In the letters, Major Danger had certified as witness that both officers had sustained combat with the enemy and had exchanged fire, thus warranting them the highly esteemed Marine Corps Combat Action Ribbon. Hembee had added in the letters that each of the two captains had displayed great courage under fire, demonstrated undaunted leadership, and had made a significant contribution toward repelling a determined enemy.

“I’m going to mention you both in my dispatches,” Jack Hembee had told them as he shook each of their hands and slapped them across their backs. Neither of the pair had any idea of what the operations officer had meant by his parting words, mentioning them in his dispatches. O’Connor had suggested to Kirkwood that it had a classical, old-style military ring and that he felt honored by the comment.

“That can be a double-edged sword,” Kirkwood said as the two lawyers walked from the flight line at Chu Lai, now searching for a ride or directions to military police headquarters and the holding facility, nicknamed the Chu Lai Cage, where their clients waited for them.

“Jon, if someone handed you a sack full of candy you’d complain about tooth decay,” O’Connor responded, walking alongside his friend, both carrying the M14 rifles in one hand and the green plastic headsets in the other, making their way toward a group of buildings in front of which flew the American flag.

“I’m not complaining,” Kirkwood said defensively, walking inside the headquarters with O’Connor. “I’m just saying we might do better if all of what happened yesterday and last night didn’t get mentioned in dispatches. I would rather that Major Dickinson heard nothing of it. That’s all.”

“That asshole has you intimidated!” Terry O’Connor said, walking down the passageway toward a desk in the hallway where a burrheaded gunnery sergeant sat behind an open logbook.

“I’m not intimidated,” Kirkwood huffed.

“Dicky Doo has you by the balls, admit it,” O’Connor said, and then looked at the gunny. “We’re lawyers from Da Nang looking for our clients that you have boxed up around here somewhere.”

“That would be at PMO,” the gunny said. “I can call over there and have them send someone here to pick you up.”

“Would you do that for us?” O’Connor said, smiling.

“What’s going on out there?” a voice boomed from an office behind the gunny’s desk. In a moment a barrel-chested, cigar-chomping colonel wearing a flight suit stepped through the doorway and gave the two captains a quick up-and-down look.

“Sir,” the gunny said, “these are lawyers for a couple of turds we’ve got locked up. I’m calling PMO to give them a ride.”

“You boys look like you’ve been shot at and missed, and then shit at and hit,” the colonel said in a loud, rasping voice, while clenching the stogie in his teeth and laughing. Then he glanced down at the gunny. “Go ahead and give the desk sergeant a call, and tell him I said to get his ass over here and pick up these two officers.”

“Thanks, Colonel,” Kirkwood and O’Connor said simultaneously.

“Care to come rest your butts in my office?” the commander of Marine Wing Support Group Seventeen said, sweeping his hand back in a gracious gesture for the pair of captains to come inside and sit. “I’m Jerry Sigenthaler, one of the stud ducks in this pond.”

“Jon Kirkwood, sir, and this is my colleague Terry O’Connor,” Kirkwood said, stepping through the doorway and following the senior officer, who then flopped on a brown leather couch and threw his feet across a stack of magazines piled on a coffee table.

“You boys ride down in the wheel wells, or did you get totally fucked up like that on purpose?” the colonel said and laughed.

“We spent the night at LZ Ross,” O’Connor offered.

The colonel roared laughing, nearly choking, and then took a sip from a mug of coffee to clear his throat.

“Well, that explains it,” Sigenthaler said, and pointed at two brown leather chairs where the captains then sat. “Hell of a fight down there last night I hear. I guess it would have anyone’s knob looking a little bit frayed.”

On the colonel’s desk sat a monstrous, ornately carved wooden name-plate. Adorning its left side, pinned to a red patch of felt, a colonel’s silver eagle rank insignia gleamed. On the right side of the gaudy, ornamental placard, a silver and gold Marine Corps officer’s emblem sparkled. Decoratively cut into the Filipino monkey wood in two-inch-high English script the words Jerome W. Sigenthaler stood in a sweeping arch.

“I guess you two learned how the other half lives over here then,” the colonel then beamed. “You don’t look any worse for wear, though. You ain’t leaking anyplace, are you?”

