Keep It Light

I. OPERATION RESOLUTE SUPPORT
USMC CAMP DWYER, AFGHANISTAN

“War,” the colonel announces, “is hell.”

He sits behind a metal field desk, a MacArthur corncob pipe jutting from his teeth like a gearshift.

Looking at his face, my mind is filled with rugged adjectives. Granite jaw. Iron hair. Steely eyes.

The wind howls up the Hemland River Valley and buffets the walls of the tent with a loud snapping sound.

The colonel is staring at me, seeming to expect me to reply.

“Yes, sir,” I say. “I’ve heard that.”

“But you’re here to draw funny cartoons about it, correct?”

“I draw cartoons, sir. But they’re not always funny.”

“Then what the hell is the point?” he demands.

“If I may, sir.”

The second lieutenant who has been my constant companion since I landed in Kandahar two days ago hands him a folder.

“Here’s the brief from the Senator’s office. In short, it says the purpose of this mission is to help shape the national narrative.”

“The national narrative?” the colonel says, squinting at the paper. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“The national narrative of why we fight, sir,” says the second lieutenant. “We need to remind people back home why we’re here.”

“They don’t know?”

“Recent polls suggest they don’t, sir.”

“How is that possible?”

“9/11 was a long time ago, sir. Americans have short memories.”

The colonel scowls as he plucks a wooden match from a box on his desk. He pops it with his thumb and lights his pipe, puffing jets of smoke from his nostrils like the mad bull from the Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“Very well.”

He closes the folder and hands it back to the second lieutenant. The second lieutenant jerks to attention and snaps a salute, then spins to face the door like a mechanical man.

The colonel points a blunt finger at me. “My boys better think your cartoons are funny.”

“Yes sir,” I say. As a civilian, I do not salute. I don’t really know how anyway.

 


II. OPERATION TALISMAN SABER
USS CARL VINSON, SEA OF JAPAN

“I love your work, man,” says Seaman Janks. “Especially the one about the dude got his legs blown off. That shit was sick.”

He leans on his mop. squirting jets of water across the deck. “We never get to see anything like that.”

“Nothing ever happens here,” says Seaman Ramirez. He’s also on swab duty, but so far hasn’t touched his mop, preferring to sit in the corner with his back against the bulkhead “Serving on the Vinson is more boring than my old job at Walmart.”

“I thought the task force is doing a joint exercise with the Japanese,” I say. “That’s why I came.”

“World War Three practice has been postponed,” says Ramirez. “Rumor has it we’re heading back to San Diego.”

“They never tell us anything,” says Janks.

“I heard the reactor went kablooey,” says Ramirez.  “That’s why we’re on stand-down.”

“Hey, that cartoon about the legs,” asks Janks. “That really happened?”

I nod. “In the Hemland Valley.”

“Where did the bomb come from? I heard that area was supposed to be secure.”

I shrug. “Nobody knows. Maybe an insurgent snuck in.”

“Fucking insurgents,” says Janks. “Every time we invade a place, there they are. Assholes.”

“Did the dude live?” asks Ramirez.

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“That sucks,” says Janks. “Still, that cartoon was fuckin’ hilarious.”

Ramirez lets loose a long sigh, like a tire losing air, then climbs to his feet.

“May as well get to it,” he says, and walks over to his bucket and takes out the mop. “This deck ain’t gonna swab itself.”

“What are you going to do your cartoon about?” asks Janks. “Now that the joint exercise is canceled?”

“Not sure,” I say. “Maybe after you guys are done here we can up top and you can show me the flight deck?”

“No problem, man,” says Janks. “As long as you promise to put us in your next cartoon!”

 

III. OPERATION TWILIGHT COBRA
CIA BLACK OPS SITE, RAS KAMBONI, SOMALIA

“Make sure nobody is recognizable,” says Sergeant ____. “Officially, we’re not here.”

“Understood,” I say, quickly drawing a mustache on my sketch of him.

“I loved that one you did about the aircraft carrier. Did that really happen?”

“More or less.”

“I loved it. All of us did. Only you can’t do that here.”

“Do what?”

“Draw anything that really happens. Like I said, we’re not here.”

“What can I draw then?”

Sergeant ___ shrugs. “You’re the cartoonist.”

“I mean, they sent me here for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Usually it has something to do with public opinion.”

“Huh. That’s not really a factor here. Since this doesn’t really exist.”

He scratches his chin. “I have an idea. Stay here for a second.”

He leaves the tent and comes back with two soldiers in gray combat coveralls and black berets. Each man is leading a hooded Somali with hands zip-tied behind his back. The Somalis are so skinny it looks like their bones might bust through their skin. Another Somali ducks in behind them, a kid in an oversized tan uniform with lots of snaps and buttons.

Sergeant ____ stands back with his hands on his hips and inspects the Somalis. “Maybe if they were kneeling?” he says.

He turns to me. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Make them kneel,” he says to the first soldier.

The first soldier snarls at the kid in the uniform. “Tell these faggots to get on their fucking knees.”

