by JD Ruskin
I stayed standing behind the couch, keeping it and the table like a protective barrier between us.
“What’s the matter?” Something was definitely wrong, but was it with my aunt or my uncle?
“Sit down, okay?” Jesse asked. He still wasn’t looking at me, but Sarah had a quivery look on her face like someone had died.
I knew who it was. “What’s happened to Dane?”
Sarah winced.
“Jesse, damn it, tell me right now. Where is he?”
My brother swiped his jaw with his hand and then rested it on Sarah’s back.
“He’s in Afghanistan.”
“Not funny.”
Jesse sighed and picked some imaginary fuzz off his knee.
“That phone call Dane mentioned the night he left? It was one of our former Ranger commanders. The guy has a private security company now, working all over the world. He called Dane about some high-level rescue job in Afghanistan, and Dane left.”
“Rescuing who?”
“Josh, sit down.”
“Rescuing who?” My voice was loud, and the room seemed small. “For how long? He didn’t re-enlist, did he?”
Jesse got up and took a few steps around the room. “No, he didn’t re-enlist. It’s a private job. And he didn’t tell me what it was specifically. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the five humanitarian aid workers the news reports say are missing from Kandahar, but I’m not sure.”
“Why the hell isn’t the Army rescuing them?”
“They’re not Americans, according to the news.”
“Why’s anyone rescuing them?”
“Because al-Qaeda has them.”
“How dangerous is it? When’s he coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you hide things from me. How’d you find out about this anyway? Did he call you?”
“He did, but he didn’t say much. And I’m not trying to hide things from you, Josh. I’m telling you all I know. He went straight to Seattle, where the company’s based. They made their plans there. He’s been out of country for two days. He called me just before he left, and then to say he’d arrived. That’s all, honest, Josh.”
“Why the hell did he do that?”
“Please sit down, Josh.”
I looked at Sarah. She was clasping and unclasping her hands. Jesse came up alongside me and tentatively took my arm. I let him steer me to the couch.
When I sat down, he sat next to me. He hunched over, his elbows on his knees, and stared at his clasped hands.
“I don’t think it was the money—though he was offered a lot. He… I think it was because….” Jesse turned to me. “He was really sorry about things, Josh. I’m really sorry about things.”
He looked at me at last, deep sorrow in his eyes.
“Oh, no. No. He couldn’t be sorry and go back there. How could you let him do that? I can’t believe you let him go.”
“I think he needed to prove something to himself after what happened here,” Jesse said slowly. “With his PTSD, and you and Hurricane. To show you he could save somebody, to prove to himself he’s not damaged, not weak.”
“I didn’t think that.” I was suddenly infuriated, at my brother, I guess, because I couldn’t let myself be mad at Dane. “And you of all people should know that that PTSD shit doesn’t matter to me.”
“It matters to him, Josh. You’ve got to understand that about him. He’s proud of his ability to handle any circumstances, and he hasn’t managed that here. He cares about people who can’t protect themselves, and he’ll fight for them and for the people he cares about. It’s how we measure our worth.”
He looked up at Sarah, like he was making sure he had his words right.
“He doesn’t care about me then… or he wouldn’t have done this.”
I started shaking. I was trying so hard to keep the anger and fear in, to keep Jesse from seeing.
“Josh, that’s not true.” He was quiet again before continuing. “I think he loves you.”
His voice broke as he said it, and I looked into his face. He was staring at the floor, his lower lip quivering.
He looked up at Sarah again, and I followed his gaze. She gave him a tiny smile, her eyes shining with encouragement and love. I’d have liked to have someone look at me like that. Jesse nodded at her and turned to me again.
“Josh, I love you too, and I’ve made a bunch of mistakes.” He rushed on to get all the words out. “Everything I’ve done since Hanson told everybody. I’ve done it all wrong. If I hadn’t been so mad about your not telling me sooner… No, that’s not right. It’s not your fault, Josh, it’s mine. It’s mine. And I was wrong.”
I saw deep shame in his eyes. “If I hadn’t reacted how I did to your being gay, Dane might have felt he could tell you he cared about you, that he could tell me about himself. Shit, that he could stay. I am so sorry, Josh. When I realized Dane was gay, I knew I didn’t care. He was still Dane, the Army buddy who saved my life, who was like a big brother to me.”
He looked at me now like he was asking for something.
“And I realized I shouldn’t care that my little brother was gay either.” He swallowed hard and glanced at Sarah again before looking back down at his feet.
“Please forgive me, Josh.”
I stared at him. I didn’t know how to say what I felt. I touched his shoulder. When he looked at me again, I nodded. He nodded back, his lips in a tight line, his eyes blinking hard.
“What are his chances… of coming home?”
My brother glanced at the ceiling and around the room, then stared at his feet again.
“Tough,” he said quietly. “They think the aid workers are hidden in Pakistan now, in a mountain valley that’s hard to reach and harder to get out of.”
“Oh, God.” I was suddenly very, very cold.
I felt strong arms wrap around me as Jesse pulled me into his chest. Then Sarah was on my other side, holding me too, and rubbing my back.
