“Go home, Bennett! You don’t belong here!” somebody in the crowd shouted.

“You’re a pig, Bennett!” somebody else bellered.

“Your son died because of people like you! You killed your son!” Ugly as it was, the third cry silenced everybody for a moment.

Bennett’s entire body jerked as if he’d been physically wounded. He gaped right, then left, as if he expected somebody to come and rescue him. He looked older, too, and despite the gym-hardened sixty-year-old body, suddenly he seemed frail.

This wasn’t what I’d come to hear. I’d never liked Bennett, but I didn’t want to see him ripped apart.

Doran made a lunge for him, but Bennett had enough strength to shove him back.

“You people should go home and get down on your knees and thank the good Lord for the lives our fighting men have given you.” At this point he didn’t need a microphone. His voice was carrying far past the parking lot behind us. And then he broke: “That’s what my son gave his life for. For you and you and you. And what the hell do you give him?” He was sobbing now, his voice cracking. “And what the hell do you give him? You give him this!”

I was pretty sure everybody else was responding the way I was. He’d shocked us. And not because he was the bully who’d commandeered the microphone but because he was this asshole who for at least one startling moment was not an asshole at all. He was just this poor guy who’d lost his son. It didn’t matter how he felt about the war in general. The war had taken his son. The son who’d spent his life growing up in Black River Falls. The son who’d been a nice young kid. He’d married a town girl and then went to war and died.