“No leaks, sir. Although a shower and a good night’s sleep would do wonders for us both,” Kirkwood offered.

“Gunny Purdue, the boy out front, said you’re lawyers seeing clients,” the colonel then purred.

“Yes, sir,” O’Connor answered. “I am the defense counsel for Private Celestine Anderson, and Captain Kirkwood represents Corporal Nathan L. Todd.”

“Since they’re the only two prisoners in the cage right now, I know who you’re talking about,” Colonel Sigenthaler growled, biting down on his cigar. “Cold-blooded ax murderer. Hell, I was a cunt hair from just pulling out my pistol and shooting the son of a bitch on the spot. You should have seen what he did to that poor boy. Split his head half in two.”

“I heard that the sight of the death was quite gruesome, sir,” O’Connor said, carefully choosing his words.

“So, what do you want with the boy?” Sigenthaler said, sipping coffee, and then noticing the two lawyers watching him. “Shit, I’m sorry, boys, right over there on the sideboard, grab some cups and pour yourselves some coffee. Hell, relax.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kirkwood said, and walked to the table, where an urn filled with coffee sat next to a stack of white mugs, and a jar of sugar and instant creamer. Terry O’Connor followed his partner and filled a cup, too.

“What about that cocksucker?” the colonel then asked.

“Accused cocksucker,” Kirkwood responded. “Corporal Todd stands accused.”

“So does the fucking ax murderer,” Sigenthaler retorted, “but that doesn’t change the facts of what happened.”

“That’s why we have a trial, though, sir,” Kirkwood then said, “to seek the truth of what actually happened. I’m sure that even the ax murder has a basis of explanation. No one just kills another man with an ax for no reason.”

“Oh, shit, I’m sure he had his reasons,” Sigenthaler said, chewing his unlit cigar. “But this guy’s pulling out another Marine’s dick while he’s sleeping, and trying to suck it. I’d like to hear the explanation of what motivated that son of a bitch.”

“Sir, that does raise a lot of interesting questions, doesn’t it?” Kirkwood said, sitting back in the chair. “We have six black Marines accusing this nonblack outsider of trying to sexually assault one of their cohorts as he slept, and then they beat the hell out of him for it. Quite a few questions arise.”

“Shit, the son of a bitch needed his ass whipped, trying to suck a good man’s dick while he’s asleep,” Sigenthaler growled, biting the stogie hard. “Damned disgusting! Don’t that make you boys want to puke?”

“What if the group of black Marines whipped my client’s ass, just for the sport of it, and then made up the cocksucking business as a good excuse to cover themselves for the assault and battery that they committed?” Kirkwood offered.

“Those son of a bitches would be painting white stripes on the runways in midday heat they pull something as chicken shit as that,” the colonel said.

“Sir, I have not yet talked to my client, but he did make a quite long and very detailed voluntary statement,” Kirkwood said, sipping his coffee. “He claims that he simply went inside the barracks after getting off duty, and the six black Marines jumped him as he entered his cubicle. He emphatically refutes the accusation that he has any homosexual desires whatsoever.”

“That’s his word against six pretty good Marines, Captain,” the colonel then said. “The boys who nailed his wicked ass, they all have good records. Never any trouble. Totally out of character for them to attack any fellow Marine, no matter his color. This kid, Todd, he’s new here, so I don’t know what winds his clock.”

“That’s why we have a trial, sir,” Kirkwood said, and then sighed. “Although in this man’s case, just having such a charge levied against him has taken its toll in damages already, and threatens his entire future. Did you read his statement?”

“No, not yet,” the colonel said. “We alerted your office Friday morning, after the shit happened Thursday night. The ax murder has taken priority. I’ll get it read tomorrow, before we ship them up to the brig at Da Nang.”

“Sir, I hope that you will consider what Corporal Todd asks in his statement before you process it any higher,” Kirkwood said, seeing the opportunity to plea his case before facing Charlie Heyster and any theatrical tricks he might pull in court against a man accused of homosexual conduct.

“So, tell me, Captain,” the colonel said, now walking to the sideboard and refilling his coffee mug, “what is so damaging?”

