“Not very,” Klay said. He glanced at his lifeless cell phone.

“I asked him, ‘How can a destroyer sail into an oil tanker?’ ‘All explainable, Pops,’ he tells me.” Billy reached under the bar and brought out a dented Famous Amos cookie tin. He pried off the lid. Inside were carefully folded letters. “I don’t go in for email,” he said, digging through the papers. He took out a letter. “He says it was the OOD plotting radar track for the wrong goddamn ship. SCS screwup, the CO shifting thrust control to the lee helmsman without telling him. Sloppy anchoring. Radar malfunction.” Billy looked up. “How does that happen?”

“I don’t know, Bill,” Klay said. He hadn’t understood a word Billy had said. On the television, CBS was showing drone shots of the Naval Academy brigade lined up by company. “You gotta be proud of him, though.”

Billy smiled. “Yeah. He said all that time on those video games of his would pay off, and I guess it did.” The older man tapped the bar in front of Klay. “Kid says the computers they’re using onboard are twenty years old. He’s praying the next systems upgrade goes to somebody like Microsoft or Perseus Group.”

Klay nodded. He almost said, “Makes sense for them,” but caught himself. He sipped his drink and concentrated on the television. West Point’s cadets were marching onto the field now, dressed in somber gray and black.

“Sink Navy!” Phil shouted, raising a fist.

“That’s it.” Billy came out from behind the bar with a nightstick in his hand. “Up,” Billy said.

Phil hunkered his head into his shoulders and stared straight ahead. Billy took hold of Phil’s collar with his left hand, inserted the tip of his nightstick under Phil’s right armpit, and pressed. The big man sprang from his stool—arms and legs out—like a wooden toy, and Billy marched him from his stool. To Klay’s surprise he didn’t lead Phil to the door. Instead, he moved him three seats down and released him. Then he slid Phil’s half-empty Jack and Coke down to him. Phil gulped the rest of his drink, visibly shaken. He reached into his sweatpants, slapped his money on the bar, and waited for Billy to pour him a fresh one. Billy set a fresh Jack and Coke in front of Phil. “You can have your seat back when the game starts, Phil. But you keep your opinions to yourself.”

Phil sipped his drink, staring straight ahead, a quiet smile on his lips.

“Remind me not to mess with you,” Klay said.

“Little shore patrol move. I learned it the hard way.” Billy folded his grandson’s letter and put it back in the cookie tin. He returned the tin to its place under the bar. “Anyway, I’m hoping no more accidents.”

Klay’s cell phone buzzed. It was a text from Eady.

•   •   •