THE JUKEBOX – Episode 4: Slot 047
“Wish You Were Here” – Pink Floyd
Marcus had been avoiding Slot 047 for two weeks.
He’d written about Jackie Ramos and David Nguyen, interviewed three other guys about songs he hadn’t even planned to research, and helped Coltrane fix the broken hinge on the men’s room door. Anything to avoid asking about the song everyone seemed to dance around.
“You’re gonna have to talk to Cordova eventually,” Coltrane said, wiping down the bar on a quiet Wednesday night. “He’s been watching you avoid him for fourteen days. It’s getting awkward.”
Marcus looked over at the corner booth where Mike Cordova sat alone, nursing his usual whiskey, staring at nothing in particular. Same booth, same drink, same thousand-yard stare that never quite focused on the present.
“What’s his story?”
“Not mine to tell. But it’s Thursday tomorrow.” Coltrane set down a fresh beer Marcus hadn’t asked for. “He’ll play the song three times, same as always. You can keep pretending you don’t notice, or you can ask him why.”
Thursday night, Marcus got to McGarvey’s at seven. Cordova was already there, same booth, but tonight there was a guitar case leaning against the wall beside him.
Marcus had rehearsed this a hundred times in his head, but when Cordova looked up and caught his eye, all the words dissolved.
“You want to know about Slot 047,” Cordova said. It wasn’t a question.
“Only if you want to tell it.”
“I don’t want to. But Jake sat in that booth for six months before he finally asked, and you look like you’re about to short-circuit trying not to.” Cordova gestured at the seat across from him. “Sit down. Don’t make it weird.”
Marcus sat.
Cordova was maybe forty-five, though the beard and the weight of whatever he carried made him look older. The Grateful Dead shirt was faded to almost nothing, and his hands had the calluses of someone who’d spent a lifetime holding either a rifle or a guitar.
“Brandon Holt,” Cordova said without preamble. “Staff Sergeant, Delta Force. We went through selection together, deployed together, bled together for twelve years. He was my best friend. He was also the best goddamn soldier I ever served with.”
Marcus pulled out the notebook slowly, careful not to break whatever spell was allowing this conversation to happen.
“Brandon made it through six deployments. Iraq, Afghanistan, places that don’t have names on maps. He had a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars… more confirmed kills than I can count. The kind of operator they write books about, except Brandon hated that shit. He just wanted to do the job and come home.”
Cordova took a long drink. “And then one morning in 2012, in his garage in Fayetteville, he put a 9mm in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”
The bar sounds seemed to get quieter, like even the building was listening.
“No note. No warning. His wife found him.” Cordova’s voice went flat in the way voices do when the only choice is flatline or breaking. “We’d just gotten back from Afghanistan three months earlier. Brandon seemed fine. Better than fine. He was talking about retirement, about teaching his kid to fish, about finally finishing the degree he’d started before he enlisted. And then he was gone.”
Marcus wrote it carefully. Brandon Holt. 2012. Silver Star.
“The thing about suicide,” Cordova continued, “is everyone wants a reason. A thing you can point to and say, ‘That’s what broke him.‘ But there wasn’t one thing. There were ten thousand little things, ten thousand moments of holding it together, and then one morning there weren’t any more moments left.”
“You blamed yourself,” Marcus said quietly.
“Of course I blamed myself. I was his team sergeant. I was supposed to see it coming. We all were.” Cordova looked at the jukebox. “After the funeral, after the flag-folding and empty platitudes, his team came here. We got drunk, and somebody said we should add a song. Brandon used to play guitar…had this beat-up acoustic he’d carry on deployments. He’d play in the downtime, middle of the night, when things were too quiet and everyone was thinking too much.”
“What did he play?”
