by Matt Dean
Chapter 28
Ben ran along the Battery, the grayish brown of Charleston Harbor on his right, the brownish green of White Point Garden on his left. He turned west on Tradd Street and loped past houses of pink and gray stucco, fences of mottled brick, gates of hand-wrought iron. Somewhere to the north, a siren was blaring.
A drop of rain landed on the bridge of his nose. Another struck his cheek. A third hit the nape of his neck and rolled down his spine. Blinking, flinching, he turned north on Rutledge. At Broad, he hopped from foot to foot while he waited for traffic. The siren wailed louder and louder and abruptly ceased.
Sure, he thought, he could be an all-weather runner, humping through the streets come rain or shine or hundred-percent humidity. And it was good to get his heart pumping again. After the deep powdery dust of Helmand Province, running on stone flags and concrete slabs made his legs feel springy and strong. So his shirt’d get wet. So his shoes’d get muddy. He was a fucking marine. He was used to it.
Still, on the other hand, fuck that shit.
He crossed Broad. A sprinkle of rain, a half-hearted shower that was ending almost as it began, spattered the surface of Colonial Lake. The blocks flew by under his feet. His endorphin high was just kicking in. He was just beginning to feel as if he might never want to stop running.
At Montagu, he sprinted toward home. Someone was standing in the side yard. Skinny. Bearded. Pre-MARPAT cammies. Jimmy La Flamme. Ben pivoted on the ball of one foot and jogged up the driveway. Arms akimbo, La Flamme stood staring at the house as if it were a puzzle that needed solving.
“Shit,” La Flamme said, grinning. He stuck his hand out. “There you are.”
Ben wiped his palm on his shirt and shook La Flamme’s hand. “Sorry about the sweat.” He nodded toward the house. “No one home?”
“Rang the bell a couple of times. Peeked in and didn’t see anyone moving.”
“My dad and brother were here when I left.” Ben patted his pockets—except that he didn’t have any pockets. He sprang up the piazza steps and tried the door. Locked. Double-locked. “Fuck.”
La Flamme had followed him onto the piazza. “I take it there’s no spare hidden under a rock somewhere?”
Ben shook his head. Now that he’d quit moving, sweat streamed down his cheeks and the back of his neck. He mopped his face with the tail of his shirt, which hardly helped at all. He looked around, searching in vain for likely hiding places, as if he could fucking retcon a spare key into existence.
Wind shook the trees. All went quiet and still, and then after a moment’s pause came a steady drenching wash. Water sang in the downspouts.
“Welp,” La Flamme said. “I’m not going anywhere for the time being.” He fiddled with the collar of his shirt, where he’d somehow hidden a joint.
Ben stared at it. “You’re smoking that out here?”
As if by way of reply, La Flamme produced a lighter and fired up. “I’m white and it’s less than an ounce. Statistically speaking, I’m safe.”
“Dude. No. I mean this is my parents’ house.”
“So…you don’t want any?” La Flamme offered the joint.
“Didn’t say that.” Ben grinned and took a hit.
La Flamme dug around in his back pocket. “Almost forgot why I came.” He handed over a smallish Manila envelope, much crinkled and bulging at the bottom. “From your buddy Owens.”
“Evans,” Ben said.
“Evans. Sorry.” La Flamme sat down with his legs crossed at the ankle and his back propped against the door. “I told him I was coming through here and he asked me to bring it. He also says you should send him some Red Vines.”
“He gave you my address?”
La Flamme shook his head. “There’s only one Littlefield in the white pages. I took a shot. I thought I might see you last night. I was signing at Captain’s Comics.”
“Fuck,” Ben said. “Didn’t even know about it.”
“Aren’t you a little bit fucking curious?” La Flamme said, nodding toward the envelope.
Evans had sealed up the flap with two or three layers of packing tape. Ben tore open the ass end. A long, narrow strap of braided parachute cord dropped into his hand. Just about everybody aboard Dwyer, including Ben, had woven something or other out of paracord. A bracelet, usually—but this was no bracelet. It measured almost two feet. A nickel-plated O-ring had been woven into each end. He dangled the strap in the air for a moment, studied it, wound it around his fingers. “Sheet far,” he said.
Between tokes, La Flamme said, “He told me you’d know what it was for.”
