I hugged her back, kissed her and said, “You’re everything to me, you know.”
r /> Chapter 10
At the mental health clinic of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in northeast DC, in an outpatient room drenched in morning sun, a shaggy and shabbily dressed man in his early forties chortled bitterly.
“Thank you,” he sneered, in a falsetto voice. “Thank you for your service.”
He shifted in his wheelchair and relaxed into a deeper, natural drawl that sounded like west Texas. “I freaking hate that more than anything, you know? Can you hear me folks? Can I get an aye?”
Around the circle, several of the other men and women, sitting in metal folding chairs, nodded, with a chorus of Aye.
The group facilitator adjusted his glasses. “Why would you hate someone showing you gratitude for your military service, Thomas?”
Thomas threw up his arms. His left hand and half the forearm were gone. Both of his legs were amputated above the knees.
“Gratitude for what, Jones?” Thomas said. “How do they know what I did before I lost two drumsticks and a wing? That’s the hypocrisy. Most of the ones who wanna run up and tell you how much they appreciate your service? They never served.”
“And that makes you angry?” Jones said.
“Hell, yeah, it does. Many countries in the freaking world have some kind of mandatory public service. People who don’t serve their country got no skin in the game far as I’m concerned. They don’t give a damn enough about our nation to defend it, or to improve it, or to lose limbs for it. They try to bury their guilt about their free ride in life by shaking my good hand, and thanking me for my service.”
He looked like he wanted to spit, but didn’t.
“Why did you enlist?” Jones asked. “Patriotism?”
Thomas threw back his head to laugh. “Oh, God. Hell, no.”
Some of the others in the group looked at him stonily. The rest smiled or laughed with him.
“So why?” Jones said.
Thomas hardened. He said, “I figured the Army was a way out of East Jesus. A chance to get training, get the GI Bill, go to college. Instead I get shipped to pissed-off towelhead town. I mean, would anyone volunteer to go to the Middle East with a gun if the government offered college to someone who worked in schools, sweeping floors instead of getting shot? I think not. No freaking way.”
“Damn straight,” said Griffith, a big black man with a prosthetic leg. “You’re willing to whack ’em and stack ’em, they’ll pay for a PhD. You wanna do good, they pay jack shit. You tell ’em, Thomas. Tell ’em like it is.”
“If you don’t, I will,” said Mickey, who sat between Griffith and Thomas.
Jones glanced at the clock on the wall and said, “Not today, Mickey. We’ve gone over our time already.”
Mickey shook his head angrily and said, “You know they tried to do that to Ronald Reagan, shut off his microphone so folks wouldn’t hear him before the election. Reagan wouldn’t let them, said he paid for the microphone. Well, I paid, Jones. We all paid. Every one of us has paid and paid, so you are not taking our microphone away.”
The psychologist cocked his head. “Afraid I have no choice, Mickey. There’s another group coming in ten minutes.”
Mickey might have pushed his luck, seen if he could get a rise out of the shrink, something he enjoyed doing. But he felt satisfied that day. He decided to give Jones a break.
Mickey waited until the psychologist left the room before rising from his chair, saying, “The powerful never want to hear the truth.”
“You got that right, son,” said Thomas, raising his remaining hand to high-five Mickey’s.
“Scares them,” said Keene, a scrawny guy in his twenties, paralyzed and riding in a computerized wheelchair. “Just like Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise: they can’t handle the truth.”
“I’m still gonna speak truth to power,” Mickey said. “Make them learn the lessons at gut level, know what I’m saying?”
“You know it,” said Thomas. “Get an ice cream before you go home, Mick?”
Mickey wouldn’t meet Thomas’s gaze. “Stuff to take care of, old man. Next time?”
Thomas studied him. “Sure, Mick. You good?”