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Overview
"Paul Griner finds surprising and inventive ways to write about a wide range of sometimes uncomfortable—but always interesting—situations. The writing is careful, precise, shocking—stylistically brilliant. The stories are sometimes surreal, but convincing all the same. They take your breath away!"—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret and In Country
A stylized and otherworldly short story collection filled with sidelined characters placed at center stage. A low-ranking soldier is forced to milk a cow within enemy range. A cartoonist's daughter waits each morning to see how her father's mood dictates how he will draw her face. Grieving siblings wait to inherit one of their father's physical features after his death.
Paul Griner's first book, the story collection Follow Me, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. His next two books, the novels Collectors and The German Woman, have been published in half a dozen languages. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Playboy, One Story, Tin House, Narrative, and Zoetrope, among others. He teaches at the University of Louisville.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781936747955 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Sarabande Books |
| Publication date: | 05/05/2015 |
| Pages: | 168 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Hurry Please I Want to Know
By Paul Griner
Sarabande Books
Copyright © 2015 Paul GrinerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936747-95-5
CHAPTER 1
Newbie Was Here
When we came into the storage yard, Sergeant Bitterroot told everyone to hit the shade.
Sweetpea—the only nickname I'd caught—said, Seriously, Sarge?
It's how we roll, Sergeant Bitterroot said.
A group huzzah, followed by a few guys calling out, You're the bomb!
I'm down with that, Sarge, I thought, though of course as a replacement I hadn't earned the right to say so yet. Still, I dropped my pack with the others and was about to express my appreciation when Bitterroot singled me out.
I said it's how we roll, Private Kowalski. Not you.
Group laughter.
So I stood on the front bumper of a troop carrier and read aloud from the back of the can. Warning! Contains butanol, ethyl acetate, xylene and toluene! Extremely flammable! Eye and skin irritant! Always use safety goggles! Always use solvent-resistant gloves! Vapor harmful if inhaled! Then, already sweating in the immense heat, I held my gloveless hand open in the universal WTF gesture.
Problem solved, Private Kowalski, Bitterroot said, and slapped a wire brush in my palm. Don't inhale, and don't smoke. And make sure to keep your hands clean. He was big and blocky and pink, with an incongruously high voice like he'd been sucking on helium.
It's Private Kovacs, Master Sergeant Bitterroot, I said, trying without luck to make my voice deeper. The vast penetrating desert heat had already dried out my throat so that I was rasping like a forty-year smoker, like someone who'd swallowed sandpaper.
And what about this? I said. Damages automotive paints?
That stumped him, for a second. Sweetpea had already broken out his pocket dictionary and begun reading, and the rest of them had their eyes shut. Then Bitterroot shrugged and ducked down with the others, sheltering from the desert sun in the blue shade spreading out to the east of the truck. The glare from the hood was blinding, so I looked back up over the sea of vehicles I was supposed to start cleaning, trembling in the heat waves like they were melting. I felt like I was: my face flash-fried, my skin scorched and sliding off my molten bones.
We got our orders, he said from the shade. Now you got yours.
Sweatpea piped up with his squeaky voice. Indubitably, he said, though I wasn't sure if he was reading aloud from the dictionary or just commenting on the appropriateness of Sergeant Bitterroot's order.
Hummers, tanks, Strykers, APCs, artillery pieces too. A half-dozen gleaming Beamers off in one corner—the confiscatory powers of the Coalition Authority, no doubt—and all of them tagged with graffiti that it was now my job to scrub off. I figured if I could do one an hour, it would only take about a billion years.
Master Sergeant Bitterroot, I said.
He took his time responding. What, Private Kowalski. The way he said it, it wasn't really a question. He sounded almost asleep.
Private Kovacs requests permission to speak, Master Sergeant.
Speak.
Being a replacement sucks, Master Sergeant.
Just figuring that out now, Private?
Once when the firing stopped on the artillery range—Bedouins were herding their camels across it, a common sight I'd been told, but still worth taking in—Bitterroot didn't hear me spraying solvent or scraping metal. He called out, Private Kowalski?
