Dolan’s Debrief

by Mike McLaughlin

I met Dolan when I was six days sober. It was my second meeting and I was exhausted and half-suicidal and shivering in my chair like I’d just been hauled from the water. When my turn came to speak it wasn’t my voice but a machine’s and I said my name and said I was an alcoholic and if it was okay I would pass because I didn’t know what else to do.

Dolan came up to me afterward and said he was now my sponsor. He said he was sixty-three years old and hadn’t had a drink for the last fourteen. He had been there and done it and if I wanted to make it then I would call him. He demanded my number and I gave it mechanically, like you do when calling the bank and wading through the maze until reaching a living human. He scribbled his own number on a faded receipt from Sears then put it in my hand and said use it.   

It wasn’t a request.

*

When you quit drinking there’s no medal. 

No drum rolls, no awards, no applause.

There are good wishes, of course. Handshakes and hugs and claps on the back. It’s pro forma, though, because talk is cheap. Because when you finally quit you’re the last living thing on earth. Climbing in the dark, desperate and alone. To fall would be so easy. Blowing out a candle easy. Breaking a soap bubble easy.

And last week I reached a year. 

No booze at all. 

Not a drop. 

A full year. 

I’d hit the mark.   

I’d gone pro. 

And nothing happened. 

*

The Eighty-Eight is a diner about ten minutes from my house, likewise from Dolan’s, and we meet there twice a week. It’s also a short walk from our Wednesday night meetings. This geography makes it easy for the student to approach the master. I said this once as a throwaway line, yet Dolan’s response was thoughtful. 

“Well, if you seek grand design to the universe, then seek no further.” 

By then I had twenty-three days and little faith in anything. I remember the day because of the little notebook I had started carrying. Every morning I would start a page with the date then mark off the hours. The next morning I’d throw it away and start another. 

A pointless exercise, I thought, when every damned minute was like a gray Tuesday in March and getting out of bed didn’t seem worth the trouble.

Our gatherings rarely last an hour. Pat had been an Army correspondent and I was an EMT—still am—and neither of us likes sitting around for long. 

His counsel remains absurdly simple. 

“Did you drink five minutes ago?” he would ask.

“No,” I would answer.

“Gonna drink five minutes from now?” 

“No.”

“Interesting.”

And that would pretty much do it. 

Mostly we talked about family. About friends near, far or gone. About how the Sox or the Patriots were looking. About books we loved and movies we’d seen more than once. Things that kept us anchored. Things real.   

As for divine intent, Dolan said our table was a circle within a circle, inscribed inside a triangle, with the school and our homes for corners.

“Master plan in action,” he added gravely.

Dolan always seems aware of the machinery behind the curtains. Of gears turning just out of sight. He’d be lethal at poker if he ever played.

“Here?” I asked dubiously. 

The bench cushion I sat on was cracked in places, held together with plastic tape that didn’t match the original green. The table’s column was bent and needed napkins wedged under it to stop the wobbling. Our window facing the parking lot was still cracked after taking a hit from a crazed seagull years before. 

“Here,” I repeated. 

“Absolutely,” he declared. “Stonehenge has nothing on this.”

It was late and we had the place nearly to ourselves. The back room was already closed and the lights were off. In the kitchen a phone rang ceaselessly. From the tv in the bar came a gleeful pitch for hemorrhoid cream.

“Devious, isn’t it?” 

*

During my first days sober I would cringe at the ads. The ridiculous commercials and posters and neon signs promising it all. This beer is a magic party train. That whiskey puts you in a tux and gets you laid. Images cartoonish while I was drinking went supernova when I quit.  Now they were malice personified, summoned to life for the sole purpose of destroying me. They were everywhere. Resisting them took titanic effort. 

Then came the dreams. In them I was drinking again, but secretly—like I had always done—while pretending to be sober. I was good at it, after all. 

It was agony. They were so absurdly real that on waking I was sure I had done it.

It was in the worst of them that my son figured it out. 

He knew. 

Getting ready for school, he knew. He wouldn’t look at me or say a word, just went on shoving things into his backpack. 

My son. My only child. Not even a teenager yet. Sickened by a world that could give him such a failure for a father. Then he walked out, leaving the door open behind him. 

Gone.

I fought it off. I fought them all. 

*

As the months slipped away I began branching out. Getting to meetings around the city. Getting better at saying I was an alcoholic. Holding fast.

Dolan kept reminding me that the drink was a predator. Not only pernicious but patient.

I would never be free of it. 

Ever.

I said I wished it was cancer instead. 

You can defeat cancer—but this was being cancer.

Dolan said that was the point. 

*

And yet, little things began happening. They didn’t seem like much at first, but slowly, they began to add up. 

In EMS they offer overtime pay like you cannot believe. Now I was turning it down and spending more time at home. Doing things I had put off for years. 

I started building model planes with my son. 

I went and bought a hummingbird feeder because my wife kept saying she’d love to see them in the garden. 

Then I detailed the car. Twice. 

Then I painted the kitchen. 

My family didn’t know what to make of it but they never complained. 

I slept better. I ate better, too—and while I didn’t quit smoking, I started cutting back. 

Dropping from a dozen cigarettes a day to eight, then seven. Then it was six, but even with gritted teeth I couldn’t get to five.   

Dolan told me to write the date on the next pack I bought. Then do the same with the next, adding the number of days I had made the previous one last. To keep doing, making each last a day longer. 

Easy, I thought—like eating gravel was easy.

And at some point during it all, I realized I didn’t need the drink anymore.

