Just One Thing

by Holly Jacobs

  I tried to picture laid-back Sam in the military, but I just couldn’t manage it. Tall, with loads of dark hair and a killer smile. This was not the kind of man who fought in wars.

  “I joined the army in the wave of patriotism that swept the country after 9/11,” he continued. “I believed we were going to stop Al-Qaeda; we were going to find Osama bin Laden and make him pay.

  “What I found was Afghanistan. Colder than I imagined. And the dust. I don’t think I’ll ever really get rid of the feel of that grit coating my body.

  “I was part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

  “Six months after I got there, there was a bomb . . .”

  Things were fuzzy.

  Sam Corner couldn’t make sense of the strange shapes and noises.

  It was the smell that finally started to clear his head.

  Antiseptic. Strong.

  It reminded him of visiting his grandfather in the hospital.

  And that’s when he formed his first real thought. I am in a hospital.

  He slept after that. Sometime later, he awoke and didn’t need to think in order to remember that he was in a hospital, but he did need to decide why.

  As he concentrated, a rush of pain enveloped him.

  That’s when he realized that everything hurt.

  Everything.

  But most especially, his right leg.

  A nurse came in. He was relieved to discover he thought she was cute.

  That was a good sign.

  “You’re awake. I’ll go get the doctor.”

  He waited for a tall, greying male doctor and instead got a cuter-than-the-nurse, blond pixie of a doctor. “I’m Dr. Lynne. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me.” His voice sounded rusty to his own ears, but it worked.

  “There was a bomb . . .” She talked about broken bones and shrapnel. Whatever surgery they’d done had been a success.

  She talked and talked, and he tuned her out by focusing on one small blond curl that bobbed up and down as she spoke.

  “How long?” he asked and when she didn’t answer immediately, he repeated, “How long until I can go back?”

  “Lieutenant, you’re not going back.”

  “I bet I’ll buzz when I go through airport security now,” he said with a small laugh, as if to lighten the story.

  Thinking about Sam in pain hurt me. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “Hey, I came home in one piece. It might be a broken and screwed back together piece, but I’m here. Not everyone in my unit came back. But I did. I came home and bought the bar. And I’m here.”

  He said the words as if he needed to reassure himself that he was indeed here.

  I understood that.

  I reached across the bar and took his hand in mine. For the first time, I saw the scars traveling up under the sleeve of his denim shirt. I squeezed his hand and said, “Thank you.”

  There was nothing left to say after that other than, “See you next week.”

  I left the bar and walked home.

  It was later than usual. Dusk had long since turned into true night.

  Usually, the moon provided enough light to illuminate the road if I walked home later than normal, but tonight, it was barely a sliver in the sky.

  I was almost home when I heard a rustling in the woods to my right.

  I stopped.

  In northwestern Pennsylvania, there aren’t many things that can eat you. We have some bears, and there are bobcats and fox, but none of them attacked people often. Unless they were rabid.

  More rustling. I stood on the berm, almost in the ditch that edged the dirt road for rain runoff.

  I stood as still as I could and waited.

  Then they came out.

  A doe and three fawns.

  I knew that deer had twins frequently, but I’d never heard of triplets. But there they were. So close I could have tossed a pebble and hit them.

  I wasn’t sure if the wind was blowing just right and they didn’t catch a whiff of my scent, or if they knew I’d never hurt them. But whichever it was, the four of them daintily leapt over the ditch and walked across the road.

  And I stood and marveled.

  Sometimes, you find yourself inadvertently in the dark. But I’d discovered that if you stopped fighting against it and just stood still, sometimes something marvelous comes along.

  Making a tapestry differs from traditional weaving. There is no uninterrupted pattern. Instead, pictures are carved out of the warp and weft threads. Most tapestry pieces are planned to the most minuscule detail.

  My piece was not traditional, mainly because other than the barest of how-tos, I didn’t know much about weaving. I’d started what I thought was going to be a small blanket, more of a throw. Five foot by seven foot, a dusky blue.

  I read a book about tapestry and decided to experiment. I’d woven about half a foot of my throw, and stopped and added a picture of the quad on the campus where I’d first met Lee. A swath of green with a brown bench. I tied the edges of the picture to the main piece and would stitch them together when the piece was done. Then, I made our garage, where the kids had climbed whenever I wasn’t looking.

  Each picture was about one foot by one foot. I decided to do a row of three. I added a picture of my father, with me on his shoulders.

  Framing in the individual pictures was a traditional weave, done in that same blue I’d started with.

  The next row started with my mom standing in the water with a dog licking her face. She was laughing. Then, I did a picture of the barn and the picnic blanket.

  I’d spent the week working on the deer and her three fawns. A reminder to myself that even in the darkest places there was beauty. This was by far the most involved picture. I worked until my eyes felt rough with grit and my shoulders ached from hunching over. I’d wanted to finish the square before leaving tonight for the bar and I did . . . barely.

  I covered the loom and the project, then called Angus. “Here, Angus. Supper.”

  Angus wasn’t as smart as Bernie had been, but he knew the word supper. He woke up and stretched. He liked to sleep on the time-dimpled old couch I kept in the barn.

