“That’s right.”
“You don’t remember me? I changed that much?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Jimmy Doyle. Seventh Division, Alpha Company, second platoon.” He leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Nine years ago, chasing nook and shooting gook.”
“You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”
“Summer 1953. You and that other kid from Texas were always together. See one, see the other.”
“Wish I could help you.”
“What is this, man? You blowing me off?”
“No, sir.”
He looked at Jo Anne. “He’s pulling my leg, right?”
“He’s not a leg-puller,” she said.
He took a comb from his back pocket and clawed it with two hands through the thickness of his hair, then examined the comb and returned it to his pocket, not once looking at me. “I think you’re calling me a liar, Mac.”
“Nope.”
He huffed air out of his nose. “What was the name of that kid? He was KIA or got grabbed the night the gooks broke through on us. It was a funny name. Like a sword or blood or something.”
“We’ve got to say good night, buddy,” I said.
“I got it,” he said. “It was Saber. Goofball Saber Bledsoe.”
“We’ve got to move along, Doyle,” I said. “That’s your name? Doyle, right? Nice meeting you.”
He surveyed the room, his face like a wax replica that had started to melt, his thoughts veiled. “Okay,” he said, as though he had just completed a conversation with himself.
“Okay, what?” I said.
“I give up.” He looked at Jo Anne. “Enjoy your evening, pretty lady. Your guy is a lucky man. Watch out for him. He’s a card.” He walked away and squeezed Lindsey Lou and Orchid against his hips, swinging them in the air.
“You never saw him before?” Jo Anne said.
“I might have.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“He’s buds with Marvin. At best, he’s hunting on the game reserve.”
“What was that army stuff?” she asked.
“Who wants to find out? His tats are a nightmare.”
She looked at me strangely. I thought I heard bugles in the hills, and wondered if they would ever cease. Through the back windows of the cafeteria, I could see electricity flaring on the horizon, like faraway artillery pieces silently lighting the bottom of the sky. I wanted the floor to split apart and swallow me alive and deliver me to a mythic garden between the Tigris and Euphrates when the world was only one day old and hung with fruit that had never been touched.
A boom of thunder rattled the windows, and a rush of wind slammed a side door into the wall and filled the room with the bright, cold smell of the storm. A solitary man was standing outside, his hooded slicker striped with rain. He pointed his finger at me and mouthed the word “you,” as would a medieval inquisitor.
I went after him, into the ferocity of the night, the dust blowing, the snowcaps in the mountains turning to tinfoil, the parked gas-guzzlers and battered pickups shuddering with the velocity of the wind. The hooded man was gone. I wondered if I had become delusional.
I went back into the cafeteria, my clothes drenched, unable to explain my behavior to Jo Anne. “Don’t worry about it, Aaron,” she said, placing her hand on my arm. “Maybe he was someone who wandered in from the highway.”