Now I was only afraid of it.

*

I was six months gone and well into seven when Dolan recommended a speaker’s meeting at a church in South Boston. I was grateful for this because it gets old, having to be on all the time. Reading passages aloud then saying how they apply to you. Talking about who you were and who you’ve wounded. Talking about who you want to be. At a speaker’s meeting you can sit silently through it all. Showing up is enough.

When I arrived the church was packed, with every row filled and people lining the walls. I stood near the doors as a man in a blue cardigan opened the meeting. He asked for a moment of silence, then began his story. He was followed by a short woman, pale as milk and looking about thirteen. The closer was a painfully thin man who had just turned ninety. 

They looked terrific. Standing tall. Good natured. Humorous and kind. Looking like they’d been that way their whole lives.

Then they spoke, and after a minute I grabbed a flyer and started writing.

Combined, they had been arrested seven times. Five were DUI’s. Six hospital trips, all by ambulance. One of them had flatlined during the ride.  Five tours in rehab, three of which were court-ordered. Three separations. Two restraining orders. Four divorces. Loss of custody of three children. Two cars wrecked. Two more and a house seized by banks and a total of twenty-seven months served at Walpole and Framingham. 

And through the program they had recovered. Nowhere near perfect, but better.

And, all together, they had been sober for fifty-one years.

The applause was thunder.

The usual crowd gathered outside afterward. To talk and smoke and laugh. To look like parents during intermission at their kids’ musical. To look ordinary. 

I spoke with people and shook their hands. I learned their names and forgot them. A few invited me along for coffee but I begged off. Saying I had to be somewhere else. Giving a cheery wave when I’m faking that everything’s fine.

I called home and my son answered and caught me up on his day. Then my wife came on and I said to her what I say every day now. That I loved her and that I was okay. That I was on my way home and did we need anything.

Milk, she said, if it wasn’t too much trouble.

It could never be trouble, I said, and meant it.    

*

And then it was a year.

No trumpets sounded. No angels sang. 

Why would they?

That night I headed to the Eighty-Eight to mark this non-accomplishment. 

Dolan was already there, in the back this time where there’s a better view of the harbor. He saw me and even though the crowd was thin he put up his hand. Holding it high and steady as if being sworn in, like an old fisherman ready to testify. 

A joke.

Classic Pat.

He was wearing his army green jacket and some paint splattered jeans, plus an electrician’s cap he picked up somewhere. A gift maybe. Now and then he’d lose one and someone would offer a replacement. The last time we met he had one from Texas A&M. I didn’t ask. 

He looks like Gary Cooper and Paul Newman spun together, but I’ve never seen him in formal gear. Not once, which I still can’t figure. He could bring it off, easy. At heart, though, he’s more like an officer from a Bill Mauldin cartoon. Not some asshole from headquarters but a line captain. A man who cleans his own rifle and is just as tired as his men but makes damned sure they eat before he does.

He looked fit as ever, despite autumn’s shorter days and miserable weather. Not tan but toned enough to defy that eternal winter look. Like he had retired to the Bahamas but still came to town three or four times a week.

It was his relentless drive that did it. His refusal to play the part. Hellbent to stave off the decay that plagues too many men. That damned over-sixty syndrome as he calls it, when men get fatter and no longer care. When they piss away their days yelling at their televisions and bitching about their yards. 

After Vietnam, Dolan spent the next forty years on the go. True, there were “the gray eras”—his play on words—but sober or drunk, he’d be damned if he spent the rest of his life just sitting around.   

That night his scars showed clearer than usual. With his hair recently cut, the gray bristles couldn’t hide the jagged lines climbing from his left eyebrow to his scalp. More red than white now, as they always get when the weather turns cold and damp. 

When I was three months sober he told me how he’d earned them. A legacy of the service, he called it, and when he finished I wondered if my hair had gone gray as his.

“Jeep accident,” he would otherwise say, in a tone to discourage whoever was fool enough to ask.

I sat down and studied his haircut.

“New girlfriend?” I asked.

“Nikki Minaj,” he grumbled wearily. 

I coughed violently then couldn’t stop. Unconcerned, Dolan pushed his water glass toward me.

The night manager came over. We were loyal regulars and she knew our routine. We ate little and tipped too well and she would bring coffee then leave us alone. This time she stayed until I recovered. Then she shot a hard look at Dolan—himself the very picture of innocence—and moved on.

“So,” he said mildly, “The prodigal son arrives.”

“Hardly,” I gasped.

“And?”     

Buying time, I dumped cream and sweetener in my coffee then stirred a while. As usual he frowned—you took it black or not at all—and as usual I ignored him. 

Then I took out the flyer from the meeting in Southie. I carried it like a talisman after writing so much on it that Saint Francis had to wave to be seen. No names or dates, only events. It was getting frayed now, the folds starting to tear. I kept meaning to tape it and kept forgetting.
Dolan studied it carefully, then handed it back.

“Frame it.”

“Kitchen?” I asked.

He shook his head. 

“Bathroom. Read it when you take a dump.”

“Mixed messages,” I said, not coughing this time. “Shaving maybe?”

“Up to you.”

I shrugged.

“So,” he prodded. “How goes it?”

“The same, I guess.”

“You guess?  You’ve got a year, damn it. You look like your puppy died.”

I shook my head.

“Still feels like pissing in the wind, you know?”

“I know.”

“Still don’t believe it.”

“You could say as much about breathing.”

“Spinning my wheels, forever.”

Raising his coffee, he sighed grimly. 

