Everything You Wanted
an excerpt

Justin

I want to sleep through it but Mom sends Crag up to shake me up before the buffet closes. Crag never sleeps. I say what the fuck and he says I have to go downstairs for breakfast now because there won't be any in like 15. I say I give a shit and just bury the bitch already but he says I have to go anyway so I get my jeans and shirt and I go.

Downstairs everybody's at this long table. Everybody's reminiscing about some happy shit and my aunt's kids are running around making noise like fucking savages, so after my sister and my mother are done hugging me and saying hi I sit down at the empty side of the table. The breakfast buffet has this stuff like sausage and fruit and old eggs like chow hall eggs with the scumwater on top and the sterno under it and a scoop but you can't get waffles or anything so I get a scoop of eggs and some biscuits. And a bunch of that sterno bacon. The waitress brings me a pot of coffee and
goes away like that's worth a dollar.

My aunt and her husband come up and sit down by me but I don't say what or anything. I just make a sandwich with one of one of the biscuits. She says how are you doing and I say okay. The husband sits down too and I say hey and push the pot at him.

My aunt married an old Air Force guy. One of those fucking desk officers who never get deployed. He thinks we're butt-buddies because he was in the Air Force. His name is Darren like a real rear echelon motherfucker. Just like that guy from the show with the chick where she's a witch or something. He's been in Omaha for years. Now he's retired and they're spending all her time raising kids and getting fat. The kids are annoying everybody at the table and she comes up to me and asks me how Iraq was. I don't say anything because nobody's supposed to know I was there. It's not like it's a military secret. I just didn't want to deal with it and shit so I told people I was sent to Okinawa.
Last time I was in a war my mom got all stupid. She put out some big flag and a put bunch of ribbons on trees. I mean shit. It's not like I was in jail. Doesn't anyone listen to the fucking lyrics? Besides. It's her retirement condo. It's not fucking home or anything.

Uncle REMF says I looked you up and you were in Iraq. I saw your record. You've ever even been to Okinawa.

I say so.

She says and you were in combat.

And I say so.

And he says so what was that like?

I say what do you think?

She says but what about Iraq?

I say I just want some fucking waffles.

He says tell us about the war.

