Code for Failure

dishes, like the stench of being kicked out of college emanates from me.

Craig, my boss, is selling cigarettes to a guy with a crew cut and a muscle tee. “When I was in ‘Nam,” he says. I don’t listen to the rest. I finish washing the customer’s windshield.

When the car leaves I go back in the office and wait for Randy Savage to make his exit.

“No way you were in Vietnam,” I say.

“Of course I was,” Craig says, shooting me a bug-eyed look.

“You’re forty-two, right?”

Craig nods.

“You were too young to be in Vietnam.”

“How the hell would you know, kid?”

“I was a history minor.”

“Before you got the boot you mean.”

Oh, the knife in the side. “Yes,” I say. “Regardless, you were too young to be in Vietnam.”

“You don’t know what I’ve seen,” he says. “Gooks everywhere. I laid in trenches for days in the mud.”

I can’t help laughing. “Maybe the trenches of your backyard.”