The Heart You Carry Home (8 page)

“At the Rolling Thunder Rally in DC, about five years ago now. I was having a real hard time.” Bull kicked his legs up on the porch railing, settled back into reverie. “I figured if a guardian angel didn't swoop down soon and save my ass, it was goodbye, Bull. But then your dad and the CO appeared. Now, I'm not a superstitious man, but what are the chances? Three hundred thousand people at that rally and they find me—a guy who so badly needed to be found? They took me out to Utah, got me straightened out.”

Utah. Was that where King had been all this time?

Bull drummed his fingers on the top of his beer can. “Guys have a lot of opinions about the CO. Reno thinks his whole salvation thing is a load of crap. But I can't help it. I'm a believer. Hey, look there.” Bull pointed at a hawk winging across the sky.

Becca had not heard her father mention a commanding officer. “A believer in what?”

“That there's a way out. That us vets can be free. It's a shame, though, you know? No matter how enlightened you are, the Agent O gets you in the end.”

So a friend of theirs was sick. That's where they were going, and why.

Bull sat up straight, suddenly and inexplicably enraged. “Those motherfuckers in Washington. Just shrugging their shoulders like,
What did I do?
Like even though we bathed in that toxic shit, they're not responsible. Like they don't
owe
us.” Bull glared at Becca as though she, specifically, owed him. Becca wanted to point out that Bull had never served in Vietnam and therefore had not been exposed to Agent Orange. But that was a technicality, at least to Bull. Also, as a child, Becca had watched her father fly from kind to cruel faster than a sports car going from zero to sixty. She'd never grown used to this behavior, and when she saw it happening with Ben—lethargy running to rage and back again, not to mention the drinking—she didn't want to believe it. Ben had promised her—sworn to her—that he would never, ever turn into King.

“What if I don't know you when you come back?” she'd asked on the morning of his deployment. But Ben reminded her that this was his second tour. “I've done this once already. And I came back fine,” he said, pulling her close. “Fine enough for you to fall in love with me.”

But he'd been wrong. After the second tour, he wasn't fine. The wedding had been the eye of an emotional storm. The days on either end of the event were beautiful and brilliant. But afterward, especially, things turned bad. Ben had gotten drunk and crashed his truck; he'd destroyed his father's fiddle. He'd broken everything.

“Everybody judges us,” Bull said, dragging Becca away from her own misfortune and into the glare of his own. “And the kids your age are the worst. Everybody's entitled. Nobody appreciates what they're given.”

“Not me.”

Bull chuckled. “Right. You're different.”

“I am, actually,” she said. “Nobody else in my family went to college. I worked hard for that. I know nothing'll be handed to me on a platter.”

“Last night, King said you'd gotten into one of those fancy schools up north—they gave you some money to boot. But you didn't go.”

She wasn't sure why she'd confessed this to King; it had kind of just spilled out one day. He'd seemed a little disappointed in her decision, though she couldn't imagine why.

“What's that got to do with entitlement?”

“Not that part, Rebecca. The appreciating-opportunities part.”

“It made more sense to stay close to home,” she said.

“You want to appreciate the freedom I fought for? The freedom your daddy fought for? Then don't be afraid to confront your fears. The CO taught me that. Too bad you can't meet him. You could learn a lot.”

“You don't know me, Bull, so I'd appreciate you not judging my decisions.”

“College girl thinks she knows so much.” And then, as though the whole conversation had never happened: “It's grub time.” Bull downed the rest of his Bud Light and licked his lips.

L
ATER THAT DAY
, while the men were in town, Becca used the cabin's landline to call her boss and ask for time off, pleading a family emergency. If she was going to stay at the cabin for a while, she'd have to find an Internet-connected computer in town, and no way the local library was going to have the necessary design programs. Now she sat in the kitchen and explained the situation to her aunt, but Kath abruptly veered off topic. “Why'd you really come here, honey?” she asked, pointing her mixing spoon at her niece.

