that 'cause you're turning into a lifer.'
'Yeah? So? You oughta do the same,' Squidface answered. 'God knows how long you're gonna stay stuck here. You make a pretty good soldier, even if you are a big target. Why not leave the uniform on? You go back to Civvy Street, you'll end up bored outa your skull all the goddamn time.'
'I'd sooner be bored than bore-sighted,' Armstrong said.
Squidface ignored the joke. That pissed Armstrong off, because he thought it was better than most of the ones he made. But, as if he hadn't spoken, the PFC continued, 'Besides, you can't tell me you aren't getting any down here. Up in the USA, the girls'll slap your face if you try and cop a feel. You want to fuck, you gotta get married.'
'There's still whorehouses in the USA,' Armstrong said.
'Yeah? So?' Squidface said again.
He left it right there. Armstrong grunted. With a whore, it was nothing but a business deal. Some of the gals down here were looking for love. They wanted to think they mattered to you, so you mattered to them. They weren't just going through the motions. That did make it better.
All the same…'You figure because you want to stay in, everybody ought to want to stay in.'
'My ass,' Squidface retorted. 'Plenty of the cocksuckers in this company, I wish they'd get the fuck out. Raw recruits who don't know their nuts from Wednesday'd be better. But you're all right. You could do it. You might even end up an officer.'
'Christ! What're you smoking?' Armstrong laughed out loud. 'Whatever it is, I want some.'
'I'm serious, man,' Squidface said. 'Me, I'm a noncom. It's what I'm made for. You've got more of the 'Yes, sir!' they like when they promote people.'
'Oh, man, give me a fucking break,' Armstrong said.
'You do,' Squidface insisted. 'Shit, you're Armstrong. You never got a gross nickname hung on you or nothin'.'
'That's 'cause I've got a gross name instead,' Armstrong said. 'Hot damn.'
'All the same.' Squidface wasn't about to let up. 'I can see the newspaper story now. It's fucking 1975, and Colonel Armstrong Grimes gets a Medal of Honor for leading the regiment that takes Paris away from the Germans.'
'If the Germans want the place, they're welcome to it, far as I'm concerned,' Armstrong said. 'It's full of Frenchmen-or it was till they blew it up.'
'So don't listen to me.'
'Like I ever did.' As long as they were zinging each other, Armstrong was happy enough. But they'd come much too close to getting serious there, and getting serious made him nervous.
He wasn't the only U.S. soldier who got nervous in Alabama. Somebody well up the chain of command had the bright idea that a football game between occupiers and locals might show people that men from the USA weren't so different from anybody else-no horns, no tails, no pitchforks.
The company CO asked Armstrong, 'Didn't you play football in high school?'
'Some,' he answered. 'I was second string. I wasn't that great or anything.'
'You want a chance to knock Confederates on their ass without getting gigged for it?'
'Where do I sign up?'
Squidface wanted nothing to do with that. 'I'm glad I'm a little guy,' he said. 'Those assholes on the other side, they're gonna be lookin' for a chance to rack you up. This ain't gonna be no friendly game.'
'Yeah, well, we'll work out on them, too,' Armstrong said.
'They better have plenty of ambulances ready,' Squidface said darkly.
They got uniforms. Whoever was in charge of what they were calling the Peace Bowl had clout. U.S. soldiers wore blue suits, their Confederate counterparts red. They got cleats to take the place of their boots. They got helmets. Armstrong wondered if he wouldn't do better with his regular steel pot than with this leather contraption.
The athletes on the U.S. team were in much better shape than the high-school guys had been. Armstrong felt he'd earned something when he got named a starting tackle. They had a quarterback who could really throw and a couple of ends who could catch. The ends weren't the swiftest in the world, but they'd do.
They played the Peace Bowl at a high-school stadium. U.S. soldiers filled half the stands, locals the other half. To make sure the bowl stayed peaceful, the locals got frisked before they could go inside.
Armstrong got his first look at the red team then. He didn't like what he saw. They were slimmer and rangier than the U.S. players. They looked fast. That wasn't what worried him, though. One glance told him these guys were going to play as if they were fighting to hold the U.S. Army out of Chattanooga. Squidface had it straight. Peace Bowl, nothing. This wouldn't be football. This would be war.
The red team-they seemed to call themselves the Wolves-won the toss. When the U.S. kicker booted the ball, Armstrong thundered down the field. The first collision was always welcome. He slammed into a guy in red. 'Yankee cocksuckin' motherfucker,' the man said, and tried to lift a knee into his family jewels.
'Kiss my ass, Charlie.' Armstrong twisted and took the knee on his hip pad. 'You want to play like that? We'll play like that.'
'Bring it on,' the other guy said.
And they did. Both sides did, the whole game long. Armstrong got punched and elbowed and gouged and kicked. Every tackle was a piling-on penalty. It was trench warfare, only without trenches. The Confederates were faster. The U.S. team was a touch stronger.
One Confederate broke his leg. As far as Armstrong could tell, that was an accident-the tackle looked clean. One U.S. player had his shoulder dislocated. On the next play, the Wolf who dislocated it got racked up. Armstrong couldn't see just what happened to him; somebody was trying to step on his face. Whatever it was, the guy in red got carried off on a stretcher.
With four minutes to go, the Confederates punted to the U.S. team. The blues were on their own thirty, down 28–24. 'This is it,' the quarterback said in the huddle. 'We get a touchdown, we win. We fuck up, we look like chumps in front of these shitheads and in front of our own guys. We gonna let that happen?'
'No!' they chorused.
'All right. Short pass into the left flat on three. Let's go get 'em.'
'You shot my brother, asshole,' said the guy across the line from Armstrong.
'Don't worry, cuntlips,' Armstrong said sweetly. 'You're next.'
And he was right, but not the way he meant it. The first mortar bomb hissed in then, and burst right on the midfield stripe. But the red team shielded the blue from most of the fragments. As soon as Armstrong heard the bang, he flattened out. So did the Alabaman who didn't like him, but the guy in red was bleeding from his back and his leg.
'Fuck,' he said hoarsely.
Another Confederate player was down with a ghastly head wound. It proved again what Kaiser Bill's army had found out the hard way in the Great War-leather helmets didn't do one damn thing to stop shell fragments. A couple of U.S. soldiers clutched at themselves and groaned, too. Their uniforms showed the blood more than their opponents'.
Armstrong crawled over to the closer one. He didn't want to rise up, in case more mortar rounds landed on or near the football field. And they did-one near the far end zone, and another, gruesomely, in the side of the stands filled with people cheering for the red team. Screams and shrieks and wails rose high and shrill.
'Son of a bitch!' Armstrong said, not entirely displeased. 'We may not even have to take hostages this time. They're doing it to themselves.'
The wounded U.S. player expressed an opinion that would have assigned every white person in the former Confederacy to an even warmer if less humid clime. Then he said, 'I wish I could bandage myself. This cloth doesn't tear for shit.'
'Hang on.' Armstrong extracted a small clasp knife from his right sock. 'I'll fix you up.'
'What are you doing with that?' the other soldier asked.
'Never can tell when it'll come in handy,' Armstrong said, slicing at the fellow's shirt. 'If I could've got my hands on a derringer, I would've packed one of those, too.' He cut at the soldier's tight trousers so he could see the wound. 'Not too bad. Looks like you're sliced up some, but I don't think there's any iron in there.'