  “Supper,” I tried again.

  His tail wagged lazily. I realized that Angus was getting old and I rubbed the ratty hair on his head.

  After he’d eaten, I let him outside, then waited until he’d come back in and settled on the couch before I headed to my Monday night date.

  “One thing.” Sam slid me my Killian’s.

  “One thing,” I echoed. I hadn’t planned what I was going to say tonight. And I was surprised when the words “Gracie got sick when she was fifteen” came out of my mouth.

  Lexie was putting away laundry.

  Her friend Lucy made her kids put their own laundry away, but Lexie had found that if she did that, the clean clothes sat in piles wherever she left them and the kids just worked out of them. So, she put the laundry away herself in order to save what little of her sanity was left.

  Having three teens all at once was more than any woman should cope with, especially given she was teaching art at the high school and dealing with the teens there all day as well. That was simply way too many hormones in her life.

  She glanced out the back window as she tucked Gracie’s underwear into the proper drawer and saw her two beautiful daughters splayed flat on the garage roof. Conner was down on the ground, looking around . . . she assumed for them.

  She’d thought they’d long since outgrown the garage roof nonsense. Seriously, they were in their teens—supposedly well on their way to adulthood.

  She put the half-emptied basket on Gracie’s bed and stormed down the stairs.

  “All right, you heathens,” she hollered. “Down, now.”

  “They’re on the roof?” Conner gave a bellow of outrage. “You two are dead,” he screamed as he started to run toward the back of the garage. That’s where the small peach tree they used as a ladder stood.
r />   “That’s far enough.” Lexie took him by the back of the collar and walked back there. “What did they do?”

  “They were spying on me.” His brotherly frustration was apparent not only in his tone, but in his ramrod-stiff spine and fisted hands.

  “What were you doing that their spying would upset you this much?”

  “I—”

  A long, tanned leg came over the edge of the garage roof and stepped onto the big tree branch.

  Connie looked down at her. “Mom, he said he was gonna kill us.”

  “Yeah, I am,” he said, confirming Connie’s statement.

  “No, you’re not,” Lexie assured him.

  She turned to Connie. “He’s not,” she told her daughter. “But who do you think you should fear more? Your brother, or me?” Lexie tried out her best mom-glare. To be honest, most of the time, she knew she wasn’t overly scary, but today she must have managed it because Connie looked nervous.

  Connie jumped from the tree. “Mom, he was talking to his girrrllllfriend.” She drew the word out and it set Conner off. He charged, but Lexie still had his collar so he didn’t go far.

  “Gracie Ann McCain, you get down here, now. And you two, just stand there and be quiet.”

  Gracie’s right leg came over the edge of the garage, her left one followed, the leg of her pants was hiked up as she wiggled down and her calf was exposed. A huge, purplish-green bruise stood starkly against her skin.

  “Gracie, what did you do now?” Lexie asked. All her kids were accident-prone. And even now, she took one or another to the doctor’s for the minor injuries, and on more than one occasion to the ER. Just last month Conner had been chasing after Connie for some other outrage. He’d been wearing socks and had barreled into the corner of the doorway, practically knocking himself out. She’d loaded him into the car and headed for the emergency room for stitches for the long cut on his forehead even as he’d insisted, “Duct tape and superglue, Mom. That’s all I need.”

  She could barely see his scar, but Gracie’s bruise stood stark on her leg.

  “It’s that same one,” she said as she slithered the rest of the way down the tree and landed on the ground next to her sister.

  “The same one from a couple weeks ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lexie had noticed it on one of the last hot days of summer. Gracie had had on a pair of shorts and the bruise was so big and ugly-looking it was impossible to miss.

  She’d wanted to take her to the doctor’s, but Lee had teased her about being an overprotective mom. He’d told Lexie over and over again that kids get bruises.

  “You two.” She pointed to Connie and Conner. “In your rooms and stay there. Don’t touch or do anything. Just sit on your beds as if you were five-year-olds in time-out. That’s how you’re acting—like five-year-olds. It’s time you realized that you are sixteen and way too old for this nonsense. And you”—she pointed to Gracie—“get in the car.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to the doctor’s.”

  I couldn’t finish my beer. I just pushed back the stool and left, walking as fast as I could, tears streaming down my face.

  I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have started this particular one-thing. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for it.

  “Lexie.” It was Sam. I didn’t have to look. Even if I hadn’t recognized his voice, I’d have known it was him.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, walking faster. It was almost a run.

  “Lexie, stop.”

  I turned and Sam was hurrying toward me. He was limping. I’d never noticed he had a limp behind the bar. But now, he was coming toward me as quickly as he could and that limp was evident.

  I waited at the side of the road until he reached me. He stood close enough to touch, but came no farther. “Lexie, what happened to Gracie?”

  “I don’t like it when you ask questions.”

  “I know. So, I don’t do it often. But this one needs to be asked. What happened to Gracie?”

  “Not yet,” I said. I knew that story needed to be told, but I couldn’t yet.

  Sam understood and just nodded.

