The Next To Last Mistake

by Jahn, Amalie

  “If you left me before I had the chance to leave you?”

  “Something like that,” he says with a sigh. “It wasn’t intentional. I guess I’ve been sorta messed up in my own head, thinking about not having you around. You’re the best part of my days.”

  I blink back tears I don’t realize are already spilling down my cheeks. His admission is true for me as well—something we’ve always taken for granted.

  “It’s only eighteen months, then we’ll both graduate and head to college together like we always planned. You and me. It’s not that long, right?”

  “It’s not that long,” he agrees. “But it’ll never be the same, not having you right next door.”

  His body is relaxed against mine, and I’m reminded of all the nights we spent together growing up, head to foot and back to back, me teasing him for his stinky feet and him making fun of my retainer. “Maybe someone better will move in here,” I laugh between sniffles. “Some Victoria’s Secret supermodel, schlepping around manure in waders and a thong.”

  He chuckles, too, and I imagine him smiling in the darkness. “As tempting as she sounds, I still wouldn’t willingly trade you for her.”

  There’s something unspoken in his words, a tiny invitation across a boundary we’ve never crossed. But I can’t cross it now. I won’t. There’s no reason to take something painful and make it complicated as well.

  “I should go to sleep,” I tell him. “We’re leaving after the morning milking, and I gotta be alert enough to drive.”

  He stirs under the covers and his warmth leaves my side. As he stands over me, silhouetted in the moonlight cascading through my window, I hear him sigh. Then, he leans down to place a kiss on my forehead like a father tucking in his child.

  “Bye,” I say.

  “Bye.”

  “Love ya.”

  “Love ya back.”

  And then he’s gone, back through the window out into the night. I assume, in the wake of our farewell, it’s going to take me hours to fall asleep, but the next thing I know my alarm is going off, and it’s time to slide the chessboard of my past life on to the shelf and begin another match.

  chapter 5

  Fayetteville or Bust

  Tuesday, January 1 – Wednesday, January 2

  Zander isn’t waiting for me on the porch or the end of the driveway as we head out. I don’t expect him to be, but part of me hopes I’ll have one more chance to wave goodbye. Apparently, he’s satisfied with our farewell from the night before, and I decide, as we pass his house, he’s probably smart to have stayed away. We both suck at goodbyes.

  Dad takes the lead as we travel the familiar roads out of town, but since his Ram 1500 has way more pick up than my Jetta, Ashley and I quickly lose sight of him once we hit the interstate.

  “You gotta keep up,” Ashley instructs from the passenger’s seat as she flips stations on the radio. “You don’t even know where we’re going.”

  “I have Google maps on my phone,” I tell her, nodding to where I’ve propped it on the dash. “And besides, Dad won’t leave us stranded.”

  “Wish he woulda left us,” she mumbles under her breath.

  This is about how the entire trip to Fayetteville goes, with me concentrating on keeping up with Dad through lane shifts, construction, backups, and detours, while Ashley makes disparaging remarks every fifteen minutes, like clockwork.

  “There’s not a single good radio station in Indiana.”

  “Why don’t you have a USB port in this car?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Ohio’s ugly.”

  “There’s a sign for Fayetteville! No, wait. Whose idea was it to put another Fayetteville in West Virginia?”

  “Pull over! This road’s too curvy. I’m gonna puke!”

  “Is this North Carolina? Where are the palm trees? I thought we were moving to the South. This is totally messed up.”

  By the time we arrive at the gated entrance to Fort Bragg on Wednesday afternoon, I’m pretty sure that if I have to spend another minute on the road with Ashley, someone is going to die.

  “Thank God!” she says as we spill out of the car, both of us stretching our arms above our heads to work out the kinks associated with eighteen hours of road travel. It’s warmer than home but not as summery as we were expecting. All the same, I’m happy to strip off my heavy coat and Ashley seems to be as well.