“Just postwedding stress,” Becca said, avoiding her aunt's eyes.

“What's that phrase your mother uses? ‘Too blessed to be stressed.'”

Becca thought about her mother at the Hands of God Church out in Colorado. There, a group of Christian faithful tended an organic garden and knit socks for orphans. And prayed, obviously. Jeanine probably had to feed her smoking habit on the sly, sneaking cigarettes behind the quinoa patch.

Kath continued. “The stress is supposed to come before the wedding, honey, not after.”

“Ben's been touchy since he came back. King says he just needs some time.” Becca knew full well that if she was leaving Ben for good—divorce leaving—then eventually she'd have to fess up about it. But she felt like somebody had poured cement into her mouth. Kath said nothing more. With one hand, she cracked eggs into a bowl and tossed the shells into the garbage. She added oil and sugar. She did not use measuring tools. Her silence was heavy and dense as a ball of dough.

“So they're going to Utah to visit an old commanding officer,” Becca said, unable to tolerate her aunt's stoniness. “They're talking about this trip like it's a big deal.”

“Your father can't help you if he doesn't know what the real problem is,” Kath said.

“I don't know what you mean.”

Kath stopped what she was doing and turned to her niece. “Earlier today. You went for a run down the mountain? Trip Meester was out on his porch.”

The run had been painful; with each footfall and each breath, sharp flashes had shot out from the ring of bruises. It was nearly too much to bear—nearly. But Becca decided to bear it. The pain was a necessary reminder of her weakness and stupidity; she would not go back to Ben and she would never, ever, let anything like this happen again.

“You were in your sports bra, honey. Trip knew the men were here. Seeing you—” Kath nodded at Becca's torso. “Well, he was worried. So he called me.”

The backs of Becca's eyeballs stung, but she gritted her teeth until she was certain that not a single tear would fall. “Momentum, rhythm, stride,” she whispered to herself. Let the electricity burn itself out. Let the despair ease up. Let go of every hope you had for your life and be free. You're running. You're already gone.

Becca felt Kath's warm body beside her, hovering close. “It's not what you think,” Becca said, though her voice sounded very small.

“How is it not what I think?” Kath's face was pitying. “Either he put his hands on you or he didn't.”

“I'm not one of those women—the ‘he didn't mean it, it was just this one time' women. But we were asleep and then . . . I don't actually know if . . .” Becca felt ill-equipped to explain. The events of that night lay broken in her memory, scattered like the shards of the fiddle Ben had smashed. What frightened her most of all was that Ben apparently didn't know what he'd done. Didn't realize that he was incapable of controlling himself. “I'm not naive!” she burst out. “I didn't think that he'd come back and everything would be fine. I tried to get ahead of all of this.”

“Honey, you're not making sense.”

“In the beginning he told me stories. On the phone, video chat, e-mail. He made me feel like I was with him. There was an Iraqi soccer-star kid who ate Corn Pops, and a platoon corporal with weird superstitions, and kitty litter to cover the latrine stink, and every other thing you could ever want to know. And then one day, out of the blue, he just stopped talking.” Becca knew she was rambling incoherently, but she didn't much care.

“Who knows what might have happened,” Kath said. But Becca, who'd started pacing around the kitchen, wasn't listening. She felt like an attorney arguing to a jury of one: herself.

“It was like somebody flipped a switch! He shut down and I didn't know what to do. I asked him questions, but he wouldn't answer. And I couldn't stand it—the not knowing. So I tried to fill in the gaps. I read all this stuff—books and articles. You would have laughed at me.”

Even in her keyed-up, frantic state, Becca was too self-conscious to confess aloud all that she'd done. It had involved rereading all the books from a war-lit class she'd taken her freshman year, renting every war movie at the video store, and obsessively consuming soldier blogs. Anything for a glimpse into his world—and his head. She'd tried to bone up on information so she'd know what questions to ask him. But during their conversations, he was either too tired to talk, or they'd had a bad patrol (whatever
bad
meant, he never explained), or he was too stressed due to new orders from HQ. Nothing Ben told her was consistent. It was like running a race where the ground continually shifted beneath your feet.

