This guy keeps talking at me and calling me Doc.
“Sit up, Doc. Wake up.”
When he’s not talking at me, he’s talking to this little, blonde bartender. This girl I’ve been hitting on. He tells her it’s okay. That he’ll take care of this. That he knows this guy, and he’ll get him out of here.
I don’t know which guy he’s talking about, but he has his hand on my shoulder and I don’t like that. Don’t like it one bit. I shrug him off, about to get pissed and swing. But before I can, he locks up my arm and carries me off into the street where all these assholes are singing about people they used to know.
“Let’s get you a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t need any fucking coffee, sir. Get fucked, sir,” I say, not sure why I’m calling him sir. My feet won’t push off the sidewalk the way they should, so I drag my toes and let this guy carry me, like Lieutenant Donovan pulling me around the day Zahn got beaned. “An asshole. Just like Lieutenant Donovan.”
“Who?”
“You. You. The asshole.”
“I guess that’s fair.” He puts me down on a bench while the singing reaches a high note. This guy takes a seat next to me, and I start to understand where I am. It’s that little square with the fountain, right next to the French Market, where all the tourists buy their feather boas and shit.
“One more time, Doc. It’s Lieutenant Donovan. It’s Pete, I mean. It’s me.”
“Yeah . . . Zahn told me about you.” I hear for the first time how bad I’m slurring these words. “Zahn told me the lieutenant was around here somewhere. Fuck that asshole.”
And now this guy starts laughing, and I think maybe I’m sobering up, but that can’t be because I’m still seeing the lieutenant sitting here next to me.
“I am an asshole. This is true.”
“Sir?” I poke him in the face.
He pushes my finger aside. “Yes, but don’t call me that. I went through the same thing with Zahn. Just skip it, okay? Call me Pete.”
I reach out again, and when he swats my finger away like a fly, I come back to the world. There’s no reunion or nothing. No hugging or any great-to-see-you bullshit. Or maybe there was earlier in the bar when I was too drunk to realize it, but for now it’s right back to work.
He takes me over to this diner he knows, around the corner. I’m still staggering drunk. Doing better, but still leaning on him every now and again. The poison is on its way out, though. That’s made certain enough when I puke into a gutter. The lieutenant hustles me away, worried the cops might put me in lockup for the night if they see.
He sets me down at the counter and starts ordering food. He makes me drink water, like we’re back in the desert and he’s making us hydrate. I tell him so. “You gonna check the color of my piss, too, sir?”
“Don’t call me that.”
Next, it’s a plate full of french fries. These fries taste so good, I just want to tell everybody. I start raising my voice about it. The lieutenant keeps putting his hand over my mouth, trying to shut me up. I guess he thinks we’re about to get kicked out of here, too. He might be right, but I can’t tell.
It starts working. The coffee, the water, the fries, and the talking. And pretty soon I’m sober enough to understand that this is crazy. Running into the lieutenant in a random bar on New Year’s Eve? He thinks so, too.
“Were you really out alone on New Year’s Eve?” I ask him.
“I was. Were you?”
“No. I was with a girl for some of it.”
He doesn’t push me for details. “I was thinking about Dodge. Five seconds before I walked in there.”
“That a fact, sir?”
“It is. I was wondering what ever happened to him. Where he ended up.”
“You know his real name is Kateb, right, sir?”
“No. First I’m hearing it. And stop calling me that. Please.”
“Okay, sorry.” I put a finger over my lips and shush myself.
“What else do you know about him?”
“Well, I knew he liked shitty metal bands. But then, you knew that, too. He never shut up about that. Also, before he came to work for us, he’d been hanging out at some lake with his friends from school. Trying to leave Iraq and open a beachfront bar someplace. Didn’t work out for some reason.”
The lieutenant laughs. “He would’ve been good at that.”
“And I knew something went wrong for him. Real bad, right after our Humvee got hit, remember? While Zahn was at medical? Just before Ramadi.”
“Yeah? What was that?”
“It was one of those escalations of force. Out on Route Michigan, you know? Someone from the construction platoon shot up this old taxicab when it got too close. One of those Baghdad taxis, you know? That’s why they got suspicious. It was out too far west of the city to make good sense. Anyways, they brought the two guys from the taxi back to Taqaddum. One of them got airlifted up to Al Asad, right away, and I heard that he died a short time later. The other guy, a real big dude, he got patched up at the shock trauma center and brought over to the company headquarters.”
“Why did they bring him over to us?”
“Because Major Leighton had to give him money. The civil affairs people showed up with this stack of Iraqi money. It was our mistake and we owed the guy, they told us. Major Leighton came and got me and Dodge. He wanted Dodge to translate for him, and for me to check on the guy. Make sure he was well enough to travel, since Lieutenant Cobb’s platoon was about to take him over to Habbaniyah and hand him over to the Iraqi police.
“That whole episode shook Dodge up pretty bad. This young Iraqi, a real burly guy about Dodge’s age, was sitting in the truck all bandaged up. And Dodge was talking to him in Arabic, trying to give him all this money and saying a lot more than what Major Leighton was asking him to interpret. But the big guy . . . he wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t say nothing. He wouldn’t even take the money. He just kept staring at Dodge with these fucking dagger eyes. And eventually Dodge just lost it, just started throwing money at him. Like, begging him to take it. But nothing doing. Big guy didn’t say a word. They had to haul Dodge away from the truck, eventually.”
I start feeling bad, like I’m talking too much, and going on too long like drunks do.
But the lieutenant doesn’t seem put off at all. He’s listening close. “Did Dodge know this guy or something?”
“Not sure. He went straight over to the intel guys in that bunker by the flight line after that. Took a week off for leave. Remember? Then, when he came back, we were back on the road before I had a chance to ask him anything. And then Ramadi . . .” I trail off, thinking he might not want me talking any more about that.
“Ramadi,” he says, picking up my train of thought. “And Gomez. And then a few weeks later, I had you brought up on charges.”
I nod my head. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry, Doc.”
“Wasn’t your fault.” I mean it.