“You’ll make it.”

“Christ—how?” I demanded.

Dolan looked out the window. The night was low overcast and there wasn’t much to see. Out by the airport a police boat was gliding along, blue strobes flashing lazily. A lone sentinel, patrolling the mist. 

“Well,” he said, turning back, “Allow me to interrogate you. Call it good cop, bad cop.”

“What—you’re both?”

“Sure. Ready?”

I wasn’t.

He took a breath then fixed me with a hard look. It was only for a second but felt longer. 

“Mac,” he began.

“Yes?”

“Mac.”

“Yes, Pat—what?”

“Is your life shit or isn’t it?”

“You mean—” 

“Yes or no.”

“It’s—well—no. It’s not.”

“When your wife realized what a fuck-up you were, did she throw you out?”

“I don’t think—” 

“Don’t think. Did she throw your dumb ass out of the house?”

“She didn’t.”

“Good. Yes or no—got it?”

“Got it.”

“Did she call the cops?”

“No.”

“Say she wanted a divorce?”

“Well—” 

Dolan glared.

“No.”

“Did she call her mother?”

“Yes.”

“So your in-laws found out what an asshole you were?”

“Yes.”     

“Are you an asshole now?”

When I didn’t answer he put his cup down. Hard.

“No,” I said dully.

“But she didn’t call a lawyer?”

“No.”

“Are you sleeping on the couch these days?”

“No.”

“Did you that night?”

“Yes.”

“Ever since?”

“Uh—maybe a couple times, yeah.”

“‘Maybe a couple’?”

“Yes,” I sighed.

“But not lately?”

“No.”

“So, she’s a kindly soul?”

“Yes, thank God.”

“At some point later, did she kiss you? Hug you?”

“Later on, yes. I—” 

“Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“How about sex?  You back in the game?”

Of course, he would ask.  

“Yes.”

“Any good?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll rephrase—during the act, does she sound disgusted?”

“No.”

“Tell you to hurry it up?”

“No.”

He changed course again.

“Are you sleeping all right?”

“Yes.”

“Is waking up like climbing out of your grave?”

“Not at all.”

“Do you bring her coffee every morning? The paper, that kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Were you hungover today?”

“No.”

“Yesterday?”

“No.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No,” I said instantly, not even thinking about it.

“Back then, did you get headaches? Pop a lot of Tylenol?”

“Yes.”

“Stomach give you hell? Need Rolaids all the time?”

“Jesus—yes.”

“Need any of that shit now?”

“No.”

“Feel sharper at work?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love your son?”

I leaned hard into that one.

“Yes.”

He nodded, his approval genuine.

“Does your son hate you?”

“No—I—I don’t think so.”

“Do you love him?” he asked again.

“Goddamn it—YES.”

“Do you tell him?”

“Every day.”

“Does he say the same?”

“Sometimes. He’s eleven, so—”

“How about your wife?  Love her?”

“Of course.”

“When you come home do you get a chilly reception?”

“No.”

“Feel like you got dumped at the morgue?”

“God, no.”

“So they’re glad you’re there?”

“Yes.”  

He scratched the back of his neck a while, then resumed. 

“Are dinners slow? Quiet?”

“No.”

“So, you actually talk?”

“Yes.”

“All glad to be together?”

“Yes.”

“When you woke up today did you need a drink?”

I stopped cold.

Dolan waited, expressionless.

“No,” I said at last.

“Do you want a drink?”

I shook my head slowly. It felt strange. 

He raised his cup, drained it in one haul then set it aside. 

“So, Mac—in total, would you say life’s pretty good?”

“I would.”

Eyes fixed on mine, he nodded again, but slowly. Very slowly, like a cop would do when your alibi may not be bullshit after all. It just might hold up. 

“Interesting.”

I expected more but he just went on looking at me. 

Then he started drumming his fingers on the table.

I was ready for it. The next question. Next riddle. Next field problem. 

It never came.   

Instead, he pulled out his cigarettes and shook the pack. From the sound I knew there was only one. 

“Ah, shit.”

Sighing, he put it away.

Then he got up. 

Reeling from it all, I moved to stand with him, but he stopped me. 

“Gotta go,” he said, dropping a twenty on the table.

Then he shook my hand.

His grip was firm as ever, but this time he held on for a while. 

There should be more, I thought. 

Hell, I had made it a year—hadn’t I?

But there wasn’t.

He just let go.

Then he left.

---

Mike McLaughlin is a writer for Vietnam Veterans of America. His works have appeared in The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The American Veteran, WWII History and American Heritage. Not to be outdone, he has written three novels and dozens of short stories. He lives in Boston, MA with his family.

He wrote “Dolan’s Debrief” to evaluate his progress after a full year sober. It is a work of “faction” drawn from his experiences and those of countless veterans who prove daily that not doing a thing is often the most powerful act of all.

Brothers in Arms

by Katie Trescott

We stand in the center of waves upon waves of headstones. They go on forever. A wreath is propped up on each stone, left over from the holidays. Slip and I are the only ones alive in this sea of the dead. I consider throwing my arm around his broad shoulders, but we’re both in our dress blues. I can tell he needs a hug. Instead, I reach over and fix the collar of his peacoat that flipped up in the wind. He bends his knees slightly so I can reach it more easily but otherwise, he doesn’t acknowledge my touch.

We just buried his pal. A Marine killed when they were on tour together overseas. Slip gave the ceremonial flag to the Marine’s mom, tightly folded into a thick woven right triangle and held between his immaculately white gloved hands. Afterward, I heard him whisper “Til Valhalla” to the coffin as the cemetery workers lowered it into the dark, hard dirt that held so many already. 

