Rumors of War (A Band of Brothers Story)

2: Optimists

"Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough." –Mark Twain

I couldn't sleep.

Even with the blackout curtains drawn tightly and myself buried deep into the four-hundred threat count sheets and goose feather pillows—the most comfortable place I'd been in months—I couldn't drop off. I just couldn't sleep. I'd never had a problem with sleeping before, not even in the jungles on Guadalcanal or in the deserts of North Africa when I was up to my knees in muck and shit and dead foliage.

The clock on the mantel was ticking. Its sounds reminded me so much of the bombardments on the atoll.

Rolling over I pushed myself deeper into the duvet, a pillow over my head.

I wasn't just tired, I was exhausted. Dead bone weary; drained; bushed; fatigued. I had stayed in the bath until I had successfully worked out all the knots from my hair and when I finally dragged myself from the bathroom I was as wrinkly as a prune. It'd taken two washes to clean all the mud and dirt off me, the water ending up a weird discolored brown shade.

Disgusting.

I had tried counting sheep—it failed—and, remembering what Gracia had said once in the dead of night on some shitty atoll, I turned my body to "polar" North. It failed as well. I counted down from one hundred. When that wasn't successful, I began to count each inhale as one, each exhale as two. Nothing worked, leaving me there in the bed laying in the relatively dead silence of the Savoy's suite.

It was maddening.

The bedding only made the whole thing worse, it was too soft, I felt like I was sleeping on marshmallow. In a fit, I untangled myself from the crisp sheets (when did they become so fucking deadly, Jesus Christ) and moved to the bedside chair. Shaky hands reached for and found the cigarettes and Zippo I had kept stuffed in my jacket. The nicotine burnt my throat, singed my lungs as I drew in the first deep breath of the cheaply rolled tobacco. After a moment I blew it out, watched the smoke curl up like a tail on a cat before settling into the chair. It was nearly as comfortable as the bed—something that I never thought was possible, but I supposed all things in the land of the civilized were comfortable beyond belief.

Faintly, onto the edges on my hearing I couldn't help but notice the voices that floated up into the room—European accents mixed in with Americans and the like—and with every new voice my hands shook more. I couldn't stand the silence mixed with the muffled sounds. I was just so used the bloody racket of war—the artillery strikes and mortar shells, the gun fire and the Marines' constant bickering—that the silence of the Savoy unnerved me.

I took a long drawl of the cigarette, shifted my feet this way and that; cracked my knuckles.

In the Pacific, silence meant something was coming. It was an omen, a sign of a coming shit storm. It was the first thing I had learned when I found myself with the Marines, that pure silence—without insects or birds—was unnatural. The best alarm system was nature; that jungles were inherently noisy so if they became quiet, something was there that shouldn't be, and the birds and the bugs, they knew. It was a rule that had kept me from taking a bullet to the skull, so it was impossible for me to drop them. Every time a passing voice floated into my suite my muscles tensed; when a door slammed I couldn't help but flinch.

Who'd have thought I'd miss the jungle? Damn...

It was by the fifth consecutive door slam that I decided I need a stiff drink. I snuffed out my cigarette quickly, before slipping on my dirty clothes from earlier sans jacket. I didn't bother tying my boots up, simply stuffed the shoelaces under the tongue and I was off.