It was long into the afternoon when my girlfriend left me behind at the Black Wave Bar.\u00a0 She\u2019d walk the hot path home, calves scratched by overanxious grasses, and start on dinner.\u00a0 I was to follow soon behind, whenever my songs on the jukebox ran out.\u00a0 In these hard times, you have to see a dollar through.\u00a0 I ordered what I thought my last drink would be\u2014working on light beer now, trying to keep the earth balanced\u2014when Brave Captain Harvey ducked his head and stepped up into the barroom.\u00a0 He slapped his hands across the thighs of his chinos and swept his hand over his scalp so that his bright red bandana came off with the motion.\u00a0 Behind him the stained glass of Our Lady of Holy Vengeance Church framed his silhouette, brilliantly trapping the sunset.\u00a0 I lowered my head onto the bar, looking down the long, uncrowded bar through a container of cocktail straws like a duck blind.\u00a0 Brave Captain Harvey never cared what was on your schedule.\u00a0 As long as he was still upright and talking in sentences, he would pencil himself in.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He ambled down towards me, pushing vacant barstools in as he went.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can smell you, Cass.\u00a0 Sit up.\u00a0 You smell like leftover youth.\u201d\u00a0 He rasped, coughed purposefully, then spit into his handkerchief.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have to look.\u00a0 Somehow everything he spat, vomited, crapped out or expelled through his nose was army green.\u00a0 I\u2019d been unlucky enough to see all four.\u00a0 \u201cWhere you been?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAround.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot enough.\u201d\u00a0 He leaned across the bar, wrapped his knuckles around the edge, then pulled his weight back.\u00a0 His back popped.\u00a0 His ass hit the stool after an exaggerated sigh. \u00a0He knocked on the bar, and Ruthie came over.\u00a0 She knew exactly what he\u2019d have, but always waited for him to ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cRuthie.\u00a0 Two Wilkes Booth whiskies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, Cap,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cAfter the last bars of \u2018Tumblin\u2019 Dice,\u2019 I\u2019m out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if I got the stomach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruthie snapped her fingers.\u00a0 \u201cOne or two, what\u2019s it going to be?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo.\u00a0 Come on, come on, Cass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruthie slid the hardwood-colored whiskey into two highball glasses, added the ice afterward.\u00a0 Brave Captain Harvey nudged mine in front of me with his knuckles and raised his forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are we drinking to, Harvey?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood old American justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCheers.\u201d<\/p>\n
We both sipped.\u00a0 Wilkes Booth Whiskey is one of those tough breeds of whiskey that fights against the ice.\u00a0 Insistent, impossible to cut.\u00a0 God help you if you put cola in it.\u00a0 It sizzles like holy water on something undead, turns green, and settles at the bottom.\u00a0 The whiskey asserts itself at the top again, daring you to try that again.\u00a0 God knows what it does inside my stomach.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you ever beaten a rapist?\u201d Harvey asked.\u00a0 I shook my head and stared straight ahead as if he\u2019d only asked me if I had the time.\u00a0 \u201cOf course not,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cLook at you.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got such pretty knuckles.\u201d<\/p>\n
He screwed in his stomach and let out a hard sigh.\u00a0 Reached his hands out in front of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at these puppies.\u00a0 Yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
The skin of his fingers looked like they\u2019d been flayed and burned and rewrapped with secondhand cells a dozen times.\u00a0 The black hairs between his indented knuckles didn\u2019t know which way to grow, what pattern to mime.\u00a0 Twisted and awry, twitching like feelers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are few things that make you feel more proud than getting a medal.\u00a0 Beating a deadbeat rapist is one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTumblin\u2019 Dice\u201d came and went.\u00a0 I stared down into my mostly full glass of whiskey, all the ice melted now and bubbling around the edges.\u00a0 My eyes clicked to the wilting bottle of beer.\u00a0 I tried to decide which I feared more, my girlfriend\u2019s impatience or the death threats Brave Captain Harvey would berate me with if I stood and abandoned him mid-story.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your ass in the seat,\u201d he hissed.<\/p>\n
I drank.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was attached, unofficially, to this frogman unit in the Caspian.\u00a0 Killing time between wars.\u00a0 The slavs are a hospitable people, but very protective.\u00a0 If you can eat it, drink it, or wipe your ass with it, they\u2019re more than happy to spread the wealth.\u00a0 But if you can ride it, shoot it, or fuck it, well.\u00a0 Keep your hands to yourself, Yankee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were on a long shift of down time, almost three weeks and no new orders.\u00a0 There\u2019s only so many times you can watch the money change hands in poker games, shifting from one pocket to another.\u00a0 There\u2019s only so many cigars you can smoke before you start getting that sting right up under the lining of your stomach.\u00a0 You\u2019ve never been there, that\u2019s why I\u2019m telling you these things.\u00a0 A young man in uniform craves action, almost any kind.\u00a0 So what do you do?\u00a0 You go to the beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cAshy Caspian beach.\u00a0 No palm trees, no suntan girls.\u00a0 No volleyball.\u00a0 Fat blobs.\u00a0 Hairy chests.\u00a0 More like a Petri dish than any beach you\u2019ve ever been to.\u00a0 Nothing but faint sun and saltwater to bear a resemblance.\u00a0 We were young Americans.\u00a0 We wanted eye candy.\u00a0 All we saw were wives and kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo some heartthrob among us, Ricky something-or-another, he gets the idea we should borrow a jeep and head down the coast.