Ben looked again into the envelope, hoping to find a note. No such luck. He kicked himself for thinking Evans would know how to spell his own name, much less write a letter. He crumpled the envelope into a tiny ball and flung it into the rainy yard. He’d just have to go get it again later, but for the moment it made him feel better to see it fly.
“The fuck is it?” La Flamme said. “A necklace?”
After weighing the thing in his hand and turning it over on itself, Ben understood. It was a collar, a slip collar for Mary. All the air went out of him. He slumped back against the porch railing. Now that he knew what it was, he knew even less what it was for. Was it a souvenir? A reproach? A piece of mourning jewelry? He pulled the strapping through one of the rings and held up the collar for La Flamme to see.
Nodding, La Flamme licked his fingers and pinched the head of the joint until it went dead. He spirited it away to wherever he’d gotten it from. “He told me about the dog. What’s his name again? Evans?”
“Yeah, Evans.” Ben sniffed the paracord. It smelled like nothing, least of all like dog. Mary had never worn the thing. Ben could get his head through the opening with room to spare. He put it on. “What did he tell you about her?”
“Just that she died in the line of duty. I mean, that’s what he said. ‘Line of duty.’ He didn’t go into detail. He did show me where you buried her.”
They’d brought her back to camp, hoping a corpsman could do something for her, but somewhere along the way she’d stopped breathing. The two of them, Evans and Littlefield, had dug a grave for her outside the HESCOs, where she’d never be trod on or uncovered by accident. Someday the Marines would leave, and the Afghan National Army would take control of the camp. It wouldn’t be right to leave her there under the feet of strangers, beneath the marching grounds of men who’d never seen her or heard her name, who’d mistake her bones for a wild animal’s.
Ben peered into the house through the sidelight. He could just make out the shape of his mother’s urn sitting on the console table. There’d been no discussion at all, not a word, but everyone—Ben included—had assumed he’d be the one to handle the remains. He hadn’t minded. It was fitting enough. He was used to the solemnity of it. He had his own private rituals and superstitions for handling the dead.
Held in the hands, the urn seemed to weigh nothing at all. Ten or fifteen pounds—far less than the smallest kettlebells in Dwyer’s outdoor gym. How did a hundred-odd-pound woman burn down to ten or fifteen pounds of ash?
Dumb question. Dumb fucking question. The body could turn out to be as illusory as the soul. He’d seen it first-hand. On one of his earliest recoveries, he and Baker had had to go into a Humvee with dental spoons and Q-tips. An IED blast had liquefied everyone inside. Three men—six hundred pounds or more of adult male—had been reduced to a scum of rust-colored gelatin.
Dirt and goo. That’s all anyone amounted to, in the end. Mary. Mama. All those guys he’d put in steel coffins. His private rituals and superstitions were no help at all, no protection whatsoever from suffering or grief.
He yanked on the collar around his neck. He wanted to smash something. He wanted to batter the door down, kick the console table to splinters, crush that fucking black marble urn with his naked hands. Once he got into the house, he’d finish the work his dad had started and strip the bathroom down to the studs, using his fingernails and teeth if ne
cessary. If he could go back in time, back to that spot among the spindle trees, he’d beat the ever-loving fuck out of that old Afghan. If he were Superman, he’d punch the earth out of its orbit.
La Flamme had gotten to his feet. He said, “Did you hear me?”
“Fuck. What?” Ben ran his hands through his sweaty hair. His heart was pounding harder now that it had during his run. “No. What?”
“Said I was sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“‘Cause I gave you shit about that dog. I thought you were pulling my chain, no pun intended. Cadaver dog? Sounded like you made it up.”
“Dude, you apologize a lot.”
La Flamme smiled, a little awkwardly, and backed up about half a step. “Do I?”
“You’re kind of an idol of mine,” Ben said. “I know I missed your signing, but don’t think it’s because I don’t love your comics, ‘cause I do, man. I do.”
“Th-thanks?” La Flamme said.
“It’s weird to hear you apologize for shit all the fuckin’ time. I mean, you actually fuckin’ apologized for Terrorstan. Dude, you can’t apologize for Terrorstan. That’s like Frank Miller apologizing for Sin City.”
“It’s not Sin City,” La Flamme said weakly. “I mean, thanks, but—”
“Don’t apologize for your shit. Own it.”
