn coo wouldn't come into the tent."

"'F I was talked about like you talk about 'im, I wouldn't come in either," muttered Sanders, seemingly out of nowhere. Hamilton's racism was vague about its roots, but it was something the men had grown used to. Not fond of, but used to. Either way… Alec silently worried, always, that a stupid grudge against a color of skin would do them to their doom if ever dependent upon each other in the field. And after all - Gerald Young was the medic.

Alec simply muttered "Yeah," and discarded his two of clubs.

***