The president set his coffee back down on the counter and wiped his hands on his greasy jeans, still looking at Ollie. “Am I in your spot?”
“No,” Ollie said. He moved toward the empty stool, not sitting on it, and said, “I’ll just take a coffee.”
“You want that to go?” Ruby asked, seeing that he wasn’t sitting down.
The rest of the men in the diner were watching him, wondering if he’d leave them alone with the newcomers. “No,” Ollie said, looking at the narrow distance between his stool and the biker. His holster and gun were going to be right under the man’s arm, close enough to grab, and even easier to lean down on, making it impossible for the gun to be drawn if needed. “Of course not. I’m sure these gentlemen won’t mind if I sit next to them.”
“Not in the slightest, sir,” the president said, inching over in his stool so Ollie could sit.
Ollie laid his right hand over the handle of his revolver and the holster strap, keeping it secured, and used his left hand to pick up the coffee mug Ruby set down in front of him. “You boys on your way somewhere?” he said.
“Just taking in the sights,” the president replied.
“Afraid there’s not much to be seen around here,” Ollie said, looking at him.
The man extended his hand. “I didn’t catch your name, Chief.”
Ollie looked at the offered hand, still keeping his own over his gun. “I apologize, friend, but I caught some poison ivy, and you don’t want it.”
“Hell of a thing, catching poison ivy in February, ain’t it?”
“Hell of a thing,” Ollie agreed. He set his coffee down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I’m Chief Rein, but mostly everyone calls me Ollie.”
The man smiled, his teeth sharp and misshapen. “Pleased to meet you, Ollie. Everyone calls me Wombat.”
Ollie saw the rest of them were wearing US Army patches on the front of their vests, alongside American flags, some of them upside down, and their arms were heavily inked with wartime tattoos. “Were all you boys overseas?”
“That’s right,” Wombat said, and the others nodded. “How about you?”
“I was there from ’67 to ‘69,” Ollie said.
“You don’t say. Army? Whereabouts? Hell, we might know each other and not even realize it.”
“I doubt it,” Ollie said.
“Why’s that? Were you some kind of hotshot?”
“No. I was at Long Binh. Command staff support,” Ollie said. The men were all looking at him. “I was basically a secretary.”
Wombat was the first to snicker, which set off a chain of laughter from the rest of the bikers, until they were doubled over, holding their stomachs. “I’m sorry,” Wombat said, shielding his mouth with his hand, still laughing. “Ollie, it’s good to meet you, man. We gotta get going.” He turned in his stool and waved for the others to follow. Some left behind only half-eaten meals. The bald one reached into his vest pocket and threw down a fifty-dollar bill, telling Ruby to keep the change. As they walked behind him, Ollie kept his hand on his gun, not taking it away until the roar of their motorcycles was in the distance.
* * *
The last bell rang and the school doors burst open, releasing a flood of children into the parking lot. Little Ritchie’s cackle could be heard over all the other voices, a slobbering hyena’s laugh, when he snatched a girl’s schoolbag and hurled it into the street. The boys he hung around all laughed with him, surrounding the taller, muscular form of Fred Eubanks, who leaned against a signpost, watching.
Fred hadn’t gone to that elementary school in three years, but on occasion he came by to pick up his brother. Now he watched the little girl race into the street and bend over to pick up the schoolbag, the hem of her dress coming up just beneath her panties, and then watched her hurry off. He reached down and adjusted himself through his jeans, watching the rest of the smaller kids going wide around his posse.
A fourth-grader in a bright orange traffic vest raised a metal whistle to his lips and blew, holding up his hand, making all of the kids stop at the edge of the sidewalk and look both ways.
J.D. tapped Adam on the arm and pointed away from the buses. “Let’s go this way.”
“Our bus is right here,” Adam said.
“We can walk home.”
“It’s too cold.”
“Come on,” J.D. said, pulling his friend’s arm.
Adam refused, the fabric of his jacket sliding free of J.D.’s hand as he pulled his arm back. “What’s wrong with you?”
