JARHEAD
SCRIPT



I go to the basement and open my ruck. The basement is in Iowa, after a long, harsh winter, and deep in my ruck where I reach for my cammies, I still feel the cold of February. We were supposed to turn in our desert cammies, but I kept mine. They're ratty and bleached by sand and sun and blemished with the petroleum rain that fell from the oil-well fires in Kuwait. The cammies don't fit. While in the Marines, I exercised about thirty hours a week. Since I've been out, I've exercised thirty hours a year. The waist stops at my thighs. The blouse buttons, but barely. I pull out maps of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Patrol books. Pictures. Letters. My journal with its sparse entries. Coalition propaganda pamphlets. Brass bore punch for the M40A1 sniper rifle. A handful of .50-caliber projectiles. I think of what I must look like to the late-night walker peering through the basement windows: the movie cliche, the mad old warrior going through memorabilia, juicing up before he runs off and kills a few with precision fire. But, no, I am not mad. I am not well, but I am not mad. I'm after something. Memory, yes. A reel. More than just time. Years pass. But more than just time. I've been working towards this-I've opened the ruck and now I must open myself.
It would've been easy to sell my gear to a surplus store. After the war I spent most of my monthly pay in the bars in Palm Springs and Newport Beach, Las Vegas and Santa Monica, I'd steal a case or two of MREs (meals ready to eat) from Supply each week, and on my way out of town for the weekend I'd sell the meals for $80 per case in an army/navy store in San Bernardino. And occasionally, I'd steal more than the meals. Or I wouldn't necessarily steal. Sometimes I'd happen along a Sergeant Smith's ruck, and he'd be nowhere near. It is not ordinary to live like this. In fact it is quite extraordinary. One may classify it as psychotic or depressive behavior but I classify it in one word: guilt.