Addictive Memories
Joseph Wayment was born and raised in Twin Falls, Idaho. He is an English major with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition. Along with being a student, he is a dedicated father, husband, and full-time employee at Glanbia Foods. Like most Idahoans, Joseph loves taking-in all that Idaho’s great outdoors has to offer, whether hunting, fishing, mountain-bike riding or bird watching. He also enjoys reading and writing, and he is a chess fanatic.
Joseph chose Rhetoric and Composition as his emphasis because he wants to take an interdisciplinary approach to his studies. He’s fascinated by science, ecocriticism, nature writing, and the role that literature plays in the shaping of society’s land ethic.
Academically, Joseph hopes to achieve a Ph.D. in English, and to one day teach science/nature writing and/or literature at the college level. But he says his real rock-star dream is to just write full-time for a publication like Scientific American or National Geographic. He also does freelance journalism while he works toward his writing goals, and he’s always on the lookout for new writing opportunities.
Addictive Memories
I’ve used smokeless tobacco, on and off, since I was eighteen years old. At eighteen, I never really tried to put into concrete terms my reason for picking up the habit, but in retrospect I think there were two simple reasons – I thought it made me look tough, and it was a legal way to catch a buzz. However, when I joined the Army two weeks after high school graduation, my reasons for maintaining the habit multiplied. For one, during infantry training it seemed like every soldier chewed tobacco – almost like chewing tobacco was a pre-requisite for being an infantryman. So, all of my friends chewed, my instructors chewed, and I just kept on chewing. Two, the habit was like a bonding mechanism for my Army buddies and me. No matter what we were doing, sharing a can of Copenhagen was like a symbol of acceptance and friendship. If we were freezing cold and soaking wet in the middle of the woods while conducting combat training, we could huddle in a shivering circle and pass a can around, and feel warmer. If we were waiting to board a C-130 before a night jump while conducting airborne operations, shaking in our boots because we were nervous, a quick pinch of Copenhagen would calm our nerves. If we were packed three to a seat in a buddy’s Ford pickup, on our way to Florida’s beaches on leave, a can of chew made the ride more comfortable. Simply put, smokeless tobacco is tied to my memories of life in the Army, and those experiences have shaped me in ways I’ve yet to fully comprehend. That connection is a major reason that I stop dead in my tracks near the tobacco aisle at the grocery store, time after time.
***
It’s February, 2005, and I’m bouncing around the steel turret of an M1114 up-armored Humvee like a dashboard ornament as the vehicle barrels down the Abu Ghraib Expressway on the western edge of Baghdad. Mine is the trail Humvee in a four-vehicle convoy, and we’re smashing through traffic like a derailed freight-train as we speed toward Abu Ghraib’s insurgent-infested marketplace, dead set on tracking down enemy fighters who had sent mortar shells into American positions just fifteen minutes earlier.
As we close in on the crowded entrance to the market area, an oxidized tangle of beat-up Toyotas, Kias, and Ford Ranger-type pickup trucks forces our convoy to a near stop. Over the radio I hear the impatient voice of our platoon leader, Lieutenant Ericson, as he yells at the lead Humvee.
“Alpha-one, don’t stop! Push ‘em out of the way, goddammit!” Tires spit sand and gravel as the lead truck lurches forward again into the gaggle of little cars. An opus of crunching metal, feeble little car horns, shattering tail-lights and angry Arabic voices reverberates between the crumbling stone buildings on each side of the street as the convoy maneuvers through the throng. As we part the rusty red sea like an angry Moses, the cars immediately fall in right behind my Humvee, making me feel claustrophobic.
“Sergeant Milberg, they’re crowding us back here,” I shout into the cab over the sound of rattling ammunition and rev’d-up engines.
“Fire warning shots into the hoods,” he shouts back, “if they don’t back-off, shoot the fuckers!” Just two weeks prior in this very location, one of our guys was killed when shrapnel from an IED (improvised explosive device) sliced open his larynx. He bled to death in Sergeant Milberg’s arms before the medevac helicopter even arrived; we were done trying to win “hearts and minds” at this point.
