Coming up on Austin in the early morning hours was not bad, traffic wise, but then again it was near 5 in the morning. I pulled the car into a convenience store, asking as I did, if he wanted coffee. He looked up from the briefcase and nodded in the affirmative.

Opening my door and getting out was a pleasant surprise; the cool damp air was refreshing, and with the rain now gone, the early morning air had a good feel about it, kind of like a cleansing feeling. It felt good to stretch my legs, and as I headed into the building, I looked back to see if he was coming, but he waved me on with one hand, the other one holding his cell phone to his ear.

The store, not surprisingly, wasn’t busy at this time of the morning, and it didn’t take me long to get two coffees, and head back to the car. Terry was still in his seat, talking on the phone, and as I was getting in, I heard him say, “love you too”.

“That was Marsha”, he said, slipping the phone back in his pocket. “She’s meeting us at the Pilot Truck Stop just as you get into San Antonio, that is if you’re going that far, I’m assuming you are, right”?

We’d never discussed where I was going, only where he was headed. It was a natural assumption I decided, and said, “sure that’ll work”.

“Marsha and me plan on getting married”, he said, brushing lint off his uniform. “How many kids do you have”?

Taken back a little, with his sudden chatter, I shifted gears a little, and told him, “never had any, my wife couldn’t have kids”. My answer was true too; Doria had two miscarriages before the doctors told us to forget it. A major disappointment for both of us, but something we slowly got over and eventually quit talking about, at least between ourselves.

“I’m sorry, that must be tough on both of you”, he said, as he lit another cigarette, although for some reason he didn’t look so nervous anymore.

I heard him talking but I didn’t say anything, as I thought about Doria. I still missed her, or thought I did, sometimes I wondered if it was just because we had been married for so long, and now that she was gone I was missing her like I would a mate to a pair of old comfortable shoes. God knows we had our problems; she’d known how hard it hurt me that she couldn’t have children. And, she knew I was “away” much more than I needed to be.

In the end, ours had turned into a relationship of convenience, which, she had decided to bail out of. She’d left three years ago, on Christmas day, leaving a note that said, “she couldn’t continue the charade any longer”. I was left to file for the divorce, pay the lawyer and make sure she got her copies, a dry, unemotional ending to our marriage. Not much different from the marriage itself, I thought now as I maneuvered the car through the light Austin traffic.

“Do you have anyone now”, he asked?

“No”, I replied, surprised at feeling somewhat defensive.

But it was true, I hadn’t dated or anything close, since she’d been gone, mainly just putting the finishing touches on the only thing that had ever really mattered to me; the job.

We rode in silence for the next hour. I have no idea where he was but I was lost in my thoughts; about my life and what it all added up to, and why I was thinking about it now. My previous suspicions about Terry were still there, but, for some reason, they didn’t seem as important as before.

It came as a surprise to me when he said, “ Wesley, the exit we want is coming up”.

I’d known we were nearing San Antonio, but had forgotten about where we were meeting his girlfriend. “Okay” I answered him, clicking on the signal, and slowing a little.

The truck stop was bustling with activity, trucks pulling in and out, and quite a few cars doing the same. Terry was talking again, saying, “She’ll be in a white Dodge pickup, one of the new body styles”.

I saw her before he did, long black hair, a silhouette type figure; she was standing outside the truck, a pair of sunglasses in one hand, and folded papers of some kind in the other. She was a nice looking woman that was obvious even at a distance. As I swung the car in her direction, Terry spoke up, “there she is, damn it’s good to see her”. I could only nod my head thinking how good it must be.

We rode in silence for a while, him “chain smoking” and staring out his window, me, thinking about the meeting I was scheduled to attend in Austin. My 35-year career with the FBI was coming to an end in a few months, and this meeting was more or less another “retirement seminar”, neither particularly interesting to me, nor necessary, and certainly not mandatory.

My main reason for attending was basically “boredom”, plus having spent Christmas with my brother and his wife, who lived about 40 miles out of Austin, it was a convenient excuse to get away “early” from their forced hospitality. I’d even thought about going back to Kansas City, as I was leaving their house, but practicality took over, and I decided to go ahead to Austin.

But now, as I drove toward Austin, my nervous passenger was beginning to arouse my naturally suspicious nature. He’d told me that his name was Terry Gaines, and that he had grown up in Lufkin, Texas, and that his parents were still living there. “Why were they not taking him to Ft. Sam”, I wondered? And, if for some reason they couldn’t take him themselves, “why was he broke without any money, and forced to hitch-hike”?

Earlier, when I’d asked him about this, he’d told me that they were out of town, and he couldn’t get a hold of them, and had quickly changed the subject, by asking what my name was, and what I did for a living. I hadn’t hedged on my name, telling him “Wesley Gates”, but when I had added “from K.C., and happily retired”, I knew that I had automatically fell into an official mode, deciding at that point, that there were too many peculiar things about this young man, and that I was going to be a little bit cautious with him.

I must admit the “hitch-hiking thing” had intrigued me the most, but there was other things too, his jumpiness, smoking one cigarette after another, and the part about going to Ft. Sam, in order to return to Iraq. I’d been out of the Army for a long time but the usual way you went overseas was to report to a Military Installation on one or the other coasts, depending on where you were going. In my day, I’d left from Ft. Lewis, Washington enroute to Vietnam, and from Charleston AFB, South Carolina when I went to Germany. To my way of thinking, it was highly unlikely that he would be going to Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, “enroute to Iraq”.

So with thoughts like this running through my mind, and needing to piss, I said, “ I need to stop and get something to drink, and take a leak”.

Shifting in the seat, he turned toward the back seat, and said, “yeah, me too”, as he retrieved his beret, and a black briefcase that had been attached to his duffle bag.

