“Alright, let’s ask Grizz,” Sawyer began. “He can settle thi—“
His sentence died a quick death. All four of us had turned, and were staring at the empty seat near the end of the bar.
A seat that had been empty sincethatnight.
“Ah shit,” Sawyer mumbled. “I forgot again.”
It had been almost two weeks now, since we’d left Cole’s crumpled form behind the bar. In that time, Bodie’s birthday concussion had faded, and Carter’s sprained back had mostly healed. Sawyer had gotten away with only a few bumps and bruises in our group trip to urgent care. My cracked ribs still hurt like crazy, though.
Dawn broke the next day, cold and beautiful, and thankfully, Cole was gone. But Grizz was gone too.
“It’s not just you, man,” Bodie consoled Sawyer. “I keep forgetting too.”
Together we stared at the spot in relative silence. Grizz not coming in was like the sun not coming up every morning. Seeing his seat empty like that was beyond weird.
“Think he got freaked out by what happened?” Sawyer asked quietly.
Bodie shook his head. “You think a guy like that gets freaked out by anything?”
It was a good question. None of us really had an answer.
Carter rubbed his chin, as if deciding something. Eventually he sighed and waved Bodie over.
“I was going to wait, but I came in to a little surprise this morning,” he said. “But first, I need to show you something.”
He walked to the center of the bar, and hopped up on something. Reaching high overhead, he brought down one of the many old, dusty photos in even older frames. This one, I noticed, had the dust blown off it already.
“My uncle used to show me these photos,” Carter began, “the few times I came in here when I was little. I always figured they were soldiers he knew. Guys he’d served with. But after we saw Grizz in action, it got me thinking.”
Placing the frame face-down on the bar, he slid open the back and popped out the black and white photo.
“See this?”
He pointed. We squinted. Recognition dawned.
“HOLY SHIT!” Sawyer breathed.
I’m pretty sure we all saw the same thing at once. A group of soldiers stood huddled together, against the backdrop of lush,jungle mountains. But on the far left, kneeling in front, was a very recognizable face.
“It’s him…”
He was heartbreakingly young, but there was no mistaking those sharp, heavily-lidded eyes. His fatigues looked well-worn, his boots caked with the mud of a thousand marches. But it was the familiar-looking cap on his head that I most recognized. It looked placed there almost as an afterthought, and rested at a downward angle.
“Grizz was Green Beret,” Bodie swore, his voice choked with veneration.
“Still is, apparently,” Carter corrected him. “We saw it for ourselves.”
Sawyer nodded, mechanically. “That kind of training never goes away.”
Carter handed the photo over to me. I took it with reverence.
“Look at the back.”
I flipped it over. A bunch of names were scrawled in pencil, some of them so faded it was hard to make them out. One, at the bottom, stood out from the rest:
Jonathan Grizzlock.
“Damn, we’ve always wondered,” Sawyer beamed. He pointed upward. “It was here the whole time.”
