A Couple of Bars: The Lieutenant

This started as the introductory scene for a novella twenty times longer. I gutted it because I didn't like where it made up its mind to go.

Afterward, I realized this was a complete story—beginning, middle, and an ending—on its own, albeit a very short one. Which isn't to say that we won't see Glenn again in a serialized set of stories of which this would be the first.

There's a little bit of jargon and acronym-ese in the beginning, but I think most of it can be figured out from context. I hope it doesn't detract from your enjoyment. If you anticipate it will bother you, I put a short glossary of some of the terms at the end that you can check before you begin.

—C

They made him a second lieutenant.
They gave him his two bars of gold.
They made him a forward observer.
He lived to be ten seconds old.
  — to the tune of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean

I'm still not sure which was worse: being in 'Nam or coming home.

Being over there exposed me to torrid heat, exhaustion, canker sores from jungle rot, malaria, diarrhea, constant rain, constant boredom, and coming close to being killed or maimed probably more times than I know.

I mean that last literally: whether it was a fourteen-year-old sitting twenty feet away in the jungle with an AK and a burning hatred of Yanks, or a toe-popper mine in a paddy. Or even that snake we called a "two-stepper" in the idiotic belief that's how long you'd live after a bite.

And though I didn't learn about them until sometime later, you could add: Agent Orange, cancer from liver flukes, and the Hepatitis C endemic among the vets. Let's not even mention what everyone now calls PTSD.

Coming home exposed me to Jackie getting my paycheck while Jody got her. Jody being named Brad in this case.

I stepped off the Pan Am 707 from Tan Son Nhut wondering if she'd be there to meet me. I'd called collect at a refueling stop in Alaska, but no one had answered, so I had to hope she'd gotten my letter. Otherwise, I figured I'd have to hunt down a cab. But she was there, and all was right with the world for about fifteen seconds.

Then, as I caught her up for a kiss followed by a hug, my mouth nuzzling into her neck, I saw the hickey there. Far back, hidden by her long brown hair, but I know a goddamn hickey when I see one and it was a doozy. As I stepped back from her, I saw Brad over her shoulder. He wasn't my best friend, but I thought he was a buddy. Yet, he didn't look glad to see me. He looked nervous and guilty ... seriously nervous and guilty ... and seriously upset at what he was watching.

I'm not stupid.

Yeah, a year is a long time. Yeah, I got horny. But no boom-boom girls for me because that's the deal when it comes to marriage. I had expected Jackie to do the same. Evidently, my expectations were a mite high.

So, I had a decision to make.

The thing about being a butter bar over there is that you don't know shit. So, there are two options. You could run around like a headless chicken, trying to cope with something for which you were absofuckinglutely unprepared. That would be a good way to get everyone killed. Or just you, if your men didn't think you were going to grow out of it pretty quickly.

Alternatively, you could shut your trap and listen to everything the old boots told you, allowing for the obvious hazing and general screw-with-the-louie moves. And the thing you heard the most was to stay as cool as you could when the noise started, then figure out what the situation required to accomplish the job and get everyone out. And do it "fookin' toot sweet" as my RTO used to say.

The CO of the company I was embedded with was this second-tour captain who knew his shit, and Top definitely knew his. They made it crystal clear which approach was acceptable. I was a forward observer, and that meant I was on that first chopper for a combat assault in case Charlie was present in a big way. Nineteen times. In other words, I had become used to acting calmly while my gut was clenched in a knot and dealing with shit quickly.

Of course, "shit" had meant laying down some suppressing artillery around a supposedly cleared LZ to let the trailing slicks land. I didn't think it would be having to figure out a reaction to a wife who, apparently, didn't like cold beds while you were away.

So, I stayed cool and figured out what to do tout de suite. Sometimes you had to call fire in around your own position to stay alive. I scooped up my duffel and headed briskly for the doorway.

"Glenn, wait! Brad's here to say hello, and the car's the other way." Jackie was caught off guard and scurried after me, pulling at my arm.

"Hello, Brad," I tossed over my shoulder, continuing to make a beeline for the doors.

"Glenn! Stop! What's gotten into you?" she demanded.