Dwell time, Master Sergeant Bitterroot, I said. Says it on the can.
Dwell time is what we're doing, he said. Get your ass in gear.
So I did. A lot was just swearing or hometown stuff or biblical references, some was seasonal or political—Merry Christmas, TONY BLIAR, Saddam Sucks—and favorite teams got coverage: Sox and Yankees, Celts and Lakers, though there were some mad-ass taggers—Sheff had been particularly active, and his throwies were pretty dope—but most of it was crap, and of course gang signs. You had your Latin Kings and Crips and Bloods, Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords, some Florencia 13s and 38th Streeters, even a few P-Stones, Norteños and Simon City Royals. Three KKKers that I could scope out, and one Aryan Nation. They'd all thrown up their signs. C's up next to a B's down, painted over with a B's up, C's down. MOBs, three-dot dog paws, 031, five-pointed stars, six-pointed stars, tridents upright and inverted, crescent moons. So many gangs, and some I didn't even recognize. 150%, MS, 13, IGC. Who the hell were they? All learning to be better warriors. Jesus. We were in for it once all this was done and all those newly-trained warriors hit the streets.
And me, scrubbing the shit all alone. While I watched, the paint bubbled up as if the metal were coming to a boil, Sheff being wiped from the planet one throw at a time, and I wondered if it was the toluene that made my eyes water, the xylene that burned my skin. And who knew what the butanol and acetate were doing to my lungs and balls, which respectively felt banded and bound? I pictured myself as a forty-year-old dad wheeling around an oxygen tank and kids with fins. Yeah, I was in the war, can't you see?
This silence I felt before I heard it: another flock of camels—is that what they call it?—marching across the firing range, Bedouins urging them on. The strange thing was that some of this group of Bedouins were driving some of this group of camels in flatbeds. A relief corps? Who knew? But the silence was why I heard the question, asked by a roving corporal.
Anyone here ever milk a cow?
I waggled the slimed-over scrub brush in the air. Stupid, I realized, the second I did it—the rule is, wait for someone else to do it and see what happens—and lowered my arm too late. Who'd have thought a high-school field trip could get you in so much trouble?
So early the next morning I'm at a forward operating base, another replacement standing next to another sergeant, Christianson, big and dark as a plum this time, and he's pointing out a guy who could be Saddam's younger brother leaving the village two hundred yards off to walk in our direction, same hair, same mustache, same swagger—though at this distance eyes and mouth are just dots—and dressed in a sky-blue track suit. The world was greener here, north of the Euphrates, crops in the field, fig trees, palms. The cow was halfway between us.
The sarge sighted Saddam's mini-me with his gun. That's him, he said.
I realized the game: spook the newbie. I decided to play the newbie who couldn't be spooked. Christianson had a rich deep voice and a Pennsylvania accent. You from Pittsburgh, Staff Sergeant Christianson? I asked.
You don't need to know that, Private Newbie. If they capture you they'll make you talk before they cut your balls off.
I heard laughter behind us.
Seriously, Newbie, he said. Last a week and I'll tell you.
I could see where this was going, so I gave in. So, how can you tell he's the spotter?
Phone.
Lots of people have phones. Look over there. I pointed at the village's cluster of low, mud-colored buildings, where knots of people—men, women, kids—were watching us, half of them on phones.
No, the sarge said not looking away. He's the spotter. Trust me.
His gun barrel was following him. Mortars? I said.
Mortars. They came in yesterday, and earlier this morning. The same guy.
How do you know?
Track suit.
Lots of guys dressed in track suits here.
Yeah. But how many of them are sky blue? And how many of those are walking around former minefields near a FOB? And stay there when mortars start falling? Everyone else ran away.
He dropped him with a single shot, flat on his back across three furrows. The echo bounced off the village walls and everyone vanished like they'd been sucked into the earth. Not even any rising dust to mark their passage.
The spotter's boots were crossed at the ankles as if he were taking a nap, the hobnails glinting. I made myself think about what Christianson had just said instead of what I'd just seen.
