The friend of a friend put Richard in touch with a friend, who wasn’t home but—thankfully—was up on answering messages. A call to the number Richard was given also ended at an answering machine, but he’d only waited a short while for a call back before his phone rang again.

“God, I’m sorry,” the friend—Trevor—said. “I forgot—he’s visiting one of his kids. You want the number where he’s staying?”

Under ordinary circumstances, Richard would have said no, he’d left a message and that would be fine; but thoughts of Klaus made him hesitate. Accept the number and interrupt the man’s vacation, or delay the call and delay answers until after Klaus showed his face again—perhaps long after.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter. He’d faced Klaus more than once without an answer to a single one of the questions the younger man raised; doing so again wouldn’t be impossible. The kid needed a place to run to, a friend to listen. Richard could provide that without knowing where he’d come from or where he’d served or even his last name.

And yet….

He couldn’t face Klaus again, not with all those questions nagging at him. Not with doubt gnawing away at compassion and suspicion threatening to push concern aside.

“You sure he won’t mind?”

“Nah. If he can’t talk, he’ll let you know.”

Richard wrote the number down, thanked Trevor and hung up, but didn’t dial it immediately. The digits scrawled on a piece of notepaper—they were just a number. A sequence that would bring an interlude to a stranger’s visit with his family, if not grind it to a halt. Maybe things would stop there, end with the voice on the other end of the line announcing that he knew next to nothing about the unnamed soldier in the photo.

But maybe not.

Richard brushed a thumb over the paper. It was just a number, but it felt like a key.

Arthur preferred to be called Art, and if a stranger intruding on a family visit bothered him, his voice didn’t show it.

“I’ve spent the last forty years bouncing around the whole country,” he said with a laugh when Richard apologized for the interruption yet again. “Probably made me hard to track down.”

“Just a bit.”

Art laughed again. “So you want me to come on down today, tomorrow, when?”

Richard glanced again at the number he’d taken down. He’d been told the man had somewhat settled in Arizona, but the area code looked familiar. “How close are you?”

“’Bout forty minutes away.”

So his daughter had wound up in one of those towns scattered around the city, the ones that lured tourists in with a cultivated quaintness and a Main Street designed to separate them from their money. “We’ve got his photo at the VFW here in town.”

“I can get there tomorrow. You got directions?”

Art beat Richard and Jim to the VFW, and despite only starting his walk once hands were shaken and introductions made, he beat them inside and reached the memorial wall a few paces before they did.

“This the guy?”

Even before he closed the gap, Richard knew which soldier his pointing finger highlighted. “That’s him.”

A smile tugged at one corner of Art’s mouth and then the other, but no sooner had it spread than it lost whatever innocence it might have had, turning wistful at best. He shook his head. “Should’ve known Klaus would show up in the last place you’d expect.”

The name was like a thunderclap. Richard tried to think of something, anything to say besides asking him to repeat it, something that wasn’t incoherent stammering.

“Klaus?” If Art heard Jim’s voice increase in pitch, he didn’t show it. “That’s his name?”

“His parents were ahead of the curve, I guess.”

“My great-grandpa’s name was Orange.” Richard wasn’t sure how he managed to get the words out at all. “Married a woman named Blossom and never heard the end of it.”

“Klaus. He have a surname?” Jim asked. It sounded casual enough, but Richard heard the strain in it, the forced nonchalance.

“Hargreeves.” Art frowned, looking to the photo again. “Always did think that was weird, once the Academy started making headlines.”

Klaus wasn’t too unusual of a name—not like Orange. It hadn’t been the sort of name most mothers would bestow upon their children back in the forties, but it had existed. So had Hargreeves. If the parents of a perfectly harmless baby boy who had done nothing to deserve it could nevertheless choose to saddle him with a name like Orange back in 1843, then a Mrs. Hargreeves in the 1930s or 40s could name her son Klaus.

