Rain and Reckoning

Cormac was standing in the rain when he realized he’d turned the wrong way on purpose.

It wasn’t a heroic storm. Just March along the Tennessee/Kentucky border—low sky, steady rain, the kind that soaked you without ceremony. The neon shamrock over O’Paddy’s door bled green into the puddles at his boots. Water slipped off the awning in thin, cold ropes. Fort Campbell Boulevard hissed behind him with passing tires.

He let the rain run down the back of his collar. Let it remind him where he was.

“Forty goes home,” he muttered. “Twenty-four don’t.”

He could be almost to Bristol. Instead, he was here.

The radio had done it.

A few hours back, he’d been rolling east on I-40, Nashville shrinking in the mirror, when the announcer cut through the static—too bright for the subject.

“…the 101st Airborne Division is returning home to Fort Campbell…”

Cormac eased off the gas without thinking. He told himself to keep driving. Lied about it. At the split, muscle memory took the wheel. I-24 pulled him northwest like it always had.

Gate 4 smelled the same—wet concrete and old paint. The MP kid in the poncho scanned his retired ID, blinked at the name.

“Yes, sir— I mean— Mr. Dunne. Welcome back.”

Rain tracked down the screaming eagle’s beak like tears.

Cormac parked near the flight line and walked in with the storm.

Families crowded under plastic and canvas. Homemade signs bobbed. The PA crackled. A transport groaned overhead. The noise punched through the weather in bursts—laughter, sobs, boots on wet pavement.

He stayed on the edges with the retirees. Men and women with hands in pockets and eyes sharp. Checking the count.

That’s when he saw Malloy.

He was standing wrong near a row of cones and an idle tug—half under cover, half in the rain. New rockers on his sleeve. Same shape. Same stillness.

Cormac stepped closer.

“Should’ve found a roof, Sergeant.”

Malloy turned too fast. His boot slid on the wet gravel—just a half-step, but enough. His arms flared for balance.

Cormac caught his arm without comment. Not hard. Just there.

Malloy squared up like nothing had happened.

“First Sergeant?” Then, softer. “Cormac?”

“In the questionable flesh,” Cormac said. “What are you doing getting baptized in uniform?”

“Getting air.”

“You look like you’re standing watch on a ghost.”

Malloy didn’t answer.

Two days back. Weapons turned in. Reunions underway. All the boxes checked—except the one behind his eyes.

Inside, O’Paddy’s steamed with heat and fryer grease. Darts cracked against wood. Soldiers laughed too loud. The kind of busy made for coming home.

They took a corner booth without a word of choice.

Wings. Cokes.

Malloy tracked the room without moving his head.

“You know you’re doing that,” Cormac said.

Malloy didn’t bother denying it.

“How bad is it?” Cormac asked. “And don’t give me the briefing slide.”

Malloy stared at the condensation on his glass.

“I wake up standing in the hallway and don’t remember getting out of bed,” he said. “Boots on. Heart going like I’m back on headsets.”

That was answer enough.

“Lithuania,” Cormac said.

Malloy’s jaw tightened.

“Night recovery. Pabradė training area,” he said. “We took a recovery track out to pull a dead vehicle. Routine. Seventy tons of ‘routine.’ Ground looked firm on the map. Looked firm in the dark, too.”

He finally looked up, met Cormac’s eyes. There was nothing theatrical in it—just pure pain and shame that had been chewing for weeks.

“They hit that bog and it took them all sideways,” he said. “One second they’re rolling, next second sliding like the whole world tilted. Then the nose is down and the water’s up over the glacis and still sinking.”

He swallowed.

“I was section sergeant that night. I cleared the route. Cleared the angle. Cleared the damn mission.”

For a moment the noise of the bar dropped away.

“They found the vehicle fifteen, twenty feet under,” he said. “Mud, water, diesel, all mixed. Took pumps, cranes, gravel, engineers from three countries, Navy divers—whole circus—to even get a look at it.”

His voice stayed level, but his fingers had gone white on the glass.

“Three of my guys were still inside when they finally dug in,” he said. “Fourth was farther out in the muck. A week of watching them work just to bring bodies up. Training mission.”

He exhaled, a sound more like a hissing leak than a breath.

“Enemy I can point at, I can live with,” Malloy said. “This was mud. Mud.”

He pushed a wing around his plate without eating it.

“You talking to anyone?” Cormac asked.

Malloy shook his head once.

“Walk into Behavioral Health and it follows you on paper forever,” he said. “I spent years building my platoon. I’m not giving it over to a box checked on a form.”

Cormac leaned in.

“In my day, going to Behavioral Health meant a flagged career, maybe losing schools,” Cormac said. “It’s different now—”

Malloy snorted.

Cormac didn’t pause. “You don’t go, and one day you wake up in a hallway with your family crying and no memory of how you got there. That’s the trade. Pick your loss.”

Malloy’s jaw flexed.

Silence held.

He stared past Cormac’s shoulder at the door like he might bolt.

“You ever ask for help?” he asked.

Cormac took a breath.

“Late,” he said. “Took the long road. Sat on what was broken and let it grind me down. Didn’t make me tough. Made me tired.”

He didn’t say more.

“You still scared of CSM Horne?” Cormac asked.

Malloy barked a short laugh.

“That man once made me carry the brigade guidon all week because I got caught smoking behind HQ.”

“He’s still that man,” Cormac said. “You walk into his office and say you’re not right—he won’t break you. He’ll steer you.”

Malloy’s fingers worked the edge of the table.

“If he pulls me out—”

“He won’t,” Cormac said. “He’ll keep you alive long enough to put you back where you belong.”

The bar roared around them.

“I’ll go… because I don’t want my kids finding me in a doorway I don’t remember walking to.”

That was the real oath.

Outside, the rain had thinned to mist. Streetlights smeared halos into the wet dark.

They shook hands between their trucks.

“I’ll call him,” Cormac said.

Malloy nodded.

“Thank you.”

“Handle your business,” Cormac said. “That’s all.”

Malloy’s taillights vanished toward the gate.

Cormac stood in the fine rain a moment longer.

He started the truck and rolled east.

Horne answered on the second ring.

“You calling too late or too early?”

“Malloy needs you tomorrow.”

Short pause.

“Ten hundred,” Horne said.

“Don’t let him dodge,” Cormac said.

“You drive,” Horne said. “I’ll handle the rest.”

Cormac merged onto I-40 as the clouds tore open in the east. Pale light bled through. The road shone clean and slick.

Something in him shifted with it.

His heart had gone to stone a long time ago. Not shattered—just closed. Over the years it had taken cracks, hairline and stubborn. Tonight one of them widened. Not from breaking, but from growth—something green pushing up through the seam.

Storms never ended.

They just shifted ground where you couldn’t see them yet.

That was why you checked your gear.

That was why you learned how to stand in the rain.

Cormac drove into the lifting gray, not finished with storms—but finally moving through one the right way.