On Monday I wore a cowboy hat to work—just to see if I could.

Employees at Brick Albert seldom break the unspoken dress code of a Costco button-down paired with either khaki, black, or navy-blue slacks. Once you get pegged as dressing a certain way, any deviation only invites conversation, and I don’t like talking about myself.

My usual social strategy is this:

On Fridays I ask about weekend plans. On Mondays I follow up. Tuesday–Thursday I chat about the weather. This is how I’ve survived nine years of bureaucratic drudgery as a budget and defense contractor for the federal government. It’s not that I’m anti-social or dislike my coworkers, I just can’t connect with personas. The social masks and constrained sense of self we curate in order to belong. Personality is threatening. Preference for one thing implies rejection of another. A flourish of fashion can make the boldest of statements against the backdrop of a corporate milieu. So I wore the damn cowboy hat to challenge my comfort with conformity.

Walking down the row of cubicles, heads began to turn.

Who does he think he is?

What, is the rodeo in town?

Daaayum—that’s a fine Stetson.

I wore it loud and proud and kept it on booting up my desktop—still with the classic Microsoft hum. I half expected a talking-to. Quietly pulled into the boss’s office and asked to doff my garish headwear, citing the employee handbook.

“If it were up to me,” I imagined him saying, “we’d all wear Crocs and tracksuits, but this is Brick Albert, goddamn it—we crunch numbers for the military-industrial complex.”

But when my boss laid eyes on my glorious headpiece, he worked his jaw in confusion and/or intimidation. Since time immemorial volume has always conveyed power. If ever cornered by a wild animal, thrust your bag or coat atop your head and puff yourself up bigger.

The day ended with my cowboy hat still adorned, which left me wondering:

What the fuck else could I get away with?

 

On Tuesday I tried sunglasses. Wayfarer Ray-Bans—as if hungover or concealing a black eye. Less ostentatious on arrival than my cowboy hat, until I stormed into our 11 a.m. meeting like a poker shark and took my seat at the conference table. Funny thing was—it was my best meeting ever. I felt none of the social anxiety that usually cripples my communication and has me stuttering all over myself. All points were made in short, concise fashion, staring everyone dead in the eye whether they knew it or not.

“Johnson!” my boss called, miffed by the glasses but not wanting to interrupt the meeting’s clockwise flow. “Where are we with the Predator missiles?”

I assured him my spreadsheet would be in his inbox by COB Friday. He glared as if in contest but quickly blinked and lost, unable to penetrate my 15% VLT lenses. His usually baritone voice cracked calling on the next man:

“Gregson! Brief me on spare tank parts.”

 

On Wednesday I combined both cowboy hat and sunglasses. My boss gave little reaction other than to study me up and down through suspicious eyes, wondering if he should renege after allowing both items on the floor.

On Thursday I pushed things further with a muscley tank-top fit for the beach. Women in my office go sleeveless every day, always perceived as elegant and still business casual. But if a man bares his arms he looks like a thug.

“Johnson!” my boss cried from afar, and here we go, I thought, I’d finally broke him, skirting conventions all week long, and now pushed through a nebulous yet not-to-be-crossed boundary. I couldn’t tell if I’d been fighting my boss or if my boss was puppet for some sort of unkillable ideal—a primordial organizing principle existing since before the Big Bang, first made manifest on Earth when one alpha caveman combed his hair with a pinecone and demanded others do the same.

I turned in anticipation of a confrontation but was struck open-jaw by what I saw. My boss with a shit-eating grin, Top Gun aviators concealing both eyes and brows.

“Johnson!” he said again, “I didn’t know you pumped iron, you son of a bitch!”

