Cool Tile Floor

My day didn't start out well on Wednesday. Actually, the night before didn't start out that well, either. The window by the bed was open to let the fresh, cold air into the room. Buddy was curled up right in front of the crack where the cold air would rush in on his huge frame. It's Buddy's favorite spot when the nights are brisk. But the cold air was making it hard for me to fall asleep. My toes were freezing! I drummed up enough courage to throw the covers off for just enough time to get myself to the closet to retrieve my heavy winter down comforter. Candace doesn't like the comforter because it makes her too hot, so I folded it in half and tucked the edge into the foot of my side of the bed. The warmth was immediately noticeable as I slipped deep under the weightless covers and turned on my side for a wonderful rest.

I fell asleep quickly and I don't think that I moved for the rest of the night. My next conscious thought brought me into a brightening day and the fact that I needed to take care of my morning business. I threw the covers back and began to roll out of bed when I was suddenly and violently slammed by a horrible cramp in my left calf. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” was all I could let out of my mouth without using any objectionable language that early in the morning. I rolled to my other side, trying to realign my spine just enough to ease the pressure on the nerves. The cramp slowly subsided and I was finally able to step out onto the cold carpet and stretch out my aching muscle.

I limped to the bathroom feeling just a little bit light-headed and wondering what could be going on. I sat down for a moment to try and get myself stabilized but the dizziness worsened. “Am I about to die?” I wondered. “Is this what it feels like just before slipping into the next life?” I asked. The answer didn't come. I woke up lying flat on my back on the bathroom floor. Annie was licking my toes in an effort to wake me up. The tile floor felt cool against my back and I began thinking through a slow, deliberate self-examination. My head didn't hurt, so I must not have smacked it on the hard floor. All of my fingers and toes were wiggling, so there must not be any serious nerve damage. What had just happened? Annie continued to lick my toes and as my eyes finally opened her tail started to wag.

I lay there for a few minutes, feeling the cool tiles on my back and shoulders. Annie trotted out of the bathroom. Finally, I sat up and worked my way to my feet. The dizziness was gone as I walked back into the bedroom. “Where have you been?” came from under a hump in the covers. “I didn't know where you went. Where have you been?” I was a little embarrassed and just a little bit concerned as I told Candace, “I just found myself lying on the bathroom floor and I don't know how I got there.” The covers exploded away from her face and she looked at me with horror in her eyes. “Well, obviously you passed out!”

The same thing happened to me several years ago. I had laid down wearing my sweats and pulled a blanket over myself to get warm in front of the television set. I fell asleep there and when I woke up I felt extremely warm. I remember walking up the stairs but then found myself lying in a heap on the floor in the hallway. The doctor hadn't been able to find anything wrong with me and it didn't ever happen again, and so I just forgot about the whole incident. “I think I must have overheated. I think that's what must have happened the last time I passed out, too.” Candace wasn't consoled.

I hope that's all there is to it.

The Beast in the Attic

I was in Utah photographing a wedding when Candace called. "The air conditioner won't come on and I don't know what to do." I wasn't even going to catch a flight for three more days and I felt helpless. "I guess you'll need to call an air conditioning company to get it fixed." The weather in Houston had been unseasonably cool for several days and it looked like it would extend into the coming days. "I can just keep the windows open until you get back. It's still cool here," Candace proposed. It was settled for the time being.

My first item of business after dropping my bag on the bed was to climb into the attic to examine the furnace. I pulled the doors off and looked at the vents and the gas jets. Everything was clean and in good working condition, but the two green indicator lights were dark suggesting that there was no power reaching the unit. I followed the long yellow cable from the furnace up the heavy roof support and across to the junction box. The switch was in the on position and there was power to the only light globe in the large attic space. That wasn't the problem. I walked outside to look at the large condenser unit. The unit was in excellent condition. Everything looked normal. I checked the breakers and found them all intact. "We need to call an air conditioning company. I can't see what the problem is." It was a hard thing to admit that I couldn't solve the problem myself because I'd rather spend $600 on a new set of tools so that I could perform the repair than to spend $625 to hire a professional who actually knows what he's doing. That $25 is equivalent to eating lunch for a week and you wouldn't expect me to starve to death just for some cool, dry air now, would you?

Candace had talked to Ann, our neighbor, while I'd been in Utah and Ann had given her the name of a specialist who she liked and trusted. Candace gave me the number and told me to call. That was yet another slug in the gut to this heavy-hearted husband whose pride was on the very brink. I called.

The next afternoon, when I came home from work, the air conditioning was running and the house felt cool and dry. What a relief, and not a moment too soon. The temperature had climbed back into the 80's and it looked like warmer days were ahead. "What did he find?" I asked. Candace reached back on the kitchen counter and retrieved a bundle of wires. "He says it looks like we have animals chewing on the wires. He pulled the vent cover off and found that all of the foam insulation had been chewed through. He thinks we have mice or squirrels or even a racoon that's climbing the pipes into the attic. I'll call the pest control company and see if they can take care of it." Wow! The thought hadn't even crossed my mind that it might be a devilish little rodent!

That night as Candace and I lay in bed there came a sudden scratching above us in the ceiling! "Did you hear that?" "Huh? What? Did I hear what?" The scratching began again. "Hey! It's up there!" I listened for a while to the silence. Wham! My eyes jerked open and I know that I sat straight up in bed. Candace had banged the wall hard causing a small 3.0 earthquake in the bed. "I was just trying to shut it up." My heart pounded as my mind was spinning, still half asleep.

The next afternoon when I came home from work the pest control people had been in the attic looking for the beast. "They said that it's definitely not mice. It's something much bigger. They said that for $69 they'll set a trap in the attic and catch it." My pride was returning as the thought of trapping the animal grew in my head. "No. For $69 I can build a dozen traps. I'll take care of this." Candace challenged me. "What makes you think that you can trap whatever it is?" I was ready for this one. "When I was in high school I built a trap for squirrels. I actually caught a few."

The next morning I stopped at Wal-Mart to buy the one component that I'd need--a mouse trap. I wouldn't use the trap to catch the animal, but to trigger the door release. I'd show that crazed, rabid pest who's the man! Back at home I waded through the knee-deep assembly of bicycles, swimming floats and umbrellas to get to my stash of scrap lumber. I chose three pieces of pine that would do nicely and waded back to my work bench. I measured and cut and drilled and stapled and hammered. I was a genius! "Are you sure that door is big enough?" Candace was back to challenge my omniscience. "I know what I'm doing," was all I needed to say. I tied a piece of cheese and a slice of apple to the bait string, set the mouse trap trigger and left it in the darkness of the attic.

About ten minutes later there was a loud "SNAP!" from above us and I hurried up the ladder into the attic to see my trophy. The apple and cheese swung quietly from side to side on their string. The wooden door was closed. The trap was empty. "I don't think that door is big enough." Candace was determined to be right about the door size. "A squirrel can get through that door. I've done this before." Her next question was the one that I wasn't prepared for. "What if it's not a squirrel?" What was she talking about? Not a squirrel? What else could squeeze through that tiny hole in the vent? I wondered. The seed of doubt was creeping in. Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am. I laughed the question off. "Yeah. It's probably Cujo in the attic with glowing red eyes." Jeez! Did I just say that? I was creeping myself out.

That night the scratching was back. And to make it even worse, the grandkids heard something stalking around in the attic above them. We were all starting to get the creepy skin crawlers. The next morning I checked the trap. Empty. "Maybe you need to make the door bigger." I couldn't even reply. My pride prevented me. But, of course, I brought the trap back to the work bench and revised the trap by making the door bigger. In the course of making the complex repair I had an epiphany. I could improve the trigger by removing the mouse trap and running a string directly from the bait to a small nail that held the heavy door open. I tested it. A light tug on the bait brought the door slamming down on my arm. "Gotcha!" I thought as a warrior's grin crept across my face. I strung the bait line with a piece of cheese and a bit of cold hot dog. "If it's Cujo, he's going to need some raw meat." The thought sent an icy shiver down my legs.

