A Few Good Men

Excerpt:
John walked into the MWR, pulled the helmet off his head and looked around. "Shit," he whispered to himself. Five machines shared between one hundred soldiers and wouldn't you know it, for the first time in his deployment there, the place was a ghost town. No line of men waiting to get on. Two machines available and not one excuse left for John to use to avoid writing this email.

He spied the coffee pot. The good coffee had already run out (even a case didn't last too long once a hundred caffeine addicted soldiers heard about it). With Jazzy laid up and unable to solicit more, they were reduced to the crappy stuff again. John couldn't even use pouring himself a cup now to procrastinate getting on the computer because this stuff was barely worth drinking.

John sighed, hearing in his head Jazzy's voice saying, You could thank her for the coffee...summer at summer winters dot com.

"Okay, dammit." He sat at the nearest available console as the three men on the other computers glanced up to see what all the mumbling was about. John was not about to tell them that he argued with his friend in his head.

John logged into his military email account, the only one he had, the same one he'd had since joining up so many years ago. Jazzy always teased him about the fact he never opened a personal email account. A Yehaw or a Yahoo or whatever the hell it was called. Why should he? The army.mil address worked just fine for his purposes, that being the few times he needed to send official correspondence...such as now. He justified writing this message to this pen pal�¯�¿�½he hated even saying the words�¯�¿�½ as nothing more than an official duty of a superior officer to help out his injured crewman.

John had written too many letters of condolence to the families of fallen soldiers, twenty to be exact. It was a dreaded but necessary part of war. This, however, would be John�¯�¿�½s first email to a pen pal. Not sure which was harder to write at the moment, he sighed, bowed his head, thought for a minute and then set to work.

He began with, �¯�¿�½Dear Ms. Winters.�¯�¿�½ Stifling the urge to roll his eyes at the obviously fake name he was being forced to use for this missive that his supposed friend had coerced him into writing in the first place, he continued.

I regret to inform you that SPC Josh Zipkin was wounded during a mission.

Sincerely,

SSG John Blake

There. That about covered it. Reading the email over one more time, he verified there were no typos and then hit send, relieved that particularly nasty duty was done.

In the meantime, he realized he needed to order himself some underwear and socks. At this rate, with the laundry service losing things as fast as he dropped them off at the quartermasters�¯�¿�½, he would be going commando. John was about to search for an online retailer that would ship to a military address when into his inbox popped the last thing he expected to see�¯�¿�½a response from Summer Winters.

With a feeling of dread, he opened the email.

Oh my god. I knew something was wrong when I didn�¯�¿�½t hear from him. Please, is there anything more you can tell me? Is he all right? He must be if he asked you to email me, right? But he must be very hurt if he could not email himself. Is he in the hospital? Did they send him back to Germany? I know how busy you are, but I am going crazy here. Please, please, please write back if you can.

Summer

John leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. All his good intentions had done was manage to upset the girl. Now what?

Then John realized that his image of Summer Winters had suddenly changed in his mind yet again. She had gone from his first impression of little old lady do-gooder sex novelist to now a concerned young woman. When had that happened? He glanced at the email again and decided it was because she sounded young when she wrote. Like a worried high school girl. Although, he certainly hoped she was older than that considering what she wrote. She must be in her twenties�¯�¿�½

But all of this pondering didn�¯�¿�½t solve the issue that he had to respond to her and fix what he had done. The problem remained, he did not want to write to her the first time, now, because of his screw up, he had to write to her twice and she was writing to him now, too.

Deciding the road to hell was paved with good intentions, he hit reply and faced his penance.

Ms. Winters,

Jazzy was severely wounded when a vehicle-born IED exploded in his vicinity during a mission. His condition is stable, however he remains hospitalized here in Iraq for the time being. You are correct in assuming he asked me to inform you of his injuries and as his superior officer, it was my duty.

I am truly sorry to deliver such news.

John read the last sentence and deleted it, deciding it made Jazzy sound dead rather than lying in a hospital bed cracking jokes and twisting his arm to make him do things he didn�¯�¿�½t want to do. Instead, he added I am sure he will contact you when he is able.

Leaning back, John reconsidered that. He couldn�¯�¿�½t write that to the girl. He wasn�¯�¿�½t exactly sure Jazzy would hop out of bed and email Summer immediately. He did have a wife to catch up with. Hmm. Deleting that line also, he simply signed the letter John Blake and hit send before he could think any more about it.

And then he found himself doing the strangest thing. He didn�¯�¿�½t log off. Instead, he sat there and waited. John soon realized he was waiting for her response. He somehow knew with certainty it would come. Somewhere in the United States, nearly halfway around the world from where he sat, this woman was at this very moment reading his letter and writing back to him.

John quickly did the math. He didn�¯�¿�½t know where Summer lived but it would be late afternoon or actually, early evening on the east coast, mid-afternoon on the west coast. Was she at work? Did she even have a real job or did she sit around in slinky lingerie writing sex stories all day long? Jeez! Where the hell had that image come from?