“America Honors the Warfighter!” Sebastian called back, injecting his voice with as much earnestness as he could.
The man in rags smiled and put his hand across his heart, looking down into the river. “The honor is ours.”
As they walked across the remainder of the bridge, Sebastian replayed what he’d just witnessed. He felt a bit in awe, and a lot in dismay. Maybe it was the suburbanite in him. Maybe it was the former Boy Scout. Maybe it was the blood—even half-Bolivians from the upper middle class knew they didn’t have white-people latitude with police. Maybe it was something else. But he’d never seen anyone treat a cop like that.
“Goose-steppers,” Pete said, mostly to himself. Then, “Some people are just dented cans, you know? Nothing to be done.”
Sebastian didn’t want to opine about goose-steppers or about dented cans.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.
Pete shrugged. “Part of the social contract, I think.” Then he grinned up at the afternoon sun and took yet another sip of bourbon.
Sebastian wasn’t sure which social contract Pete meant. It didn’t sound like something from any America that’d come before.
CHAPTER 8
“MUST SEEM SMALLER to you, being back.”
Mia thought the opposite—the halls of Riverbrook felt larger, somehow—and told the dean so. He shrugged and poked his head into an ajar locker.
“Memory can be a beast,” he said.
Riverbrook School (“A Fine Place to Learn”) had been built on a leafy, quiet block in a northwestern corner of the city some seven decades before, molding the young minds of future statesmen, financiers, and an occasional drug merchant in the duration. It was modest, as Empire City private schools went: simple uniform, demanding-but-not-draconian academics, mandatory volunteer work in the community, et cetera. Mia had attended Riverbrook from kindergarten through eighth grade, and still held it in regard, if not deep affection. It was a good school, like many others.
“How are the kids?” Mia asked. Three weeks had passed since the war memorial bombings. Public transportation across the city remained a horror show and the lack of arrests had become a national punch line. The academic year beginning on time seemed a little step toward normalcy, at least. “Skittish?”
“Less than you’d think.” The dean closed the locker and they continued down the hall. He’d introduced himself at the front desk as “Riverbrook’s Resident Tyrant.” He was a bowling ball of a man, sixty or so, wearing an old suit and new tie. “Young people—easy to forget, sometimes. They’re adaptable.”
“A gift.” Mia’s thoughts drifted toward the aftermath in Vietnam Victory Square, and the tour group she’d helped reunite. The young girl finding her father again had been a high point. The Korean War vet dying from a heart attack as they pulled shrapnel from his leg had been the nadir. It’d been a long evening. The acrid tang of burnt metal had lingered in her throat for days.
“So, your cousin tell you much about the class?”
“It’s a history course,” Mia said. “And they’re studying modern conflict.”
“Innovative approach, starting now and working backward. Not how my generation did things but that’s okay. They’ll get to Nam in November, just in time for V-V Day and the parade.”
“Are you a veteran of Vietnam?” Mia felt sure he was. The dean had the look about him. The moxie, too. “Praise to the Victors.”
“Protestor.”
“Oh. I—” Mia didn’t know what to say. She was almost never wrong about this. “My mom was one of those. A protestor, I mean.”
“A long time ago,” the dean said.
“Did you—did you go to jail?”
The dean nodded. “Society’s tried real hard to make us embarrassed about it. But I’m not.” He sniffed. “ ‘Peacemongers.’ That’s no insult.”
“Proud, then?” They were nearing the classroom. Mia was curious. The dean was right. Most Vietnam protestors expressed shame now. Or had learned to fake it.
“Not exactly. We were more right than wrong. But we weren’t all right, either. Now it’s just something I did forty years ago. A lot’s happened since. My life, for one.”
“I think it’s good,” Mia said. “You believed in something.”
“Belief can be good,” the dean said. “So can doubt. Like I tell the kids, it all depends.”
“Depends on what?”
The dean winked and held the door. “The billion-dollar question.”
They walked into the classroom as the bell sounded. Twenty or so sixth graders sat in rows as ordered as any army formation, a muted, bantam energy crackling along the verges. Mia found her cousin Quentin in the middle of the third row. He smiled a little grin and waved. Mia introduced herself to the teacher, a man about her age built like a long, spruce Y. He thanked her for coming and set up the slide show. The dean took a desk in the back.
The lights were dimmed and Mia began, selected photographs from her tours cycling behind her.
“How many of you know a World War Two veteran?” she asked. “Like a grandfather.”
A few hands went vertical. They’re so young, Mia thought.
“How many of you know a Vietnam veteran?” she asked. “Father, uncle, something like that.”
Many more raised hands filled the room, including the dean’s.
“Now,” Mia asked. “How many of you know someone who has served in the Mediterranean Wars?”
Thirty years was a lot of war, but most of the hands fell like diving birds in rhythm. She pointed at those left raised.
“My brother,” a girl said. She was proud, Mia liked that. “My cousin,” Quentin said, and the class laughed. “My old neighbor,” another boy said. “They moved to the army base in the South,” he explained.
“Does my nanny’s boyfriend count?” still another boy asked. Mia looked at him. He wasn’t trying to be funny.
“Have you met him?”
The boy nodded.
“Then of course.”
“He got blown up bad,” the boy said. “Stepped on a trash bomb.”
The room shifted his way. Other boys wanted to know the gory particulars. Mia asked about the recovery.
“Don’t know,” the boy said, slumping back with his hands in his pockets. “They broke up.”
Mia discussed her own journey from Riverbrook to the military—the meaning of service, the power and importance of it, too. She talked about her early failures at flight school, and the power and importance of overcoming those failures. She talked about missing family during deployments, and the power and importance of letters and care packages. She talked about leadership, and how good leaders were also good followers. Then she asked for questions.
They weren’t shy. They were old enough to be informed but young enough to be unfamiliar with the art of guile. That mattered in these conversations. They wanted to know about the helicopters she’d flown, so they asked that. They wanted to know about the guns she’d carried, so they asked that. They wanted to know about women soldiers, so they asked that. They wanted to know if she’d killed, and how many, and how. So they asked that.