  “Wait here,” Dad calls to us from across the main entrance parking lot. Given the steady stream of civilians and soldiers flooding in and out of the building, I expect him to be gone for quite a while. Instead, he returns in less than five minutes with a pass for the dashboard of my car. “This will let your POV on base for now until you get an ID card next week. We’ll get TLE for a few nights and have been assigned a room with Army lodging until our permanent quarters are ready. We should get keys to our housing Friday or Monday sometime after my in-processing is complete.” He looks around then, taking it all in as if he’s come home to an old friend. “Things are a lot different from the last time I was here.”

  The perplexed look on Ashley’s face confirms she and I share the same bewilderment over Dad’s account of our situation. Peppered with an unintelligible smattering of military jargon, it’s almost as if he’s speaking a foreign language. “How about explaining all that again, only this time in English,” I say.

  Dad chuckles to himself, considering a broader explanation. “Your car is a POV. A personal operating vehicle. TLE is temporary housing, like a hotel. And in-processing means checking into my assigned unit,” he clarifies. “In fact, if I can still find my…”

  He’s stopped short by the sound of a bomb going off. Ashley and I jump into the air, nearly knocking each other down.

  Dad laughs. “Artillery fire,” he says. “You girls are gonna have to get used to it. They set off all the big stuff around here. Howitzers and mortars. Air defense. Lots of little artillery, too. SAW. 50 Caliber. AT4s.”

  “English, Dad,” I scold.

  “Weapons. Guns. Firearms.”

  “It sounds like a war zone,” Ashley says. “I miss the peace and quiet of the farm already.”

  I glare at her, but Dad seems unfazed. “Before you know it, it’ll be background noise, and you won’t even notice it anymore.” As another round of shots rings out, Ashley and I jump a second time. “Come on, you two. Let’s leave your car here for now, and I’ll show you around a little bit before it gets dark.”

  I’m not thrilled about the prospect of being back on the road, especially cramped into the front seat of Dad’s truck next to Ashley. Binge-watching the final season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix in the hotel sounds like a better idea, but Dad’s enthusiasm is infectious and before long I’m almost as excited as he is.

  “What’s over there?” I ask, pointing to a large building with an overflowing parking lot.

  “That’s AAFES and the PX,” he says quickly, before remembering my anacronym-free mandate. “Uh, it’s the grocery store and a place sorta like a Walmart but only for military people.”

  “Oh, great,” Ashley deadpans, “all my shopping needs in one convenient place.”

  I ignore her, noticing another building ahead. “Are we staying there? The Landmark Inn?”

  “No. We’re staying over at Moon Hall. There’s more temporary housing further on post.” We drive a couple of miles, and he points out a library and a golf course. “There are two 18-hole courses here on post. This one is Ryder and the other one is Stryker.”

  I can’t believe how big they are compared to our little 9-hole course in Iowa.

  We come to a traffic circle, and after a couple more turns he points out an ice rink, a gymnasium, and Womack Hospital.

  “It’s huge,” I say.

  “They treat a lot of people there,” he replies, taking a right-hand turn onto Normandy. “And Ashley, here’s where you’ll go to school for the rest of the year, Albritton Midd
le School.”

  From the truck’s center seat, Ashley cranes around me to look at her new school. Her eyes widen, and although she doesn’t mention it’s twice the size of my high school back home, I can tell she’s gobsmacked. Or maybe terrified. Either way, the moment passes quickly because before we’re even completely past, she’s already scowling again, arms folded across her chest.

  “My school’s not on base, right Dad?” I ask as we continue on Normandy. “It’s a public school.”

  “Right. Since there’s no DOD high school here on base for military kids, all the high schoolers go to M.A. Hopkins, a public school off post. If we get housing in Casablanca like I’m hoping, it won’t be too far of a drive for you to get there.” He leans around Ashley to look at me. “We’ll go there tomorrow or Friday at the latest so you can have a look around.”

  If Ashley’s middle school is any indication of the size of the schools around here, I don’t know how I’m going to navigate the building or the student body.