Richard tried for an unhurried gait as he moved closer to the photograph of the unnamed soldier—toward Klaus Hargreeves, if Art wasn’t the perpetrator of the world’s strangest and most twisted practical joke. Maybe if he were able to remove it from its frame and study it without the glass, he’d be able to find some discrepancy between this Klaus and the one he knew. It was the light, he decided. The light kept him from seeing it clearly, gave an admittedly spooky coincidence more meaning than it deserved.

Out the corner of his eye, he saw Art frown. “You okay?”

Richard didn’t try for a smile, or even a reassuring tone. Art struck him as a smart guy—too smart to be brushed off with something like that. “You want to sit down?”

There was a table somewhat close to the photo, and that was where they set up operations. Jim fetched a few drinks from the bar and passed them around; Art held onto his beer a moment before speaking.

“You know, I figured I’d just come in and name the guy.”

Richard kept both hands wrapped around his soda as he tried to find the proper words. It was tempting to toss all the cards on the table and let Art sort them out—but there was still a chance that all this was a coincidence or something darker. Throwing everything out into the open could muddy the waters before they had an inkling of what lurked beneath.

“We’ve had some….weird shit happen, these last couple of days,” Jim said without looking up. “And it all ties back to that guy in the photo.”

“To Klaus,” Art said.

“Yeah,” Jim said with a hint of a sigh. “To Klaus.”

“We still don’t know shit about him,” Richard added, motioning between himself and Jim. “But you do. Maybe you can help us clear a few things up.”

Art fell silent, gazing down at his beer. Richard tried not to hold his breath, tried not to let anticipation and disquiet show on his face. He tried not to watch, too, but that proved fruitless. Slowly, Art’s expression softened. Slowly, it became a smile.

“The guy was a trainwreck.” He shook his head with a soft chuckle. “But God, he was fun.”

He leaned forward, resting an elbow on the table. Richard had seen that smile before, wry and expectant all at once—the smile of a man who knew he had some good stories to share.

“This one time, I was just sitting there, minding my own business, and Klaus walks up, plops himself into my lap and goes ‘Trust fall!’” He chuckled again. “Of course, he didn’t get to that part until I was already cussing him out.”  

It wasn’t that Richard forgot the reason for Art’s presence. It wasn’t that he tossed the purpose of hearing his stories aside. But as Art told another story followed by another, as he relaxed into memories he may not have shared before, reason and purpose took a backseat. They remained in the back of his mind, but he was laughing too hard to hear their guidance.

Richard still hadn’t gotten his wind back from laughter at the last story when Art slapped the table. “The ghost moose! Almost missed that one.”

Jim coughed on his beer. “The what moose?”

Art leaned forward with his elbows propped on the table. He liked to do that and gesture broadly as he spoke, Richard had noticed. “So, Klaus didn’t know how to drive once he got in country.”

“How old was he again?” Richard asked.

Art frowned, as though he’d never considered the question before. “I…I dunno. Late twenties? Anyway.” He waved the question aside. “So we’ve got to teach him. He’s in the driver’s seat, bumping along—and there’s nobody for miles. Out in the middle of nowhere. But everything seems to be going great, he’s finally getting the hang of it, and then all of a sudden—bam! Guy slams on the brakes, almost pitches us all out. We’re all ‘What the hell, you almost got us killed,’ and he just stares at the road a minute and then he goes, ‘I thought I saw a….moose.’”

“You’re shitting me,” Jim said.

“Nope.” Art chuckled. “He said it just like that, too—like he knew he had all of two seconds to think of something good and that’s what he came up with.”

Richard gulped his soda. “A moose.”

“Yep.”

“In Vietnam.”

“That’s what the rest of us said, but he goes, ‘Well, maybe they lived here millions of years ago and now there’s a ghost moose walking around, ever think of that?’”

Art grinned through the laughter that followed.

“I’ll bet that story took off,” Richard said when he’d straightened out enough to speak.

“God, yes. After that, every goddamn shadow we saw was the ghost moose. Officers pull some new bullshit? Ghost moose. Mail’s delayed again? Ghost moose.”

Richard grinned. “Did the ghost moose have a name?”