 

By Friday my bohemian attempts at self-discovery and/or rebellion had caught fire and spread throughout Brick Albert. Gregson came in wearing a Lakers jersey and a white UV sleeve, but that was tame in comparison to the leopard tights, sequin polos, and spikey punk jackets other coworkers dusted out of high school wardrobes as if in a fashion cold war against the world. People rode skateboards while wearing LARPing chainmail down hallways and spat dip into shiny red cups. We hadn’t yet devolved into using said cups for beer pong, but I suspected such antics were right around the corner. The bathrooms permeated vape and cigarette smoke, and some of our most gifted employees had a never-ending table of Magic: The Gathering set up in the breakroom. The damn thing was that within one week of eschewing esthetic and behavioral norms productivity tripled. Brick Albert was producing enough sophisticated and high-grade weaponry to wage war against a hypothetical Mars of equal population and technological prowess. We all received bonuses—a healthy direct deposit some of us used to break away in search of more fulfilling work, though from what I gather their souls were quickly ground to dust by a return to corporate values. The Ping-Pong and puppy yoga of Silicon Valley wasn’t shit compared to Brick Albert. I’m talking a total and complete expression of the autonomous and individuated self, no matter how vain, silly, or OSHA non-compliant. One and all was accepted here for who they were—so long as they hit their quota. Even I wouldn’t fucker with my Christmas bonus. So eight hours a day, five days a week, my ass was in my cubicle. Sure, sometimes with a Fear and Loathing Boonie cap and filtered cigarette between my teeth, sometimes with my white, squeaky Snoopy slippers warming my feet, but in my cubicle nonetheless.

 

Although our daily tasks were still the same, our workdays felt less tedious no longer hiding who we were. One way of coping with the Kafkaesque support of a global killing machine was to comment on it openly. On Monday my boss wore a true-to-life Darth Vader costume he had won in a vicious bidding war on eBay. Equipped with a soundbox that emitted labored breath noises, ironically, this was the first time I saw my boss as a real person—and not a mere arbiter of pointless tasks and standards—after he had turned himself into a machine-man to parody our industry. I would have never known he enjoyed anything other than busting our balls had we not created a culture in which he felt free to express himself. We both agreed, Empire was the GOAT, and puppet Yoda was far superior to CGI.

It wasn’t just my boss, this new injection of culture allowed almost everyone to become a clearer, more vivid person in my mind’s eye. Carol in HR brought in her Pomeranians. I learned adopting Hugsie and Mugsie kept her sane after becoming a sudden divorcee and empty-nestor. Gregson and I hit it off over beat ‘em up videogames; we’d both been raised on Street Fighter and thought it would be fun to meet at an arcade after work. For the first time in my near decade-long career, I finally had a friend.

 

The sudden warm regard we all had for each other caused us to question if Brick Albert could be better utilized helping humanity rather than mass-producing cruel and vicious weaponry used for killing and maiming from a climate-controlled cockpit suspiciously resembling a racing-game pod 7,000 miles away from the target enemy.

Are we the bad guys? we all began to wonder after unpacking the implications behind our boss’s cosplay. A psychological injury began to take hold, affecting Brick Albert’s morale. Although still free to be me, I questioned the quality of the me I was becoming in support of such a mission. This new and unconscious belief we all harbored trickled into work performance. The scientists and designers drafted concepts meant to stun rather than kill. Unsurprisingly, there were few buyers interested in stunning their enemies into submission. General carelessness caused me to delay shipment of small arms to a developing nation often fixated upon by CNN, which upset a major revolution contrary to the interest of Brick Albert. When these sorts of mistakes happen, it’s never the person responsible who is punished. In this case it was my Darth Vader, Top Gun-loving boss who was replaced by an even sterner version of himself. This new boss was mostly cheekbones with a disproportionate amount of white to the pupils in his eyes, as if perpetually afraid or overstimulated.

Within a week, any public display of personality was immediately deemed inappropriate. Cubicles were stripped of décor, and the employee handbook was affixed to the walls of every common area. Under a culture of fear and conformity productivity resumed its normal trajectory. Stockholders rejoiced. Yet in lieu of being able to think for ourselves, whatever moral reservations we held about our work evaporated. As did previous memories of the former Brick Albert. The most difficult loss in all of this was the slow inevitable reversion of the friends I’d come to know so well back to business-casual colleagues—personas who saved their fun for the weekends and talked about the weather on days in between.

Okay—let me set the record straight. It started as a bunch of rumors first, before we lost control of it. But it really started as a stupid word game at a mission briefing.