I didn't hear any noise up in the attic all afternoon and I concluded that my trap wasn't going to work but decided to check it anyway. I climbed the ladder and shined my flashlight at the trap. "Holy crap! I've caught a huge rat!" The furry monster was nearly as big as the trap! The door was closed and all I could see was the dark, hairy hump of its back and the long slender tail. "Hey, big guy! Looks like you got caught." I spoke in low tones, trying not to scare the ugly thing. It turned to look at me, it's triangular white face contrasting sharply with the dark gray fur. "A possum!" When it turned and made eye contact with me it hunched its back even more and let out a gutteral hissing noise that reminded me of a giant snake. "Whoah! I'm not messing with you!" Its teeth were bared and bloody from attempting to chew through the wire and into freedom. I even expected to see the tiny eyes glowing red as I pulled on a pair of heavy leather gloves and gently lifted the trap down the ladder, keeping it safely away from my body and arms.

Candace was right. Of course she was right. My door hadn't been big enough.

I took Cujo out to a stand of trees a distance from the house and opened the trap. It poked its head out slowly at first, then silently scurried into the darkness of the cool Tomball evening.

No more chain of command

Things moved on quietly for a few days, though tension could be felt within the office environment as Grumpy, Lumpy and Bling came and went. Something was clearly not right, but no one was talking to me. On June 11^th the Bling monster reared its head again, though, and the tension was beginning to spread to the SCW’s in the office.

Aslam was trying to keep up with his inspections of the Porta-Johns during the daytime and would go out with Chitrah to get them done. On that Thursday afternoon, though, Bling stopped Aslam before he could go out the door. “You’re just office help. You don’t do inspections. You stay here and do your job.” Aslam was confused. He’d been ordered by Maxx to do the inspections and it had been his job since Indika had gone home. Bling wasn’t even his boss, but the orders were coming from everywhere these days. There didn’t seem to be a chain of command anymore.

I pulled Bling aside that evening and explained to him that Maxx and I expected Aslam to inspect at least 180 Porta-Johns each day in order to stay on top of their maintenance. Bling didn’t say much but he agreed to let Aslam do his job.

On Friday morning Chitrah came in complaining that Bling was trying to pull him off the job in order to clean buses at the main bus stop. It wasn’t Bling’s job to keep the buses clean and it wasn’t within his power to pull people from their jobs. I stopped him before lunch and told him that he couldn’t just pull people from their assigned duties without a little bit of planning. Again, Bling stayed silent but he didn’t try to exert his assumed authority again while I was there.

That night was going to be my last restful sleep for several months because life was about to pull me in a new direction that I wasn’t prepared for at all.

Control Slips Away in the Night

May 31^st started out as a pleasant morning, only 72 degrees, a bit cooler than the previous weeks had been, but I knew what that meant. The 1^st of June would bring heat, wind and dust. But May 31^st was a gift that I wasn’t going to overlook. I broke away from the office routine at my first opportunity and, instead of driving across the base to the dining facility, I decided to walk. The DFAC was only a mile and a half across the wide, flat landscape and it was always a joyful time to look at the sparse plant life and the unusually abundant animals and birds that made their homes in the Syrian Desert.

About a half mile before I reached the dining facility I walked past the Service Desk, the contact point between the military and the civilian contractors. As a matter of habit I stopped by to see if any orders had come in during the night that I needed to be aware of. I walked through the plywood building’s screened door and was met by two large soldiers who were huddled over the counter in a state of serious concentration. The soldier who was writing glanced back to see who had just come in behind him and John, the Service Desk attendant stood up from his desk. “Morning, John. Is there anything here for me?” John hadn’t been at the service desk for long, but he lived next to me in the shipping container apartments. “Jed! You’re just the man we needed to talk to here! This is Staff Sergeant Pullen and he has a mission for the Transportation Department.” The big sergeant turned again and we shook hands this time. “I’ve got 18 people coming in next week and we need to move them from the air terminal to their living area. The problem is that we don’t know what day the flight is arriving for sure and we still don’t know what time the flight will arrive.” His description of the mission was typical. Because of military operational security the details and schedules of arriving and departing flights were never made public. I knew that two hours before the flight arrived I’d get my first notice that things were about to happen and I’d have to get out and round up the drivers who had previously been assigned. Sometimes the drivers were sitting at the bus hub waiting for their next departure and the entire process would take a few minutes. But sometimes they were somewhere out on the base in the middle of their routes and it would take some time to find them and prepare them for the upcoming mission.

“Sergeant Pullen, I understand how this works for you. If you’ll just come to the Service Desk as soon as you find out about the flight, they can call me on the radio and I can get the bus to the flight line.” He was pleased at the simplicity of the process. “That’s all? You don’t need extra memos from my chain of command?” I understood how he felt. Everything needed more paper than Brazil could possibly produce in a year. The Syrian Desert was probably the result of millennia of military invasion and occupation. Any trees that had once been there were long gone as a result of the constant pile of memoranda moving from inbox to outbox and from office to office. I always saw my job as facilitating the military by cutting down on the craziness of the bureaucracy, but it was always a fine line, too. Without good paperwork the government wouldn’t be able to reimburse the civilian contractors, so I had to make certain that the necessary papers were submitted.

I put SSG Pullen’s bus mission on the calendar and made a large note of it on the white board at the office so that everyone would be aware of the upcoming mission because to miss a mission for the military was an unforgiveable offense. We’d never missed a mission since I’d been in Tal Afar, and I wasn’t about to begin now.

June 1^st was exactly the way I’d expected it. The morning was unusually warm and a wind was beginning to kick up from the east. “Here it comes,” I thought to myself as I walked to the office. “In about two hours we won’t be able to see anything or breathe. I’d better warn the drivers about opening vehicle doors in the wind.”

It turned dark by ten in the morning and the dust was choking. It was a physical precursor to the mental and emotional roller coaster that had already begun its ascent toward the top of the first big drop in a ride that was, by far, one of the scariest and worst of my adult life.

Five more days ticked away, normally for the greater part, but there was an undercurrent of anger and frustration that I couldn’t put my finger on. Bling still seemed angry about being caught at the Tank Wash office and Grumpy had gotten very quiet. Lumpy was eerily silent, something that was completely out of character for him and I kept wondering what was going on. “What’s happening, Grumpy?” “Nothin’.” “Hey, Bling, what’s going on?” “Nothin’.” “So, Lumpy, how are things going?” “Uh, I dunno. Nuttin’ much, I guess.” How many more days would Maxx be gone? I was counting the days until his return from R&R so that I could get back to my normal routine and leave all of the office politics to the boss.

On the morning of June 6^th I was shocked by an early phone call from the Service Desk. “Your buses missed a movement last night. Staff Sergeant Pullin called for the buses and Grumpy didn’t get them to the air field in time. The entire group of soldiers borrowed some trucks to carry them to their living areas.” Our department had just committed the unforgiveable sin! We had left the military standing out in the darkness in the middle of the night!

When Grumpy walked through the door I asked him, “Did you know that you missed a troop movement last night?” His answer was too casual and it raised the hair on the back of my neck. “It’s all right. They got to where they were supposed to go.” I couldn’t believe that this foreman was nonchalantly tossing this missed movement around the office! This was exactly the kind of thing that sucked corporate managers and directors into the field from Baghdad and left headless employees in their wake! What could he possibly be thinking! This could end up as a level 4 CAR! (That means a “corrective action request.”) A level 4 CAR was the kind of thing that shut entire corporations down in the theater of operations.

My stomach was in a tight knot through the rest of the morning. I finally reached Staff Sergeant Pullin just before noon to apologize. “It’s all right. We made it to where we needed to go.” His use of the same type of language that Grumpy had used sent another chill up my spine. Had they planned this? Had Grumpy already talked to Sergeant Pullin? Was this an effort to discredit the Transportation Department? Sergeant Pullin’s reaction was too benign. He knew the serious nature of the missed movement. Why wasn’t he bothered by it?

Later that afternoon Lalith Dahal came into the office. His eyes were deep red from the tears that he’d been fighting back. “What’s happening?” I questioned. Lalith sobbed pitifully, “Sir, Mr. Bling yelling at me. He telling me I go home. He telling me my bus jump too much at bus hub. I go slow but ground have too many holes. You like my father, but Mr. Bling yelling too much. Telling me I go home.”