“The man will never be able to go home,” Kirkwood said. “His people will ostracize him, simply based on the charges, even if we exonerate him. Any record that he was ever accused of homosexuality can brand him with an ugly specter that will ruin him not only where he lives but among his own family, too. They’ll disown him.”

“That’s a little hard to swallow,” the colonel said, and then laughed as he sat down, “like that big black dick he tried to suck.”

Kirkwood and O’Connor smiled politely at the jovial colonel with his poor taste in humor.

“Sir, are you at all aware of Corporal Todd’s background?” Kirkwood said, now walking to the coffee mess to refill his cup, too.

“Like I told you,” Sigenthaler blustered, “the boy’s new here, I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“He’s a full-blooded Cheyenne from a highly respected family, coming from a very tightly knit Indian community in Colorado,” Kirkwood explained, sitting back in his chair. “According to Todd’s voluntary statement, the Cheyenne people have strict social standards and customs. They don’t even marry outside their nation, did you know that? That’s why we have so few of them remaining today.”

“That boy’s a Cheyenne Indian?” Colonel Sigenthaler bellowed. “Shit, those lying bastards, accusing him of cocksucking. They beat this poor boy to a pulp, too. The sons a bitches made the queer story up just to cover their attack on this lad. By damn, I’ll have them filling sandbags and burning shitters for the next six months if I don’t keel haul them first.”

“Sir?” Kirkwood said, perplexed at the 180-degree outburst. “Now you’re suddenly convinced that the six black Marines accusing my client are lying?”

“Damned right they’re lying!” the colonel growled. “Shit, boy, anybody knows that there ain’t any queer Indians! That’d be like calling John Wayne a fruitcake. And he damned sure ain’t any fruitcake. Neither is this Indian boy.”

The colonel then walked to his desk and removed a tan manila folder from a tower of wooden trays. He pulled the charge sheet accusing Corporal Nathan L. Todd of homosexual conduct from it and started to tear the paper in half. Jon Kirkwood quickly stepped to the desk and put his hand on the document.

“Sir, you can’t just tear it up,” the lawyer said.

“Why the fuck not? It’s a damned lie!” Sigenthaler bellowed.

“We need you to write an endorsement disapproving the charges, and ordering that the entire incident be expunged from Corporal Todd’s record,” Kirkwood explained. “Say the complaint lacked material and corroborating evidence to support the charges, because that is clearly the case. We have a group of assailants accusing my client with nothing to back them up, and circumstances suspiciously pointing to their culpability in the gang-style assault and battery of my client. Furthermore, Corporal Todd vehemently denies the charges, and we both know about Indians, don’t we.”

“Hell, yes,” Sigenthaler said, jotting some notes on a yellow writing tablet. “Ain’t any queer Indians.”

Terry O’Connor got a fresh cup of coffee, and then looked at the colonel as he walked back to his chair.

“You care to discuss my client’s case, sir?” the lawyer said.

“Skipper, with a dead body in a bag, I don’t think we have much to say about your client’s case,” the colonel said, not looking up and still scrawling hurriedly on the notepad.

“What about Todd, sir?” Kirkwood then asked, hoping to resolve all questions about his client’s incarceration status.

“We’ll let him out of that cage right now. He can pack his trash, and fly to Da Nang with you this afternoon. The lad damned sure can’t stay here. Not now,” Colonel Sigenthaler said, lying back on the couch and crossing his legs on the coffee table once again. “By now, half the Marines in the barracks have heard about the charges. News like that travels fast. They’ve got him flagged as queer, and they’ll have his ass. Not fair, but the damned facts of life in these parts. We’ll just ship him up to Freedom Hill anyway, only he’ll be working on the other side of the bars at the brig.”

“Sir?” Kirkwood said, now confused.

“We’ve got a quota to fill for a chaser up there, and I just filled it,” the colonel said with a satisfied smile, sipping his coffee.