“Your porn name!” LT began. “Pet’s name and the street you grew up on.”

He was keen on figuring out everyone’s combination. Mine was Bella Tulane. Not bad if I was a chick. We got some other good ones: Snickers Calhoun, Georgie Wilder, Sherry Potts. Then this quiet, young private comes in and LT demands his info.

“Uh. Jack Fleming,” the kid says, and our jaws drop.

There is a moment of silence before LT says, “My God, that’s a handsome name,” bringing fingertips to temples like it’s too much for his brain to process.

“Jaaack Flemmming,” Sergeant Kim tries it out, and sure enough, it’s as smooth on the lips as it sounds in the ears. A phonetic Adonis.

Rivera starts slow clapping like this kid just did something Silver-Star worthy. And it wasn’t just Rivera; we were all possessed by the garish weight this name carried.

“Jack Fleming could be an American James Bond,” I say.

“Very classy, indeed,” LT agrees. “The type of name that’ll wine and dine you—before taking you back to its apartment for a tender pounding.”

This poor kid spoils our fun by telling us that Jack is a fluffy white Maltese, and Fleming is a residential byway in meth-town USA. We get a few more jokes out of it and then stop laughing when the captain comes in so we can all shout “at ease” at the top of our lungs. Captain throws a pen at Rivera, who’s the loudest, and we’re once again reminded that people will most likely try to kill us on our next mission passing out rice and beans.

*

We go about our business the next few days with no mention of Jack Fleming, that glorious gem we’d tripped over only to neatly rebury in the dirt for being too beautiful for any one man to possess. Like any good improv joke, it was kind of a one-time deal. Outside of that briefing room it wouldn’t have made much sense.

Then the Battle of Jowgi River happens. You might have heard of this one: Taliban down a Black Hawk and decide to ambush the rescue party. You haven’t? Well, we get out there; it’s outside our AO, but we’re available so we go. These pararescue guys are dug in on the wrong side of the river. They had already recovered the pilot’s remains and incinerated the bird, and they’re taking heavy fire by the time we arrive, trying to decide if they should risk getting wet running or just fight their asses off. And Rivera—crazy sonofabitch—starts laying down 240, and he is just on-point, I mean—we’re watching bodies drop while these PJs are stringing a rope across the river to exfil. I’m surprised Rivera didn’t burn the barrel off—he was just rolling in brass by the end. So, the PJ guys get away, and they come up on our net flabbergasted.

“Who’s the maverick on the 240?” they ask. “We want to know the name of the man who saved our lives.”

Rivera is just all pink. I mean, we respect the hell out of these guys, shit—most of us wanna be these guys, or Rangers or SF or what have you.

“Aw, geez,” Rivera says, twisting his foot like a schoolgirl. “Tell ‘em . . . tell ‘em Jack Fleming did it. Yeah, Jack Fleming is a machine-gun Mozart.”

It made us laugh pretty good.

And that was just about the birth of it. We can blame it all on Rivera. If he wasn’t such a humble prick . . . You see, he set the precedent. Anyone did anything cool afterwards—Jack Fleming got the credit.

—Jack Fleming shot and stopped a VBIED, though it was really Kim

—he CPR-revived a choking baby; LT did that one

—unearthed and snipped an IED

—rendered aid to an Afghan cop with a sucking chest wound

—befriended a pugnacious village elder

—attended Mosque with a terp and locals

—found multiple weapons caches

—got all our confirmed kills

The list goes on. Anything even remotely noteworthy, we all just said Jack Fleming did it. Why? Fuck, I don’t know. We were bored, I guess. Even I caught two dudes at 0300 pushing an IED in a wheelbarrow and said Jack Fleming spotted them. Saw them clean and green through an LRAZ atop a cliffside OP. Called it in; got put in for a medal. Though back at the FOB and outside of official paperwork, me getting these guys was a rumor added to the growing list of miracles performed by one Jack Fleming. For some reason this felt more meaningful than another stupid ribbon for my Class A’s.