I paused and met her irritated face with the blandest one I could muster given my suddenly fucked-up mood. "It's simple, Jackie. I am hungry, tired, and haven't gotten laid in about a year. So, I'm off to find some food, a hotel, and a woman, not necessarily in that order. You are well-fed, well-rested, and clearly well-laid, so you and Brad should just go back to wherever you're shacked up."

After "haven't gotten laid" in the second sentence, her face looked surprised. After "a woman" in the third, it started turning angry. After "clearly well-laid" in the fourth, it was stricken.

That last was all the confirmation I needed. She stopped dead, as did Brad. Good for him. I wasn't one of those hard cases I'd left in-country who could annihilate a squad with just a P-38 out of a C-Ration, but I'd lived with bloodshed for a year now and pulled the trigger more than once. My inhibitions against violence were more on the order of "Advisable?" than "Inconceivable!"

Brad, on the other hand, wasn't much different from the college boy he'd been the last time I saw him. He'd have hit the floor before he even figured out he was in a fight.

"Glenn, I-I don't know what you're talking—"

"Save it, Jackie! If you want to keep that kind of thing a secret, tell lover boy to stop giving you hickeys and to stop acting jealous when he sees someone kiss you. And don't freeze in panic when accused." I saw her hand fly to her neck. I guess she hadn't realized he was marking his territory before I came home.

"Have a rotten life." With that, I turned and didi'd the hell out.

Governor Reagan had signed the first no-fault divorce bill in the country over a year before. That made it easier—no need to scramble for proof—and I took quick advantage. The judge awarded her half of our savings, which weren't much; most of our joint belongings because I didn't want them; and enough of my pay for eighteen months, the length of our marriage before I filed, to make up for the disparity in our incomes.

I was expecting a lot worse. But even though her lawyer objected and I got a verbal reprimand from the judge, I guess a moment of smart-assery in court was worth it. When asked if reconciliation was possible, I stood there in my Class As, some fruit salad on my left chest, and said, "Your Honor, if someone can tell me how to reconcile 'forsake all others' with the freshly stained sheets on my bed when I got back, maybe." With that haircut, I figured him for Korea. The look he shot her before lecturing me about respect in a courtroom told me I probably figured right.

The fact that I didn't go all John Wayne on either of them had nothing to do with my emotions and everything to do with not wanting to be arrested. Other than "Leave me alone" and "Get the fuck out of my way," I didn't speak to her from that moment in the airport onward.

Until almost five years later, when she walked up to my table in The Pot Still. I knew she'd made attempts over the years. Friends told me she'd ask where I was stationed, how to get in touch with me, but I'd left strict instructions for radio silence. I guess one of them didn't listen because here she was, not forty-eight hours after I came back for a temporary visit. And she knew which watering hole to find me in, to boot.

"Please talk to me, just for a few minutes, Glenn. Please."

I contemplated the prospect. I had nothing I needed or wanted to say to her. On the other hand, the rage had burned out over the years and I didn't care anymore.

"How'd you know I was here?"

"Someone told me."

"Who?"

She didn't answer, so I turned back to my beer with a quiet, "Goodbye, Jackie."

She edged around the table so I'd have to turn my back if I didn't want to look at her. "Why does it matter?"

"I like to know who's loyal and who'll betray me." That hit home. I saw the flinch.

"You don't know her." Before I could ask the obvious question, she continued. "Carly, Kevin's fiancée."

I knew the name but, yeah, I'd never met her. Kevin was a friend from growing up, and I'd be seeing him later. I was pretty sure he wouldn't have told Jackie diddly-squat himself, so he probably just slipped up. Maybe I should send him one of those World War II posters of "Loose Lips Sink Ships" for Christmas.

"Please, Glenn."

Oh, what the hell. I kicked a chair out from the table.

"You've been gone, and I couldn't figure out how to see you to talk."

The Army had made it pretty easy to accomplish that. I had headed to Ft. Sill in Oklahoma almost immediately for a stint as an instructor, flying back only for the day in court, then bounced to Bragg in North Carolina. I'd wondered if I'd be doing a second tour in 'Nam but Nixon shut all that down, and a spell playing Cold Warrior in Germany was my only other overseas posting before I started thinking about whether active duty was really what I wanted for the rest of my life.

