Suzie’s House 467 : Flashback #1

“Ewwww! Icky!” Martin threw his hands to the side and lifted a leg in retreat from a mud puddle.

“Quit fooling around,” Walter growled. “You know this area is full of landmines.”

This had to be the fifth time Martin had done it. Was he trying to give Walter the jitters? As if he needed to lavish on the jokes during recon!

“Hey! Check this out.” Martin plucked some kind of weird fruit from a branch of some jungle plant hanging over the narrow, rural road they followed. It had a strange shape. “They call this star fruit. Know why?”

“Could you be a little quieter?” Walter glanced all around, but saw no sign of enemy presence. Still, you never knew.

“Lighten up, buddy. There aint anyone but us around.” He handed the fruit to Walter.

It felt cool and soft. If they weren’t on recon he might have taken a bite. Then again, you couldn’t really trust anything Martin just handed to you, and Walter noticed his old friend didn’t take a bite. He let the fruit fall to the ground and kept moving.

“Hey. Hold this for me.” Martin pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Don’t light up now. The gooks might smell it.” He took the pack

“Relax! There’s no one around, I tell you.” Martin made no effort to get the smokes back. Instead he patted down the many pockets in his army fatigues.

“How do you know?”

“Remember when we passed that weird little pyramid of hand grenades?”

“Yeah.” It was a pile about knee high. Walter was sure it was some weird gook trap. He’d given it wide berth. Martin had actually gone over and touched it, but the thing hadn’t gone off, so maybe it was just someone’s stash. Walter was glad to be away from it. “What about it?”

“The thing is, I think you were right about it being a trap. None of those grenades had pins him them. I have no idea why none of them went off when I took this.” He pulled a live grenade from his pocket. “I’m tired of carrying it. Here. You take it.”

Martin smiled as he handed the grenade to Walter, plucking the cigarettes out of his other hand at the same time. For a full second Walter held the grenade, unable to believe his best friend would seriously try to kill him. If he didn’t throw it fast enough, they would both be blown to smithereens. As the smile slid off of Martin’s face, Walter bought a clue. He lobbed the grenade into the woods as hard as he could.

The explosion took place in mid-air. Twigs and leaves flew past them at missile speeds. Rushing air lifted Martin’s hair in a mad whirl and pulled at their clothes. A patina of tiny scrapes covered part of Martin’s face and neck.

Walter’s cheek stung. He rubbed at it and came away with blood. It wasn’t enough to worry about. Cold shivers ran through his body. He had to concentrate to keep from throwing up.

If he threw up in front of Martin, the jerk would probably joke about it for months. For sure he’d be telling the tale of how stupid Walter was for accepting a live grenade and how long it took him to throw the thing away. As if neither of their lives meant much of anything.

Martin stood in front of him with a smile of anticipation. He looked like he just wanted an excuse to start laughing. A jungle full of gooks and this nimrod wouldn’t think twice about calling them all down on them.

Shivers ran through Walter’s body, but he refused to admit he was shaken. Suppressing all the swear words that leapt readily to mind, he continued down the narrow rural road as if nothing had happened.

“You ass!” Martin hit Walter on the back of the head as if the whole thing was his fault. “You’re so stupid!”

“Look whose talking,” Walter grumbled. But he had to admit his reactions were dangerously slow. “Quit fooling around and let’s get this over with.”

The scary part of the whole thing was the way none of it surprised him.

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