Two Military Funerals
The Dog Walker, a short story epilogue.
If you’ve not read the Dog Walker, this would be a short story, an epilogue of that.
The story follows Rex, reflecting on the funeral of his former mentor, Laz. A man who dedicated his life to military service before dying from cancer shortly after retirement. Rex compares the life Laz led to the one he lives now, contemplating the decline of the values he was trained with. The narrative weaves through Rex’s thoughts on duty, honor, and the shifting dynamics of the military and society, marked by diversity quotas and medical mandates, married life, and the roles of men and women to each other.
Through the funeral, he reconnects with strangers, former shipmates and friends, sharing memories of their time together. Ultimately, Rex grapples with the disillusionment of how everything has changed. His cynicism grows as he contemplates his own future and the inevitable passing of more men like Laz, who represented a different, now-faded ideal of military life.
Two Military Funerals
It’s hard to give a fuck about impermanence.
Kate was drinking a glass of wine after a particularly hard week at work. Rex was sitting on the sofa on his phone. After reading something that bothered him, he looked to Kate and said,
“Babe, I’m talking with Jason. Do you remember Laz?”
“Yeah. I remember. We met at that bar that one time when we first started dating.”
“Oh yeah, Halloween. You were dressed like Silk Specter, making out with that other Silk Specter, and he grabbed your ass, then high-fived me.”
“Oh, for Christ's sake. What about him?”
“He died.”
“Oh no. When?”
“I don’t know. His funeral is tomorrow at 9:30. I’m going though.”
“Oh good. I have an early morning call. Can I get a ride to work when you go? I have to be there at 8.”
Rex knew that Kate loved him, but she wasn’t one for sentimentality unless it was her own. She was sweet, but she was a woman. She couldn’t be anything but. Rex opened his mouth, then thought better of it. He didn’t push to bring her along.
“Sure.”
“Well, what time do you want to leave? I can take the call in the car, and we can leave a little later and have you there for nine-thirty, or I can leave sooner and you can be—I just want to know when you want to leave so we can make sure that we—”
Rex, annoyed, cut her off.
“I want to be at the funeral at nine-thirty. Tell me when you want to leave tomorrow morning, and I’ll be ready.”
I
He was, by happenstance, living in the same city. He wanted to go, he should go, he felt compelled to go. It made Rex feel like it was more likely someone would do the same for him. Rex and the boys from 2 Mess fancied themselves the kind of friends who may not see each other every day, but they were always a phone call away when things were important. They called it being shovel buddies, if you needed a hole dug with no questions. Laz never called to say he was dying. A link at the bottom of the webpage asked for donations to a cancer fund.
Rex remembered watching his father die of lung cancer. He was tethered to an oxygen tank, wheezing as he spoke. He looked in the mirror and thought,
If I were to be remembered, I want them to remember me for the guy in Croatia who slept with that cute bartender from Montreal, not hooked up to a fucking tank.
The next morning, Rex looked through his closet. He had six suits; none of them fit anymore. A few inches make all the difference. He panicked a bit. In the military, not having a fitting uniform was a death sentence. Rex had been out for years now, but the feeling never left. He suffered the common, low-grade PTSD that comes after years of inspections and parades.
He looked in the mirror. His sideburns were a little long, he needed to shave, and his shirt needed more ironing. The other Rex reassured him,
They can’t yell at you anymore. Laz isn’t here to expect perfection, and this isn’t a parade or a deployment. Relax. Just be there.
The next morning, he unlocked Kate’s door before he drove to her work, dropping her off at the intersection where their destinations parted. He checked his Seamaster. 08:05. Ninety minutes to kill. He parked a few blocks away and put twenty bucks in parking, good until noon.
He walked around the block, looking for a place to relax until the funeral. There was a nice coffee house on the way to the church. Rex looked at the chalkboard and ordered,
“A medium Americano and a croissant, please.”
The girl was homely but nice. She grabbed his croissant, put it on a plate, and handed it to him. Rex looked at the mirror behind the till and saw himself. For the first time ever. He looked old, mature. He looked like Laz, who was his age when they last sailed. The other Rex said,
You realize you’ve already had three of your shipmates and friends die, right? This isn’t any different.
