Mark Stone - The Judas Line

And I thought the gunshot hurt.

Boris’ shoe slammed into already my broken nose and that was lights out.

The Dreaming City Lounge was full near to bursting and I felt uncomfortable as hell walking in wearing civilian clothes. Five dollars cover charge! I felt like a rube for paying, but did anyway, attracted by the lure of a Def Leppard cover band.

Damn I felt old, shoving my way through writhing bodies and cigarette smoke. My time in Iraq was starting to feel like a dream … a dream of a brotherhood I wished I hadn’t left.

Muscling between two beefy types with pop-collar rugby shirts, I arrived at the bar and held up a hand, a sawbuck between my fingers to flag attention.

“Whatcha need?” Yelled the pretty little bartender with teased hair and too much lipstick.

I hollered back over the raucous crowd, “Draft!” pointing to a tap.

“Light beer?”

“No! Real beer!”

She smiled and reached into a cooler for a frosted mug.

The band came on stage the same time the pretty bartender came back with my beer. The lights dimmed and “Rock of Ages” slammed out of the speakers. Too loud, not even Def Leppard would subject their fan to that kind of auditory overload. People drifted onto the dance floor to gyrate to the beat.

As I stood there, drinking ice-cold beer and listening to music through what felt like bleeding ears, the incongruity of me being there while many of my men were laid out in private lots or Arlington made me want to cry. It didn’t seem fair that blood still thrummed in my veins while theirs had been spilled onto desert sand.

Damn, I was uncomfortable. My polo shirt and khakis felt prickly on my skin and, while I loved the music, the people there put me on edge … too carefree, blithely ignorant of the horrors the world had to offer. Or maybe they did know what lay around the corner, what lurked beneath the bed late at night waiting to strike. Maybe that’s why they partied so hard, drank so much, treated sex like a sport instead an intimate act.

I didn’t belong. Not there, not with those happy, desperate, dancing people, drinking, shouting, flirting, sweating, and cussing. That place was, those people were, too loud, too … too … lost.

I was lost, too.

“Hey, Sergeant.”

Sergeant? I hadn’t been a Sergeant for three months. Turning around, cold beer sloshing over the rim of the mug onto my fingers, I smiled in pleasant surprise at the short, stocky man in desert gear standing not more than three feet away.

“Hi, Corporal, what are you doing here?”

“Question is, Sergeant, what are you doing here?”

Strange, I didn’t wonder why an armed and geared man was standing in a rock-n-roll bar smack dab in the middle of Omaha. Nobody looked at the Corporal, no one even came close to him and the place was packed elbow-to-cheek.

The truth came to me slowly, easing into my mind as if through osmosis. “You’re dead, Corporal.”

He smiled. “That’s right, Sergeant.”

Goekenhauer. That was his name. Ben Goekenhauer. “You took a round to the neck, Ben,” I said slowly, almost in a stupor.

“Right again, Mike.” The desert gear was gone, replaced by a navy blue Van Hagar t-shirt and ripped blue jeans.

“Am I dead?”

“Are you?”

The beer slid past my teeth and I gulped at the brew as if it contained the answers I needed. “Don’t feel dead. Feel fine.” Physically I felt great.

“Well, then, Mike. That’s your answer.”

“What are you doing here, Ben?”

The Corporal gently took the cold mug from my hand and took a drink, then gave it back. “Ah, that’s good. I missed beer something awful.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I came to see you, Mike.

A girl bumped into me, a soft hip against my thigh. An innocent looking strawberry blonde in white shorts offered a sweet smile of apology before moving on. The band started up with “Let’s get Rocked .”

“That girl. I know that girl.”

“Yeah, Mike. You met her here and went home with her when the bar closed.”

I smiled. “That’s right. Jenny … She was so sweet.”

“You dated her for about three months before you realized the calling you felt was for the Church.”

My voice became distant as memories slowly bobbed to the surface. “She cried when I told her. I think she really cared for me, maybe even loved me a little, but she said she understood.”

“She did, Mike, although it broke her heart. A couple of years after you two broke up she met a man named Herrick and married him. They had three kids and, for a while, were happy. She died of breast cancer last year.”

Oh, damn. I felt a lump in my throat for a woman I’d only known for a few months but had cared deeply about-only not as much as I cared for the Lord.

“It was at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church near the river where I heard my calling for the first time,” I mused, mind skipping and jumping like droplets of water on a hot griddle. “Tuesday. Yes, a Tuesday when the traffic was light and the sun was bright. I was fixing to head to Council Bluffs, but I saw that old building and it sang to me.” The memory moved sluggishly through the cotton that shrouded my mind. “I just parked the car and walked in, lost in a world of emotions and thoughts I couldn’t articulate. Pews, the carpet of the nave, nothing registered except the altar and the image of Christ on the cross.” My voice grew thick. “I think that before I even made it to the altar I knew. I knew-the way I knew the feel of desert sand in the palms of my hands-that service to the Lord was my calling, my truth … and I was no longer lost.”

“I like that Sergeant. I really do.” Ben was now dressed in denim shorts, a green t and Converse sneakers.

“Am I dying?”

“Didn’t you just ask me that?”

“No, earlier I asked you if I was dead. Dying is a whole different deck of cards.”

“True, true.” He snagged a cola-drink from a passing waitress, who ignored him just as everyone else did. “No, Sergeant, you’re not dying.”

“Then what is all this?” I gestured to the bar, the people, to the band that was playing “Pour Some Sugar on Me .”

“I don’t know. This is your place, your construct, not mine. For some reason this place holds significance for you.”

“Hmm. Strange.”

“Listen, Sergeant, I’m here to tell you something. Something important.”

“Is it urgent?”

“Nothing is urgent in this place. Here we are between tick and tock of the clock.”

“Good. Good.” I took a long pull from the still-cold mug. “I want to listen to the music.”

“Sounds good, Sergeant. Sounds good.”

So we listened to classic ’80s rock while drinking cold ones, feet tapping to the beat. The band did a credible job and the crowd was relatively well behaved. It was nice, standing there amid a sea of people who just wanted to have a good time and relax. As for myself, the thought of the real world didn’t intrude on my consciousness, almost as if it couldn’t. There was no urgency, no pain, no Boris.

The house lights came on, the band left the stage and the bartenders hollered out “last call.” A momentary spike of pain, like a flash headache, ran from temple to temple and I knew my brief moment of piece was at an end.

Ben tapped my shoulder. “Ready, Sergeant?”

My heart sank. It was time, I guessed. “Yes, Corporal.”

“Scream, Sergeant. Scream loud and long.”

Scream? “What d-“

Pain, blinding and harsh in my side, a digging, slicing, and hot sear that brought me full out of whatever la-la land I had been in.

Boris’ nasty face was inches from mine and he smiled into the teeth of my agony, enjoying every nerve-twitching moment. “I give you pain you don’t believe, God-man.”