The Squadron Commander vs. The Salmon Women

“Oh my God! I can’t believe this shit. Where’s your game at, you bunch of sorry pussies? Glitzo, I want you on their flank now. No! Now! If we lose this fucking spawn point, I’m going to fucking ban someone. Ramirez, where are you?” Bryan had become so enraged, he was screaming at the top of his lungs.A distinctively Mexican voice traveled across hundreds of miles of copper wire, bounced off several satellites, and finally streamed through my brother’s speakers as clear as a bell. “Yo, cutthroat man… you need to like chill out or somethin’ man. It’s just a game, bro.” To me, Bryan was an endearing, if socially retarded young man. To the people he was speaking to online, he was Cutthroat16, infallible squadron commander of their online war game.

“Listen to me Ramirez, you get your shit together and help me keep this spawn point or I’m banning you from this server.” The speaker crackled with static for a moment.

“Dude… you’re like too into this or somethin’. I’m going to go have dinner. My mom just called me.” There was an audible ding as Ramirez logged off.

“FUCK!” shouted the Bryan I knew and loved. The squadron commander overtook him again. “Now we’re down a man. If any of you other princesses need to go home, I suggest you do it now.” There was silence from the speaker.

“I want Garcia42 and Jizzbomber11 in foxtrot position. DemonKnight, move to Delta strike. Glitzo, you’re going to have to fill in for Ramirez on point. Now Glitzo! We’re going to take the house in the lower quadrant. Breach and clear, boys. Breach and clear. Move! Move! Move!” On Bryan’s monitor a computer generated man in fatigues kicked open a wooden door, and began to shoot a group of other computer generated soldiers.

From the vantage point of his doorway, I watched my brother move around in his seat, trying to mime the motions of his online avatar. When his character jumped, he sat up straighter. When his character ran, Bryan made sure to lean forward and pump his shoulders back and forth. Most hilariously, when shot in the chest, Bryan would start to scream, lean back in his chair, and close his eyes. Usually, when his character reset he would accuse whoever had killed him of cheating. “This is bullshit! They hacked the server! Fucking laggers, they have map hack! I know it! You fuckers are using map hacks!”

“Hey Bryan, do you want me to get you some ice cream?” Bryan hadn’t realized I had been watching him the whole time. Reacting as though he was experiencing PTSD from his recent internet combat, he jumped at hearing the sound of my voice. His large, fluffy winter jacket made the motion all the more absurd. He pushed back his hood when he realized it was me. I asked him once why he wore it when playing online. He responded that it was his “war coat.”

Hitting the pause bar for a moment, he pulled off the microphone, and was again the nervous boy I had always known. “Are… uh… are Rachel’s friends still here?” Rachel and her friends had been drinking downstairs for the past few hours. Bryan had decided to forego dinner rather than walk past them.

“I think so. It’s not big deal though, I can just bring it up to you.” Bryan looked at his game, hesitating. His fear of walking past a few people to get some ice cream didn’t seem to jive in his mind with his image as the squadron commander.

“No… that’s okay. I’ll deal with it. Just give me a while and I’ll go and get it myself.”

As I left the room, Bryan flipped the large puffy hood of his jacket back over his head, put his microphone back on and started clicking his mouse with a vengeance.

“Do you hear me you evil mother-fuckers! There’s a new chief in town, and his name is Cutthroat16! Oo-rah, mother-fuckers! Oo-rah!” Then, because he is my brother, there was a large blast of Wookiee noise.

I left my brother to his computer game, and walked downstairs. Rachel and a few of her friends were in the kitchen recalling how hot they had been in high school. I did my best to walk past them to the refrigerator.

For the many thousands of you not familiar with my hometown, let me take a moment to explain something to you. Women in Aberdeen, Washington are very much like salmon. While they may, in their youth, have a sleek and even silvery sparkle to them, it is inevitable that when they reach their childbearing years that they will “spawn out.” Their hips are destined to widen at an increasingly faster rate than the rest of their bodies. A line of fur prophetically sprouts on their earlobes and then, perhaps out of loneliness, promptly marches across the upper lip of and meets up with the other line of hair. Several of these “Salmon Women” were gathered around my sister and a bottle of vodka. They seemed to cackle at every word.

