I hail a cab on St. Charles Avenue at eleven thirty on New Year’s Eve and ask the driver to take me to the French Quarter. He’s justifiably annoyed, but eventually agrees. I’ve decided on a whim to drift into Molly’s on the off chance that I’ll find Paige there. Without the courage to call her, it’s the best I can do.
The crowds become impassable when the cab reaches Canal Street, so I throw the driver a big tip to compensate for leaving him stuck without a ready fare or an easy way out. Molly’s is on the far side of the Quarter, almost to Esplanade. It’s a mile to walk, down streets packed with drunks, meandering en masse toward the river in an effort to catch the last of the fireworks.
I pass through Jackson Square as the fireworks reach their crescendo, and trudging through the crowd with my hands in my pockets, I try not to notice the couples gliding off into dark corners.
A sense of embarrassment catches me off guard, as I become suddenly aware that I’m underdressed in my jeans and boots. Everywhere I look, young revelers are dressed to the nines. Women brave the cold night in their shiny party dresses by cozying up to men in slacks and high-collared sweaters. I bow my head and try to hide inside my canvas bomber jacket. I worry about running into a classmate, alone as I am on New Year’s Eve, lacking the self-respect to even dress for the occasion.
I miss Paige in a way I didn’t expect. I feel the urge to call her, but at midnight on New Year’s Eve? After I’ve stood her up five days running? I can’t. It would be worse than desperate. It would be desperately selfish.
Even if Paige isn’t working, even if she happens to be at Molly’s, it’s hard to imagine how she’d have an interest in seeing me. Maybe I’m looking for Paige so she can tell me to my face that I’m an idiot. I need to grow up, and a midnight phone call isn’t the place to start. I should bear things for what they are. I should take responsibility.
The brass buttons had hurried back to Ramadi to spread the story of our dustup. He must have told anyone who would listen because it became the talk of the Ramadi chow hall that night. The lieutenant with the nerve to tell off a diplomat. A decidedly junior diplomat, but still. All the regimental staff officers had a good laugh, I’m sure. But not the commander.
We pulled into the marshaling yard just after dark and I stood aside while Gomez and Zahn supervised the breakdown of the convoy and the cleaning of the vehicles. They pushed the Marines to hurry so they could get some chow before the dinner line closed.
Cobb, in the marshaling yard to prep his platoon for an overnight construction mission, pulled me aside. He’d been on watch in the operations center when Major Leighton got the late-afternoon call. Because I hadn’t reached Taqaddum in time to warn him, Major Leighton was blindsided. Regiment learned about the dustup before he did, which was unforgivable. I’d made it look like he couldn’t control his lieutenants or even stay up-to-date on their antics.
My stomach dropped. I imagined him bursting into the company offices in the morning, wheezing fury and letting it spill over the plywood walls so everyone in the company could know how incompetent and clueless I’d made him look. I decided that hiding from him wouldn’t help me. I wanted to get it over with first thing, so I went over to the operations center and volunteered to take Gunny Dole’s overnight watch shift. Gunny Dole smiled, thanked me, and hustled out before I had time to change my mind.
I didn’t even bother to shower or change out of my stinking flight suit. The overnight shift would keep me awake, as would the quickly healing but still painful blisters under my eyes. I’d stand up from the watch officer’s chair around six o’clock the next morning, set myself by his office door, and present myself for a dressing-down as he came in from breakfast.
I collapsed into the watch officer’s rolling chair and pulled myself up to the desk, drawing a line in the logbook and writing in block letters, “I, Second Lieutenant P. E. Donovan, have relieved the watch. I have nothing significant to report at this time.”
The sergeants stood, looking confused by my filthy uniform and wafting stench. They took turns briefing me. Intelligence. Movement control. Logistics tasking. They each issued a crisp, well-prepared update on the operational picture.
Most of our convoys went out at night. The watch officer represented the company while Major Leighton slept, responsible for all vehicles and personnel on the road, and ready at any time to update higher headquarters on the company’s current operations.
The sergeants finished briefing me and returned to their routine. They’d been forced by Gunny Dole’s empty uniform to run the overnight shift on their own and had consequently developed a tight system. Information packaged in clipped speech moved around the room in choreographed bursts. I didn’t have much to contribute, so I leaned back in the tall chair and listened to the hum.
