REV, Part V

By Michael Shay

I'm filing my daily report on my laptop and the console beeps, telling me I have incoming mail. I tap a key and the message flashes: "See me ASAP -- Colonel Gumble."

I sign off and am in front of the C.O. within minutes, which I hope is ASAP enough. "How goes it Brandt?" asks the colonel, smile appearing briefly under his mustache. He has dark eyes, a flat nose. He always wears the campaign holographs from Iran and Turkey on his desert fatigues.

"Smith settling in?" he asks.

"She's still rough," I say, "but she'll be a good soldier."

"Well," he says, shifting in his seat, "looks like I'm going to take that responsibility out of your hands."

"How's that?"

"Transferring Smith to REV," he says, looking at the laptop on his desk. "He needs another adjutant and Smith is available."

"Another adjutant, sir?" I ask.

He looks at me with those dark eyes. "Got a problem with that, soldier?"

"I do sir," I say. "We need the extra hand. Supply says a new shipment of QACs is on the way. A couple days and..."

"You and Bender can handle it," says the C.O. His fingers tap across the laptop, then he looks at me. "Done," he says.

"I don't like it," I say.

"We'll give you the next replacement," says the colonel. "How about that?"

"Yes sir," I say, knowing that there's nothing I can do and probably nothing the colonel can do, since REV is the religious values officer and has as much power as the C.O., maybe more.

When I return to my bunktent, I summon Smith and break the news of the transfer.

"Is this good?" she asks.

"I don't think so," I say.

"Seems almost like a promotion."

"Depends on how you define promotion."

She looks thoughtful. "We women grunts hear things about REV."

"So do we."

"I'll take a rivet ride before I let REV touch me," she says.

"That's decision you'll have to make soon."

"Can you help me?"

"No."

"You did already, though, in the ATV."

I look at her closely. She had brush-cut red hair and a freckled face. Girl-next-door look. All REV's adjutants looked like this. "That was different."

"Thank you," she says. "I'll pray for you."

"Thank you," I say. "I need all the prayers I can get."

* * *

"There's nothing I can do," says the C.O. when I see him. Rev says he's too busy to see me. I tell Bender what's going on. "Let her go," he says. "We're a team here. We can handle it."

"It's not right," I say.

Bender stares at me as if I'm the devil incarnate. "You're saying that the REV's wrong?"

"I didn't say that," I say. "We need Smith here."

"We can do it. Now. let's get to work," he says, as if he's giving the orders around here.

So we get to work and the next morning I'm yanked out of my rack and hustled off into the desert night and I realize that the SS spooks have come for me. It's my time for a Soul Check. I too can be Penitent of the Day.

I blink into the vidcam. "Get some makeup on Brandt," yells the PR officer. "His forehead's shining in my lens." One of REV's adjutants appears and dabs some powder on my forehead. At first I think it's Smith because of the red hair but it's just someone who looks like her.

The makeup adjutant disappears and REV comes breezing in with his retinue, which includes Smith. She stands behind him with the others; her eyes are puffy and her mouth a thin line. She glances only briefly at me, then faces the camera.

REV's hands are on my shoulders and he kneads them like dough. "You know the routine, Brandt?"

"I do REV."

"Try not to mess anything up," he says. "This is all live, on-camera stuff."

"I won't ruin your show, REV."

"Very good," he says. The director gives the signal, the vidcam rolls, and REV clutches my shoulders. "Brother Brandt," he says.

"Praise God, REV," I say. REV's thumbs dig into my shoulder blades and pain shoots up my neck.

"Brother Brandt, keeper of the crosses," says REV.

"I'm just a poor sinner, REV."

He removes his hands and backs up. I notice Bender standing with the SS spooks who flank REV. Bender a spook? If so, I'm in deep trouble.

"And what say the word of the Lord, Brother Brandt," says REV.

"Pardon, REV?"

"What say the word of the Lord? What does The Book say about idolatry? 'You shalt have no other gods before ye.' Isn't that how it goes Mr. Brandt?"

"Yes REV."

"Maybe you could read the passage for us, Mr. Brandt."

"Read, REV?"

He smiles, and it is the kindest, deadliest grin I've ever seen. "Like you read your books, Brother Brandt, when you should be watching me intoning the word of God -- or the Americorp broadcasts."

"I could recite what Exodus says about idolatry," I tell REV.

"I'd like you to read it," says REV. "I see you don't have your WristBib on -- shame on you -- so I brought an extra." He motions to the SS spooks and they lock one on my wrist. I look. Scrolling across the split screen is Exodus 20:2.

"Or what about Deuteronomy 5:6." He snaps his fingers and the words of Deuteronomy scroll on the screen. How does he do that? "Read it for us, Brother Brandt."

I glance over at Smith and she's looking into the camera. I look at Bender, but he's studiously avoiding my eyes.

"How about The Bradbury instead?" Before he can answer I recite from memory, with as much feeling as I can muster: "In the living room the voice clock sang, 'Tick-tock, seven o'clock. Time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock!' as if it were afraid nobody would." I look up and see a black cloud pass in front of REV's face. "More, REV, more?" I say, then continue. "The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on..."

REV crooks his fingers for the SS spooks and they advance. Suddenly, passages from all the books I've spring out of my memory. I yell them: " 'It was the best of times....' 'The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he was madly in love with him.' 'The light at dawn during those Pacific tests was something to see.' 'Stopping by woods on a snowy evening.' 'Verrieres is no doubt one of the prettiest towns in Franche-Comte.' 'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia...' " My words are cut off by the SS goons who slip a gag over my mouth, but I keep yelling, hoping some of it gets on the vidcam for others to hear. The last thing I see before the SS goons drag me out of the studio is REV, a fountain of hate bubbling up into his flat face.

* * *

I'm riveted to the unit's lone cross.

Before the unit moves out in the afternoon, I get a visitor. Bender stands at the foot of the cross, looking up at me. I notice he has sergeant's stripes on his uniform.

"Goodbye Brandt," says Bender.

"Judas," I say. I'm not in the mood for conversation. The mercy dose of Americorp synthocaine they give rivet-riders is wearing off; even speaking hurts.

"Just doing my duty," he says, smiling. "REV needed my help. He wanted Smith and you were being a pain. I nosed around; found your little supply of microchips. REV was grateful."

"What about Smith?"

He chuckles. "That little Catholic girl won't last an hour with REV. He'll convert the hell out of her."

"Got a cig?" I ask.

Bender shakes a smokeless out of his pack, attaches it to the QAC gripper and extends it to me. I grasp the cig with my teeth and suck on it. Tastes good -- like a cig should, as they say in the Americorp blurbs.

"Thanks, Bender."

"No hard feelings?" he asks, dropping the gripper in the sand.

"You're stranger than fiction, Bender," I say. "You should be a character in a novel."

Sergeant Bender grimaces. "That's a compliment, Bender." I laugh, but it hurts too much so I stop. Bender shakes his head and walks off. I suck on the cig and watch the unit break camp, the ATVs humming down the ancient highway to Kandahar. In the east, smoke rises over the distant hills and I know soon they'll be in the city and the purges will come. My blood drips to the sand below; I'm weak from the heat. If I am lucky, I will be in the house of spirits by morning.

But I have a freedom I haven't had in years -- the freedom to speak the words aloud. So I begin: " 'January 1999: Rocket summer. One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with...' "

So much to remember. So little time.

Return to Part I of REV