Billy Summers

Pill went running, slipping off his pack as he went. The rest of us followed. There were two other patients in the tent, clearly fucked up with their own shit but not as divinely fucked up as Jamieson, because they were on their feet. One had his arm in a sling, the other had a bandage wound around his head.

Jamieson was lying on a cot with stuff, I think they call it Ringer’s lactate, running into his arm. The place where his left foot used to be had a pressure bandage on it, but the foot was gone and the bandage was already bleeding through. His left cheek was torn open and that eye was bleeding and all crooked in its socket. A couple of grunts were holding him down while a medic tried to get him to swallow some morphine tabs, but the lieutenant colonel was having none of it. He kept twisting his head from side to side, his good eye bulging and terrified. It landed on Pill.

‘Hurts!’ he yelled. There was nothing of the old bossy (but sometimes funny) l-c in him. The pain had swallowed all that. ‘Hurts! Oh my fucking God it fucking hurts!’

‘Dustoff’s on the way,’ one of the medics said. ‘Take it easy. Swallow these. You’ll feel bet—’

Jamieson raised one bloody hand and swatted the pills away. Johnny Capps chased after them and picked them up.

‘Hurts! Hurrts! HURRRRTS!’

Pill dropped to his knees beside the cot. ‘Listen to me, sir. I got a cure for the pain, better than the morph.’

Jamieson’s remaining eye rolled toward Pill, but I didn’t think it was seeing anything. ‘Briggs? Is that you?’

‘Yessir, Corpsman Briggs. You gotta sing.’

‘This hurts so bad!’

‘You gotta sing. It bypasses the pain.’

‘It’s true, sir,’ Taco said, but he gave me a look that said What the fuck?

‘Here we go,’ Pill said. He started to sing. He had a good voice. ‘If you go down to the woods today … now you.’

‘Hurts!’

Pill took him by the right shoulder. Jamieson’s shirt was shredded on the other side and blood was oozing through. ‘Sing it and you’ll feel better. Guaranteed. I’ll give it to you one more time. If you go down to the woods today …’

‘If you go down to the woods today,’ the l-c croaked. Then: ‘“The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”? You have to be fucking shitting m—’

‘No, sing it.’ Pillroller looked around. ‘Somebody help me. Who knows the fucking song?’

It so happened I knew it, because my mother used to sing it to my sister when she was just a baby. Over and over until Cathy went to sleep.

I couldn’t sing for shit, but I sang. ‘If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today—’

‘Better go in disguise,’ Jamieson finished. Still croaking.

‘Fucking right you better,’ Pill said, and sang: ‘For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain …’

The man with the bandage around his head joined in. He had a lovely strong baritone. ‘Because today’s the day the teddy bears have their piiiic-nic!’

‘Give it to me, Lieutenant Colonel,’ Pill said, still kneeling beside him. ‘Because today’s the day …’

‘The teddy bears have their piiic-nic.’ Jamieson said most of it but sang the first syllable of picnic the way the man with the bandage on his head had sung it, drawing it out long, and Johnny Capps dropped the morphine tabs into his mouth, bombs away.

Pill turned his head to look at the rest of the Hot Nine. He was like a fucked-up bandleader encouraging audience participation. ‘If you go down to the woods today … come on, everybody!’

So the members of the Hot Nine sang the first verse of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ to Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson, most of them just faking it until about the third time around. By then they had the words. The two wounded men joined in. The corpsmen joined in. On the fourth repetition, Jamieson sang it right through with sweat pouring down his face. People were running toward the tent to see what was going on.

‘Pain’s less,’ Jamieson gasped.

‘Morphine’s kicking in,’ Albie Stark said.

‘Not that,’ Jamieson said. ‘Again. Please. Again.’

‘One more time,’ Pill said, ‘and put some feeling into it. It’s a picnic, not a fucking funeral.’

So we sang: If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise!

The jarheads who’d come to see what was going on also joined in. By the time Jamieson passed out, there must have been four dozen of us singing that foolish fucking song at the top of our lungs and we didn’t hear the Black Hawk coming in to take Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson uprange until it was swopping up dirt and practically on top of us. I never forgot

10

‘What are you doing?’

Billy looks around, startled out of this dream, and sees Alice Maxwell standing in the bedroom door. Her bruises are stark against her white skin. Her left eye is puffed half-shut, making him think of the l-c, lying in that hot tent where the fans did jack shit even running at top speed. Her hair is all bed head.

‘Nothing. Playing a video game.’ He hits save, then turns off the laptop and shuts the lid.