He grabbed at the table’s edges again. She held his shoulders with her lovely brown hands. Something soft had fallen across his shoulder. Her silky black hair. That flower.

“Easy, Joe, easy,” she whispered, “going stay all right,” and she sung something to him in Hawaiian, and he loosened up inside.

He lifted his head, pushed back his imaginary helmet, and stared into her eyes to help make it go away for good. “Thank you,” he said.

The barman showed his face behind the bar, peeking out from the back room. “Miss Kanani, try come speak one second?”

Kanani rolled her eyes for Lett. She patted him on the knee. “I’ll be right back.”

She and barman met at the bar, leaning into either side of it, the barman waving arms. They were speaking Hawaiian Pidgin English.

“No call da MPs, yeah?” she said. “All pau. We talk story, he calm down already. Mo better.”

“Not pau. I no went call before, but auwe! He lolo, dat army guy. Just now I see. He going bust up joint, and me? Dey cut neck. So he gotta go.”

Just then three puffed-up types with sergeant stripes lumbered in. They took a table by turning the chairs backward and wrapping their legs around them, their eyes bloodshot and bulging. Lett already had them figured—three Joes on a bender ignoring yet another OFF LIMITS sign.

Kanani and the barman kept arguing. The sergeants laughed and slapped their table and the stench of stale whisky in sour stomachs hit Lett when the wind shifted.

And the weather would not let up. Lett lowered his head, took deep breaths. But it was no good. All light dimmed. A sharp headache came, like his skull splitting, making him drool. He shut his eyes to fight it, and rubbed at his temples, and wished he’d asked Kanani for a warm rag, a cold cloth, a baseball bat between the eyeballs, anything.

“Speaka da English,” one of the sergeants shouted toward the bar, and his buddies roared with laughter.

“Please one moment, sirs,” the barman told them.

These aren’t sirs. They surely never served in the war from the looks of them, all plump forearms, pink cheeks, and soft jaws.

More dark clouds hovered, swirling over the two palm trees as if ready to suck them up whole, the fronds slapping around. The ocean spilled forth, exploding white on the black rocks.

Gotta keep moving, Lett told himself, repeating their old maxim from the front line, Always keep moving, don’t bunch up. Stop and you’re cornered. Keep your eyes open.

“Buncha savages,” one sergeant said, and Kanani started backing away from the bar.

“You there, sweetie,” another sergeant said to her. “Why don’t you climb up this here palm tree and fetch me a coconut,” and the third made monkey sounds, and—