“How you doin’?” I greeted him.

He stared at me quizzically for a moment and then said, “Oh yeah, you’re that guy from the other day. The one Bernard tried to brain with that Coke bottle.”

“Yeah.”

“What can I get ya?”

“You keep any schnapps back there?”

Meanie grinned and said, “European theater?”

“Yeah.”

“All you boys that marched into Germany got a taste for their liquor and their women.” He folded the paper and stood up straight. “I got this raspberry stuff in the fridge out back. Won’t take a minute.”

He left through a side door and I turned my back to the bar. The men in the corner were happily shouting. I was engulfed by one of those beatific moments, certain that everything would be all right for the next few minutes. It was that peaceful lull soldiers experience in wartime. Nobody was shooting at you right then and orders from behind the lines were to hold your position. Maybe there was a letter from home in your pocket or some cards or dominoes coming out of a buddy’s backpack.

Those oases of calm between battles were moments of grace rarely paralleled in peacetime.

“Here you go, Mr. Rawlins,” Meanie said.

He’d returned to his post behind the bar having served up three fingers of the clear liquor in a squat whiskey glass.

I took a sip. It was sweet and chilly on the tongue but savory and warm going down.

“Pretty damn good.”

Meanie smiled.

“You remember my name,” I said.

“That’s a bartender’s job. Remembering drinks, names, and tabs.”

I looked at the young man. Slender, he’d probably been in shape at one time, but now his only exercise came from those duties the bar demanded. When he moved there seemed to be a hitch involved. Like if he swiveled to pick up a bottle with his left hand, the right shoulder resisted a moment before falling into the flow.

“Vietnam?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He blinked and nodded.

“What you do over there?”

“Same thing. The men in my family been tending bar since they were called taverns and decent women weren’t allowed. I was the daytime bartender in the American officers’ club in Saigon.”

“That where you got wounded?”

Meanie took in a deep breath and nodded.

“In Saigon. Not the club, though,” he said. “We was out whorin’ at this hotel they called Big Fish. They served real bourbon and had the finest bar girls in the city. They only played American and English rock ’n’ roll on the jukebox and after a few drinks the war seemed like it was about ten thousand miles away. The girl I was with was called, um, uh, Duyen. Yeah, Duyen.