Previously, I briefly mentioned that one of my roommates in the barracks at Fort Benning was a cook in the mess hall. He cooked the deer meat I brought home as a result of ‘roadside hunting’ with a deuce and a half with bad brakes. However, deer meat wasn’t his specialty. Not by a long shot. It was chili. He made a wicked hot spicy chili from a recipe he said was passed down from his great grandmother. That stuff was delicious. Super-hot and spicy, but delicious. His name was Felix Garcia, and he wasn’t my roommate for very long because he was arrested by the military police for allegedly pulling a knife on our commander. I say ‘allegedly’ because no knife was ever recovered. No knife, no crime, right? Not according to the Army. Then, he ‘allegedly’ committed suicide in the Fort Benning Central Confinement Facility (CCF). Shortly after his death, a soldier from our unit that I never even knew existed was magically released from the CCF. His name was Albert Koenig. Old-timer soldiers in the unit said ‘Uncle Albert’ as they called him, had been pending a court martial and chapter 10 from the Army for dereliction of duty, AWOL, domestic abuse, and a few other charges. The other thing they said about Uncle Albert was that he was literally insane. When I first met Uncle Albert and spoke with him, my impression was that he was normal and lucid. Just another average joe. Then he saw PFC Barker with another soldier (Di Anzo) and said, “Hey, Barker, do you still have my dog?” PFC Barker quickly responded, “Oh hell yeah, Uncle Albert. I got him locked up right down there in that storage shed yonder.” And Barker pointed at an old storage bunker off in the weeds in an empty lot behind the parking lot. Then Barker said, “In fact, I just fed your piranha dog fresh steak to calm it down because it was trying to tear down the walls of that storage shed last night.” “Can we go down there now? I want to see him,” Uncle Albert replied. “Just a minute, I have to go inside first and talk with the platoon sergeant, okay?” “Sure. I’ll wait.” PFC Barker grabbed me and Di Anzo and said, “Come inside right after I go in.” Di Anzo and I didn’t have a clue what in the hell was going on, but I was pretty damn sure there was no damn dog down in that old storage bunker. I had gone past it several times when taking the short-cut through the woods to get to the cleaners over by the armor battalion area. And I was pretty sure that old bunker didn’t have a door on it or at least a door that closed. When we got inside, Barker pulled us aside and said, “Look, I’m going to stall Koenig and feed him some bullshit about how we gotta go get some more dog food for his damn piranha dog. Meanwhile, you guys go down to that old bunker with your flashlights and find something to barricade what used to be the door. Make sure you hide inside.” “Why do we have to hide inside that damn bunker? And, what in the hell is a piranha dog?” I asked. “There is no such thing as a piranha dog, you dumb ass. A piranha is a fish. Koenig thinks he has this vicious, invisible piranha dog cuz he’s as crazy as a looney bird. That boy is out there. And when I say he’s out there, you know the lights are on but nobody is home. So, you are going to be the damn dog. When we get there and start yelling for the dog, you guys need to start making lots of noise inside that bunker to make him believe his bullshit dog is in there.” “What? Are you for real? What kind of horse shit is that?” Di Anzo said, “that’s just wrong. That boy needs some serious help. Why are you encouraging this bullshit?” Barker replied, “Look, that boy went AWOL and beat his wife’s ass so bad he almost killed her, because he thought she wasn’t feeding his damn dog.” “How the hell was that?” I said. “Well, he bought all these cans of dog food, but they weren’t disappearing out of the cupboard. So, he thought she wasn’t feeding his dog. To him, the dog is real, and he thought she was deliberately starving it. When the military police asked her why she wasn’t feeding his dog she said, “There was no damn dog.” “Because there is, in fact, no damn dog. But who’s going to tell good old Uncle Albert that? That right there is the problem. So, you are going to hide your asses in that damn bunker and make some damn noise and make good old Uncle Albert believe his beloved bullshit piranha dog is safe and sound inside that damn bunker. Do you get that?” Barker demanded. I said, “Sure, okay. I got it.” “Me too,” Di Anzo replied. And that is how a figment of crazy man’s imagination gave rise to another exercise in futility.
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