Raising his hands as if in surrender, La Flamme backed up another step and said, “Fuck, dude. If you’re this aggressive after smoking weed…”
Ben hunkered down and bounced on the balls of his feet. He took a couple of deep breaths and touched the rings of Mary’s collar. “My mom died,” he said. “I’m off the map here. I never lost anyone before.”
“Well, there was the dog.”
If that was supposed to be a joke, Ben thought, he’d kill La Flamme in hot blood, right where he stood. But when he looked up and scanned the other man’s face for signs of irony or mischief, he found none. The opposite, in fact. La Flamme looked like a man about to lead a graveside prayer.
“My mom and I are close,” La Flamme said. “It’d be the hardest thing in the world, losing her.”
“Let me tell you about my mother,” Ben said. He sank to the floor and sat with his arms resting on his knees. “I never got to be an Eagle Scout.”
La Flamme sat facing him. “Because of your mother.”
“My project was fostering puppies, doing basic obedience stuff till they were ready to be trained as hearing ear dogs. My dog was named Bozo. I got some other guys to do it, too, you know, for the leadership part of it, but I guess maybe—” He kneaded the back of his neck. “I must be a shitty leader, ‘cause they all fuckin’ bailed on me.”
“Sucks.”
“I could’ve maybe squeaked by anyway, except Bozo took a shit in the house. If you knew my mother, man—” He shook his head. “Straight to the fucking pound. And that was the end of my project.”
“Well, fuck.”
“Mama then decided the Boy Scouts are a paramilitary organization and homophobic to boot, so I shouldn’t participate. So I quit scouting and joined the Marines.”
“Let me understand this,” La Flamme said. He licked his lips. “You enlisted…in wartime…passive-aggressively?”
Ben shrugged.
Shaking his head, La Flamme said, “Man, I think I get why you told me that story, but I’m on your mom’s side. The BSA is a paramilitary organization and homophobic to boot.”
The rain had let up. Ben got to his feet. “Come help me with something.”
He led the way through the squishy side yard to the narrow front lawn. La Flamme was slow to follow. When he finally caught up, he looked flustered, like a bird that had had its feathers ruffled.
“What are we doing?” he said.
“I need a boost.”
“A boost?”
“The only window in the house that doesn’t have a lock is that one.” Ben pointed to his bedroom window on the second floor. “Just give me a boost. I’ll come down and unlock the door.”
La Flamme laughed until his laugh broke up into coughing.
“What?” Ben said.
“This is not going to work, dude.”
“Have a heart.” Ben plucked at his sweat-damp shirt. “I’m kind of freezing out here.”
“It’s not about heart.” La Flamme nodded toward the piazza. “That’s a metal roof. There’s nothing to hold on to.”
“I used to climb in and out when I was in high school. There was a tree.” Ben waved toward the spot halfway between the house and the fence where an oak had once stood—not that there was any sign of it now, other than a broad shallow dip in the middle of the lawn. “I just need to get some height, that’s all.”
La Flamme gave a shrug and a sad shake of the head. They positioned themselves under the piazza roof. In the downpour, the leaf-choked gutters had overflowed, and the spill had churned up a marshy bog along the front of the house. There wasn’t a particularly firm place to stand. La Flamme braced himself with one foot on the best ground he could find and the other buttressed against the piazza’s foundation. He locked his fingers together and crouched over. An awkward pose—so awkward that Ben nearly decided to abandon his plan. But he was cold. More than anything in the world, he wanted a change of clothes and a hot cup of coffee.
Ben braced the toe of one foot against the piazza railing. He tucked the heel of the opposite foot into the slot La Flamme had made with his hands. He reached up and grabbed hold of the gutter. He pulled himself up, and La Flamme boosted him.
All at once, Ben found himself mostly airborne. His flight lasted for no more than a second or two, and then his chest thumped hard against the rim of the gutter. He scrabbled at the rain-slick surface of the piazza roof, but just as La Flamme had predicted, there was nothing there, no handhold. He slid backward and down, his legs pinwheeling in the air, his nails scraping the metal roof. He grabbed for the gutter, but the gutter came loose in a shower of water and rotting leaves. When he landed, it was with a thud, but with La Flamme to break his fall.
Hugging his bruised ribs, moaning, panting, Ben rolled away into the soupy lawn. La Flamme was bleeding from the nose and mouth, and the blood-smeared white thing he had in his hand appeared to be a tooth, but he was cackling like a fool, a motherfucking fool.