Becca often felt lonelier after talking to him, but she refused to believe that all was lost. There were moments when he still laughed. When he shared some funny detail or anecdote. And he always signed off by saying, “I love you, Chicken.” Other women were
baby
or
sweetheart
or
hon
. But it was there, in the silly nickname Ben had given her, that Becca felt him close, as he had been before. So she continued to hope. And she continued to read and study and prepare. Just in case.

Kath asked no more questions. She walked to Becca, who had drifted to the far side of the kitchen, and reached for her, but Becca did not want comfort and pulled away.

“I've been thinking, honey,” Kath said. “If you want to go with your dad to Utah—”

Becca looked up with surprise.

“Well, why did you run to him if not for advice? For some insider knowledge? So he happens to be taking a trip. Even better. Perfect for bonding.”

Becca stared at her aunt with genuine confusion. She'd run to King because she could think of no place else to go. To speak of bonding was absurd. Traveling with her father, she'd be nothing more than extra weight on the bitch pad. Once she explained all of this, Kath's face grew stern.

“Sit down, child,” she said and Becca obeyed. “I'm not saying you did wrong trying to get inside Ben's head but there's only one way to really know a person, and that's to be with them.”

“I know that now.”

Kath sighed. “I don't think you're being honest about why you went to King. You could have called me. But you called him. And if he hasn't given you what you came for, then just letting him go on his merry way would be a real waste.” Kath's stare was more powerful than truth serum.

“He can't advise me unless he opens up, and we both know he won't. It's not like I can guilt him into sharing.”

“Not guilt him, honey, communicate with him. Your father's not so great at that, but I don't think you're giving him enough credit. You can't expect him to do a thing for you, though, if he doesn't realize he
has
to. And besides, you're not staying here cooped up with me. I'm an old misanthrope. You're young and adventurous. At least I thought you were.”

Becca remembered what Bull had said about confronting her fears. And her aunt was right; this cabin was the physical edge of what she knew—like one of those invisible fences that keep dogs from running into the street. Her father's motorcycle would be more than sufficient to bust through. “Maybe I'll talk to him tonight,” she said, searching Kath's face for encouragement.

“Come on.” Kath breathed, exasperated. “You need to confront him soon and be forthright. Say you want to go with him. You're a runner, Becca. It's not in your blood to stand still.”

Just then, the growl of motorcycles blasted the windows.

“This is a horrible idea,” Becca said, but she marched outside anyway. Partly, she was allowing herself to be baited; she was not a person who stood still. But mostly, she wanted to show her aunt that King had zero interest in helping her.

“Rides like butter,” King was saying to the others. “I mean, it cruises like a yacht.” Reno and Bull saw Becca first and they must have noticed something in her face or her walk, because they hopped off their bikes and shuffled out of the way. Becca stopped her march and watched King dismount, trying to get a sense of this person—this father—who had produced her. Yes, he'd returned after a long absence, but Kath had made it clear that he was only halfway back—no closer than shouting distance.

The sun was setting into the valley, and the light glowed halo-like around her father's head. He looked truly king-like and prophetic. Then he coughed, and the spell was broken.

“Dad, listen,” Becca said, closing the final feet between them. “I know it's out of the blue. But Kath thought—well, not just Kath but me too—that I might be able to stay with you a little longer. The road's good therapy, right?” These were King's words. He'd said them to her many times.

“Oh.” King glanced around for backup and realized his friends had retreated to the porch. “It would be nice to take you out at some point . . .” His throat released a grating sound. “But this isn't the right time.”

Becca hoped Kath was watching. She'd taken the plunge and the outcome was exactly as she'd predicted: her father was letting her sink. But then, King turned away and started toward the steps. He was literally turning his back on her.

“When?” Urgency welled inside of her, a feeling that bordered on panic.