Your Caius Aquilla Read online

  ALSO BY JOHN ANDREW FREDRICK

  the knucklehead chronicles

  The King of Good Intentions

  The King of Good Intentions II: The continuing & really rather quite hilarious misadventures of an indie rock band called The Weird Sisters

  Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson

  this is a genuine rare bird book

  A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2017 by John Andrew Fredrick

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

  A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  epub isbn: 9781945572623

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Fredrick, John Andrew, author.

  Title: Your Caius Aquilla / John Andrew Fredrick.

  Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Rare Bird Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572562

  Subjects: LCSH Rome—Fiction. | Military history, Ancient—Fiction. | Soldiers—Rome—Fiction. | Historical Fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC HUMOR / Topic / History

  Classification: LCC PS3606.R4367 Y68 2017 | DDC 813.6—dc23

  “Fans of Fredrick’s seminal indie rock band the black watch will immediately recognize his voice: equal parts punk ethos and Wildean wit and trenchant observations on war, death, sex, and love. Your Caius Aquilla reads like Proust on meth by way of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It’s funny, obscene, touching, and quite unlike anything else.”

  —David Rocklin, author of The Luminist

  “Hystericallus majorus! A pistol of an epistolary novel. It ensnares the reader in its mordant clutches, pounding the funny bone with merciless abandon until he is spent and flummoxed as to what the hell just happened. If you read one book by an author with three names, make sure it’s this one.”

  —Bruce Ferber, author of Cascade Falls

  “The hilarious and seamless mix of conversational affectations from ancient Rome, modern America, and any place in-between makes the characters feel timeless. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry–well, you might not cry; you’ll likely just laugh some more. This novel’s simply stunningly imagined.”

  —Dave Coverly, Speed Bump cartoonist

  “Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking,

  unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.”

  —Edward Gibbon

  For Nora

  Contents

  XII Februarius

  XIII Februarius (or sometime thereabouts)

  XX Februarius

  II Aprillus

  I Mars

  III Mars

  X Mars

  IV Aprillus

  X Aprillus

  XI Aprillus

  XIII Aprillus

  XX Aprillus

  XXI Aprillus

  XXII Aprillus

  XXII Aprillus

  XX Aprillus

  XXI Aprillus

  XXI Maius

  In our relentlessly Romance-obsessed era it’s rather hard for many of us to fathom how other epochs could and did prize friendship over love. A Roman legionnaire, for instance, in writing home to his beloved wife would invariably address her as “Dear Friend” rather than Wife or Her Name. Here’s a sample letter home—from the Sixteenth Punic War or something. Translated from the Latin.

  XII Februarius

  Dear Friend:

  Hail! I hope this missive finds you healthy and well. We sure have slain no small amount of Germans, Spaniards, Saxons, or Goths this week! Whew! I’m so tired. I can barely lift my sword arm over my effin’ head—pardon my Gallic. It’s been nothing but march, march, march, kill, kill, kill this entire campaign: none of your “hearts and minds” palaver and nonsense at all this time for sure. I don’t know what the higher higher-ups are thinking but the venerable generals are not in the least effing around here. Around they are decidedly not effing. Not this particular show, that’s certain. Thank Mars and Jove it’s almost over. Got any idea how hard it is to cut off a guy’s head when your weapon’s smeared with blood from a Franctk’s (spelling?) jugular or the neck of a Pict and it’s your third or fourth head that day that’s had to be cut off? And—thusly cutting and thrusting and beheading—you haven’t had an iota of time to fetch a nice new blade or have one of the smiths at the smithy sharpen your old one for you while you hurriedly refresh yourself with muddy or bloody river water or a squirt of watered wine? Forgive me, dear friend, for nattering on and on about work. How are you, anyway? And the kids? How I long for the warmth of Rome and your arms. How I dream of you—and of you taking me into your mouth, dearest friend. Good gods I’m almost ready to go Greek as it were and have one of the slave camp boys suckle my aching julius! But no. I don’t really mean that. Only joking. That only happened that one time, I swear by all the gods and lesser goddesses; and as you know I sacrificed two goats and a chicken in penance to Diana and a calf to Venus so… Well, anyway. I hardly know what I am scribbling here, I’m so worn out from today’s fray. You must indulge me, forgive me. Only too well do I know, Lora, that you wouldn’t like that if I did that, I’m sure. I mean, I would like it—don’t get me wrong. But you, you wouldn’t. So I’m not going to—rest assured. I swear by Janus’s faces I won’t and may I roam in the darkest depths of lowest Hades always if ever again am I even tempted to do such a sordid, sorrow-making thing. Instead, ergo, every night I as I take my desperate scepter in hand and pull myself off I envision coming home and luxuriating in a good hot Roman bath, then snacking on barbecued larks’ wings, your most excellent and still mighty perky breasts, and the greatest pizza known to man. I say! I’ll try to port you home some different spoils this time, my love. How’s that?! I’ll bet you anything you’re tired as Hades of feigning delight when I bring back a baby monkey or a necklace made of jade, lapis lazuli, and the teeth of a Celtic child. And the kids are totally all, like, “Another primate, Daddy? What are you/can you be thinking? If thinking at all. The stupid compound courtyard’s starting not only to look but to sound like a zoo!…” By the by, in case you’re wondering, I’m still sharing a blasted tent with Beeflicus. You can imagine how much fun that is after we’ve dined, say, on heaps of fresh cow and he’s had a goblet or two (or four). Picture this, if you would be so kind: there I am the other night, on my cot reclining, taking my ease after a long day, tacitly practicing my lute, and Beefy up and smiles his wily smile and smirks right at me and just rips one—a good, long, jarringly jabbering blast from his fat arse—and I says to him I says, “Godsdammit, Beefy old man, you’re a deuced, impudent blackguard, and if you don’t stop making this tent bellow like the sails of a swift Sicilian ship, and smelling like an Abyssinian bog, I am going to cut your sorry throat in the dead of night!” Some of the other lads have noticed (and how could they not?) his bloody proclivity for stupendous and dramatically sustained flatulence and have dubbed him “Lower Aeolus” and/or “Aeolus from Below.” They call that clever. They call that hilarious. I call it appalling. Utterly unacceptable. Mark this, love, no lie, I have to sleep with a wet rag over my nose. The other day Joculator asked Lieutenant Optio if, next attack, we couldn’t have young Beefs march b
ackward so as to “beef out” the enemy, so to speak, like a phalanx of rank skunks, before we get to them. Everyone busted up like you wouldn’t believe. Everyone but me, that is. Waggish Joc tried to get him (i.e. Beefy) to rip one right then to show the clearly bemused officer what he (Joc) meant, but Beef couldn’t manage it. He wasn’t in the mood, I guess. “Come on, Beefy,” Joc cajoled, “be a good boy and show the lieutenant what you can do!” “I’ve been straight plumb downwind of him, sir,” someone whose voice I didn’t recognize shouted from way far behind me in the ranks, “and I should wager two campaign’s worth of salary that he could take out an entire first wave with just one blast! Just one, I’m telling you, and he could open a hole in their ranks wide as the Appian Way!” “Just give him a plate of Gauls’ mess and he’s good to go!” Marcellus chimed in. “Not funny,” yelped I. “You chaps try being his tent mate for just one night!” I got a few chuckles and maybe five titters before Joc trumped me and got off a really good one: “I’d sooner face a thousand breakfastless Etruscans—and me unshielded!” Everyone roared, nothing but complete cachinnation and fond, broad grins for the royal wit Joculator. Beefy smiling smirkily. Me sort of scowling but trying not to. All this, and you know how I abominate any sort of scatological humor and think it’s positively revolting! Oh, well. Look after yourself. Be well. Eat well. As in please don’t get fat. Last time I campaigned… Well, you know. Let’s not have to go through that again. Hit the gymnasium now, please, darling. Don’t wait. I know how you are. Minute I’m out the door you’ve three thick stalks of sugar cane in your gob; then you start in on the candied almonds, and wash it all down with wine after wine after wine. Gods know I’m keeping fit, in shape. Do your part, as well. Try to be of good cheer during my absence. I think you sport eat because you miss me so much. Bananas, it was, last time—remember? Fruit really packs on the poundage. Try and have some self-control. Eat pig and cow—those are far and away the best substitutes for all those sweetmeats and puddings, cookies, and cakes. Jellied eel: there’s another, better snack for you, Lora. How we Romans love the flesh of that delicious delicacy! Ye gods what I wouldn’t give right now for a platter of the stuff. How yum would that be! Best not to think on’t. Yet trying not to think about it, and all the other foodstuffs you can’t get on campaign, only makes one crave them more and more and more, sooth to say. Ah, irony. Goodbye for now, dear friend. Take care. I miss you, you know, very much. I can’t wait to see you (if you’ve not ballooned, that is). Kidding! You know I have a wicked wicky-wacky sense of humor. If I survive long enough to retire from the Legion I may even try doing a bit of stand-up. Hie me down to the Forum and give it a go. Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not. I’m inclined to think it’s only one of my little velleities, little vanities. I’m sure I’d chicken out, back out, suffer terrible, dreadful, horrible stage fright. Imagine that! Me having stage fright. Isn’t that funny? No qualms meeting an hoard of half-naked, ululating, armed-to-the-teeth Persians but frightened as a rabbit at the prospect of getting up in front of an audience. Quaking in my battle sandals. That’s me all over, though. Quite keen in theory, vacillating at the actual prospect. We all have dreams, I imagine. And whether or not they turn to account, turn into realities, is anybody’s or the gods’s guess, don’t you know. Sigh. Nevertheless, before you know it we’ll be together again, wife. I do so very look forward to that. You can advise me, Lora. I can try out my routine—if I ever get one together—on you and the children. Er, or maybe just you, seeing as some of the material I’m thinking of working up isn’t exactly appropriate for Under-XVIII’s. Tell you what: when I get home, I’m going to “perform” (if you know what I’m saying) for you like you’ve never seen! Until we meet (how sweet!) again, I am