Lalith’s words and emotions swirled in the room. Why was Bling yelling at the drivers knowing that they weren’t even his responsibility. Why did he think that it was so important to make a big deal out of the rough surface at the bus hub parking area? I tried to calm Lalith down, “Lalith, don’t worry. You’re not going home. I’ll check with Bling and see what’s going on.” Lalith began to cry again, “Thank you, sir. You good man. You like my father.”

It wasn't more than five minutes before Bling walked into the office. "I just had a driver come in crying because you'd been yelling at him." He bristled and blasted back, "That's BULL____!" I worked to calm the air. "I'm not accusing anyone. I'm just trying to find out what's going on." "He was speeding through the bus hub! He was bouncing the bus so hard that it looked like it was going to roll over!" I thanked him and added that I'd check it out.

Questions were suddenly blossoming in my mind. What EXACTLY was going on in our department? Something was just not right. It was as if the idea of a chain of command had completely evaporated and each American employee was now assuming the role of Supreme Executor of Departmental Command and Authority. It was a growing anarchy and I was struggling to maintain my small corner of the American Republic and hold it all together. I checked the bus over as it sat in the parking area. It turned out to be a huge problem with the front suspension. I drove it to the maintenance shop and the boss exclaimed, "I can't believe these guys have been driving this bus! The front end is absolutely shot! I'm going to have to deadline it."

The roller coaster car was still an agonizing week away from the summit where it would finally level out at the top of that first giant hump, and the other side would be a drop so steep that my gut would certainly careen through the hot, empty air and crater into the dusty desert below.

Moving Day

The Spring Gardens Nursery has been situated on a prime piece of real estate on FM 2920 for two years. Richard Gieseke, the owner of the nursery, has worked his little plot with his own hands while growing his business from a seedling and the acres of ground are covered with thousands of trees and bushes that he sells mostly to commercial landscapers. Across the street there are new strip centers filled with new businesses. Next door is a brand new, large emergency medical building to serve the fast-growing communities that surround it.

Richard's landlord took notice that his real estate has grown dramatically in value and has now decided that it should be leased to someone else with a higher profit potential. Richard's lease is finished on the 30^th of this month and the landlord is not willing to renew. Richard was devastated by the news. His nursery is covered with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of large commercial plants and he was on the brink of losing everything he'd worked for over the decades. He brought a plea to his brothers in church two weeks ago. “I need to ask for your help. I'm about to lose my nursery because the land owner refuses to renew my lease. I've found a new piece of property, only four miles away, but by the end of the month I need to have all of my plants moved to the new location and I need help moving all of my plants.” He set Saturday aside as his moving day and asked for as many volunteers as possible to come and help with the arduous move, not knowing whether anyone would even bother to show up. Richard had spent the previous week installing the huge irrigation system at his new site that would be needed to water the thousands of growing trees and shrubs.

On Saturday morning at nine o'clock a group of strong men and at least one strong woman appeared, some with their sons, at the nursery gate armed with gloves and an attitude to do whatever they needed to do in order to get the nursery moved. Before the commotion began it was hushed on the wide, flourishing forest of quiet beauty. A lark was singing mellifluously in the top of one of the huge Magnolia trees and it seemed as if the bustle of the road outside had vanished for a time. Then the moment was broken by big trucks moving into position to pick up their massive loads.

“One, two, three, lift!” Over and over the count rose up as men lifted the burdensome thirty gallon pots onto the trailers and into the tall vans. “Oh, no! I lost my glasses!” Brother Grabau had lifted one of the pots into the tall van and the tree had dragged his glasses from his face, flipping them deep inside the already dense load. They were buried somewhere in that sea of thick greenery inside the dark van. “I'll never find them in here! I can't see without them and it's too dark.” Ken Hubnik calmed him. “We'll tell the guys at the other end to keep their eyes open for them as they unload the van.”

Dustin Hubnik, all 40 pounds of him, huffed and puffed to drag a giant 70 pound pot down the aisle. “Dustin! You can do better than that! Put some breakfast into it!” someone called. “I think it would help if you weighted 200 pounds, like most of the rest of us,” someone else said. Dustin only attempted the task once but his observation of this service project was teaching him a valuable lesson.

“Fire ants! They're biting me!” A new caution was raised to everyone in the crowd and the rest of the men began to examine their feet to see if they were standing in a fire ant bed. “Bruce! Hold still!” A quick swipe of a glove brushed a large black spider from his shirt back onto the ground. “Watch out for snakes, too.”

For several hours the group pushed, pulled, dragged and lifted the heavy pots, covering themselves with the dark, stinky mud that continually splashed from the black weed mats covering the ground. Truck after truck moved the big trees out of the gate and toward their new home. By lunch time it was hard to tell whether it was the thick, black mud or the soaking perspiration that raised the mightiest stench, but no one felt burdened by the work. The brothers chatted about their work and about the upcoming game. Everyone chatted about the things that made them smile between the shouts of “One! Two! Three! Lift!”

Brother Grabau recovered his glasses because someone unloading at the other end spotted them when they fell from one of the trees coming out of the van. In the end, service is something we love to do and what makes it even better is that we do it as a matter of personal choice. We give up a Saturday morning at home in favor of helping a brother in real need. No one has to cajole us. No one has to pay us. No one has to legislate or regulate us. We do it purely out of love. It's what makes us great as Americans and as Latter-day Saints and it's just what friends do.

Day of Remembrance

This morning I drove my school bus to pick up my elementary students. I pulled up in front of Kassie and Steven at their stop and as they climbed on the bus they both smiled and said, “Happy Nine Eleven.” Their little brother who was standing next to Mom blurted out, “Happy Birthday!”

I was born on December 9, 1948, seven years and two days following the attack on Pearl Harbor. My mother used to tell me that I was born two days after Pearl Harbor Day and I always looked at that as a great privilege, even though I didn't understand what Pearl Harbor Day was for several years. Along the way I gathered little bits of information about the attack and began to form a picture in my mind about what it really meant, but it wasn't until August of 2006 that the picture came with real clarity into my heart and mind. That August Candace and I went to Hawaii to photograph a wedding on the north end of Oahu. We took a few days to enjoy the island and to see the sights and the most profound experience that I had that August was our visit to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. We watched films of the attack in horror as the great American naval fleet was sunk by Japanese bombers on what had begun as a quiet Sunday morning in 1941.

Kassie and Steven aren't old enough to comprehend what was going on eight years ago when four jet airplanes were hijacked by murderers and used to target buildings, killing nearly 3,000 Americans who were quietly beginning their day. Kassie and Steven will gather bits and pieces of information over the next few years until they begin to understand what happened that morning. Until they come to that understanding, though, I'm grateful for their innocence and their youthful joy at a National Day of Remembrance. I have a hard time feeling their joy because, like most of my fellow Americans, I still remember where I was on that morning and what I was doing when Candace told me to come and look at the TV and what I felt as we both watched, still not yet fully comprehending, as the second airplane crashed into the World Trade Center. The realization crashed like a bolt of lightning that comes with the immediate explosion of thunder and we understood that the country had changed and that it would never be the same place again.

In February of 2002 I had an opportunity to talk with Senator Orin Hatch and I begged him, “Please tell the President that there's an old Marine who's ready to do what needs to be done.” Senator Hatch pooh-poohed my plea with, “War is a young man's game. Let's hope that you don't need to go.” Now, as a 60-year-old and having returned from Iraq and having served our country's real heroes for two years I just say to Senator Hatch, “You don't know what you're talking about. War is everyone's game and even old men can make a valuable contribution.”

The innocence of Kassie and Steven is different than the innocence that my generation had. They can't experience what we did because parents hold their children a little closer now in a world that seems just a little bit darker—a little bit more sinister. I still have hope, though, that we can get some of that old America back, but we'll all have to come together as Americans and take a hard look at just how much we've lost—and just how much we've gained.

