I Pledge Allegiance by Chris Lynch

us than I had ever really thought about. First among those things is food. Everybody’s mother asks about the food.
    “‘Are you getting greens?’” Moses reads to us, though he is doing equal parts laughing and reading sowe have to listen hard. “‘You know, son, that you will never be fed greens the way you were in this house here, so you are going to have to make sure you get your hands on whatever greens you can find. And please, don’t let them tell you that that ol’ iceberg lettuce is any kind of greens because that is pure nonsense. Shouldn’t even call them greens, they should call them whites. And speaking of whites to look out for …’” The rest of the letter is omitted. Not to protect anybody’s sensitive ears, but because Moses is now laughing so far beyond his ability to form words, he may not ever get back. He’s in the rack above me, and when he laughs himself right out of that rack, I snatch the letter out of his hand as he flies by. He lies flat on his back looking up as I hold it, but he just keeps laughing without making any effort to get it back.
    I hand it to him, unable to keep from laughing myself, though I haven’t read a word. You don’t read another guy’s mail unless he clearly tells you to.
    “‘Scurvy!’” Seven reads out, from his own mom. “‘You do know about scurvy, don’t you? It is a disease that the Navy is famous for because of their inadequate food, so unless you want to come back to me with horrible bandy legs and bendy bones, you make sure you get vitamin C, and A, and D, and all the sunshine you can manage.’”
    This time it’s the audience that makes the reading impossible. Everybody roars at the notion of Seven getting sunshine. Then he puts down his letter, picks up his guitar, and starts howling his way through Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.”
    “‘You’re all the sunshine I need, Ma,’” he sings, really mangling the original lyrics. But hey, it’s his mom.
    Rascal has the biggest stack of letters. He claims they are all from heartbroken girls.
    “Okay,” Huff says, “read us one. Any one.”
    “Cost ya a buck,” Rascal says.
    “What?” Huff says. “Don’t be a dope. We’re all reading.”
    “You ain’t readin’ what I’m readin’. A buck. Guaranteed satisfaction, or your money back.”
    “I could just lie and say I was not satisfied and you’d never know.”
    “I sleep two and a half feet away. I’ll know.”
    We laugh a lot at letter time.
    There are also great fat silences that seem to come over all of us at exactly the same time. I don’t know how that happens.
    Right now the place goes silent while the guys read whatever private stuff they’ve got. Me, I’m reading Rudi.
     
    Dear Morris,
    How hard is the war going to be if even your own guys scream and shout at you all day long? The sergeant screams so much and so close up to me, it feels like it is always raining on my face.
    Sorry, how are you, Morris?
    I’m scared all the time though maybe not as much as you might expect. Are you scared? I’ve been hearing a lot about the Navy. The Marines talk about the Navy a real lot. They say yours is the easy war and the safe war. That we do all the dangerous stuff while you sailors mostly go fishing and work on your tans. Then there’s all that other stuff that I can’t even repeat that they say about sailors. Do you think all that is true? About you having an easier war than me? Does it feel like that to you?
    Here’s what I mean about being not as scared as maybe you’d of thought I might be. The surprise thing is, I think I fit in here. I know, isn’t that crazy? All those years and years of never fitting into anything that didn’t have you and Ivan and Beck making sure I fit and even then never being a really good fit anyway, let’s be honest. Then I get this letter telling me Inow belong to a whole new something and it’s a something that scares me into wetting my pants. Remember that? I am sure that you