I’d felt a wisp of desire to make fun of him. “Til Valhalla” was something he learned from his Marines, no doubt. And the idea that this Baptist from South Carolina who had Bible scriptures tattooed on his shoulder blade intoned a Norse blessing on a Texan Catholic who’d named his first and only son “Jesús” was a bit too much. But I’d clamped my mouth shut. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that.

Slip didn’t cry when he handed over the flag, or even when the casket was lowered into the ground, but it looks like he wants to now. His amber-flecked brown eyes are glassy, but the wind whipping over the graves is like ice, a prelude to the cold gale of death, so it might just be that.

“Slip, you good?” I ask, wondering if I should have used his real name. Immediately following a burial doesn’t feel like the right time to use a nickname born of a bout with an STD. But it’s too late now and anyway, using his real name would feel even worse: distant, detached. 

“Jamila broke up with me, Glue,” he says, straightening to his full height.

The moment I’d earned that nickname couldn’t be more different than the current one. We were practicing casualty carries with a 200-pound dummy, sweating through our NWUs under the huge San Antonio sun, when we’d finally gotten a break. I’d split my protein bar in half and shared it with Slip. One of those all-natural things made mostly of dates and chalk.

“What is this shit?” Slip had asked, after several minutes hard chewing. “It nearly glued my jaw shut.” 

“Give the rest back then! I’m hungry, asshole,” I’d said, reaching for the gnawed brown piece he still held in his hand. 

Slip had snatched it away, grinning with some of the bar wedged between his normally perfect white teeth. “It’s kinda good actually. Glue.” 

The memory of that smile doesn’t keep me warm in this graveyard. I pull myself out of his space and away from his body heat reluctantly. Even with my heavy peacoat on over my jumper, I’m freezing. I want to keep moving, suggest we go get a drink in a warm bar. I don’t want to rush him either. 

“She say why?”

“Something about different paths.” 

I grunt acknowledgement. Jamila’s the type of girl that causes traffic accidents. Beside her, especially in uniform, I feel like a different gender of human being. Everything swings with intention when she moves, from her gaze to her hair. Grace, that’s what it is. She’s a nice gal, whip smart and studying International Affairs at Georgetown. But not the type you can really burp around.

To me, different paths sounds like some vague excuse for something bigger, like Slip being in the Navy, or the particular brand of friends that comes with that. Or it could be his inability to keep his toenails clean or all the money he spends on supplements. More likely, she might have been trying to tactfully negotiate her way out of a tough situation. I didn’t know her too well, but I can guess she was afraid of the version of Slip that returned to her. And I can understand why. This distant cold statue of a man beside me is intimidating. 

He holds his dixie cup cover to his head as the wind picks up but otherwise stands stock still, looking away from me. 

“It’s been off since I got back. But I can’t tell if it was my fault or hers,” he continues. 

“How was it off?”

“At first, all we did was fuck and it was great. I told her about Lopey,” he shrugged.

Lopez-Aguero. The Marine. 

“And she was supportive, listened and you know, let me… cry,” he quickly mumbles the word and then pushes on, “but after a while, it was like she got tired of hearing about it. She’d say she needed to go study or had to get some sleep. I know she works hard, and I probably talked about it too much. But then she told me I should go see someone.” 

“Therapy?”

“Yeah. But I can’t do that. You know I’m up for this award and I put in a package for OCS, and I don’t wanna fuck it up.” 

He looks at me directly for the first time that day. His forehead crumples like he’s looking at me for answers, desperation woven into the light crinkles around his eyes. I don’t know what to tell him. 

The whole world seems to want to send the military to a shrink but getting it done is something entirely different. No one sees how it can sidetrack your career or turn your peers away from you. It’s hard to escape the label, even thrown out as a joke in the smoke pit or after a long night of studying for the advancement exam. I should feel honored Slip is sharing it with me, trusting me with his honesty, but it feels like a burden I’m ill-equipped to carry.

“Shit, Slip, you can talk to me. I’ll be your therapist,” I find myself saying, trying to infuse some humor into our conversation to get us back on familiar ground. 

“Well, Doc. Where’s your couch?” He gestures loosely out to the graves.

I cringe and turn away from him to look out across the field. 

“Do you think for each one of these guys in the ground there is a brother who thinks he died for nothing?” Slip asks in a low voice that cuts through the ghostly wind. 

The wintery air blasting my exposed face and hands is nowhere near as harsh as his question. Hearing his comments makes me uneasy. I swallow a couple of times to get the lump out of my throat. 

Slip’s the guy that gets teary-eyed during the National Anthem. If he could carry a tune in a bucket, he’d volunteer to sing it at every possible venue in the world: NFL games, Presidential inaugurations, Veteran’s Day Parades, even NASCAR. I’ve heard him sing it in the shower while me and another buddy played Call of Duty in the other room. We laughed so hard we dropped the controllers. “You need a drink, dude,” I say, shoving him into motion with my numb hands. A drink might be the very last thing he needs but it’s the only thing I can think of. He shouldn’t be alone, I know that much and maybe if we relax a bit, he can get some perspective. 

We make our way out of the cemetery. I’m trying not to think of each stride, each line of headstones all adding up to a tally that can’t be a real number. Slip doesn’t speak at all. 