The Aztec secret

This morning is the day that the garbage truck picks up tree prunings along with the regular garbage and so I spent a little time cutting the dead leaves from our Mexican Fan Palms. The leaves are tricky to work around because they have razor sharp spikes along the fronds and I've been caught by surprise on many occasions. One morning I was mowing the lawn near one of the palms when a spike caught my thumb as I passed by. The mower kept my hand moving forward and the spike made its best attempt to hold my hand back, but the Honda 5 horse power engine won out and my poor thumb lost a large patch of skin. Anyway, as I was trimming the palm trees this morning I was suddenly grabbed by one of the sharp spikes as my head was rubbing against the leaf above me, or at least that's what I imagined until I heard a loud buzzing very close to my right ear. The spot where I'd been spiked was in my right temple and it turned out that a large Yellow Jacket, part of a small nest of Yellow Jackets, had stung my temple. There was sudden fire and my right eye closed instinctively as I jumped out of the palm tree's umbrage yelling “The little booger! The little booger!”

I walked into the house, my face on fire, and continued to repeat “The little booger!” Candace asked me what was going on, half horrified and half chuckling. “I was just stung by a wasp and my face is on fire. Do we have some Calamine lotion?” I always kept a large bottle of Calamine in the medicine closet for just such emergencies but it was no longer there. My two years in Iraq and moving our home and going through Hurricane Ike had somehow made my large bottle disappear. “I don't think we have any Calamine, but I have some healing mud from Egypt.” I wasn't sure about what to think. Healing mud from Egypt? Sounded fishy. Candace removed a large jar from the closet but her eyes must be suffering a little bit because there was, indeed, a pyramid on the label but the name of the product was “Aztec Secret.” My confidence level dropped a bit. I've lived in Latin America and I've been around the places where the Aztec civilization once flourished, but I suddenly wondered why, if this was the “Aztec Secret,” did all of the Aztecs disappear? Maybe this was the secret of their sudden, mystifying disappearance and Candace was plotting something.

She opened the jar and handed it to me. It was full of fine dust. “Just put some into a little dish and mix it with water.” My right eye was pegged closed because of the continuous fiery pain and I realized that maybe death wouldn't have been so bad right then. I tapped some dust onto the edge of the sink (since I didn't want to waste my time looking for some tiny porcelain apothecary bowl) and mixed a little water with it. I picked up the thick paste on the end of my finger and, closing the other eye, rubbed it onto my flaming temple. The pain vanished! It was immediate! It was a miracle! Or maybe I had just died and all of my pain had suddenly ceased! No, I was still alive! My right eye popped open.

When I went back to investigate the palm tree I found a nest of Yellow Jackets adding on to their mud hut on the underside of the leaf that I'd been rubbing against during my pruning episode. I'll use more caution the next time I prune. That's what wisdom is—learning from our mistakes and our lack of wisdom in order to acquire the ability to correctly apply knowledge. And, of course, there's always the “Aztec Secret.”

The Secret Combination Begins

“And it came to pass that they formed a secret combination, even as they of old; which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God;” (Book of Mormon, Ether 8:18)

“You don’t have to put up with Maxx. I can’t stand him either. He thinks he controls everyone in the department.” Rabbit sat with Grumpy at midnight chow as the two of them seethed about Maxx. “He came and told me that I’m going to be at the top of his cut list because of my reputation on the internet. He’s nothing but an a__hole.” The discussion heated even more each time one of them spoke. It was open season on Maxx and there were no limits to what they were saying about him. They had even ceased speaking in low tones and now the soldiers sitting at the next table were listening to the venomous words. “I don’t think you could find anyone in the department who even likes that a__hole.” Rabbit’s wheels were turning. He’d begun to recognize an opportunity and now he was going to turn it to his advantage. “I’ll bet you could get everyone in the department to sign a statement against Maxx. If H. R. had a stack of statements on their desk they wouldn’t keep that bastard around for a minute.”

A new phase of the plot was hatching. Grumpy could save himself if he could recruit the other Americans. It could work. “There’s only one guy who wouldn’t go along with this. Jed and Maxx are friends. I don’t think we could get Jed to go along with it.” Rabbit was an expert manipulator and he could artfully stay ahead of the jackals just long enough to get to his hole in the ground. “You don’t need Jed. If you could get statements from everyone else, Jed by himself wouldn’t be able to save Maxx.”

“Let’s get together with Lumpy and Bling tomorrow night and talk this thing over. I’ll bet we could overthrow this S. O. B. Whatever you do, though, don’t say anything to Jed about it or this whole thing will blow up in our faces.”

By morning the idea had blossomed in Grumpy’s mind until he began to feel a little more confident. He stood through the shift change monitoring his watch and waiting for his first opportunity to capture Lumpy and Bling together. After the shift change I pulled up all of the important items for the daily report and told Aslam that I’d be going to breakfast. It was the moment that Grumpy had waited for. He gathered Lumpy and Bling together and asked them to meet with him at the DFAC in the evening.

The day passed as usual. It was getting hot on the base, reaching 106 degrees in the afternoon, and there was no air conditioning in most of the trucks. The wind had blown for two days, kicking up dust and making the heat even more unbearable. The drivers were hot and tired by the time they came in that evening and they were anxious to go home. The shift change went by and I signed my time sheet and left for the evening. I never went to dinner at the dining facility because the food was rich and heavy and it never settled well on my stomach just before bed time. It was a good opportunity for the conspirators to gather.

“If we all sign statements that Maxx has been abusive and intimidating we can get him thrown out as supervisor.” Grumpy had started the discussion. “Lumpy, you don’t like Maxx. What can you say about him in a statement?” “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t like Maxx but I don’t know if I have anything that I can put in a statement. I gotta think about dat one.” Lumpy felt a bit uneasy about the meeting, but he didn’t want to be the one to say anything. He wasn’t a real leader and it surprised nearly everyone that he’d ever been promoted to a foreman’s position.

“Look, you guys, we all need to stand together to get this thing done. We can get rid of that big S. O. B. if we just send in our statements together. We don’t have to put up with him any more. This is our chance to get him good.” The white rabbit poked his head out of his hole long enough to add a few words. Bling chimed in, “That bastard told me that I couldn’t get paid for the extra time that I put in here. He wants me to work for free. I ain’t goin’ along wid dat. I’ll sign a statement. Let’s get that bastard good!” Grumpy grinned when he heard Bling join in, but the voice in his head didn’t go away. “You’re a dead man! You’d better pull this off! You’re a dead man!” Grumpy continued, “I printed some blank statements for us. You guys fill them out and sign them and I’ll turn them in tomorrow morning. Whatever you do, though, don’t say anything to Jed about this or it could kill the whole scheme.” He passed out the blank statement forms to each of the conspirators. “Give them to me in the morning,” he concluded.

Rabbit talked to Scalawag at the morning shift change in the Fuel Department. “I don’t think I need to add my statement. Yours will be enough.” Scalawag was playing his normal political game—stay in the middle and don’t get caught on either side. It was a game that had served him well for a long time, but he was never a person of real conviction. No one trusted him because no one ever knew what he stood for.

As the morning shift change concluded I sat at the computer, gathering the information together for the daily report when Lumpy walked into the office. “I ain’t getting’ into dem discussions at de Dee-fack at night. Uh-uh. Dey ain’t talkin’ ‘bout nothin’ good down dere. I ain’t even gettin’ involved. It’s some bad stuff dat dey’re talkin’ ‘bout. I don’t even want to be around it. Uh-uh. Dat Rabbit likes to talk ‘bout some bad stuff.” The words spilled out of his mouth just as they normally did. He hardly ever gave any thought to what spilled out. I stared at him, trying to understand the meaning behind what he was mumbling. “What’s Rabbit saying?” I asked the question, but I was fearful that the answer was going to go on for the next half hour. “He’s sayin’ some bad stuff. I don’t even want to be a part of it. Uh-uh.” He walked out of the office and I breathed a sigh of relief that the conversation with him was over, but I wondered what kinds of things Rabbit was talking about at the DFAC in the evenings.

Grumpy came into the office, signed his time sheet to end his night shift and walked out again. He held a small stack of papers in his hand as he headed across the gravel parking area toward the Human Resources office.

