“He’s one of mine, Lewis.”
The Oak Leaf looks like something that dragged itself, by brute force of will, out of the thirties into present time. Cypress walls, pressed-tin ceiling, rooms so narrow that people turn sideways to pass. Makes you think how the city itself is a kind of sprawling memory. A few blocks away, the Mississippi waits to flood all this. Only the Corps of Engineers, that brute force of will, holds it back.
“You have to understand,” the old mercenary said. “None of us ever belonged-here, or anywhere else. We’re a society to ourselves.”
“I know a little about that, Papa.”
He picked up his beer and looked through it at the meager light pushing its way through the bar’s front window.
“Probably more than you realize, Lewis.”
He swirled beer around the bottom of his glass, maybe looking to see if any of the light had remained there, and finished it off. I did likewise. The barkeep brought us two more.
An Irish ballad, “Kilkelly,” started up on the jukebox.
“He stopped being a soldier when he started his own war,” I said.
“It’s not his war, Lewis. Soldiers always fight other people’s wars. That’s what makes them soldiers. You should know something about that, too.”
“But the people he’s killing aren’t soldiers, Papa. This isn’t abstraction and theory, some pure idea you kick about the classroom or discuss over civilized martinis, white pawns here, black there. When these pawns fall down, they don’t get up for the next game. They don’t ever get up.”
“Hard for an old man to change.”
“Not easy at any age, Papa.”
He sat looking at me, finally spoke. “You understand so much more than you have any right to, Lewis, young as you are.”
“I don’t think I understand much of anything.”
“Then you’re wrong.”
He looked away again.
“Going on forty years now, I always said ideas don’t matter. Democracy, socialism, communism-all the same. Like changing your shirt between dances. Who the hell can tell any difference? One half-bad guy goes out and another half-bad guy slips into his place. No one even notices. You think any of them care about human rights, social progress? I tell my men: You’re soldiers. Professionals. These people contracted for your services. The money matters. That, and doing a good job, doing what you were hired to do. That’s all.”
It was a Hemingway moment. I understood that he wanted me to assure him somehow that violating his code was okay. And I couldn’t do that. I could only wait.
Papa put his glass on the bar. It was still half full.
“I think I’ve had enough beer today. Enough of a lot of things.”
He stood.
“You need a ride, Lewis? Van’s out back.”
“Think I’ll stick around for a drink or two.”
“Lewis?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Was I wrong, too? All these years?”
“I don’t know, Papa. How can we ever know?”
He stood there a moment longer, then told me where the shooter lived.