Sweat ran freely down my neck by the time I finished. I went back to my locker and found that my phone held messages.
Even the sight of the pixelated ‘Rosa’ on screen had a smile warming my face. I might have to purchase a smartphone for her. This one couldn’t show me a picture of her face when I wanted.
We meeting tonight?
the message asked.
Absolutely,
I said.
I locked up and started for the showers, but the phone rattled on its metal shelf right away
You really haven’t had enough of me?
it read.
I wanted to call her an idiot. I didn’t trust the phone to convey the tone right. Rosa was many things, but not a girl you wanted to misunderstand you.
Instead, I sent her another truth:
I haven’t even begun to taste you.
I sat waiting a while, but she didn’t answer. I understood. She had lives to save, far more than I ever did.
But as if she’d been watching and waiting, the phone rattled right after I finished locking it up again.
Seems like you ended up addicted to something after all.
I smiled and locked it up for good. There was no better end to the conversation than that truth.
When I came back from the shower, another surprise awaited me. This one was far less pleasant.
Montego was leaning on the door sill by my locker comfortably, fully-uniformed. His black hair seemed slick with grease. His pale, round face held a wispy smile.
“Looking good, Corporal.” He whistled as if I was a supermodel. A guilty soldier might look that way in the eyes of the military police.
“What do you want now?” I dressed slowly and turned away, so I didn’t have to meet his eyes. The last thing I wanted was a literal dick-waving contest.
“Just seeing how my good friend is doing.”
“I was better moments ago.”
“Oh come on, we’re not enemies, Corporal. You know it’s my duty to investigate any injury like yours.”
“So you’re still investigating?”
“Not much.” He pinched his fingers to show me how little. I didn’t trust a word.
“Enough to keep the case open even after I gave my formal testimony.”
“What can I say, you’ve led a long and interesting life. In fact, I only recently found out that you’ve been a soldier for quite some time.”
The breath caught in my lungs. My affiliation with the Storm’s Soldiers was visible enough if you went digging. I had known he would find it, but his voicing it meant something more.
“That was my old life,” I said, with the strength of the truth.
His copper eyes had a dangerous luster though. “Doesn’t seem all that old. What do you see before you, Corporal? An asshole MP, or an asshole spic?”
“I would not say that word,” I growled.
“Sorry, I’m not up on my racist lingo. What would your people say?”
“I am telling you those people are my past. It has no bearing on your investigation.”
The last part of a lie, but I did wish it to be true. I wanted this secret dead and buried.
“Well, see now,” Montego said. “It does affect my investigation.”
He tossed me a rolled up newspaper. “It seems that your skinhead friends have been getting shot much like yourself. They’ve got their own little war going on.”
The newspaper had already been folded back to a page. It showed a black and white picture of police tape around a toppled black and chrome chopper on some country road. A blue tarp lay lumpy on the road, with two pairs of boots sticking out from it.
“Larson Flynt and Jerald Harper, both gunned down in a fire fight. They managed to take out three Mexicans though, so you know, that’s always good.”
Wasted lives, that’s all I saw. I suppressed the rage and tossed the newspaper back. “I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know the men. They must be new.”
He pulled out a folder that must have been tucked into his waist This one held face shots of the dead men.
“You sure? You guys all look alike with those buzz cuts. Ironic, really.”
The two looked young and exhausted in death. They were no older than the men I’d been training outside. It was getting hard to contain my fury at the callous end they’d been sent to.
I might have been training them instead, if things had been different. If the army had not given me the distance to see the Storm’s Soldiers anew. I pocketed my wallet and phone and shut my locker.
“I don’t know anything about those guys,” I said, stressing every word.
I moved for the gap in the door, but Montego’s hand blocked it. He had the sense to keep it off my body.
“Just a moment, Corporal,” he said, softly. “I wasn’t trying to ruin your appetite. The mess hall does that well enough on their own. No, the reason I brought this up is that these men I just showed you were taken out by the same caliber ammunition that hit your leg.”
“It’s a common round.”
“Not common in Atlanta.” His smile grew hard. “Other than us, it’s primarily used by the Mexican Cartel. The same guys who happen to be shooting up your boys.”
I glowered down at him. He had nothing. If Montego was trying to hang me with frayed yarn, he would get no help from me.
“Whoah, guys,” a voice rose out of the hallway. “What am I interrupting?”
Dennis had come up right over Montego’s shoulder. His dark skin was beaded in sweat and he was heaving like he’d just come from a run. His eyes were wide open, though.
“Go on through, Private.” Montego dropped his hand, but his gaze stayed on me.
Dennis shot me a puzzled look as he passed on through. I shrugged even as I shrank inside. There were few enough faces I could trust at the base. I didn’t want Dennis to see this.
But he didn’t keep going. He turned and looked between me and Montego. “Is the Corporal in trouble?” he asked.
“His buddies sure are,” Montego said.
“They’re not my friends,” I said. “They haven’t been my friends since I went to war.”
“I know how that goes,” Dennis said. “My family here’s littered with idiot gangbangers. I almost used to look up to a couple of my cousins, but I can’t stand them since I got back. Always going on about this guy’s street cred or that, as if any of it matters.”
“Respectfully, Private,” Montego said. “This is not your fight. Run on to the jungle gyms and do some pull-ups.”
