A Private Little War by Jason Sheehan

of a halo lamp, betting with corks and shell casings or gambling away their days off and roster positions. Vic had been there for a minute. Tommy Hill and Lefty from Carter’s squadron. Ernie O’Day from Fenn’s 3 rd . Billy Stitches and Morris Ross and Wolfe and Stork and Johnny and some of the mechanics and ground crew as well. Everyone was having trouble sleeping these days. No one liked the mornings, but the nights were becoming unbearable.
    Fenn had been talking to someone and so had missed most of Carter’s departure, catching only the end of it, which had involved an overturned chair and hard words and the men all jeering him as he’d left—laughing and making jokes about missing his beauty sleep. Someone had bounced a cork off the back of Carter’s head. More laughter. Carter’d given the lot of them the one-finger salute, pushed through the door, and made for his tent without saying a word to Fenn.
    This was the way the men spent their days and their nights—in jest and sinning and leisure, secretly half hoping forsomething,
anything
, bad to happen to someone else just so the rest of them would have something to talk about for a while that wasn’t the boredom, the shitty weather, their lice, misery or home. It was cheap and it was awful, but it made the time go. And as they all well knew, when there wasn’t drink or poker or laughing or games or just simply staring up at the sky and pretending they weren’t calculating the distance back to more friendly suns, there was always the slaughter.
    It hadn’t been an hour later that Ted had come in, counting heads, gathering up his work crew to break down the drop, and looking for someone to fly. Fenn had argued with Billy because Billy wanted to go night flying and wasn’t a man who took kindly to being told no anymore. Then he’d sold out Carter to Ted in exchange for staying safe on the ground himself. All things considered, it hadn’t been his best night. But one had to take these things philosophically. Although he’d certainly done much worse in the past year, Santa Claus had come regardless. The man’s standards for who was naughty and who was nice must really be slipping, Fenn thought, and he wondered how much more killing he would’ve had to do to tip the scales.
    When the search party had come back with the gear for opening the containers, Fenn had done little more than aim them in the proper direction and let them have at it. It was Christmas, after all. That’d been true. And the way he looked at it, every bastard among them—every killer, every defiler, every eye-shooter and psychopath and machine-gun artist—ought to have something to open on Christmas morning.
    There were accidents, of course. Arguments. One fistfight. Most of the men were too drunk to walk more than a dozen paces without falling down. The holidays could be difficult, Fenn knew. When no one was looking, he tucked away some of the supplies for himself—loading boxes and packages onto a bomb sledge and dragging it to the mess tent, where he hid everything poorly but well enough to fool a bunch of drunks and mental cases. When he came back, it was to uproarious laughter and men literally doubled over. In among the cases of food and bullets and medical supplies and whatever else, the boys had uncovered a brand-new ice machine. Of all the things…
    Fenn had caught sight of Carter walking then, kicking his toes at the frozen dirt and making for his plane. He’d raised a hand to wave, but Carter hadn’t seen him. He’d called out—meaning to tell him aboutthe ice machine because Fenn knew Carter would appreciate the absurdity of it—but Carter hadn’t heard him. Lost in his own world, that man. Fenn shook his head and turned back to the task at hand which, just then, involved loading up another sledge full of commandeered supplies for his tentmate.

    Vic had called Carter’s plane out of the longhouse when she’d been told to do so. She’d loaded it, muscling the gun