Kirkwood had aptly pointed out that rather than making the prosecution prove his client killed Buster Rein, concede the fact. Anderson did kill Rein, but argue that the man needed killing. Doing so would open the door to the many extenuating issues that led to the final act, done without planning, committed in a rage of anger, provoked by the victim. O’Connor had angled on that same avenue of thought, but had worried about trying to defend against the charge rather than maneuvering to the why of it. Such a concession would also eliminate the long parade of eyewitnesses who had seen the killing at a distance but who knew nothing of the circumstances that led to it. Stanley Tufts, the lead prosecutor on the case, ably assisted by Philip Edward Bailey-Brown, half of the intellectual tandem of the Brothers B, would no doubt look to call as many eyewitnesses as possible, to reinforce the heinous nature of the killing, and let them paint the defendant as cold-blooded and mean.

Concession of the fact that Anderson did kill Rein would remove the need for the court to examine the details of the slaying itself. The trial could then focus on the issues that provoked the killing. It removed many of the tools with which Tufts and Bailey-Brown would use to bury Anderson.

With a pared-down agenda of jobs to get done, Terry O’Connor went to work looking for witnesses and testimony that would justify the killing of the racist thug. Dicky Doo had told O’Connor that he could have First Lieutenant Wayne Ebberhardt to assist him in the defense, but no one had talked to the lieutenant since Friday night. Rumor speculated he might have gone flying with Lobo early that morning. Others reported sightings of him in the ville with a flight attendant, and that he had a tall, shapely white woman shacked in a Da Nang hotel. No one knew for sure where Ebberhardt had disappeared, but they didn’t let the mojo know about it either.

With his own case now dropped and having nothing better to do, Jon Kirkwood took up the slack left by Wayne Ebberhardt and spent the day helping his buddy, Terry O’Connor, weed through a multitude of witness statements, and research a long list of legal precedents. Kirkwood also did not bother telling Major Dickinson that the wing support group commander at Chu Lai had dropped the charges against his client.

Shortly after he and O’Connor had returned to their office from lunch, Staff Sergeant Derek Pride came back from a summons by the military justice officer with a worried look on his moon-shaped face, holding a copy of the paper dismissing the charges against Corporal Nathan L. Todd, and a note from Dicky Doo to Jon Kirkwood that simply read, “See me.”

“I’m gone for the day,” Kirkwood told O’Connor and Pride.

“You will see the major first, though,” the staff sergeant asked with a wishful tone.

“On my way now,” Kirkwood beamed happily, picking up his khaki garrison cap and walking out the defense section’s office door.

“Careful, sir,” Pride cautioned. “Major Dickinson has had First Lieutenant McKay on the front burner most of the day. He’s as angry as I have ever seen him.”

An hour later, Kirkwood kicked open the barracks screen doors and walked straight to his bunk, where he threw down his cap and kicked the door of his wall locker.

“I see you’ve talked with the major,” Michael Carter said, spreading a scrambled-egg smile as he peeked around the corner from where the lockers stood.

“Yes, I listened to him,” Kirkwood snapped, wheeling on his toes and eyeballing Carter with a grimace that curled into a snarl. “I only said, ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir,’ and ‘three bags full, sir.’ The son of a bitch.”

“Join the club. He keeps me pissed off all the time,” Carter beamed, showing Kirkwood his caked-up, yellow teeth.

“Fuck him, and his horse, too,” Kirkwood said and pulled off his shirt. “Like I give a shit. I’m doing my time and going back to California. My wife owns a nice set of office spaces overlooking the Presidio. I just need to roll with it like the rest of you guys do, Mike.”

“You know,” Carter said, taking an uninvited seat on the corner of Kirkwood’s bunk, “Major Dickinson, with his unabashed bias against any accused, perhaps offers greater justice for these men that we defend than any other mojo might. So while you deal with his gross unfairness and featherbedding of the prosecution, think about it this way. Because he hates the defense section so much that he staffs it with lawyers he despises and leaves them with nothing to lose, the major ignorantly relinquishes his one means of manipulating them: his power over our fitness reports. None of us gives a shit what he does to us careerwise, do we?”

“You have a point, my friend,” Kirkwood said, and now smiled.

“Everyone else is so worried about fitness reports and promotions, they will do whatever it takes to get ahead, including compromising their cases,” Carter explained. “We don’t have that problem. We keep Dicky Doo pissed off, and it entertains us. It’s more his problem than ours.”