Dennis did not budge. “Respectfully, it is my fight. This man saved me in the heat of combat. Do you think he could have done that if he was just some criminal or whatever? Even if he was, do you think he would stay the same after that?”
He stared down Montego. My chest filled with a profound warmth, but only momentarily.
Things might be different if he had walked in a moment earlier and saw what he was defending me from. Or if Montego simply spelled out my past affiliations.
Luckily, Montego simply smiled and stepped further aside. “I wasn’t detaining the Corporal, just asking him some questions. I suppose I can let him reflect on what happened here for a bit.”
He tossed me a grim smile. He meant to rattle me, by letting this slide. Letting me think on how a black man had defended my racist connections.
It was just another item to add to my long list of ruminations.
I backed out into the hall. Dennis threw me a wink past Montego. I could only toss him a nod. It felt inadequate for many reasons.
I ate and headed for the armory. It was my assigned duty, but as I neared the cement bunker, my stomach dropped.
My role with the Storm’s Soldiers had come to an end. However, I could not abandon my father. I was supposed to call him today and confirm the timing of this month’s weapons drop. The operation was the one thing that he asked of me now.
It would be tough with Montego breathing down my neck.
But the bigger issue was that I no longer felt a pressing need for the task.
Getting the guns had been my purpose in joining the army. I had stolen them to support my father’s white nationalism cause. They had always been intended as a means for defense.
But my father would let the Storm’s Soldiers use them. He kept his distance from their activities, but he saw purpose in their drug war. I didn’t want to supply criminals.
The cause itself was another problem, now. I could still believe in my father’s vision. There was nothing wrong with a space where white people could live freely with their kind. But I couldn’t occupy that world anymore. It had no room for Rosa. It had no room for Dennis. It had no room for many of my brothers in arms.
I didn’t know how to hold the two ideas together, but perhaps I could keep them apart. Maybe I could wind down the operation here. My father hadn’t even seemed to need the guns urgently last time we talked.
I gave him a call on my private phone to check.
“Calix,” he said, his low, rolling voice comforting and frail all at once. “Are you doing well? How is your leg? You haven’t come by in a while.”
“I thought it best to work.” I couldn’t reveal it was Rosa eating up my spare time.
“Ah, I understand. Well, carry on then. We’re looking forward to your new delivery.”
My throat tightened. “You’re still expecting those on time?”
“Well, of course. That’s what you are there to provide us, right?”
“It was my goal, yes. But I thought we agreed that there was no rush.”
“Oh, I’m sorry if you got that impression, dear boy. No, your aid is invaluable to our cause. The Storm’s Soldiers may cast it aside, but I have not forgotten. We promised ourselves to forge a new world together you and I. And so we shall.”
“I…”
I wanted to say that it had been him who came up with that vision. I had just been there to help with the details. But I could think of no protest that offered both truth and comfort to him.
“Yes?” His voice rose, expectantly.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’ll make it work.”
“You are my bedrock, Calix.” His voice went tender. “I am so grateful you were not hurt after all you went through.”
“Me too,” I said. “I’ll try to come by when I can.”
“I would appreciate that.”
I shut it off and looked at the empty phone. A bugle call rang out long and eerie in the distance.
I descended into the armory and carried out my duties as usual. Those of the army and those from my father.
Later, I met up with Rosa and performed for her as well. These duties required far more effort. I had to grind my tongue into her, bear her open to me with my strength and bind her tight as I poured out the last burst of our lust into her. She was a far more strenuous master than any at the base.
She was also altogether more enjoyable.
As we lay together after, panting and exhausted, her soft little head nestled in my arm, a new weariness overtook me. The moon hung outside the window and I felt like a shadow. My life lay partitioned.
Everything lay in secret from each other.
It worked for now, but I knew it could not last.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rosa
The past couple weeks, I could barely work the upper floors without flinching every time someone called my name. I’d expect to turn around and see the Chief of Medicine, or worse, the police jangling handcuffs. At least in ER, I could run out. I couldn’t exactly jump out a second story window.
My part in the investigation had been brief - I hadn’t been asked to do more than repeat the testimony I’d given my shift manager. But just the idea that people were wondering about me, watching my every move had me on edge every time someone called my name.
It almost reminded me of being back in Venezuela. We hadn’t grown up poor, but being middle class was almost worse. It meant your family had money and no security to protect it.
Even as a little girl, I’d always learned how to stay safe: travel in groups, know your surroundings, be ready to find safety or scream for help. It took a long time after moving to realize how paranoid that all was.
But paranoia was useful at times. It made sure you were never caught off guard.
I was busy adjusting the IV for a man in a diabetic coma, when I realized that someone had come up behind me. I whirled around, nearly dropping the bag altogether.
Lilly cocked an eyebrow at the foot of the bed. “Are you sure
your
blood sugar is ok?”
“Christ, Lilly.” I clutched my chest. “Don’t do that when I’m with a patient.”
“Enter a room noisily and wait quietly for you to finish up? Yeah, that was a real jerk move.”
I hooked the bag back up. My heart was pounding, and I half-expected Mr. McComb’s eyes here to pop open. I was not a girl designed for secrets.
“What couldn’t you wait to tell me?” I said. “Don’t you have your own rounds?”
“I finished my rounds already,” she said. “I thought I’d just come by to chat. I didn’t expect to find my newly innocent friend being suspiciously jumpy to see me.”