The Heart You Carry Home (21 page)

“You mean cut your losses?”

“Exactly. You pretend that you're coming into the situation for the first time. If you wouldn't fork out the money right then, knowing everything that you do in the present moment, then you should get out, pronto.”

“And this has to do with what exactly?”

“Well, sometimes I think the same principle should apply to relationships. I mean, just 'cause I've been with Ricky for so long and built so much of my life with him, that doesn't mean I should stay, right? If I met him now, would I get into a relationship?”

“Would you?”

“I'm an optimist and a pushover, but I'm not an idiot.”

“That sounds pretty sensible to me,” Ben said.

“For business, it makes tons of sense. But for love? The heart is a bottomless pit, Ben. You can sink the pain of a lifetime into it—all the love too—and it will never feel full. It will always want more. And more. But I don't need to explain any of this to you.”

Ben looked at his feet.

“How long have you been married?”

“Six weeks.”

Lucy whistled. “Want to talk about what happened?”

Ben shook his head. He twisted his wedding ring. He liked the smoothness of the gold against his skin, how easily he could make it spin. It was probably a little too loose, but in a way that was good; it reminded him that he was wearing it.

“We'd been together for about five months when they announced the surge,” he said. Even now, the word brought to mind an enormous wave rushing toward a small beach. Hurtling toward the sand but never crashing. It was an infuriating image, like an unresolved musical stanza. “No way was I just going to leave her behind.”

“You wanted to lock things down?”

Ben smiled. “It wasn't a trust thing. I just wanted us bonded. You know, more strongly than we would have been otherwise.”

Ben remembered the moment so clearly. He'd gone to one of her races and waited for her at the finish line. It was a frigid February morning, but Ben didn't have to wait long. Becca was ahead of the others, as usual, but she ran those last yards as though the competition were neck and neck. It seemed like she was trying to reach him as quickly as possible, because their days together were dwindling. Over the finish line, she jogged past the cheering crowd, finally slowing to a walk. She must have had sweat in her eyes, because she nearly tripped over him.

She didn't understand why he was kneeling on the ground and demanded to know what he was doing. So Ben said, “Proposing.” She still didn't get it, so he tugged on her calf, until she knelt down with him. Then he said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and nobody else.

The next thing he knew, she'd jumped on him, which pushed them both onto the ground. In the process, he dropped the ring. It took them fifteen minutes crawling around in the grass to find it.

“Five months isn't a long time to know somebody,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, that's what everybody told me. My parents. My friends.”
It's not 1914, or 1939,
Katie Jacobson had told him.
And this is your life, Benny, not some Hollywood movie. I swear, if you knock her up before you leave and then go off and die . . .
Katie could be flippant like that, and at the time, Ben laughed her off. Remembering the conversation now, he felt angry.

“Getting engaged then was right. I knew it and she knew it. It felt like—” He paused, thought a moment. “This is going to sound strange, but it was kind of like that bread you make.”

Lucy snorted.

“No, hear me out. See, when I came back from Iraq the first time, nothing tasted quite right. I don't know what happened. I was near a couple of explosions. Something fucked with my taste wiring or smell wiring. But that frybread woke up every taste bud in my mouth. And it went beyond that. It was ten times better than anything I'd ever tasted before. It was a feeling I'd never known existed.”

“So you're telling me,” Lucy said, “that your wife was like a flavor explosion in your life.”

“Cut me some slack. I came up with this on the fly.”

“Ben, do you have any idea what the calorie content in a single slice of frybread is? I realize I sell it for a living, but that stuff's like crack. It will
kill
you.”

“Let's not take this metaphor to its logical conclusion,” Ben said.

Lucy bit her cheek. “I didn't mean to make fun. I get it. Your wife was a powerful force in your life. She had healing abilities. And she was unexpected, which made everything about her feel that much more exciting.”

“Yes,” Ben said.

“I felt that way about Ricky,” Lucy said. “Sometimes I still do. In glimpses.”