I find the nearest bar on my phone, just five minutes away. It’s a sports bar with decent draft options but more importantly, it’s warm and not too busy. The D.C. crowd is certainly more accustomed to seeing people in uniform but still, eyes turn to watch us as soon as Slip and I walk in. In identical movements, we whip our covers off with our right hands as we pass over the threshold. Usually we’d laugh about it, make a joke about brainwashing, but Slip doesn’t even look my way. 

I head to the end of the bar, a little out of the way so we won’t draw much attention. The barman, a tatted-up guy with an oiled beard and studs in his ears, nods at me. He recognizes my control of the situation as Slip stares off into the middle distance. Usually, I’d give Slip shit for being dramatic but not today. 

“Two Guinness. We’re getting a head start on our St. Patty’s Day drinking,” I say, hoping it makes Slip laugh or at least smile. 

Neither Slip nor the barman’s face change. The barman just turns around to begin the slow pour at the tap. Slip fiddles with his phone. I’m losing my touch.

I set my cover on my knee under the bar and look over at his phone screen. It’s not a picture of Jamila that he’s looking at, it’s a picture of a group of Sailors and Marines. I can’t pick him out at this range but I’m guessing Lopey and Slip are in the cluster of dirty men.

“Hey, Slip, man, you’re gonna be okay.” 

He grunts and slides his phone in his coat pocket. 

“Tell me about Lopey,” I just go for it, my usual brash approach to problems.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, his chiseled jaw muscles working under his brown skin. 

The barman sets coasters and two tall glasses of Guinness before us. I watch the foam settle, the darkness coalescing like a storm cloud. Before Slip gets his next words out, I want to chug the whole damn thing but even that wouldn’t prepare me. 

“One minute you’re laughing about porn or something stupid, trying to pretend like you’re not going to piss yourself, you’re so scared. And the next, it’s so loud, you can’t hear anything and body parts are raining down from the sky.” 

His heel taps a staccato against the rung of his bar stool. He swallows, eyes zeroed in on his beer as if he’s talking to the brew and not me.  For a moment, I’m worried about him crushing the pint glass in his hand. The smooth brown skin is pale with tension that radiates up his arm, through his entire wool-swathed body. 

“Lopey had this epic Chesty Puller tat on his calf. That’s how I knew the leg next to me was his. The hair was singed off, so it looked like one of those dummies we practiced on at Corps school.” He tips his Guinness back and his Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks it almost halfway down. 

“Fuck me,” I murmur, taking a big swig of my own beer. 

“I go for my tourniquet, that’s all they tell you to do, right? Get cover, return fire, throw tourniquets on any bleeders. But there wasn’t enough leg left to wrap the thing around. I just crammed my hands in there but…” 

He clears his throat and shakes his head. I teeter on confirming he followed the right procedure. I decide to keep my mouth shut. 

“Excuse me, guys.” 

A voice cuts across the bar at us and it takes me a moment to tear my eyes off Slip to see who’d spoken. Some man, not much older than us, wearing a blazer and scarf knotted tightly around his neck grins our way. I look up expectantly, annoyed and feeling Slip pull away. 

“I just wanted to say thank you for your service,” he says, looking pleased with himself. 

I stare at him. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Usually, I shrug it off with something like “Thanks for your support” or another equally trite phrase. But today, all I want to do is smash my beer glass over this guy’s head. Accessing some rarely used diplomatic part of my brain, I nod to acknowledge him and turn quickly back to Slip. 

“You guys are in the Navy, right?” The asshat won’t shut up. He’s got this vibe like he’s God’s gift. I look at him again and nod again, trying to make it clear he should shove off.

“Are you Navy Seals? Well, there’s no way you’d be one,” he points at me and waves me off dismissively. “But you look like you could kill somebody,” he says this to Slip. I stand, take a step toward him.

“Hey man, we’re in the middle of something. Could you move along?” I say in the assertive but not aggressive voice that the military taught me to hone to perfection. 

“Jeez, ease up. I just wanted to show my appreciation.” He holds up his hands in a dramatic way that I don’t appreciate at all. I feel my temper rising. 

“We heard you and like I said, we’re in the middle of something, so step off.”

“What the hell? I am trying to be nice here. What’s with you?” 

I hear him mutter something that sounds like “PTSD” under his breath as he signs the receipt and puts his credit card back in his wallet. I nearly launch myself over the bar at him but Slip gently squeezes my arm. Whipping my head back around, I lock eyes with him. His face broken, looking so damn handsome it’s painful, Slip shakes his head. Clenching my jaw, I sit. Thankfully, the bartender intervenes. 

“Hey man, leave them alone. It’s been a long day.” How he knows that, I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe he’s aware of the bar’s proximity to Arlington or it’s just a line he uses to deescalate situations. Either way, it works and the dirtbag struts away. It’s hard not to grab a coaster and flick it at the back of his head. 

Slip releases my arm and drains his glass. “None of them understand. How can they?”

The bartender brings us another round of Guinness, which he says is on him. At first, I think he’s my new favorite person but upon reflection, I wonder if he’s not part of the problem too. Everyone wants to buy us drinks but what good are drunken, broken people to the world?

After that, we drink our beers in silence. Slip doesn’t continue his story and I lose the nerve to ask him. I pay our tab. He calls a ride and I ask him to text me when he gets home. He never does. 

*

I wake with a start early the next morning. Crashing over to the bedside table, my fingers scramble for my phone. No missed calls or texts from Slip. I call him, eyes still mostly shut but heart rate picking up. Nothing. Just his cheery voice on the voicemail message, which makes me queasy. I order a car, drag some clothes on, and whip my hair back into a ponytail. Before the driver even stops the car, I slide into the backseat and watch his body language change when I say, “I need you to hurry.”  

