L I B R A R Y

      Joseph Lezama awoke at the front of the unit tent. It had snowed the night before and by some strange phenomenon, he was warm bordering on hot and he unzipped his sleeping bag to invite the cool morning air. To his right was another soldier, Private Sanders. “Fellas?” Lezama called out, “It’s 7:30 in the morning. Formation is at 8:00. It’s time to get out of these, ole’ fart bags and face the music, fellas?”
 
        “It’s too cold outside, Lezama. I’d rather get chewed out than to face the music. I’m staying put until we get orders.” said Sanders, “My nose is frozen.”
 
   “Ok, but let’s confer with McCann. He’s got seniority.” Lezama suggested. “McCann?”
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         “Let’s wait until they call for us, Joe.” suggested McCann. “My nose is frozen.”
 
      “I don’t get it?” questioned Lezama, “I slept in the doorway and I’m not even snowed upon plus I feel extremely warm. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to see if we can get a heater like the NCOs and XOs (Executive Officers,) have. I’ll be back.”     
 
      Lezama recalled that such was the day he became, according to his superiors, problematic. “I hear Lezama is running shit over at first platoon.” said Sergeant Duffus, of second platoon, to Sergeant Lemarie, of first platoon as all such NCO’s were gathered within their tent. Lezama stood outside and heard everything.
 
       Sergeant Lemarie could not let the reputation of first platoon drop for first platoon was the best platoon in all the base of the 1st  and 24th Infantry Division Mechanized, having fired a missile in three seconds from the command, “Fire Mission!” during the 1986’s annual ARTEP (Army Readiness Test Evaluation Program.)
 
      But Lemarie allowed his pride to answer for him. In a different existence, he could have said that Lezama outranks other Privates but would still do as he is told by NCO’s, as if he had to prove it. That is where the bet should have lay that day, supporting Lezama’s reputation. Instead Lemarie took the pride of first platoon, Lezama, and scrubbed it to the floor.
 
     “Lezama isn’t shit. He’s nothing but a dry sweep.” Lemarie answered back. Dry sweep is gravel that soldiers use to scrub oil from off the ground of the motor pool. And it is the worst thing one can call a soldier.
 
        Lezama was the best soldier on the base and because he was so, he was called attention to; for NCO’s command practice. All the enlisted members believed he was favored on the account of his art work. And the NCO’s believed that the Colonel and the Sergeant Major sheltered him because of such talent. It was not so. Lezama was never paid as many believed so, for his service as an artist.
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          Not one of his peers understood his hard labor but first platoon’s NCOs and they kept it quiet. Nevertheless he didn’t receive any favors. However Duffus’ intent which was to belittle first platoon would cause Lezama to be chaptered out of the Service an action that was motivated by envy, jealousy, and mammon; the love for money as everyone tried to exploit him during a new era of change when the 1st and 13th FA became the 1st and 14th FA, the new unit being in charge by Captain Martin Meador; a childish plumped imp whose daughter had fallen in love with Lezama though he knew nothing of it.
 
        Jacquie Rodriguez meant the world to Joseph Lezama. Jacquie was everything his heart could see. She was everything his soul believed in because she had God in her heart and she would talk of God to him then.
 
      Joseph wanted everything to manifest in her. He wanted her to marriage. He wanted her to mother his Children. He loved her.
 
       “Will you marry me?” he had asked her for practice when they were children as required by their youth sociology course.
 
          “Why should I marry you?” she had questioned in rebuttal.
 
       “Because I have a house,” had been the pursuit in awe of interest as the others watched.
 
          “Does it cleanse itself?” she continued to evade.
 
          He roped a dope and moved in for the sucker punch, “Yes, it does!”
 
         “Then, I love you!” She had exclaimed evading the “yes, I will marry you,” but had hugged him with a kiss. They were children then. In Joe all came to be and any girl to discover such found her life blessed in him but the cost was his happiness. He could not make it happen for himself as he did for others. In Jacquie, he would make it happen. All he had to do was apply effort. That was his gift.
 
           Jacquie and Joe met when teenagers in Huntington Park, California at Church. Joe was a musician, a tech designer and a writer. He felt his writing needed more life than the emotional emptiness presented. Joseph had enlisted into the Military to seek out that life.
 
            Eight years later, Joseph returned to Church being sent home from the military and having sojourned a covert operation in the streets of Los Angeles. He was unaware of such operation for he was psychologically conditioned and hypnotized into such due to its insubstantiality in nature.
 
          His heart carried a heavy burden having then signed up to serve another mission; a religious mission for his church, the continuing covert operation, a mission within a mission.
 
        He found to still love Jacquie but he loved God more. He challenged her to live the correct way to happiness, as she had forgotten to but the pull of sin from other sources was stronger in her. They broke off their relationship and saw each other no more.