Ben was about to respond when a sudden buzzing erupted in his pocket. He jumped from the chair, fumbling to get the phone off his person, like it had stung him. The object clattered onto the ground, where it continued to skitter like a roach. Lucy had also jumped to her feet, afraid that something truly dangerous was going on. But then she recognized Ben's response for what it was and returned to her chair. “So there's another thing you're not allowed to do around the kid—get a phone call. Big deal.”

Ben called the missed number and, to his astonishment, Reno picked up. “I know what you did,” said the older vet, not even bothering with hello. “I know you weren't trying to hurt her, which is why I'm calling you. I also know you're still to blame, which is why I am extremely ambivalent about it. Where are you?”

“Kayenta.”

Reno whistled into the phone. “Jesus, you're close.”

“To you? To Becca?”

Reno barreled onward. “Here's the deal. Tomorrow, you will drive out to Navajo Perch. From there, take BIA road fifty-two going west toward Kanab. After about thirty-five miles you'll come up on an old post office. You'll know it 'cause the roof's missing. Walk down to the river. I'll try to have somebody meet you and give you directions. There's an old mining tunnel you can take in, but it's too complicated for me to explain over the phone.”

“Take in where? Where are you sending me? Will Becca be there?”

“To Kleos.”

“No shit,” Ben said. “That's where I'm headed!”

“Well, don't sound so excited, Sergeant. That place is the fucking heart of darkness.”

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
, they climbed into a plateau of boulders spotted with moss like balding heads. Soon a glinting river appeared and, not long after, a house. It was mostly a carcass, a building gnawed to the bone, and it sagged on the slope across the river. “We're getting close,” Ben said. Sure enough, the full town appeared around the next bend. Crumbling concrete buildings were scattered alongside the road. Across the river were more disintegrating houses.

When Ben spotted a couple of motorcycles and a van parked beside a caved-in cinder-block building, his heart leaped into his throat. The structure was as Reno had said: a mouth of broken teeth yawning at the sky. Affixed over the doorway were two signs. One read
U.S. Post Office
. The second read
Kleos
.

Jacob picked his way around the trash, busted tires and rusted bedsprings, until he reached the first cabin. A plastic chair missing one leg lay overturned on the sagging porch and half of the roof was gone, like a giant had come along and taken a bite out of it. “Curtains!” he called to the adults. “Do you think this is somebody's house?”

“Come back here,” Lucy ordered. But Jacob wandered over to the next cabin and disappeared from view.

“Want me to get him?” Ben asked.

“Nah. Let him poke around,” she said. “You stay in earshot!” she yelled.

The wind knocked the post office's barely hinged door against the frame. This place was creepy and far too reminiscent of bombed-out neighborhoods in Iraq—places that looked dead but often were not. Standing out here, Ben felt exposed, certain he was being watched.

Jacob reappeared down by the river. He chose a stone from the bank and skipped it across the water. He did not seem unnerved by his surroundings. How blissful to feel that kind of ease, Ben thought. To carry out a simple activity without psychological or emotional interruptions. To let the world fall away. Playing the fiddle, laughing with Becca, even some parts of soldiering had once provided him a similar release.

Ben turned from the boy only to hear Jacob shouting. The kid had found someone.

A man descended slowly between the busted shacks and stopped just above the mess of seep willow and arrow weed that grew along the opposite bank. Ben and Lucy joined the child at the water's edge.

“You Reno's guy?” the man called out, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. He looked to be in his sixties and had a stubbly white beard. He wore jeans and a black biker vest.

“Yeah!” Ben shouted back. “He said you could give us directions to the mining tunnel?”

“He would,” the man replied and Ben realized that Reno's name was not exactly an open sesame. “Tell me your division, rank, and number of tours,” he called out, “and we'll talk.”

“This some kind of interview?” Lucy murmured.

Ben answered the questions.

“Active duty?” the man shouted.

Having finished his contracted service, Ben was now Individual Ready Reserve. Theoretically, the army could still call him up, but as long as recruiters like himself continued to peddle their wares successfully, the chances of that were slim. “IRR,” Ben answered.

