Four years before the selection process
As a matter of fact, Ortega's story doesn't start on board of the heli-ambulances in Vietnam. It starts well before.
Ortega – as many others - decided for the first time to join the army in '63, in front of the television news announcing the murder of the president of the United States.
That afternoon, he was alone in his home because his parents were at his uncle's house.
So Ortega took his chance and drank a couple of his father's beers: an innocent, 'boys' thing, and nothing more than that.
Ortega wasn't a spoilt boy, nor mixed-up or a rebel.
Not that at his age he wasn't still in time to become like that, he just wasn't that kind of guy.
He was a calm boy, maybe a little lonely but peaceful, and surely not the kind of guy you could imagine - one day - running or marching with a rifle in his hands, screaming that ' killing is cool'.
The only thing that really didn't work inside of him was that he had no enthusiasm for anything.
And that afternoon, he decided to get drunk because he hadn't anything better to do.
The first beer had gone down bitter and disappointing, but cold at least and so, in some way, comforting on such a hot day.
The guy wasn't really good at holding his drink at all. Once he started his second can, the young Ortega felt his head starting to spin already, and the urge to puke too.
Together with the sick feeling, a sense of guiltiness rose up, even though he had probably just drunk too fast, as often happens to those who are not used to drinking alone.
He turned the television on.
It looked like all of the channels (not so many at the time) were all broadcasting just news.
There wasn't even one western movie or cartoon: all of the damn channels just had an anchorman speaking.
At first, Ortega continued to switch between the channels, because he didn't want to watch news at all.
Then he thought that if all of the channels were broadcasting just news, something big had probably happened.
Maybe the Russians had finally launched the bomb for real.
Maybe it was the end of the world.
So Ortega decided to stop, turn the volume up and finally hear what the hell everyone was talking about.
They had killed the president.
Not the president of the Supreme Court or any other kind of president: someone had killed that president and they continued repeating it like a hurricane warning.
Someone had killed Kennedy.
Something rose into Ortega's head and seized it, and it was as if the guy was possessed by his own feelings.
The United States...
The United States are the only place in the world where the law grants people the pursuit of happiness.
While in the red countries – instead – the communist governments committed horrible massacres: the Tibetan monks in China, the Russian Gulags... And many others. All in all, while many countries in the world used terror against their own citizens, in the US people just lived to be happy, fuck...And yet, someone had just shot its president.
How the fuck could anyone shoot the President of the United States?
Ortega continued watching incredulous, as if he might have had misunderstood.
And they didn't even shoot a president like many others, but one of the Kennedys... An idealist, a pure of heart, and yet someone shot him in the head just like a fucking injured horse being put down.
Manuel had just drunk two beers he shouldn't have, and someone, that morning, had woken up, loaded a rifle and shot his president.
In that exact instant, Ortega saw himself from the outside, and did it so well that it scared him.
He had no enthusiasm for anything, he never devoted himself to anything.
No one in the world would ever have succeeded in forcing him to dedicate himself anything. Had he continued living this way, he would never have done anything good in his whole life.
That was how Ortega decided to join the army.
Had he not drunk those two beers, that afternoon, maybe Kennedy would have survived.
Yes.
Yes because he - those damn two beers – he had drunk them without even opening them.
That was the problem.
He had taken the first one with his mouth, bitten it like a dog, and pierced it with his teeth until it exploded. Then he had gulped down blood and beer all together, sucking from the aluminum blades as sharp as razors, and he did it without even feeling any pain.
He had felt the blades rip his lips and go through his skin, giving him just a vague discomfort together with the consciousness of the damage he was doing to himself, but no real pain.
The first beer mostly tasted of blood.
Once over – and despite the fact his stomach was already turning against him – Ortega immediately started another one as if he was crazy, like a possessed person, and this time his mouth literally crushed.
He could clearly feel that with his cheeks pierced he couldn't suck anymore, because of the air loss caused by the hole cuts he had just made on himself.
Manuel Ortega was now literally drinking his own blood, with an even more bitter taste because of the very little beer that was diluting it.
And while he continued to gulp down that bitter blood, the television continued its litany.
“The President died at....”
Ortega...
ORTEGA