  My fists were balled, every muscle in my body taut. I wanted to hit someone, something.

  And then, Sam just opened his arms and engulfed me.

  Standing at the side of that tarred and chipped road, he held me, and slowly my hands relaxed.

  He smelled exactly how I’d have said Sam should smell. There was a faint whiff of beer. Maybe the hops. Cinnamon. There was a definite scent of cinnamon. Laundry soap.

  He crooned words that I couldn’t quite make out because his voice was a whisper, but I knew their meaning. It was fine. I was fine. He was here.

  “You’re angry.” Those words I could make out. It was a statement. It was Sam’s way of saying he understood.

  I nodded against his chest.

  “I get that. You didn’t ask, but here’s my one-thing . . . When I woke up in the hospital, I was furious. Furious at everything and everyone. My mom came every day and took the brunt of that anger. And one day, she looked at me and said, ‘I only had one child, but I lost him to the war. You’ve changed. You’re no longer the boy I knew. What we both have to figure out is who you’re going to change into.’ It took me a long while to figure out who I’d become. If I’m honest, I don’t think I’ve got the whole picture of who yet.”

  He released me enough that he could look at me. “Who did you change into, Lexie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I read this book once that said we meet the people we need to meet when we’re ready for them. Maybe that’s why we met. To try and help each other figure out who we are now.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. It would be nice to think that things happen for a reason. That people come and go in our lives with purpose. Maybe there would be some comfort if I started to believe that. But I couldn’t think about it anymore that night.

  As if sensing that, Sam said, “I’m going to walk you home tonight.”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore.” It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to; I couldn’t. I couldn’t force another word out.

  There was no room for any more words—not tonight.

  “That’s fine,” Sam said. “We’ll just walk along together, quietly.”

  So, for the first time, Sam walked me home. It was a long walk, but true to his word, he didn’t say anything. Neither did I. He held my hand as we walked. His limp wasn’t quite as pronounced at the more sedate pace.

  We turned down my long, dark drive that had been tucked between the old pine trees and the field. The pines had all died now, and slowly they been replaced by hardwood trees. I couldn’t believe how big those trees had gotten. Though it was so dark I couldn’t see them, I knew that they towered over where the pines had once stood.

  Sam wouldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. Here, hidden beneath all the trees, I’d found some measure of comfort.

  “Who’s watching the bar?” I asked. My voice felt out of place in the dark.

  “Jerry.”

  “You know, you may have no beer left when you get back there.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but it fell flat.

  “It would be worth it. You’re worth it.”

  And on that note, he turned and walked back up the driveway toward the street and as he walked away, I realized something—one thing—Sam Corner had become something more than just a Monday-night friend.

  I stayed close to the barn that week, working on my project. I only walked away from the loom when Angus made it clear I had to.

  There was no subtlety to the dog. He’d simply grab on to any piece of my clothing he could and pull.

  So, I walked and fed him when he made me. I slept when my eyes grew so bleary I couldn’t see straight.

  But otherwise, I worked.

  I did a few more rows of uninterrupted weaving. And fingered through my wool, looking for an i
nspiration.

  I pulled up a skein of black wool.

  Now, most hand-dyed wool I’ve seen tends to produce blacks that are on the greyer end of the color spectrum. But this was a beautiful piece. As black as black could be. And I knew what to make.

  When I got to the bar on Monday, Sam gave me my glass and said, “One thing.”

  I knew he thought I was going to talk about Gracie’s illness, but I just couldn’t yet. So, I copped out and said, “When I was five, I wanted a horse for my birthday . . .”

  Lexie Morrow wanted a horse. She asked her father for a pony for her fifth birthday. Her sixth. Her seventh. She was in fourth grade when she finally realized she wasn’t going to get a pony any more than she was going to get a dog.

  It was the fall of her eighth-grade year when her parents took her to Cook Forest State Park and her mother took her on a trail ride. Lexie had never been on a horse and she was so excited that she could barely contain herself.

  “Can I pick which one I want to ride, Mom?” she asked as they drove up to the stable.

  Her mother turned around and nodded. “Yes, I’m sure you can,” she paused a moment and added, “and you also may.”

  Lexie felt chagrined. Her mother was a champion of proper English and hated it when she said can instead of may. “Sorry.”

  Her father parked the car and Lexie was out the door and hurrying to the horses that were tied up along the front of the split-rail fence.

  Her mother came up beside her. “So, which one?”

  There was no one else at the stable. It was late in the season. The man said they were moving the horses to their winter stable the next week, so this was probably the horses’ last trail ride of the year.

  She looked through the choices. The muddy white one. The bay. But it was the giant black horse that caught her eye. “That one.”

  “Are you sure?” her mother and the stableman asked at the same time.

  “I’m sure.” Lexie listened intently as the guide talked about safety. How to get on and off a horse. The fact that these horses were trained to follow one another. Even non-skilled riders would be okay.

  Her mom got on her horse all by herself, but the stableman helped Lexie on. She didn’t care. She’d made it. She was sitting on a horse and about to go on a ride. This was what she’d always dreamed of.