“Spurlock,” Art said after another gulp of his drink. “Think it was Charlie who said we should call him Reginald. I thought it was a great name for a moose, but Klaus didn’t like that one, and since the ghost moose was his idea—”

“You wanted to go with something he liked,” Jim finished.

“Yep. Not sure where he came up with Spurlock, but it stuck.”

The name sounded familiar, but Richard couldn’t quite place it. He was still trying to match it to a face, a news article or anything else when Art nodded to the photograph on the wall.

“Every man in that picture came up with at least one story about the ghost moose. Dave started writing them all down one night. Gave the collection some long and important name, like For Those Who Have Seen Shall Never Unsee: Visages of Meese in Their Spectral Forms. But those stories...God, they were wild. That moose was into some weird shit.”

As much as he wanted to remain where the stories and laughter had brought him, Richard couldn’t ignore the nudging back toward the purpose of the whole meeting. “Dave….Katz?”

Art nodded. “He and Klaus were pretty close.”

Richard thought the way Art averted his gaze signaled something more behind those words, but the silence lasted less than a moment before Art shook his head slightly.

“Klaus was no idiot, though. Said some dumb shit, but he was a smart guy.”

Jim gave a wry smile. “Think everybody served with that guy sometime.”

“Better than a dumb guy who says a lot of smart shit,” Richard added.

“Yeah….” Jim exhaled, setting his beer on the table. “Served with him, too.”

“I tell you he knew Nixon would get elected?

Richard couldn’t say what about the question sent a jolt through him, but he’d learned years before to listen to that. Instincts could be off, but they could also be like a sound from far away, signaling danger not yet visible. “No.”

“Yeah, we were talking about the race, who everybody was gunning for—and Klaus goes ‘Eh, Nixon’s just gonna win anyways.’” Art shook his head again. “Figured it was the drugs talking, but come November, guess who’s president?”

The image of Klaus stumbling into a laundromat, covered in sweat and on his way to another club, resurfaced in Richard’s mind, but he pushed the thought back. “He knew?”

“Said it was a lucky guess.”

Richard looked to Jim, saw the same disquiet he felt reflected back, and pressed on. “Nixon won with—what? Forty-three percent?”

“Something like that.”

“And he just said Nixon was gonna win.”

“Like he knew,” Jim added.

“Look, the guy….” Art paused, pressed his lips together. “He wasn’t the only one who used, all right? Not by a long shot. And he said a lot of things like that. Just weird shit. Some of it made sense, some didn’t. But at the end of the day, he was a guy you wanted with you when shit hit the fan.”

Art sat back, and It took more of Richard’s willpower than he cared to admit to keep from slumping in his chair. He wasn’t defeated, he wasn’t chastised, because this wasn’t a fight. Just a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding he couldn’t clear up until he corralled the bizarre ideas and half-baked possibilities swirling through his head into something resembling coherent speech.

After a long silence, Jim was the one who spoke. “When’d he join your unit?”

“I don’t remember exactly when.” It was thoughtful, a consideration. There was still a hint of temper behind it, a note of irritation, but nothing more. “I know he did, since he wasn’t there from the beginning, but I don’t remember him ever joining. He was just kind of…there one day.”

“He ever say where he was from, when he got drafted?”

Art’s frown deepened. “Never did say. He was from here, though. Pretty sure.”

Jim’s questions had set Art pondering things he might not have pondered before—and sharpened the cold unease in Richard’s middle. Details no longer swirled past one another like debris in a tornado; they fell to the ground, snapped into place like pieces in a puzzle. He wasn’t sure he understood the picture they formed, but he needed to be sure. He nodded to the tattoo on Art’s bicep, the bottom half visible beneath his sleeve.

“Did everybody in your unit get that tattoo?”

“This one?” Art rolled up his sleeve, revealing the same tattoo Klaus had worn: a skull emblem below the words Sky Soldiers and 173rd Airborne Division. “Yep. Same place, same everything.”

Not quite the same. Where Art’s tattoo had faded and blurred with age, the one Klaus wore—the Klaus he’d met, at any rate—appeared more freshly inked. “How long was he there?”

