After the first death, there is no other
“a goddamn time loop. we don’t have marine training for a goddamn time loop.” burgie comes over to check on them. asks them if they need anything. “we need more men,” snafu complains, “and we need them trained for time loops.”
at least snafu is sane enough to know they would never take the two of them off the line to train for time loops.
“i’ll ask them to work on it.” burgie says.
snafu makes his displeasure clear as mud with his usual unintelligibility.
---
snafu uses the empty helmet of a dead man to bail out their foxhole.
too little, too late; this time anyway, sledge thinks; but he doesn’t say it. there’s always the hours they’ve lived, again, to bail out their foxhole before their asses are soaked.
---
sledge gets it suddenly. snaf. he said welcome to the real world. but he wouldn’t need to specify “real” if this was the real world.
there is no getting off this world until we die, sledgehammer thinks, but if this real world isn’t the real world, we just might have a chance. and won’t need to die. won’t even have to consider it. won’t have to consider death, and dying again.
his corporal will ask, “have you ever seen a bootprint that looks like that?”
sledgehammer will answer, “no, corporal, i can’t say i have.”
“feels like we lived lifetimes together,” snafu will muse.
“it was only a few years,” sledgehammer will correct.
---
sledge looks aimlessly at the sore on his hand.
snafu leans his head over his hand like he’s taking a closer look, and who is sledgehammer to say no, and licks it.
sledgehammer hisses, "ow, snaf. aw, hell that hurts."
"yeah?"
"what the hell did you do that for?"
"thought it might be nice." he leans back on his heels again. eugene glares at him and glares at the sore on his hand. the pain that had started pulsing after that bit of attention fades to an ache. "feel better any?"
sledgehammer shrugs. "guess so. better than a minute ago. when you licked it."
---
sledgehammer asks about the time loop and burgie hesitates and says today. snafu says he's lying. sledgehammer glares at snafu like he’s less than dirt. burgie says sledgehammer is a good man, and that he doesn’t know what this business is about a time loop, but that sledgehammer is a good man.
snafu and sledgehammer both know he is not a man.
---
sledge listens to the violence as the replacements introduce themselves; possibly for the hundredth time, probably doesn't matter. snafu, for his part, has a confused grin spreading on his face making it awkward for everyone.
sledgehammer takes time to note the eye color of the replacements and in doing so recalls what a recruiting sergeant had asked him. "do you have any scars?" he asks the replacements.
they stumble over their answers, excitement and pride suffusing their soon-dead faces as they mistake his efforts to survive as a decent guy wanting to compare misadventures.
snafu finally has his grin in place—torture on his mind, and sledgehammer feels the attention land on him first. "you sweet on these boys, sledgehammer?"
the replacements aren't happy to hear snafu say that. sledgehammer doesn't even bother to roll his eyes. snafu is a good man, but he was never right in the head.
"want me to tell them to fight bare-ass naked for you? or is stripping just the one time enough?"
the replacements are more scared of sledge now than war or snafu. sledge appreciates the novelty but his attention remains on scanning their faces hard for distinguishing marks. they shift uncomfortably but it won’t be long.
"you making sure when they get blown to bits you can put your boys back together?" there it is.
sledgehammer looks over at snafu and matches his friend’s grin.
the dour cajun chuckles and turns back to the boys, "now that you’ve introduced yourselves to sledgehammer, go say ‘hi’ to the shell that’s gonna hit you."
---
sledgehammer’s hands shake around snafu’s neck.
their skin barely touches; there is no threat, this is a vow he can’t keep. snafu wants him to keep it. “please, sledgehammer, i know you can get me out of here. it’s all over for me, please, sledgehammer. i want you to get me out of here.”
he presses his throat into sledgehammer’s hand but the force is nothing, his hands are spread too far apart. mud applies itself in layers to his neck. it has an oily sheen—like paint.
---
snafu tells burgie, “jesus motherfucking christ. we're in a goddamn time loop. tell the brass to solve that.”
sledgehammer doesn’t try to stop the tide of cursing. considers praying.
“what do you think, sledgehammer?” burgie asks when the world lets words be heard over violence.
"i think i’d like very much to not be stuck in a time loop."
---
“what about you?” snafu asks. days later, hours later, who cares.
“inch long scar on my right knee. you?”
“man, i have no idea.”
sledge accepts that answer, but resolves to find out for himself. either earlier today or later today.
---
eugene thought the one cloud on the other cloud and mix them up would look so pretty.
snafu listens to him talk about clouds for awhile. he knows a lot because he was homeschooled for awhile, the information just sticks easier when your out in the field learning it. “i don’t really remember the names. but i know that’s some type of storm cloud. it looks like a begging dog.”
finally, "you said that already, sledgehammer. about the dog."
eugene frowns. thinks about it. and then laughs helplessly into snafu’s side.
---
every morning, sledgehammer duly adds to the tally. the mark is left in the same place he had placed it yesterday, but he doesn’t worry about it. he marks it again and again. he worries he’s crazy sometimes and snafu tells him he is.
“definition of insanity, sledgehammer, expecting this day to be any different. even the damn hours aren’t ever any different.”
---
“we’re not men anymore. men fuck. men get old.”
“then we weren’t men before.”
“speak for your damn self, sledgehammer.”
“fuck you.”
---
"imagine if we were clean."
"Lord." he can’t imagine.
he can’t imagine.
---
sledge throws down his shovel and uses his hand to smear mud on the side of snafu's neck, gentle as applying warpaint.
“taking me in, sledgehammer?” snafu asks, rolling his head into eugene’s hand like an affectionate cat.
