I met the girl, an E-5, a sergeant, like Michaels and me, at an all-day NCO briefing. I was sitting next to Michaels who was seeing how many words he could make from one word, despair, written at the top of the page.

            Rapid, spade, pard, dire, ride, padre, parse, diaper, spear, spare, repaid, spar, drip, drape, pride, sari, praise, pare, pear, pier, sire, rise, raise, spread, prise, read, sped, rape, ripe, reap, dare, sear, dear, arid, raid, paid, rasp, said, pied, dais, spire, sapid. I didn’t know what sapid meant but I wasn’t going to ask Michaels who was writing words down so quickly, I figured he’d written the list earlier.

            She sat down across from us when we came into the room after break, rested her heavy breasts on the table, peered up at me between her splayed out fingers. Mona.  

            “I’ll let you buy me a drink when this is over,” she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

            I’d smiled, trying to pretend she meant it as a joke. You didn’t drink in Saudi. I didn’t anyway.

            I twisted as far away from her as I could, turned to Michaels, told him he’d missed some words. “Sap, sip, sad, pad, dip, asp.”

            “I don’t bother with anything less than four letters,” he said. Grandly. Michaels thought well of himself.

            Mona rolled her eyes at this, as if to imply men who liked word games would have no interest in women.

            She’d started it, but I wished I hadn’t embarrassed her.

            Trouble, Michaels said afterwards. Even Ray Charles could have seen it coming.   

A nineteen- years old E-1 in Michael’s unit, Canning, fell in love with her and she with him. She outranked him. Fraternization, dereliction of duty.

From the first Michaels said Canning was clueless, a waste of skin. Headed for the Big Chicken Dinner. He was always writing him up, which you had to do sometimes, of course, but I worked with my soldiers, encouraged them.

A waste of time, Michaels told me. “Let them find their own level.”  

Michaels didn’t know what was going on, no one did, till after a night of both of them getting sloppy drunk, Canning accused Mona of cheating on him with another E-1. She’d taunted him, said the other man had satisfied her as he had not, and he’d stabbed her.

That’s what Canning, stinking of beer and vomit, told us when we took him to the stockade.

Mona was on a medical transport back to the States six hours after it happened. She wasn’t badly hurt. It was to placate the Saudis.

In the stockade we kept someone on Canning 24/7. It’s only good sense, I’d argued. He’s looking at fourteen years, maybe more, and a dishonorable discharge. Who knows what he might do?

No loss, the captain said. He talked tough, but he let me have it my way, said he didn’t want to have to do the paperwork if Canning did something stupid.

I’d already decided not to re-enlist by then.

Six days later I was in charge of transporting the kid to Germany. A commercial flight, on Lufthansa, because we were in a hurry to get rid of him.

 Perhaps Canning appealed to Mona’s maternal side. Skinny, fine-featured, long, thick eyelashes. Hard to imagine him sticking a knife in anyone.

I figured he was too stupid and scared to think of escaping, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “One of us must be no more than arm’s length away at all times,” I told the two assigned to me for the trip. They listened solemnly. I’d just been promoted, was pleased and relieved by their deference. Both of them were from Michael’s unit, so I’d heard plenty about them. An arrogant prick, Michaels said of Stephens, the older one. Carroll he called a Bible-thumping hillbilly.

            “We just have to keep his spirits up till we hand him over in Germany,” I told them. Which wasn’t easy. He was sobbing when we led him out of the stockade, cried all the way to the airport. Carroll, the E-2, tried him on jokes so corny they’d make a third grader groan, abandoning them when he realized they were over the kid’s head.

            Stevens, the E-3, told him it wasn’t going be so bad. She didn’t die. You were drinking; that’s diminished capacity. You called the medics, that’ll count for something. Those JAG guys are smart, better than civilian lawyers. Before you know it, you’ll be out, living your life.  

            I hoped it was true but Canning was Black and the old-school Army didn’t like Black guys availing themselves of white women, no matter how willing, even when they didn’t want her for themselves.

            The kid didn’t answer.

             We sat in the back row, four seats, side by side, me, Canning, Carroll, Stevens. By the lavatory which I didn’t mind because it made it easier to escort the kid there. The flight attendant, older and not as pretty as the ones at home, attempted to push the cart past us without stopping.

            I’d heard Germans didn’t like Blacks and this one didn’t seem to care for soldiers either.

            “I can’t serve you alcohol,” she said when I spoke to her.

            I hadn’t asked for any.

            “No ma’am. We’re on duty. We’d appreciate a Coke.”

            “Your prisoner as well?” Loud. I’d covered his handcuffs with a jacket, figuring he’d been embarrassed enough. He wouldn’t be for much longer but he was a soldier now.

            “Ask him.”  

            She put the sodas and the little bags of peanuts on our trays, without looking at us. Didn’t acknowledge the kid’s thank you and made us go through the same thing when the meal came. She didn’t need to be that way; the flight was half-empty and he wasn’t giving trouble. I unlocked his cuffs.

            Stevens said somebody ought to break a stick off in her. I didn’t want anything getting back about us, glared at him. He was older than I was, at least 30, should know better. The kid, pondering the choice between chicken and beef, didn’t seem to notice.

            I asked for the beef. A cheap cut, I told my mom later, but the thin, sharp sauce, like nothing I’d ever had, made up for it. All of us were fascinated with the food. A nice change from MREs, I said to the kid, who agreed, pleased to be included.

            We could smell the good, fresh brewed smell and I told him they’d come around with coffee afterwards.

            “Real coffee!” Canning said, looking animated. They only got instant in the stockade.

            I told him I’d have mine with dessert. Some kind of chocolate cake, I told my mother. Not as sweet as we’re used to. Rich and satisfying.