At least she didn't try to blow smoke up my ass. "I'm very sorry I cheated on you."

"I'm sorry you did, too." I shrugged. "Water under the bridge now. But thanks for saying it."

It stalled there for a second. As I said, I didn't have anything to say to her, and she clearly hadn't come with a prepared script.

"I want you to know it wasn't something you did or that you weren't a good husband. It was nothing like that. I just made a mistake. A very bad one."

"Good to know."

"The only thing I blamed you for was not being willing to talk to me after, to maybe see if we could find a way past the mess."

I felt a flare of temper. Maybe the embers weren't entirely cold yet. "You cheated on me. I don't know for how long or"—I ignored her attempt to break in, probably to explain how long—"why exactly, but you weren't faithful, which is kinda the point of marriage. That made ours a joke. There was nothing to fix."

"I didn't think you were faithful either." She put up her hand as I started to react to that. "I know now. Your reaction and what you said made it clear. Plus, I've talked to your close friends and ..." She trailed off for a second, obviously upset at whatever had been said to her. I'd heard some of my friends had been brutal.

"But back then, we all heard stories about the hoochie girls. I figured the stress over there would drive you to do things you normally wouldn't. I didn't like the thought, but I understood. And I was lonely and frightened. Every time there was a knock at the door, I'd think it was someone coming to tell me you were dead. I was falling apart. Brad was a comfort, nothing more. I never even considered not ending it before you came home. I loved you and wanted a life with you."

"Before I came home? Jesus, Jackie! You still had a fuckin' hickey. Does 'before you came home' mean you left just enough time to throw the sheets in the wash before you left for the airport?"

She looked sad. "The week before. I tried earlier but ... well, I wasn't strong enough to hold out against him. I was certain some last-minute thing was going to go wrong and snatch you away forever. It wasn't until that last letter of yours, the one with the flight information, that I was able to pull myself together and make 'it's over' stick with him."

"Well, I hope you two were happy." I didn't. She knew that.

She shook her head. "I didn't go back to him. When I realized that he'd deliberately done that so you'd know, I walked away. I've barely spoken to him since that day. He hated you."

"The feeling was mutual." I'd nursed that rancor up until the evening I got back to my quarters in North Carolina and found a postcard with a cheesy picture of a cable car. Glad you're not here. Mayor Alioto gave a speech about the street violence problem in Haight-Ashbury. Good that victims usually recover. Eventually. Funny how buddies would think I cared about crime waves happening in a specific neighborhood twenty-eight hundred miles away. Almost like it happened to someone I knew. I smiled.

"Did you hate me too?"

"Yes." She flinched. "And I loved you for a while. You don't turn that off like a spigot. It took some time."

She hesitated even longer. "Do you still?"

Her grammar didn't make it entirely clear which emotion she was referring to, but I assumed she wasn't stupid enough to think I was carrying a torch. "Not really. I don't think about it much either way. It was a bad couple of years that I just prefer to put in the rearview mirror."

"It wasn't all bad."

"Actually, in retrospect, it was. Absolutely everything I believed about us wasn't true. I just didn't know it until I got back. Those good times? Illusions."

The sadness suddenly looked as if it would turn to tears. "I'm really sorry. Thanks for being willing to talk a moment." She pushed back her chair and stood. "Goodbye, Glenn. Again, I'm so, so sorry I hurt you that way. I really do hope your life turns out great." She plastered on a small smile and walked quickly away toward the back.

Call me an unforgiving bastard if you want. I probably am. But it's the way I'm wired: I don't want to be looking over my shoulder, wondering when the figurative knife is headed for my back. There are hardship tours when you're in the Army, and spouses get left behind sometimes. The way I look at it, if you can forget your vows in the first eighteen months, then the half-life of the next "I forgot" isn't good.

I managed another quarter of my beer before I felt someone standing behind me. "Yes, Jackie?" I said, turning, "What do you— Oh! Hello, Leslie."

"Why are you such an asshole?"

"What?"

"She's in the Ladies crying her eyes out. All she wanted to do was talk a minute. Did you have to make her cry?"

