“I’m telling you one last time. Get out of that chair and off my parade ground.”
Colonel Derek Shaw had one hand locked around the old man’s arm, his voice low and vicious beneath the Texas morning heat.
The old man didn’t resist.
He sat in the back row looking like something the wind had blown against a fence and forgotten—boots gray with age, jeans crusted with garden dirt, an olive field jacket carrying the stale smell of mothballs and old tobacco.
“Just came to watch, Colonel,” he said, his voice rough as gravel. “Here for Laura. Captain Reyes.”
Shaw wiped sweat from his brow and gave a humorless laugh.
“Captain Reyes’s family is in the front row. They wear suits. They have invitations.”
His eyes traveled contemptuously over the man’s clothes.
“You look like you slept behind the mess hall. You’re disrespecting this uniform and this installation.”
“I served.”
The old man touched a frayed patch on his shoulder.
Most of the lettering had disappeared with time, but two faded words could still be made out.
Mad Dog.
Shaw’s expression hardened.
“Stolen valor’s a crime.”
He seized the man’s bicep.
The field jacket was thin beneath his fingers, but the arm underneath felt unexpectedly solid.
“I don’t care what you bought at a surplus store. Move. Now. Or the MPs put you in a cell.”
Nearby, Lieutenant Nolan shifted uneasily with a clipboard pressed against his chest.
“Sir… maybe we should verify—”
“Quiet, Lieutenant Nolan.”
Shaw jerked the old man to his feet.
Pain flashed across the man’s weathered face.
Not from Shaw’s grip.
From the piece of shrapnel that had remained buried in his hip for fifty years.
“I’m going,” he whispered, lowering his eyes. “Don’t want no trouble for the girl.”
“Damn right you’re going.”
Shaw shoved him toward the aisle.
The old man took one limping step.
The ceremony was seconds from beginning. The brass band raised their instruments. Two hundred soldiers waited beneath the rising Texas sun.