“You ought to be a defense lawyer, Michael,” Jon Kirkwood said, stripping off his trousers, underwear, and T-shirt and wrapping a towel around his waist. “Turning the negative to positive is a real talent. Thanks. You made me feel better.”

“So the group commander dropped the charges, I hear,” Carter said, now bubbling from the friendship that Kirkwood had shown him.

“On Corporal Todd? Yeah, he did,” Kirkwood said, and laughed. “Indians can’t be queer. Didn’t you know?”

Carter tilted his head to one side and cocked an eyebrow.

“The group commander,” Kirkwood explained, “has this notion that American Indians cannot be queer. Like calling John Wayne a homosexual, he told me. Todd’s a Cheyenne from Colorado, ipso facto, not homosexually inclined.”

Carter fell back on Kirkwood’s bed and laughed.

“You’re one lucky son of a gun,” Carter said. “Charlie Heyster had his bonnet all set for prosecuting a homo, you know.”

“Oh, I knew it Saturday morning when Dicky Doo took such enjoyment in letting slip that tidbit of news as he handed me the package on Todd,” Kirkwood said, forking his toes through the rubber thongs on his shower shoes. “I thought of Heyster when Colonel Sigenthaler dropped the charges, too. One part of me wanted to sit in that courtroom just to see what kind of evil tricks Charlie the shyster would pull out of his hat. So in a sense, purely from a jurist’s curiosity, I felt a little disappointed. It lasted about a millisecond before the jubilation for my client took hold.”

“Don’t worry,” Carter said, ambling his long, stick-figure body back to his feet, “you’ll have lots more opportunities to see Heyster in action. Don’t feel too disappointed. I’m happy for your client.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Kirkwood said, flip-flopping down the center aisle of the barracks, his shower shoes slapping his heels as he walked.

As he passed the last cubicle before reaching the entrance to the toilet and shower facilities, a figure moved in the corner of his eye, catching his attention. First Lieutenant T. D. McKay sat at a small writing desk beneath an open window. He had his head resting on his arm as he wrote a letter.

“Speaking of the devil,” Kirkwood called to him, “does anyone know you’ve returned from the far north jungles?”

Tommy McKay turned in the straight-back chair, resting his arm over the back, and looked at Jon Kirkwood. His face appeared puffy, and his eyes peeked through slits between swollen red lids.

“Allergy,” McKay said, noticing that the captain had immediately focused on the condition of his face.

“I see,” Kirkwood answered, walking to where the lieutenant sat and pulled over Wayne Ebberhardt’s straight-back chair from across the cubicle and sat down. The captain glanced at the writing paper and the envelope, and McKay quickly laid his arm across it, as though he hid it for shame.

“Letter home?” Kirkwood asked.

“Sort of, I guess,” McKay said, and turned over the page he had written.

“What’s going on with you, Tommy?” the captain finally asked the sullen lieutenant.

“Nothing,” McKay responded defensively. “I’ve got an allergic reaction to some vegetation or pollen from the bush up north. Got my sinus all plugged, my eyes irritated. Just like a cold, that’s all.”

“Staff Sergeant Pride told me that he got word that your buddy Lieutenant Sanchez died in action up there,” Kirkwood said, and locked eyes with the lieutenant. “He added that the scuttlebutt from Ninth Marines and Third Recon puts a laurel wreath on your head for taking charge and saving the platoon.”

McKay looked at Kirkwood and tears trickled from his eyes as he gulped back more of his grief.

“I didn’t do a fucking thing, sir,” McKay said and turned to the window.

“Maybe not, but the enlisted Marines here have a whole other story going around,” Kirkwood offered, and sat still on Ebberhardt’s chair.

“You know how the troops get, anytime someone gets into some shit,” McKay answered.

“Yeah, I know,” Kirkwood agreed, still sitting on the chair, holding his toiletry kit in his lap. The two Marines sat for a full minute, and neither spoke until the captain cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“I lost my best friend when I was seventeen,” Kirkwood began. “He was a boy who lived next door to me in San Luis Obispo, where I grew up. We started first grade together there, and he remained my very best pal in the whole wide world right up until two weeks before our high school graduation, when he killed himself. My dad and his found him hanging from a tree in this grove behind our houses, where we had built a hideout. We played war out there, you know, as ten- and twelve-year-old boys do. Ironically, his name was Jimmy, too. Jimmy Sandoval.

