Chapter Eighty
Like most military forces in the Middle East, they still primarily traveled by pushing their vehicles to conserve fuel, which seemed to be getting scarcer and scarcer. It made for very slow going. The distance they would have usually traveled in a day could now take weeks to cover. Rations, mail, and even water could be delivered by air, but there was no quick or easy way home when someone was injured. Cogswell, still recovering from his shoulder wound, spent most of his time in the back of a truck, watching his fellow Marines push.
He didn’t like it.
It was his shoulder that was hurt, not his legs, and he felt like he should have been able to walk—that way, at least, he wouldn’t be adding weight for everyone else to push—but the truth was that too much walking also made his shoulder hurt.
Lance Corporal the Frog, as the unit’s expert on taking a bullet in the shoulder, had told him to expect that. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but every step is like a little jolt to your shoulder,” Frog had explained. “A little walking is fine, but these long treks we’re doing… You’d better stay in the truck, Cogswell. Who knows when we’ll get any kind of pain killers delivered again. No reason to make yourself miserable.” He was right, of course, but that didn’t make Cogswell feel any better about the situation.
Of course, the lack of fuel also meant that there was no quick or easy way to transport any war prisoners to the appropriate camps, which was why they still had the four prisoners they had captured in February and the suicide bomber from April. It wasn’t as hard as they had expected—most of the time, the prisoners knew painfully well that if they ran away, they would be running into an unforgiving desert. Aside from the rare occasions when they reached a village or some other form of civilization, the prisoners knew that their own survival depended on the survival of the unit.
This gave Larsen more time than usual to work with the prisoners and try to get information out of them—with one very important exception. With their youngest prisoner, ten-year-old Bassam, he had an entirely different goal.
They were stopped for a mid-day break in another long trek when Larsen took the opportunity—as he usually did—to talk to Bassam, who had been riding in a truck all day and was eager to stretch his legs. Larsen had been marching for most of the day and helping push a truck for the rest of it. The other troops were happy to spend the break sitting and resting, but Larsen strolled around with the boy and talked with him while they ate their lunch and drank some of their carefully-rationed water.
When the worst of the mid-day heat had passed, they disassembled the makeshift canopies they’d constructed for shade and fell into place to resume the long trek.
Kermit was too short to help with any of the pushing, but he did carry some of the unit’s supplies in his own pack so that he could still contribute. Beside him, Holt was just about to turn the camera off when they heard Larsen call out.
“Frog! Hey, Frog!” Larsen hailed, hurrying to their side.
Kermit gave him a weary look and shouldered his heavy pack. “Guss… Why are you running, where do you get your energy, and who is going to carry you when you finally pass out?” he said, and then he saw the spark in Larsen’s eye, and he perked up. “Good news?”
Larsen was beaming. “He smiled.”
Kermit didn’t have to ask who he was. The frog broke into a grin of his own. “Oh, that’s great!”
“Little smile,” Larsen qualified, “But a smile.”
“It’s a start!” Kermit said enthusiastically.
“It’s a relief; that’s for sure,” Larsen said.
Holt cleared his throat and looked at them around the camera with his eyebrows raised.
“Oh! Sorry,” Kermit said hastily, and he addressed the camera. “When—When the soldiers we capture are kids, we don’t try to get information out of them—”
Larsen shook his head. “There’s been a policy against it ever since we found out the Childs Corps is entirely brainwashed,” he said, grimacing at the words. “Not that I would anyway. I doubt Major D. would order it.”
Kermit nodded. “Right. But you still work with the kids.”
“Yeah, I—” Larsen sighed. “It would be easier if I had some sort of background in psychology, but—I just talk with the kids. I try to un-brainwash them, to just—remind them that they are still kids.” He grinned at the camera. “This one smiled today. He’s getting there. We hope they all do, eventually, in the camps, but it’s not something we usually get to see out here.”
“And I think we needed some good news like that,” Kermit said. “Maybe there’s actually a good side to this fuel shortage.”
Larsen laughed. “Sure, that’s one way to look at it, but I think that’s kind of a stretch, Frog.”