“Hey BC!” one of them called. “Looks like you’re still a nerd. No surprise there.”

I promptly scooped a few lumps of ice cream into my bowl and replied. “And it looks like you got fat. No surprise there, either.”

Salmon Women possesses only a minimally evolved nervous system. As such it requires several seconds and a great deal of blinking before an insult will properly register in their fish brains. My sister’s friend looked at me, licked the fur on her upper lip, gasped in shock and said, “Are you making fun of me?”

“Have some more to drink, baby-doll. I’ve got things to do.”

The Salmon Women linked their minds together, struggling together as a hive mind to articulate an argument. “Do you think you’re better ‘an us just ’cause you don’t drink?”

I took a bite of my ice cream. It was delicious. “No, I think I’m better than you for lots of reasons.” Their expression was the same as that of an amateur porn star giving her first attempt at double penetration. Their eyes bulged out of their sockets. Their noses started to twitch. The fur on their lips seemed to curl back under the singing heat of their wrath. I was in for the most ferocious inarticulate tongue lashing of my life.

“How dare you-” the phone rang. My sister picked it up and called for silence before the others had a chance to respond.

Rachel listened for a moment, nodding, then put the phone to her shoulder. “Fuck guys, it’s the cops.” Any plans for vengeance held by the Salmon Women instantly vanished, as their small brains are not capable of thinking about more than one thing at a time.

“Fuck that! We haven’t been loud at all.”

Rachel nodded several more times, then hung up the phone. “We gotta go. They’re dispatching a car.”

“So fucking what, we haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You’re only 20, dipshit,” I supplied.

“Oh yeah.” Dread began to grip the group.

The Salmon Women gathered their sparse supplies, before making their way to the car. “Hey you guys, since you’re drunk and all that you should take the hill route. Less cops that way,” I called out.

“Thanks BC, but don’t think that makes us even,” Rachel threatened.

Grinning, I took another spoonful of my ice cream and muttered, “I was actually just hoping you’d fall into a ditch, you stupid whores.”

“What’s that?” one of them asked.

“Nothing! Have a good trip!” I cheerfully responded.

I looked at the caller I.D. after they left. I did not recognize the number or even the area code. Who the hell had that been? Some state office? Made no sense to me. A loud thumping came from the other side of the house as someone descended the stairs.

A very large hooded head peeked into the kitchen, turning owl-quick to inspect every corner. “Brother, are they all gone?” Bryan asked, punctuating his question with another blast of Wookiee noise.

“Yeah, they all left. The cops called and asked them to be quiet, so they freaked out and ran.”

Bryan walked into the kitchen suddenly unafraid. To show his sudden courage he unzipped his coat, but did not take it off. “It wasn’t the cops.”

“Yeah it was, look it’s a weird number.” I offered my brother the phone. He didn’t even look at it.

“That’s Glitzo’s phone number,” he said, while straining to dig a big metal spoon into the ice cream tub. He pried an ice-burg sized chunk of vanilla ice-cream loose and put it in his bowl. “I had him call here and pretend to be the cops so I could come down here and eat.” Bryan took a knife and cut out the entire strawberry portion of the box and threw it on top of his bowl. While still chewing his first bite, he looked at me and made his Wookiee noise.

I paused, too overwhelmed by my brother’s simple genius. After a moment, I responded with my own Wookiee noise, then kneeled over laughing.

“Brother, you’re a genius.”

Bryan snorted, shook his head like a boxer getting ready for the ring. He turned his back to me, and walked toward his room. I heard his coat zipper piercing the silence of the house. His face turned over his shoulder and regarded me coolly, elegantly framed in the puffiness of his hood. “I’ve got to get back to the game. We’ve got the enemy on the run. We’ve already overtaken two of their spawn points.”

For most of his life, people have been telling my brother that he has a lot of problems he’ll never get past. In moments like these, I’m pretty sure that he’ll do just fine.