by Callie Hart
I loved having the Italians around, though. They were the only ones who could sneak hard liquor in-country, and they were always happy to trade for cigarettes and whatever porn files were stored on the unit’s shared drive at the time. That was a lot of porn.
I ran across the base, flinching every time the high-pitched whine of a mortar whistled overhead, cursing their names today, however. I ran past one of the first lieutenants from C company heading in the opposite direction, some maverick kid from Alabama who’d probably be running this whole show some day. He slowed, saluting me. “They’re buzzing the fences today, Captain. That’s a hell of a lot of flack from the hills over there, too. Whitlock’s gonna be out, looking to spank some asses tonight!”
I laughed, turning to run backward. “You seen my brother, Lieutenant? Can’t seem to find him anywhere.”
The lieutenant rocked his head to one side, studying me. “Begging your pardon for asking, sir, but which one are you again? I’ll be damned, but I can never tell.”
“Sully,” I replied, grinning to show there was no harm done.
“Ahh. You got any tips for differentiating you two, huh, Captain? Might make life a little easier for the rest of us out here.”
I shrugged. “Sorry, man. There’s only one way to tell us apart, and I don’t think it’s gonna be much help to you.”
“Try me.”
“Well, my dick is obviously way bigger than his,” I said, laughing. “That’s how the girls at high school always told us apart, anyway.” In truth, Magda was the only girl who’d even seen my dick. And Ronan’s was probably exactly the same size as mine, down to the millimeter. Not that we’d compared, of course. That would have been weird. Our hands, our feet, our shoulders, our waists—everything else was exactly the same, though. Why would our cocks be any different?
The first lieutenant laughed. “Well, in any case, the other Captain Fletcher just left a briefing with the colonel. I heard Whitlock’s intelligence guy complaining about how long their meeting was. Your brother’s probably somewhere recovering from the ear chewing he just got served.”
Colonel Whitlock wore his eagle with pride. He was a concise, no-nonsense, efficient leader with a shitty attitude, but he got the job done. It wasn’t easy overseeing an operation like this, out in the middle of nowhere with limited resources and a whole city full of locals who all wanted you dead. The only time he ever kept the clock running in his office was when he was reprimanding someone. You fucked up and you knew you were spending the better part of a day inside Whitlock’s office with your pants around your ankles, receiving the hiding of your life.
“Shit. Okay. Thanks, man.” I cut through the base then, skirting around the infirmary and the shipping containers that had been set up as care package general stores, shelves stacked with tubes of toothpaste, toilet paper and Twizzlers, until I reached the other end of the base, where the officers’ Alaska tents were pitched. I caught Ronan just as he was about to head inside. He looked relieved when he saw me, though there were dark, ominous circles under his eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t been eating properly. If this carried on much longer, it would be all too easy for people to tell us apart. He’d be the one looking like he was about to fall face first into an early grave.
“Hey, man. You were meant to meet me after lunch. They fucked up and gave me your mail again. Whitlock kept you late, huh?” I grimaced, waiting to hear how bad it had been. From the look on Ronan’s face, it had been really fucking bad.
He swallowed, looking around, and then urged me inside the tent. Checking first to make sure we were alone, he walked the length of the billet and then back again, his hands clenching into fists and unclenching again every few seconds. He was acting weird, which was how he’d been acting for weeks now, ever since the incident with the woman and the little baby.
He’d seemed relieved when I’d told him he was mistaken, that there was no woman or baby, and yet as the days had passed, he’d started asking questions. What did the guy look like? Was he on any watch lists? What had he been wearing? How old had he looked? Ronan’s willingness to believe he was off the hook was obviously wearing off, and it wasn’t going to end well.
When he came to a stop in front of me, his shoulders were slumped, his head hanging low. “Whitlock’s a cunt, man. He called me in to talk about some missing tires from supply, but that turned out to be bullshit. He really wanted to talk to me about extension.”
“Extension?” The word was a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle, three miles away. You heard it, knew what was coming, but you didn’t feel the impact or the pain of it for a good five or six seconds, until the weight of it had time to sink in. “What the hell are you talking about, extension? Our tours are both up in nine weeks. We’re headed back to the States.”
The muscles in Ronan’s jaw tightened. He looked away, brows drawn low. I hadn’t seen my brother cry since our parents’ funeral, and that was such an old memory that the moths had gotten at it and turned it into dust.
“Doesn’t look like home’s on the cards for anyone at the base,” he told me. “Whitlock says they’re keeping all of the officers on as well as the enlisted guys. That’s me. That’s you. Everybody. The whole battalion. Intel projected increased Taliban activity in the area from now until the end of the year. So that’s it. All deployments are being extended.”
I felt cold, despite the heat. Was he right? No way he was right. They couldn’t just spring that kind of shit on us without any warning, especially coming up to two months before we were due to go home. “How long?” I asked. “How long are the extensions?”
Ronan’s breath came out shaky. “Six months. He said there was every chance that could be shortened if the intel turned out to be wrong, but he highly doubted that would be the case. He said he appreciated my dedication to the US Army, and that my sacrifice was for the greater good of our fine nation and the protection of her people. Blah, blah, blah. The end.”
