The Patriot Paradox

by William Esmont

  He looked both ways, goosed the throttle, and darted into traffic. He had seen a sign for the airport on the way into town, so he backtracked until he found it again. Only four kilometers. Not bad.

  It took only a few minutes to reach the airport, but the trip was the typical Peruvian obstacle course of deathtrap taxis hurtling over rutted roads. He wouldn’t miss that aspect of South America. Not one bit.

  He pulled into the lot in front of the airport and glanced around. The sun was dipping low behind the western mountains, and long shadows reached across the asphalt. For a brief moment, he reflected on the cocoon in which he had existed for the past months. He had managed to leave the outside world behind, existing solely for the moment, whether it was climbing a mountain pass or getting to the next town without hitting a cow.

  Mike is dead. He shook his head, still not sure what to make of the news. He and Mike had grown up together. His brother, four years older, had been there for him at every turn. Hell, his first girlfriend was the little sister of one of his brother’s friends.

  A tear came to his eye, snaking down his dusty cheek and splashing on his jacket collar. He pulled off his helmet then removed his gloves, placing them inside the helmet.

  He went to the rear of the bike and unfastened his saddlebags, setting them on the ground beside the bike. He took a quick inventory of his belongings. His bike looked naked now, unloved and forlorn. It had the usual nicks and dings that were part of any long voyage, but aside from the gadgets bolted directly to the bike, it could have been anyone’s machine. He turned, picked up his gear, and headed for the terminal.

  He stopped at the door and scanned the room. There was only one thing left to do. No, there was something else. He surveyed the late afternoon crowd, looking from face to face, making quick mental calculations about who was about to have a lucky day. He settled on a man about his size lounging beside a newspaper stand and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He looked American, or maybe European, and appeared to be in his early twenties.

  Kurt walked over to him. “Hola.”

  The man sized him up and nodded in response.

  “Look,” Kurt continued, “I have to leave the country. Out in the parking lot there’s a BMW motorcycle. It’s yellow.”

  The man eyed him with suspicion, still not speaking.

  “Take good care of her.” Kurt tossed the keys to the guy, who snatched them from the air.

  “Are you kidding, mate?” New Zealand.

  “No. It’s legit. Something came up. I have to leave.”

  “I don’t understand—” the man started, flustered.

  “Oh yeah, you’ll need this.” Kurt fished around in the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted the title to the motorcycle. He flipped it over on the newsstand counter and grabbed a pen from the counter. Yanking the cap off with his teeth, he signed the document with a quick flourish, leaving the buyer’s name blank. It would be up to the Kiwi to fill it in. Kurt put the cap back on the pen and pushed the paper across the counter.

  The man stared, mouth agape. A smile blossomed on his face as he realized Kurt’s offer was legitimate.

  “Enjoy her. She’s been good to me,” Kurt said.

  “Thanks, man!”

  A young woman with a backpack strolled up carrying two liter-sized bottles of water.

  “What’s going on, Ben?” she asked. Kurt liked her accent. It sounded like she said ‘Bin.’

  “This bloke just gave me his bike!” the Kiwi said with a stupid grin.

  “You’re kidding.” She turned to Kurt with a suspicious look.

  He smiled. “Yep.”

  Ben couldn’t stop grinning. “It is. He gave me the title and everything!”

  “Can we give you anything?” she asked incredulously. “I mean—”

  Kurt waved her off. “Don’t worry about it.” He turned and started towards the Delta ticket counter, leaving the Kiwis to enjoy their newfound vehicle.

  “Buenas tardes,” he said to the ticket agent.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” she replied in mellifluous English. “How can I help you today?”

  “I need a one way ticket to Washington, DC.” He slid his passport and American Express gold card across the counter. “As soon as possible.” She took the card and held his stare for a long, uncomfortable moment before turning to her computer.

  Five minutes later, he strolled through the security stalls. His panniers were traveling as luggage; all he carried was the small backpack he normally kept attached to his gas tank. His flight left in three hours, going first through Miami, and from there, to Dulles International, outside of Washington.

  Looking around the boarding lounge, Kurt scoped out a comfortable-looking seat near his gate.

  Home.

  Five

  Kurt awoke as the packed Boeing 757 banked hard to the right. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was. Then it all came back in a rush. An airplane. Going home.

  He stretched, contorting his lanky frame in a futile effort to get his blood flowing. Opening the shade on his right, he pressed his face against the scuffed Lexan and peered out. Thick, sodden clouds enveloped the jet. Fat water rivulets streaked the window, crawling across the glass in convoluted streams. He snapped the window shade shut.

  The cabin bell chimed, and a flight attendant came on the intercom, informing the passengers that they were beginning their final approach. Seatbelts secure. Tray tables upright. All of that.

  Kurt had been asleep since shortly after lifting off from Miami, the stress of Mike’s death serving as a potent sedative. He didn’t feel refreshed, though. If anything, he felt a numbing sense of dread as his past and his future raced toward each other on a collision course.