Grumpy stirs the pot

No one really learned until much later what had been going on, but Grumpy had finally formed his plan and was about to pull the irreversible trigger that would set it in motion. He would eventually receive most of the credit for the coup d’ état that was being launched, but his narrow little mind couldn’t have known the full extent of where his carelessness and wasteful self-aggrandizement would carry everyone involved.

It was nearly midnight when the plot was finally vaulted into cyberspace. Grumpy sat in the near-total silence of the night at his computer in the Transportation office pounding on the keyboard. His face was red and the veins bulged in his normally long, flaccid neck. The voice inside his head had slowly played a crescendo until it was fortissimo and searching for a rest. Beads of sweat formed in the night time heat of the plywood office as he repeated to himself, “I ain’t afraid of you! I ain’t afraid of you!” With every repetition of the phrase, though, he realized that he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t really afraid, but the vise clamped down on his gut and he knew that if he really committed himself by actually pressing the ‘send’ button that Maxx would be the last face he’d want to see. Maxx had left for three long weeks. Grumpy knew that he had time to pull this off if it would work.

The letter that he was sending would go directly to the Ethics Hot Line more than half a world away, but Grumpy knew that the repercussions would resound in his far-off corner of Iraq, and that the resonance would be thunderous as the entire corporate world would be brought down around Maxx’s quiet, peaceful life. He looked at his letter one more time and hesitantly reached up to hit “send.” He watched with demonic glee as the blue bar count percentages as the computer sliced up the information into tiny bytes of information and then rushed them off to Houston.

Grumpy’s hand shook as he pulled it away from the mouse. “Done!” the voice in his head screamed. It was finally over. Grumpy was about to change the direction of his life, but what he didn’t think about, or care about for that matter, was that the lives of everyone who would come into contact with his anger would be changed as well.

By seven in the morning the realization of what he had just done had grown and now loomed huge in his mind. The vise had nearly cut off his breathing and his heart struggled to beat as the voice continued to whisper in his head, “You’re a dead man! You’re a dead man!” Grumpy struggled to get himself through the shift change with the drivers and then he drove the white Chevrolet pickup truck to the dining facility to try and ease his tightness by picking up some more Rip-its. He downed two of the energy drinks at the DFAC before taking the rest of them with him to the truck. “You’re a dead man! You’re a dead man!” The voice taunted him and he knew that he would have to act fast to save himself before Maxx returned. He bumped quickly along the back road of the base, through the morning emptiness that gave him some comfort. Even the passing vehicles had become invisible and he failed to return the friendly waves of the passing drivers as his mind focused in on his hope of salvation.

He pushed the door open to the Operations tent and walked down the plywood hallway to the office of the base manager. “I need a transfer,” he trembled. “I need to go to another base just as soon as you can get me out of here.” The large, steel-hard man sat behind his desk and stared at Grumpy, his dark, deep-set eyes narrowing. “Why do you need a transfer?” Grumpy choked as he began to spin his tale of terror in the Transportation department. “I sent a letter to the Ethics Hotline and I need to get out of here before Maxx comes back.” Sam, the site manager considered the request momentarily. “I’m sorry. I can’t give you a transfer. You’ll have to go to H. R. and see if they can help you.”

Panic had set in by the time he opened the door to the H. R. office. “You’re a dead man! You’re a dead man!” the voice screamed. Joe, the soft-spoken H. R. supervisor listened quietly as Grumpy related the horrors of working in the Transportation department and how Maxx was continually threatening, intimidating and abusing him. “I suppose we’ll have to have an investigation before we can do anything,” he finally responded. Grumpy already felt like a dead man as the voice screamed even louder. The vise would never loosen its grip on his gut until either he or Maxx was gone from the base.

The magic white Rabbit

The base is laid out on a wide desert expanse that ends five miles away against a line of low hills in the north and east. The city of Tal Afar itself has been built up over thousands of years in a little crook of the hills due north of the base. Millenia ago it was a thriving settlement known as Karana. It commanded a view across the vast plain to the south and west where the ancient city of Qatarra was only a small dot in the distance.

The Syrian Desert, as barren and dusty as it is, sustains an amazing variety of animal life. One of the most prevalent animals is the lowly Jack Rabbit. It uses its speed and agility to avoid being caught by the foxes, fennecs, hyenas and jackals that live out their lives at night in the desert. The rabbit is prey, and so it hides. The Jack Rabbit’s fur is the same color as the desert floor and it blends with its surroundings and it uses its camouflage to hide from its enemies. The rabbit is a burrowing animal, able to dig into the hot, dry earth to create a cool refuge from the heat of the day.

One night, while driving along the base’s back road I watched a panic-stricken rabbit gallop across the headlight illuminated road while a pair of jackals bore down on it in hot pursuit. The wide-eyed rabbit suddenly disappeared from sight in the middle of the flat earth and the jackals dug at the ground and sniffed the hole as a last-ditch effort to get a filling meal. The wily rabbit had escaped with its life.

“Rabbit’s been identified on the daily list from KBR in Houston as one of the top 100 abusers of internet privileges in the entire corporation!” Maxx was agitated as he read the report again. “That Rabbit is absolutely worthless as an employee. This is the second time he’s come up on that list! If I get the chance to send him packing, he’s gone! I’m not putting up with this kind of B. S. any more.” That was my introduction to Rabbit. I hadn’t met him, but I knew that he was keeping himself busy at night cruising through the endless maze of the World Wide Web.

In 2008 Maxx had gone home for a vacation and he’d left me in charge of the department. I followed in Maxx’s footsteps by changing up my schedule to keep people guessing about when and where they might run across me or be observed. One night I opened the door to the Fuel Department office to check up on the employees there. Rabbit was alone, his back to the door, and when the door opened there was a flurry of activity on his keyboard as I watched an internet site disappear. “Is everything all right?” I asked. “Uh, yeah, fine.” Rabbit was shaken by the sudden, unexpected intrusion into his internet abyss. I closed the door and left quietly, making note of the reaction to my visit.

The next morning, after his customary trip to the weight room, Rabbit walked passed me as we met on the dirt road. “What were you doing last night?” he asked. “I was out checking on our people.” He’d never really met me before, let alone had me walk into his night shift routine and I could tell that he was wondering whether Maxx had specifically asked me to check up on him. Maxx hadn’t, but I thought it would be a good idea to keep everyone honest. Rabbit had a reputation and I was going to keep him on his toes.

Fuels had just recently been annexed to the Transportation Department and it had created some bad feelings already between Scalawag and Maxx. Maxx hadn’t asked for the assignment to assume control of the Fuel Department, just as he hadn’t asked for the assignment to come to Tal Afar in the first place. He’d just been ordered by management to “straighten things out.” It was a gift that Maxx had, getting things “straightened out.” Maxx sensed the ever-growing tension between himself and the Fuels people, so he called a meeting in the Transportation office with all of the Americans.

“I’ve called you all together to clear the air. I sense that we’re having some difficulties with the way things are being run. If anyone has anything that they want to say to me, I’m interested in hearing it. There will be no reprisals or recriminations. You can say anything you want.” There was a long silence and then Rabbit broke it. “I think you’re an a__hole.” Maxx didn’t skip a beat. “I think you’re a flaming a__hole, but that’s neither here nor there. I want to know why you think it.” Maxx, Scalawag and Rabbit moved into the office for a more private discussion. When they emerged a half hour later, they were all smiling and talking as if some new ground had been broken in their relationship. It appeared to ease the high tension that had been crackling in the air.

Rabbit was a solitary animal who lived one of the quietest lives of anyone on the base. I don’t think he ever left the Fuel Dept. office, except to visit the Porta-John that was just outside, and the night shift was always quiet anyway. Very few people actually worked at night. Transportation was one of the exceptions, with trucks filling huge tanks on a regular basis all day and all night long. Rabbit’s fuel trucks kept the generators running and there were a lot of fuel tanks to be filled. Rabbit, just like his foreman, Scalawag, didn’t have a license to drive the fuel trucks and that fact was the original cause of the friction between Maxx and the Fuel department.