“Jilbahaaga waa jilibyo aan fiicnayn oo jinsi ah,” says the kid, and he starts giggling. The hooded men join him, all three of them laughing.

“What the hell did you tell them?” demands Sergeant ___.

The kid goes wide-eyed and stops laughing. He bows his head to Sergeant ___.

“I am sorry, Commander. What he ask me to tell does not translate to Somali, so I say get down on your soft womanly knees. In school we learn a joke–”

“Shut the fuck up,” says the second soldier.

He unsnaps a telescoping baton from his belt and whips it open, then smashes the side of the nearest Somali’s. leg. The man shrieks and falls to his knees. The soldier does the same to the other.

Both Somalis kneel before us, sobbing underneath their hoods.

“What do you think?” says Sergeant ____. “Can you use this?”

“Um. Maybe.”

I flip my pad to a fresh sheet and start sketching. Sergeant ___ looks over my shoulder as I draw.

“On second thought,” he says, “you better not.”

He reaches over and tears the paper out of my hands. “This never happened.”

 

IV. TENTH AMENDMENT PAC MILLION DOLLAR DINNER
LIMELIGHT HOTEL GRAND BALLROOM, KETCHUM IDAHO

“You’re wasting your talent,” says The Honorable Mrs. Astronaut.

She’s tanned and fit, her arms muscular, her jawline firm. It must take a woman her age a lot of work to stay in that condition.

She gives me a smile, her white teeth shining with a light of their own. “Political cartoons are the ickiest kind of journalism.”

I pull a tiger prawn from the Swarovski crystal goblet and dip it into the caviar cocktail sauce. “I did win the Pulitzer for the Somalia series.”

“Yes,” she says. “But you could be doing so much…more.”

“Am I interrupting anything?” the Vice President says, placing his meaty hands on The Honorable Mrs. Astronaut’s bare shoulders.

She cranes her head back, her pearl necklace riding up onto her clearly defined collarbones. “Dick, Darling!” she croons. “I didn’t know you were here!”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” he grins.

I’ve never been this close to him before. His head is huge.

I reach for my sketchbook, but he’s glaring at me over his smile.

“Mind if we have a word?” he asks.

Without waiting for an answer, he strolls away.

I feel hands on my arms. Two large men in blue suits with earpieces and black sunglasses appear out of thin air and lift me from my chair.

They half-carry me across the banquet hall to a pair of tall doors made of dark wood. The man on my right loosens his hand and taps three times on the door, pauses, then taps twice more.

The door opens and I am marched into what looks like a mansion library. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, leather armchairs, even a fireplace.

The Vice President sits in one of the armchairs with legs crossed, a cigar in one hand and a cut-glass tumbler of whiskey in the other.

“Leave us,” he tells the men.

They back away as though on rollers, pulling the doors closed after them.

The Vice President gestures to the chair next to him. “Sit. I’d offer you a drink, but I know about your…problem.”

“My problem?”

I sit down.

“When you were in college at Northern Arizona University, you were thrown out of Shaky Drake’s Good Time Bar for being drunk. Twice. Less than a year later, you were photographed at an outdoor café drinking an entire bottle of wine by yourself. At ten in the morning. And that was just the start.”

He reaches down to a briefcase beside him and removes a thick folder. He sets it on the coffee table and flips it open.

A color glossy photo of me at a party drinking a beer. I don’t recognize the photo, but I look very young.

He flips through the photos. There are dozens of them. In every one, I have a drink in my hand. “This is just five years’ worth,” he says.

I shrug. “This proves nothing,” I say.

He gives a little laugh like a B-movie villain.

“We don’t need to prove you have a problem. You have quite a lot of them. I’m just showing you this particular one to demonstrate how much we know about you.” He takes a huge pull on his cigar. “Which is very much indeed.”

“I don’t understand. What do you want?”

“I need your cooperation. We need it.”

“We?”

He looks dumbfounded. “The United States, son. Americans. The real Americans.”

“Republicans?”

“Of course Republicans. Didn’t I make myself clear?”

“What do you want me to do?”

He grins again, but his eyes remain as flat as poker chips. “Exactly what you’ve been doing. Keep it light. Make them laugh. It’s a great distraction in a time of war.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

He leans forward and gives my leg an avuncular pat. “People are starting to take notice of you. People like Fran.”

“Fran?”

“The Honorable Mrs. Astronaut. At the table just now. She represents some powerful people who would like to take you out of the game. Keep you from doing what you’ve been doing.”

“How do you know that?”

He tilts his head as though I was speaking in tongues. “Did I not make myself clear? We know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Every single fucking thing there is.”

He sets down his drink and picks up the folder, then rises from his chair.

“Personally,  I loved the Somalia cartoons. The hoods were a fantastic touch.”

I nod modestly.

“One thing I was wondering,” he asks, leaning in close. “Did any of that really happen?”

I don’t hesitate even a second. “No. None of it happened.”

He smiles again, and this time it seems to involve his eyes.

“Ah. That’s too bad.”