“I know, little brother. I know.”
They held me together like that for a long time, none of us talking. I managed not to cry, but I shook some. Finally, Sarah broke the stillness.
“Why don’t you stay with us tonight?”
“Nah, I don’t want to cramp you guys.” I gave her a smile, small but real, and stood up. “I’ll be okay, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
I looked at my brother. “Thanks for telling me, Jesse.”
He nodded and stood up. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” I walked them to the door. “Tomorrow,” I promised as I let them out.
They walked arm in arm back to Jesse’s, glancing back my way once. Then they went inside his house and shut the door.
I left all the lights in the living room on and went searching for where I’d finally hid Dane’s jacket when I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I put it on and slipped out my back door.
It was cold and dark. I pulled Dane’s coat tighter around me and walked awhile through the back pasture.
Away from the lights of the house, I stopped and looked up. No moon. Just a billion stars and the edge of the Milky Way in the sky. I knew it was sometime close to noon in Afghanistan. There’d been a time when I always knew what time it was in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Where was Dane, and what was he doing? The memory of our last times together popped into my mind one after another fast, like popcorn in a too-hot popper. Dane fucking me so deep I felt he’d be there forever. Me calling him a coward as he walked away.
Now he might die. Would that horrible minute be his last memory of me? Pain that was nearly physical made me stumble. I hugged my stomach and dropped to my knees.
“Moron,” I whispered to the sky. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want anyone to know how angry I was. I had to keep it inside. If it leaked out, it might hurt Dane.
“What were you thinking? You didn’t have to prove anything to me.” I rocked back and forth. “All you had to do
was care. Why couldn’t you care about me? Jesse is wrong. You don’t love me. If you did, you wouldn’t have done this. Oh God, Dane, please come back.”
I knew I wouldn’t get an answer, just like I knew he wouldn’t come back here. But if he didn’t return anywhere at all….
I stopped that thought, but it crept back again and again, leaving me colder each time it did. Something inside me went numb altogether. That was a good thing, I decided.
I WAS up early the next morning. Or maybe I never slept. I went to the corral to take care of Sugarpie and Hector and to walk Hurricane through his physical therapy routine.
Today, it was therapy for me too, moving slowly around the corral, paying attention to nothing but Hurricane’s gait, breathing, and reactions.
“Hey, I thought you might like some coffee.” Sarah stepped inside the corral with two thermos mugs.
I grabbed one as Hurricane and I went by. “Thanks.”
“He’s looking real good.”
“He’s going to have a big depression in his neck. But Hanson could have done a lot worse.”
“I hear Mel Evans has left town,” she said.
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. A lot of people figure that means Hanson was behind everything, and they’re kind of shunning him. He’s lost some business.”
I nodded. It was all the justice I would get, so I should have been pleased. Maybe I would have been yesterday. Today, it really didn’t matter. I had said that before, when Hurricane was first shot. Now I really knew. What happened to Ray Hanson didn’t matter. And I couldn’t do a damn thing to affect what really did matter.
“What you thinking about?” Sarah called as Hurricane and I made another turn around the corral.
“When did Dane call Jesse?”
“Yesterday.”
She pulled a peppermint out of her pocket. Hurricane sniffed the air, turned, and headed right for her and stopped, waiting. She held it out to him and rubbed his nose as he chomped it.
“I knew I could get you to stop,” she said to him.
“When does he expect to hear from Dane again?”
Sarah frowned. “Dane didn’t say when he’d call again. He doesn’t. Jesse told you everything Dane told him, and everything he could figure out between the lines.”
“But he knew Dane was leaving before Dane told me.”
“He knew Dane had gotten that call—that’s a fine distinction, Josh,” Sarah said carefully. “I know because I asked Jesse these same questions, believe me. Jesse didn’t know what Dane was going to do, and he did ask Dane to stay.”
“But Dane didn’t want to.” I nudged Hurricane to start walking again.
It was as simple as that. Once I was outed, we were through. I should just accept he wasn’t coming back, whether he survived the mission or not. God, it hurt to think that. I knew I’d never get the images of him and my feelings for him out of my mind.
Was Guy feeling as bad as I was? Is this what I’d done to him? Crap, I really deserved what was happening to me if that was so. But that didn’t mean Dane deserved to be hurt or killed.
And Dane. Was he glad to be rid of me? Was being with me really so horrible that going back to Afghanistan was an improvement?
“Josh? Josh!”
I looked up. Sarah was walking toward me, her phone to her ear.
“Jesse says we’re to head for the big house for lunch when you’re through, and he wants to know when that might be.”
I shrugged. “Another fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him and wait for you.”
Great. Lunch with everybody. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. But I couldn’t do that to Jesse. He’d sincerely apologized yesterday, and I had to make sure he didn’t doubt that I accepted it. And Uncle Karl and Aunt Kate. They were really standing by me, even though it was costing them. I should show them I was grateful.
Hurricane and I finished his therapy, and I turned him out to pasture. Jesse was standing by Sarah when I got back.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“This is gonna be tough.”