“You better be telling the truth about that,” the man called back. “If you're AWOL and the CO finds out about it, you'll be very sorry that you lied.”

Ben didn't understand what any of this meant, but first things first. “We've got our car up on the road,” he shouted. “Where's the overpass?”

The man laughed. “No overpass.”

“You got a boat then?” Lucy said.

“Soldier, if you want to get here, you're gonna have to swim.” He turned around and started back up the rise.

“We've got a child with us,” Ben said.

“And I can't swim,” Lucy added.

The man looked over his shoulder. “Your friends aren't my concern. You, soldier, can swim. Or build yourself a raft. Or a goddamn bridge, for all I care.” The man resumed his retreat.

“Hey!” Ben yelled. “Do you know a woman named Jeanine Keller?” But the man had disappeared over the rise.

“There's got to be a bridge.” Lucy scanned up and down the river. “Or we can look for that mining tunnel your friend Reno mentioned.”

They drove twenty miles in each direction, without luck. Nor did the river appear to narrow at any point. Back at the defunct post office, they pulled in beside the motorcycles and van.

“Who the hell do these vehicles belong to?” Ben demanded.

“Mom!” Jacob exclaimed from the back seat.

“What nonsense are you talking?” Lucy said.

“That's Mom's van.” Jacob scrambled out and pointed to a decal in one of the van's windows: a Jesus fish surrounding a hand. “Hands of God! I want to swim across with Ben.”

“Nobody's swimming,” Ben said. “We'll find another way.”

But in a flash the boy took off, a silver bullet flying toward the river.

“Come back here!” Lucy bolted after him. But the boy did not stop. He plunged into the water, lost his balance, and slipped under. Almost immediately, the current began to pull him downstream.

Lucy was in the river up to her knees, screaming, pleading for Ben to do something. Jacob's head popped back up, but the river sucked him farther and farther away. Ben dove in; his body spasmed with cold, but he fought the numbness and swam out, using the current as a boost. Jacob was flailing and crying, pulling himself under with his own hysterics.

“Float!” Ben called out. “Turn on your back!” He swam harder, pushing his arms through the water like it was a heavy blanket that he was trying to shove off his body. Finally, he came within reach of the boy. He grabbed at Jacob but managed to catch only a fistful of jacket. “Fuck.” He spat out a mouthful of dark water. He grabbed again. This time, he caught Jacob's arm. Holding the boy to him, Ben scissored his legs and pushed at the water with his free arm, maneuvering both of them out of the current. When they reached a muddy pocket of bank on the far side, Ben hauled the kid out. Gasping, he grabbed Jacob and pulled the child in tight. It was all he could do to keep from bursting into tears.

“Ben? Are you okay?” Jacob whimpered.

But Ben couldn't let go. He pressed Jacob's drenched, dark head and frail body to his chest. He needed to be sure that the child in his arms was real. Real and still alive. And in this moment, he felt sure that he was holding on to Majid, which, somehow, was the same thing as holding on to Coleman. “You're okay,” Ben whispered. “You're all right.”

Jacob squirmed in Ben's tight embrace. “Ben!” he cried. “Ben! Aunt Lucy?”

Ben let go and felt the bodies of Majid and Coleman evaporate. “Let's go,” he said, steeling himself against a loss that felt far too visceral. He helped Jacob out of his coat and wrung out the water. Then they climbed up the slippery bank. They'd traveled farther downstream than Ben had realized and the desert willows grew thick enough to obscure the opposite bank. Trudging along, Ben felt like he was on a mission with his platoon. His adrenaline was still pumping from the rescue, and he felt oddly exhilarated, energized in a way he hadn't been in weeks.

“Lucy!” Ben shouted, thinking they must be fairly close to their starting point. There was no response. Jacob looked at him, worried. Ben forced a smile. “We're almost back. See, it clears up over there, and those are the shacks we saw driving in.”

Jacob took off again, scrambling ahead. Ben hurried to catch up. He emerged from the willow thicket to find Jacob standing in the exact place where the old man had stood.