“It feels different.”
It’s not any different.
“Well, Jeff died when he got drunk with that crazy chick, fell off the cliffs at the lake, and drowned in the undertow. Bryan got hit by that car in San Francisco, and Tim was a suicide. Those are all young deaths. They feel sad, but they aren’t the same. Laz lived his life, smoked, got cancer, and died. It’s just different, that’s all.”
Oh yeah, San Fran was our first port with the guy. Hell of a first impression.
“Yeah. Remember Giroux? Said he was flying him in from the other side of the country. Showed up like a rock star, started fixing equipment. Did his time, then flew home. Forty years old with a twenty-three-year-old boyfriend. Gay or not, that’s pretty awesome.”
Kate is only nine years younger than you, though.
“It’s not a contest.”
The barista yelled, “Rex!” then placed his coffee on the counter.
“My coffee is ready. I’d like to be alone for a bit.”
Rex focused on being present. He enjoyed his Americano and his croissant and brought out a book he had tucked away in the pocket of his trench coat. The coat looked like his old parade raincoat. It felt official and hid the piss-poor ironing job.
He had committed to reading T. E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He had watched Lawrence of Arabia the weekend before. It was such a crazy time, a crazy military career. Rex’s career couldn’t compare. No empire to defend, no Axis to defeat. Relegated to an office job full of careerists, strivers, diversity quotas, and incompetence. It was a miracle so few people had been crippled or killed over the years. The danger was in the ports, not the theatres.
Rex recalled how Laz would treat every day like "ze Germans were ready, so we shall be too." Laz joined just in time to catch the tail end of WWII sailor careers, while Rex joined just in time to catch his. Anyone from those days with a deployment medal had their Bosnia story. Rex had his Croatian story. It wasn’t the story of war or glory, but he made do with what he was given.
The third port, after San Francisco and a banyan outside of Italy, was Split, Croatia. Laz took us all to the hotel and casino and introduced the boys to the mani-pedi. Jason’s first comment:
“Laz, no offense, man, but this is fucking gay.”
“Shut the fuck up and just sit there. You’ll thank me later, and that’s an order.”
Rex laughed and fell asleep in the chair. He had slept two hours a day for the last three months and didn’t care what was gay, so long as it didn’t wake him. After the nap, he removed the cotton swabs from his feet and noticed something, asking Laz,
“I can feel the floor with my feet. Not the pressure, but the floor.”
“I told you it would be awesome. Was I right?”
“I think I can get used to this.”
Jason already had his shoes on and was headed to the bar.
“Feels great, still gay!”
Rex had re-read the line in Lawrence's book, where he had shot his first Arab, three times in a row. Lawrence wrote how he ended up liking the violence and not being horrified like he assumed he would.
It was 0915. Time to go.
II
Rex walked to the large Protestant church. You’d mistake it for a Catholic cathedral if you didn’t know the difference. Rex couldn’t tell the difference. The congregation would have an unkind word if you got them mixed up. There were large LGBTQ banners on either side of the entrance. The front signage, propaganda for diversity, was tasteful and surprisingly restrained. The church didn’t put any inside the chapel. Nice to know they knew where to draw the line.
Rex checked the obituary details again. Would it start soon? How long would it go for? Where was he supposed to sit? This was his first funeral, other than his dad’s. He never reacted during that funeral, breaking down on the ride home, after everyone else was gone.
Rex read the pamphlet he was given. Born in 1967. That would make Laz 58. Rex’s dad died at 54. Donations welcomed to the cancer society. Rex thought about the oxygen tank again, glad he didn’t have to see another one. These memories were better.
930 start for the public, friends and family 10-11.
