Читать книгу Still Come Home - Katey Schultz - Страница 11

4

Worse than Cheesy Bread

Miller and Folson find the rec room completely empty, thanks to a late-night screening of Full Metal Jacket on base. A portable generator hums in the corner, parlayed for a Star Trek pinball machine, of all things. No one can get the straight story on who authorized that. The two-player function button is jammed with sand, ruling it out. Delta Platoon sawed the legs off the mail-order air hockey table as a prank on Bravo, and now the game simply gathers dust. Tonight, the pucks are arranged in alternating colors of red and blue, aligned across the face of the gameboard in the shape of the letters OEF. Folson challenges Miller to best three out of five table tennis, and they begin the search for paddles and balls.

“Got one here,” Folson calls. He crouches on one hand and both knees, reaching his free arm under a dank, brown sofa.

Miller grabs a ball from a dirty paper cup and wipes it clean.

“So?” Folson says. He stands and pockets the ball, then brushes his hands down his pant legs.

Miller pulls two paddles from the top of a vending machine and hands one to Folson. “So, as I said…last Thanksgiving.”

“I’ll serve,” Folson says. He spins the paddle in his right hand a few times. “My friends call me Forrest…”

Miller slips the coffee-stained ball from his palm and beats Folson to the serve. “Think fast, Gump.”

“Oh, I see how it’s gonna be.”

They volley, the hollow toc-toc sending a wash of relaxation down Miller’s back. He thinks of home—Indiana—the pinging of the ball in his basement to while away winter boredom. Mostly, he played with his older sister, Miranda, the two juking while their mother shuffled around them with loads of laundry. There had been warmth, even then, though high winds pierced the empty nights and whipped snow into long, powdery banks. Home seemed an unquestioning embrace—one he now understands he took for granted.

Folson lets out a victorious shout. “One-zero, my serve,” he calls. Miller bats a soft one back over the net, forcing Folson to stretch across the table, just barely tapping the ball in return.

“So, we’ve had the turkey dinner,” Miller says, “and the pie…”

Folson smacks a direct shot across the line and scores a quick point.

“…and it’s not even really about all that,” Miller continues, “because the shit didn’t actually hit the fan until two days later.”

“Ha!” Folson paddles the ball hard and quickly, back across the net.

Miller catches it midair. “I can’t do this in here. Let’s walk.”

“‘My Mama always said you’ve got to put the past behind you, before you move on…’” Folson stutters through his best impression.

“Yeah, yeah, Gump. You comin’?”

They drop their paddles and head for the door. Folson tosses the spare ball into the corner on his way out. Miller hocks a sand-clogged loogie into the trashcan. Together, they find the main path and begin tracing the extended loop inside the perimeter of FOB Copperhead, which hasn’t been on blackout for over a year. Beneath the security lights and glinting concertina wire, Folson’s face still looks haggard, but his demeanor is oddly cheerful. Easing Folson’s mind is a task Miller readily welcomes, if for no other reason than the sheer obviousness of what’s needed—friendship, permission to be imperfect, a listening ear. These things Miller can give. These things don’t cost him anything. Not sleep, not rank, and certainly not a soldier’s life, and so there is only the sound of their boots plodding along the far end of the FOB, Folson quietly breathing as Miller opens up.

In North Carolina last Thanksgiving, Miller suggested having another child. He imagined Tenley would let her thin lips burst into a smile. That tears might well, and he would know she had been waiting for him to say it. “Let’s try. Let’s do this together,” he’d planned to say. “I’ll do it right this time. I’ll be ready.”

Maybe Tenley would even beat him to it; maybe the cold air blowing between them since the stillbirth of their second child had less to do with him and more with Tenley, the self-sufficiency she’d been forced to master in his absence.

He took Tenley to Micaville Park at a bend in the South Toe River where the 6,000-foot Black Mountain range abandoned itself to a narrow valley. The park had become their family spot before Miller redeployed, before the stillbirth. Water sang against the rocky riverbanks at the edge of the park, moving slickly and slowly in its long line toward the ocean. Shimmering flakes of mica dotted the river bottom, capturing sunlight. Even the soil in western North Carolina crumbled in Miller’s hands, beautiful but unsettling. He carried a piece into the shower once, just to see how each flake peeled back, glowing and fragile in the wetness.