“My dad carried his body home. My dad and Mister Sandoval cut him down off that tree where he had hanged himself. They took him home, and then called the police. They didn’t want Jimmy left hanging out there while all the cops mulled around, drank their coffee, and investigated.

“Dad came home crying. That’s how I found out about it. I had never seen my father cry until that day.

“He and Jimmy’s dad were buddies, too. They took us fishing, up at Big Sur, and hunting out west near Paso Robles, where Jimmy’s uncle ran a sheep ranch. They use these majestic, white Great Pyrenees dogs to shepherd the flocks out there.

“Jimmy’s father never has gotten past his son’s suicide. Destroyed both him and Jimmy’s mom. They barely muddle through, still, mourning their poor son. I saw Mister Sandoval just before I shipped out, a few weeks ago, and he still talked about what if Jimmy hadn’t hanged himself.

“I damned near didn’t graduate high school because of my best friend committing suicide. You know, I blamed myself for it. I should have known. I should have seen his unhappiness. I even thought of killing myself, too.

“My dad never left me alone after that. I think he was scared I’d hang myself. I didn’t go to school, and he didn’t go to work. He stuck to me like glue until I finally broke down one day and let it all go with him. That’s the second time I saw my father cry. He cried for me.

“Tommy, I know what you’re feeling.”

“I’m sorry about your friend, Jon,” McKay said, snuffing his nose and now looking at Kirkwood.

“I’m sorry about yours, too,” the captain said, and put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.

“You know, growing up in the Texas Panhandle, coming from a respected family, playing football at Dumas High School, and getting a full-ride scholarship at the University of Texas, I had it pretty good,” McKay said, turning a black ballpoint pen in his fingers and looking at it as he spoke. “Like most boys from out there in that High Plains ranch country, I had my ample share of prejudices, even though I had not taken account of them.

“We didn’t have a lot of black folks living up there: a few, but not many. However, we did have a whole shitload of Mexicans. Mostly they worked on the ranches, or did the really dirty jobs out in the oil fields. To us white boys, they were all worthless wetbacks. We called them taco benders and bean balers. Greasy spics. Right to their faces. And we’d laugh about it.

“I look back, and I feel ashamed of myself. Those folks lived as poor as people can ever imagine. They heated their shacks with wood stoves, if they were lucky enough to have a stove or wood. Some had to cook on grass twists and dried cow flops. Most of them didn’t have running water or a toilet. They worked like dogs, and we treated them worse. And we thought ourselves better for it. While those people starved and survived a wretched life, we went to church on Sunday and sang praises to Jesus as though they didn’t exist.

“I met Jimmy Sanchez the day I checked in the dormitory in Austin. They had the gall to put him in my room!

“When I walked through the door and saw this Mexican sitting in there, I had a fit. My dad and I marched down to the housing office, and told them what they could do with this fart blossom they put in my room. Hell, the idea of a white boy sharing space with a wetback insulted the white right out of us.

“The lady who made the assignment, a sweet old blue-haired gal I later came to adore named Isabelle Brown, very politely told me and my dad that we could kiss her bright, rosy pink, Tyler, Texas, ass, and she used those very words. She said that I would take the room assigned, or that my dad could pay tuition, room, and board for me elsewhere. We went to the athletic director after that, and made an even a bigger mistake showing our prejudices to him. I damned near lost my scholarship over it.

“So I stomped back to the dormitory and took up residence with this brown kid from South Texas with dead koodies dripping off his hair and the smell of DDT fresh in his clothes. My tilted perspective at that moment.

“I hated life, the University of Texas, and especially him. After about a month of suffocating in silence, I finally spoke up and told him that since I had to share space with his stinking ass, I might as well get to know him. That’s when he put out his hand, and I swallowed my pride and shook it.

“Of course, living in Austin, training with the freshmen team, and coming in contact with all sorts of different types of people, pretty soon Jimmy Sanchez seemed to develop lighter skin. He didn’t talk like a Mexican. He showered daily, kept his hair cut short and clean, too.