  Thirty minutes later, he was on the ground, elbowing his way through the crowds to reach the baggage carousel. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t help but be reminded of the last time he had been here, at this same carousel, meeting his wife and daughter. Amelia and Heidi. Kurt squeezed his hands tight, nails digging into his palms, cutting bloody half-moons. It helped.

  Like Mike, they were gone, cut down by a speeding ambulance eleven months earlier. He squeezed harder. He felt himself slipping, starting to tumble into the well of despair he had so carefully avoided for the past four months. He gave himself a hard mental slap, an openhanded blow to the mind, and the memories went scurrying back into the dark corners of his conscience where they belonged. He wasn’t ready to think about them. Not yet.

  He had spoken with his mother during his Miami layover, calling to inform her of his travel plans. Why he hadn’t called her from Peru, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter now. He was almost home.

  The doors leading to the exterior of the airport whooshed open as he approached, his tank bag slung over his shoulder, and a pannier in each hand. The humidity assaulted him like an unwanted lover, pasting a thick sheen of sweat on every inch of exposed skin. He stopped and shed his dirt- and oil-encrusted leather jacket and stuffed it into one of his panniers. Picking up his luggage again, he made his way towards the taxi line. There were only two people in front of him, and at least ten taxis waiting for fares.

  A late model yellow Crown Vic pulled up, and a slender Ethiopian man jumped from the driver’s seat to help him load his gear. Kurt waved him off. “Thanks, I’ve got it.”

  “Are you sure?” the cabbie asked in a singsong voice.

  “Uh huh.” He took a step toward the trunk. The driver was persistent, holding the trunk open as Kurt dumped in his panniers.

  “Where to?” the driver asked, as he slid behind the wheel.

  “Forty-five Quail Court. Fairfax.”

  Kurt put his head back and closed his eyes, hoping the cabbie wasn’t the talkative type. The cab lurched out of the pickup lane with a squeal and merged into the maelstrom of northern Virginia traffic.

  The eyes-closed trick must have worked because the cabbie didn’t say a word. The next thing Kurt knew, they were parked in front of his house,
idling. “Keep the change,” he muttered, slipping the man two twenties to cover the thirty-dollar fare.

  “Of course. Have a good day, sir.”

  Standing three stories tall, the old brick building stared back at him with empty eyes. It had been four months since he had last set foot in the place, four months during which he had made every effort possible to forget about it and everything it represented. With a sigh, Kurt grabbed his bags and lumbered up the short sidewalk to the front door. There was a moldering pile of Washington Posts on the right side of the porch. The freshest paper bore a date a month after his exodus.

  He held up his key and stared at it, watching the sunlight bounce off the small brass talisman of his former existence. It was the same key he had used at least twice a day for the three years he, Amelia, and Heidi had lived here, the same key that had been stashed out of sight in the bottom of his tank bag as he fled south.

  The key sank into the lock as if no time had passed. Kurt took a deep breath and steeled himself for what was next.

  After Amelia and Heidi had died, the promise of the trip was his only lifeline, the only thing that kept him moving forward. In the deep of the night, when loneliness clawed at his heart, the trip was the only thing that prevented him from eating a bullet and joining his wife and daughter in oblivion.

  In a practiced motion, Kurt twisted the key and put his shoulder to the door. It swung open easily, revealing the sunny entryway of a thousand days of happiness and one terrible day of sorrow. He stepped through and inhaled. The house smelled much as he had left it, maybe a little mustier. A jumbled pile of old mail sat on a table beside the door—magazines for Amelia, business correspondence for him. In addition, peeking out from the bottom was what appeared to be an unopened birthday card for Heidi.

  Kurt dropped his bag, threw his keys on the table, then kicked the door closed with his heel. He cocked his head and listened. Silence. No, not quite. The air conditioner hummed from somewhere on the other side of the house.

  He made his way into the living room, where he sank into the leather couch in the darkest corner. He didn’t bother with the lights; there was still plenty coming in through the glass doors on the opposite side of the room.

  He put his feet up on the coffee table and pulled out his mobile phone. He had purposefully not called his mother upon arrival. He knew she would only make things more complicated by demanding to see him right away. He didn’t need that. This homecoming had to happen on his terms, or it couldn’t happen at all.

  He thumbed the phone on and watched it gather a signal. As soon as it finished synchronizing with the network, he dialed his parents.

  His mother picked up on the second ring. “Kurt?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Are you home? I tracked your flight and saw that it landed over an hour ago. Where are you?”

  “Yes. I’m at home.” Sweat poured from his brow despite the air conditioning.

  His mother let out a long sigh. “How are you?”

  He glanced around the room. “I’m okay.”

  “Are you sure, honey?”

  Kurt rubbed his right eye, halting a stray tear in its tracks. “I’m fine. I need to do this.”

  “Kurt, your father wants a word.”

  He heard it in her voice. Things were not good between Kurt and his father. They never had been. His mom had served as the buffer between him and the old man as his life had fallen apart. She had been the only person to encourage him to take his trip, to leave everything behind, while his father had tried to act as if nothing had happened.

  Kurt knew he couldn’t avoid his father forever. “Okay. Put him on.”