  I’m still worrying about school when Dad announces, “This is the 82nd Airborne area of post, where I’ll be stationed while we’re here.”

  The street is long and straight and would remind me of home if it weren’t for all the brigade headquarters and barracks lining both sides.

  “Here’s where I’ll be working,” he says as we pull in front of a rectangular, two-story cinderblock building. “313th MI Battalion.”

  There are soldiers everywhere, some marching in formation, some strolling along the sidewalk dressed in combat fatigues similar to the camouflage Zander wears hunting with his dad. Except for the hats, that is.

  “What’s with the red berets?” Ashley asks before I have a chance to comment.

  “They’re actually maroon,” Dad replies, “and they’re only worn by airborne divisions like the 82nd. The 75th Ranger Regiment wear tan ones and Special Forces wear green.”

  Still processing my dad’s seemingly endless supply of non-farming-related knowledge, we turn a corner and begin to double back on a parallel street. The first thing I spot is a billboard which reads:

  82nd Airborne Division Public Safety Message Center

  39 DAYS NO DIVISION FATALITY

  I read it a second time, certain it can’t seriously be tracking soldier deaths. Dad sees us reading the board and chuckles nervously under his breath.

  “I’d almost forgotten about that,” he says. “It’s, uh, supposed to give everyone an incentive to be safe because if the division goes 82 days without a fatality, everyone gets a day off.” He smiles as though this is perfectly normal, incentivizing the practice of staying alive.

  Before we’ve fully passed, I glance at the sign again and it hits me—my dad is putting his life in danger by simply being here. Because soldiers die. Apparently so often they need a billboard to keep track.

  My stomach lurches, and I’m furious with myself for having been so short-sighted. How could I have spent the last six weeks so focused on myself when my dad was getting ready to lay his life on the line for his country, the way one of his fellow soldiers did thirty-nine days ago?

  Oh my God. He could die. People die here.

  Dad clears his throat as we continue driving past the division headquarters and apparently feels the need to keep explaining, since both Ashley and I have fallen completely silent. “You gotta consider, with how many men and women from the division are serving both here on base and abroad, that’s still a pretty good success rate. I mean, you can die anywhere, right? Crossing the street. Choking on a hot dog. Jim Tucker died in that combine accident not too long ago, remember?”

  He’s trying to put us at ease. To help us feel safe in the face of truly mortal danger, but blaming fate doesn’t seem quite fair in this instance. It’s not that simple for me.

  “Oh, look! A bowling alley!” Ashley cries, having already moved on from the subject of our father’s possible demise. Apparently, it is that simple for her. “Can anyone go there or only soldiers?”

  “Everyone can go there, spouses and dependents too,” Dad says, clearly grateful for the change in conversation. “You and your friends can ride your bikes up here on Friday nights. They used to make the best cheesesteaks around.”

  The first time Dad took me bowling at Sidetracks back in Iowa, he helped me carry the shiny purple ball from the rack to the lane because I could barely carry it, even with two hands. He taught me to keep my wrist straight so the ball wouldn’t sail off into the gutter. He cheered the loudest the night I scored my first spare.

  “It’s got something like twenty-four lanes,” he continues, his voice thick with pride. “Way bigger than the one back home.”

  The moment he says it, I can tell he wishes he could take it back, because what was meant as a comment to highlight how much bigger and better these new lanes are, comes out instead as a jab at the life we left behind back in Iowa.

  We fall into silent contemplation as we continue our tour. Every building we pass illustrates how different our lives are about to become. There are no farms. No crops. No silos. No tractors.

  Just lots of soldiers and loud guns.

  We cross what appears to be an interstate, and Dad turns into a residential section. “This is Casablanca,” he tells us. “My first choice for our housing. We’ll have to take whatever they assign us, but there’s some availability in here.”

  A sidewalk runs parallel to the street and along tiny patches of green as far as I can see. The houses are practically on top of one another. Then I notice some actually are.

