He lifted his phone and dialed the number.
Chapter 9
Logan walked into the office four days later feeling just a bit better than he probably had in all his time since his return to civilian status. It had still been a pretty rough drive into the office, but since he was now coming in at a little more normal time of day, he’d hit some traffic.
But he hadn’t broken into a cold sweat sitting in that traffic. He’d handled it. Sure, his grip on the steering wheel had been tighter than a pilot’s ass in a tailspin, but he hadn’t been in a full-blown panic.
He didn’t know if it was the two counseling sessions he’d had in four days or what, but on the off chance it was, he’d be keeping those appointments.
Ernie Green had turned out to be maybe fifteen years older than Logan, a veteran who’d served in Desert Storm. He was so freaking laid-back, he actually managed to get Logan talking. And that was something Logan hadn’t thought anyone would be able to do.
During the first session, Ernie just smiled amiably at Logan and said, “So, what do you feel like doing?”
Logan had looked around at the pool table, the couches, the small refrigerator and the multiple old-school pinball machines that filled the room before answering.
“I thought we were supposed to talk,” Logan said as his gaze came back around to the man in front of him.
“Sure,” Ernie said. “We can talk.” He walked to one of the couches and sat, his khaki pants slipping up to show the barest snippet of a prosthesis on each leg. Logan hadn’t realized he’d been frowning at the man’s ankles until Ernie called him on it.
“Desert Storm. IED. Lost ’em both below the knee.” He said all this with an easy smile that suggested he didn’t give a shit if anyone questioned him about his legs.
Logan nodded before sitting on the other couch. “So, how does this work? I tell you my problems and you tell me how to fix them?”
“Shit,” Ernie answered with a grunt as he reached into the fridge and pulled two bottles of water out, tossing one to Logan and opening the other. He took a long swallow before continuing. “You can tell me your grocery list if you feel like it. You’re the boss in here. We can play pool, shoot the shit, or sit here and stare at each other.”
Logan schooled his face and eyed the man. If anyone other than Chad Thompson had told him to come see this guy, he likely would have walked out the door.
But Logan trusted Chad. Completely. If Chad said he needed this guy, he’d stick around long enough to give him a shot. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give the guy some shit.
“I thought you were supposed to be a licensed therapist or something. Shouldn’t you be trying to help me?”
“Eh, all right. You want to play it that way, we can. Tell me about one of the guys who didn’t come home. Out of all the guys you wish you could bring back, out of all the men you would gladly flush your own life down the toilet for, simply for the glimmer of a shot at bringing him back. The guy who was worth all of your lives put together, the whole effing team of you would have thrown yourselves on a grenade to bring this guy—”
“All right! I got it. I got it.” Logan sat and stared open-mouthed. Would it be inappropriate to tell this guy he changed his mind and wanted to play pool?
The silence dragged on. After several long moments, Ernie slapped his hands on the arms of his chair and shoved himself up to his feet. “Pool it is, then!”
The crazy bastard walked to the pool table and began racking the balls, nodding to the pool cues hanging on an adjacent wall. “Pick it. You break.”
And, then they played. And that’s all they’d done. A little small talk here and there, but that was it. They just played. When the fifty-minute hour—what the hell is that about?—was over, Ernie nodded at Logan and said, “I’ll see you in two days. Same time.”
And that was it.
The following session, Logan walked in, caught the bottle of water Ernie tossed his way, and they began to play again. No pressure, no nothing.
And, within twenty minutes, Logan was talking.
“His name was Dopey.”
Ernie grunted. “Back in my day, we had names like Cowboy and Ice Man. Dopey? You guys went with Dopey?”
Logan was surprised to hear himself chuckle and a little of the tension seeped out of him. “Yeah. Nick James. We all called him Dopey because he was so damned much like the dwarf, Dopey. Smiling and happy all the freaking time. Everyone’s friend no matter what. In the beginning, I think people thought he was a bit slow, because he had this way of talking really slow and he didn’t say a whole lot sometimes. He turned out to be the smartest of all of us.”
“How so?” Ernie asked, leaning over the table to line up a bank shot.
Logan shook his head and a bitter half laugh came out of him. “He was actually pretty damned philosophical. One day, we’re all sitting around. They told us to get ready for a call out, then nothing. You know—“
“Hurry up and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait,” Ernie said.
“Yeah. So, we’re waiting and someone pulls up some article about an asshole somewhere burning the America flag in protest. We’re all feeling pretty pissed off about it because, you know, we’re deployed left and right, hardly a break between them. We’re dealing with sand in our damned underwear and heat like you’ve never felt in the summer or snow up to our freaking ears in the winter, getting shot at and blown to shit, and—”
Logan stopped then, swallowing as the memory hit him hard. “Well, you know,” he said, not wanting to mention the shit they had to see, the shit they had to do.
Not wanting to talk about what it was to take a life, even when you knew it was their life or yours. Even when that person would put a bullet through your skull with no qualms about it because of what you stood for. Who you stood for.
Ernie simply nodded. They’d stopped playing pool for a minute, but Logan bent back over the table, taking a shot to the corner pocket and sinking it with a satisfying shunk in the pocket.
He was quiet for a minute, eyeing the table and then lining up another shot before continuing.
“And, we’d all do it all over again in a heartbeat for our country. So, to see some guy burning the flag—” He shook his head. “Dopey. He just stops all of us. He tells us all we’re wrong. Of course, we look at him like he’s nuts, but he doesn’t care. He says, we’re all wrong. That burning the flag is a right and it’s a right we have to continue to protect no matter what.
“He says it’s a right that should never, ever be exercised, but if some asshat back in the states is dumb enough to exercise it, we need to protect his right to do it. Because that’s what makes us different, you know? That’s what makes the United States so great. It’s the fact that you can say and do those things, that you can say and do what you believe in and you can stand up for what you believe in. And, that’s what we’re over here fighting for, he says. We’re fighting so that asshat can burn the flag.”
“Do you think he was right?” Ernie’s tone had held no judgment. He had only been asking the question.
“I don’t know.” Logan stared out the window for a minute before continuing. “It still pissed me off to hear about some guy doing that, but I do think Dopey had it right that we have to stick up for all the rights we have here, you know? Even the ones that make me want to bash someone’s head in from time to time. It’s what makes America better than any other country on the planet.”