“What did you say?”
Ronan looked at me sharply. “I said thank you very much, sir, for the opportunity. It’s an honor. What else could I say? Actually, sir, I had plans in April back in Maine, and I don’t really feel like cancelling? Or how about the plain old truth? Sir, I am done with this bullshit, and I don’t think I can take another day of it. I can’t sleep, and every second I spend out here is another second I step closer to insanity. How do you think that conversation would have gone, Sully? He would have had me court marshaled on the spot.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do. This is Whitlock we’re talking about. Then again, if he did court marshal me, at least they’d send me back to a military prison in the States. That would be preferable over another six months in this hellhole. God. What the fuck’s happening right now, Sully? The past few years have felt like this one long, unending nightmare that just won’t seem to quit. Day after day of humping packs and shooting at civilians, suspicious of everyone and everything, the madness creeping in so gradually that no one seems to notice, until one day the guy standing next to you in line at the chow hall does something so monumentally insane that you suddenly see it, it suddenly clicks, and that’s when you realize you’re only a heartbeat away from doing the same crazy shit yourself.”
He was barely coherent, hands gripping at his khaki t-shirt, sweat beading at his temples. I’d never seen him look like this, and I’d never been so worried for him. People always talked a lot about the bond twins shared. The supernatural link between them. One of them gets hurt, the other feels the pain. One of them is unhappy, the other’s down, too. One is in danger, the other is gripped by such an overwhelming sense of foreboding that they have to call and make sure everything is all right.
Ronan and I never experienced such a thing, but I didn’t need a made-up psychic link right now to understand how he was feeling. The tension was rolling off him, thick in the air, and his eyes were wild with panic. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him, hugging him tight. “
Fuck, dude. It’s gonna be okay. Six months is nothing. We can do that no problem. Just you wait and see. We’ll barely even break a sweat.” Ronan buried his face in my shoulder, breathing hard. He was on the verge of breaking down and losing it entirely. Holding onto him as tight as I could, I told him over and over again that it was going to be okay, that another six months wouldn’t break us, but this awful notion of dread was coiled in the pit of my stomach like a deadly snake, and it was threatening to strike at any moment. I didn’t know if he could make another six months out here. I didn’t know if everything was going to be okay. All I knew was that I had his back, and I was going to do everything and anything in my power to get him through it as best I could.
We stood for a long time in silence while Ronan caught his breath. We would have stood for much longer if one of Ronan’s specialists, Crowe, hadn’t burst into the tent, yelling out my name.
“Captain Fletcher? Ah, there you are. Sorry, Sully. Colonel Whitlock’s looking for you. He asked if you could please head straight to his office. He has some paperwork for you to fill out.”
So there it was. Ronan was right; they were extending everybody. Looked like I was up next. My brother stepped back, breathing in deeply, straightening his t-shirt. “Thanks, Sully. I’ll see you later, man. Let me know how it goes, huh?” He turned and walked away before I had a chance to reply to him. He obviously didn’t want his guy to see he was freaked out, and I didn’t want to put him in that position, either.
“All right, Crowe.” I turned to the specialist, slapping him on the back. “You lead the way. I’m right behind you.”
The entire walk to Whitlock’s office, the Italian’s mortars continued to rain down on the city four miles away, sending bursts of fire and death into the sky.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sunshine Scramble
“Are you ready for this? Are you sure you don’t want to wait until after Christmas like we planned?”
Connor was sliding a brand new notebook and a pack of pencils into a dark blue book bag I’d bought for him at the store. Stationary supplies on The Causeway were a little thin on the ground, so I’d had to do the best I could. As a result, Connor had everything he needed for his first day at school, but he was hardly going to be the cool kid in his year. If we were back in New York, I’d have been able to take him all over the city, buying the best shoes, the best clothes, a mountain of different paper, pens, glue sticks etc. He didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t decked out in brand names, though. He just seemed happy to be getting out of the house.
“Yes, it’s fine. I want to go. Really.”
Rose had shown up at the house after work the day before, saying wouldn’t it be a great idea if the children could make some friends before the holidays, so they’d have people to stop by and visit. She’d already spoken to the principal at the elementary school, who was fine with taking Connor as an early admission. I hadn’t had much input in the decision at all—fine with me, because Connor actually appeared to be excited for once, and that was a wonder in itself.
“Do you want me to drive you, or Rose?” I asked him.
He bit his lip and looked at the floor. A second later, with narrowed eyes, he glanced up and said, “You, please.”
So I did. When I said goodbye to him at the gate, where other children were filing boisterously into the small, boxy-looking building beyond, Connor turned and hugged me, head pressed into my stomach, arms only just about able to reach my waist, and I felt a stab of anxiety shoot through me. Was he going to be okay? What if he tripped and fell? What if he banged his head? What if some of the other kids started bullying him for no reason? There were endless things that could go wrong on the first day at a new school, and it felt wrong that I was standing around outside the school grounds, watching him run inside, bag bouncing up and down on his back, and I wasn’t going inside with him to protect him. I supposed this was how it felt for the parents who used to drop off their kids at Saint Augustus’s while I walked inside, too, ready to teach.