---
sledge listens to the violence as the replacements introduce themselves. replacements replacing themselves. names of men indistinguishable from names of men. it’s a waste of men and, even if they weren’t a waste, meeting sledgehammer is a waste of time. he doesn’t say it. smiles friendly, briefly. nice (this time) and quiet.
snafu says the quiet part out loud, "i don't need to know your name. tell them," he jerks his dirty head towards the enemy, "and spell it right. they're carving it on a bullet for you." the same one, with the same care. then again, they are all the same.
---
“think i’m gonna let time keep us side by side, for better or worse and worse, forever? sledgehammer, as soon as we are alive and moving through the world how men should, you are dead to me.”
---
sledgehammer runs through the Lord’s prayer again. the sound of violence is only shelling. in the valley, in their hole, his corporal forms shapes of ugly words. snafu cusses easier than breathing—much easier. his face goes red to white to blue in relentless hatred.
---
it’s their job to know where everything is. sledgehammer wakes snafu for his watch. they shuffle quietly. sledgehammer laid on his back now as snafu scans the surroundings. sledgehammer watches the sky. one moment they are being rained on and the next, like loading their mortar, they are being rained on.
“did time just go backward?” why sledgehammer asks this now, he has no earthly idea.
snafu’s stare doesn’t deviate from his task; he takes his fingers and presses them first to his own lips and then, blindly, to sledgehammer’s mouth and up his nose a little. “time stops when i’m with you, sha.”
---
sledgehammer gives it a few “tomorrows”, hears it over and over, but he’s had enough today. “hey!” he shouts at burgie walking with an officer. snafu wrestles him down into their foxhole.
the disrespect outweighed by car-crash curiosity, burgie and the other guy squat at their hole and ask snafu what sledgehammer’s problem is. “oh, sledgehammer? he’s just mad about the time loop.”
“sir.”
snafu drawls, “sir.”
“you guys know about the time loop?” burgie asks.
“sure do, sir. think sometimes we’re the only ones who do. but you see, sir.” snafu is fooling around now. sledgehammer can tell by how his knee moves around on his back—like he’s dancing up there, and snafu is. he leans closer to burgie, his knee digging deep enough into sledgehammer’s back he feels like if there is finally a tomorrow then sledgehammer will get sent home with a broken rib. “you see,” he winks and the guy with burgie leans closer, too. “if you are telling us that the time loop is ending tomorrow, that isn’t going to do us any good. sledgehammer and me can’t make to tomorrow. time. loop.” he enunciates those two words with a pop and then slurs his last one. “sir.”
---
always the same replacements. it will be a shell, as always, as snafu knows. the same one, with the same aim.
---
“so, is it better to die at the end of the day or the beginning?”
“shut up.”
“what would you rather? come on, sledgehammer. see, i think we are supposed to snap and kill each other. let me know how you wanna do it, that’s an order.”
“i don’t care, sir.”
“i think you want me to go first. say like, choking on your fat cock. and just to be nice to you, while you’re killing me with little sledgehammer, i will bite that thing clean off. my last action here on this earth. my honest promise to you, sledgehammer, and you can bleed to death refusing to call over a corpsman.”
death felt distasteful again. “sounds great, sir.”
---
the fucking replacements are introducing themselves again.
sledgehammer snaps, “tell me tomorrow.”
snafu reacts like it’s the meanest thing eugene has ever said and he loves it. it kind of is. “hear that? make it through one fucking day and sledgehammer here will host a sleepover.”
“any advice?”
“yeah, tons. i’ll tell you tomorrow.” he grins like it’s an in-joke they’ll say themselves one day.
they die when they get shelled.
---
they take bets on how many steps people take or how quickly the replacements forget discipline.
---
burgie is on his way to check on them and there is no way they are going to stop making out in their foxhole. sledge is resigned to it, and snafu doesn’t mind either.
instead of trouble, burgie tells them to be careful. it doesn’t sound right, somehow, and sledgehammer finds himself asking for clarification before burgie can head off, “hang on, careful with what?”
burgie grimaces, “i only mean, don’t get distracted.”
“i’m kissing snafu.” sledgehammer states, and at least one other foxhole heard that.
burgie turns purple, but they still don’t get to leave. snafu gripes on him, telling him that he should have told burgie he was in love.
---
sledge throws down his shovel and uses his hand to smear mud on the side of snafu's neck, gentle as applying warpaint.
"you don't want to do that." snafu tells him.
"why not?" sledge keeps his hand in place as snafu turns away. his fingertips advance into his hair, and it feels like the first time for sledge. the muddied, salty locks are always the same but it doesn’t matter because it is always the first time for sledge. he can’t ever get used to it because the sensation itself is always new.
snafu repeats himself—maybe even for the first time, "you shouldn't do it." he waits for sledge to back away.
"why?" sledgehammer pushes.
“i’ll tell you tomorrow.”
---
burgie walks up to check on them, clears his throat and dutifully relays the information that the time loop is ending.
snafu jumps straight into a rant while sledgehammer nearly loses his helmet laughing. burgie, thrown off by their reception of this news, starts walking off and sledgehammer gets out of their foxhole to stop him.
"wait, when, burgie?" sledgehammer asks. burgie looks down at sledgehammer’s hand pulling at his sleeve and sledgehammer immediately lets go (though burgie is a good guy and doesn’t begrudge exuberance). sledge puts as much respect into his voice he can manage. “when is the time loop ending, sir?”
“tomorrow.” burgie replies.
sledgehammer’s heart sinks with his glee as he can’t tell if burgie is lying or relaying information he doesn’t understand. snafu has gone quiet as well, but soon he’s the one laughing.
---
the replacements wander off, ignored.
“do you think we have to save them?” sledge asks.
“hell no. pass me that damn shovel.”