Marines sit on the ground with their feet in their hands, their bare knees against the wet morning grass to stretch their groins, to loosen their limbs, to gather themselves near the flight line behind company headquarters. They await the arrival of their instructor, the start of their next round of martial arts training. They wait to advance, to add to their takedowns and submissions, to harden their bodies, train with new weapons, trade tan for gray belts and—Oohrah!—increase their chances for promotion. Nearby planes taxi, spooling turbines. A spider clings to falling greenery on the perimeter fence. The marines ready for deployment. One drops his stretch and takes up a brittle vine to coax the creature away from the kudzu locks and into the mouth of an empty water bottle. Another rushes to suggest the species—brown recluse—and its necrotic capabilities. Yet another suggests a sporting match against his emperor scorpion, not-so-hidden back in the barracks, back of his room, top shelf of his wall locker. The spider flinches, tucks its legs, balls its body, and tumbles into the bottle, where it sprawls, scrambling for traction against the slick plastic walls. Water drops slide and collect in the struggle.
Body-hardening exercises are intended to deaden the nerves, to toughen areas of the body which might prove sensitive to aggressive contact. In the hardening of the arms, for instance, two marines stand one pace apart and rotate at the hips with stiff elbows and clenched fists to repeatedly collide forearms along the radial nerve. Legs, too—the peroneal nerve is hardened with an exchange of partial roundhouse kicks, the lower shin or instep striking against the meaty portion of the outer thigh. To harden the abdominals, marines exchange fist-to-stomach strikes, careful to avoid the navel, the xiphoid, the ribs, sternum, and forward protrusions of the hip bone. Their instructor shouts, by way of motivation, some non-words. He mirrors their moves with more and more intensity, counts them out with sharp consonants and long, graveled vowels. He commands them to count with him—louder now—to lean into their strikes, to shout out their breath and to stop flinching—really, get a grip, wincing like children at flying bugs in the yard.
The spider wallows in the base of the bottle. Marines continue to strike one another—a convulsive communication between partners across the spread of just one pace, one arm’s length—sometimes heavy and sometimes with a lightness that may or may not be reciprocated. They count strikes at the peak of their volume, numbers bursting with breath, and they continue to flinch—so much tightening and contracting of the face which, although commonly understood as a sign of weakness, is the body’s autonomic motion toward strength. The body knows, when confronted with great pain or when remembering or forecasting such a blow, to flinch or to wince—from the Old French, a turn aside. Aside—where the nerve endings are less sensitive, the skin conditioned to regular and more aggressive contact, the body naturally hardened. Flinch—to summon hardness, to bring forth and expose the deadened side. The aim of this training, perhaps, is to eliminate the need to turn.
A wall locker frames the match—arachnids at dusk. Marines crowd into a barracks room, scramble through the doorway and bound over beds toward the back wall where one locker shines with doors opened wide. They corral and lean into the lamplight and hoist themselves on chairs or hold one another’s shoulders to gain vantage, leg muscles engorged, the striking edges of arms inflamed like their eyes, like their savage hopes. On a shelf above khaki service shirts, green and blue jackets pressed and creased with single chevrons patched over starched and stiff sleeves, between folded blocks of undershirts and boot socks, high upon arched legs, there stands the Emperor, dark and still, stinger aloft, basking in the warmth of an aluminum-shaded lamp clamped to the slotted lid of its plastic cage—small, with a carrying handle, designed for temporary and not long-term habitation. The scorpion holds wide its pincers. Bets are placed. Someone takes on the mantle of ring announcer, speaking into his fist. Dollar bills fly and are collected. A hatch in the lid is lifted. The spider bottle is uncapped, turned, shaken over the opening in the cage. The Recluse falls to the plastic floor in a shower. Droplets splash and pool. All watch as the Emperor stands handsome and aware beneath the yellow light of a single bulb while the displaced spider withdraws its legs and contracts its wet body, tightening and rising like a middle knuckle. Someone mimics the sound of a bell. Marines steady themselves, watching close, waiting for the first move.
Only a moment passes, a flinch, and then the scorpion kicks from its corner and clambers across the plastic floor to meet the spider, who cowers there in a shallow pool. Touch gloves, someone calls as the Emperor holds its pincers aloft. The Recluse shrinks between the shadows of its claws. In a sudden fit, the scorpion drops its body, twitches its tail, thrusts its sensitive jaws, and begins taking up water droplet by droplet, drinking from the puddle around the spider with delicate fervor. The Recluse remains small and still in the center of the cage. The scorpion stoops to drink its fill, and then, once sated, returns to its place beneath the warmth of the lamp. Again, the Emperor stands tall, bathed in light. The Recluse sits in the wet where it fell.
This, they all agree, is not what they had in mind—a total fucking letdown—and they begin letting the tension from their hardened fists, pulling away from their frenzied expectations as they back off and exit the room. Someone jostles the cage. Another barrels past with an elbow strike to the door of the wall locker. A few of them step outside to discuss the scorpion’s misdirected motivations, the spider’s refusal to transcend the obvious behaviors implied by its name. They reverse their wagers, suppose a fight took place, imagine more violent outcomes, and some of them, as if only just inspired, roleplay these imagined versions of the match on all fours, grappling in the grass of the barracks’ courtyard while others watch from inside with reinstated bets and a collective hope that they might yet see the fight they had envisioned. Others still turn from the bout, commenting on the absurdity of an impromptu wrestling match—haven’t we had enough?—after training all day.
The darkening of the evening means the lowering of the flag, and everyone outdoors stops—running formations at a halt, vehicles pulled to the shoulder of the road—the only movement that of the breeze, the rustle of small animals through the leaves, and the two marines charged with retiring the American flag for the night. Then comes the call of “Taps”—a melancholic bugle with the sonic reach of turbine engines.
The bugle call rolls through the barracks yard where wrestlers unlock one another and drop their roles as Emperor or Recluse to rise together as proper marines at attention. Observers jeer from open windows, their fight spoiled yet again, and chide the others for being caught outside, their inattention to the hour—fix your posture out there, you hard-charging heroes! They stand and face the same general direction as “Taps” echoes from the surrounding brick buildings. The bugle plays on, stretching sound, drawing out each blow like a lengthening shadow. Laughter carries down the walkway and across the grass. They steady their breathing to stand impossibly still. Tighten up—an anonymous voice from afar. Another dares them to flinch. Yet another shouts that he’s heard enough—how about we show some respect for the dead? “Taps” plays on, an appeal to quietude. The joking stops, though its echoes remain. Twenty-four notes hang over a chasm of rest. Marines hold fast in the yard, caught and well-taught, unable to break attention during the somber song of the bugle, and they begin to flex their muscles in response to the shouts and jabs of their peers, pressing tight their lips, clenching teeth and swelling their necks, fossilizing, arms fixed to their sides, fingers coiled, thumbs buried in the seams of their trousers, prolonging this flinch through every note as if “Taps” were a proper song and a gradual hardening of the body the only befitting dance.
Christopher Notarnicola is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and an MFA graduate of Florida Atlantic University. His work has been published with Bellevue Literary Review, Best American Essays, Consequence Magazine, Image Journal, North American Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. Find him in Pompano Beach, Florida and at christophernotarnicola.com.