“Everything. Cash, Hendrix, whatever. But his favorite was ‘Wish You Were Here.‘ He’d play it on repeat, just the guitar part, no singing. Said it was the only song that made sense.” Cordova opened the guitar case. Inside was an old Martin acoustic, worn and loved and perfectly maintained. “This was his. His wife gave it to me after. Said Brandon would’ve wanted me to have it.”
Marcus had interviewed enough people to know when someone was about to crack, and Cordova was close.
“I come here every Thursday,” Cordova said. “I play Slot 047 three times. I drink three whiskeys. And I sit here with his guitar and try to figure out what I missed.”
“That’s why Jake kept coming back,” Marcus said. “He told you about someone he lost.”
Cordova nodded. “Never told me the name. Just said he had a guy in Helmand who didn’t make it home, and he couldn’t shake the feeling he should’ve seen it coming.” He picked up the guitar, fingers finding the opening chords to “Wish You Were Here” like muscle memory. “We didn’t talk much. Mostly just sat here. But I think it helped him, knowing someone else was carrying the same weight.”
The bar was fuller now, usual Thursday crowd, but nobody was talking loud. It was like everyone knew what was about to happen.
Cordova stood, walked to the jukebox, and fed it quarters. He punched in Slot 047.
The song started…that haunting opening, all space and longing and the kind of sadness that doesn’t have words.
Cordova went back to the booth, picked up the guitar, and played along. Not performing, just playing. The bar went completely silent.
Marcus watched the men around him, combat veterans, operators, guys who’d seen things most people couldn’t imagine, and every single one of them was listening like the song was a prayer.
When it ended, Cordova played it again. Slot 047, second time.
Then a third.
By the time the final notes faded, there were tears on faces that probably hadn’t cried in years. Cordova set down the guitar carefully, finished his whiskey, and looked at Marcus.
“The jukebox isn’t just about the dead,” he said. “It’s about the living who have to carry it. Every Thursday, I come here and play that song three times, and for eighteen minutes, Brandon’s still alive. He’s still playing guitar in some FOB in Afghanistan, and I’m still his team sergeant, and neither of us knows how the story ends.”
Marcus wrote it down. All of it.
“Your brother understood that,” Cordova said. “Whatever he was carrying, whoever he lost, coming here didn’t fix it. But it made it bearable. That’s all any of us can ask for.”
He packed up the guitar, nodded at Marcus, and walked out into the night.
Coltrane appeared with two fresh beers. Set one in front of Marcus, kept one for himself.
“You asked Jake once,” Marcus said, “if he wanted to add a song for whoever he lost in Helmand.”
“I did.”
“What did he say?”
Coltrane took a long drink. “He said, ‘Not yet. I’m not ready to make it real.‘”
Marcus looked at the notebook, at the pages filling with other people’s grief, other people’s ghosts. He thought about Jake sitting in this exact spot, listening to Cordova play along to “Wish You Were Here,” trying to find a language for the things that couldn’t be said.
“I don’t know if I’m ready either,” Marcus admitted.
“Nobody ever is,” Coltrane said. “But you keep showing up anyway. That’s what matters.”
Behind them, someone fed the jukebox again. Not Slot 047 this time. Something else. Something lighter.
But Marcus could still hear it, the haunting space between the notes, the wish that couldn’t be granted, the presence of absence.
He closed the notebook and finished his beer.
Seventeen slots left.
And somewhere in those seventeen empty spaces, there was one for Jake.
Editor’s Note: This is Part 4 in a multi-part series of Tegan Broadwater penned pieces. Please keep an eye on SOFREP for the remainder of the series. – GDM
If you liked this story (and I know you did), please check out T’s popular book, “Life in the Fishbowl.” In it, he documents his time as a deep undercover cop in Houston, where he took down 51 of the nation’s most notorious Crips.
He donates all profits to charities that mentor children of incarcerated parents.
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Tegan Broadwater is an entrepreneur, author, musician, former undercover officer, podcast host, and positive change-maker.
Learn more about his latest projects at TeganBroadwater.com
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