The drive to Slip’s shouldn’t be more than ten minutes but it feels like days. Each time the driver fiddles with his phone to change the song playing or takes a sip from his water bottle, my fingers go pale gripping my knees. On the final turn before we get to Slip’s, he cautiously scans the intersection at the red light, and I have to stop myself from wrestling the steering wheel from him. Finally, the front of Slip’s building looms into view and I pull at the door handle frantically until the child safety lock goes off. I know that guy is going to give me a one-star review, but I don’t have the energy to soften my behavior. I hop out and sprint up the steps. Darting through the main door, I leap up the stairs to the second level and careen through his apartment door with my spare key. 

“Slip!” I shout, not caring that it’s six o’clock in the morning on a Saturday and the walls are thin. All I can think is that I didn’t stay with him. I’ll be the next sailor handing a folded flag to a mother who has no concept of what happened to her son. All she’ll know is some invisible cloak of honor or sacrifice that lends no warmth to the frigid air of life without her child.

He’s prone on the carpet in his Gryffindor pajama bottoms. His nieces gave him those. They had decided that he was a Gryffindor because he was brave. 

“Slip!” More direction to my voice this time, but no response from him.

He’s face down in a pool of puke. The smell is wretched; that acidic punch makes me want to heave up my own insides. I start breathing through my mouth as I note the empty bottle of Jameson and half empty bottle of Tito’s. What a combination, I think, even as my mind is racing. I drop down beside him and jab my pointer finger and middle finger into the side of his neck. No heartbeat. Readjusting my position, I shift my fingers over his throat like the needle on a record player, looking for the right groove. His pulse jumps suddenly under my touch.

“Oh, thank God,” I croak, dropping my head momentarily to his side and feeling his warm skin against my forehead. “For fuck’s sake, Slip.”

Tears start rolling down my cheeks, which pisses me off. To regain control, I dive into my training: listen for breathing, check for any indication that he fell, C-spine precautions as best I can when I roll him onto his back, check his airway again. Another wave of relief when I see his chest rise.

He grimaces a bit when I slap his face. “Slip, get up. Wake up, man.”

An eyelid pops. He moans and a giant relieved breath puffs out of my gut. It takes a while before he works his jaw, inhales sharply so his nostrils stretch, and a tension settles between his dark eyebrows. Like he remembers everything. 

“Slip, what the hell, man? What were you thinking?” My voice quivers and I hasten to brush the tears away before Slip really comes around. 

“Fuck,” he moans and begins to turn onto his side, to hide in the fetal position. But I pull him back. 

“C’mon, get up. You’re covered in puke. Let’s get you to the shower.” I say in my best “Chief” voice. It feels wrong, used for so many jokes in our shared past, but it might get through to him. 

I push my hands under his arms and start to lift. 

“Glue?”

His eyes still aren’t fully open. 

“Who else would it be?” 

Somehow, he rises to his feet. We get him into the bathroom, and I make a fuss about getting the water temperature right so he can drop his PJs. He steps into the shower and lets out a robust groan at the warm water with me standing on the other side of the mostly transparent, a bit moldy shower curtain. Bracing himself on the shower tiles, I see him drop his head and wonder if he’s embarrassed or if he regrets failing at drinking himself to death. 

“Slip?” 

He grunts in response, pulling himself upright and reaching to pour some soap onto a washcloth. While I fumble with the words, he slowly starts to lather his gleaming dark skin in bright white suds.

“Don’t ever fucking do that again,” I say, trying to hide the mortifying hiccup in my voice as steam fills the room. 

He pauses in his circular scrubbing with his washcloth and looks through the shower curtain at me. “What? Drink to the foam?”

He’s trying to make a joke, referencing our favorite line of “Anchors, Aweigh” and I feel the bile rising in my throat.

“You know what I mean.”

“Don’t worry, I got all those people doing twenty-two pushups a day for me, I’m all good.” His voice is savage. 

“I know things are shit right now but—”

“Do you know? Do you? Because females don’t see action so how would you know?” His tone is sharp and nasty, unlike him. 

His comment cuts deep. It feels like as soon as he went downrange, there was a part of him I could no longer reach. I’ve been in country. I was the Corpsman waiting at the Role III, trying to put all those bloody pieces back together. But I can’t tell him about the Soldiers or Marines that carried their buddy’s severed arms or legs back to the hospital, only for me to inform them we couldn’t sew it back on. It was too burned, too damaged, it’d been too long. For Slip, it’s not anywhere close to what he knows. Nothing compares to outside the wire, according to everyone who had been outside the wire. Guess I can’t blame him. But it still pisses me off.

I reach down and flush the toilet. The water temperature drops so fast, I can feel a whoosh of cold air cut through the humidity as Slips screams. His arms cross protectively over his body, his groin, spine curling down to conserve his body heat. 

“What the—” 

“Slip, I know you, probably better than anyone. I know you’d never mix vodka and whiskey. I know you don’t drink alone; you just got those bottles for when you have people over. Those Gryffindor PJs,” I gesture to the pool of scarlet fabric on the tile. “Maya and Malia gave you those. When you’re nervous you clench your jaw and have to piss every five minutes. And I’m the one with the key to your apartment, standing here yelling at you while your skivvies are on the floor and you’ve got nothing but soap on! So yes, I fucking know!” 