“Scalawag, what good is a Transportation foreman to me who can’t even drive a truck?” Scalawag sensed the frustration in Maxx’s voice. “When they made me foreman here there was no requirement to have a Class A CDL. I know about fuels, not driving trucks.” Maxx understood the stupidity of this company that was accustomed to hiring people without the slightest interest in whether or not they could actually perform the job that they were being hired for. All the company needed was a warm body whom they could place in the position so that the government paychecks would begin pouring into the coffers. Each new employee came with a training price tag of several thousand dollars and the company would gather a huge group of new employees at a secure location for training. The employees were held at a local hotel and transported to the training location each morning. The group was fed at the location to avoid having them leave or stand around outside the building. Nothing about the process was to attract attention. This was the world of operational security and secrecy in the face of an inconspicuous enemy. As each new group of employees was quietly shipped off to the Middle East, the company also sent an invoice to the government for their training. Scalawag and Rabbit were just bodies to fill positions. They knew about fuels, but they had no ability to do more than sit in their office and push the mountainous stack of government-generated papers from one corner of the desk to the other. “Those two are absolutely worthless to me,” I heard Maxx repeat on several different occasions, and Rabbit was keenly aware of his precarious position within the department. His only hope was to keep galloping and shifting his position ahead of the jackals until he could reach his secret hole.

Malcontent

July 30, 2009

I had my doubts about Bling the first time I saw him. He’d arrived with two other Americans who were supposed to relieve some of our burden. Maxx and Dawg and I had all been holding the place together while everyone else was either playing on R&R or recovering from their various illnesses. Bling came in with the usual telltale signs, gold front teeth, gold chains and oversized black shirt and trousers. Everything about him screamed “attitude” but I’ve learned not to always trust my first impressions and so I thought I’d observe him for a while before passing my final judgment.

He came to us as a brand new employee, fresh from the States, who was looking for a chance to say that he’d been overseas for the first time in his life. He’d been working on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and had decided that he could get a job working for KBR and earn better money.

He wasn’t a man who liked to avoid conflict. In fact, he seemed to seek it out, right from the beginning. He’d learned that it was all right to use intimidation and bullying to get his way. “Man, I got a bone to pick!” he said to Maxx one evening after the shift change. “I’m workin’ overtime here and I’m not getting paid for it!” Maxx looked at him with disbelief on his face. “How are you working overtime?” Bling was ready for this fight. “Man, I work my twelve hours every day and when it’s time to leave there’s always somethin’ goin’ on that I have to stay for. I ought to get paid for every minute that I work past my regular hours.” “If you’re putting in less than fifteen minutes beyond your time, you don’t get paid for it. Besides, overtime needs to be approved ahead of time.” “This place is encroaching on my personal time. I need to go to the gym each night to work out.” Maxx was soft in his reply, but he was absolutely firm. “You’re not here to work out at the gym. You’re here to work for the military. That mission comes first and if there’s something that blocks you from your ‘personal time’ each evening, then you need to get over it. You won’t ever be paid for every minute of overtime. This is a war zone. Don’t forget that.”

Bling didn’t get over it. Someone had told him that KBR stood for “Kick back and relax” and he didn’t like the idea that this wasn’t going to be a cush job.

I watched him for those first few weeks of work and his attitude was always just a little bit over the top. “Man, I’m watchin’ those guys to make sure they’re doin’ what they’re s’posed to be doin’.” I watched him to see what his idea of ‘watchin’ those guys’ was. He’d sit inside of his air-conditioned pickup truck and read books with an occasional glance at the operation. His frequent gripes about how poorly the drivers were doing began to have its effect on the drivers’ attitudes. I never heard any encouragement come out of his mouth. I never heard him say, “You guys did a good job out there today.” He just seemed bent on crushing their spirits so that they’d be as miserable as he was.

He wasn’t worried about making a connection with the drivers and it was obvious that he didn’t really care about doing his job. He just wanted to collect his pay at the end of the month with a minimum of personal effort.

Maxx had just left on his three week R&R leaving me in charge of the day shift administrative duties. I was to fill in for Maxx. I was to make my observations while he was gone and one of my first was focused on Bling. I drove by the Tank Wash one afternoon and noticed that all of the employees were sitting outside in the heat. Bling’s pickup truck was parked in front of the office and so I decided to stop in and check up on the guys. They all stood when they saw me coming and they all had huge smiles on their faces when they realized that it was me. I parked the truck and stepped out. “Where’s Bling?” I asked. The coordinator nodded toward the closed office door and so I moved toward it. As I pulled the door open, Bling’s head jerked up and his eyes jumped from his lap to full alert. “Did you tell these guys that they couldn’t sit in the office?” I queried. It was my first question since the heat outside was unbearable and I couldn’t imagine anyone making a conscious decision to sit outside while a nice air-conditioned office sat nearly unoccupied. “No, man, I didn’t tell ‘em nothin’! They just chose to sit outside.” “All right, then.”

I told the coordinator that the office was there for them to stay cool in the heat of the day and that they were welcome to go inside. The coordinator nodded, but I could see that there was an unspoken conflict somewhere in what I’d just told him.

Back at the office a little later, Lumpy and Grumpy were sitting at their desks holding a little conference between foremen. Bling walked in because it was time for him to finish up his day. I wanted to make a point, but at the same time I didn’t want to raise tensions and so I decided to make Bling the subject of a hard time. “You guys need to keep an eye on Bling,” I commented with a smile on my face. “I opened the door at the Tank Wash this afternoon and his head popped up from a nap.” Bling jumped right on it with a full frontal attitude. “Man, you think I was sleepin’? I don’t sleep on the job! I was playin’ a video game! You didn’t see the game in my hands? And what was that thing about tellin’ the guys that they couldn’t sit in the office!” The conversation had just become unproductive. “Bling, I was just giving you a hard time. As far as the question goes, it’s based on my past experience because of someone who used to lock the employees out of the office while he sat inside and read.” Bling retaliated once more to make sure that I got the point. “I don’t sleep on the job, man! I was playin’ a video game!” I don’t know whether he realized it or not, but it was the wrong thing to admit. I walked out of the office. I thought to myself that if Jim-E had given Bling the same hard time, it would have been funny. It was undeniable that Bling looked at me and Jim-E with different eyes.

Grumpy followed me outside. “Lumpy and I heard what went on in there. If you want us to write statements, we will.” I gave it a moment’s thought. “No, that’s all right. I can talk to Bling about it. I don’t see any major harm and I don’t think we need to bring H.R. into the equation.” I regret that answer. I wish now that I’d had them write their statements.

Bling seemed to be out of control a few days later on June 6^th when one of our bus drivers, Lalith, came through the office door in tears. “What’s going on, Lalith?” He stood there at my desk and sobbed, “Sir, Mr. Bling not like me. He telling me I go home. You like my father but Mr. Bling yelling at me, tell me I going home.” I was wondering what had really happened because of the language barrier, but I felt like the truth was there in Lalith’s eyes. “Bling was yelling at you?” “Yes, sir.” “What was he yelling about?” I inquired. “Sir, bus stop very bumpy. Bus rocks this way and that way when I drive in. Mr. Bling tell me I speeding but I not speed. Bus not good. Bus rocks when I drive slow.” I tried to give him some consolation. “It’s all right, Lalith. I’ll have a talk with Bling.”

Bling walked through the door just minutes later. “I just had a driver come to me in tears because you were yelling at him.” The attitude came back with full force. “Man, that’s bull sh__! I didn’t yell at him!” “Bling, I’m not trying to place blame here, I’m just trying to understand what happened to make him so upset.” Bling grew slightly quiet. “He was speeding through the bus hub. His bus was rockin’ back and forth until I thought he was going to tip it over.” “Did you drive the bus to see if the problem was mechanical?” “Naw, man. He was speedin’.” It was obvious that Lalith was terribly upset when he stepped into the office and I knew that there was more to the story that Bling didn’t want to admit.

I followed up that evening by driving Lalith’s bus through the bus stop. He was right. No matter how slowly I drove the bus, it rocked violently back and forth. A terrible grinding noise was coming from the passenger side front suspension as it rocked. The bus needed to go to Maintenance for a check up. I thought it might be well for Bling to go somewhere for a checkup, too.

