Buddies by Kip Cassino
Author Kip Cassino’s Buddies (Bookbaby) is a war novel, but not the kind with soldiers shooting at the enemy or tanks rolling through the sand. Buddies is about the aftermath, how the lives of two service members — one National Guard, the other Marine — unravel from the trauma each endured for their country.
Physical and mental wounds continue their unforgiving assault even after their tours ended, keeping them in a perpetual state of combat, but all Pauley Abbott and Vernon Taws — whom Pauley calls “the Captain” — want to do is live their lives unnoticed. Hard-working men, their only goal is to eke out enough money to survive on, to get through each day in one piece.
Their macabre circumstances force Pauley and the Captain to move often — one of them is a killer, and they’ve got to elude law enforcement. The road they’ve followed throughout the Southwest for the past decade is desolate, yet perfect for traveling unheeded. “‘This is the beginning of an empty place’ the map would whisper. ‘A place where people might fall into trouble — and no one would know.’”
Shunned by their families after returning from Afghanistan, the damaged men consider themselves a team and the Captain their leader. He’s got to look after Pauley who suffered horrific burns while serving overseas, which cause not only extreme physical pain but also psychological pain as his melted face scares people.
Although the pair always settle in small towns, trying to remain invisible, they make sure a VA hospital isn’t too far away. The Captain and Pauley’s “ability to cope with society hung by a tenuous thread of medication … If that thread frayed or broke, both would be cast into the limbo of mental instability, where thoughts and senses no longer pictured reality.”
THE HUNT BEGINS
For 10 years, they’ve eluded law enforcement, surreptitiously moving from place to place, leaving only when violence erupts. But that all changes when a man is murdered in the parking lot of an all-night diner in Clovis, where Pauley works. A savvy police investigator with expert IT research skills discovers a connection between the Clovis murder and other unsolved killings across the Southwest. The MO is the same — the victims were all repulsive men sliced open with a Ka-Bar knife, a vicious weapon issued to Marines. It appears they’re now tracking a serial killer.
Because the murders took place in multiple states, the FBI takes over, creating a special task force of federal and local policing agencies. But even as they discover more facts with DNA evidence and witness accounts, law enforcement always seems to be one step behind the killers — the pair are experts at keeping a low profile.
As Pauley and the Captain feel the pressure of the hunt, their meticulous strategy to remain unnoticed unravels, along with their sanity. Can the FBI find the pair before more people die? And which one of them is the killer?
A PORTRAIT OF DESPAIR
Author Cassino viscerally inserts readers into the fate of men ravaged by war, both physically and mentally. We feel Pauley’s shame in his damaged body and the Captain’s fierce dedication to a man shunned by society. As their mental stability disintegrates, readers experience the desperation of the pair as they try to survive while tethered to the medication that controls their lives.
Pauley and the Captain are the ultimate anti-heroes. We know at least one of them is a murderer, but we can’t help but compassionately consider what it would be like to live an isolated existence with PTSD as a forever companion. While the narrative is frequently poetic, it remains brutally honest in its descriptions of war’s lasting trauma. Respectful in his depiction, Cassino paints a vivid picture of damaged soldiers forgotten by their country and the devastation left in the wake of war.
