A young private at the next table looked up. She couldn’t have been twenty. She opened her mouth to say something. Then she looked at his stripes and closed it again.
I finally turned my head and looked at him.
He had a good face under all that meanness. He looked like a boy who’d been told his whole life he was the strongest one in the room, and never once had a reason to doubt it.
I looked at his name tape. I looked at the patch on his left shoulder.
Then I looked at the little enameled crest pinned above his right breast pocket. The one that tells you which battalion a soldier belongs to.
A blue shield with a white heron on it, wings spread wide.
I didn’t say a word. I picked up my water glass.
“What, you deaf?” one of the others said.