  “Are those supposed to be one house or two?” Ashley asks.

  “Two houses. They’re connected to save land. It’s called a duplex.”

  “Are we gonna have to live in one of those?”

  Dad speeds up, past the houses, as if he’s finally seeing the neighborhood through our eyes, how intrusive it all seems, and he’s embarrassed. “Maybe. I already told you, I don’t know for sure.”

  I stare out the window as we continue through the neighborhood. Each house looks exactly like the last: one brick rancher after another with fading shingles and a smattering of shrubbery beside the stoop. The grass, what little there is of it, is neatly trimmed inside the squares of yard, and each house has a concrete path leading to the front door. I try to imagine myself living in one of these houses, but it’s nearly impossible.

  Finally, I say to Dad, “It seems like a nice place.”

  “It is,” he says, reaching around Ashley to pat me on the shoulder. “And I think you’re both going to be surprised how much you’ll like it here if you give it a chance.”

  chapter 6

  M.A. Hopkins

  Friday, January 4

  Dad spends all of Thursday and most of Friday in-processing while Ashley and I hang out in our hotel room watching bad daytime television and eating a bunch of junk food he let us buy at the commissary. It’s fun for a while but by Friday afternoon, we’re at each other’s throats. Ashley’s scowl has returned because she can’t figure out why her friends haven’t texted her back all morning. When I remind her they’re in school, she repays my kindness by throwing a pillow at my head.

  “You always have an answer for everything,” she says. “You’re such a know-it-all.”

  Over the years, I’ve become immune to Ashley’s insults. Her words no longer sting the way they did when we were younger. As she rolls her eyes and grabs another Twizzlers from the bag, what upsets me more than her teasing is her initial reservation. Because while I do have an answer for why her friends aren’t texting her now, I have no idea why Zander didn’t return my texts last night.

  Bad reception? Too much farm work? Extra homework?

  Forgotten friend syndrome?

  I’m checking my phone for the hundredth time for a response when Dad breezes in, carrying an armful of fatigues and two pairs of combat boots. “Well, I’m finished,” he says tossing it all onto his bed. “Passed my physical. Signed into my unit. Even got all the patches sewn on my BD
Us.”

  I glare at him and he acknowledges his verbal transgression. “Battle dress uniforms. BDUs,” he says again, handing me a pair of camouflage pants.

  “Who cares about the clothes. What’d you do to your hair?” Ashley asks for the both of us. His curl-laden, shaggy mop of hair my mother’s constantly hounding him to cut is gone. Completely gone.

  “It’s called a high and tight. You like it?”

  Ashley makes a face. “It makes your forehead look really big. And your ears,” she adds.

  “The better to hear you with, my dear,” he teases, hurling himself across the room to tickle her.

  “Stop!” she screams, squealing with delight. “Your forehead is blinding me!”

  “Never,” he cries, tickling her even harder.

  Once the two of them settle down, and I’m able to look past his lack of hair, I ask, “So did we get our house?”

  “Yes,” he says, pushing himself onto his elbow so he can reach into his pocket for the key. “And it’s not a duplex. It’s a single-family home, so you should both be happy about that.”

  “In the neighborhood you showed us?” Ashley asks.

  “Yeah. Casablanca.”

  There’s visible relief on her face. She’s warming to the idea of being here, because the truth is, there are worse places to live than in one of the homes in Casablanca, even if it’s still not anywhere as good as the farm.

  “Can we go to the schools and see the house this afternoon?” I ask.

  “Yes, to both,” he says, hopping off the bed. “I was thinking we’d hit the house first, then the high school, and finish off at the middle school.”

  *

  Less than fifteen minutes later, we pull into the driveway of our new house. It’s a modest, brick, one-story with a quaint stoop and black shutters. There’s a carport big enough for one car and a large maple in the front yard.

  “This is it,” Dad says, stepping out of the car. “Come out and meet your new house, girls.”