He stares at me for a long time, shivering slightly. The water drives all the clouds of soap down his neck and chest before he turns the water off. Turning to snag a towel off the rack, I hand it to him, and he wraps it around his waist before stepping out. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, humble in the misty air of the small bathroom. 

“Me too. About Lopey, and everything.” 

After a beat of just looking at each other, I turn to go to the kitchen. I get him some water and poke in his fridge to find he has a pack of sports drinks. Wrestling one out of the plastic collar, I take it and the water into the bedroom where I find Slip has put on a fresh pair of basketball shorts and a ratty Gamecocks t-shirt. 

He gingerly crawls onto the bed that smells like the linens could do with a wash, but the overwhelming smell of the room is Slip, a bit his cologne, a bit the smell of his skin. 

Handing him the cold sports drink, I sit next to him on the bed. He chugs all of it before placing the empty bottle on the nightstand and dropping back against the pillow.

“Don’t you dare clean up the other room while I’m asleep,” he says from beneath the heavily muscled arm that he’s thrown over his face. “It’s my mess. I’ll deal with it.” 

He closes his eyes and I look down at him. Shifting his arm to the side with a grunt, now his face is on full display in the dim morning light. Even hungover, in desperate need of a saline drip, he looks beautiful. The smooth deep brown color of his skin reminds me of warm coffee. We’d lost so much sleep together, standing watch, studying, partying, working nights at the hospital, that the comfort and kick of coffee was a real, palpable thing. It was always our lifeline to making the day or the night or even just the next hour possible. The number of times I’d brought him a cup, or he carried one to me, I couldn’t even begin to guess. But we’d always stand together, clutching the cups like our lives depended on it and spare a smirk for each other even though it felt like every choice we’d made up until that point had led us to a pretty shitty place. But even a shitty place was bearable with him there beside me. 

I wonder if I were the woman that could fall in love with him, could do anything besides throw an arm over his shoulders or wrestle him to the ground, could I do what Jamila could not and save him? The reel of potential spins over my mind’s eye: wearing a dress to dinner with him, getting naked with him and pressing our bodies together, holding him when he cries. 

No, that’s not me.

I tentatively touch his bicep, the warmth under my fingers soothes this ragged worry that hasn’t yet receded since the night before. He reflexively folds his lower arm back to press his hand to mine. 

“Don’t you worry, Glue. I’m here. I’m okay,” he mumbles, half-asleep. 

If I were that woman, I wouldn’t be here next to him on the bed, having just pulled him out of his own vomit and all but showered him myself. I am not a girl, not in that sense. I am his brother. He might slip away from me into this dark, cold world but I’ll never stop trying to pull him back. 

I sigh and go to do something about the stench in the living room.

---

Katie Trescott works at a marketing firm and is a Corpsman in the Navy Reserve. She studied Creative Writing at Florida State University and served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. She and her dog, Diggity, live in Augusta, Georgia. When she’s not working or writing, she enjoys camping and watching soccer. 

“Brothers in Arms” was inspired simultaneously by the unity forged among those who serve and the division created by the defining experience of combat. 

SAR

by John Van Kirk

Back aboard the USS Thomas Jefferson after seven and a half hours in the air, having refueled from a hover over the back of a frigate and seen nothing but water for most of the flight, Lieutenant Junior Grade Henry Bowman learned the names of the pilot and radar officer who had gone down. Lieutenant George “Spanky” Cruikshank and Lieutenant Commander Bill “Catfish” Bafford. Bowman knew both of them by sight from the wardroom. They’d stood in line together for late night sliders, though he couldn’t say he ever had a conversation with either of them. Bowman and his crew had searched until being called off, following an intricate pattern of expanding squares out from the point where one of the Air Wing’s F-14s had disappeared from the radar. Pfft. One minute it was there, burning along at a couple hundred knots, 3000 feet over the open sea, the next minute it was gone without a trace. At least without a trace on the radar scope. And, if they had searched in the right place, without a trace on the sea either. After the routine debriefing in the squadron ready room, The Air Wing Safety Office called Bowman and his crew in one by one to debrief them further on what they’d seen. The mishap investigation had already begun.

—What was your altitude when you first saw this thing?

—My crewman first saw it from 500 feet, asked me to go lower for another look. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of it until we were below 300. 

—What did he say it looked like from 500 feet?

—He didn’t say. Said he had something. I think he said it might be a raft, but I’m not sure. You should ask him.

—We will. When you first saw it, what did you think it was?

—Wreckage, maybe. Something flat, piece of rudder or tail.

*

They’d already been searching for three hours. In the middle of the Red Sea. Out of sight of land. Sky milky gray, undefined. Sun a blur, marginally brighter than the hazy overcast. Sea also gray, barely darker than the sky, long shallow swells. Crew bleary-eyed and tired. Bowman glanced down at the search pattern on his kneeboard, then checked the time on the eight-day clock on his instrument panel. Twenty-two seconds until his next turn.

The crew chief’s voice crackled over the radio.

—I’ve got something. About two o’clock, 300 yards, three o’clock, we’re past it. Four o’clock. Can you come back around? Go down a little lower?

—Coming right, keep talking. What’s it look like?

—I don’t know. But there’s something in the water. It doesn’t look like a raft. But it’s bigger than a man.

—Color?

—Brown, maybe.

—You still got it, Chief?

—Yes, sir. 

—I’m descending to 300 feet. Where is it now? 

—Five o’clock, coming around to four, three. About 200 yards. Passed it again. Still not sure what it is, sir. Looks flat, like a door. We need a closer look.

—Okay, coming around again. I’ll bring us into the wind. Keep talking to me.