            Stevens told us the little foil wrapped wedges of cheese were for after the meal. “That’s how they do it in Europe.”

            “Seems weird, cheese with coffee.”

            “No, you have it with wine.” Stevens said. “I think maybe this is white cheddar. You have red with cheddar. Nothing too overpowering.” Information I placed no value on whatsoever. The kid didn’t need to hear about what he wasn’t going to get anyway.

            After lunch Carroll offered to show us how to do magic tricks. “They taught us when I was a counselor at Bible Camp. You’d do a few and say, ‘with Jesus there are no tricks. He’s the real deal.’ After that you were supposed to start devotions only I’d be having fun and forget. They said I was the worst counselor they ever had, busted me to KP duty for the rest of the summer.”

            Canning loved it.

            The flight attendant who brought around the snack, little cardboard cartons of vanilla ice cream, was easier on the eye than the other one, and friendly. She giggled when Carroll pretended to pull a quarter from behind her ear, presented it to her with a flourish. When I do the same trick at my little girl’s birthday parties I think of her.            

            “Come back to the galley,” she told Carroll, “and I will give you more snacks.”

            “You go too,” I told the kid. “You don’t know when you’re going to eat again.” He and Carroll looked excited, boys on an adventure. Stevens and I, hearing the three of them back there laughing, smiled across the empty seats at each other.

            They returned with cans of Coke, more cartons of ice cream, bags of chips, little candy bars. In Saudi the chocolate melted before you could eat them; you had to lick them off the foil.

            “They got stainless steel drawers back there they can pull out for ice, lemon slices, cherries, olives,” Canning said.

            The older flight attendant handed out postcards, pictures of the plane, before we landed. “A souvenir of your journey,” she told the kid, asked me, politely, if we’d like to get off the plane first.

            No, I told her, we’ll wait for the others. The kid, knocking back another Coke, and studying his postcard, would want to stay as long as he could.

“I didn’t know they’d do this. Do you think I can keep it?”

“Put it in with your religious items.” In the stockade they’d issued the kid a paperback Testament. “It might be okay.”

In the Munich airport everyone was drinking beer. You could smell it as soon as you walked inside. Like some kind of fucking Oktoberfest, though it was April.

The guys from Landstuhl, four of them, in Green As, looked sharp. Their sergeant marched them in formation. The lieutenant walked at his own pace, so everyone would know he was the one giving orders. He seemed disappointed when he couldn’t find anything wrong with the cuff and shackles.

“You’ll notice the skin is intact, sir.”

 He looked at our fatigues with distaste. We’d been up for twenty-six hours. Stevens and I needed to shave.

Carroll went to the kid, slugged him gently in the arm. “Hey. It’s been real.”

“Hella gay,” one of the Landstuhl soldiers said into the floor. I stared into the lieutenant’s smirking face.

            If one of my men had said it, I told myself, I’d have ripped him another one.

 “We’re out of here,” I announced, though they’d already turned to march Canning off. “Take care of yourself, soldier.”

He looked back at me. “Thank you, sergeant.”

Six of them, and Canning probably weighed a buck fifty soaking wet.

“I’m sorry about that, Carroll. I should have said something.” I told him, after they’d gone.

Carroll smiled, the hurt gone from his face. “It meant a lot what you said now.”  

 I’d have liked to let Carroll and Stephens go into town. None of us had been to Germany before. But the return flight was in two hours. I told them they could get a beer at the airport if they wanted. Some of the ones carrying big mugs of dark beer looked like high school kids so, though Carroll was underage back home, I figured it would be all right here. “Just don’t show up shit-faced at the gate because we better be able to get on the plane. I’m going to walk a little. Stretch my legs.”

Carroll asked to stay with me and Stephens didn’t seem to want to go off on his own either. I told them they’d been great, bought us pretzels.

Which were good, Stevens and I agreed, but not much different than the ones at the mall at home. Carroll was delighted. No malls where he was from, he announced, and he was eating foreign food in a foreign country.

We talked for a while. About how hard things were going to be for Canning, about missing home, about Carroll wanting to be a preacher. The minister at the church his family had always gone to, wouldn’t write him a recommendation for Bible College. “He said I didn’t take it seriously enough.”  

Stephens took an interest, surprising me. Maybe you’re better at bringing people in than keeping them out, he said. There are a lot of Protestant denominations you might be more comfortable with. Get the chaplain to write you a recommendation.   

Or, if he just wanted to help the poor, Stephens had good ideas about that too.

I didn’t have much to contribute but I remember thinking it was the best conversation I’d had in a long time. On the way to the gate we joked about having another fine meal at the government’s expense, but the other two were asleep before take-off and then I was asleep too. We didn’t wake up till the plane touched down.

The lieutenant e-mailed me two weeks later to tell me the kid had hung himself in his cell. Saving the expense of the trial, he’d said. I didn’t answer, figured he just wanted to tell me the kid wasn’t worth the trouble we took, wondered if Mona, at Fort Bragg with her NCO husband, awaiting separation from the Army, knew.

I was a short-timer by then myself. Michaels surprised me. He wanted me to stay in, said I’d go far, I was smart, and he didn’t know how he could stand Saudi without me.

 I looked up Carroll and Stevens to say goodbye, went to their unit at change of shift.  

            Shook hands, wished them well, told them I was sorry we hadn’t had another chance to work together, would have said more, but Michaels came over then, expressed surprise at my being there, though I’d asked to come. “My boys fuck up again, double-digit midget?”

            You know they didn’t, I told him, and then we couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Jane Snyder’s stories have appeared in Cobalt Weekly, Bookends, and Red Rock. She lives in Spokane.