An Army Of Two

A judge sentences a fellow veteran to jailthen joins him in his cell for the night

- Robert Kiener

THE MINUTE JOE SERNA WALKED into the Veterans Treatment Court in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA, he could feel his shoulders tense up, hear his stomach growling. He had come to turn himself in. Six months earlier, Serna had been arrested for impaired driving. As part of his sentence, he was required to report to Judge Lou Olivera’s court every two weeks to take a urine test and prove he hadn’t been drinking.

Serna had passed every biweekly screening—until the week before. Positive. He decided to try to bluff his way out of trouble. “I never had a drink, Judge,” he told the court. “Honest.”

If Judge Olivera suspected anything, he didn’t let on. Both men were veterans, and Olivera had come to know and admire Serna as he participated in the court’s programme to help vets [war veterans] with drinking and addiction problems. Though their lives had gone in opposite directions since they’d left the military, they were still connected by their service. And that was what ate at Serna, what had brought him back to Olivera’s court a week after his lie. This guy is a fellow soldier, he told himself. I need to make this right. So Serna stood before Olivera and admitted quietly, “I lied.” As beads of perspiration rolled down his forehead, he said, this time a bit louder, “I lied, Judge. I was drinking.”