Chapter 4 - The Coffee and the Scars
Jason pulled a chair back with trembling hands and sat opposite the old man. The steam from the paper cups rose between them, smelling of cheap institutional roast and chicory. Jason couldn't bring himself to look Harold in the eye; he kept his gaze locked on the table’s edge.
"Drink your coffee," Harold said gently. "It’s lukewarm, but it puts iron in your blood."
Jason took a hesitant sip. It was bitter, but it burned away the tightness in his throat.
"My grandfather bought me that cake," Harold began quietly, looking toward the far wall where historic battalion flags hung in glass frames. "Well, not my real grandfather. The men in my platoon. Every year since I turned seventy, a group of old men who can barely climb stairs pool their pension checks together and order a cake from that little German bakery down on Elm Street. They send it over because they know my Martha passed away five years ago."
Jason’s stomach clenched with agonizing guilt. "Sir... I swear, I didn't think—"
"That’s the problem with young men in shiny uniforms, Lieutenant," Harold interrupted without raising his voice. "You don't think about the invisible things. You look at me and you see an old man who moves too slow in the chow line. You see wrinkled hands and an out-of-style sweater. You don't see the nights in the monsoon rain when we shared one can of peaches between four men because the supply choppers couldn't cut through the fog."
Harold reached across the table and pushed up the sleeve of his navy sweater.
Across the underside of his right forearm ran a thick, jagged ridge of purplish scar tissue, stretching from his wrist to his elbow joint. The skin was puckered and uneven, the unmistakable signature of mortar shrapnel that had shredded flesh to the bone.
"A boy named Tommy Henderson was bleeding out under a fallen palm tree," Harold said, his voice dropping into a distant, haunted register. "He was eighteen years old. He cried for his mother for three straight hours while the enemy raked the clearing with heavy caliber rounds. My commanding officer told me to hold the bunker. He told me Tommy was already gone."
Harold looked up, his faded blue eyes locking onto Jason's.
"I disobeyed an order that day. I crawled eighty yards on my stomach through burning brush. When I reached Tommy, another mortar round landed ten feet away. This arm took the metal. But I grabbed Tommy's web gear with my teeth and my left hand, and I dragged him back. Tommy lived. He went home to Ohio, married his high school sweetheart, raised three girls, and ran a hardware store for forty years."
Harold tapped the scar with a blunt finger.
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"That’s what that cake represented, Lieutenant. It wasn't about vanilla sugar. It was about forty years of life that Tommy got to have because somebody decided that another human being was worth bleeding for."
Jason buried his face in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking as deep, unrestrained sobs finally broke through his chest.
