Story: The Captain's Many Faces

They know him mostly as the ex-vet who can balance a beer on his belly, even as a belch rattles his gut; that old lion, still broad across the shoulders, whose post-treaty gut sags and causes his lycra t-shirt with the ‘C’ Company badge on the chest to fit just a little bit tighter, with slightly different proportion as of late. He wears Levi jeans and a pair of faded tan cowboy boots. In place of the military issue spectacles he wore during his service he now sports a narrow set of frames his ex-wife picked out, having said they made him look debonair. She hadn’t been fond of his lycra t-shirt, nor the rest of those he’d had his service badges pressed in to. He has worn his faded buzz cut proudly since the day he earned it back in June of ‘62.

But though he may be old and faded, he can still whip some ass when he needs to.

He sits by the door at night, nursing a forty-ounce bottle of High Life wrapped in brown paper, even though the bar staff would gladly provide him with the lager of his choice. He doesn’t require anybody’s patronage, least of all these kids’. He checks IDs as he is instructed to mostly, occasionally throwing out some asshole with a marshal twist of the arm and a well-placed shove that sends him ass-first onto the asphalt; a stern reminder not to fuck around when the Captain is on duty. But most of the time he just nurses his drink, responding to the young girls’ flirting with the paternal indulgence that is expected of him, catching them off guard every now and then with a licentious comment and an awkward pause before he smiles and shakes his head kindly. “Only kidding with you darling. Lemme know if any of these pricks give you a hard time.”

From his seat by the door the Captain often wonders at the children’s reckless exploits. Most of the clientele are in their twenties, though some, he knows, are also teens (he is not always as vigilant as he should be). He observes their escapades half with affection and half resentment, the skewed arc of their darts growing more amusing (and precarious) as their capacity for it diminishes, their shifting social scenes, their never-ending pursuit of the opposite sex, and hell, these days the sex doesn’t even have to be opposite! The times, they are a’ changing. He can remember when that was something everybody needed to hear. Some generations though, take it a little too far, he thinks.

None of these kids seem real somehow. He first remembers feeling that way on his return from the war, back in the year of our lord-1974, but the feeling has escalated since his wife’s late departure. She’d been that necessary link that grounded his world-weary seen-it-all-ness, so afterwards he found himself disconnected, utterly. Kids these days are so alien, he thinks, running around with their colorful cocktails, enjoying their freedom with scarcely a clue of its cost, as if it were something that just existed, like the air they breathe, and hadn’t at some point been wrested from faces just as young, just as human, half a world away. Some of those faces from his years in combat stick with him, interchanging themselves with those around him.

A flashlit signal from the bar suddenly catches his attention, and he places his wrapped can on a window ledge close by, watching the beam’s arch to see where it’s signaling. A crowd has gathered beneath the neon Killian’s sign, around one pair of boys who appear to be getting pretty hostile. He lifts himself from his stool and approaches tentatively. They are chest to chest, heads cocked menacingly toward one another while their mouths move silently, words lost upon the screech of the house music.

There’s no rush as he walks over, politely navigating the sea of bodies. He intends to break things up gently, interjecting himself between them and sending each in a different direction, because really nothing has happened yet. But just as he reaches them the first fist flies- a guy in jeans and a ragged blazer grazes the other on the back of the head, just behind his ear. The one who has just been struck looks wide-eyed for a moment, and begins to rush forward, not striking or anything but just barreling toward his opponent. Perhaps he’s just trying to appear proactive, or is so clouded by emotion that dumb aggression is the only thing he can manage.

It doesn’t matter.

With a trained professional’s expertise, the Captain catches the boy, and with a familiar twist of the wrist he lifts his shoulder and immobilizes him. But the other, probably thinking it one of his buddies stepped in to help, swings again, only misses his target this time and catches the Captain just under his eye, crushing the thin spectacles against his face.

For a second he is stunned, and his perception of the environment refigures. In an instant, everything is real. His mind retreats deep into his body now and he is all instinct; a life’s worth of cool, expert reflexes. As the boy lifts an arm toward him—probably in apology—he finds himself chopping it down with a force that sends the kid sideways, following with a right hook the catches him just beneath the jaw and sends him flailing against the bar, where the staff watches wide-eyed, unable to guess at what has happened. The boy on the bar reaches in the direction of a bottle, but before his fingers can close around it the Captain is wielding a garnish tray and bats him across the face with it, sending up a spray of limes olives and cherry juice. The kid collapses on the floor and he moves quickly, grasping him by the collar and belt of his pants and running him toward the exit, at last tossing the boy onto the sidewalk so hard he’s nearly decapitated by a car passing in the street.

As he turns back to the bar, the Captain says nothing. Everyone is watching, and besides the music, it is silent and still. “Anybody else have a problem?” he calls coolly, feet set widely apart. But there is no response. The bartenders too are silent, tin shakers paused and reflecting some brand of neon.

Without much idea of where he is going the Captain leaves, wandering off down the sidewalk and stepping over the boy (who, coincidentally, is still preoccupied with finding his feet). He wanders beneath the drooling orange light of sidewalk lamps and listens to the muted sound of bass drums pumping in different clubs downtown, and for a while it seems he might wander forever, alone. After a while though, it occurs to him that there is actually a place for him to go; that he has a house on a quiet street, with a dog even, that limps, and has lost much of his youthful spirit but is a fitter companion for it. There is a home for him, the Captain realizes, in this world he’s helped to create, and with neither relief nor enthusiasm, he goes there.