Before I can raise the barrel of my M4-carbine to discharge a few rounds of 5.56 into one of the cars, we make a hard left off the main avenue onto a garbage-strewn side street flanked on both sides by mud brick houses. I quickly push my weight into the turret, rotating my machine gun barrel 180° to keep its barrel from getting tangled up in the low hanging mess of telephone and electrical wires running from the roofs of the houses. Just as my turret comes to a stop facing the front of the convoy, I hear a loud POP as pieces of garbage spray outward from a pile sitting right beneath the left-front tire of the lead Humvee. The radio crackles.
“Alpha one, push past that house! Alpha two, Alpha three, Alpha four, halt and pull security!” We’d just been ambushed by an insurgent IED team, but the blasting cap had blown clear of the bomb – a lucky break that saved the five soldiers in the lead Humvee from being blown to pieces.
We know the drill: each truck takes up a defensive position in an attempt to create 360° of security. Lieutenant Ericson calls in an EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) team, and we wait.
The sound of chaos is replaced by the usual urban hum. I lean hard into the butt of my M-240 machine gun, squinting into the magnified reticle of its scope at the Iraqis in the marketplace north of our position. They meander through the kiosks of multi-colored clothing, fresh food, and other wares as if everything was back to normal. The temperature’s only about 70° Fahrenheit, but I feel heavy with sweat, and salty beads of perspiration stream down from my Kevlar helmet into my eyes. I blink to clear them, but the steady thump, thump of circulating blood in my head makes my vision blurry with each heartbeat. Leaning back, I suck-in a deep breathe of the dry, sewage-heavy Baghdad air, and stare for a moment at the burning blue of the desert sky.
“Kechakakaka!” Ak-47 shots from an unidentified building across the street sear the silence. Sergeant Milberg throws open the left passenger door and exits the truck in the same instant. The other soldiers in the truck do the same, looking like a gang of mobsters piling out for hit.
“Pop-pop-pop, Pop-pop-pop, Pop-pop-pop!” M4s crack in quick three-round bursts, sending rounds arbitrarily into the buildings behind the crowd of shoppers in the market across the street. People scatter like cockroaches in a basement when the light is suddenly turned on. Into doorways, under stairwells, behind parked vehicles, into the very ground like Buggs Bunny it seems.
“Skittles, make that fucking ‘240 talk!” Sergeant Milberg orders, using my call-sign.
“Sergeant, I didn’t see where the shots came from!” I yell in frustration.
“You see that window?” He points to the tallest structure on the block, a two-story apartment-type structure with two murky black windows on each level. “One man, Ak-47 – light it up!”
“Roger that.” Quickly, robotically, I slam my green-gloved right palm around the pistol grip of the trigger housing, grab the butt stock with my green-gloved left hand, and smash my sweaty cheek against the sun-warmed composite surface of the butt stock. I lean into the butt stock as hard as I can, pulling it into my chest and right shoulder until it feels like an extension of my body. I focus both wide-open eyes into the scope, level the circle below the upper-most stadia line onto the black opening of the stone-framed window, slowly exhale, and squeeze the trigger.
“Che-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke!” The machine gun bucks against my shoulder with a lightning-quick series of satisfying kicks. Fire and blue smoke explode from its barrel, and ember-orange 7.62 mm tracer rounds arc over the traffic and garbage and people and marketplace at 2,800 feet per second before shattering to dusty pieces the ornate stone window frame like it was never there.
“Che-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke!” Gun oil sprinkles my face from the over-lubricated chamber, and the thick smell of burnt carbon, burnt nitrocellulose, and burnt nitroglycerine from the ammo propellant stings my nose. Red-hot, black metallic ammo links and red-hot, smoking brass casings clink and clank around the turret like sparks from a frayed telephone wire as I traverse the barrel 10° back and forth from one black window to another. My lungs burn and I remember to inhale for the first time since my first squeeze of the trigger. Rifle shots continue from both sides of the Humvee between my bursts, and a voice calls from the radio in the cab, “Alpha four! What is your target – where is your target? Alpha four, how copy, over!” But nobody is in the cab to answer.
“Che-ke-ke-k—Clunk!” My ‘240 jams. “FUCK!” I shout as I pull back the cocking handle and watch the spent casing fly from the ejection port. I pop open the cover assembly, brush a few ammo links from the feed tray with my green-gloved hand, check that nothing’s stuck in the chamber, reposition the ammo belt against the cartridge stop, snap the cover down and slam the cocking handle back into forward position.