  Your Caius Aquilla

  P.S. Try to get tickets for the Coliseum a couple of months from now for when (if?) I come back. Strangely, having seen so much otiose bloodshed and mayhem, I jones for it whenever I come back. Rotating back to the world (i.e. Rome; an “Army expression” if there ever was one), I’ll miss it, surely—that adrenalin rush, that thrill of swift and sudden violence and slaughter and all of that. It’s like a high that’s hard to come down from, killing and warring. You’d think it’d be quite the opposite—that I would be sick to death, sick at heart, of gore and GBH and stuff—but weirdly enough that’s not the case at all. It’s doubtless a sort of an addiction.

  P.P.S. If the Legion doesn’t make it back in time you can always have one of the servants scalp them, the tickets, that is—not the servants. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom! Rim shot, rim shot, rim shot.

  P.P.P.S. Guess what? Beeflicus just beefed again, lifting brazenly his left leg straight at me like a German salute. A long, staccato then legato blast in E flat, if I’m not mistaken. Tell a lie: F major 7. Now I’m going to scalp him, for the gods’ sake! I can’t take this anymore! He’s laughing. He won’t for long, though. Pah! Stinks to the highest skies in here now. Thanks, Beef! Real sweet. Some chum you are.

  P.P.P.P.S. Oh! The E flat or rather F major 7 comment reminded me: how are your harp lessons going?!

  Editor’s note: Well, guess what? We’ve unearthed the entire correspondence. Tell a lie: we can’t say the entire in case some of the letters have gone missing or were burned or lost in the post or got singed by an angry volcano or eaten by an idiotic yard dog. Nevertheless, if you’ve enjoyed Caius Aquilla’s style and content (as we certainly have; gotta hand it to him—he is pretty funny, witty, charming, etc.), here are quite a few more epistles for your enjoyment, delectation, or amusement, not forgetting wife Lora Caecilia’s return missives:

  XIII Februarius (or sometime thereabouts)

  Drear Freind:

  Beefy’s dead. Poor fool. Poor bastard. I’m drunk. Positativily legless. (Sorry, spelling’s gone out straight the window, even though no widow do we have here but tent flap opening which isn’t.) I’ll try to and sober up a bit. Not easy. So wasted. Plus it’s loud out. Kinda deafning, in fact. Almost the entire regiment’s reeling round the shambled encampments, arm in arm and singing or waving crazy faces in each other’s torches and behaving like slaves on holiday or barbarians any day. Victory is ours! Hail Caesar! Romulus, Rebus, rah, rah, rah! The Seventh till the dreaming Fields of Elysium and all of that rubbish. Well, they can’t be faulted, I reckon, can’t be blamesed for suchlike carry-on: we won a big one today. Six thousand or so of us against maybe seven or eight at the hundred most of raggle-taggle, scattershot them. Just a wipe-out. A pitiful show. Totally one-sided. Over in a flash—they never hit what knew them. Some of these clashes just seem so bloody unfair: what should just be a minor skirmish turns into a major rout. But I reckon Jove’s sent them us (these breezes, these occasional cinchy mop-ups) to make up for all the Pyrrhic ones we had in inexpressibly execrable Africa. Those were no joke. Losses galore. Very heavy. Maybe it’s Mars’s doing, I don’t know. I’m sick of those Pyrrhic ones, nevertheless. At one point today, looking across the glorious red and marigold field of dubious battle, I thought: “I bet you I could actually count the enemy over there.” Their side looked so scrappy, so scrawny, and us of course as per usual cutting a dash like mad in full beautiful scarlet and gold Imperial regalia. And them resembling a bunch of wooly hairy dirty barbarian gibberish-hollering guys out hunting who just happened upon (into?) the teeth of the mighty Seventh Roman Legion! Not the teeth literally. But in the sense of…oh, you know what I mean. So drunk here. Don’t think I’ve have ever been so! Steady, steady. OK. So there we spot them, this morning sometime, I think it was, our newly-polished silver armor clanking fierce and percussive in the morning sun as the mists lifted, the crunch contrasting very with the soft whoosh of our swift sandals going over the wet heather, the threshing of our marching calves brushing scratchy purple thistles. “Oh, shit, oh fuck!” I thought I heard one of them, the enemy, say—an eerie echo echoing over the echoing field—as we flanked them, then wedged up into regulation square formation, then smashed through them in the fla
sh of a knife, don’t you know, like a warm spoon going into a bowl of cooled, quivering golden egg custard. Oh it was smooth, went as smooth, as one’s palm waving like the very air over leafs, or sheaves of bowing wheat as one wends one’s way through a dewy field of it at evening in mellowest amber springtime, under canopies of colored cloud; smooth as one sliding on one’s trusty round arma down a happy grassy knoll or dell or dingle, zipping round like so many orange and purple butterflies in ripefullest spring. The trumpets trumpeted triumphantly, the venerable generals bravely waved and nodded to the proud officers and narrowed in glorious knowingness and acknowledgement their watchful eyes, the officers proudly shouted grimly-smiling/teeth-gritting orders to advance and, in sum, victory was ours, was everyone’s! Yes, yes, yes, yes! Hurrah, hooray, hurrah! Hooray, hey up, hurrah! Huzzah! Everyone’s, victory was! Well, everyone’s but Beefy’s. Poor fellow. Poor guy. His was a sad defeat, a bad end. You know how yesterday I wrote to tell you I was contemplating slitting his throat and everything? For all his brazen you-know-what? Well, now I don’t have to, Pluto be praised. A massive patch of horrid vomit-colored quicksand saved me the trouble. Not that I was going to take it, the trouble, that is. You do know that, right, my love? You know I wasn’t being serious? Wouldn’t hurt him if he asked me to, begged me to. Poor Beefy. Poor beggar. Here’s what happened: Oh, Hail, by the way. Did I say that yet? Hope you’re doing well. And, yes, I miss you still—even more than I did in yesteradays’s posting. OK, though, lisssen up, lisssten here, my darling dear. I really should probably have a wee lie-down before I continue to writing this, really. Now me head’s going off like fireworks on a merry-go-round. Have you ever had a sore head—also known as “a hangover” or as a “katzenjammer” (a Saxon word I learned the other day)—while you were drinking? I have. I have that right now, in fact. It’s no fun at all. Funny thing, though: all these years we’ve been together and I’ve never asked you that. And do I ever know how you like to knock back a drink or two! Gods know I do, too. One of the many reasons I married you: ’cause you’re great to drunk with. Get drink with, I mean. Drunk. Oh my propitious constellations, I’m personally haven’t been this plowed since I honestly don’t know when. Day before yesterday, maybe. Kidding. Kind of. I’m toasted. Completely pissed. We’ve been drinking and carousing all afternoon. All us have, even the grumpy generals in all their pomp and garish-beautiful royal imperial purple cloaks and their splendiferous, beautiful-fitting, minimal armor; even the irascible, overly serious captains and the lieutenants of course and many of the aide or aides de camp or camps, if you can believe that. All drunk as skunks. Wasto. Sauced as all get-out. Discipline’s gone completely the way of Atalantis (sp?). Ever seen a drunken ten-year-old? A post-toddler tippling tipsily? I should hope not. Gone completely wild, a veritable Riot Club, some of these camp boys and young lads. Unreal, rather. Absolutely appalling. I call that not funny. Lots of chaps, however, laugh like mad when a too-tipsy tyke of a camp boy goes running, making a beeline for the tree line, hugging his tummy with one hand, covering his gob with the other, rushing bushward to horf his paltry little guts out. Me, I don’t at all find that funny. I say! People do have different ideas. Imagine our dear little Aurelian pickled on rank plonk and heaving a pony-sized cutlass around irresponsibly, like it was nothing, like he’d never received an ounce of training?! The thought of the very of it. Shameful. Imagine how all the whoops and assorted sounds of wassailing and victorious merrymaking sounded to the poor unfortunates in the surgeons’ tents (the wounded, in other words)! Guy’s had his ear pierced and scorched to absolute bits by an errant flaming arrow or his godsdamned sword hand lopped off in the heat of it, the thick of it; he’s sitting there agog and incredulous, looking with absolute horror and dismay at an awful hole in his horrid red and oozy thigh the size of plump-ripe plum or tree-sweet apricot or young-green coconut; or the surgeon’s just told him he’s sorry to say but there’s just no other way, he’ll have to lose the leg, hacking it off’s the only option—and said poor fellow has to hear the jubilant strains of the other lads gleefully gargling Chablis, rose, or a nice table wine and clapping one another on the hearty, good-show-old-chap back and all that rot? Jumping up and down and pounding their perfectly chiseled chests like apes or drunken Visigoths, Ostrogoths, or Lithuanians? I can’t believe the callous attitudes that swirl round here, don’t you know. Bloody tragic, truly. Walking back toward the mess wagons in search of a snack to settle my stomach I came across two guys effing flogging, if you can believe that. They were just standing there with their willies out, waving them round in the breeze, going at it—flog, flog, flog, fap, fap, fap—right by where the horses are tied up. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that unconscionable? How slack. How very. Full on decline of the Roman Empire or what? “Oi!” I says. “You lot! What in the name of Venus do you think you’re doing?” They just laughed at kept at it. “Ah, gods, you guys—are you kidding me? Well done! Well done! Nice one!” I says as I trot by, averting my eyes, or trying to, at least. “NO FAT CHICKS!” one of them yelped, cracked, right at me. What the Hades was that supposed to mean, I wondered? “What the Hades does that mean?” I said. But they just kept on laughing, threw their silly heads back, and carried on wanking as a murder of crows cackled in the trees like some sort of musical accompaniment to their onanistic shenanigans (“shenanigans”: Celtic word I heard someone who’d been to Londinium on campaign use, meaning “no-goodness or something like that; trickery; tomfoolhardiness and such”). I reckon campaigning’s all just one big plethoric joke to some of these fellows. A circle jerk of two? Seriously, lads? Disgusting. I mean, two’s not even a circle. It’s, like, a dialectic or a polar opposite or a see-saw or something. It was all I could do to stagger past this grotesque burlesque. Unbelievable. Sad. Hardly befitting our ethics, the complete Roman motif. Though I suppose one might let them (i.e. the in-tandem masturbators) off the hook a wee little bit, what with all the unalloyed inebriation going round, withal: I mean, every time one’s tankard got to even near the halfway mark some blasted peg-or-barrel-carrying roisterer with a makeshift laurel on his head (made of a cropped robin’s or bluebird’s nest or something) came crazy-legging by and splashed more and more into it and ran off guffawing. If you put your hand over the dancing mouth of it, the brim, as if to say “Cease, roisterer! No more! Away, I say!” the wine stewards and random gregarious fellows just went ahead and flung it in anyway, promiscuously, liberally, right over one of your mitts, slopping the old grape about like so many ancient charwomen tossing pots of bilge water on grimy, unscrubbed flagstones. Never once, never once in my puff have I born witness to such Bacchus-like revelry and whatnot. There was no escape from it, really. Join in or risk ostracism, ’twas. So by the end of the day, I was sticky as fresh tree gum, vine-varnished all over. You could lick just half of me and probably get drunk or at least quasi tipsy. Absurd. I don’t know what gets into them sometimes, the fellows. Sometimes, truly I wonder if we’re not just a gang of, a myriad of, hooligans, n’er-do-wells, and bloody common thieving rowdies ruled by pompous potentates (the generals, that is; humorless as Jews or scowling Phonecians). To which you may now add (us, i.e.) drunkards, wastrels, philistines, and well-dressed/in-shape vagabonds. How nice, eh? How very very nice. To crown all, you wouldn’t hardly recognize me right now, I don’t think, dear dear friend, if you saw me, which you won’t, on account of I am miles and miles from Rome and home. I mean, I didn’t recognize me at all just now. After I nibbled on a wee bit of a crust of bread and a fruit or two I went to throw a splash of water on me face to try and sober up a bit so I could write to you. As I’m looking into the basin or whatd’yecallit trough or standing bath I’m sort of screwing up my eyes (they must be red by now as a smith’s face or as Rhenish wine and sore as vinegar), I go “Who is that chap? I know that bastard. I’ve seen his fat face somewhere before; I know I have.” And turns out it was me… Me, me, me. Quite the shock. More later…. Must sleep… All right. Hey. Hail again. Hello, there. Took
break. Back now. Hail/hello. Slept it off. Woke up a tad refreshed and it’s only six of the clock, six thirty. Egads! Been quite dark since four, maybe four thirty. Oh, the banality. Of war, of everything. The boring boredom. Dreadful place, wherever on earth we are. Brittany, someone said it’s called. What a strange name. Have the kids show you it on a map. If it’s even there. I’ve never heard of it. Never know where I am, hardly. Someone said Champaign-sur-le-Lac-sur-le-Foret-d’Odette-du-Plessey or summat like that and I just thought the bloke’d sneezed a prodigious sneeze of some sort, like a stage sneeze or sumfink, like he was choking on some soup. The sounds you hear, so odd, so catch-as-catch-can, from these various alien peoples! So many of them, their vile languages, recall someone yakking profusely into a reverberant vomitorium, or a deaf mute being strangled with a belt, rope, or precious necklace. And what is up with these silly effing foreign names? I never bother. Paying attention, that is. Trying them out in your mouth, they only end up hurting your tongue somehow. Learning them—please! Give me a break! And what’s the difference, anyway? There’s never any time for language-learning on campaign as we incontrovertibly are hump-hump-humping away on a daily basis. March here, camp there, break your fast in the morning, fall in formation, pass muster, fight-fight-fight, lunch break, skirmish (maybe), play a bit of Smear the Queer or a little football (yuck!), take tiffin (salt and bread, plonk, and an apple that looks like your great aunt after she’s fallen asleep in the bath), go on plunder detail, sort through the pillage detail, collect the wounded detail, do a bit of lightsome torturing of any captured enemy, sponge bathe, clean up, tea time, meetings-meetings-meetings, light drills and inspection, second wash off, dinner time/mess hall in an open field, wash-up, campfire or do what some like I do: practice music and write these little merry-melancholy letters home to the loved ones. Oh! Speaking of music… Well, a kind of music… The lads—in jest—made up a song about me. Let me see if I can remember how it goes. It was very sing-songy, and you can just picture them roaring over it, thinking it such a larf. They sang it, nay, roared it, in galloping III/IV time, mind, as I loped by just a little while ago, hurriedly, toward the steaming latrines: Caius Aquilla—looks like a gorilla/ye gads don’t he smell like one, too/Let’s put him in a cage/although he will rage/until we can get him to the zoo! The rest of it went something like “Caius Aquilla, a something something killa, he slays them by the dozen or two, he dit dit doot do, and doo doo doo doo doo, still smells like a primate, too.” Or something like that. It’s a pretty catchy little ditty—I’ll give it that. I found myself humming it all afternoon and smilingly. Ah, music, sweet music! How it transports one/me. Music of any sort does—even a vulgar camp song, and one that makes fun of one. Quite curious, that. How I miss making music with you, Lora. Speaking of places, landmarks and vistas, runes and stuff—there’s never time for any sightseeing/seeing the sights. Never. None at all. As we’re the elite we go in last, you know—so on the road in to base camp there’s invariably been an advance force there burning and pillaging, pillaging and burning, living it up, with occasional obligatory crucifixions and rapes, authorized or unauthorized as the case may be. Some sights, those; real sweet. “Join the Army of Imperial Rome and See the World,” the new recruitment motto goes. You’ve no doubt noted the mosaic posters round town of a centurion pointing straight at you with his sword, holding up the dripping, severed bearded head of a ghastly, crazy-looking “barbar” in his other hand. The join part is spot on, but the see the world? Yeah, sure; yeah, right. The only sights I ever see, it seems, are of the fat or not-fat butt of the chump humping in front of me in an insanity of sun on one of our interminable marches or in an attack-square; and the aftermath of blurry and blood-spattered battlefields, through visored metal and stinging sweat, in as I said sick-making, dizzying heat after hours upon hours of torturing boredom. Some sights! Some world! Our sailors, the navy, they tell tall tales of sirens and gorgons and Medusas and furious giants lobbing rocks from lofty and mythopoeic precipices, gargantuan insatiate sea monsters and armies of almond-eyed, smoky-eyed island girls of lissome dark beauty bearing frankincense and myrrh and steaming plates of smoked oysters and mussels and crab and lobster and scallops, plus flagons of winking-cool wine and sweet lime and lemon barley water. But we landlubber legionaries never see such dishes, have such quintessences of things to drink, nor get to gaze on such strange and/or