The Fourth Sunrise by H. T. Night

up.’
    “‘ Maybe he likes you, Jackie-poo,’ the other shorter chubbier captain said, the one who looked like Mickey Rooney.
    “ I stood up and I didn’t like what the others were insinuating. They had no idea how bizarre this situation was and I wasn’t about to tell them, but I was definitely going to let the little Mickey Rooney-looking guy get the best of me and call my manhood into question. He might be a captain, but I could still kick his ass.
    “ I said, ‘With all due respect, Captain Half Pint. If you say something like that again. I will have to approach you as a man.’
    “ Captain Connelly started laughing. ‘Did you hear that, Humphries? Private Murphy called Captain Mulligan a half pint.’
    “ By this point, I was pretty sure that everyone was drunk. Captain Mulligan, the Mickey Rooney-looking captain, wasn’t about to let a private talk to him that way.
    “‘ I bet you will approach me like a man,’ he laughed. ‘With your mouth wide open.’
    “ And that did it. I wanted to hit someone and now I had an excuse. I lunged across the poker table and punched him directly in the nose and laid him out.”
     
     
     
    Chapter Fourteen
     
     
    Present Day, Delta, Colorado – Coffee Shop, 1:20 a.m.
     
    “ Luckily, everyone was too drunk to remember a thing from that night. I remembered every detail, however.” I looked across the table. Sharee’s face seemed stunned. I wasn’t exactly sure why. This was a side of the story that needed to be told. I hoped I didn’t lose her.
    “ Did you get in trouble for that punch?” she asked.
    “ Captain Mulligan didn’t bring anything out in the open. I could probably thank Captain Jack for that. Captain Mulligan was a known drunk, and had enough problems of his own. But, needless to say, I wasn’t invited to any more poker games that the captains were putting on.”
    Sharee had a blank stare which surprised me with the bit of juicy information that I just gave her.
    “Are you still with me?” I joked, trying to get Sharee to show some life.
    “ No, I definitely didn’t get lost. I’m just hanging onto every word.” Sharee then switched gears and asked, “So, it’s fair to say that you and Captain Jack were friends?”
    “ Friends…” I laughed. “No. No one was Captain Jack’s friend. What you were was someone Captain Jack tolerated and he was somehow amused by your presence.”
    “ So, you didn’t like Captain Jack?”
    “ Are you kidding? I loved him! After the poker night, Captain Jack’s and my friendship was more one on one. He and I got close enough to where he began showing me pictures of his family. He was very private about showing me pictures of Christine. He said he didn’t want other men to have impure thoughts about his wife. He had nothing to worry about with me. I had nothing but respect for her and it showed.” Sharee smiled and again I was thrown off by her response. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
    “ You’ve got to see it from my perspective. I’m a romance writer. The amazing detail and twist in this story is that her husband was your captain in Vietnam. It’s too unbelievable. A publisher would never buy it. It’s the meat and potatoes of the first act. So, what kind of relationship did you exactly have with her husband? Did you two become best friends?”
    “ Well, I was there only for a couple more months, but Captain Jack and I were pretty inseparable. Frankly, as long as he was close, I felt close to Christine. It was weird. He was this odd window to her and I valued every story and every detail he ever gave me about Christine.”
    “ And he never suspected anything?” Sharee asked
    “ How could he? The way he saw it, him talking about his family only reminded me of home. He had no idea that I was eating it up every time he mentioned Christine’s name. Every once in a while, he’d tell me a wonderful story about Christine and I wanted to know more, so I had to be tricky on how I got him to