“Kechaka! . . . . . Kechaka!” Two more bursts from phantom AK-47s, shorter and further away this time. I can see the fury shooting from Sergeant Milberg’s blackened irises as he looks up at me. “Goddamn it! There it is again, – Skittles, you clear the jam? Just keep laying down fire on those buildings!”
But besides the occasional flash of clothing as some civilian sprints around a corner to cover, there isn’t much movement in the marketplace anymore. No movement from the black windows of my target building either. And I’m staring intently, hoping to see it. I’m hoping with all my heart to see some deadly, AK-47-wielding, shemagh-over-the-face sniper pop out from one of those murky windows and unload his entire magazine directly at me. But I just see black surrounded by bullet holes. So I hesitate, just for a moment, before squeezing the trigger. But I squeeze the trigger.
“Che-k—Clunk!” Again I clear the jam, and one glistening shell flips through the air and bounces, clinking and clanking, off the top of the Humvee. Again I ready the gun, aim, and hesitate with the trigger half-pulled – this time my indecision is noticed.
“What’s going on with that ‘240, Skittles?” Sergeant Milberg shouts, and back-steps from behind the cover of the open driver-seat door, carbine still at the ready, until he’s just below me. “You ok?” he asks, his concerned gaze bouncing back and forth between me and the marketplace. “Yeah,” I say, suddenly feeling nervous, “damn thing’s just jamming up on me.”
A Ak-47 burst, even fainter than the last, steals his attention and he returns fire toward the buildings, quick-stepping back to the front of the vehicle.
And again I squeeze the trigger, sending one glowing tracer round into the black abyss of a window before the machine gun jams again. For a minute that feels like an eternity I repeat the process – clear the jam, ready the weapon, and explode the universe with one burning round; watch that one round get swallowed without any apparent consequences by one black-hole window – again and again and again.
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!” Lieutenant Ericson’s no longer shouting on the radio. Instead he’s running toward our truck, waving his hand, palm facing out, up and down in front of his face. “Sergeant Milberg, SITREP, now!”
Sergeant Jones, the squad leader from another truck, trots over to my position as well. “Good job, soldier.” He gives me a serious cowboy nod.
“Thank you, Sergeant.” I say, giving him an awkward cowboy nod of my own. He trots away. Good job, soldier. I replay the statement over and over again in my mind, mouthing the words in silence. Good job, soldier, as the Lieutenant and the Sergeants discuss logistics. Good job, soldier, as the EOD trucks rumble in, business-like as usual. Good job, soldier, as two of my friends discuss the firefight excitedly, “Man, you kill anybody?” “Shit I don’t know, I just starting shooting, Bro!” Good job, soldier, as the Iraqis across the street reappear, bustling crouched and cautious to search for their belongings, and possibly for their dead or wounded. I stare into the black windows. Good job, sol-
“Skittles! What’s the fucking SITREP on that ‘240?” Sergeant Milberg always has a way of refocusing me.
“Failure to extract rounds, Sergeant. Could be a broken extractor spring, or a bad gas regulator, or the receiver might be dirty.” He reports the problem to the Lieutenant.
Radios are buzzing, soldiers are communicating, a bomb under a trash pile is neutralized – things are getting done. Everything is under control.
But my neurons start buzzing too, and I have to wrap both green-gloved hands around the ‘240’s butt stock to keep them from shaking. Thump, thump, thump, my heart says to my head, and I shift my weight from one tan boot to the other, feeling trapped within the steel circle of the turret. The calm always feels worse than the storm, when there’s nothing left to do but think about the damage. Good job, soldier.