wondrous sights. Galling, is what it is. That and no more. It’s the same old same old for us grunting ones on the ground—“ground troops,” I reckon you could call us. Curious phrase, that. And indeed some of us do end up on the ground, literally (dead, I mean, perish the thought and touch wood and all of that.) And ground up, as in shredded wounded. Aye, that happens, you can’t deny it. And speaking again of sights, I meself must be such an one, a right spectacle: for my helmet keeps slipping down on account of all the sweat I sweat in the ferocious frays. See what you make of this, in fact: I keep asking the bloody fussy effing silly tight-assed and pilular quartermaster—begging him, actually, almost every day I do—to have a heart and stuff and “req” me a newer tighter spiffier helmet but they only send me over to the undersmiths, who point me back to the poxy Q’master, who gives me a chit for the smiths, who expostulate with me and fake like they’re about to brand me with their red-hot tongs and irons, then shoo me straight back to you-know-who… I call that a real runaround. “Oi, Caius—ever tried wearing a cloth of some sort over your head to likesay steady your cover, make it fit good and tight and proper? Like that rag you said you put over your hooter at night?” one of the callous blacksmiths, taking the major piss, razzed the other day. How’d he know I do/did that? I wonder. The quartermaster just laughed and laughed when he heard that one. He’s this very tall, very not dark, and quite desperately handsome guy Brutus—guy who I thought was my friend and ally and buddy. Some chum, him. Some pal. He’s a ginger, so I reckon he gets made fun of quite a lot himself. Ragged on royally. Ginger’s not quite the word for it, though—actually, he’s orange. You’ve never seen anyone more orange. His hair’s orange, his skin, even his freckles have an orange-ish hue. I’m tempted to say his eyes are even so but I wouldn’t swear it. At six foot four or five he’s kind of a gentle giant, and so good at quartermastering, so good with his hands—they’re appropriately large and remarkably exquisite—that he’s never seen combat, ever ever. They don’t want to risk him getting hurt or killed or maimed on account of maintaining the armory is so important and they (whoever “they” are) are convinced he’s the best that’s ever lived at making and keeping sharp our swords and spears and battle axes and all that muck. That popular opinion and consensus has given him a bit of a chip on his orange shoulder, I daresay. Still, the crack about the rag, and Beefy and stuff—well, he couldn’t have expected me to brook that without a retort or riposte, a way of getting back at him for laughing and keenly at my being made fun of by one of his understaff. ’Twas one of my better zingers, actually. I says to him I says: “Should you ever find yourself by mistake and after all this time in one of the frays [note my irony here], Brutus m’boy, I reckon the barbarians you’d be having a go at would freak out and run away before you even got to them on account of, looking at you, they’d think they were being attacked by a tangerine! Ha!” I really cracked me up on that one, dear. “Very funny,” Brutus said. “Ho, ho, ho.” Some people—they just can’t take a joke. Not if you hand it to them on a platter, on a silver salver. Boom-chicka-bam-bam. Rim shot! Rim shot! Flatulent sound. I can take a joke, all right. I can. I’ve had to. Boy, have I ever. I’ve even been considered one on more than one unmerry occasion. Can you credit it? Me, one of the I daresay bravest of the brave. In a fray, you know. Oh well, nevertheless, my poor helmet. Poor old thing. Rather emblematic of the man who wears it, innit. Sports it. You couldn’t brush a senator’s pate with what’s left of the sorry, tatty, catawampus plume. Get it? Most senators being baldies and all! Ha! It’s seen so much combat, my jolly old lid, that the darn plume’s about the width of a s
mall boy’s toothbrush. Helmet makes the man, the old saw goes. Mine’s a sorry wreck and no joke. Of course, the “plume” I make reference to here is purely imaginary, totally fictitious, all just part of my comedy stich: us or we grunts’s helmets aren’t in the slightest adorned with those dandy red or brown brushes, more’s the pity; those are for officers only, damn them for a bunch of attractive dandies, what with their insignias and broaches and fine capes of robust purple and gold clasps and many silver rings a-finger, plus all the superb eagle motifs they bedeck and bedizen themselves with. You’d think, being around them, you were in a metal aviary! Their better-made sandals, their meticulous/better haircuts and clean shirtsleeves! Oh, darling. Oh, loved one. Oh my precious wondrous lovely plump but not quite zaftig beloved. I miss you so. I love you so. So very so. I am so woe…begone right now! My dulled red heart yearns with all its blood for your presence in my absence; my strained loins cry out for the light touch of your fine, soft, fat hands. My meagre and poor prose stretches itself thin in quest of a new metaphor or simile for my yen for you. My soul—if such there be—screams “Lora, Lora, Lora, etc.” Nearly my every thought is of you. You, you, you. When I’m not thinking about lunch or my helmet. Where was I? Oh, yeah—Beefy. Oh, would you mind, if you wouldn’t mind, highlighting with a lick or tick of cadmium yellow or at least underscoring some of the quippier stuff and the one-liners in my letters? And checking for anachronisms? Not sure, but I wonder if I mightn’t cull some material from some of these epistles for use in my…what I was telling you about in terms of my ambitions—my perhaps ambitions, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, poke, poke, Bronx cheer, raspberry—when I come home. Thanks in advance. Here’s one, in fact, that I thought up the other day—see if you think this one’s up there with some of my better jibes, jests, and all-round jokes: “An actress walks up to the director of the play she’s in and says: ‘Well, as an artist I…’” What do you think?! That one just came to me today as we were double-timing it toward the battlefield. Isn’t it odd how the creative process works? You can just be trotting off to slay some infies, or standing in the queue for mess, or innocently farming your nose in your tent when no one’s looking, and suddenly—boom!—a great joke or idea descends on you like the sword of Damocles! I hope you like it. I do. I keep trying out new ways of saying it, the delivery and that. I love it. Cracks me up to no end. Have told it to a few of the guys but—I dunno—they’re not exactly the most sophisticated crowd. Not surprised such a zinger came to me whilst ambulating. Nothing like a good hike for inspiration and all of that rubbish. It’s said that good old hoary Socrates thunk up a lot of the profound stuff he thunk up whilst on his walks (i.e. constitutionals) around the Parthinaan (sp?), which indubitably eventuated in his entelechy. Remind me, do, to take a few good, swift Socratic strolls when I come home, won’t you? Some bracing jaunts on shank’s pony, take a few turns around the streets of our superbly walled and not exactly neighborly neighborhood. I don’t need much reminding here on campaign on account of we do so much hiking, marching, running, trekking, what-have-you while we’re working, you see. But at home I know I am wont to neglect to exercise and just lounge around all day reading such trash as crosses my writing desk and as tickles my fancy and sucking down stalk upon stalk of sugar cane, glugging fine wine with you, and playing with the kids and feasting like a starveling, plus of course (as is only meet and right to do) waiting for you to be in the right mood to let me have you, fairly ravish you. Ravishing you—oh is that not just a nice and torturing thought, Lora, Lora, Lora. Having just the one portrait of you (I keep it with me always, dear; right inside my breastplate), I have to strain hard sometimes to picture your gorgeous Loraface. Catullus the artist’s drawing isn’t a great likeness, I don’t think. I