He eyed the waves out there darkening and rising, the cool breeze chilling his sweat. He needed that drink, now. He started shaking and oscillating inside, starting from low in his gut. So he hunkered down on his stool, pressing his tightening ass onto it, and peered around to make sure no one was onto him. Still the barman hadn’t come. His right leg started hammering up and down like a telegraph key sounding out a desperate plea. He pressed his hand on it, and when that didn’t work, his tight fist.

Thundering sounds found him from the distance, and the shrieks of sea birds were like screams inside his head.

The barman set down Lett’s drink on the edge of the table, keeping a wider berth this time. Lett sucked it back in one gulp, shouted for another. The rush of booze helped a moment. He wiped sweat from his eye sockets and glared at the horizon, at the sea rising and falling like mountains breaking apart.

The thundering screaming in his head became trees exploding from the top down. It was the Ardennes Forest. It was the Battle of the Bulge all over again. He could smell the damp tree sap, the metallic air, the fresh splitting wood, the blood.

Every electric impulse inside him told him to hit the deck, to press his body to the floor and pull on his helmet, but he didn’t have a head cover. “I’m done for, finished,” he muttered. He needed better cover, a good hole sheltered with logs. This old house was going to come right down on top of him when the artillery shells came whizzing in.

Where was that second drink? No one came. He kept his trembling hand out for another, held on tight to the table with the other hand. Still no one came.

The hot metal ripped trees and men to shreds and those human shreds did worse to other men. Lett groaned. “Oh, God, no . . .”

***

Sometime later, a hand was holding Lett’s. He wasn’t sure for how long. The hand was warm. It was soft. It placed his now calm hand back onto his lap.

His eyes found her.

A young woman stood before him holding his rye, smiling. She placed it in the dead center of the little table like hitting a bull’s-eye. Something about the precision of that helped bring him back even more.

“Thanks,” he muttered and sat up, staring at her. She was local, or at least Hawaiian. He’d seen her here before. He added a smile for her.