On a nearby television, I watched Cleveland sports fans burn the jersey of some basketball player, a self-proclaimed messiah who’d left because winning was hard there and it’d be easier in Florida.

She was right, but that didn’t make me wrong.

I belong here as much as anyone, I thought. Because at least I have the goddamn dignity to question being here to begin with.

He knew the board like it was kin, displaying foreknowledge of open shots and an accuracy he’d concealed at first. He’d wanted to watch me shoot to learn my strengths and weaknesses. Whereas I was reacting to the game, he anticipated it. There was a counterinsurgency lesson in this somewhere, but I had neither the time nor the patience to figure it

My mom had grown up an admiral’s daughter and said that senior officers functioned so that no truth could betray the myths, of either the past or the mind.

After Ahmed’s emergency ride, I was certain they’d mutiny, but the exact opposite happened: they revered me now, nicknaming me Iceberg Slim and telling other soldiers I was the only lieutenant in the entire army worth a fuck.

“Before we left, we thought we were steel. But even those of us who’d deployed before didn’t know what hard was. Not yet. Our platoon sergeant, he had an idea. Kept saying it wouldn’t be like the Invasion, or Afghanistan. That the war had changed, evolved. Kept calling us youngbloods, to try and get us focused. We thought it was a big joke. Ha

And he didn’t want his kids to grow up fatherless? This was the same guy who’d bragged about not knowing where two of his offspring had moved with their mother. Then I thought about how I wasn’t really the person I presented to the soldiers, either. There were parts I hid, parts I exaggerated. Maybe Chambers was the same.

“We can’t save them all. I know your heart’s in the right place. But as an officer, your head’s got to be in the right place. Remove it from your asshole. Now.”