don’t think it does your considerable beauty justice. I flicked it out a few weeks ago as the lads were passing round pics of their sweethearts and, handling yours, garrulous Joculator goes “Oi, who’s this cove, mate? He looks like a chimp or—whatyoucallit—orangutan!” Thanks a lot, Joc. Nice one. Real nice. He got (again!) just a load of laughs outta that one. See what I mean about them (the lads, that is) not exactly appreciating the finer points of subtle humor? Last time I ever show anybody your portrait, Lor. ’Twill be a secret, between my breast and me (it’s in a locket, you know). Oh! If only I could see you right now, hold you, kiss you, touch you, palpate your fine skin, your bum and haunches, tummy, thighs, etc. But just to look at you, dear friend: content I’d be. The sight of you (who decidedly do not look like a chimp or orangutan, okay?) would be the most welcome thing in all gods’s creation. Just spectacular. Come to think of it, speaking of seeing things and stuff, we do sometimes see something worth seeing out here amidst all the phantasmagoria of war and all. About a mile out, e.g., from base camp just t’other day there was this vast, nice field of beautiful bluebells—just miles and miles or at least a hundred yards of them—nodding next to acres of canting reeds amidst plosive heather and a smattering of cornflowers glittering in the sun. Absolutely utterly simply breathtaking, it was—and then even more so as, all of a sudden, hundreds of lovely butterflies emerged from nowhere, then merried in the pollen-filled air. A bit farther (further?) on we come upon great patches of celandine and eglantine and cyclamen, daisies and chrysanthemums, then thistles galore, exploding with tart, splendiferous, purplish, splashy color near some soughing wheat fields, that sighed surreally, like they were some strange, living thing, eerie and queer with quiet and ominous portentousness—yet absolutely rivetingly pretty, arresting somehow, like something you see and just wonder at the world, its wonderfulness and majestic charm. A bit on from there, there were low snowy mountains in the blue-blue distance, and tall, incredible curds-and-whey clouds in a painted sky unlike I’ve ever seen. A congeries of chestnut trees, cherry trees, almond trees near green streams. Marching as the crow flies we made for some gently rolling meadows crisscrossed with more brilliant-tiered rivulets of diaphanous green, hyacinths abounding, water lilies, orchids, sunflowers, bluebells, yellow/red/white roses, lilac, sweet William, Johnny-jump-ups, birds-of-paradise, nasturtiums, and lilies of the valley. Then onto dirt-pink silt-soft parallel thoroughfares, dotted with innumerable buttercups, daisies, and peonies on either side. Astonishing. Ah. Wondrous. Nature. Stupendously splendiferous. Quiet shadows with splashes of splotchy sunshine. Marvelous sights. Calming, beatific. The very thing. Lovely. Okay, so: the Beefy thing. Here’s the deal. Okay. Might as well come right out with it—tell it to you straight, my dear. What happened was… Oh, this is hard, so hard. I’m a bit choked up here; hard indeed it is to keep a stiff upper lip and all of that. I can hardly believe he’s gone. Can’t believe he’s dead, godsdammit. I’ll try and buck up, I’ll do my level best; I’m all but gutted here and no mistake. All told, he was my mate and tent mate, and we saw a goodly amount of action together, gods rest his gaseous soul. Okay. So we go patrolling after today’s big show—strictly routine, utterly quotidian, nothing to get your knickers in a twist about, nothing we haven’t done an hundred and seven times before, even though it’s what we call being “in the shit.” On account of anything can happen, retaliation-wise. It’s a mop-up sort of sortie down these long lush green glens beside a marsh behind some woods near a town on a lake abutting a rivulet past some waterfalls next to a mountainside. I say a lake but it’s a big pond, really. A lakelet at best. A g.d. swamp if you were in no mood to be generous or conciliatory, geographically speaking. After the massacre (when the archers are “on,” boy is our job a lot easier; the hardest thing we have to do is keep from being singed by one of the cloaks of a still-burning enemy, or mowed down by one of our own cavalry, the huzzah-crying horsemen) I say, we split up into patrols and went through the strangely quiet villes and silly little hamlets to check and see if there were any cowering cowards hanging about, hiding down wells or in hovels or in hutches or in attics or atop some of the larger oaks and pine trees and that, under patchy hatches covered by crude rugs and stuff in stinky old huts; trying to disguise
themselves as ugly old beldams in tatty cloaks or whatnot. There you are, moving out along, say, a trail where there’s a sharp shelf of pale brown or pink rock, and out pops two or three of them, just like—snap!—that, flinging great rocks at you or a chucking a spear that wobbles right toward then past (or maybe not past) your godsforsaken breastplate. They can be so sly, sometimes, these people. So devious and resilient. You really gotta watch it. Keep an eye out always. They’re animals, basically. That’s really all they are: not-human creatures. Very crafty, and quite often replete with malice aforethought and ruthlessness. You’ve got to watch out for them as you would a nasty snake or rabid-mad child or infuriated drunken woman who’s just found out that you’ve been untrue to her with multiple partners, some of whom she’s acquainted with or related to. The enemy! You don’t know what they’re going to do, what to expect. Beneath their sometimes smiling eyes—such malicious intent. And these overt aggressions—it goes without saying—will not stand. We’re fighting for freedom here. And glory, of course. That’s what we’re told, anyway. The freedom and the glory of the peoples we are quote-unquote teaching to love Rome, adapt or adopt Roman ways, Roman values, Roman…other stuff we stand for. So that they can be free to be our servants, to bow down to us, their ineluctable masters, and to Rome itself. Which only makes sense. Do you see the logic? I must admit it’s hard for me to work it out; it’s a paradox. Yes, that’s it. A paradox. We enslave the ones we don’t kill so that they can have the privilege of living/loving Rome. It’s wonderful. And rather self-explanatory, in a paradoxical way, I suppose. Interesting, though. Very. Looked at like that, as a statement of our “mission” in going on these “missions,” you really see the beauty and selflessness of the conquering “enterprise,” the manner in which it reveals our benevolent intentions toward these valueless pagans and barbarians. They’ll have the chance—well, they’ll be forced, actually—to worship our gods (the right gods, naturally) and adopt or adapt to our customs and mores. That’s pretty righteous, I think. What do I know, though? What I know. That’s all. I’m just doing my duty, serving my city-state, keeping the faith, fighting the good fight, keeping my pecker up, making sure morale doesn’t flag, that my brothers-in-arms are making sure the body count’s on the upswing so that the stats look good, work out, keep us out of the brig or the clink or what-have-you. Semper fi. One for all and all for Rome. So anyway, came we upon a long house sort of job/thing, plain and made of twigs and branches and thatched with straw. Cut grass in bunches, clusters—tussocks is what you call them, methinks—outside it, and piles of stacked pink rocks and slats of schist and yellowish brown bricks, and scaffolds of hewed logs braced against the blackened building, a little citadel or rather an abode. An abode I shouldn’t like to abide in! (Zing!) One with a strange stone square or perhaps rectangle atop it, out of which black smoke pigtailed, then puffed, then streamed; then, weirdly, snowflakes of ash snowed down, then dancing fountains of blue, yellow, white, and bright pink sparks shot up. Which made one think this, thusly: “Hmm. Why is there a fire (what else could it be?) inside a house, an ostensible