A military man was tuning bagpipes in the corner. It irritated Rex’s tinnitus. He got up to walk around the church to get the ring out of his head. A chief stood in the hall, talking to a half-dozen other senior non-commissioned officers and a second chief. A dozen military guys in total. All of them looked good in their uniforms and well turned out. Rex instinctively checked their chests; not one of them had a deployment medal. No SWASM, no NATO. Just the CD, symbolizing 12 years of service without a charge. No deployments, no SSI, so no sea time. Rex thought to himself,
You’ve become like the chiefs you used to hate. Tell them good morning, and they are checking your uniform for infractions.
“Good point. Damnit.”
They were practicing their drill for the casket. It was sloppy. Rex’s job wasn’t to fix it. He pictured Laz rising from the lacquered box and dressing down the chief in his graveled voice that only a blues singer alive for emancipation could appreciate. He should have laughed, but it was sobering. He went back to the pews. The bagpipes drowned out the sound of impending mortality and the loss of a way of life that only existed for a brief time and wouldn’t come back.
People filtered in. There were three groups, then the few stragglers, like Rex, who didn’t fit into any of them. One was his family. A tall man in a sweater who looked similar to Laz was probably his brother. A lot of women who looked like they used to be lookers, but two kids in a stroller and the ravages of time gave them a motherly look. Madonna in the church, whore couldn’t make it. Their suits didn’t fit well either. Their husbands were dutifully pushing children in strollers to the pews. They were very militant in their actions, peppering the men with checklists:
Did you get the bottle? If they make noise, take this seat so you can walk them outside. Did you lock the car? Did you handle parking? The men simply nodded. Everything in its place. Everyone had a job. Everything turned out.
The next group was his friends, husband, and the rest of his social group. Rex assumed they were all gay. They were all tall, thin, and dressed immaculately. The 1990s mod squad had aged into the event. They were all walking and shaking each other’s hands and hugging and sharing stories and crying. They were close, like family.
The last group was all the military members. You could tell by the haircut. Some were retired, wearing comfortable shoes and looking injured from their years. The uniformed members never saw a ship or a deployment. They had never shot an Arab for the empire either. Then again, neither had Rex. The military were the gay ones attending.
About fifty people showed up. Rex was worried there would be no one there, or too many. This was perfect. Too many, and someone always brings a loud, obnoxious woman who makes everything about her, or a guy who talks business to the bereaved. Too few, and it’s a life poorly lived.
III
The bagpipes played, and the procession carried the casket. The preacher gave his sermon. Rex drifted. He remembered the time in Italy when they anchored, a few days before landing in Croatia:
Laz worked us like a slave driver. We worked, ate, and sometimes slept—that was our first three months. The banyan, by pure chance, aligned with a brief lull in our workload. We had an hour to have a beer and relax. Of course, the Rooster was there as well.
The Rooster was an irritable Newfoundlander, with short red hair and a high-and-tight mustache. They called him the Rooster, not for his red mane, but for his habit of turning beet red and clucking at every opportunity, puffing out his chest and pecking his head like a chicken when he was mouthing off.
None of us were in the mood for clucking. None of us had seen Laz relaxed before. But something was annoying. Something was always annoying. Laz let him go for a minute, then turned to the Rooster mid-cluck and said,
“Why don’t you shut up and stop being such a dripping fag?”
In civilian life, the crudeness would be shocking. The military used to be a more tolerant place. The real shock was watching the Rooster shut up. When the gay man on board outranked you and called you a fag, where else could you go? What else could you do? His face was redder than usual, but it didn’t stop him from downing his beer and wandering off. Laz winked at the rest of us while we finished our beers in peace. He gave us one piece of professional advice,
“Work hard, play hard, guys. And don’t put up with bullshit when you’re playing.”
The pastor finished his sermon. Rex couldn’t understand what he was saying through his accent, but assumed it must have been close to what they said for his father’s funeral.
A man named Terry walked up. He had a limp, slowing his cadence. Terry was a Master Corporal when he retired. Rex was a Master Seaman. Same rank, different elements. He told stories of his times with Laz, his impatience, his intolerance for anything less than perfection, and his need for detail-oriented subordinates. Sounded familiar. Then Terry said,
“Laz only had one piece of advice for us. work hard and play harder.”