“By the time that first semester had ended, and we went our separate ways for Christmas holidays, we had become friends. I got home and told my dad it wasn’t so bad sharing a room with a Mexican. In no time, during the spring semester, Jimmy and I started going to movies together, eating out, even double dating.

“The next fall, I looked forward to seeing him. We voluntarily roomed together from then on. He quit being a Mexican to me and became human. My best friend. That’s when we told each other all our secrets, and confessed our families’ shames to each other.

“Jimmy Sanchez’s mother and father both came across the Rio Grande one night, back during World War II, and took up residence in Texas, working for half the wages that white cowboys made, something like fifteen dollars a month. All with the hope of a better life.

“Still kids themselves, they wanted their yet to be born children to enter this world in America, to live free and have opportunity. The two of them had left behind the most abject poverty anyone can imagine. People died of starvation. Kids walked around in the dead of winter with no shoes and no coats, and it snows and gets cold in northern Mexico, where they grew up.

“About the time Jimmy turned twelve years old, his father got busted up really bad by this renegade paint stallion they called Big Baldy. He worked breaking horses and gathering range cattle for this rancher, who let the Sanchez family live in one of his dilapidated fence-line shacks. Right off, the old gringo took a liking to Jimmy’s dad. You see, his father was quite a good horse wrangler and vaquero, and the rancher admired those skills. Mister Sanchez could spin that sixty-foot Mexican lariat full circle around both him and his horse at a full run, and catch a calf on the fly thirty feet away with it.

“After Big Baldy gave him a stomping, Mister Sanchez laid in that shack for a week, his wife nursing the fever that set in, and then he finally died. He had convinced Jimmy’s mother that he just needed to lay in the bed for a few days. They didn’t have any money anyway, not even for a doctor, and he thought he’d mend on his own.

“Kind of like he treated his range stock, the old rancher just figured the Mexicans that got hurt working for him could tough out their injuries with what they had at hand. Survival of the fittest, so to speak. Calling a doctor never crossed his mind. That fellow was about as prejudiced against Mexicans as me and my dad were, too, and I think we were pretty typical of most white people in Texas.

“When his dad died, Jimmy had two younger sisters and three younger brothers. Damned beaners, you know, they breed like cockroaches. So this old prejudiced, son-of-a-bitch patrón, seeing this twelve-year-old boy quitting school and taking up the work of his dead father, trying to support this raft of little ones and his mother, who washed and ironed laundry, cooked and cleaned house for this guy for something like two dollars a week, I guess the bastard finally got bit by his own conscience seeing them struggle so hard.

“He took the Sanchez family to his bosom, and moved them up to a pretty nice house, just below his own grand castle, where his late mother had lived, and it had then sat vacant for several years after she died. Jimmy’s mother kept on cleaning and cooking and doing the laundry for the rancher, but he started paying her a good deal more money for her work, and he fed the family, kept the kids and mother in good clothes, and he sent Jimmy back to school. He said he owed Jimmy’s dad at least that much.

“My buddy Jim graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average. He got an academic scholarship to the University of Texas, which paid for his tuition and books for four years. That gringo rancher shelled out for Jimmy’s room and board, even bought him a pretty nice, used pickup truck to drive, and gave him a hundred dollars a month to spend. The man said he owed Jimmy’s father at least that much, too. Him dying on his ranch with broken ribs and whatever else that bronc busted up on his insides, as he did, and not seeing a doctor at all. So the man paid penance by raising Jimmy as a son.

“I never heard Jimmy Sanchez speak with bitterness about the way anybody treated him, his mother, his father, or even how I treated him when we first met. Instead he focused on what we could accomplish, and how he looked forward to going back home and teaching school. He wanted to teach school where he grew up.

“Between my junior and senior years in college I spent the summer with Jimmy at his home on that old man’s ranch. I got to know his mother, his sisters, and his brothers very well. They’re a wonderful family. Even that old fart gringo rancher, he loves every one of those Sanchez children like his own kids.

“Jimmy Sanchez showed me a lot about myself and my shortcomings. From his example, I learned to take people one person at a time. He taught me to respect poor folks, not pity them, but admire the people for their courage and their strength of character to struggle against an unfair tide, and not quit. Jimmy gave me a charitable heart and an open mind, and showed me how to accept people, even a dumb fuckhead like Michael Carter, who sneaks in the shadows and eavesdrops.”