“Yeah.”
The three of us headed for the big house, Jesse holding Sarah’s hand. I wished I had someone to hold mine.
When we walked into the kitchen, Aunt Kate wrapped her arms around me. “We just have to believe he’s going to come back to us, Josh,” she said at last.
I nodded. Still, I didn’t think that numb part inside me would allow me to believe that.
“Will you set the table?”
I did, but I was just going through the motions. Lunch was the same, and not just for me. A dark cloud seemed to hang over the whole table. No one talked until Jesse came up with a ridiculous plan for Sarah and me to help him check cattle.
“Isn’t that what you have hired help for?”
“Gave them the day off,” he told me.
“Sorry, I have to grade papers,” Sarah said.
“Josh, you have to help me then.”
So we climbed in his truck after we finished eating and headed for the pastures.
“God, I never realized until now what it was like for you guys, always worrying and waiting to hear from me when I was in the Rangers,” he said. “It was a lot easier being over there.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t see how anybody stands it.”
“Yeah.”
He parked the truck and turned toward me. “Josh, I wish I could figure a way to make it up—”
“Jesse, it’s okay. I understand, really. And I wish I hadn’t been afraid to tell you that Sarah and I weren’t ever going to get married. I could have done that.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. I’m the one who drew the conclusion. How could you know, really, what I wanted? We never talked about it, and I wasn’t always sure myself.”
“You’re sure now?”
“I really am. I’ll treat her right, Josh.”
“I know you will.”
He was still for a few minutes, thinking.
“Josh, it’s okay for you to get mad at me. I won’t disappear or die.”
I huffed and pointed my finger at him. “See? I knew this was going to be a problem if you and Sarah got together. You’d talk about me.”
“Hey, Sarah didn’t say anything.”
I glared at him, and he held up his hands in mock surrender. “All right, but only because I asked,” he said. “And give me some credit. I half figured it out all on my own.”
“That’s crap, and you know it.” I looked him straight in the eye. “Or else falling in love is making you sensitive. You’d better be worried about that.”
He slugged me. I grinned and he did, too, and we got out of the truck and walked through the herd, reviewing each animal, pointing out details to each other, and stopping for a hands-on inspection now and then. This was the way things had been with us before. It was good to be doing this again.
After we climbed back in the truck, I got up the nerve to ask the question that had been on my mind since he’d told me about the phone call. “When do you think he’ll call again?”
“He didn’t say, but I think he will before they launch the mission.”
I nodded. “When?”
Jesse shook his head. “That’s the hard one. Weather is getting iffy there. They’re headed into winter, same as us. They’ll want a dark night. It’s a couple weeks before there’s no moon again. But it’s not clear they’ve got the best intel yet, or that they feel comfortable with the plan or their practice runs.”
He started up the truck.
“Do you want to go out tonight, Josh? Maybe we take Sarah dancing to forget for a while?”
I thought a bit before answering. “I don’t think so. I know you’ll think I’m a coward, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be up for going to Cunningham’s again.”
“I don’t think you’re a coward. Not at all, Josh. I mean that. And I didn’t
mean Cunningham’s. I haven’t been back since that night. Won’t go until or unless you go. Sarah and I agree on that.”
“You don’t have to on account of me.”
Jesse put his hand on my shoulder. “We want to do that for you, Josh. We are both one hundred percent behind you.”
“Thanks.”
Checking the cattle killed a couple of hours. Then Jesse went off to check on some equipment, and I headed for the big barn. I lost myself there for a few hours, checking on animals, tack, and feed supplies.
We all had dinner together, and Jesse, Sarah, and I did cleanup. A long, restless night loomed for us all. We joined Aunt Kate and Uncle Karl in the family room. They each sat in their favorite recliner chair. He was watching TV, and she was knitting.
Sarah and Jesse sat down on the couch, and I took a spot on the floor, leaning against an ottoman.
“With all of you here, I want to bring up an idea I have for next summer,” Aunt Kate said, looking up from her knitting. It was some big blue thing, probably a prayer shawl for church. She was always knitting them. I didn’t understand how praying and big knit blankets went together, but she claimed they helped people. Then again, if she could tell me one would help bring Dane back to me, I knew I wouldn’t hesitate to wear one all day every day.
Uncle Karl hit the mute button on the remote and turned toward her, an amused look on his face. “An idea for next summer?” he repeated. “Do tell, Kate.”
“Brace yourself,” my brother whispered to Sarah.
Aunt Kate shot him the killer look. Then she smiled and put down her knitting needles.
“I’ve been reading a lot on PFLAG….”
“Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays,” Sarah supplied for Jesse.
He glared at me. “Thanks a lot,” he mouthed. But he was smiling.
This was so like my aunt. Gay pride was going to be her new crusade because one of us was affected. Heck, she was still big into sending letters and packages to soldiers overseas. She had been since Jesse’s first deployment. Why hadn’t I realized long ago that she would react this way?
I thought back on Sarah’s challenge to give my family more credit and glanced at her. She smiled at me like she had read my mind.