Rex remembered stories from the 1970s about men starting new families in new towns, only for their kids to find out later. This must be what those children felt like.
Rex saw his doppelgänger if he had stayed in. Rex had the sense to get out. Laz’s vision of duty and honor might have been appealing, but Rex was just bitter and cynical enough to save his joints the lesson.
Next was a man named John. He had gone to basic training with Laz. Before joining the forces, Laz worked as a sound tech for a moderately popular band in the ’80s. They flew him in like a rock star to set up the equipment, then flew him back. His story mirrored Terry’s, which mirrored Rex’s. Laz had started three families, and all the kids found out they got the same Christmas presents.
John had a story of overlap.
“I hadn’t seen Laz in years. Then, when I was living in San Francisco, I heard he was in port. I took him around town and showed him a good time till six in the morning.”
Rex had been there on that trip.
At 0630, he had to wake Laz up and inform him that Jason was arrested and thrown in prison for being drunk and mooning the cops. That was their last North American port before they went through the Panama Canal and shipped off to Croatia, en route to pirate hunting.
Laz bailed Jason out of general population. California didn’t have a drunk tank. He dressed him down, breathing fire that smelled like cigarettes and five different blends of alcohol. Jason was a model sailor for the rest of the trip. Shame will do that to a man. It wasn’t long before they repaid the favor, in Croatia, of course.
Rex continued listening to the eulogy.
“He trained us well. Laz, or Andy as I called him, was an idealist. He loved his country, loved his service, and took it very seriously. He had zero patience for fools. He retired in 2018 and got to enjoy some years before he was taken—too soon.”
Rex drifted into his version of the eulogy. Same story, different people and places. This one was in Croatia.
Laz was Bosnian, or Serbian. Rex couldn’t remember which was which. The ship pulled into Split, a wonderful city taken over by every empire in human history—a museum of the last four thousand years. Rex wasn’t old enough for the war, twenty years prior. The place looked pristine. It was only on the way to the casino that they had seen a shelled-out building in the middle of nowhere.
Rex gambled. He hated gambling. Jon, his stepfather, loved to gamble more than he hated to hawk furniture, so Rex never liked it. Sailing was like a second life, so this other Rex had no qualms about smoking with Laz while putting everything on ‘00.’ Out of pure luck, he won a small foreign port fortune. Good luck meant drinks were on Rex for the rest of the night. Some locals at the next table joined in, and after some banter, one asked,
“Hey, what are you anyways?”
Not knowing the importance of the question, Rex answered,
“Irish.”
“Oh, Catholic? Good.” They held up their drinks and babbled in some babble. As the night went on, everyone got drunker, louder, and more interested in the history of Croatia. Laz, being Protestant, would have been whatever they weren’t. At one point, the locals were about to crack a vodka bottle over his head and start a gang war when Jason put Laz in a fireman’s carry, getting them out before an international incident.
He trained us well.
Rex wasn’t sure how to feel at funerals. Laz gave his country his entire adult life. He retired with honors and dropped dead five years later, four of them spent in chemotherapy. Not exactly a beach with a boat and a daiquiri.
Rex did the math and realized Laz left right before the craziness started. The ship, like the church, draped LGBT flags over the guns, but unlike the church, brought it straight into the ops room. A third of their shipmates were unceremoniously fired for not wanting to get an untested, experimental treatment that promised it would provide immunity, then prevent transmission, then weaken symptoms, and finally admitted that it would not kill you, probably. Cigarettes gave more certainty.
Laz had trained Rex and many other men, mirror images of those who valued honor and duty. They were all unknowingly fed into the meat grinder of an AstroTurfed and flaccid form of social progress. Rex remembered Laz telling him to be ready for if the commies came back, but the commies were inside the house. Rex could have had the same dream of purpose if only he were a decade younger. Of course, then he would be in that coffin, surrounded by a gay military, a militant family, and a family of the fabulous!
The bagpiper played. The pallbearers brought the coffin to the car outside. Everyone filtered out. The families left first, strollers in tow. The friends and family next, as they wanted to keep their eyes on that box until the very last minute. The military guys remained till the end, after the uniformed people shuffled out.