Computer screens, scattered at watch stations around the room, burned out my night vision. I rubbed my eyes, avoiding the sore patches where the blisters had been, and blinked away the spots. Printed banners came into focus. Over the intelligence desk, a banner read WHAT DO I KNOW? WHO NEEDS TO KNOW IT? HAVE I TOLD THEM? And over the door: COMPLACENCY KILLS.
Field telephones with ringers more grinding and caustic than any in the civilian world rattled folding tables against stone floors. Sketchy rumors of enemy activity flowed through the intelligence clerk to the movement-control sergeant, who used the information to alter convoy routes over the radio. Notations appeared in grease pencil on the laminated wall map.
A stack of radios, mounted to a table in the corner, squealed with transmissions from convoys and dismounted patrols moving under cover of night. Reports of small-arms fire and suspicious vehicles came through the speakers in snippets, breathy and rushed. A lance corporal from the communications section struggled to write it all down on yellow slips. Each slip had a box for the date and time, the sender’s call sign, and the message description.
The lance corporal sweated over the details. The kid didn’t understand friction, yet. How chaos in the field distorted everything. How it made every message irrelevant before it ever went out over the air. Still, he tried to understand it all. He massaged scratchy transmissions into coherent, if contradictory, exchanges and meekly offered me a stack of yellow slips every hour or so.
I’d thank him and give each message a glance, but only because he had worked so hard. The real story always came through the computer. We had a chat room set up on the classified network. Watch officers from around the battle space used it to coordinate operations in real time. The watch officer in Ramadi, a nameless major responsible for all of western Iraq, demanded status updates at random intervals. He used the same, easily overlooked message each time: “MNF-W_Watch Officer: All stations, update status.” He did it that way, subtly, to ensure that the junior watch officers didn’t fall asleep. If a subordinate station didn’t reply inside thirty seconds with a curt “NSTR”— nothing significant to report—the next grinding ring on the tactical line would be an unpleasant, accusative call from regimental headquarters in Ramadi.
On the other side of the desk, a blue force-tracker terminal showed convoys and dismounted patrols as icons moving along the highways, or stationary at intersections. When a blue force tracker somewhere outside the wire reported an IED attack or a snap vehicle checkpoint, the terminal gave a beep and the icon flashed.
I selected the icon representing Cobb’s platoon and checked how long he’d been sitting still. He and his Marines had set a cordon at an intersection north of Fallujah and were working through the night to build a vehicle checkpoint for the Iraqi Army. They arranged Hesco baskets in defensive positions on either side of the road and used front-end loaders to fill them with dirt. They set steel traffic barriers in the asphalt and strung them with razor wire.
When finished, the barriers would force approaching cars and trucks into slow, serpentine turns, making it harder to charge the checkpoint with a vehicle bomb. But until then, Cobb’s platoon was a target, ripening with each passing hour they remained stationary.
Three times, Cobb’s Marines sent up flares to warn off traffic. Kinetic events, like flares and escalations of force, triggered official reports to regimental headquarters, due within an hour of the event. So, each time it happened, Cobb called on the satellite phone to walk me through the sequence of events. The type of car. The provocative behavior. We called the assembled details “the word picture.”
Most on-scene commanders used the radio to pass reports, but Cobb liked the satellite phone. It made him feel like a world traveler, a young adventurer. On the radio, he would have to speak in short bursts while the whole battle space listened in. Cobb didn’t have the patience for that. He liked to tell stories and infuse each narrative with stock characters and surprise endings. Somehow, he always managed to make the story about himself.
Cobb’s Marines finished their work around five o’clock, and their blue force-tracker icon started moving half an hour later, just as the watch shift changed. Wong took my chair and made a note in the logbook. The outgoing shift briefed him as they’d briefed me the night before.
Properly relieved, the sergeants shuffled off to the chow hall, but I spent thirty minutes sitting next to Wong. When it became palpably awkward, I ambled to the back of the room and hung around Major Leighton’s office door.
