chapter7
He was my squadron commander. He had been a captain in 2013, an A-10 instructor pilot who had taught me my last set of upgrade rides. He had pinned my captain bars on at a small ceremony in the squadron bar at Davis-Monthan in December of 2012.
He had been a major when I was awarded the DFC.
He had not been at the ceremony, but he had written the recommendation.
He had been my squadron commander now for two years. He was forty-six. He had been waiting to have a conversation with me of this exact shape for nine of them.
I told him about the mess night.
He did not speak for a beat.
Then he said, “Sticky, are you going?”
“I am.”
“In what?”
“Service dress. With the ribbon row.”
“Yes, sir.”
“With the V on the DFC?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am coming with you.”
“You do not need to.”
“Sticky, you’re about to let a Marine give you the speech you should have had in 2013. Wear the ribbon. Let your wing be there to hear it. I am coming.”
I did not argue with him.
I had argued with him once in 2018 about a check ride. I had been wrong, and I had not argued with him since.
I took the DFC out of the drawer that night.
The ribbon bar was still in the small plastic case it had come in. The metal itself was in its jeweler’s box with the white satin lining gone yellow at the edges.
I took both out and put them in the top drawer of the bureau where I would see them every morning.
I closed the drawer.
I did not look at the envelope I had mailed Dominic.
I had given it to him already.
I slept that night the way I had not slept in two weeks.
The officers’ club at Camp Lejeune is a low brick building with white columns and a lawn that has been mowed in such a way you can read it from above.
We pulled up in front of it at 18:45 on a Tuesday evening in June of 2026. The air was warm but not yet heavy. The live oaks on the long avenue hung the way live oaks hang when they have not yet decided what to do with their afternoon.
I was in service dress.
Dark blue jacket. Dark blue trousers. White shirt. Dark tie. My flight cap under my arm.
The DFC ribbon was on my chest in the second row, the first ribbon in its row because of where it sits in the order of precedence.
Lieutenant Colonel Yates was beside me in his own service dress, with his own ribbon row including the Bronze Star with V he had earned in 2010, the one he had not put on a press release.
Hulkcom was at the front door.
He was in dress blues. He had his master-at-arms baldric on. The dress blues looked the way Marine dress blues look in person, which is the way they cannot look in photographs.
The white belt. The high collar. The eagle, globe, and anchor on the cover.
He saluted us both.
We returned it.
“Ma’am. Sir. Welcome to Two-Eight.”
“Gunny.”
He walked us in.
Pace was at his elbow inside the foyer in his own dress blues, the corporal chevrons crisp on his collar.
Behind Pace was a Marine I did not know, a staff sergeant whose face I knew the way I had known Hulkcom’s voice. He had a face I had built in my mind out of a radio call sign and a casualty number over thirteen years of imagining the man under the lip of the ditch.
He looked the way that man would have looked at thirty-eight years of age, which was a thing I had not been able to picture until that moment.
He came to attention.
He saluted slowly.
He held it the way Hulkcom had held it.
“Ma’am. Staff Sergeant Aaron Wexler.”
“Sergeant Wexler.”
His eyes filled.
May you like
He did not try to hide it.
“Ma’am, I was not sure I could come.”