Bowman circled to the right again, coming into the wind, and brought the helicopter into a hover 40 feet above the waves. Light chop, swells about 3 to 5 feet. The water silver and gray as a dolphin’s flanks. 

—Still see it, Chief?

—Yes, sir. Two o’clock, 100 yards, the chief said. It’s not a raft. I’m not sure what it is.

—I think I see it. Could it be wreckage?

—Can’t tell from here.

—Okay, guide me in.

—Roger, sir. Easy forward, easy right.

—I’ve got it now. A piece of wood?

—Stop forward. Easy right. It’s a door, sir.

—What?

—It’s a door. Steady. A regular door, like from a house. Or maybe from a boat.

—Damn, Bowman said, getting a better look as it passed under the rotor wash. A fucking door. 

Two panels, like for a closet, still some white or pale green paint on it in places, but mostly bare wood, floating right on the surface, rising and falling gently with the swells, now being battered by the artificial wind blown down by the rotor.

—All right, take down the coordinates, time 1602. Let’s get back to our search pattern.

—Yes, sir, the chief said.

—Bummer, Bowman said. He pushed the nose forward and started his climb out.

*

—You’re sure now it wasn’t aircraft wreckage, the officer in charge of the investigation asked.

—I told you it was a door. I don’t remember noticing if there was any hardware attached, hinges, knob. I doubt it. I think I would have noticed. Ask the chief.

—Do you think the crew of the plane that went down could have seen it from 3,000 feet?

Bowman hadn’t thought of that. Had they seen it? Gone down for a closer look and ended up flying into the water?

—I don’t think so, sir. My guy barely saw it from 500 feet at 60 knots. And he was looking. The Tomcat was at 3000 feet and doing what, 300 knots? I doubt they would have seen it.

*

Later, lying in his rack, Bowman thought about that door in the sea. Once the chief told him it looked like a door, he had to see it for himself. They could have done a fly-by. It hadn’t really been necessary to pull into a hover and go right over to it. But he couldn’t resist. Could anybody? The chief never hesitated. Easy right, sir, he had said, as if they were going in to drop a swimmer, or lower the hoist to the deck of a frigate or a destroyer. A door…. 

A forbidden door. Who can resist a forbidden door. A door into the sea. 

And if you could go through that door, somehow, open it like a trap door in a stage floor and pass through the surface of the ocean, where would it take you? Davy Jones’ locker? A storybook undersea world where slow patrolling sharks passed silently among the skeletons of dead sailors manning the decks of wrecked ships? Would Spanky and Catfish be there, newly arrived, still in their flight gear as if they had just landed and were squeezing in line for sliders, drowned fishermen on either side? This was the Red Sea, famous for shipwrecks since ancient times, watery grave to thousands of mariners going back to the Phoenicians. And what about Pharaoh’s army, swallowed up by these same waters after Moses led the Israelites across to begin their 40 years of desert wanderings? 

Crossing into an underwater dream, Bowman found himself in this liquid world, swaying gently with the currents, magically able to breathe, moving in shafts of aqueous light among shades who drifted up to him as the shades in Hades drifted up to Odysseus to give him news of the dead and get news of the living. He felt himself drawn in, crossing shallow reefs into darker blue water, ultramarine, where the murmur of indistinct voices drew him on, urged him to go deeper, into the great rift, over 7,000 feet deep, where the tectonic plates of Africa and Arabia were slowly backing away from one another.

Suddenly whatever mechanism or magic had allowed him to breathe failed, as if by giving a scientific name to where he was he’d broken the spell. He was starving for air, swimming madly, but which way was the surface? Blue-black darkness in all directions. It must be night now. The shafts of light were gone. He couldn’t tell up from down. His lungs ached, craving oxygen. He would drown if he didn’t get to the surface. His chest convulsed, his mouth filled with salty water which he fought to keep out of his lungs, choking, flailing his arms and legs in pure panic.

He woke with a gasp, breath heaving, disoriented, ears aroar, to find himself in his rack, the curtain drawn, the ship rising and settling, his body pouring sweat and becoming lighter and heavier against the thin mattress, the incessant roar still surging in his ears. He tried to get control of his breath. 

The number two cat above his head fired. The roar moved off, died away into the general heavy equipment assembly line noise of the aircraft carrier. He was beginning to breathe normally now. Out of the general confusion of noise he distinguished the metal on metal slide of the hydraulic shuttle being drawn back and clanking into place, the loud thunk of the Jet Blast Deflector lowering back into the deck. An F-14 had just been launched and another jet was maneuvering into position. He heard the JBD grind back into the up position behind it. Heard the engines shift into afterburner. Another F-14. They’d lost one plane with its crew just hours ago, but flight ops didn’t stop. 

Bowman looked at his wristwatch, its hands glowing in the curtained-off darkness. The Petty Officer of the Watch would be in any minute to wake him for his next flight. He lay on his back as the Tomcat roared off the deck only a few feet above his head. He focused on the gentle movement of the ship. This was home. This was his life. He had come back through the magic door into his real world, an aircraft carrier at sea. 

---

John Van Kirk is the author of the novel “Song for Chance” (Red Hen Press). His short fiction has earned the O. Henry Prize and The Iowa Review Fiction Prize and has been published in a variety of magazines and literary journals. A Navy helicopter pilot in the 1980s, he now lives and writes in Kentucky.

Death and injury don’t only come in combat. This story focuses on the kind of loss that can happen on a perfectly ordinary day, in training, in “peacetime” operations and exercises, in the daily routines of military service.