“Hey Skittles, catch!” Specialist Coleman says, and tosses a can of Copenhagen Longcut over the gun shield. Sunlight catches the can’s golden lid, and it shimmers as it wobbles through the air toward me. “Thanks, man!” I say, and grin to show my gratitude. I grip the can in my twitching green-gloved hand like I’m preparing to throw a curve-ball. I flip my wrist up and down like a whip, letting the can tock – tock – tock against my ring-finger to pack the tobacco tight. I open the can with a pop that reminds me of the finger-in-cheek popping sound from the song “Lollipop,” by the Chordettes. The familiar salty-sweet-sour smell – almost like bourbon – hits my nose, and for a moment I don’t notice the odors of sewage, garbage, sweat-crusted body armor, or the thick smell of burning rubber that seems ever-present in Baghdad. I don’t bother removing the glove, and smash my green thumb against the black tobacco shavings that are packed together on one side of the can. Brown juice stains the tip of my green pointer finger as I squeeze a giant pinch from the can and stuff it into my outstretched lower lip.
Immediately the thump, thump, thumping subsides as it’s replaced by a tingly feeling in my temples, and my head becomes light with chemical carbonation. And I feel like I have something to do again as I put my tongue to work, packing the dip into the perfect position between my gums and lip. My green hands become still, with one hand resting palm up over the other on the butt stock, the glinting can resting loosely in its fingers. I exhale through my nose as a light breeze tickles my sweaty face and neck, cooling my skin. The buildings with the murky black windows across the street look distant and more ancient now, but still sharp and clear as the sunlight makes their edges glow – like I’m looking at an old photograph instead of a real place. I wonder how many pieces of “collateral damage” lie, bloody and silent, within those black windows.
“Damn, you gonna suck on the whole can, Bubba Blue?” Coleman says mockingly, interrupting my thoughts as he gestures for his can of tobacco. I play along, and move the dip to the front of my lip with my tongue, making it jut out obnoxiously.
“My given name is Benjamin Buford Blue, but people call me Bubba. Just like one of them ol’ redneck boys. Can you believe that?” I cross my eyes for effect. Coleman puts on the most obnoxiously sincere face he can muster. “My name’s Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump.” We both laugh like it’s the best reenactment of Forrest Gump to have ever been performed, and I spit like a camel toward Coleman, trying to nail one of his boots. Such tobacco spit target practice was one of our favorite ways to annoy one another. He kicks up dirt as he scrambles away, and I yell “Run, Forrest, Ruuun!” after him.
***
It’s May, 2015, and I’m staring at a WARNING label – printed in no-nonsense white – on a can of wintergreen-flavored Copenhagen Longcut: “This product can cause gum disease and tooth loss.” I use the thick, calloused tip of my favorite birdie-finger to play the can like a finger drum, tapping “My Shit’s Fucked Up,” by Warren Zevon, right over the top of the white words of wisdom; the deep echoic tock of my drum solo is more satisfying than the silence of the message.
I slump back deep into the dusty polyester cushion of my iron deck chair, and let my fist dangle over the side with the can clutched loosely in my fingers. The wind plays river sounds through the boughs of white pine and elm trees, mimicking the frothy irrigation canal running through the middle of my backyard. I tilt my ear toward a chirping competition going down between a few American Tree Sparrows, and attempt to identify the winning teedle-eet warble over the sounds of wind, water, and trees. I try to relax – just be in the moment.
But the week’s been long, so I finally give in and bring the can of tobacco to my chest. I run my thumbnail – scraped and serrated from manual labor – like a knife through the green and gold paper around the lid of the can. With a quick pop I pull off the lid, and immediately the thick menthol smell of “wintergreen” stings my nose and makes my throat feel cold. Neurons begin buzzing, and I think about long-gone times when my Army buddies and I would sneak away from training with a can of Copenhagen, or times during war when we would take a break from patrol in one of Baghdad’s blown-to-hell slums, and spit our worries like bombs into the dirt and the rubble. We’d laugh at jokes, tell stories about home, and try to forget about the hardships of life.
Now, I pick out an especially plump, juicy looking dip that reminds me of a cat turd wrapped in soaked toilet paper, and stuff it between my lower lip and gums. I grimace a bit from the flavor – chewing “wintergreen” is like sucking on old pennies dipped in acid, sugar and mint. Then the heavy chemical wave washes over my brain, shushing those neurons and relaxing my muscles. My chair suddenly feels softer as I sink deeper into its polyester.
Again I begin tapping Warren Zevon’s “My Shit’s Fucked Up” into the can’s lid, and think to myself, “Just one last can.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the non-famous