*

Now I first started to suspect we had opened Pandora’s gossip-box when my little cousin serving in Iraq’s drawdown messages me on Facebook. My deployment had ended, and I was back in Fayetteville being pulled around the mall by my preggers wife Christmas shopping. So, I check my phone while she’s checking juicers or salad spinners or some such nonsense, and there it is.

[Hey Cuz! You ever serve with a Jack Fleming? Might have been around during your rotation?]

My first instinct—apart from laughing my ass off—is to push this farce as far as I can before coming clean with the truth.

[Fuck yes, I did! Jack Fleming is the goddamn patron saint of mayhem! You know how many lives he saved by being so deadly? No one wanted to do shit for ops without Jack Fleming covering our six!]

Now, what he says next causes me to pause. Maybe I feel chills, too.

[Well, he’s here in Iraq! Must have volunteered for another deployment. I haven’t met him, but it gives me peace of mind knowing he’s out there.]

So, once we get home from x-mas shopping, I call up LT, Kim and Rivera and tell them we might have a little problem on our hands.

*

We figure it’s highly improbable that our collective imagination gave birth to some sort of phantom Fleming—if that’s what you’re thinking. More likely there’s some poor bastard in Iraq who just so happens to be named Jack Fleming. Some unwitting private who we just turned into a wartime legend. You hear our rumors, then you pass a fit-looking kid at the FOB rockin’ Fleming nametape, and you think: could it be?

We figure it’s probably best just to let this one run its course. We’ve seen a few shenanigans in our time. For a hot minute, after this one episode of Family Guy, everyone was shouting Roadhouse! at anything requiring the least amount of physical effort. Well, we stopped saying roadhouse after so long, so we figure we’d all stop with the Jack Fleming bullshit, too.

But uh. . . man. Was I ever wrong on that account.

*

We get sent out to endure us some more freedom, this is over a year later, mind you. Different crew, but still got Rivera, Kim, and LT is now a captain.

We land in country eager to meet our ANA counterparts and quickly realize the whole Jack Fleming thing has turned somewhat cultish. Beyond your desert-variety war stories. I’m talking mythic proportions. You can’t so much as take a shit without seeing graffiti about an impossible sniper shot made by Jack Fleming. You hear people in the chow hall chatting about orphans he carried out of a fire or the high-risk livestock he helped birth. Stranger stuff than that, stuff people have no right believing in. How he shot an RPG out of the sky. That there’s really three Jack Flemings, triplets who enlisted at the same time. One Jack Fleming donated a kidney to another Jack Fleming who got shot—I mean, it’s just getting bizarre. Kim comes up and swears he saw a Jack Fleming morale patch worn by some Navy Seal types. Apparently, it’s a cartoon face of a sly 1950s-era alpha male: Ray-Ban sunglasses, a dimpled chin and slicked-back hair. An acronym in gold underneath: WWJFD?

Even the ANA are hip to the Fleming mania. We’ll be sitting before heading out on a patrol, and they’re rattling off Pashto: “Something, something, something—Jack Fleming!—something-something-something,” and they all start laughing.

The more this goes on, the more I rue the day we ever discovered the name.

*

It’s worse for Rivera. While it annoys me, it terrifies him. Maybe it’s his strong catholic morals, prohibitions against lying and all that, or maybe he feels more responsibility because—as I said—he started all this.

“I’m freaking out, man,” he says. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I’m not worried about getting schwacked by the Taliban, I’m worried about what people are going to do when they find out we’ve been stealing our own fucking valor.”

“Wait now,” I say. “Do you really think people believe in Jack Fleming?”

“The other day I saw two local national kids huddled over a drawing book. I approached with a smile expecting to see Ninja Turtles or some shit, but—no—it’s a custom-made Jack Fleming coloring book. Someone designed it and ordered up a plethora online. They’re all over Afghanistan, man!”

“Okay,” I say. “But what can we do? This is bigger than us now.”

“We have to put Jack Fleming to bed.”

“Yes, but how?”

“I don’t know. But it has to be huge . . .

“We’re going to have to kill Jack Fleming.”

*

So, we put on our murdering-hats and spend an inordinate amount of free time scheming how to pull it off. It sort of feels like trying to kill King Arthur. You can’t just make up lore; these things unfold organically.