The adrenaline of the watch drained away. My legs and eyelids went soft and I struggled to stay alert. I stopped myself from leaning against the plywood wall, afraid I might fall asleep standing up. My cheeks felt rough, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t shaved in two days. The flaw in my plan came into focus. Not only had I humiliated him in front of the entire command, I now had the gall to appear before him unshaven while wearing a soiled uniform. I wanted to run, shower, and shave and come back in half an hour looking refreshed. But Major Leighton stepped into the operations center before I had a chance. He looked anxious and distracted, clutching his coffee mug and classified briefing folder.
I summoned my nerve and stood up straight.
He stopped midstride and raised his eyebrows, looking puzzled as to why a lieutenant would stand at attention by his office door at six in the morning. He waited for me to say something.
I searched his face for clues, having failed to anticipate this turn of events. I’d imagined the moment many times and prepared for a dozen unpleasant scenarios, but never planned to initiate my own reprimand. Finally, Major Leighton’s face showed some recognition, like the memory of a root canal. He closed his eyes, pulled a slow, sour breath through his gritted teeth, and pointed at his office.
I followed him and came to attention six inches in front of his desk.
He didn’t raise his voice or lose his temper. He just glanced at a typed document, formatted in flawless naval correspondence, and pushed it across his desk. “Sign it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” I leaned forward at modified parade rest, bent over with one hand tucked in the small of my back, and signed it without reading. I knew what it said.
“There were better ways to handle that, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” I dropped the pen and stood up straight. Back to the position of attention. Eyes forward.
“You embarrassed us. You embarrassed me. The Marines in this company? They work hard. You took the spotlight from them and put it on yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Worse than that, you showed a lack of bearing. No emotional discipline. And I’ll be honest, Pete. It makes me question your leadership.” He looked me up and down. “It also doesn’t help that you look like shit.”
“Yes, sir.”
He stood, planted his hands on his desk, and leaned in close. “Would you like to defend yourself, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir.” I smelled scrambled eggs on his breath. “No excuse.”
“Good. Do better next time.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Dismissed.” He sat down and opened his laptop to a website about sports.
“Dismissed. Aye, aye, sir.” Even though he’d stopped paying attention, I made sure to leave his office in the proper way. I took a long step backward and came to the position of attention before finishing the ceremony with a proper “Good morning, sir.”
I turned on my left heel with a crisp drill movement and marched smartly to the door. A water bottle filled with sand hung on a length of parachute cord. It acted as a counterweight and closed the door behind me.
Wong smirked, “Have a good one, Donovan.” In the corner of my eye, I caught him smiling and dialing the satellite phone. Probably reaching out to Cobb to see what time he wanted to get breakfast.
Outside, under the awning, I leaned against the concrete wall and looked east into the sunrise, sickened at the thought of a night gone by without sleep. I worked to catch my breath and slow my heart. Three hauls of morning air, boiling and laced with exhaust, did the job.
I pulled the soft cover against my scalp and walked across the compound with the brim low on my forehead. The taste of hot guts stewed up into my mouth. I kept my eyes on my feet, hoping to avoid passing conversations with other lieutenants, or with Gunny Dole, refreshed and just back from an extralong breakfast.
Even looking at my feet, I stumbled. My toes caught the dirt with every third step. I worked my eyelids in an effort to get some moisture going. The gallon of coffee I’d needed over the course of the night, combined with the strain caused by dim computer screens, made my eyeballs feel like sponges wrung out in bleach. Letter of caution or not, I needed a few hours of sleep. I didn’t deserve it, but I needed it.
I staggered toward my room, steering a listless course through the rows of enlisted barracks, sculpting in my mind the moment I’d fall face-first onto my cot.
A voice stopped me. Gomez at her most stern, lecturing a Marine somewhere in the maze of long, wooden huts. She was lacing into him, whoever he was. But then a laugh rose up and I peeked around the corner to investigate, expecting some sort of criminal, group hazing. Instead, I found my whole platoon up early and smiling.
“Look, the object is to wrap the horseshoe around the post,” Doc Pleasant said to Dodge.
The rest of the platoon lounged on the barracks steps or leaned against plywood walls. They’d stripped down to their green T-shirts, folded their blouses and arranged them in three neat rows next to their stacked rifles. Obviously, the junior Marines had assembled expecting a morning formation run, but had found Gomez with another idea.
“Unless you can get a leaner,” Doc Pleasant continued. “That’s the most points.”
