Savages

7

Chon doesn’t say much.

People who don’t know him think this is because he lacks vocabulary. The opposite is true—Chon doesn’t use a lot of words because he likes them so much. Values them, so he tends to keep them for himself.

“It’s like people who like quarters,” O explained one time. “People who like quarters hate to spend quarters. So they always have a lot of quarters.”

Okay, she was ripped at the time.

But not wrong.

Chon always has a lot of words in his head, he just doesn’t let them out of his mouth very often.

Take “savage.”

Singular of “savages.”

Chon is intrigued by the noun versus the adjective of it, the chicken and the egg, the cause and effect of that particular etymology. This conundrum (nice fucking word) emerged from a conversation he overheard in Stanland. The topic was FundoIslamos who threw acid in little girls’ faces for the sin of going to school.

Here’s the scene that Chon remembers:

EXT. SEAL TEAM FIREBASE – DAY

A group of SEALS—worn out from the firefight—stand around a coffee urn set on a mess table.

SEAL TEAM MEDIC

(shocked, appalled)

How can you account for people doing something so . . . savage?

SEAL TEAM LEADER

(jaded)

Easy—they’re savages.

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