"First of all, I didn't make her cry. Everything about this situation is on her. Every single goddam bit of it is a consequence of her sleeping with someone who wasn't her husband while I was getting my ass shot at." My tone was pretty vehement, and she stiffened in surprise. "I get she's your best friend, but maybe you should just think about who fucked up and who didn't and stop blaming the guy who got cheated on."

"But you—"

I cut her off. "But I nothing! I accepted her apology. I don't hate her anymore. I wasn't rude. I just answered her questions honestly. If you expect anything beyond that, you're delusional. I'm not going to kiss and make up, and maybe see if we can patch things up just because she regrets what she did."

Leslie looked at me in disgust. "She didn't come here to see if you could make it work. She's married, you asshole."

"Oh." Not the most brilliant response but, when you think about it, what was there to say to that?

"She just wanted—"

"Umm." I turned the other direction to see the reason I was in the bar this early. "Am I interrupting?"

I think Leslie would have liked to say yes to the newcomer and chew into me some more but, before she could do anything that stupid, we heard a sharp, "Leslie!"

Jackie stood some fifteen feet away. Her eyes were a little red but, otherwise, she looked reasonably put together. Her glare made it clear that she hadn't instigated Leslie's mini tirade. "We need to go." As Leslie glanced back at me one more time, "Leslie! Right. Now."

Elizabeth's eyebrows went up in surprise as she met my eyes, but she leaned in for a quick peck on the cheek anyway. "Hi, hon." Her smile and a rueful glance down at her uniform said she'd probably have liked more than that after not seeing me for three months, but the wink that promised more later was enough for me. Around her shoulder, I saw Jackie glance over as she all but frog-marched Leslie to the door. Her expression loosened enough to convey a brittle apology as she herded her friend out.

Later, Elizabeth burrowed into my shoulder. "You've been a bit out of it all evening, hon. Want to talk?"

"It's nothing, sweetie. Sorry."

She sat up and my eyes dropped involuntarily to her bare chest. She reached up and chucked me under the chin, forcing my eyes up to hers. "Your ex shows up out of the blue. You get all moody. Coincidence? I don't think so."

"Liz, come on! She's my ex for a reason. I'm not still hung up on her. It was just a surprise."

"Hey. Don't get defensive." She leaned in and kissed me lightly. "I don't think you're still in love with her. I think you're in love with me." She smiled as I nodded. "But she's not just another girl from your past, either. She's not Nookie Peterson—"

"Nancy Peterson," I interrupted.

"Whatever." We both grinned. "That one was your girlfriend for three years and got your cherry, and you can laugh about her and show me her picture in your yearbook. Even Karen Bigtits ... okay, grumpy! Karen Bickford ... the woman you were diddling before you came to your senses and asked me out, gets mentioned without any drama.

"You never talk about Jackie other than when you told me, in exactly two clipped sentences, that you were married once." She stroked my chest softly. "It's like ... I don't know ... a wound that has closed over but there's still some pus inside. I think you need to let it out, and I'm there for you, even to talk about old flames. Let it out, Glenn."

She put her head back down on my shoulder and let me process it. It took a while to get my thoughts together. Finally, "There were moments over there where I was sure I was going to die. Sometimes it was being pinned down when we came into contact, listening to rounds zip through the leaves or smack into the mud. Other times it was knowing that a sniper was reported on a hilltop nearby, and I had to be careful which way I pointed my binoculars, wondering if I'd even feel it hit. What got me through it was a death grip on memories of home. My folks, my friends, the ones who weren't radically anti-war, at least. And my wife, waiting for me at home, and the kids we'd have someday. Except she wasn't waiting."

I could hear the desolation in my voice on that last sentence.

"It's like ... like ..." It took me a moment to find the simile. "It's like walking over a bridge across a canyon. It feels firm beneath your feet. Then, when you reach the other side, you look back and see that the timbers are rotten, and half the bracing has already collapsed." I looked to see if she understood.

"What you believed wasn't real."

"Exactly."

"And therefore, you start to wonder what else in life isn't real. And that leaves you alone."

I didn't have to answer that.

I felt her lips where my neck met my shoulder, trailing a line of soft kisses up toward my jaw and then my lips. "I'm real."

I hope you enjoyed it. If so, the next episode will be A Couple of Bars: The Publican.

As promised, here are some of the terms that may or may not be familiar to everyone.