  “Just a second.” He heard a soft clunk and pictured her placing the phone on the table, the one beside the green sitting room armchair; the sound was followed by the click of her heels as she left the room. She would never stoop so low as to call through the house.

  “Son?”

  “Yeah. Hey, Dad.”

  “Thanks for coming…” There was a long pause. His dad coughed, cleared his throat, and continued. “Since your brother died…”

  This is ridiculous, Kurt thought. He had to end this, to put his father out of his misery. “I know, Dad. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the funeral. We can talk then.” He had intended to talk to his dad, to clear the air. As the last surviving Vetter son, an enormous responsibility was now on his shoulders; it was a responsibility Kurt wasn’t quite sure he wanted.

  His father seemed surprised by the rebuke. “Right. Tomorrow. Do you want to speak to your mother again?”

  “No. This is enough for tonight.”

  “Okay. And Kurt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you. Always remember that. I always have.” For the first time in as long as Kurt could remember, his father sounded genuine.

  “I know, Dad. I know,” he responded.

  The line went dead. He envisioned his father on the other end. He understood his pain. “Your children weren’t supposed to die before you,” and all of that bullshit his shrink had said after the accident. He knew more about loss than any one man should ever have to know.

  Kurt thumbed off the phone and shoved it back in his pocket. He shifted his feet to the couch and stretched his body the full length, the rich leather crunching and crinkling as he made himself comfortable.

  It was eight o’clock. Only another hour or so of daylight remained. Already, shadows were slinking across the room, disguising the familiar shapes of his old life in dusky cloaks of black and gray. What he didn’t know, and couldn’t possibly fathom, was what was waiting for him on the other side of this experience. The one thing he knew for sure was that there would be a lot more pain before things got better.

  He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, finally succumbing to the cozy embrace of the couch and the familiar surroundings.

  Six

  Kurt sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His face was greasy, and his hair was a tangled nest of road grime, salt, sweat, and maybe even a few bugs. He needed a shower, and he needed it now.

  Pushing himself from the couch, finding his way by memory alone, he stumbled up the dark stairs to the master bedroom. He stopped at the doorway and leaned against the jamb for a second, taking it in. Light from a nearby street lamp cast a soft glow through the room. Someone had made the bed and cleaned up, probably his mother, maybe Mike. Whoever it was, they had done a good job. The room had never looked this clean when he and Amelia had lived here.

  The bathroom was on the far side of the room. Kurt made his way across, ignoring the family portrait on the nightstand, focusing on the shower. His palm found the switch, and he squinted as the lights flickered on. His clothes went into the hamper beside the door. He held his fingers under the shower faucet and dialed the hot water almost to scalding.

  He stepped into the shower and closed his eyes. Almost losing his balance, he reached for the walls to steady himself. For a terrifying moment, he thought he was going to collapse. Counting backward from ten, he forced himself to relax, just as his shrink had taught him. By the time he reached two, the world had stopped gyrating. The images of his former life dissolved into the clouds of steam billowing around him. With renewed vigor, he raced through the rest of his shower, scrubbing away the last remnants of his trip.

  Five minutes later, his beard was trimmed to a more respectable length, and his unruly sideburns were gone. He promised himself he would pay a visit to the barber as soon as he dealt with Mike’s funeral. For now though, his long hair would have to suffice. He pulled it back in a ponytail, holding it in place with a stray rubber band from the medicine cabinet. Good enough.

  Turning, he headed into the bedroom to find some clean clothes. The room was enormous, with two walk-in closets and a king-sized bed. The closet on the left, the one with the door cracked open, was his. He was tempted to peek inside Amelia’s closet, to see if her scent lingered, and found himself taking an involuntary step in that direction. He
stopped. No.

  He went to his closet instead, grabbing a pair of boxer briefs from a drawer on the left. As he pulled them on, he realized how much weight he had lost. The briefs hung loose on his hips, threatening to slide down his legs. From a shelf halfway up, Kurt pulled out a pair of olive green cargo shorts. Next were a navy blue web belt and a t-shirt.

  Exiting the closet, he padded out of the bedroom and down the stairs, passing by Heidi’s door without a glance. In the foyer, he cracked open one of his aluminum panniers and pulled out his favorite pair of sandals. Made from recycled automobile tires, they were the most comfortable shoes he owned.

  “Hello, old friends,” he whispered as he slipped them on.

  He turned and made his way into the kitchen. Coffee. Grabbing his French press, he loaded it with sugar and fresh grounds, then filled the kettle and set it to boil.

  The water finished boiling, but as he was about to pour it into the press, there was a sharp knock at the front door. He glanced at the clock over the microwave and cursed. Who’s knocking on my door at this hour?

  He poured the water in, gave the coffee a quick stir, set the lid on the press, and then hurried down the hall. Through the frosted window to the right of the door, Kurt made out the distorted image of a man. He opened the door to a FedEx delivery man.

  “Kurt Vetter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sign here,” the driver said, handing him a small electronic device and a plastic stylus.

  Kurt scribbled his name in the small window at the top and handed it back.

  “Thanks.” The man gave him an envelope, then turned and jogged back to his truck. Kurt inspected the label on the package. The only indication of the sender’s identity was a long string of digits.