Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Thank you for your service
Chapter 1:
Matilda and John sat in the front seats of his 1998 red Toyota Camry. Considering the car was older than either of them, it was still in pretty good shape. The suspension wasn't the best when it came to comfort and the fuel efficiency meant that long trips would prove costly. But to bring the two teenagers from their small hometown of Dawson Springs's in Kentucky to where they were parked now, outside a small strip mall near Fort Campbell, the car was good enough.
"You sure you want to do this Matti?" John didn't look over at the girl in the passenger seat as he asked the question, instead his bright blue eyes remained intent on the only business still open at this time of the evening... Chet's bar.
He didn't receive an answer straight away and the young man didn't need to confirm with his eyes that the passenger beside him was in a world of her own at the moment. He was used to that.
John Dennehy should have been a poster boy for the All American ideal for an eighteen-year-old high school student. Tall and good looking, eldest of three children to an Irish American family. With his naturally powerful build and turn of speed, he should have been the star of his school's football team. With his intelligence and propensity to read voraciously on all manner of subjects, he should have been graduating top of his class, a shoe in for one of the Ivy League colleges or better yet Notre Dame to please his fiercely Irish catholic parents. John wasn't either of these.
He'd always been introspective as a child, weighing up the pros and cons of any endeavour before committing to it, even something as simple as climbing a tree in his own backyard. He shunned crowds, hating the limelight brought by success in anything. This meant he'd dropped out of each and every one of the teams his parents enrolled him in, much to his father's chagrin. In school, he purposely targeted himself to be a solid B student, capable of far more but content to remain just outside the top tier, much to his mother's dismay. Both parents agreed that their eldest son was 'weird' and they worried where he would find himself in life.
Acting as he did, he hadn't many friends growing up. Only his physique and intelligence kept him from being bullied in high school. The predatory instinct of children to single out the weak and the different among themselves seemed to signal to any would-be bullies that John wasn't an easy target. He might not have been popular but he wasn't completely friendless, he If he had the person sitting next to him.
Matilda Diaz, or Matti as John called her, was the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who had moved to Kentucky after her father's discharge from the army. She was born, much like John, with gifts both physical and mental. To see her, five foot five inches tall, lustrous dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail and a sweet pretty face dominated by her big brown eyes that seemed perpetually sad, you could easily describe her as striking in looks without fear of contradiction. All the more so with her arresting figure, 120lbs, 36F-25-36. She should have had every red-blooded male in their high school chasing her for a date but she'd never been asked out, not once. Matti was different from the teenage norms much as John was, one reason why they had become friends. However, John had always had his quirks from childhood, Matti's had only manifested when she was twelve.
Just a few months shy of her thirteenth birthday, both of her parents had died in a car crash. Her mother's sister had moved from Washington DC to raise Mattie, offering her nothing but support and understanding as had the community at large. Matti however, had never gotten past that time though, never shedding the air of mourning, never setting the ghosts to rest. She wore black or at best dark hued clothing all the time, her interest in school work and life in general was muted. The understanding nature of people faded over time and where once they had looked on her with compassion and pity, gradually became just... pity.
Her fellow students called her 'the sad one' or 'misery girl'.
She did have a few things in life that she worshipped, almost as if her lack of interest in everything else had magnified her enthusiasm for these few things. First and foremost was the memory of her father. She missed her mother of course, but not the way she missed him. Matti clung to his memory like a security blanket, reliving the stories he had told her over and over and over. This led to her other obsession, the army.
Her father, his father and his before him had all served in the US Military. Matti's family had been serving their nation since the Korean war and she held all those who served with a certain reverence. One story of her father's had always been among her favourites. He'd told her about the first time he'd returned from a posting overseas, how he had gone to a bar near the base and a number of strangers had insisted on buying him a drink to thank him for his service to the country. Her father had told her how much that simple gesture had meant to him.
That was what had brought her and John to this place at this time.
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Despite the relaxed, faraway look in her brown eyes and the relaxed pose of her body, the young eighteen-year-old girl stared without seeing into the mostly empty parking lot outside the strip mall, her attractive face pinched with a tension from some internal debate.
"Hey... Matti... Matti" John's voice finally cut into her reverie.
"Sorry... what did you say?" She turned her eyes towards her friend, giving him one of her rare but heart stopping smiles as she did so. Even John, who counted himself as her only friend hadn't seen her smile like that before. He grinned in response.
"I asked were you sure you wanted to do this, but I think I got my answer," he quipped. He pulled his wallet out, removing the small identity card from the slot and held it up to that dim light from outside let him read it.
"John Smith," he read out loud, shaking his head at the name. The card didn't look particularly legitimate to him, the patently false name not helping either. But it was the only false ID he'd been able to secure, paying $50 each for his and Matti's. Her card had read 'Mathilda Murphy' which was slightly at odds with her looks but again, beggars couldn't be choosers.
Matti's dream was a simple one. All she wanted to do was to walk into the same bar her dad had gone into decades before, to buy some veterans a drink in acknowledgement of their service had been one she'd shared with John a few times over the course of their friendship. A simple act of tribute to her late father and to those who now defended her country as he once had. Deep thinking and good hearted, John had resolved to make her dream a reality, waiting until they both graduated high school before organising this trip and the fake ID's. When he'd told Matti his plan, she'd jumped on him, hugging him so tightly he'd actually thought she'd bruise him. Her six-year wait to honour her father's memory in this way was finally over. They were going to do this.
The two teens got out of the car and headed to the bar's entrance.
There was no one working the door so they passed into the interior of the bar without being stopped. Chet's bar wasn't exactly heaving, though as it was a Tuesday night that wasn't too much of a surprise. Hidden speakers were blasting out soft rock loud enough that John had to lean over to speak into Matti's ear to get her attention. She'd slipped into one of her 'trances', perhaps the reality of the bar not meeting her expectations.
Twenty odd years before when her father had gone there, it might have been a different place although the condition of the furnishing and fixtures suggested that it was 'exactly' the same place today. Everything seemed dated, worn, grubby. The only pristine things were the pool table in the centre of the bar and the bar counter itself that gleamed from years of being polished and waxed lovingly.