\u00a0 Change the waters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey bummed a cigarette off of me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe drove half a day on this Eastern Bloc excuse for a coastal highway, dodging tanker trucks and mules.\u00a0 Someone had a bottle of brandy.\u00a0 We imitated the locals: we shared, passing it randomly, forcing it on each other.\u00a0 We sang Frank Sinatra songs to local melodies.\u00a0 We took potshots into the sea with our sidearms.\u00a0 This is what the military was about at that time.\u00a0 This is what fell under the heading of MONITORING NATIONAL INTERESTS on some folder back home.\u00a0 It was great.\u00a0 Ricky pulled us into a small burg around sunset.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was this tavern with some pigs out front of it.\u00a0 We stumbled in, a little rowdy but with plenty of local currency.\u00a0 The bar had a handful of old-timers.\u00a0 Dirty hands, big black eyes.\u00a0 A pretty young girl was filling their glasses out of a big earthen jug.\u00a0 I remember this place had one of those antique pool tables.\u00a0 You know, the kind without pockets.\u00a0 We split into teams and started playing, making up rules that seemed to make sense.\u00a0 We bounced those balls around and around, overpaid for the locals\u2019 tolerance, and cut each other down.\u00a0 We were drinking without a plan, really.\u00a0 If worse came to worse we would cross the road, stumble down the hill, and sleep on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had those nights,\u201d I said.\u00a0 It was exactly the night I was trying to avoid at the moment.\u00a0 Harvey had pointed again, and Ruthie had obeyed.\u00a0 My glass was top-full of whiskey again.\u00a0 Suddenly my cell phone started to vibrate across the wood in front of me.\u00a0 Harvey put his mottled hand over it until it stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cGirlfriend?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw her leave.\u00a0 You shouldn\u2019t have let her walk outta here alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s always a Ricky around.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put my head down on the bar and drank my whiskey through a cocktail straw, sipping the booze right off the surface.\u00a0 \u201cOh, god.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do this, Cap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should be thankful,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cYou should be thankful you\u2019ve got somebody like me to teach you the ropes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust get to it.\u00a0 What did Ricky do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was dark now, dark like you haven\u2019t seen, black in a little village without electricity.\u00a0 Three of us were in the jeep, passed out.\u00a0 Two other guys were still clacking the balls across the felt, taking turns just testing angles and speed.\u00a0 I came back from the ditch where I\u2019d taken a piss.\u00a0 The locals were gone.\u00a0 The girl was gone.\u00a0 And Ricky was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI poked my head into the back room which was full of jars and crates and spiders.\u00a0 I went further, pushed through a plank door into the back courtyard.\u00a0 That\u2019s where I found the girl and Ricky.\u00a0 I could tell immediately, drunk as I was, that there was an absence of\u2026consensual agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey watched himself extinguish a cigarette.\u00a0 He was staring through the ashtray, down through the wood of the bar itself, down through the foundation, down through to the other side of the Earth, rewatching history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could hear the Slavs around the corner of the building, pushing their bellies through the bushes.\u00a0 They\u2019d be there in a heartbeat.\u00a0 In those kinds of moments, the old Semper Fi, band of brothers type of bullshit evacuates the asshole of your mind.\u00a0 I ran straight at Ricky, bore into him like a frightened pig.\u00a0 I knocked him off the girl long enough for her to get up and scream.\u00a0 The Slavs came lurching forward, hefting heavy tools.\u00a0 Ricky looked up at me and started complaining like a goddamned aristocrat.\u00a0 Like I\u2019d spoiled his rightful conquest.\u00a0 That did it for me.\u00a0 I started laying into him a second before the Slavs did.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe passed the beating randomly, taking turns.\u00a0 Sharing.\u00a0 Ricky kept turning on his side, rolling this way and that, trying to anticipate the attacks.\u00a0 Nothing doing.\u00a0 I stood there alongside the locals, the men of the village, and raised my fists and brought them down.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t need a translator.\u00a0 \u00a0Ricky clutched into a bag of flesh at some point. \u00a0Stopped bracing and avoiding.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t take what was coming to him, not in a prideful sense, not in a mitigating, owning up kind of way.\u00a0 In the end he just took it because he had to, because we beat all the energy and motivation out of him. \u00a0It fled in droplets, Cass.\u00a0 Spit and blood and sweat.\u00a0 It all left him and covered us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t stop for an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey adjusted in his stool, clasped his hands together like he was about to say grace over a meal.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause, really, for every one that you catch, rapists, that is, you gotta beat \u2018em twice as hard or three times as hard as they deserve, just for all the others that get away.\u00a0 The slow ones and the stupid ones catch the hell.\u00a0 There\u2019s always more than enough vengeance to go around, know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
My face was on the bar, rocking.\u00a0 I managed to raise my empty glass six inches into the air.\u00a0 \u201cGood old American justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the ticket.\u00a0 Stick with me, boy.\u00a0 Learn a few things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was long into the afternoon when my girlfriend left me behind at the Black Wave Bar.\u00a0 She\u2019d walk the hot path home, calves scratched by overanxious grasses, and start on dinner.\u00a0 I was to follow soon behind, whenever my …<\/p>\n