domicile? Where else might smoke come from but fire? Ipso facto. Q.E.D. Where there is smoke, there’s fire. Someone said that, I believe. Who? I? Who knows? Logically, one wonders if there are people inside such an edifice—while it has a fire inside it? How could that be? And what sort of people? If on fire, the people inside, what needs must we have to do with them—surely fire will take care of them, lick them up, burn them, make quick work of them and spare us the work of slaying? But why, if people on fire, people not screaming in agony from being burnt alive by fire? All very odd. Another conundrum. If not on fire, then, perhaps they are fugitives. Fugitives plural. Warming themselves, also plural, somehow. While we, their conquerors, are here in the outside and quite frankly quite bitter cold, teeth-chatteringly so, blue of face and hand, freezing our balls off, the testicles, testes, that is, one’s nards, the family jewels, sausage-and-eggs and what-you-will.” [Editor’s note: Caius’ confusion here can be attributed to the fact that fireplaces, hearths, etc. were unknown in Rome at the time; domiciles were warmed and lit by torches, either mounted or, in the best houses, held by slaves; a fire in the house was an unthinkable thing to your average Roman.] I had a think about it. Thought I: “Hmmmm. What do here? What ought we do? Could be armed, they. Armed and dangerous, plus hungry and angry and toasty warm. Armed-hungry-angry-toasty warm combination not good. Esp. if armed to teeth. Esp. if teeth fanglike and chompy. Vicious. Bared. Even if nodose and sparse, said tooths. Have myself a big, big fear of being bitten, biters, people who use their teeth to their advantage and to your consequent disadvantage. As you know, as child I was bitten by a dog. And a snake. And a barracuda. And another dog. And a hyena. And a rat. And another snake. And a sea lion. And a horse (hence fear of all things equestrian). And a kangaroo. And a monkey. And a chimpanzee. And one of my childhood playfellows. And another one. And my own brother (a biter). And a Gila monster. And a parrot. And a…can’t think now, but there was one more. It’ll probably come to me in the middle of the night, it will, and the point is, well, I’ve been bitten quite a bit. Hahaha! Get it? Bitten…bit! Hahaha. Believe me, Lora, I have seen some very strange things, some very strange creatures, campaigning, in my day—some very odd birds. Plus customs. Real weird ones, many of them have. All right.” So: “Not be hasty, let’s,” I says to myself as I think and think about how to deal with this situation of the maybe people in smoking building. “All right then,” I says at last—decisive, authoritative, not mincing words like usual, but commanding, manly, captainish. Then I tells meself to take breath. Deep breath. Think. Make plan. Have plan. Plan involving Beefy, say. Send him in. If risk involved, have him take it. Serve him right. Get him back for all his rancid, brazen, decidedly smug beefing. Get him back and grandly. Make decision. Take action. Action involving Beefy qua platoon risk-taker designated. After having a think about it, squad leader moi (a.k.a. “The Decider”) goes: “Here’s the deal. Beef—you got one in you? A great big big one?” “Huh?” says he. “You know,” I says. “Oh,” he goes, shrugs, “I mean, I guess I could. I mean, sure.” “Right,” I says and points the way. “Marcellus, you listening to me, yeah? Listen here now: you go on and creep up to that thatched door—see that door, the thatched one?” Marcellus does. Nods. “Good,” I says. “You creep up that thatched door, Beefy’s right behind you, right?” Marcellus smirking, liking plan. “Right,” Marcellus said. “You with me?” I says. “Right,” say both. “All right, then. You creep up both—then, Marcellus, you poke it open—the door, that is—with a short, sharp kick, then Beef jumps forth, turns round, and quote-unquote fumigates the place with a blast from his ass. Got it?” “Um-hmm,” both um-hmm. “Beefy beefs them out,” Marcellus says. “Quite right,” I says. Whispering, I continue: “Fuckers [again, pardon my language but war is Hades—we all know that]—if there are any in there, and I think there might well be some—will scramble and scurry toute de suite right the heck out of there once they get a whiff of old ‘Below Aeolus’ or whatever here. Then, as they’re coughing and holding their hooters from the stench, we go in and slay them lickety-split, like. All right? And then, mind—well, just think of the story we’ll have to tell Lt. Optio. Now: the plan I just told you—got it?” “Right,” Beefy says. “Right,” Marcellus says. “Right-right?” I says. “Right-right,” they both say. “Good,” I says. “Good-good,” Beefy says. “Grand,” I says. “Take some deep breaths, all right, Beef?” says I and I kinda puffs me chest out and waves me hands out like I’m splashing my face with water to illustrate regulated breathing—in, out, in, out, just so, like that. “Get some extra wind in ye. Got it?” “Fine,” he says. “You sure?” “Fine. Grand,” he says. “Let’s do this!” I says. “Let’s do this!” he says. “No, no, no,” I says: “It’s ‘Let’s do this!’ You put the emphasis, the stress on the…” “Oh,” Beefy goes. “Right. ‘Let’s do this!”’ he goes and just stands there. “Forget it,” I says. Bea
t. Beat. More beats, with neither of them two knuckleheaded chuckleheads moving, getting going, getting a move on, creeping, etc. “Uh,” I says and sighs and profoundly meaningfully, “ain’t you forgetting somefink?” “Huh?” Beef says. “For Mercury’s sake, start creeping—smartish!” “Oh,” Beefy says. “Us? Now?” “Yes,” says I, between gritted teeth. “Yes, yes, yes,” says I. “Aye-aye. Sorry, sir,” Beef wheezes inaccurately. Away they go, creeping, us crouching, watching—all ten. All was still. Very still. Too still. Then the wind hummed in the oscillating trees, making the leaves sough here, sough there, rustle, flutter, sigh. I don’t know why but suddenly all seemed wrong, ominous. “Be careful!” I said a bit perhaps too volubly, cupping my hands round my mouth like a town crier, as they, the two buffoons, got halfway there, them scrambling slowly, deliberately zigzaggedly. I was a bit concerned for them, I must admit; I began to second-guess my plan. In retrospect, I’m sort of chiding myself for not trying to play the ventriloquist, or at least disguising my voice somehow, donning a Visigoth or South or Central Latvian accent or something. Because, well, let me tell you somefink, Lora: the damned inhabitants in that grassy-assed longhouse must’ve been of the educated ilk of indigenous longhouse inhabitants and spoken fairly good Latin or at least well-understood it on account of they must’ve overheard us (i.e. me) and were ready for us (well, for Beefy), ’cause soon as Marcellus swift-kicked the door open with a big old hypermelodramatic bang! and Beef stuck his big fat bum in to rip them a good one, some squat, smiling, motley-looking tooth-free churl with a hot poker like what you use for a roaring, midwinter courtyard fire dodges round all leprechaun-like and the blighter in a flash gets said hot poker (complete with one of them fleur-de-lis on the end of it, a hook, like; and I mean the thing was white hot and bright orange and sparkling red with diabolically hot heat—it must’ve come straight from lying or laying in the hottest-whitest coals)—the blighter, I say, points it and gets it, that nasty thing, right smack up Beefy’s proffered bumhole, gets it up him good and deep, as he’s bending over to “beef” one, “beef them out,” as instructed. As suggested, I mean. What a cock-up! A recon gone wrong and no mistake. Unbelievable. And godsdammit if good old dear old windy Beeflicus just then didn’t yelp like a thrice-fucked banshee and jump three feet off the ground, then do a hop, skip, and another jump like he was a qualifier for the what-d’ye-call-it event in the Olympics? The triple jump. Heading sort of diagonally off, obviously discombobulated, he was going “Ouch, ouch, oouch, eeuch,” etc. And running holding with both hands his now-smoking bum. “Make for that lake, Beefy boy!’’Marcellus shouted