Maybe Jeremy shook his head; he didn’t know.
Pull off where you can see the highway, Gunny repeated. The voice was soft, caring, almost fatherly. Then we’ll straighten some things out.
Jeremy sped past another exit.
Gunny said, Oh, my. Don’t you know yet that without me you’re nothing? So…if you want to be nothing again, you can stop at the next gas station and let me out.
Jeremy stared straight ahead. In another moment he realized he was alone, because he could no longer see Gunny from the corner of his eye. Yet he knew he’d always been alone; what he saw and heard as the image of his gunnery sergeant from training school wasn’t there and had never been. It was something from within, just like when a lonely person starts talking to the mirror. He remembered some line from a movie, maybe he’d seen it on the base in Iraq, where the guy says you’re not crazy if you talk to yourself in the mirror, but if you answer back you’ve gotta be fucking nuts.
He thought his image of Gunny, just as regulation spit-polished, side-walled and crisply buttoned-up as the man had been in real life, had to do with perfection. Maybe it was how he himself had wanted to be…had planned on being, until things messed up. He could’ve been an instructor at the school, no doubt about it. He could’ve served a long and useful life in the Corps. Semper Fi, that’s what it was all about. So he knew that Gunny wasn’t there, could never really be there, but he would accept any part of Gunny he could get because it took him back to when he was somebody, doing something important in this world.
It occurred to him as he was driving eastward, about midway between Sweetwater and Abilene, that his fingers on the steering-wheel seemed longer than he recalled. The knuckles were thicker, too. He wasn’t excusing himself for those poor shots—no way, he was a professional—but his long fingers might have fouled up his trigger pull. It was something he hadn’t noticed until now, and it hit him like a small shock that he did not recognize his own hands. When he moved the fingers, they rippled on the steering-wheel like the legs of a spider touched by a hot needle. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw with a strike of terror that one eye was the wrong color, and then he started talking himself down, muttering and gasping things that had meaning for him, like grape popsicle and their daughter Judy and my name is Gladiator, my name is Gladiator, my name is Gladiator. Until finally his spider-fingered hands pulled the pickup off at the next exit and Jeremy stopped at a gas station to get a cup of coffee.
He left the truck parked at the far corner of the lot, its bug-smeared grill aimed toward I-20.
It is nearly one o’clock by Jeremy’s watch. In this pretend playhouse, with the Rolling Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’ now cranking from the speakers and the flamehaired girl taking her turn on the pole, the Hispanic dentist has had enough beers, even of the watered variety, to be swaying in his chair. Miss Ponytail is always a tit’s touch away from him, guarding her gold mine. Jeremy has been to three other joints like this tonight. The first and second had a security guard out front, patrolling the parking lot, the third had floodlights and video cameras up on the corners of the building, but this one out in an industrial area is a windowless cinderblock slab designated by a portable sign on wheels to be Club Salvaje, Where The Wild Angels Play. There are lights in the parking lot, but they’re angled so they throw huge pools of black shadow amid the cars, SUVs and trucks. Up on the building itself are two video cameras aimed down at the front door, which might have been a problem except for the fact that Jeremy thinks they’re fakes because no red Record lights are showing. He thinks this joint is too cheap, too temporary, to afford a real video security system. The batteries for the false lights have probably burned out.
He needs money. He’s used his credit card too much as it is, for gas, food and motel rooms; it was on the critical list when he left Temple, and pretty soon it’s going to be shut down. If he doesn’t have enough cash, the police will be called and that won’t help him any. He was out last night, hitting some other strip clubs, spending his money on the crappy beer because they won’t let him sit in these places if he doesn’t buy something. But no opportunities had come up. He hasn’t eaten today, saving his last few dollars for tonight. He watches the Hispanic dentist, and he wonders where in the lot is the man’s car parked.
If you have any doubt about what you’re doing, Gunny had said when Jeremy was back in the pickup with a styrofoam cup of coffee and a Milky Way bar, know that you’re making a new life for yourself. You’re coming out of retirement. How does that feel?
Jeremy hadn’t answered, because if he did he would be talking to himself. His fingers were okay now, his hands back to what they were. He checked his eye in the rearview mirror and found that it too had returned to normal.
You’ve missed being useful, said Gunny. Being needed for a task. A mission. Being the go-to guy. That was everything to you, wasn’t it?
Jeremy slid down a little in his seat and watched the passage of traffic going east and west on I-20.
Everything, Gunny repeated. Well, you’ve got a mission again. Maybe you’re not as good as you used to be, but hey…who is? This time Gunny didn’t pause for a response. You’re still very talented. Very able. And you still enjoy the hunt, don’t you?
“Yes,” Jeremy said, before he could think not to.
They trained you and fed you and built you and set you loose. They created you to be what you are. What did they expect you to do, after they didn’t need you anymore?
“I don’t know,” said Jeremy.
But they do still need you. They need men like you to step up and defend the honor of every veteran who put their boots in that dust over there. Who left their families, and who came back changed from when they went. Who died over there, or who came back as good as dead, like Chris. You think anybody in that band ever fought for their country? You think they ever would? So they get up on their stage, on their platform, and make their accusations and their pronouncements, and play their music—which is shitty music, really—and people like them screw everything up until the flag looks dirty and fighting for your country looks like the act of a criminal. Are you a criminal because you carried out your missons? Does following orders make you a criminal?
Jeremy shook his head. No, it does not. Definitely not.
He wasn’t sure if he’d spoken aloud or if he hadn’t, but Gunny could hear him.
This is not just about that shitty band, Gunny said after a stretch of silence. Not just about smearing garbage on the memory of men like Chris. This is about you. Are you listening?
From Jeremy: I am.
Gunny said, This is your new beginning. You do this right—you be smart and careful—and you can live the dream. Every once in a while they bring you out of that white stone villa on the beach in Mexico somewhere, give you a target and you go hunting. You spend three or four days in the field, you send the bullet, and they heap praise and money on your head. And you perform a service for them, something they can’t do on their own. Something they have to keep off the books. Dangerous? Sure. Could you get yourself killed, or strung up by the heels and cut up so bad you’d want to die? Absolutely. But where were you on Friday night, Jeremy? Cutting yourself up, weren’t you? Living in misery and dying in sadness. So what do you have to lose from this point onward? And weigh that very carefully against what there is to be gained, won’t you?