About the Book
In the early eighties Richard Skeet is seeking only one thing, an escape from his life and from his mother’s control. His world is not dismal, but bordering upon dismal. He works in a pipe yard, getting sun burnt daily. His mother has decided that he will be a good Catholic even if she has to go to hell to accomplish it. His sister is shacked up with a tattooed biker named Thor. Skeet’s solution is to be all he can be and he joins the Army. The wide, wonderful world of Nike-Hercules missiles calls his name because the missiles are nuclear and because that’s cool.
Skeet undergoes the highly stressful rigors of being called a ‘dirtbag,’ being forced to lay on his back and scream, ‘I am a dying cockroach,’ because he could do no more push-ups, and being bumped in the head by the brim of the hats that the drill sergeants wear. To his dismay they assign him to a Texas post where he works in the supply room. However, when he is assigned to Germany he knows that he will finally get to touch a nuclear weapon. All his dreams and hopes hinge on the precipice of working in his chosen field. Upon reaching the remote detachment in Germany he discovers that the Nike-Herc site will be closing down soon, as will all of them. Furthermore, not only will he not work with the much-anticipated nuclear weapon of his vivid imagination but he will work in another supply room in close contact with all of the people who were too stupid, too naive, or too crazy to leave the job while the leaving was good.
Every day will be a trial for Skeet as he attempts to glean some sort of lesson from what life has presented to him. His commanding officer is an avid John Wayne fan who wears a Stetson because he can. One of the lieutenants is a buxom, blonde beauty commonly known as Lieutenant Cupcake because of the fluff between her ears. One of the sergeants is an overrated infantryman who detests every kind of air defense artillery soldier and especially detests Skeet. Another sergeant is a supply sergeant who is addicted to Pepto Bismo and afraid that he will have to pay for all the things that have gone missing in the detachment. An unknown individual with an odd predilection for smearing his own bodily wastes on various pieces of equipment haunts the unit after the midnight hour. Every single person there has some sort of twisted issue and each one is not afraid to let those issues out to flop around the floor like dead fishes.
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