and pointed north, lakeways. “Jump in, cool your arse down!” said he. And then did not he, Beefy, yelp “Oh, good idea,” and take off running like a bloody crazy madman toward the lake or lakelet or pond, excruciatingly bluer than blue as it was in the coolly placid afternoon. Here’s a bit of regrettable ignominy, though: for I must admit we was all of us and verily trying very hard not to laugh (and failing ’cause by gods if it wasn’t the funniest thing I’ve ever seen). Well, though, here’s the sad and bad part: Beef didn’t quite make it to the water, it being quite marshy all round the joint, there was a neighboring bed of quavering quicksand, crapulous green and yellow as anything, with twigs, leaves, fur hats, small bones, childrens’ clothing, etc. floating on it. When we got up close and had a better gander, I was put in mind of the sawdust they use to tidy up vomitoria. A grotesque sight, in other words. Anyway, Beef being occupied running pell mell and yelping and holding that great fat giant arse of his like it were in a sling, he must’ve not noticed it, that fatal quickswamp, must’ve plashed plop splat! right into it, that wet trap of icky death. And the treacherously quicksandy bed, before we could get a rope to him or anything, try and fling him one of our red cloaks tied to another red cloak, became his last resting place, gods rest his obnoxiously flatulent soul. I feel a bit guilty on account of admittedly there was something of a pause between us hearing his piercing, desperate cries for assistance and us taking off dashing-sprinting madly after him. Well, maybe even more than a pause; more like a pause and another one, a very long one. I mean, eff me, but we (I in particular) just could not stop laughing. You ever tried legging it while you’re giggling like crazy? Not easy. Before we all started wheeling after good old poor old unfortunate Beefboy, Marcellus for instance was on his ruddy knees and sort of salaaming, then holding his sides like a Jai-crying Hindu or German or Saxon had spiked or truncheoned or stabbed or arrowed him there, and sending skirling peals of bonkers laughter to the very skies. Lucretius—another of our party—was fairly crying, he was laughing so hard. And Claudius had to breathe into a big fat sack we were using for picking up spoils, he was hyperventilating so bad from mirth, delight. Gods, I wish you could’ve been there, Lor. It really was the funniest thing you’ve ever seen—or it would have been, had you seen it. I did, and it was. I’ll always wonder if Beefy didn’t try to blast his way out or something but the bubbles that bubbled and burbled and gurgled to the surface as we got there could’ve easily just come from his mouth, his last breaths on earth, poor sod. Or under it, in a sort of vibrating bayou, as the case may have been. Poor guy. Poor Beef. I can’t believe that happened. I just can’t believe it. And as I said, I feel terrible about it. He always did like a good larf, he did. Not as much as I do, of course. Does anyone like to yuck it up, laugh it up, and chuck around the old discus of hilarity more than I? I doubt it greatly: I’d like to meet the chap who’s jollier, if he exists. I feel responsible: but you know, I’m not a bloody officer, he didn’t have to obey me; he didn’t have to go. It was no order or command—just an idea, just a wink and a nod. He and Marcellus as well could have said “No, fanx. Not doing that. Not creeping, kicking, beefing, etc.” And he’d probably, gods willing, be alive today, gods rest his smelly soul. Here’s a thought. Here’s a bit of a philosophical quandary or conundrum: how interesting it is, how bizarre in fact, that we let ourselves off the proverbial hook whenever we can. How readily we find/make excuses for our faults and foibles. I’m convinced that humankind cannot bear very much reality, on the whole. I feel so low. How low, you ask or perhaps just wonder? This low: as though I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas. I feel all hollow. As though I am a hollow man. Honestly. That’s how bad I feel. And yet, I’ll live. I’ll go on, washing in the morning and enjoying the sun, killing the enemy and wondering what’s for tiffin, trying to think up original jokes and having a laugh with the chaps, writing to you each night by spluttering candlelight and sleeping and dreaming and snoring and farting. I’ll continue to daydream and to think about myself, my life, what a wonder it is; myself and you and the kids. I’ll make up more little tunes on my lute, and perhaps learn the flute. I’ll look after my loot. Make sure the lock on my spoils chest is stuck on good and proper. I’ll eat and drink and sometimes feast. I say! I’m not going to berate myself forever for this. Over this. I’m not going to feel guilty just because I’m pretty much a thoroughgoing knave here. I will say it again—humankind cannot bear, etc. Who of us can dwell for long on his mistakes? None of us. None. What do you think, Lora? Do you agree? It seems to me (for what it’s worth) that we just can’t take, as it were, the awful things we’ve done, how we’ve failed, come up short, choked, gooned, effed up, let down the side, the team, ourselves. Oh, well. The ridiculous and completely superfluous mission itself was an unalloyed failure anyway: zilch kills and no prisoners on mop-up detail. I had to fabricate (just between you and me, you know—I hope the censors don’t catch this—Hail, censors!) one kill and two mortally wounded escapees. Told them we lopped off one arm and one hand but they were swift of foot and made it to the dark and thickly misty woods and disappeared before we could catch up with them. I mean, mess-ups like this one was is why we have officers and non-coms, not guys (grunts) like me, in charge. I’m no brilliant military strategist, no battle tactitian (sp?) à la the frowning generals and the all-but-invisible higher higher-ups who,
likely enough, went as legacies to some of the top military schools and have campaigning in their respective brassy bloods all the way back to Romulus, no less. On said mop-up ops and fall-back encounters, we just sort of wing it, sans supervision, and…well…you see what sometimes eventuates: guys like Beefy sink in quicksand and die, die, die. As you know, I’m just a regular guy (an amiable guy, wouldn’t you say?) With regular ambitions and regular stools and regular adherences to regular regulations and regular hopes and regular dreams and an irregular helmet and…and an equally singularly irregular sense of humor and a regular mind and a regular yen to write long letters. The kinda guy who just wants to get a few kills now and then and get back to his spectacular, loving, sexy minx of a wife and kids and start a new life, kick back a bit, get his kilt/kit off, put down his blunted sword and snapped-in-half lance and seek out/find a new career in original comedic onstage entertainment. I ask you: is that too much to ask? Too much to expect of a long (or short, depending) life. What a joke it all seems. But this—today—was the wrong kind of joke. Nobody’s laughing now. Nobody’s amused or even grinning. As I mentioned, ’twas a mess and shambles, though not all my fault, as I’ve tried to show—we were all of us foxed, not just me alone. To crown all, the crafty, diabolical longhouse denizens must’ve seized the op to make a dash for it while we all stood round the quicksand (or mud) with our thumbs up our bums or fingers in our gobs, horrified and out of breath: for when we went back to the domicile and just barged in with swords out, intending vengeance of the most severe kind and meaning to punish them in the penetralia “with extreme prejudice,” as they say, and there was nobody there, no toothless poker fellow, nobody. Not a soul. Vanished, they was (had?). Sprites of some sort might they have been, Lora. Strange. Now Beefy’s dead and gone to the happy hallowed Fields of E, I wonder who will be my new kipfellow? How was your day, by the way? What a story, eh? What a tale. And all of it mostly true. Looking forward to hearing from you, and as always I remain