Captain Murphy was a real son of a bitch, but you couldn’t ask for a better man to stand beside you in a foxhole.
Murphy knew battle, which made him a hard man to hate once the bullets started flying. He had a pocketbook full of aphorisms, a steady hand, and the worst case of eczema you’d ever seen. He looked like he had been eaten, spit out, and scrubbed off with sandpaper. I wager it made him look like a half-cooked demon to the other side, all angry pink and hellfire.
Murphy poured white pepper on everything and pissed into an old water bottle at night. Never admitting his night terrors were why he wouldn’t make it to the latrines like the rest of us.
Most people forgot that after the war—the little habits. The things not mentioned during the medal ceremonies. I didn’t.
I remembered. Even if I forgot, I also kept a little notebook on me. I had half the company’s habits scribbled in the margins. Not to shame them— but to remember the shading of their character, not just the outline. A lot of people don’t like that. They say it’s invasive. I say they want to remember heroes instead of humans.
Thankfully for me, the OSS didn’t agree. Most of my notes went to waste. The majority of boys I served with went onto middle American mundanity. But not Murphy. The war lived too deep in his bones for Buicks and bourbon to scrape it away. I don’t say it to belittle or be mean. I wasn’t made for peacetime, either. We’d shed the sheepskins to find ourselves wolves. We could never go back after that. I wish he’d listened to me when I told him about the OSS. They needed a man like him. The country did. Well, it needed him to work for it— he’d become too dangerous not to.
We shouldn’t be made to hunt down friends. Maybe that’s why the agency suggests not having them. I worked with enough of those Mormons to believe it—for a while. I can’t help wanting to share some suds every once in a while. Sitting on a barstool, sharing a Schlitz, and remembering our first pastries after peace had been called. Had we ever tasted anything so sweet? Murphy would say victory. Sergeant Burns would say Parisian quim.
I think no one wanted to admit it was the camaraderie. War was hell— but regular life swallowed you up like Jonah’s whale. No harpoons for these lads. Just cheap beer and thinning hair. I thought about that as I watched Murphy from a distance. He returned to Wisconsin to live. Milwaukee after surviving Normandy? What a masochist.
He’d gone to O’Hoolahans pub three times this week, and it was only Thursday. Caught like a fly in amber.
I wanted to reach out. To share a stool with him. Shoot the breeze like demons didn’t live inside our hearts. It would have made things a whole lot easier.
Well, that’s what I wanted to believe. But poison is a hard way to go. Still, the illusion would have been nice. The autopsy report cleaner than a shot to the head. Suicide could be ruled in either case. But Murphy deserved better.
I screwed the silence onto my nine-millimeter as I sat in the car. It sure would have been nice.
Glass broke, and a hand slapped the gun out of my grasp as another grabbed my hair.
“Nice evening, eh, John?”
“Mighty fine, Murph.”
“You’re a little far from New York. Forget to give me a call?”
“Must have slipped my mind. Thought you moved to Chicago, anyway,” Murphy laughed and took a slow step away, releasing my hair. His right arm ran crimson, his eyes steady. “Any plans for tonight?” I asked him.
“Thinking about a beer, you want one?”
“Better than sitting in a chilly car,” Murphy laughed again and stepped away to let me out. At that moment, I’d have rathered stepped foot into a tiger cage— but realistically, it wasn’t much different. Murphy watched to see if I’d even think about the fallen gun. I didn’t. My brains didn’t need to make the next great abstract expression on my windshield. Besides, I wasn’t lying about that beer. Everything tastes better after tip-toeing past death.
I exited the car— Murphy’s face had healed since I’d seen him last. But no one would confuse him with Audie Murphy. For the first time, I wondered when he’d last been on a date. Heroes like him shouldn’t be alone. Hoped someone saw that he’d been the best of us. Grown men need heroes, too; we don’t know how to admit it. Standing there— I knew he had been mine throughout the war. Hemmingway might have been a hoke— but he made some points before he tried too hard to prove he didn’t cry. Ugly thing it is for a man to cry. Uglier to lie about it when you’re caught dead.
So here I was, caught dead. I walked into the bar for a beer and hoped no backup showed.
Some men are cowards when it counts. That’s the difference between who walks through the door and who doesn’t.
I knew even if it were the end— I’d been on borrowed time since I stepped on French soil.
I’m not too big a bastard to not admit when I’ve made a mistake.
As I walked into the bar, I realized in the past three days, I’d been tailing Murphy; I hadn’t seen anyone else walk out of this bar—shame on me.
“Oh, Murph. What have you done?” We’re not meant to be alone. Not for too long. It does queer things to the mind.
After a while, you can’t make it back.
I thought Murph had—before a quiet bar filled with mannequins said otherwise.
I got closer to see they had uniforms of a sort. They had name tags too.
“Murph…” He didn’t say anything.
“Would have told you the gangs all here, but the boys wanted me to keep it a surprise,” Murph’s eye had a glassy sheen. A cold sweat broke over my back.
He walked behind the bar and poured two draughts. He set mine down on the counter and motioned me to sit beside a plastic Sergeant Burns. Murphy raised his glass, “A toast! To our slipperiest solider and company light weight, Johnny Maynard.” I pushed my glass towards Murph for the cheers, and a third joined us—a plastic hand on my shoulder. The room filled with clinks behind me as Murph downed his pint. I kept my eyes ahead as the malt burned my throat.