J.D. looked at Fred Eubanks and the rest of the boys, standing near the buses, and said, “I just feel like walking today.”
Adam took out his inhaler, gave it a shake, and stuck it in his mouth. He pressed the button, took a good look at the woods where J.D. wanted to go, then back at the bus, and said, “I’m getting on the bus.”
The traffic safety kid blew his whistle again. J.D. watched Adam head into the crowd lining up for the bus but hung back, keeping his eyes on the Eubanks brothers and the other kids around them. No one had noticed him yet. He turned to go around the buses, toward the trees, when someone leapt in front of him, blocking his path. Hope Pugh’s hands were outstretched, her cheeks red with cold, and curls of her long red hair spilled down over her face from the butterfly barrettes on top of her head that could not contain their mass. “Where are you going? Buses are that way,” she said.
“I’m not taking the bus today,” J.D. said, adjusting his schoolbag strap.
“How come?”
When he didn’t answer, she turned. Her eyes narrowed on Fred Eubanks. “What’s he doing here?” she said.
“You know him?” J.D. said.
Hope didn’t have time to answer. Little Ritchie had seen Adam coming up through the crowd and shrieked, “It’s the Four-Eyed Freak!” He leapt forward and snatched the inhaler from Adam’s hands, holding it up like a trophy. He pressed it to his mouth and staggered around, sputtering and choking, pretending to take a huge dose of it, making the others laugh.
Adam grabbed for the inhaler, but watched in dismay as it was tossed to someone else in the crowd. He tried to catch it when it was thrown again, but it was useless. He was too slow for them. Too bogged down by his schoolbag. Too uncoordinated. He leapt and swept with his arms, shouting for them to give it back, but his cries were drowned out by their laughter. They kept laughing, even as his face turned purple, and he started to wheeze.
Little Ritchie jiggled the inhaler, holding it high in the air as Adam sank to his knees, clutching his chest. “If you can reach it, you can have it,” he said. He never saw what was coming.
J.D. Rein raced up through the crowd, sidestepping onlookers and breaking through their lines, rushing the group of boys who were standing with their backs turned. He raced up behind Little Ritchie, swinging his schoolbag in a wide arc aimed square at the side of the laughing boy’s head.
It hit with the sound of a baseball bat against a metal mailbox. The plastic pencil case inside the schoolbag cracked, backed by several dense and hardbound textbooks, against Little Ritchie’s unprotected temple and cheek. The force of it sent him sprawling across the sidewalk, leaving him clutching his face, writhing on the ground.
J.D. picked up the inhaler and handed it to Adam, then helped him guide it into his mouth so he could take a deep blast from it. “You okay?” J.D. said.
“I’m good.” Adam panted, readying himself for another quick dose.
Both of them looked up as the kids around them backed away. As the crowd parted, they could see what was coming toward them. A seething hulk in the form of Fred Eubanks. His eyes glowered. The veins on the side of his neck were tight as steel cords. Both of his hands were clenched into fists as he stepped over his brother’s squirming form. “You’re gonna die, Piss Face.”
J.D. leapt up, swinging his schoolbag as hard as he could, the last assault of the slingshot toward the towering Goliath. Eubanks threw up his left arm as it swung, knocking it away and int
o the crowd. J.D. backed up. He had nowhere to run. They’d been encircled by kids, who’d abandoned their lines waiting for the buses and come to watch him get his teeth knocked out. Or worse, the life choked out of him.
He had no doubt he was going to die. Eubanks was going to throw him to the ground in some kind of expert choke hold and start squeezing. The rest of the kids were going to think J.D. was faking it. Or that he was knocked out. He was going to die on the sidewalk, kicking and scraping his new sneakers on the cement, unable to breathe, and by the time anyone realized it, it would be too late. Adam grabbed him by the hand and pulled himself up.
“Run,” J.D. said, nudging him. “Get to the bus.”
Adam pulled out his inhaler and took another deep drag. He puffed out his chest, ingesting as much of the medicine as he could, then stuffed it back in his pocket and said, “No way.”
