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“You want to stop and get some medicine?” she asked when they were back on Route 1, heading south.

“No. I don’t want to make anymore stops. We’re going to Albertson’s anyway. I’ll get something there.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a grocery chain. They’re pretty big around here, like Kroger’s is in Richmond.”

“Oh, okay. If you feel any better after your medicine, do you think we could see a little of the town? I’m just curious to see some of the sights down here. You know Truman spent a lot of time down here when he was President,” she said. “They call his house, ‘The Little White House’. You can take tours and everything.” She paused for a minute, assessing if she was having any success, then continued. “Hemingway’s house is also down here.”

“Have you ever read anything he wrote?” George asked.

“Um...well, no, but I’d still like to see where he lived,” she said.

“I don’t want to see anything other than the inside of the store’s employee break-room,” he said.

“You know, you’re being really nasty today.”

“I’m sick,” he said.

“You haven’t been down here in forty years. You’d think you would want to see how things have changed, you know, see where you used to hang out. Don’t you have any sentimentality?”

“Some things are better left forgotten, Ellie.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said, and he saw the man’s head hitting the concrete again, felt his hands squeezing the stranger’s neck as hard as he could, the trachea cracking like chicken bones under his fingers. “I just don’t have any reason to see the sights down here, that’s all. I’ve spent the last forty years trying to forget what happened down here.”

“What, the war?”

“It wasn’t really a war,” he corrected.

“I know, I just mean the stuff that was going on while you were here. Is that what you’ve been trying to forget?”

“Um, yeah. That’s it. It was a pretty scary time. We were all acting strange, right? Scary.”

“Why’re you acting weird, George? What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing. Look, I’m not feeling well, you know I’ve been sick with this flu. My stomach’s killing me and I’m so tired I can hardly see straight.”

“Yeah, but being sick doesn’t account for how strange you’ve been acting. And you been having these nightmares,”

“I only had the one last night,” he said, knowing it was a lie. He’d woken up covered in sweat every night since coming home from the dispatch office with this assignment. She’d only heard him screaming last night.

“You haven’t been sleeping right since you came home from the office, now what’s going on? Jesus, George, you don’t have any bastard kids down here, do you?”

“I killed someone,” he blurted.

“What?”

“A Cuban kid, down in Key West.”

Her face softened. “Like an enemy? When were you in combat?”

“Not combat, Ellie. I told you, it wasn’t a war. I murdered him.”

She just stared at him, her mouth slightly agape, her head shaking in faint disbelief. “Why?”

“It was a stupid fight, just a stupid bar-room fight.”

“What Happened?”

“I heard this woman shouting something and I looked over to see the commotion. This young Cuban kid was putting his hands all over her, and it was clear she didn’t want no part of him. Well, I’m drunk, and I look over and see this going on, and I decide to get involved. Only the bartender comes over first and tells the kid to get out, so I followed him outside and across Duval Street into an alley between two buildings. I caught up to him and started yelling at him. We got to fighting, and I kind of lost control. I just saw all the problems we’d been having with Cuba and the Communists in this guy. I don’t really even know how it happened, how I got so carried away. But when I came to, the back of his head was all smashed in and there was blood all over my face. I left him in that alley and ran back to the barracks and got cleaned up.

“His story ran in the paper the next day, said his name was