In the muted light of that overcast afternoon, he and Tenley watched Cissy slip down the slide and giggle. Cissy had her mother’s hair, pale wisps so blond they appeared white against a certain angle of daylight. On that day, they looked plain, a papery, golden color reminding him of sunrise over the Miller Family Ranch. They cheered as Cissy slid to the bottom of the slide, stepped down, then repeated the dance. It calmed Miller to stand in this open, airy park so rarely found amidst tight Appalachian hollers. Tenley looked at him and smiled lightly. It wasn’t the smile he had fallen in love with. A handful of years into marriage and he had given up that fool’s gold. No couple stayed like newlyweds forever. Hard enough to imagine newlywed anymore. Miller wasn’t even home long enough to try.

Cissy squealed with laughter and raised her pudgy arms as she whooshed down the slide. Miller marveled at the simplicity of it, how readily joy came bursting forth. He put his arms around his wife and smelled her citrus shampoo and cinnamon bark perfume. Nothing about her seemed to give. He moved closer, but she felt iron-plated, as if any assurance this short time before redeployment might afford didn’t matter anyway. There was so much he wanted to say, even more he’d promised he wouldn’t hold back, but she would never understand what it’s like to have someone die on your watch.

“I love you,” was all he could muster.

For a moment, it almost seemed to be enough. But when Tenley pulled away, Miller forced himself to look her in the eyes. It was then he saw that her tightness stemmed from decisions she had come to in his absence. He recognized something fierce and bolstered there, and it occurred to him that she’d been fighting too, slow and steady on the homefront. He had waited to tell her about going to FOB Copperhead in person because the bonus and promotion would set them ahead for the future, for their family. But he didn’t tell her it was also a chance to prove himself capable again, the ghost of Mercer biting at his every thought. Studying her in the park, he knew waiting had been a mistake.

“Baby, let’s go sit down,” he said. “We can watch Cissy from our spot.”

He tried to guide Tenley to the park bench, but she insisted on walking a half step ahead of him, refusing to be held. He looked at her petite shape, the way the smooth curve below her ribs widened at her pelvis. The way her legs held her upright so infallibly. The war had done that to him, making him keenly aware of how entwined flesh and bone really are—likewise, how readily they betray one another. But the war also gave the mundane back, offering the simplest pleasures in Technicolor: drip coffee on an automatic timer, the feel of bare feet across a carpeted living room. The park view expanded outward from where they sat, the horizon circling back as if it started and ended at Tenley. It may have been cliché, but Miller felt it—his world rose and set by that woman—her dimpled cheeks, her tiny earlobes, her Southern drawl that came so softly and sweetly it made him woozy. She was the first woman he ever felt understood that his quiet way came carefully calculated. Others misjudged it for defiance or passivity. But she always held a vision of his highest potential at the forefront. He could feel it just as surely as he felt the mountains around them, holding everything together in this rural Appalachian bowl where Miller had moved his life to prove his love and come around to opportunities just like this.

“Baby, I’ve got to go back,” he said.

“Me too. And I’m sure Cissy’s getting hungry by now,” she brushed a flyaway hair off her forehead.

“No, Ten. I mean to Afghanistan.”

She looked at him, eyes so beautifully blue he felt ashamed. How much more would he take from her? They wanted the same things: stability, family. Getting there, though, seemed another matter.

“I can’t…Nathan,” she pressed her fingertips into her closed eyelids. It was a strange gesture, as though she intended to claw something out of herself. When she pulled her hands away, she had to blink several times before looking back at her husband. “You can’t be serious, Nathan,” she shook her head.

“I am, baby, but listen.”

“When have I ever not listened?” she asked. It wasn’t the kind of question she wanted him to answer. Miller heard that much in her tone. “What I want to know is what’s so great about it? What do they give you that we can’t?”

“Tenley, don’t.”

“No, I’m serious, Nathan, because there must be something, and it can’t be the bonuses. I don’t care about that.”

“Ten…I don’t know. I’m trying to make you happy.”

“Happy?” she stood from the park bench and jammed her fists into the pockets of her jeans. “Happy?” she paced in front of him, gaze lasering into the dry grass. Behind her, Cissy played on the slide.

“What I mean is it’s all for you. For us. For our family. All this work. All this being gone. I’ve got to go back and finish right, Tenley. I need this,” he said.

“But do you need me?” she asked.

Of course he needed her. Without her, there was nothing to come back to. Without her, he didn’t know what to define himself against. Without her, there couldn’t be this—the park, the day, their daughter, the world. It all seemed so obvious it never occurred to him to say it out loud. At what point did his own wife no longer believe that? How long would her doubts hang over him? He couldn’t fathom the shift, couldn’t accept that he tried to do everything right and still ended up wrong. He remembered searching her for some clue he might have missed, but he came up short. He could only see her as he always had—perfect, really—and that’s when he knew she never would be.