“I understand, then. How do I get a leaner?” Dodge considered the weight of the horseshoe in his hand.
“Just practice, man.” Pleasant handed a horseshoe to Gomez. “Will you show him, Sergeant?”
“What am I? Fucking schoolteacher over here? I look like Mary Poppins to you?”
The platoon laughed, either because she’d referenced some inside joke, or because her Mary Poppins crack had made no sense at all. I couldn’t tell.
Gomez rocked the horseshoe back and forth, keeping her arm straight, her knees bent. “Easy does it, Dodge. Straight wrist. Arch that fucker in there.”
She let go with too much force. The horseshoe flew well over the post and hit the plywood barracks next to me. I ducked and let it bounce over my head.
The platoon, suddenly aware of my presence, let out a collective gasp as they saw how close Sergeant Gomez had come to hitting me. In a stupor, which the Marines seemed to mistake for calm detachment, I went to the horseshoe and picked it up.
Gomez jogged over and took it from me. “Sir. Sorry, sir. Didn’t see you, sir. Sorry.”
Behind her, the Marines laughed hesitantly. She turned around and scowled at them.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Where did this come from?”
“The horseshoe set, sir? Doc’s father shipped it over. Pulled the shit right out his lawn.”
“And this is morning PT for you guys?”
Her face flushed bright red as she took the offhand remark as criticism, her platoon commander calling her soft.
“No, sir. Just some fun. Real quick. Then I’m gonna run them till they puke. Promise, sir.” She smiled nervously.
“Well, don’t do that. We don’t need heat casualties inside the wire. We get enough of that on the road.”
“No, sir. Course not. Just meant . . .” She stammered to a halt.
Without meaning to, I’d tied her in a knot. I never understood how I could make her nervous. How she ever viewed me with anything other than amused derision. An outsider, observing the platoon without context, would have no problem spotting its leader.
“It’s fine,” I said, balancing the horseshoe in my palm. “Just curious.” Behind her, the platoon began to fidget. “Mind if I take a throw?”
She brightened. “Sure, sir. Course.”
I walked to the spot where Dodge and Pleasant stood. “Whose turn am I taking here?”
“Me? I suppose?” Dodge looked at Doc Pleasant and shrugged.
Pleasant nodded. “Him against me, sir.”
“So I’m Dodge’s proxy then?” I smiled, light-headed and loopy. “Good deal for him. Alabama’s been taking it to Louisiana as far back as Bear Bryant.”
The southerners in the platoon understood and laughed, except for Doc Pleasant.
“Cold, sir,” he said. “Cold.”
I reeled back my arm and gave the horseshoe a few practice swings before closing my eyes and letting go. It wasn’t technique, closing my eyes. And it wasn’t some strange attempt to show my Zen mastery of horseshoes. I was just so tired, it couldn’t be helped.
My eyes stayed closed until a soft thump and a metallic clang let me know that the horseshoe had reached its target. I opened my eyes slowly to the sound of cheers. The horseshoe leaned perfectly against the post.
A big hand landed firmly on my back. It was Zahn. “Damn, sir. You do this a lot back home?”
“No. First time.”
Dodge laughed and feigned punching Doc Pleasant in the ribs. “Behold me, Lester. I am master of the horseshoe game.”
“The fuck you talking about?” Doc Pleasant shot back. “It was the sir’s throw.”
“The mulasim was my proxy. Do you not remember?”
Doc Pleasant shrugged Dodge off. “Back up. My turn.”
The platoon showered Doc with jeers and whistles as he pushed them aside to make room for his comically wide stance. He scowled and took his practice swings. The Marines kept the pressure on, gleefully unaccustomed to the sight of their meek corpsman so riled up. Even Gomez played along. She didn’t join in, but she didn’t stop it either. She just stood off to the side, arms crossed and smiling.
The heckling seemed to work. Doc’s face flushed bright red, and he couldn’t get comfortable in his stance. He tried in vain to find a grip he liked. He switched his feet and decided a two-handed tossing motion worked better. Each time he altered his approach, the jeers and laughter grew louder.