Art looked down at the table. Any trace of mirth had vanished the moment questions took a turn he didn’t like, but Jim’s more routine inquiries had brought a sort of wistfulness, as if decent memories had begun to simmer at the back of his mind—the sort that needed no defense or explanation, only sharing. Every bit of cheer drained from him at Richard’s question.

“He didn’t even make it a year.”

Richard felt the bitterness in those words—had felt it time and again, when yet another friendship ended at the front line. He shut his eyes, trying to turn the flood of unwanted memories into a stream, turn the deluge into a current he could stand against.

“Him and Dave both. Fight ended, dust cleared. Dave was dead, Klaus was gone without a trace.” Art’s intake of breath shook. “Lost ‘em both that night.”

There was nothing to fill the silence that followed. Richard could have tried. Could have repeated some of the same platitudes he’d been given, knowing they’d remain empty no matter how much sincerity he poured into them.

Once again, Jim spoke first.

“You said they were close.”

It was an observation, and a gentle one at that. Art didn’t lift his gaze from the table, hands wrapped around his beer.

“You know, I think Dave might’ve been the first one to talk to him. Can’t say for sure, since I don’t remember when Klaus joined, but Dave? Saw the guy looking around like he still couldn’t figure out how the hell he wasn’t back in the States and thought That guy needs a friend.” His mouth tipped, more in rueful memory than genuine mirth. “There was a while, in the beginning, when the rest of us were wondering how the hell Klaus made it through basic without learning a goddamn thing, and Dave’s there with him, showing him what to do. Just all, ‘Try it that way. Do it like this. You got it.’”

The image of Klaus—the Klaus he knew—wearing David Katz’s dog tags surfaced in Richard’s mind. A quickly traded glance with Jim said his friend entertained similar thoughts—with similar disquiet.

“You never heard anything else, after he went MIA?” Richard asked.

Art exhaled. “I’m sure he’s dead by now.”

Now it was Jim’s turn to glance at Richard, meeting his gaze with a frown. Richard gave a small shrug, and Jim returned his attention to Art.

“You remember if he had any other tattoos?”

Art frowned. “Why?”

“Like Jim told you,” Richard said slowly, “there’s been some weird shit around that guy in the photo.”

“Yeah, but what do tats have to do with it?”

“We’re not sure we know, either,” Richard said.

Art gave them both a long look, let out a short sigh, and leaned forward. “Yeah. Had an umbrella on his forearm. I…always thought it kinda looked like the Academy logo, but never….”

His train of thought ended as his gaze shifted between Richard and Jim.

Richard knew he ought to speak. He didn’t trust himself to offer a full explanation, but he knew he should say a few words at least. Stammer something. Begin a sentence and end it too soon. But the more he fought for words, the more they eluded him. In his mind’s eye he saw Klaus concentrating on his knitting, Katz’s dog tags around his neck as the umbrella on his arm flicked in and out of view.

Klaus.

Klaus Hargreeves.

Klaus Hargreeves, haltingly asking about Richard’s time in Vietnam as he practiced stitches.

All the impossibilities bound up in that one, all the questions that went along with it, were nothing compared to that one certainty. He didn’t know how. He couldn’t say why. But in that moment, Richard would have bet money that the Klaus he knew, the Klaus Art knew, and the Klaus Reginald Hargreeves had adopted as an infant were one and the same.

Art’s gaze managed to pin them both down. “Are…you guys gonna tell me what’s going on, or….”

Richard drew a breath and then another. The first one shook, the second was steadier. He needed a way to phrase what he had to say, a means of softening it, but there was nothing. “I don’t think Klaus is dead.”

For a fraction of a second, Art’s face went entirely blank; then half a dozen emotions warred for dominance. Confusion. Shock. Anger. Relief. Despair.

Hope.

“If you’re shitting me—”

“I’m not. Swear to God, I’m not.”

“So what the hell made you say it?”

Richard opened his mouth to answer, traded a glance with Jim and thought better of it.

Jim drew a long breath and pointed to the photo on the memorial wall.