“Yeah, of course.”
What?
“A nerd.”
No, before that. It’s real meaning.
She shook her head.
Someone who bites the heads off live chickens.
“Oh, that’s gross. You’re not serious.”
Really.
“I’m going to go home and look that up.”
Go right ahead.
“I will.”
The next day at school, he had found a folded sheet of paper in the vent of his locker. When he opened it, a widemouthed man peered out at him, and a cartoon rooster head stared down the man’s throat. Above the chicken’s head, a thought bubble had been drawn, and it read,
Help! I’d rather be crossing a Möbius strip!
He turned to her now, shook his head.
“You sure? There’s room in the back of Teddy’s truck for your bike.”
The shortstop. Teddy Derboven.
No thanks.
My aunt’s going to work soon, and I have to watch my cousins.
“Well, okay. I’ll see you, then.”
She turned away, to her friends, and all three girls walked to the parking lot, Ellie’s floral skirt swishing just below her knees. And Matthew biked home, knowing the math geek never got the girl, especially with a shortstop flexing and waving at her.
Benjamin heard the telephone ringing, though in his sleep he saw the sound coming from a machine gun. After four rings he opened his eyes, stretched backward to grab the receiver.
“Yeah.”
“Patil, we got a fire.” Wesley.
“Where?”
“At the Hoogendoorn place. East side.”
“I’m coming.”
Abbi had left the bed already, her pillow in her place. The baby slept in the bassinet with her fists near her ears, arms bent out from her shoulders in little L’s. He tucked his pillow next to Abbi’s and, after shimmying into his socks and pants, went into the basement to find Abbi at her sewing machine.
“There’s a field fire I have to go to,” he said, standing behind her. She wore a tank top, and in another time he would have kissed the knob of bone at the base of her neck, the one that protruded from her back when she hunched over.
“Okay.” The needle continued up and down. She didn’t turn.
“What are you making?”
“Something for the baby.”
She couldn’t even tell him something as small as what. He breathed a deep, disjointed breath. “Don’t stay down here too long. You won’t hear her if she wakes up.”
She switched off the machine light. “I’ll finish later. Do you want something for breakfast?”
“No time,” he said.
Thirty-foot flames burned in a field of wheat stubble, backed up against a grassed waterway. The lone Temple fire truck hammered the inferno with water, men in rubber coats guiding the hose. The flames shrunk, bowed to the firefighters in submission, until the hose went limp and dry, and then they were up again, big, orange marionettes of fire dancing and jerking their way over the green and across another harvested field.
Benjamin crossed to Wesley, who stood with the fire chief.
“Out of water,” Wesley said.
“We’ve called in the Lippman and Hensley trucks. They’re on their way,” the chief said.
Benjamin shielded his eyes, looked toward the fire, beyond it where two neighboring farmers sat on their tractors, disc implements hooked to the back, slicing grooves in the earth. “Looks like folks are trying to dig a fire line down there. I’ll head over, keep an eye out.”
Wesley nodded.
Benjamin started his car, the smoke dense and black enough to obscure his sight. Like the sandstorms in Afghanistan. Those were red, though, and loud, a freight train plowing through the desert. He honked, hoping anyone in his way would hear and move, crept down the road, past the fire, and eased the steering wheel to the left. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a reddish glare and two round lights.
The fire truck slammed into his car, Benjamin’s head cracking against the driver’s-side window. Smoke seeped around him, filling the Durango. He pawed at the door handle, his fingers sliding off it once, twice, before his arm dropped to his thigh. He turned his head, watched the black air curl into the passenger seat, thickening, stretching until it looked like a man. And then it was a man. Stephen, sitting right there, made of smoke and sorrow. Benjamin managed to flip his arm up, palm flapping against his face, and rubbed his eyes.
You sure got your bell rung,
the smoke-man said.
You’re dead
, Benjamin thought. He heard shouting from far, far away.
Yes sirree. How are the toes?
Gone.
Benjamin rolled his head from one shoulder to the other, then back, glass shards tumbling down his face. Coughed.
I can’t
breathe.
Smoke will do that. Remember that fire outside Kabul? Man, that was
smoke.