A former minefield? I said. How former?
Don't worry. We cleared it. See those feathers?
I did, now, thousands of them tangled in the grass and shoots, flickering light and dark as the wind moved over them like they were trying to signal something. This is important, I kept thinking, but I couldn't figure out why.
He tapped the wall of the building we were in. This was a chicken ranch when we got there. Hundreds of hungry, angry chickens.
That explained the smell of bird shit.
Christianson said, We chased them out in the field.
The chickens? I said. They blew up the mines? That explained the smell of rotting meat.
Yep.
But chickens don't weigh much, I said.
Not individually, but in aggregate.
He had to be BS-ing me. I mean, they weren't going to send one of their own—even a replacement—across a possible minefield for fresh milk, were they?
Why don't you bring the cow closer? I said.
We're not supposed to steal the cow. The locals would think we were. Rules of Engagement. No looting. And if it was near us and someone shot it they'd say it was us. So we're renting it.
Renting?
Six bucks a day. Not a bad deal. She wanted to sell it to us for five hundred dollars. She gives us info too. Told us we'd get mortared today, and we did. And it's good for Iraqi morale. Shows we're not just here to blow up things. Hearts and minds.
Not mine, Staff Sergeant Christianson.
We own your heart and mind, Kovacs. We don't have to win them. He turned back to the cow. Besides, he said, it draws them out. The spotter thought standing behind the cow hid him.
Draws us out too.
Not us. You. Here, he said, and held up a green plastic bucket. Fill 'er up.
I wanted to put this off as long as possible. Staff Sergeant Christianson, why is the captain doing this? How come fresh milk is so important?
Strictly NTK, Kovacs, and you're not in the Need-To-Know sphere.
That wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to draw on my vast bovine experience. Cows like routine, I said. What time did you milk her yesterday?
Zero-nine-hundred.
I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes still.
Christianson gave me the moron look. They've got to wait to get another spotter, Private Kovacs, he said. My guess is he'll be here in less than ten minutes. Get moving. You'll be fine if you hurry. But if I'm wrong, or if they bring out a new one, just duck your head and make a noise like a mushroom.
All the way across the field the bullseye on my forehead seemed to deepen and expand. I tried not to think about the spotter as I walked, how, if I'd been standing next to him when he was shot, the shot would have popped like a champagne cork, or how the wind was tugging at his pant cuffs now. Instead my mind wandered to the Dragunov sniper rifle. I wished I'd paid more attention to the lectures. What was its range, 800 meters? Someone could hit me from the opposite side of the village at that distance. A flash suppressor, corrosion resistant, those I remembered. What useless shit we fill our brains with. Of course, if he was out there, he was hoping to empty mine of everything. The spotter's crossed ankles still threw me, like he was out for a lazy morning. But there might be other spotters. The bulls-eye moved. Up to my helmet, where it became a Red Cross emblem.
Even that early the heat shimmered like I was walking in gas fumes, and my boots weighed a thousand pounds each; I was slogging through warm wax. I lost three pounds of sweat just getting there. No stool, so I'd have to crouch, but at least I'd be hidden, except for my legs. Ho, Sandy, I said, and patted her flank. She eyed me, then turned back to the business of eating.
I didn't want to communicate my nerves to her—cows can be finicky, and finicky cows take longer to milk out—so I squatted quickly but smoothly, like I did this every day. Behind me, from the hut, came an annoying beeping sound. She turned her head toward it and I patted her again, told her it was all right. Nothing for you to worry about, I said, pushing her head straight. Means they're playing computer games.
She turned back again so I went to plan B, pulling salt from my pocket and letting her sandpaper tongue rough up my hand. Then I upended the bucket, spanked the bottom, righted it and wiped it down with my bandana, settled it under her, and rested my head on her dusty flank. Breathed. That pleasant cow scent. Must be the same the world over.