Rex had never met John, but he walked up and shook his hand as if they were old friends. In a way, they were, just with different names.
“John? Rex. I was there when you were with Laz in San Francisco.”
“Oh really? I only got to see him the one day. I hear you guys lost your operations officer to a hit-and-run that night.”
“Yeah. We didn’t know that until the next day. Another guy on his watch, Jason, was arrested for drunkenness that day, and after hearing your story, I realized we woke him up a half hour after you got him to his rack. It explains why he was so angry with us.”
John shared a chuckle with Rex, then thanked him for the continuation of his story. There were no more Laz stories and never would be, so it felt good to eke out just a few more details in the ones John had. Afterwards, Rex heard the trunk of the hearse close and drive off.
“Everyone is invited to drink afterwards. Maybe I’ll see you there.” John was interrupted by a woman who wanted to thank him. Rex smiled and walked to his car. Anything else could only disappoint. Rex said to himself,
You’re not going?
“I’ve lost enough heroes in my life. No need to give one up by choice.”
Stop. It won’t be that bad.
“I don’t want to know about chemotherapy, or more stories of another unit that would be the same as my stories but with different names and different places. I don’t want to think of him as anything other than the man who trained me to be who I am.”
You mean an ornery, meticulous asshole?
“Goddamned right.”
Blasphemy.
“I’m outside. It’s no worse to Christ than those rainbow flags.”
IV
Rex had taken some pictures of the event, as many as felt tasteful and dignified. He sent them on his phone to Jason, who texted back,
“Oh, those are great. I’m glad to see that many people showed up. I would have hated to find out you were the only one there.”
“They had the local reserve base at least.”
“Any medals?”
“Only CDs.”
“Typical. At least someone with some sea time saw him off.”
“There were a few of us. Send the pictures to the boys.”
Rex saw he had missed some texts during the funeral. They were from Kate.
“How was the funeral?” Then, fifteen minutes later, a link to a funny TikTok she had watched afterward. Rex clicked it. It was a dog dressed up like a human, set to a Disney song. Rex texted back,
“It went well.”
Rex didn’t say any more. Why waste the feeling on someone who only knew how to sound sympathetic, like one would talk to a child? That’s not her job. He closed the SMS app and called Jason.
“Jay, got the pictures?”
“Yup. Man. Wish I could be there.”
“We all do what we can. If you hadn’t showed me, I wouldn’t have known.”
“Guess we will have to start doing this for each other soon. Not too soon, but—”
“I don’t want that kind of funeral.”
“What? I guess after what they did to you—I get it.”
“I think I do too.”
“So what would your plan be?”
Laz was in a military with WWII vets, Bosnian vets, Queen and Country vets. I got you guys. Rex was in a military with career strivers, diversity quotas, lawfare, and medical fuckery. His unit neglected to plan his retirement party, a violation of the military duties they were entrusted with. Rex had to put in the paperwork for his own deployment medal. Little things like that burn a bit, like the vehicle’s cigarette lighter falling into one’s lap during the road trip of life.
Rex had to sue the organization because they lost his pension; the AC was broken too. Thinking that he would be sitting in a box someday with a picture from basic training and six sailors with less sea time than sense, with the off chance that the now-married fathers that shared the deployment would have the time to spare… it just irritated him.
“I’d just want to be cremated, and having the King pretend to care would just annoy me.”
“Heh. You’re not going to ponder your own mortality now, are you?”
“Naw. If I live for another decade, I’ll have outlived most everyone. I’ll come to see you and the kids next month if you’re free.”
“Bet.”
It’s hard to give a fuck about impermanence. Rex went home and took the rest of the day off. Kate came home with Thai food.
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Lovely story. The inspection ptsd rings so true (not in military but many of my male family members are veterans). I enjoyed your book. Got it the day it was released. The Dog Walker is enjoyable also for those who don’t buy into manosphere stuff (I don’t). Compelling characters and a great crisp style.