“Well, when you’re as short as I am, everything’s a stretch,” Kermit quipped.
As they resumed their long march, Kermit tucked this news about Bassam into his heart and tried to take comfort in it. His worry for what was going on at home—whatever it was—hadn’t really gone away, but he couldn’t exactly name the reason he thought there was something wrong, either. It was just sort of a vibe he got from all the e-mails and letters—from both the Muppets and the swamp, which made him worry even more. If he thought about it, the trouble at home was probably just that they were upset about Greg enlisting… but somehow, he couldn’t quite convince himself of that.
What the frog didn’t know was that he was the only one in his entire unit, and probably the only one in the entire military of the United States of America, who didn’t know what was really troubling his family. Everyone in his unit was on their guard, making sure not to say anything that might alarm him, keeping track of everything that was said to him, watching him to make sure he was okay. They did everything they could to protect him from the truth.
That was why Major D. fell back a little as his unit marched. He lined himself up with a few of his men who were slowly pushing a truck, well out of Kermit’s hearing range. “You boys holding up?” he said as he made room for his own hands on the fender and pushed his weight into it.
“Yessir,” the men all replied.
Major D. glanced at the one closest to him. “Geraldson, I’d like a word with you.”
Geraldson’s head snapped up. “Sir?”
“I’d like to know whose idea it was not to tell Frog what’s happening with his nephew,” the major said.
Geraldson stiffened, but they all continued pushing the truck forward. “His family didn’t want him to know, sir,” he said. “I think the rest of us all agreed that he wouldn’t take it well if he knew.” The Marines beside him grunted their agreement.
“Well, I’d be inclined to say that you’re right about that,” Major D. said carefully, “But I think that decision ought to be revisited.”
The half-dozen men shared alarmed glances. “Sir,” Geraldson said nervously, “Frog would blame himself, sir, if—if he heard Robin was taking fire. I don’t think—emotionally—”
“I’m well aware of that, Geraldson,” Major D. said sharply. “I didn’t say we should be foolhardy about it. But the fact of the matter is, when Frog has some random Marine face the camera one-on-one to say hi to the folks at home, he picks from everyone in the Division. Not just our unit. And this thing back home is getting bigger and bigger, and it’s only a matter of time before one of those other Marines who doesn’t know him as well as we do will ask him about it. Now you tell me, boys: what’ll be worse? If he hears what happened from someone he knows, or from an outsider?”
Despite the sweltering sun and the hard labor, Geraldson suddenly felt chilled. Major D. was right, as usual. If Kermit found out from someone he barely knew, who just chanced to ask about how Robin was doing… That was what would destroy him. His emotions would short-circuit, and it wouldn’t be safe to have him on the front line. Geraldson reluctantly nodded. “I’ll send them an e-mail, next chance I get, sir,” he said quietly. “I just don’t know how we would tell him, without…” He groped for the right words, trying not to quite admit just how delicate a balance any soldier’s mental and emotional stability was in this war.
“I’ll tell him,” Major D. said. “We’ll get you on a computer tonight. If they can give him good news in the next mail call about all of this, I’ll tell him then.”
Geraldson nodded. “Yes sir,” he said quietly.
Major D. left it at that and went to check on some of his other men. The few who had heard this conversation waited until he was gone to say anything.
“It’ll kill him,” Casper hissed.
“We can’t let him know this,” Pine grimly agreed. Both of them were urgently staring at Geraldson, knowing that he was the closest to Frog.
Geraldson’s face was carved into a deep frown. “It’s too big to hide,” he said reluctantly, glaring at the truck they were pushing but not really seeing it. “The whole nation’s talking about it. Other countries, too. Talking about what happened to Robin, and how it’s happening to other kids, too, other families. Robin wants to give an interview about it. We can’t hide it.”
Casper and Pine shook their heads. “I hope Major knows what he’s doing,” Casper muttered.
“He does,” Pine said. “He always does. I don’t like it, though.”
“Can’t change it,” Geraldson grunted. “You heard him. We won’t change his mind. Just gotta be there for Frog, that’s all.”
And they didn’t bother talking for a while after that. Nothing else needed to be said.
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