I'd carried a wet rag with me, over my shoulder, and the rag had soaked through my uniform. I lifted it and cleaned her udder, swollen and tight. Teats in my palms, thumb and forefinger squeezing the top, closing my fingers sequentially until the first warm spray splattered and foamed against the plastic. I still had it. Then my right hand, then again with my left, shifting from teat to teat. Good size teats too, all four working, and she wasn't a dancer, which was nice, though she did swat me with her tail—the new guy, the wrong time—and when she let down her milk she let down her shit too, giant warm brown pancakes which the flies were on before they hit the ground. Tinny music was playing somewhere in the distance, something Arabic with what sounded like a busted banjo. I found myself squeezing in rhythm with it. My nose was dripping, my face wet, and I was going to wipe my nose on my shoulder to keep the snot from dropping into the milk, but then I thought, Screw it. The captain could drink my snot with his warm milk if he wanted to put me out here.
In a few minutes the udder was noticeably softer and the pail foaming and full. I patted her again and thanked her for the milk but didn't stand immediately, as it might be the last time I ever did.
Fuck it, I said, and stood. I wasn't going to run. They were all lined up to watch me, I could see them. I wasn't going to give them a show. The pail was heavy and sloshy.
The spotter was gone. Who'd come for him? And how had I not heard it? His boots had left drag marks perpendicular to the furrowed field, so exact they might have been laid out by an engineer. My elbows felt dislocated by the time I got back.
Martinez was shoving a cleaning patch through the barrel with a cleaning rod. He had Prada tattooed on his lower eyelid, and through his glasses it looked like it was on the lens. But it was the five-pointed star inked on the underside of his left wrist that caught my attention; that and the left earring and the rolled-up left pant leg. A true people person.
Hey, I said. They didn't really herd the chickens out into that field, did they?
Around his lit cigarette, he said, Which field?
That minefield?
It ain't no minefield.
I felt my shoulders straighten. Nah, I knew that, I said. But why all the feathers?
He looked up at me at last. My hands were still adrenaline-jumpy, so I tucked them under my arms.
There was a chicken farm. We drove 'em out when we cleared the building.
They blow up?
No. Mortars got most of 'em. We probably shot the rest.
What a mess.
No shit.
He bent to inspect the cleaning patch for copper fouling, the cigarette smoke drifting up over his helmet. It smelled good, but he wasn't going to offer me one. All replacements are mendicants, for food, for material, for attention and conversation. Friendship most of all. So I asked.
He one-handed the pack from his pocket, shook one loose, extended it. I had to ask for the light too. It made me cough.
Still concentrating on the barrel, he said, First one?
Yeah.
Bad habit.
One I hope to have for a long time. I inhaled, coughed again, and said, Martinez, tell me. Why does the captain have such a jones for milk?
I don't know, Martinez said, but rumor is he's got hemorrhoids.
Hemorrhoids? How does the milk help that? What's he do, soak his ass in the bucket?
Martinez continued cleaning his gun. Don't know that either, he said. Captain's not in the habit of talking to me about his butt.
Nothing to do but be out with it, so I said, Lemme have your paints.
I ain't got no paints.
Bullshit, I said. I seen 'em.
Actually, I hadn't, but he seemed a likely target. And the gamble was worth it if it meant I didn't have to be a walking bullseye.
Fuck off, Newbie.
All right, I said. Fine. But I only got half a pail today. Sandy's not happy.
Who's Sandy?
The cow. Someone's got to hold her. When I tell Christianson, who you think he'll send? You're on burn duty, for shit's sake.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hurry Please I Want to Know by Paul Griner. Copyright © 2015 Paul Griner. Excerpted by permission of Sarabande Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
AnimatiNewbie Was Here
The Only Appearance of Rice
The Wind, It Blows Forever
Hotei
Why I Like the Blues
A Sharp Winter, an Obese Smile,
On Board the SS Irresponsible
Immanent in the Last Sheaf
Find Your Real Job and Do It
The Caricaturist’s Daughter
Betrayal
The Builder’s Errors
Mum on the Rocks
Trapped in the Temple of Athena
Lands and Times
Separate Love
Balloon Rides Ten Dollars
Open Season
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Home For The Holidays
Three Hundred Words of Grief