The one that killed the shop owner.
Black, black smoke. Like tar pouring into the sky.
What was his name?
Farhad.
Yeah. Him. He sold Doritos. And Hershey’s.
He remembered the chocolate but not the man. How was it some memories had wads of chewed gum on them, sticking to the bottom of his shoe, refusing to shake off, and others floated away, like wind, like clouds.
Like smoke.
That was some time, man,
smoke-Stephen said.
And afterward we
grabbed hands and prayed, and the guys laughed at us, but we didn’t care.
We were alive.
For a while.
You should be praying now. Not talking to a dead man.
Benjamin coughed again.
I can’t.
Don’t give me that, Sergeant.
This is all in my head.
Then I’m just saying what you already know.
The shouting closed in on Benjamin, in his ear. Words. He knew they were words, knew words had meaning, but he couldn’t match the sounds with the pictures they conjured in his mind. The passengerside door was pried open, and Stephen disappeared the way he came, in a pocket of smoke.
Hands against his head. Fingers tugging down his lower eyelids, pressed on the inside of his wrist. And then Wesley strapped a brace around his neck and the hands were back on him, wriggling him from the car, onto a board, into a box. A metal box.
An ambulance.
He had taken bodies out of ambulances in Afghanistan, unloaded the dead and piled them into helicopters. He knew who they were. Most of them.
He woke to a still but heavy fullness, a kind of whooshing sound, and blinked his eyes to clear the solid sleep from their corners. Squinted at the harsh white ceiling.
“The lights,” he said, mouth dry as snakeskin.
“I’ll get them.” A familiar voice. Wesley. His face appeared over Benjamin. “You’re in the hospital.”
“I’m thirsty.”
Wesley guided a striped bendy straw between Benjamin’s lips, red and white, like a candy cane. The water tasted like warm plastic. He tried to turn his head; it was stuck. His hand skittered up his thigh, his abdomen, felt something cold and hard around his neck.
“You’re okay,” Wesley said. “Just a strain. And a concussion.”
“What . . . I don’t remember . . .”
“The fire truck. Couldn’t see it through the smoke, I guess.”
He saw the hazy bulge of a white gauze pad out of the corner of his eye, a ghost in his peripheral vision. His head pulsed rhythmically, the IV in his arm filling him with something to keep the pain away. But it lurked underneath the drugs. It always hurt later.
He touched the bandage above his left ear.
“Fourteen sutures,” Wesley said.
If only all wounds closed so easily.
“I called Abbi. She’s on her way,” the deputy told him.
Benjamin closed his eyes, said nothing.
“You two having some trouble?”
“We’re fine.”
Wesley nodded once, slow and burdened, rolling his lips in until only his mustache could be seen. “I was in ’Nam, you know. Saw some nasty garbage. Not as much as some, though. Came home and my wife left me. Not Renée. My first wife. She should have left. I beat the tar out of her. More than once.”
He said it in a flat, blue voice, and Benjamin rolled his eyes to the pastel-patterned wall. He thought of the time—the one time—he had grabbed Abbi. Hard, at the upper arm. She didn’t move, but pressed back into the wall with stuttering breath, her nostrils open, her eyes wide. His grip loosened as he looked on her stricken face; he let go of her and put his fist through the wall. The living room mirror had jumped from the nail and to the floor. The glass didn’t shatter; it cracked. Three long, jagged lightning bolts through the center.
He’d tried to ignore the hole for several days, but by doing so he thought about it more, turning his head when he passed it, spinning away from the doorway before going into the room. And then, when he saw Abbi had slid the table over so the hole would be blocked by a lamp, he took an afternoon to repair the wall. It had done nothing for his marriage.
“Guess you need to rest,” Wesley said.
“Guess so.”
“Well, then, I’ll be ’round tomorrow. And after that, I suppose.”
Benjamin licked his lips. “You could just call, see how I’m doing. You’ll save gas that way.”
“Patil,” Wesley said, “I won’t get that mileage reimbursement, then.”
Abbi went to the meeting to get out of the house, away from Benjamin, whose week of required recovery time couldn’t end soon enough. She took Silvia, despite his protests.