“You should have listened to Piss Face,” Eubanks said. He snatched Adam by the shirt collar, twisting it in his hand until the seams ripped. J.D. latched onto the massive arm with both of his hands, trying to pull it away. Eubanks swung his free arm, clubbing J.D. across the back and upper shoulders. J.D. cried out at each blow but wouldn’t let go. Adam kicked Eubanks in the side, his gray Velcro sneakers little more than swiping against the larger boy’s coat, screaming for someone to help.
Someone was helping. Everything was a blur of panic and struggle, and J.D. felt someone collide against him, landing wrapped around the upper torso of Fred Eubanks.
J.D. twisted his head around in time to see Hope Pugh, latched onto Eubanks like a monkey, one hand clutching the side of his face and the other digging through her coat pocket, coming up with a piece of glinting metal, dangling from a chain. He watched Hope thrust the tip of the traffic safety whistle into the larger boy’s ear and blow as hard as she could.
Eubanks screeched in agony. High-pitched pain. Not the little kid kind with blubbering tears. The kind of disturbing pain that made everyone’s blood freeze. He dropped to his knees, clutching the side of his head.
“What did you do?” J.D. cried.
“Let’s go,” Hope said, pulling J.D. by his arm. “Come on.”
She ran toward the crowd of kids, hurled the whistle back at the terrified-looking fourth-grade traffic safety director she’d taken it from, then looked back at J.D. and Adam. They hadn’t moved. Adults were coming from the buses then, and even a few running up from the school. “We have to go!” she shouted.
* * *
The fire within the brick chimney in Hope’s backyard warmed them, but Adam shivered anyway. He kept his hands stuffed in his pockets, teeth chattering, as Hope set a steaming mug of hot chocolate on the blanket in front of him and another in front of J.D. Hope and Adam picked up their mugs and blew on them, making steam rise into the cold air. “Are the two of you nuts?” J.D. said.
Both looked at him, their mouths still perched around their mugs.
“You are gonna die,” J.D. said, pointing at Adam. “That maniac lives right down the street from you. He is going to come to your house and mess you up.” He turned to Hope, “He’s probably going to get you too. What were you thinking?
She sipped her hot chocolate and said, “I was thinking you needed help. He was going to kill you.”
“Exactly,” J.D. said. “A nice, easy death. Not the long, slow, painful one that he has planned for me now.”
“This is really good hot chocolate,” Adam said.
J.D. smacked him on the arm. “Are you listening to me?”
“Oh, stop,” Hope said, rolling her eyes. “He won’t do anything. He’s just a big bully.”
J.D. picked up his hot chocolate but felt too sick to drink it. “Well, you can’t walk home,” he said to Adam. “You’ll have to call your parents to come pick you up.”
“From your house? Is your dad home?”
“We’ll have to check,” J.D. said.
“You can call from my house.” Hope sighed. “Why are you boys so dramatic about everything?”
They sat, listening to the woods all around them. A distant branch fell, sending an animal skittering across a patch of wet leaves. “Why did he keep calling you Piss Face?” Adam asked.
J.D. felt his cheeks burn hot. He raised the mug close to cover his face and said, “I don’t know. He was just being a jerk.”
Over the steam, he could see Hope staring at him. She knew. She said nothing. The wind rose, making the fire flicker inside its chimney housing. Hope moved away from it, coming up beside J.D. The two of them stared at the fire, sitting so close their arms and legs were pressed together. He could smell her. The back of her hand touched the back of his hand, and neither of them pulled away.
CHAPTER 12
The rolling wave of orange flame was taller than the forest of trees it consumed. Its fire engulfed their lush foliage, turning it into black smoke. Ben Rein tried to scream, but the heat had sucked all of the oxygen out of the air and he was left gasping. The stench of the burning jungle was all over him. Smoke and charred flesh and the chemical smell that would linger for days after the bombs dropped.
