THE WEIGHT WE CARRIED AFTER VIETNAM

We stood side by side in battles that should have finished us. When our strength failed, we carried each other. We dragged one another from the enemy’s reach to safety when the world’s weight was too much to bear. If we messed up, the jokes never stopped. The ribbing was endless, good-natured but sharp, like the cracks in a concrete sidewalk. We gave each other names. Nicknames that meant something made it real — made us brothers.

Before every mission, we swore an oath that meant more than the words could hold. And for all the squabbles, the irritation we felt when the heat of the day got to us, the only thing that mattered was the line we drew between ourselves and the rest of the world.

God help anyone who crosses it.

I knew that feeling when we found Lt. Pauly and his rogue team. We walked into a place where the devil himself had set up shop. The evil hung thick in the air. Pauly and his men had sold their souls long before we arrived. They were hungry for ours; if we’d let them, they would have taken them in the next breath.

We got out. We finished the tour. We came home. But the war didn’t leave us behind.

Two years later, H called me. W had gotten into trouble — his temper. The cops had taken him in. The man who’d started it had stepped too far over the line. Alcohol had…