“You can leave her with me,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“It’s for mothers of preschoolers,” she said. “I can’t go without one.”
She could, but wouldn’t. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the place she only went when she felt brave or when the Holy Spirit prodded, she wondered if Benjamin didn’t turn purposely in front of that fire truck.
She never wore pants in the summer, but today she put on a pair of loose linen ones, too long on her, cuffs frayed from dragging on the ground. She pushed her hair up under a cotton snood and slid a clear retainer stud through her nostril. She didn’t want to be known as Deputy Patil’s wife today.
When they first moved to Beck County, he’d told her, “Population five thousand. Small enough to at least know of most everybody, and big enough not to.” He worked on the knowing, and she worked on the not, but after three years even those she’d never been introduced to had an idea who she was—the freaky, peace-activist vegan with the hairy legs.
To be fair, most people who knew her weren’t like that. Hardly anyone, really. But she was in a foul mood. Her size tens hadn’t fit this morning. She wanted to hide from herself, not everyone else. If she wanted to be able to think of anything but her weight this week, she’d have to stop at the Shop and Go, for a bottle of senna. The prunes weren’t cutting it anymore.
“You’re wearing pants? It’s sweltering outside,” Benjamin said.
“Oh, now you’re looking at me?” she snapped.
I’m such an awful
wife.
He stared for a moment, shook his head a little. “I need the car at one,” he said, and closed himself in the bathroom. She turned the other way, stomped outside to the car, loaded down with baby and bag. Two different directions. They were always turning away from one another, even when going to the same place.
She bumped Silvia’s head while putting her into the car seat. The baby wailed, and Abbi jumped in the front seat and started the car; the motion would calm Silvia.
Lord, is this what you really want for
me?
She didn’t feel like a mother. After knowing since twenty she’d never have children, her constant concern for a baby now seemed unnatural. Even when she and Benjamin considered adoption, it was always a school-aged child, walking and talking, and potty-trained—a hard-to-place kid no one wanted. In the past, when confronted with a writhing, wailing infant held up before her, some other mother’s prize, she’d told herself she simply wasn’t a baby person. The truth or not, it didn’t matter now. She needed to find some mothering instinct. Or at least be able to fake it.
The meeting, at the Baptist church in the next county, began at nine thirty. The sign out front read:
WE USE DUCT TAPE TO FIX EVERYTHING—
GOD USED NAILS!
A big-toothed woman greeted Abbi at the registration table, handed her a paper name tag and marker; skin flapped from the undersides of her otherwise skinny arms. “Welcome,” she said, cheeks frozen in two rouged mounds with her smile. “You’re new, aren’t you? I’m Betsy Swell. I know, funny name, whichever way you look at it. Your daughter is gorgeous. How old is she?”
“A month.”
“What a fun time. I love babies. And I love, love, love that little pouch thingy you have her in. I saw what’s-her-name using one just like that in
People
a few months ago. Where’d you get it?”
“I made it.”
“Oh, how crafty. I wish I knew how to sew.” The woman licked her teeth, running her tongue over them like someone would over dry lips. “Just fill out this registration form and give it on back to me at the end. First visit is free. After that, there’s a membership fee. It’s all there, on the form.”
“I can read it.”
The woman giggled, high and springy. “If you can sew, you can read, right? Just go on in. Sit anywhere you’d like. We don’t have assigned seating. Oh, wait. I think you have something stuck to your nose.” She scraped the side of her right nostril with her fingernail. “Looks like a little piece of tape or something.”
Abbi stood in the doorway, pressed up against the jamb, metal cold on her forearm. She scanned the tiny basement room for an empty chair, saw three of them, all squashed between chattering women, who drank coffee and laughed after every sip. She knew a dozen of them, should have known a few more. One of those
should knows
waved, pointing at the space next to her. Abbi squeezed in, sat sideways on the chair because there wasn’t enough room for both her and Silvia between the table and the wall. A miniature metal washtub piled high with cheap, plastic baby dolls decorated her table—all the tables—their naked skin stamped with
Made in China for Dollar General.