So I tell him first mission in Iraq was to refill the Coke machine. I was on a boat that was like a fucking shopping mall. It was about a hundred miles long and I wasn't really supposed to be there, but it's where I ended up cause of some stupid Navy Exchange Service Command screwup. Somebody got my sosh wrong or something. Sometimes, NAVX is a more complex than the CIA sometimes. SNAFU, you know? Situation Normal. All Fucked Up.
I don't know why I was there, but it was a good way to start the war. I was infantry on a nuclear aircraft carrier, I had no one in my chain of command nearby, and nobody could figure out what to do with me or what was there for.
When the war started, they had planes taking off and
landing all the time. That would have been fine, but you couldn't just hang out
on the deck any more. I checked out DVDs from the library and spent a lot of time watching my portable player. Sometimes, when the swabbies were off
shift, I would play poker with them or we would talk, but they used a lot
of words and letters, acronyms and shit, I didn't understand. After a while, we started playing this game where you make a circle with your fingers. If another person looks directly at the circle, you get to hit them in the arm. But, if
they put a finger in the hole without looking, they get to hit you. Some of
the other swabbies said that we were a bunch of childish motherfuckers, but
they just didn't get the game and its subtlety.
Thing is, swabbies really like Coke. They're crazy about the shit. You never see one of them drinking out of a canteen or a camelback or a coffeecup. It's all red cans. There was more aluminum going through the gedunk than going off the runways, and the more planes were going out, the more the Coke machines went empty. I'd watched all the DVDs in the library, so I got to watching the swabbies. So one day, I'm leaning up against the Coke machine on the top of the stairs near the flight deck, watching the swabbies run around, which is cool cause they're kind of like ants on the metal stairs and halls. They run all over the fucking place and never run into each other. So I'm leaning against the machine and a guy in a flight suit comes over to the machine, drops his quarters in, and he gets that red light that tells you the machine is out, so he said the machine was a motherfucker and told me to refill the machine.
He wasn't in my chain of command or anything, but it was a direct order, and nobody said anything but stay out of the way for like a month, so I figured I gotta do it. I mean, it was a war and all, so I said siryessir, saluted, and turned on my heel. When I walked away, I could hear a gedunk and the pilot saying, "fucking Dr. Pepper." Since logistics was kinda my chain of command, I knew where the warehouse or stowage or whatever was. I went straight there, and Fordham was there manning the computer. "I need Coke, I said, lots of it."
"What for?" he asked.
I said, "Dude, the machine near the launch deck is empty."
He said, "Do you even know what's going on right now?"
"Motherfucker," I said.
"Vending machines are not priority right now," he said.
So I say, "Well, some captain ordered me to refill it."
"Which captain," he said.
"Captain fucking Crunch, how the fuck am I supposed to know? Some pilot. He gave me a direct order."
Fordham looked me in the eye and made an upside down okay sign with his fingers, so I put my finger in it and punched him in the arm.
"Fuck," he said.
"A few cases," I said.
The cases weighed like ten tons, but Fordham gave me a handtruck, so I pushed it to the machine. This sucked, cause the machine was like fifty miles from the stowage. There were lots of places where I had to maneuver the thing around corners, so I had to back up and inch forward, like when you're moving a couch out of an apartment. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the stairs that I thought that the elevator was about twenty miles in the other direction.
I figured I would just carry the Coke up the stairs two cases
at a time. In logistics, you don't get the suitcase 12 packs or the long fridge cases. You get flat brown cardboard with 48 cans wrapped in
plastic, so I made three trips up the stairs. My boots were banging on those metal steps. So I got all the Coke up, then I looked at the machine. I'd never refilled a machine, and these carrier machines hold like 300 cans, but I figured it would be just like loading an M-16 mag, you just stack them in and they stagger automatically. It turns out you need a key to open the thing up, so I left the Cokes stacked and doubletimed back to stowage.
"Fordham," I said. "I need the key to the machine."
"I'll need authorization for that," Fordham said, so I gave him an okay sign.
Then I put it below my belt, and his eyes followed my hand.
"Fuck," Fordham said, and I punched him on the same spot.
Fordham wore glasses and had no peripheral vision, so I owned him at this game. I don't know why the fucker even suggested it.
He gave me a ring of keys, and I doubletimed back to the machine. When I got there, the Cokes were all gone, just empty pallets and dollar bills and quarters thrown all over the place. On the deck, every fucking bellbottom in the world had a warm Coke in his hand. Some were double-fisting. I saw a swabbie tuck his Coke into his waistband to wave his flashlight wands. He had a warm Coke in his pocket. Somebody had
flown in press, and the cameramen had Cokes too. Some were holding big cameras
on their right shoulders, sipping Cokes with their left hands. Others had cameras on tripods and were raising Cokes with their right hands. Others had the cameras on the deck and were sitting down with the cans between their feet. I didn't know shit about press back then, but I know they probably didn't pay. I picked up one of the pallets and got all the quarters and bills. Some of the quarters'd bounced down the stairs. Some were under the stairs.
On a metal floor, a quarter can roll forever, so I was finding quarters
like a mile away. With planes taking off, a dollar can fly, so I was getting dollar bills all over the hall, off the flight deck. One drifted down from the ceiling and landed on my head. When I had as much of the money as I was going to get, I went back to stowage and told Fordham I would need more Coke. I told him there was press and they probably did not pay for their Cokes.
Fordham told me I would need to fill out a requisition form
and stolen property form. He said, he had them right here.
"Right where?" I asked, and he pointed down. I saw the circle his fingers made, but it was too late. He punched me in the arm, on the bone between the bicep and tricep.
"Goddammit," I said, then, "We're already sold out. We need more Coke." He gave me more pallets, and I said I'd left the handtruck at the bottom of the stairs, so I had to go back, get it, and go back to take the truck to stowage, get the Coke on the handtruck, get the Cokes to the bottom of the steps, then carry all that shit up to the top of the steps.
At the top of the steps, I tried five different keys before I got the right one. It was just like I figured, once the thing was open. You just drop the cans in, like feeding a mag. I fed in six hundred cases, slammed the thing shut, and locked it. Then I fed a dollar into the machine, got a Surge, since I knew that would be cold, and walked out onto the deck.
On the tower or bridge or whatever, there was a big banner
that said Mission Accomplished. There was an aircraft coming in for a landing. There was a bunch of swabbies standing in formation and saluting in their best bellbottoms and shit. I looked at the banner then I looked at the Coke machine. I took a sip and said okay. The war was over. I did my part. Mission accomplished. Done.

They're still looking at me and I say that's it.

But it said you were in combat my aunt says.

I say so.

Uncle REMF says what was that like?

I say what do you fucking think and I'm out of biscuits and the coffee sucks so I go
upstairs and go to sleep.