Five days later, on June 11^th, Aslam complained that Bling had ordered him to remain in the office during the day and that he was not to go out inspecting the Porta-Johns. I was surprised by the complaint because Bling didn’t have any authority to work with either the Porta-Johns or the office staff but Bling had arrived at the conclusion that he was now in charge. “I’m sorry, Aslam. I’ll talk to Bling about the situation and I’ll let him know that it’s a part of your job to check P.J.’s during the day.” I sent Bling a kind e-mail explaining that Maxx and I had given Aslam the responsibility to inspect a number of Porta-Johns each day so that we could spread the work out between those of us who had been given the responsibility and inspect about 180 every day. There was no response to the letter and Bling didn’t bother Aslam again about it.

The next morning, though, Bling attempted to pull another member of the office staff off of his appointed duties to have him clean buses at the main bus stop. On June 12^th the temperature was 103 degrees in Tal Afar and cleaning the buses would have been like working inside an oven. Again, I talked to Bling about pulling people off of their regular duties. Again, there was no response, but there were no more attempts to pull people from their regular work. Bling had become quiet.

Anger

24 July 2009

“Lumpy J. if you’re nasty!” Maxx called it out as Lumpy stepped into the office. I’d been gone on R&R for the previous two weeks and so the inside joke was wasted on me. Lumpy laughed a goofy laugh and began his report. “I checked on da Tank Wash and everything looked OK dere. I checked da bus stop and everything looked OK dere.” Lumpy habitually changed his TH’s into D’s—dis, dat, dose, dese, dem, dere. “I’m gonna go down to Fuels and take care a’ da report fer dem.” Lumpy’s large, round face had a serious look on it, full of concentration, as if he were trying not to let his feelings show. He turned without any further comments and walked out of the office. I thought it was pretty uncharacteristic of Lumpy to keep his words from spilling out. He’s never been able to do that before. In fact, one day Maxx and I watched him driving the white pickup truck past us on the road. He was alone in the cab of the truck but he was chatting away with some unseen rider. He’s never been able to hold his words in before.

A month and a half before this, Lumpy came in to the office one morning with a hand that was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe. “What happened to your hand!” Dawg was dumbfounded at the sight. “I must a’ hit it in da shower or somethin’. I don’t know.” Maxx was right on Dawg’s tail. “What the hell happened to your hand!” Lumpy chuckled as he swooped his hands in a wide, circling gesture. “I don’t know. I must a’ hit it in da shower or somethin’.” He was examined by the medic and then by the military doctor. The Army doctor was fresh out of medical school and a first deployment soldier. He was the only real doctor on the base, but he’d received all of the required training in treating trauma victims and he’d spent his residency working in the emergency room. “Are you certain that you weren’t stung by a scorpion? Are you allergic to anything? You’re going to need to go home for treatment. We can’t help you here. This is going to require some sophisticated tests to determine what’s happened.” Lumpy was sent home for several weeks.

I left to go back home for R&R while Lumpy was out of the country and so I wasn’t in on the big inside joke about his new nickname, “Lumpy J. if you’re nasty,” but I used my own imagination to come up with the possibilities. It was an inside joke between Maxx and Lumpy, but Lumpy was only laughing on the outside. It became apparent later that his true feelings were slowly smoldering on the inside.

Lumpy returned from his state-side medical treatment after a month away from the camp and the first thing he did upon his return was to walk into Maxx’s office and ask for his next R&R! Maxx was wondering if Lumpy had just lost his mind. “Do you mean to tell me that after a full month in the United States of America you want to go back for another three week vacation!” “Well, uh, yeah. It’s time for my R&R and I want to go back home.” Maxx sat in his office after Lumpy had left and stared at the ceiling. “What kind of idiot would come back to work after a month away and then want to turn around and take another three weeks!” It was outside of Maxx’s frame of reference. He’d never witnessed anyone so brazenly lazy before. “If Lumpy can be gone for two months, then why do we even need him here?” That was a question that Maxx would ask himself many times over the next few months. “Why do we even need him here?”

Lumpy had been sent to our department from the headquarters base. He’d worked in the Fuel Department there and it was hoped that he could fill in and lend a hand in our Fuel Department where Scalawag had constantly complained about how overworked he was and how understaffed his department was. Scalawag was another character in the department, a supervisor of Fuels who didn’t have a driver’s license and who couldn’t even drive his own fuel trucks. “He’s absolutely worthless to me as a foreman,” Maxx would say. “How does a company hire a foreman who can’t even drive his own vehicles? When they need a new driver trained, he can’t do the training. It’s left to me to get the training done. He’s worthless.”

The Fuels supervisor on the headquarters base had finally reached his limit of trying to work with Lumpy. “He likes to hide during his shift. Nobody can find him. He’s a lazy man who likes to disappear,” he warned Maxx. “That won’t happen on this base. My people check in with me on a regular basis or they don’t work for me.” That was the truth. Maxx kept a close eye on his people. They didn’t sleep on the job, they didn’t go to the gym on the job, and they didn’t just disappear on the job. “I’m a firm believer in President Reagan’s philosophy of ‘trust but verify’,” he told me on several occasions. He expected all of the Americans to follow his lead with their people, and I took it to heart with the bus drivers. I was always kind when I caught them goofing off, but they knew that they’d been caught and I let them know that my expectations were much higher and it didn’t take long to teach them where the limits were.

In May, just before Maxx left for his much-needed vacation, Lumpy came into the office one afternoon and reported to Maxx that the hose that had needed a clamp at the Brine Pond was still unclamped. “Why hasn’t that been done?” Maxx inquired. “Uh, Grumpy left a note for me to have Indika saw de hose off and den to clamp it over a new fitting and Indika never got around to it.” Maxx was suddenly in a rare angry mood. “I have three foremen in this department and they all want Indika to do their work for them! You are a foreman! Get out there and get that hose clamped off!” Lumpy had been looking for a way to get out of doing the actual physical labor. The Brine Pond was a hot place and the temperature was edging over 100 degrees each day. Indika was a translator in the office, but he was willing to do anything for his American bosses and Grumpy and Lumpy both liked to take advantage of him.

It was still May, just after Maxx had left for his R&R, when Lumpy walked into the office one morning and announced, “I ain’t getting’ into dem discussions at de Dee-fack at night. Uh-uh. Dey ain’t talkin’ ‘bout nothin’ good down dere. I ain’t even gettin’ involved. It’s some bad stuff dat dey’re talkin’ ‘bout. I don’t even want to be around it. Uh-uh. Dat Rabbit likes to talk ‘bout some bad stuff.” It was a typical conversation with Lumpy. No one ever had to respond because it just rolled out of his mouth. I knew that Rabbit was a trouble maker. I’d already heard about how he liked to stir up discontent and then sit back and watch it roil. I didn’t jump in on Lumpy’s conversation because it was so typical and I was seriously tired of encouraging him. A question could have kept the verbal waterfall tumbling for another two hours so I let the words slip off of my ears like a drop of water on an oil slicked slope. In another couple of weeks I’d add that to my growing list of regrets.

Turmoils

24 July 2009

The intrigue has passed and the weeks of hell are finished in Iraq, but the bitter taste remains, the bitter flavor of stupidity and waste. A good man’s name was darkened by a few fellow workers who all had the evil motive of revenge in their hearts, and the bitterness was made more acrid by the fact that it was motivated by the kind of revenge that comes after being caught in their own laziness and stupidity.

This is a long story that concludes my time in Iraq, but I have lots of time on my hands right now as I’m searching for new employment.

Evidently, this whole miserable affair began nearly a year ago in about October. Grumpy, the night shift foreman, had modified his jacket by cutting the pockets out so that he could fill the entire lining with drinks that he was stealing from the dining facility. He relished the notion that he could stuff his jacket full of fruit juices and “Rip it’s,” ‘energy’ drinks that are popular with the soldiers in Iraq. Each morning when I arrived at the office Grumpy would laugh about how many drinks he’d been able to sneak out of the chow hall during the night.

