"Ah f*ck
." My BFF Caleb is sitting at the bar, shooting the shit with Eli. And by BFF, I mean a guy I wouldn’t piss on if he was on fire. The last thing I want is to listen to him chest-beating about how much action he saw downrange. How the hell can Eli tolerate that guy?
I met him here a few months back with a couple of the other vets here on campus. He's a former West Point officer, which—unfortunately—should tell you something right there. Ninety percent of the kids who come out of West Point are normal, well-adjusted adults. Like Eli. Except that Eli was the kid leading the insurgency at West Point. Not Caleb.
No, he's one of the ones who gets high on power and authority and forgets that there are people executing the orders he gives.
God but I hate officers like Caleb. Spineless f*ck
s who talk about how awesome it was at war, blowing shit up. Like he gets off on the very thought of it.
And what’s nuts is that Caleb thinks we’re actually friends.
And there's a happy mental image that I’m about to try and drown with some alcohol. I'm not in the mood to listen to Caleb on a good day, but because I need a drink, I walk up to the bar and mumble something vaguely polite and order a beer.
Praise Jesus, Caleb ducks away to the latrine.
"You going to behave tonight?" Eli asks, sliding a beer in front of me.
"I shall give it my best effort," I say with a grin that’s about as genuine as I’m feeling right now.
He glares at me in the way that reminds me of my old first sergeant. "Think of the children. Or if nothing else, think of me having to order new bar stools if you break another one."
Eli is a study in contradictions. He runs a bar—correction: a craft brewery—but I’m pretty sure he’s got a graduate degree from the business school here, which is one of the top business schools in the country. West Point grads tend to be clean-cut and on the tight side of uptight but he’s also sporting full sleeves of tattoos on both arms and a beard that puts the members of the local chapter of Hell’s Angels to shame.
I snort and take a long pull off the beer. It's the perfect balm to a really odd start to the semester.
Eli changes the channel on the TV over the bar.
The newscaster’s face is polished and tight with too much plastic surgery. There’s a false somberness as he reports the latest news from the war.
FOB overrun within five hours. Seven coalition forces killed in the heavy fighting over three days in the mountains near the Pakistan border.
“Change the f*ck
ing channel.” I don’t beg. I can’t go that far. But I can’t watch this. Not tonight.
“Hang on.”
I don’t know Eli’s story but I know he doesn’t turn the war off. Doesn’t avoid it like I do. He watches the news incessantly.
But then Caleb returns.
“Hey, dude. How’s the first week of classes going?”
See? He thinks we’re friends. And when he’s not being a deliberate tool, I have to be polite. Because he’s one of Eli’s stray veterans he keeps rounding up from the local area. And we’re supposed to stick together or some shit.
“Surviving. You?” I can be polite.
“Pretty good. I’m doing an independent study with the head of the law department.” He shifts his attention to the news from Afghanistan. “f*ck
man, I wish I was there right now. They wouldn’t have taken the base if I’d been in command.” He takes another pull from his beer. “We’d blow those motherf*ck
ers to Kingdom Come. Let God sort ’em out.”
“I’m sure you would.” I try, I really try to keep the sarcasm to a minimum.
I don’t really succeed.
“What. You know what it’s like, man. The f*ck
ing charge you get when you blow one of those f*ck
ers away.”
I take a long pull off my beer. I do know. And I do not want to f*ck
ing talk about it. "You know the Green Zone wasn't exactly f*ck
ing Fallujah, right?"
Eli sets another beer in front of me. "Not tonight, Josh."
"We got bombed. Every day," Caleb says mildly.
I shrug. "Sure there were a few attacks. But for the most part, it was goddamned Disney World."
"Disney World doesn't have incoming mortar fires, now does it?"
I smile coldly. "From six miles away. Dude, the closest thing to tragedy at the Green Zone was the Olympic swimming pool running out of chlorine tablets."
"What the hell is your problem?" Caleb rounds on me. “I don’t have enough PTSD or something?”
I down the rest of my beer. "You know, I came in here to grab a beer, not listen to some prima donna officer bitch jack off to bullshit war stories."
"Oh, come on. You know you liked it. Everyone f*ck
ing likes blowing shit up."
I did like it. And that’s ninety percent of the f*ck
ing problem.
I've never felt so alone when surrounded by so many people.