“A bullet get through one of those, or something?” one of the others asked.
“Nope. I had the worst kind of luck,” Suzie said. “Which is when somebody else gets lucky when they weren’t supposed to. One of those potshots hit my Jesus nut. That’s the thing on top of the helicopter that holds the rotor on. You take that out, suddenly you are fifty feet up in a thing shaped like a school bus, not like a glider. You fall down and go boom. I was in my safety webbing, I had all kinds of fire suppression equipment and impact-resistant gel under my butt, I was going to be okay. Then a piece of my rotor comes straight down through my canopy and then straight through my face. It was like getting chopped in half by a sword.”
She pulled the neck of her tank top away to show the scar that ran from her hairline down across the middle of her chest. Chapel was a little shocked, thinking she was going to expose her breasts — until he saw that she only had one.
“Like the Amazons of old,” Rudy said, gasping.
“Shut the fuck up, you drunk,” Suzie said. She let her top fall back to cover part of her scar. “I was in traction for a year. They had me strung up in this frame, locked down so I couldn’t even move my fingers. If I wriggled around too much, I would have fallen apart like an onion chopped down the middle. Yeah,” she said, “real fucking lucky. And yeah, that was how I got to meet Top.”
One by one the others told their stories, each claiming they’d had it worse than anyone else, that they’d been lucky or unlucky in various measures, each one ending with how they’d come to meet Top. There were only two exceptions. One was an airman missing both legs below the knees. He started out strong. “Your stories ain’t shit,” he said. “You want to talk real suffering—”
But then he stopped. Chapel saw a look in the man’s eyes he knew all too well. The airman couldn’t see anything but the past. The worst moment in his life. “Never mind,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you.”
“That’s okay,” Suzie said. “Nobody wanted to hear it anyway.”
Some of the others chuckled.
Rudy, the other exception, was the last one to speak. “I’m afraid you’ve all got it wrong,” he said. “All these tales of woe. Talking about how unlucky you sods were. Nonsense, every bit of it.”
“Let me guess,” Chapel said. “You had it worse than us.”
“I wouldn’t say as much,” Rudy told them. “By fuck, I’d say you’re all a bunch of sad sacks that make my own troubles seem like minor inconveniences by comparison. But I know you’re the luckiest sons of bitches who ever lived. That antitank round, the helicopter blade that got you, Suzie my dear, the ammunition cooking off in your Stryker,” he said, nodding at a veteran with a white plastic hand. “In my day, those things would have killed you all stone dead. You’re all here because medical technology has come so far we can save people who should have died.”
“You saying I should be dead?” Ralph asked.
“Son, your very existence is a blessing on us all,” Rudy said. He shook his head. “No, I’m saying you got lucky enough to be born when you were, that’s all. I watched a lot of boys with injuries less severe than yours die back in ’Nam. There was a time when I wished I’d been one of them. I suppose there are times I still do. I couldn’t handle it, you see. All the death. Every time one of my friends caught a bullet or stepped on a punji stick or just disappeared out in the jungle… I knew it wasn’t going to stop. That kind of thing gets into a man’s head. I came back from Southeast Asia without so much as a scratch on me, you know that? At least, none I could point to. No Purple Heart. No medals at all. But I came back and found that I’d brought a souvenir with me. No matter where I went here in the States, every time I met someone I’d look them in the eye and think, Are you going to die today? Are you? I couldn’t care about anyone. I couldn’t get attached, because they were just going to disappear, so I treated them like they already had. Made it rather difficult to find a job. Made it rather easy to find a bottle, since when I drank it didn’t seem so bad.”
“You still feel that way? Even here?”
“I have my good days,” Rudy suggested. “And then sometimes—”
A familiar voice boomed out from the stairway. “What do we have here?” Top asked. “I believe I said you all should stay out of this here basement.”
The boys got to their feet. They didn’t quite stand at attention but they looked like they wanted to.
“Maybe,” Top said, “I’m getting senile in my old age. Dolores, honey, did I tell these people to stay out of the basement?”
“You did, Top,” Dolores called out from upstairs.
“And yet here they all are. What do you suppose we should do about this discrepancy?”
The boys filed out of the basement with bowed heads. When they were gone, Top glanced at Chapel. “You okay, Captain? They didn’t suck up all your air?”
“Just having ourselves a bitch session,” Chapel told him.
Top nodded in acceptance. “Well, I suppose that’s all right. You know what I always say. A soldier who can still bitch is a happy soldier. It’s the quiet ones you have to worry about.”
Chapel smiled. “How was the movie? What did you see?”
“Something about a dog that learned how to work a computer or some nonsense. Didn’t pay attention. But I’ll go see anything’s got a dog in it. Now, good night, my dear captain. You get some rest. That would be an order, if you didn’t outrank me.”
“I’ll take it as one anyway,” Chapel told him.
When they were alone, just the three of them — Chapel, Julia, and Angel — he let himself be eased down into a prone position so he could go to sleep. “Tomorrow we’ll talk more about that place in Kentucky,” he told Angel.
She nodded and then reached down to touch his cheek. “Good night.”
Julia watched her go. There was a funny look on her face.
“What’s going on between you and her?” Chapel asked.
“Tell you in a minute,” Julia said, then held up one finger. Together they listened for the sound of the basement door closing. “Okay, first, what exactly just happened down here? With all the stories?”
“Sympathy,” Chapel said. “It helps to share, sometimes.”
“Including trying to one-up each other with how bad your stories were, or Suzie telling people to shut up all the time?”
“What you saw,” Chapel told her, “is about the closest you can get to a pity party and still consider yourself a hard-ass soldier. We all need to feel like we’re not alone sometimes, but none of us wants to admit it.” He smiled at her. “Now. Are you going to answer my question?”
She looked away. “Angel has a crush on you.”
“Oh, come on. She and I flirt. It’s harmless,” he insisted.
“You didn’t notice how she was hovering over you? How she just touched your cheek? But of course, no, you didn’t notice. Because you’re an oblivious man.”
He shook his head. “Maybe you’re jealous.”
“I’m trying to decide if I am or not,” she told him.
That made him want to sit up. He didn’t, because he knew how much it would hurt. “Julia — if you think you and I could maybe—”
“Shush. Anyway, this isn’t the time for that conversation. Or the place.”
He grinned at her. “I’m not going anywhere. Doctor’s orders.”
“Veterinarian’s orders,” she said. “Which might be fitting, considering what a dog you are.” She smiled when she said it, but then her face fell. “Okay. If we’re going to do this, let me start. I’m not a jealous person. I don’t like being a jealous person. And I am very angry at you for forcing me to be a jealous person.”