One morning Grumpy wasn’t in a good mood because he’d been followed around the dining facility by the night shift supervisor who’d been alerted that he was up to mischief during the midnight meal. That evening, after considering his new situation he had decided that it must have been Maxx who had given the hint to the chow hall staff. Maxx hadn’t said anything to the dining facility staff, but Grumpy had already decided that it was certainly Maxx who must have tipped them off. As his night shift was just beginning, Grumpy stormed into Maxx’s office and shouted, “I ain’t afraid of you! You don’t scare me!” Maxx returned with a quiet voice, “Would you like to take this outside?” That struck Grumpy as a threat, but Maxx insisted that he was merely asking if he would like to step outside the office for some privacy in their conversation. They moved outside and around the corner of the building where they would be able to have a more private confrontation, but Dawg, who remained inside the building, could hear Grumpy screaming at Maxx. After Grumpy had blown off all of the steam that he’d built up during the day they returned to the bustling office and continued with the shift change.

Grumpy returned after the shift change was over and apologized to Maxx for his blow-up. “I’ve just had a bad day. I didn’t mean to blow up at you,” he confessed. Maxx admitted that he’d had a long day, too, and that sometimes being cooped up on the base can get to a person. The confrontation was dropped and forgotten. Well, at least that’s what Maxx assumed.

Two days later he was surprised by a note from the Human Resources Department. “We request that you respond to the following statement that was submitted concerning your conduct.” The statement alleged that Maxx had threatened Grumpy and that Grumpy was fearful for his safety. Maxx responded to the allegation and a meeting was called by the Human Resources Department to go over the event. The site manager sat in on it and the meeting ended with the apologies being extended once more. “Why did you take this to H.R?” Maxx asked. “I thought you were going to talk to H.R. and I wanted to beat you to the punch,” was all that Grumpy could come up with. Maxx shook his head in disbelief.

Because of the nature of the allegations, the Deputy Director of Logistics and the Director of Transportation had also been notified so they flew in from Headquarters on the very first available flight. A second meeting was held that included the site manager and the Human Resources supervisor. The meeting ended once more with apologies from Grumpy and the incident was closed. At least that’s what everyone assumed—again.

Grumpy’s famous jacket became a joke, not only in Transportation, but across the entire base. Grumpy had been caught by the staff at the dining facility and had been reprimanded by the supervisor there. He was humiliated and angry because he couldn’t continue to steal his drinks from the chow hall. Every time he walked into the building the staff was alerted to his presence and an ‘observer’ was assigned to him for the entire time span of his meal. Grumpy’s infamous jacket had become a joke, too, until Maxx finally decided to put it out of its misery. A solemn ceremony was held in the Transportation yard with all of the American staff present. The jacket was hung on the concrete blast wall and a match was put to it. The jacket, 100% synthetic, burned nearly instantly. “I paid $20 for that jacket in Russia about ten years ago. It paid for itself many times over in juice and Rip its” Grumpy was proud of his chow hall escapade and he wanted us to know that he’d really put one over on the dining facility staff. It wasn’t about the drinks. It was a glimpse at Grumpy’s brooding dark side.

Maxx had arranged for the ceremony for the demise of the old, brown jacket but he didn’t want Grumpy to feel like he was just the brunt of a cruel joke. Maxx had gone to the P.X. that afternoon and had bought Grumpy a brand new jacket. He’d paid considerably more than $20 for it, too. It was presented to an ungrateful Grumpy at the end of the ceremony.

The winter progressed and Grumpy wore his new, warm jacket during the cold December nights as he drove the FOB to check on the drivers. Something happened that made us all wonder about Grumpy that month, though. The Rip its and the juices began to show up again. Maxx asked him one morning about all of the drinks. “I found out that if you take out a ‘to-go’ plate at the DFAC you can take two drinks with it. I just take out six to-go plates and that gives me twelve drinks.” The answer to the next question was absolutely predictable. “What do you do with all of those meals?” “I just throw them in the dumpster.” Grumpy was reprimanded again, but this time it was Maxx who did the reprimand. “There’s such a thing as fraud, waste and abuse on this base. Don’t you ever let me find out that you’re dropping perfectly good food into the dumpster just so you can get a lifetime supply of juice boxes!” Word was sent to the dining facility and the chow hall observer resumed his midnight vigilance. As he spoke with the DFAC manager, Maxx learned that Grumpy had told the staff that he was taking plates to Maxx at each meal. Maxx was furious that his name had been used to cover Grumpy’s lie.

In January Grumpy struggled into the office one evening. He didn’t look well, his face was pale and the tone was gone from his skin. “What’s wrong, Grumpy?” Maxx was clearly concerned. “It’s kind of embarrasin’,” Grumpy mumbled. After some coaxing, Maxx was able to draw it out. Grumpy’s colon was suddenly extended outside of his rectum. “This is serious,” the medic told him. “This is extremely serious,” the military doctor told him. When asked about his diet he explained that he’d been losing massive amounts of weight by drinking Rip its as his only source of nourishment. “They’re full of vitamins,” he boasted. “Your diet could kill you,” the doctor admonished. ”We can’t do anything for you here. You’re going to have to go home for medical care until you’re well enough to work again.” Grumpy was suddenly thrust into a situation where he found his life swirling out of control. An email notice arrived from Baghdad. “Any employee who leaves for medical treatment is not guaranteed employment at the conclusion of the treatment.” Grumpy reeled in anguish. He had no money. He sent his entire paycheck home to his wife who had managed to spend every nickel every month for nearly five years. “I can’t go home if I’m going to lose my job. I’ve got to stay here.” “You can’t stay here with your medical condition. You have no choice.” KBR had no compassion. They were seeing red ink every day because of an overburden of employees. They were looking for ways to be rid of people.

Maxx came to Grumpy’s aid. He started a campaign to hold Grumpy’s job for him, at least for 30 days, to allow him enough time to have surgery and to get back to Tal Afar. Maxx talked to H.R. and to the base manager. He called the Deputy Director of Logistics on the phone. He wrote to the Project Manager in Baghdad. He made a case for Grumpy, who had been loyal to the company for five years. Maxx was heard at the highest levels and Grumpy was given 30 days to return to duty.

Nobody expected Grumpy to come back, but we all prayed for him. Candace’s daughter who is a nurse told us just how serious this could be for Grumpy. “He could spend the rest of his life with a bag strapped on his leg. He could die.”

Grumpy arrived in Florida within three days of leaving Tal Afar. He went straight to his doctor who examined him and was amazed that his condition had corrected itself. “You can return to work as soon as your company clears you.” Grumpy fought the system for nearly a month until he was successful in his struggle and was told that he could return to work. He arrived in Tal Afar on the thirtieth day after his departure. His job had been saved.

The storm's aftermath

On June 17^th we had a terrific dust storm with high winds and thunder and lightning. The walls of my hooch rocked and whistled all night long against the steady pressure. The lightning flashed outside, painting the inside of my dancing room blue. I kept expecting the generator to be shut down, but it chugged on through the storm and kept my air-conditioner running.

In the morning there was a thick coat of red dust on every object in my room and the floor was covered, leaving footprints as my flip-flops dragged across it. The daylight outside was still filtered and orange as the dust continued to settle from hundreds of feet in the air, covering the walls and vehicles and camouflaging the already dried mud spots where rain had dropped through the fine grit.

As I drove to the DFAC for a bite of breakfast I was astounded by the damage that I found across the camp. Porta-Johns were torn from their moorings and pushed every which way across the ground. One huge maintenance tent, probably 100 feet by 50 feet, had been torn apart in the winds. The green canvas was missing from the roof and the yellow fiberglass insulation was scattered for miles to the east. The inner lining, a white layer of light-weight material was shredded by the wind and flapped peacefully in the breeze that continued to push eastward. The roof was nothing more than an aluminum skeleton. A few labor crew employees walked across the barren fields dressed in plastic hazmat suits, plastic gloves, hard hats, dust masks and safety glasses as they picked up the torn, scattered fiberglass, a very hot job when the temperature reaches into the nineties very early in the day.

That was the wind that blew outside through the night. Inside the office another wind was blowing—an ill wind.

(To be continued)