And then OP Tiger Eye gets overrun. Now, I know you’ve heard of this one. It had been hit once or twice before, yet from what I gather it was a fairly chill place to kick back and survey the land. Well, the boys up there at the time get ejected, practically tumble down the mountain. A Taliban flag flies up the pole. Prudent thing to do would be to send out a drone, forget we were ever up there. Well, when QRF responds they light up the mountain with indiscriminate 50-cal, just as an f-you on their way out. This starts up a damn-near four-hour firefight neither side wants to break from. OP Tiger Eye is a landfill by the end of it. We take some casualties, and there’s even an MIA who never made it off the mountain. Real fog of war shit. It’s the perfect opportunity we need to kill Jack Fleming.

*

We spread the seeds of hearsay far at first, and it’s amazing how quickly it doubles back to us. Any FOB we visit outside of our AO we circle up and gab about Jack Fleming’s untimely demise. We write in Sharpie on DFAC tables:

Jack Fleming, KIA OP Tiger Eye.

God rest his beautiful soul

And you know what? It takes. Better than we could have hoped. A little too well. People go into public mourning. FOB Fleming gets erected. I’m seeing little candle-lit vigils outside of MWR hooches. It seems the only thing we did by killing Jack Fleming was to further cement his legacy. Looking back, I’m not sure why we expected a different outcome. Course, everyone present at OP Tiger Eye claims “It’s not true. Jack Fleming wasn’t even there. Which means . . . he’s still alive!” This—I guess—is how a series of counter-rumors gets started. Kim tells us that he heard from a Marine out in Helmond that his terp heard from a jingle truck driver that Jack Fleming secretly married a war widow and now lives peacefully with the local population out in Mazār-i-Sharīf. Luckily, these marriage rumors are branded conspiracy and most go on believing Jack Fleming perished.

*

We edge closer to heading home and it becomes increasingly clear we must do the right thing and shatter the Jack Fleming mythos. People can’t go on believing something that doesn’t rightly exist. Also, Rivera will probably need psychological counseling. Not for PTSD, but he can’t live with these lies any longer. They’re corroding his insides.

A soft-spoken ANA sergeant approaches and asks if we know Jack Fleming’s wife and children back in the States, and Rivera starts trembling like he’s about to spontaneously combust.

“Please tell his family,” this sergeant says to me, “that we are praying for God’s peace to surround them during this sorrow.”

“That’s such a kind sentiment, Hakim. I’ll make sure they know!”

And Rivera stares me down with the look a man makes right before he stabs you in the fucking face. I tell him it just wasn’t the right time or person.

We decide the “right time” is conveniently our last day in country. Captain—formerly LT—holds an emergency formation, a “family meeting” as he calls it. The ANA form up, too, and Rivera, Kim and I march out, somewhat informally.

Kim starts us off. “We wanted to say a few words about . . . Jack Fleming.”

Heads lower in reverence.

Kim looks at me, looks at Rivera. No one wants to be the one to squeeze the trigger. Rivera stands in awe before this humble formation of both Afghan and American soldiers. Hard-working people, a little rough around the edges, who believe in a better world so much that they’re willing to die for it.

“Fuck it,” I say, using aggression to hype me up. “Listen here, men. You people need to know that Jack Fleming is nothing but a big, fat—”

“American hero!” Rivera practically pushes me over shouting this. He looks left, he looks right. “And Afghan hero,” he says. “A hero to two nations. And I’m proud to have served with such a man. But he wasn’t extraordinary. He was just like you and just like me. Having Jack Fleming on our side didn’t give us a superhuman advantage out there. He was a simple man who only wanted to do his best. And his best was pretty damn good. He wanted to be good. As we all aspire to be. And I think you know that deep down we all have the capacity to be our own Jack Fleming.”

The formation ends in mass applause. We’re clapping, some are crying. As this goes on, Kim leans into Rivera and says, “So, I’m pumped and all, but what happens when we get back and the president wants to award nine posthumous Medals of Honor to Jack fucking Fleming?”

Rivera bites his lip. “We’ll cross that landmine when we come to it.”