“Come on,” Kennet said to O’Hara. “You stay with me. I want you two feet from my hip at all times.”

“I don’t think I can—“

Hating himself, Kennet cuffed O’Hara’s jaw hard. “Don’t think. Understand me? Don’t think, don’t feel, just do what I tell you. Stay with me. I don’t want to hear a fucking word and when I look around, I better see you right there. Move.”

God, Asta, Kennet wrote, I felt like dogshit slugging O’Hara like that, but I had to do it. And I tried to get to him later, tried to say I was sorry, so fucking sorry and I was here for him, he could talk to me about it, I felt so goddamn bad…

He looked right through me. He was just gone.

Poor bastard.

Christ, how much can a man take?

As more and more Germans surrendered, Kennet could feel a shift in the American troops’ dynamic. Men who’d only lived in the moment these past four months, were starting to talk about the future. To kick around the idea of what they might do with themselves when they got home, besides flush toilets all day long.

“You should come back to Clayton with me,” Kennet said to Hook. “I might actually insist.”

Hook grinned. “Mean it?”

“Mean it. We’ll rest up at my home, then you can show me the Mississippi.”

“You’re on. One look at Old Man River and you’ll forget Saint Larry.”

“Bullshit. The Mississippi doesn’t have an Old Nick or a Fossegrim.”

“Of course it does,” Hook said. “We just call him Huckleberry Finn.”

Kennet opened his mouth to protest, then looked away, still open-mouthed. “Son of a bitch.”

Hook blew a modest smoke ring.

“Hook, sometimes you are brilliant.”

“Oh, it’s just the company I keep. Hey, tell you what, we should drive from New York to New Orleans.”

“Now you’re talking.”

“I mean let’s really do it right. Get a goddamn DeSoto Airstream Convertible. Cream and black. Red hubs.”

“Or a Maclaughlin-Buick Series Ninety Convertible Coupe,” Kennet said dreamily.

“I’m getting a hard-on,” Hook said.

“What do you think, O’Hara,” Kennet said. “You in?”

O’Hara lifted one shoulder a quarter-inch. He was listening, but a blind man could see he didn’t give a damn. He’d shut down completely since Jock died. He hadn’t become a liability—his bravery was intact and he was deadly as ever with a rifle. But his already guarded soul had gone somewhere irretrievable. If you tried to talk to him about it, he simply tuned you out or walked away.

2 Apr 1945