He ran as fast as he could, diving for the nearest muddy trench and digging his way through the thick reeds covering its entrance. He clawed the earth like a desperate, wild dog. The flames licked his feet, melting the soles of his boots to his flesh. All around him men were screaming, some in English, some in Vietnamese. It didn’t matter what language you spoke or what country you came from or what color you skin was when the world caught on fire. Burn enough of a man away and everything becomes the same.
The ground gave way beneath him and he tumbled through the hole, landing hard in the muddy pit below. He smacked his head when he landed, and everything was spinning. The field was on fire above him, and the flames were seeking a way inside the hole after him. He staggered to his feet and ran blind into the darkness, racing down tunnels, taking whatever turn he came to, splashing through piles of rotting food and human waste, until he tripped over a pile of blankets spread across the floor. He stopped to catch his breath, pressing his face against the cool, earthen wall. He could hear someone talking.
“ó là cái gì?”
He sunk down against the wall, holding his breath. No, he thought. This isn’t right. There wasn’t anyone in this tunnel. He felt something wet grab his arm and refused to look. He could smell the blood smeared across the hand gripping him, like the taste of copper inside his mouth. “Ben?” the hoarse voice whispering in the darkness, the hand refusing to let him go.
Ben clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head.
“They took my eyes, Ben,” the voice said in his ear, the stench of rotting flesh overwhelming. “I wouldn’t tell them where you were, and they cut out my fucking eyes!”
“Ben?” Ollie Rein said, knocking on the door, pressing his face against the screen door. “You awake?”
Ben blinked, seeing the television set in front of him, two long rabbit ear antennas sticking out of it. He saw the TV Guides and newspapers scattered across the coffee table and the empty bottles set on top of them. The morning sun was streaming through the house’s front windows, glinting off the glass rims and curves of each bottle. He looked at his own front door, trying to make sense of it.
“Open up,” Ollie said. “It’s your brother.”
Ben closed his eyes and groaned, pressing his hands against the sides of his head. “What do you want?”
“Get dressed. We gotta take a ride.”
“Where?”
“The beer store,” Ollie said. “The owner filed a complaint and wants to press charges. We need to go down there and apologize and find a way to make some kind of payment arrangement. Let’s go.”
Ben closed his eyes and covered them with his fists. “Fuck off.”
“Okay,” Ollie said, resting his arm against the door frame. “Have it your way. Hope you don’t like the taste of beer, though. That’s the only store that sells it for twenty miles, and if they press charges, you ain’t go
ing back in there anytime soon.” When Ben didn’t move, Ollie said, “It’s supposed to get warmer soon. Perfect weather for sitting outside, cracking open a cold one. I got this cooler and freezer packs that we can use, put a whole case of beer inside and make it so cold they’ll all be just about frozen. So cold the cans’ll hurt your hand when you take them out. That’s only if you like the taste of beer, though. I’m not sure if you do or not. Course, if you like the taste of ice-cold beer, I suggest we can go apologize to the man. Maybe we can even grab a six-pack while we’re there.”
Ollie watched through the door as his brother rolled off the couch and stumbled toward his bedroom to get dressed.
* * *
Ben slumped in the front passenger seat, covering his face from the sun. The police radio cackled, making him wince. Ollie turned it off and rolled his window down, preferring the cold, crisp air blowing across his face to the stale alcohol sweat seeping through his brother’s pores. Ben’s olive drab army jacket was faded gray and worn out at the elbows. It smelled like old car motor oil. Ollie’s patrol car was going to smell like that for a while now too, he thought.
He peered at the parking lot in front of the beer store, instinctively hitting his turn signal, when his foot stamped the brake. Ben slammed against the dashboard, hollering, but Ollie barked at him to be quiet. Five motorcycles were lined up in front of the store. One of them was blocking the entrance. “What the fuck,” Ollie muttered, turning the wheel and rolling the car into the lot. He put it in park and let himself out, looking back at Ben to say, “Just stay here a minute. I’ll be out in a little while.”
Ben was crumpled in his seat, arms wrapped tight around his chest, like he was trying to pull himself inside of himself.
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