As he opened the briefcase and dug around in it for something, I couldn’t help but think that “somewhere in there” was his leave orders, which would “detail where and when he was supposed to report for his return trip to Iraq”.

from afar I can almost
see the end of night
the beat of the music
heralding the way

they’re all dancing,
it’s a frigging party
as the bright sky
slides back around

and another day rotates
to its proper slot
in a world made up by prophets
slinging all the answers

while unknowing children play on
from way back near the beginning
foretelling another time and place
before or after it doesn’t matter.

How much longer do you have”, I asked? He laughed and said, “nine months”. Adding “Would have been out in March, if I hadn’t took the leave”. “The bastards made me extend six months to get it”.

He explained what I already suspected, that he wasn’t actually authorized “emergency” leave, but had been given the option of extending his tour, in exchange for a twenty-day leave. The “carrot and stick option”.

It was not beneath today’s “All Modern Volunteer Army”, or “Army of One” which was the new slogan, to extort soldiers for more “volunteer time”; whatever it took to get more bodies. As the rain started to come down heavier, I concentrated on my driving, while thinking how the government screws each generation, in whatever fashion or form it needs to.

“Were you officer or enlisted”, he asked. The question was a sign of immediate acceptance, the comradre of the military being so strong, that even though I was not in the military anymore, the fact that I had been, qualified me as a member of the club.” Enlisted”, I replied, “drafted in 67, Nam in 68”.

“My Dad was there in 70” he said. “Phan Rang,” he quickly added,” surprising me a little, most guys whose Dads were in Nam, had no clue to where they had actually been over there. I knew where Phan Rang was; had been there a couple of times.

“Ever think about not going back”, I asked, immediately testing the limits of my membership in the club. “Yeah, but I volunteered for this shit, third generation Army, and all that crap, so I’m stuck with it”, he said without any rancor toward me, but letting plenty of it drip on his decision to enlist.

“So you joined for the old man”? I said, glancing his way. “Yeah, that and 9-11, me and a friend joined together, a week after.”

Oh, a 9-11 enlistment, I thought, recalling the rash of enlistments right after the tragedy. As if reading my mind, he said, “yeah, we were ‘John Wayne’ wannabe’s, dumb, just dumb”. “At least Jerry got smart in time”.

“Your friend”?

“Yeah, he got out during basic, kept fucking up on purpose, doing everything he could to get out”. “Finally got a discharge right before we graduated, my old man would of killed me”, he said, with a chuckle, pointing his finger at me like a gun, and pulling the imaginary trigger.

I wondered what had happened to his friend, to cause his change of mind, but I let it go, but it was easy to pick up the conflict with his dad, who wanted him to be a link in a chain.

I almost didn’t stop. If not for the rain, the dark night, and the fact that he was a soldier, I’d probably kept on driving.

Settling in to the passenger seat, after tossing his duffle bag in the back, he took his beret off and shook the rain from it; turning to me, he smiled, and thanked me for stopping.

I told him it was not a problem, as if I always stopped for hitchhikers on lonely, rainy nights. He pulled out a pack of smokes and looked at me. I nodded my okay.

“Where you headed”? I asked, as I adjusted my rear view mirror, eyeing the headlights behind us.

“San Antonio”, he said, adding that his destination was really Ft. Sam Houston. No big surprise, since the well-known Army Post was also located there.

The hitchhiking thing was the oddity, and I broached it quickly, to not of done so, would have been odd itself. “You don’t see anyone in uniform, hitch-hiking anymore, what’s up with that”?

“No ride man, no money either”, adding, “I figured the uniform would get me a ride; you know we’re heroes these days ”.

I smiled with his words, and uttered, “right”. He laughed, softly and knowingly.

“I know exactly where it is”, I told him, meaning the Army post, explaining; “I was stationed there in 68, back during the Hemisphere”. The sweet smell of the cigarette, mixed with the unforgettable smell of his military uniform, was sending me back in time.

To the “Wac Shack”, a little club on the installation, where we went on those weekends when money was low, cause there was no cover charge for the band, and the beer was cheap. And to “McArthur Park”, a good place to go on Sunday afternoons, to wax your car, while listening to the radio, and checking out the local girls. Where I’d met “Gracie”,

I’d been back only once, since leaving for Nam in 68, Doria and I spending a weekend there a few years ago, on the “River Walk”, more or less passing through. We had been on our way to Corpus Christi, a vacation of sorts.

“Leaving tomorrow… going back to Iraq”, he was saying, as he opened a cell phone.

“So, how’s it going over there”, I inquired? He pulled on his cigarette and blew smoke at my windshield, and snapped the cell phone closed, without looking at it.

When he didn’t say anything else, I glanced in his direction, the unspoken words on the tip of my tongue. He was staring out his window, the cigarette reflecting back from the glass.

“Fucked up”, he said, with a sigh, taking another hit from the cigarette, and flipping ashes in the ashtray. “I never smoked before Iraq”, he said, and added, “but I do a lot of stuff now”, his voice trailing off, not finishing the thought.

“Well”, I said, “Guess you’ve been home for Christmas”, a lame observation on my part, since Christmas had come and gone two days before, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and the moment seemed to need a filler.

“Yeah, emergency leave”, he said, leaning back in his seat, examining the headliner above us, the headlights of an approaching truck, illuminating his face briefly, showing a small white scar, barely visible just under his left eye. He looked to be no more than 22 or 23, and, since he didn’t elaborate on what the emergency was, that had brought him back from war, I didn’t ask.

An oncoming car shot his brights on me, and I dimmed mine, while edging a little closer to the right side of the two-lane road. In a few more miles we would make I-35, and blessed 4-lane traffic.