“What I’m trying to say is that of course I need you. More than you know,” he stood from the bench, forcing her to stop pacing. “If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that I’m doing all of this because I want to have another child. We can do this. We can do so much.”

Her jaw dropped. She tilted her chin slightly, but it could have been the earth slipping from its axis. His wife would never look at him from the same angle again. “You’re going to leave us again,” she said. Her breath had grown short, almost a pant. “And on top of that, you want more? You want—” she dropped her hand to her abdomen.

Miller could almost see it, the smooth, stretch-marked skin that had held their baby boy. The same skin that looked flat and gray in the empty months afterward. The humble smallness of their child, whom they held only once to say goodbye. He’d been mistaken. Family. The Guard. Home. Marriage. To him, everything connected.

“Nathan, my body failed us. Don’t you see that? Me. Something inside of me. The one thing I’m supposed to be able to do, have done before, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t.”

Before he could speak, she turned on her heels and headed for the car. As she reached for the door handle, Cissy wailed from the bottom of the slide. Tenley turned and dashed back to the playground, joining Miller in the sawdust. Cissy lay crumpled into a pile of pink corduroy pants and a purple down jacket at the bottom of the slide. She sniffled.

“Daddy’s here, Cissy. Can I take a look?” Miller inspected Cissy’s forehead and found a small goose egg forming against her skull. “You’re my tough girl,” he told her. “It’ll stop hurting in a few minutes. Are you ready to go home? We could make some hot chocolate when we get there.”

He looked at Tenley for a sign of softness, but all he saw was his own ignorance. Tenley did know what it was like to lose a life, and she knew it in a way he never could: cellular. He wanted to tell her the stillbirth wasn’t her fault, but if he did that, he’d have to forgive himself for Mercer too. The military hadn’t given him language for these kinds of sentiments. It had only given him language for leaving, and there was violence in it—this idea of deploying, touring, serving—all just another way of saying gone. He had done so much harm from so far away. But coming home had hurt them even more.

Cissy leaned her head against Tenley’s shoulder, a few tears drying on her round cheeks. Miller kissed the top of his daughter’s head, breathing in her smell of wet Cheerios and that soft, underscent of infants that faded with each trip back. He looked again at Tenley, her eyes watering, waiting. Those promises they’d made to one another growing more and more impossible to keep. Miller hugged Tenley and Cissy, wrapping them both in his arms, then turned toward the car to load up.

A few miles down the road, Miller steered into the driveway.

“Tenley, I’m sorry. I—”

But she wouldn’t have it. “How could you?” she said, her voice rattling and hoarse. “After everything,” she unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. “I’ve got to study,” she closed the door and walked briskly inside.

Miller stayed in the car for a long time. He stared at their house. Its white siding. Its rough stone foundation. The over-stuffed gutters. The curtains closed against the cold. He studied it all again, searching for something that made sense. He felt like an intruder in his own driveway. He wanted to feel something other than guilt, but there was only Cissy’s sleepy breathing from the backseat, whispering toward an uncertain future.

Twilight has fallen into navy darkness. Miller and Folson are the only two visible on base now, other than a few soldiers on guard in the towers.

“Is there even a way to do this marriage-during-deployment thing right?” Folson asks.

“I may not know what right is anymore.”

“I hear that, Sir. I hear that.”

They reach the rec hall and complete the loop, Folson fighting back a yawn. They’ve both made messes they haven’t found the edge of yet. So little time remains on this tour, even less energy. “No matter how things turn out with Becca, there is one thing I can never tell her,” Folson says.

Miller waits.

“That it’s easier here sometimes. All of this—the FOB, the war, Spartans—it’s just…easier.”

“I guess so,” Miller nods. “Not in terms of winning but in terms of clarity. The Spartans are all pointing in the same direction.”

He won’t tell Folson how impossible the senior officers have become. How the army brass seems to give orders for a different war than the one Miller and his men fight outside the wire.

“I need you solid on our way to Imar tomorrow.”

“What’s the mission?” Folson asks.

“Humanitarian, I know that much. Details haven’t been sent over yet. They’ll get around to it just as soon as they’re done polishing their medals. Should be relatively straightforward. Regardless, I know I’m going to need you at your best. Can you give me that, Folson, for one more mission?”

“Yes, Sir, I can. I can do that.”

Folson’s look seals the deal, and there it is—the relief Miller had been hoping for. When sleep comes, it’s perhaps his soundest in years.