The gangly captain nearly fell, tripping around the wall lockers, and almost turned one of them on its side when he caught himself off balance. Carter sniffed his nose, and then offered a sheepish smile at the two men sitting by the wall and open window.

T. D. McKay picked up the writing paper and turned it over, and pointing to it, said, “This is a letter to Jimmy’s mother. It’s my fault he died. I can’t find the words to tell her. To tell her I am sorry. How do you tell a mother you are sorry that you caused her son to die?”

Jon Kirkwood blinked and looked at Michael Carter. Then he looked back at McKay.

“Your fault?” Kirkwood said.

“When Jimmy got shot, we had to carry him to the rally point and the LZ,” McKay explained. “There were four of us: Jimmy, me, the radioman, and the corpsman. Communications were shitty, so we couldn’t make contact with anyone outside the platoon until we got to higher ground near the RP.

“Halfway there, we came to this big open space. To go around it would add half an hour to us getting him to a place where the medevac chopper could land. I saw where Jimmy had the clearing marked as a danger area on his map, and the corpsman and radioman warned me about it, too. But I’m mister touchdown, mister Saturday afternoon hero. So I sent Doc and Sneed around, and I put Jimmy on my shoulders and cut across.

“Just like Doc had warned, the NVA spotted me and started shooting. Somehow I dodged their bullets and got across, but they circled around and didn’t charge across after me. I later learned they had the field heavily mined. So with Charlie now running over the top of them, trying to catch me, Doc and Sneed had to take cover and sit it out.

“I got to the rally point with Jimmy, but I had left his medical aid and our only source of communications to the outside world stuck behind. My shortcut cost Jimmy the critical time he needed to live. He bled to death in the landing zone just as the choppers finally set down.

“He was so shot up he couldn’t talk but in gasps. He suffered unnecessarily for three long hours, fighting for air and battling for his life. All because I left the radio guy and the corpsman behind.

“Had I gone around, I would have avoided the enemy spotting me and pursuing us, we would have gotten to the rally point half an hour later with the doc to help Jimmy, and we could have called for a med-evac as soon as we got there. My fault? Yes! My heroics cost my best friend his life.”

Carter started to speak, but Jon Kirkwood, knowing that Tommy McKay would not take very well the sweet pap doled out by the Boston-bluenose bleeding heart, put up his hand just as the gangling captain began to sputter, silencing the no-doubt ill-thought but well-meaning words.

“You’re probably right, Tommy,” Kirkwood then said. “Your intentions were for your friend, but I see your point. It’s valid. No matter what any of us will try to tell you about it, you’re going to believe what’s in your heart. You were there, we weren’t. Now you have to figure out a way to live with it.”

“Wait a minute! He was saving his buddy’s life!” Carter interjected, his natural instincts to defend the downtrodden kicking into gear.

“Michael, go to your room,” Kirkwood said and pointed to the cubicle exit.

“This lieutenant happens to be under my counsel,” Carter then proclaimed, crossing his bony, flaky arms.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kirkwood growled at the stick-man captain.

“Major Dickinson has written a charge sheet on me,” McKay said, now defending Michael Carter’s continued presence. “The blond palm tree standing there is my defense counsel.”

“He what?” Kirkwood then bellowed, and looked straight at Carter.

“Major Dickinson has charged Lieutenant McKay with unauthorized absence, disobedience of a lawful written order, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,” Carter then said, stepping back inside the cubicle.

“The dirty son of a bitch,” Kirkwood growled, and kicked Wayne Ebberhardt’s wall locker with his nearly bare foot, losing his shower shoe off it and stubbing his right toe. Hopping and limping, the captain continued his rant. “Damn that wasted fuck! That drip down a whore’s thigh! He chews my ass out this afternoon for me getting the charges dismissed against my client, doing a fucking fantastic job, I think, and then to top off the insanity, he files a charge sheet on a Marine for heroism under fire. I’m never going to make it through a year of his bullshit! I can see it now! We’re not in Vietnam. We’ve all really died and gone to hell!”