The suggestion Michael made at Rose’s party came to mind again. There was a position for a full-time teacher open at the school. And it was well paid, too. Once these six months with the children were up, come hell or high water I was finding another job. If I stayed here on The Causeway after the summer, would it be so bad? If the children stayed here somehow, too? I couldn’t imagine walking out on them now, or simply handing them over to Sheryl, to be dumped in some awful foster home. And that was after they’d sat for months in a group home, waiting forever to see who would agree to take them. The thought just killed me.
At home, Amie and I made sparkle starfish dinosaurs to put on the fridge, and then we sat and read a book together. Midway through, my cell phone buzzed on the arm of the sofa.
Sully: Macaroni and cheese? Steak?
He’d finished up with a winky face, which made me shake my head.
“What are you smiling at, Feelya?” Amie asked, looking up at me. Her face was so perfect. So sweet and innocent. Her hair was sticking up at the front, floating on a wave of static that prickled between us.
“Nothing at all, little monster. A friend I know just made a joke on my phone.”
“Was it a funny joke?”
“Not really. He was being cheeky.”
She leaned back, her head resting in the crook of my arm, giggling, teeth on show, and I just wanted to wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight. She was the most adorable thing. She had the same chin, the same high forehead, and the same dimples as both her father and her uncle. The exact same hair color. The same smile, and the same mischievous glint in her eye. “What did he say?” she asked, still laughing.
“He’s sick at the moment, so I’ve been making his dinner for him and taking it over to his house on the other side of the island. He was just saying that he wanted steak with mac and cheese for dinner, which is really naughty because it’s not so easy to make.”
Her eyes widened. “I love steaks with mac and cheese.”
“Mmm, I know. So do I.”
“Can we have it for dinner, too?”
“Oh boy.”
So that was it. A quick trip to the store later, and Amie and I were in the kitchen with the necessary ingredients, making the dinner Sully had requested: steak with mac and cheese à la Amie.
Later, when I took over his food, Sully lifted the lid off his dinner and arched an eyebrow so reminiscent of Ronan that it took my breath away.
“Why, may I ask, is the mac and cheese green? And why is the steak…in the shape of a rabbit?”
“It’s not a rabbit. It’s a Velociraptor. You can’t tell because it’s not cooked yet. I didn’t want it getting tough on the way over here.”
Sully frowned some more, staring down at the food. “I’m sensing you had help preparing this meal.”
“I did. My sous chef is excellent. Five years old. Loves the color green, and dinosaurs. She’s very sorry you’re sick, and she hopes you get better soon.”
Sully leaned against the counter and sighed heavily, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is this some cheap ploy to get me to fall in love with my niece and nephew via the medium of food? Because it’s not going to happen. I’m impervious to cuteness.”
“I’m sure you are. I am sure you are, buddy.”
Over the next week, that didn’t stop me from enlisting Amie’s help with the rest of Sully’s meals. Monster Brains (clam chowder, with biscuits), Putrid Pot Pie (turkey and sweet corn—Amie didn’t like the corn.) Seasick Stew, which, according to Amie was meant to look like vomit. Thankfully, it looked more like another chicken casserole, but Sully still laughed.
My two or three hour-long visits to his place in the evening were becoming less and less stressful and more enjoyable with each passing day. Miracle upon miracle, the edge wore off Sully. It was an interesting thing to watch. He flirted like a fiend, and he was still sharp as a whip with his comebacks, but the hostility was gone. He would text me once or twice a day
, and surprisingly I would rarely want to kill him because of the contents. Rarely. There were still times when he sent something so barbaric and over-the-line that I considered telling him to go screw himself, but for the most part he was behaving himself.
On Friday, seven days after he came home from the medical center, I let myself into the lighthouse, and Sully handed me a mug of coffee. “Big and black, just how you like it,” he said, grinning.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I told him, taking the coffee and drinking deep.
Sully smirked, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Doesn’t it? I’ll let you think about that for a while. What terrible creation have we brought over with us today, then?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows at the box I had set down on the coffee table.
“Why don’t you come see?” I picked it back up again and went into the kitchen, searching for plates. Sully hobbled after me, still bracing himself, doing his best to minimize the pain from his ribs, which was still constant and grating.
“Damn it, woman. I’ve already had my workout for the day. I don’t need to chase you around the entire house, y’know.”
“You call showering and getting dressed a workout?”
“I do. And wiping my own ass. Do you have any idea how painful it is to twist and wipe right now?” He demonstrated for good measure, twisting his torso, and then yelped when his ribcage pinched.
“Serves you right.”
“Just open the damn food, Lang,” he grumbled, holding his hand to his chest, as if that would stop the pain.
I opened up the Tupperware and showed him what Amie and I had made just before I left the house. “This is her favorite meal,” I told him. “She said she wanted to make it for you so that you’d finally get better. I explained that broken ribs took a little longer to mend than a week, but she seemed fairly convinced this was going to do the trick.”