5
Jumping OffI lose track of how many days it rains all day long, how many days the helicopters can't get in with our mail, how many nights I go to sleep in wet jungle utes, how many Thousand Island shits at holes dug too wide to squat over and so shallow the water splashes back, how many card games I played in the light of the smelly sealing-wax candles, how many hundreds of sandbags I fill, how many nights I am on the verge of screaming from the pain in my feet and how many midafternoon daydreams of painting three-story houses I have.
Everybody was right. When a new shipment of guys comes to the fire base I realize how old I've gotten. They are green and white and I am red and brown. They are insanely scared and I am not. Quite. None of them comes to Echo Company.
We have moved once,