I watched Doc’s face as genuine anger replaced the worry lines and grimaces. It crawled into his cheeks and out to his limbs. The beast in him. Something I hadn’t seen before. I looked to the Marines to see if they’d noticed it, too. They hadn’t. The intensity of the banter only grew, the Marines thinking it all in good fun.
Doc clinched his jaw and narrowed his eyes, alone in the moment. The more he delayed, the more seriously he seemed to take this throw, and the deeper the platoon sank into hysterics.
The jeers became more cutting.
“Doc Pleasant! Captain of the Olympic horseshoe team!”
“The fuck you doing, Doc? Yoga?”
“If you don’t throw that thing in three fucking seconds, I’m taking it. You forfeit.”
Through the haze of fatigue, I found a grin spreading across my face. I worked to remove it, tightening my cheeks and pursing my lips, trying to regain my officer’s composure. My bearing, as Major Leighton had called it. But the grin would not be tamed. The muscles of my face succumbed to it, driven back by a force I was too addled to resist.
It was happiness, I realized. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been happy. The platoon, my Marines, had welcomed me. For the first time, invited me to join. In that moment, listening to them laugh and jeer, not standing apart from them or banished to my Humvee, I smiled.
Doc Pleasant made his throw. The platoon’s laughter stalled, and a collective, anticipatory howl rose up as the horseshoe sailed toward the post. He missed it badly, and the jeers erupted again. No longer making any attempt to hide my participation, I smiled and clapped as Zahn walked over to jokingly pat Doc Pleasant on the shoulder.
Doc bristled. He brushed Zahn’s hand away violently and turned on his heel in an attempt to shove him. But Zahn stepped back before Doc could connect and watched as he stumbled awkwardly forward.
Doc recovered his balance and snarled a sincere “Fuck you!” in Zahn’s direction.
Zahn threw up his palms in defense. “Whoa, whoa. It’s fucking horseshoes, Doc!”
The mood of the platoon turned. The laughs evaporated into cries of protest. They’d been having fun a moment before, a genuinely fine morning ruined by Doc’s nonsense, and several Marines moved to break up the nascent fight.
Gomez got there first. Zahn shook his head with confusion while Gomez wrapped her arms around Doc’s waist and put a shoulder into his chest. She dug her toes into the dirt and pushed him back. Dodge wanted to step in, too, but he saw something in the demeanor of Gomez and Zahn that told him it was a Marine thing. And he wasn’t a Marine. He backed away and slipped his hands into his pockets.
Different elements within the platoon, sensing that morning PT had ended, began drifting back to their folded blouses and stacked rifles. They dressed and walked away without waiting for formal permission, hoping to get breakfast before the chow hall closed the line.
Zahn whispered in my ear, “Sir, you should probably go. We’ll square this away.”
“Right,” I murmured. “Right. Of course. Thanks, Corporal.”
Zahn was protecting the platoon, ensuring that I didn’t witness something that would make me obligated to bring Doc Pleasant up on charges. And possibly even culpable if I didn’t.
I walked away, expecting at any moment to hear Gomez’s sharp voice lacing into Pleasant with threats of formal charges and extra duty. But all I heard was Pleasant’s deepening stream of invective. Cursing her. Cursing Zahn. Telling the whole world to fuck off. I snuck a glance over my shoulder and saw that she’d sat him down on the barracks steps. She kept a hand on his shoulder while Zahn knelt and looked into his face, both of them trying to understand what had gone wrong.
I glanced in the other direction and saw Dodge choosing a path to avoid both me and the pack of Marines headed to the chow hall. He was walking with his head down, toward the nice spot on the berm overlooking the river, alone.
Half a block from Molly’s, weaving through the packed sidewalk and feeling brutally sober, I wonder if Dodge has found his way into something like a home or met anyone he can consider a friend. That’s what he always needed, I think. More than money. More than safety, even.
I walk into Molly’s, elbow my way through the thinning crowd of drunk revelers, and, through sheer determination, manage to get a beer and a shot of Jameson from the little blonde behind the bar. I take the shot with half the beer and start to numb down. I feel instantly better, and much less interested in an ass-chewing from Paige. Still, I scan the bar to see if she’s here.
And for a moment I think I’m hallucinating. But I look again and find there’s no denying it.
It’s Lester Pleasant, by himself at the end of the bar, looking drunk enough to fall off his stool.