Page 10 of Road Refugees

We were all speechless, mouths hanging open. I could barely whisper, “Then what did he do?”

Doll said, “He calmly turned around and went back to his seat.”

I looked at the curly, mustard-colored dog. He had his chin on his rectangular paws. His perfectly round obsidian eyes glimmered with intelligence.

Gunther finally whispered, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.”

I could not agree more.

Later, the three of us racked out in a special bunkhouse for veterans. For now, our dogs stayed in their kennels. We all took turns in the little shower—Eloise removed her prosthetic leg—and I turned down a chance at Gunther’s whiskey flask. I liked being sober but was still so unsure about my ability to maintain it. Would one sip send me back onto that depressive, downward road? It wasn’t worth the risk finding out.

“Have you seen Samantha since she broke it off?” Eloise asked Gunther. She sat on her twin bed propped against the wall, her empty pajama leg trailing like a flag.

What was this now? I thought we’d been sharing goals and fears, hopes and tears. And now Gunther had a fiancée I didn’t know about? I felt offended and sat up straighter on my own bed.

Gunther gulped his flask, smacking his lips. “Nope. Don’t want to either. She dumped me at the lowest point in my life. It took me forever to recover from that. I mean, how fucking heartless and ruthless can a human being be? Didn’t Jean-Paul Sartre say something about that?”

Eloise smiled reassuringly. “Probably.”

An awkward silence ensued during which it seemed Gunther polished off his flask. I opened my mouth to offer lame words of support, but Eloise beat me to it. Only, her words cut me more than the Samantha remark.

“Captain, I’ve never known you to hook up with anyone. You’re not secretly married, are you?”

Gunther swallowed, as if to say, “Uh oh, now you’ve done it.” Silence blared, as though we’d all tried to call God at once.

“Uh,” I said with a dry throat, and reached for my water bottle.

But my audience was patient. They’d wait for an answer.

“Uh,” I said again, looking at the floor. When I ratcheted up the nerve, I spoke to the floor. “No, not at all. Not even close. You know the drill. I’ve been super obsessed with my career. Homeland, honor, sincerity.”

“But you’re not gay.” This was a statement from Eloise, not a question.

“No. Not at all.”

She laughed with relief. “Good. My gaydar record remains unchallenged.”

The feeble remark eased the stress in the room. More relaxed now with my new friends, I added, “I did have a fiancée once. But I was way younger, maybe twenty, back in Philadelphia.”

Gunther nodded with understanding. “She dump you because you were always gone?”

I shook my head. “No. She died.” To soften the blow of their gasps, I continued, “Of thyroid cancer. I, ah, wasn’t able to be there at the end. I was over there in Iraq, you know, Operation New Dawn.” It was a lame attempt at distracting them from Jessica’s death. I hoped they might start talking about Iraq. I was mistaken.

Eloise slung her limbless pajama leg over the edge of her bed. “You’re shitting me. I’m so, so sorry, Captain. That must’ve been painful.”

Gunther was more pragmatic. “Did you know she had cancer when you got engaged to her?”

I nodded tersely. “Yeah. We thought the, ah, treatment would iron everything out.”

Eloise coached me. “The radiation. The chemo.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. I had rarely discussed Jessica with anyone. I’d thought she would recover, and we could maintain something of a life and family near Philadelphia. She went downhill and died fairly suddenly. I was in constant contact with her parents, her brother, but I was in a combat zone and it wasn’t easy to extract.

Since getting sober, I had really tried not to think about it. My old reaction to any upswelling of emotion would’ve been to grab a drink. Or I would’ve already had one in my hand. Since I did not want to overreach and crash because I’d tried to do too much in recovery, I accepted some weed that Slappy had left at my condo. It was mild enough, I reasoned. Helped blur bad memories, but you weren’t addicted. And of course, I was still taking handfuls of ibuprofen. At least it’s not an opiate.

I was talking to my brothers in arms and I should be able to trust them. “We were taking down al-Masri near Tikrit.”

Gunther nodded. “I remember that. Al-Masri was wearing a suicide vest.”