Heroes by David Hagberg (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

Just possession of the coke had made the young man belligerent.

The older man shook his head in sadness. He had known in the beginning that tonight would be no use. The kid had no conception.

Did you know this Terry from South Dakota?

No.

How about Major Fisher?

The younger man waved it off. Fuck. no. But I knew plenty of heroes, and they weren’t no saints in shining armor.

They loved their country, didn’t they?

The younger man seemed embarrassed by the question. I don’t know.

Name me one. Did he or didn’t he love his country? It’s an easy question. The older man listened to his own voice in wonder.

It had been a bitch of a week. Tonight he had drunk too much.

But going back like he had, trying to make it clear to this punk, was god damned frustrating.

The jukebox was silent for a while. The young girl was on break. They could talk more easily now, but they were still shouting out of habit. They had attracted some attention. The bar manager was thinking about calling the cops. These two looked as if they were ready to come to blows. The older one was drunk, and the long-haired freako was higher than a kite.

He just went in there and did his job, and got the fuck out.

—Was he any different afterward?

The younger man laughed out loud. He flipped his long greasy hair back. —Yeah, he was different, all right. Half his kneecap was blown off.

—He got wounded. That doesn’t make him a hero.

The young man sat forward so fast he almost fell off his chair. —Don’t fuck with my head, man. I don’t appreciate it.

The older man held up his hands in surrender.

—I was just trying to tell you something here, if you’ll just shut up and listen a minute.

The older man figured it was about time to leave. Hell, it was long overdue time for him to leave, but there was something about the younger man, something in his eyes, that was compelling.

And oddly, so very familiar. Again he got the very strong feeling that he had known this man for a long time; it was almost as if they were brothers. But that was ridiculous.

—You’re talking about heroes, here. In the big war. WW Two. But it wasn’t like that in Nam. Honest to Christ.

—I’m listening.

The younger man lit another joint. He had a Marlboro box stuffed with them already rolled. He no longer thought to offer the other man a hit.

—You know, I’m just as American as the next guy. AFL/CIO and all that crap. But I was drafted, man. I didn’t give a shit one way or the other about the war.

The older man ordered another beer. He did not notice that the barman hesitated.

—A lot of guys were drafted. They went in and did their jobs.

Nothin fancy. No extras. But if their backs were up against it, if they got pissed off, then look out. They’d do something’.

—Was Terry pissed off?

—Shit, I don’t know. You’re twisting my words. The young man stabbed a finger at the other man. —I’ll tell you this much for sure: Terry sure the fuck didn’t go looking for the slope. It just happened.

—Right, but he didn’t run away.

The younger man shook his head. —Terry was one of the good ones. But they weren’t all like that. Just cause some guy’s a hero don’t make him a saint. I keep trying to tell you that. Some of them were absolutely class one sons-a-bitches.

Maybe Vietnam had been different from the Second World War, the older man thought. Or perhaps his own definitions were off. But what the younger man was saying to him was alien to everything he had been trying to put across here tonight. Duty.

Honor. Country. Heroism. Christ, things couldn’t have been that much different. This still was the human race, wasn’t it?

His beer came, and he sipped it, but then he almost dropped the bottle in his lap.

The kid had opened the packet of coke. He averted his head and held the packet up to his nose. He held one nostril, then sniffed deeply. Almost immediately he rocked back and a slow smile spread across his face. He folded the packet and put it in his shirt pocket. Then he took another hit from his joint.

—Like I said, man, I don’t want to fuck with your head; I just want to hear the rest of the bitchin’ story. I want to hear how it turns out.

Understanding hovered just around the older man. It was there. All of it. But he refused for the moment to make the connections. It was easier to continue.

PART THREE PEACE April 1945

The stench of his own fear rose into Canaris’ nostrils as he tried to concentrate on the code tapping from the next cell. He was hunched in the corner, on the floor of his cell, in what was called the Kommandantur Arrest—the bunker—at Flossenbiirg Concentration Camp near the old Czechoslovakian border. His wrists were handcuffed, and his ankles were shackled to the wall on longer chains.

The Allies were attacking Mannheim, and the Russians were crossing the Oder. As unbelievable as the news seemed even now, it gave Canaris some hope.

Their investigation of him had bogged down. He was sure of it. There wasn’t a way in which the Gestapo could prove that he had been a part of the conspiracy to overthrow the Fiihrer. At least not by simply questioning him. That fool Josef Stawitzky asked his stupid little questions. Around and around they went, the RSHA criminal prosecutor never even realizing when he was being outclassed, outgunned, and out thought.

It was hard to concentrate on the tapping from cell 21 next to his, and for a minute or so he lost track of the message.

For more than eight months he had endured imprisonment.

First at the Frontier Police College in Fiirstenberg, then at Prinzalbrecht Strasse itself, and finally here, since the beginning of February, when the bombing had become too intense in