T. Parker - Full Measure

He was surprised to see the two men stepping out to the patio. They were Marines he recognized from Pendleton. Not Dark Horses. A woman walked along between them, arm in arm with each. Patrick looked to Iris, who was more than surprised. She rose as if to confront them but Messina jumped up and said he’d invited them — sorry he forgot to say something but these are great men with nothing to do tonight! Patrick saw Iris try to hide the disappointment. The men and woman ambled across the yard toward them and Patrick noted that they were drunk. Messina introduced them as Grier and Marcos and told Patrick to whip them up some drinks. “And who the heck are you?” Messina asked the woman.

“I’m the stripper!”

Christ, thought Patrick. Iris looked at him very doubtfully.

“Not really.” She giggled. “Just Mindy.”

Iris’s dining room table only sat six so Patrick brought in chairs and the crashers got corners and plates on their laps. Everyone drank at speed except for Natalie, who was sober three years. Messina watched her intently. Patrick kept an eye on the interlopers and kept getting up to fetch and pour more wine. He’d learned to twist the bottle at the end of the pour to keep it from dripping. He felt grown-up. The table talk was spirited and from the bleachers the three crashers offered a chorus of drunken but good-natured commentary. When Grier leaned back he nudged the framed aerial photograph of the Cash family farm with the back of his head and it fell off the wall but he hung it back up, undamaged, with exaggerated care. In the kitchen Patrick helped Iris get the trays ready. “That dumbbell Messina,” she whispered. “How could he do this?”

“I’ll get rid of them if you want.”

“We can’t be rude, Pat.”

“Yes, we can. This is your dinner, Iris.”

“Then I’m sure not going to let them ruin it.”

“I have bad feelings about this.”

“I won’t cave in to negative thinking.”

Patrick ignored his anger. Back in the dining room he poured the red wine and Marcos held out his empty margarita glass and offered a glassy grin. Patrick didn’t serve him. Finally seated, Iris asked Mary Ann if she’d like to say a prayer and everyone around the table joined hands. It was brief and heartfelt. In the silence after “amen” Grier burped and Mindy shushed him.

“You three,” said Patrick. “If you can’t behave yourselves, you’ll have to leave.”

“Says Colonel Patrick Norris of the Three-Five!” said Grier. He was a big man, heavier and older than Patrick.

“We’re not so bad are we?” asked Marcos.

“Patrick is right,” said Mindy. “So we’re going to behave starting right now.”

“Man,” said Salimony, “these enchiladas are good.”

They passed the dishes and the food dwindled quickly. Messina handed a bottle of white wine back to Mindy and she poured some into her margarita, her little finger raised preciously, then set the empty bottle on the floor.

“Mind if I turn up the music?” asked Grier.

“No, thank you,” said Iris. “I’d like to hear the conversation.”

“In that case I’ll tell you what I did today,” said Messina. “I worked my butt off training my replacements. See, I’m twenty-six years old next month and the Corps doesn’t need me anymore. Not when they got eighteen-year-old cherries to do what I did. They don’t want third-tour men. We’re washed up and too expensive and even the brass thinks we’re too crazy to fight anymore. Plus, it’s all winding down.”

“Maybe it’s time you left the Corps anyway,” said Natalie.

“I don’t want to leave the Corps,” said Messina. “Alls I’m good at is fighting. I can’t exactly get a job as a sniper, can I?”

“In the French Foreign Legion you can,” said Salimony.

“Ain’t fighting for no Frenchmen,” said Messina. “So, Natalie — pretty, genius Natalie. Did I embarrass you when I kissed your hand upon our recent introduction?”

“I’ve never had a man do that.”

“Oh, boy,” said Messina. “I could say something on that subject, but I won’t. Anyway, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Why thank you!”

“I just want it to be on the record.”

There was scattered laughter to this, but underneath it the silence was uneasy. At one quiet moment Patrick was aware of several glasses being lifted at once. He went into the living room and forwarded the music player to a peppier song. When he sat down he saw that Iris had gathered herself — shoulders in, forearms on the table, hands steadying the base of her wineglass. Her smile was fraudulent.

The men talked about who was short and who might re-up. Patrick and Grier were already out of the Corps for good. Grier had a part-time job as a night watchman at Qualcomm headquarters, said he mostly read between rounds, boring as hell but perfect after Helmand. He offered flamboyant descriptions of combat violence for which he kept apologizing to the women, and Patrick quickly deduced that Grier was just a Bagram jarhead stationed north of Kabul in the biggest American base in-country. Which, in spite of his gory posturing, made Grier just a Fobbit — a Forward Operating Base Marine — who’d never seen combat, fired a gun, and probably never been outside the wire. Patrick had learned that the more emotional and detailed the description of combat action, the greater the chance it was mostly, if not totally, secondhand. He stared off through the living room and the French doors to the night.

The women listened and asked questions. Salimony told a carefully edited story of the Labrador, Zane, saving a life. Patrick talked about crazy Reichart collecting gigantic spiders in empty ammo boxes, naming them and trying to feed them MRE leftovers. To Patrick this didn’t seem like terrific table talk, but Iris and her friends were plainly interested in their lives in Sangin. They started out curious about everyday things: was it hard to live on one hot meal a day and one shower a week? With all those spiders around, how did you sleep? What was worse, the heat or the cold? Then their questions got harder and came faster: Was it hard knowing that the Taliban would murder and maim villagers they suspected of collusion? Was it true that Afghani women could be stoned to death for conversing with anyone in the Coalition military? Why all the amputations? Was it strange to protect fields of poppies instead of destroying them, as the military had done in the past? What could be done about the “insiders”? Was trust even possible anymore?

“If you chicks are so interested, why didn’t you sign up and go?” asked Grier.

“Natalie and I talked about covering the war for the Village View, ” said Iris. “But they had no budget for it.”

“You’d need a whole budget just for your hair and makeup,” said Marcos. “You didn’t really want to go. You wanted to stay here and decorate your little play house.”

“You don’t know one thing about what she wanted,” said Patrick.

“You only think you do.”

“I saw some of the press corps babes,” said Messina. “There was some stone-ass hotties. I saw one do fifty-one push-ups.”

“Any more tequila out there?” asked Mindy. She lurched up and knocked over the empty wine bottle beside her chair. It rolled and echoed brightly, dribbling the last of the wine, but she was oblivious to it and walked in short, weaving steps toward the patio. She wore high wedge heels and it looked as if she might tip over.

Grier rose to pick up the bottle but hit the Cash farm photograph with his head again, and again it slid down the wall and hit the floor. “You ought hang this thing higher, Iris.”

“There’s one above it and I like it there,” she said sharply.