by Meg Gardiner
Wyoming leaned forward, chin first. ‘‘Are you saved?’’
Oh, crap, Sammy thought. Then Chenille tried to take Wyoming’s arm. He pulled away and walked off, shaking his head.
Sammy watched them go out of the corner of his eye. Why did the nutcases always turn up when he was by himself? Holding his breath against the stink, he turned off the faucets and waited to see if the sink would drain.
Outside the men’s room, Paxton and Chenille were lagging behind Wyoming. Paxton said, ‘‘I told you this stunt with the cops was a bad idea. It’s way past time for showboating. It’s time to get down to it.’’
Later, Sammy told this to the police. But just then he didn’t look up. The sink was clogged and the floor was slippery. Damn, this tore it. He was definitely going to study harder for his SATs, get into a good college, and get the hell away from gas station customers forever.
But first he had to ring up the sale for the two pickups. When he got around to the pumps, though, they were pulling out without paying. He ran after them, yelling, knowing he wouldn’t catch them. The people in the back of the green Dodge just stared at him. He glanced down to get the license number. The truck had no plates.
7
Brian headed to the airfield at six the next morning. On his way out he shook my shoulder and murmured for us to come over to the base about noon; he’d gotten a visitor’s pass for me. I squinted up at him. Though woozy with sleep, I had the feeling that he’d been standing over me for some time, wondering why Luke had crawled onto the floor next to me, and probably feeling second-best. When he left, the heels of his old cowboy boots clicked on the tiles in the front hall.
After breakfast Luke and I unpacked boxes and then took a bike ride to his new school. It was hot, but China Lake sprawls across a flat valley floor and it was easy riding. The streets were wider than the Champs-Élysées and sported the names of first ladies: Mamie, Jackie, Lady Bird. The dry air and beaming sun did nothing to lessen my tension headache. Luke was subdued, and I felt uneasy, wondering where Tabitha and the Remnant had gone, and what lay out there in the shining desert day.
At the school Luke seemed excited to spot the first-grade classroom, with its purposeful clutter and Halloween decorations. On the playground he climbed a jungle gym, and hopped down complaining that the metal was hot. The day was mild compared to what the Mojave can throw at you, but we weren’t used to it. We came home sweating and thirsty.
Around noon we drove to the base. I showed my pass at the gate, where a sign reminded drivers to arrange a police escort if they were delivering explosives. Things looked familiar. The Phantom jet still posed on a pedestal inside the gates. The office buildings and laboratory complexes remained lemon yellow, flat-roofed, and nondescript. The cottonwood trees had grown taller. Traffic was lackadaisical.
At the airfield we parked near the control tower and walked toward the tarmac. Fighter jets and attack helicopters sat gleaming in the sun. The smell of jet fuel wafted to me. A Harrier roared off the runway, engine exhausts glowing orange. Inside one of the hangars a squadron emblem was painted on the wall: VX-9 Vampires. And what, I thought, would Tabitha make of that? Luke bent his head down, away from the blistering white sunlight, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes.
‘‘Here.’’ I took off my sunglasses and set them on him. They looked huge, turned him into a miniature Blues Brother. ‘‘Better?’’
An F/A-18 howled down behind us. Luke clapped his hands over his ears. Soon a second Hornet came in, tires screeching as they hit the runway.
I said, ‘‘There’s your dad.’’
They taxied past, and I glimpsed the first pilot’s brown face beneath his helmet. Brian was following behind him. Brian parked and spooled down the engines, and an enlisted man brought a ladder so he could climb down from the cockpit. When he hopped to the ground, I set my hands on Luke’s shoulders. This was how I wanted him to see his father: next to a fighter jet, with parachute straps and survival gear hanging from his shoulders, his helmet tucked under one arm. As warrior, protector, defender of the free world. I felt my throat closing up, and didn’t care if it was syrupy, blubbery sentimentality. This moment showed Luke something worthy, something pure.
It was this way whenever I went to an airfield. It had been this way when I was little and our dad took us to see the Blue Angels. As they swept overhead, all turbine roar and gleaming metal and aerobatic beauty, Brian squeezed my arm and whispered, Someday that’ll be me. And it had been this way the first time I watched him fly in, and he sauntered toward me smiling that world-eating smile.
Captain America, Jesse called him. Damn right. Why shouldn’t I adore him?
He and the black pilot walked toward us, chatting. When he saw Luke, Brian waved, calling, ‘‘Hey, there, little man. Come meet Commander Marcus Dupree.’’
Dupree exuded calm power. He had a strong handshake, a direct gaze, and a creamy bass voice that crooned, ‘‘So, this is the famous Luke Delaney.’’ A minute later he was putting his helmet on Luke’s head, and Luke was trying to talk and look around, his head wobbling when he turned it.
Brian was smiling, though it stretched his features tight, telling Luke that Dupree’s call sign was ‘‘Dupes.’’ Handing back the helmet and saying, ‘‘Come on; I’ll show you the Hornet,’’ he took Luke’s hand and walked toward the jet, talking about the wings, the control surfaces, swinging Luke up onto his shoulders and pointing out the twin tails.
Luke said, ‘‘What’s your call sign?’’
Brian touched his name tag, BRIAN DELANEY, LCDR USN, ‘‘SLIDER.’’ He said, ‘‘Can you read that?’’
Luke said, ‘‘It’s you.’’
Dupree and I hung back. He said, ‘‘I heard what happened yesterday. Hell of a homecoming.’’
‘‘You’re not kidding.’’
‘‘They both look wasted. Are you going to stick around for a while?’’
‘‘A few days.’’
‘‘Is there any way you could extend that?’’
‘‘Why?’’
His voice sounded as soothing as a late-night jazz deejay’s, but his words jarred. ‘‘I’ve known your brother a long time. And I have to tell you, right now he’s riding right out on the edge.’’
‘‘He’s had a rough time,’’ I said, too strongly. ‘‘I mean, I know divorce isn’t combat, but it’s still a bitter thing.’’
‘‘Life deals rough times to all of us. But it’s dangerous for a man to develop a taste for bitter things.’’
I turned to face him. ‘‘What are you saying, Commander?’’
‘‘It’s Marc. I’m saying that Brian is soaking his head in acid. You need to help him take a deep breath and calm down before he has a helmet fire.’’ He paused, and clarified: ‘‘Before his brain gets so scrambled that he does something stupid, in the air or on the ground.’’
‘‘How come you didn’t have the missiles loaded on your jet?’’ In the backseat of Brian’s Mustang, Luke was excited and talkative. ‘‘It would be so cool to see them.’’
Brian was driving us around the base, a nostalgic tour, taking us through its small-town center, past the community swimming pool, baseball fields, a church, a McDonald’s. I was quiet. Marc Dupree’s words had stuck to me like gum.
‘‘How do they sound when you shoot them? Like shhhook, or more like crishshsh? That would rock.’’
Half the houses on the base had been torn down. Whole neighborhoods, my puberty, safe streets where we lived with cheap, tidy houses and well-ordered expectation, were gone. Even the roads had been ripped up. Military downsizing. I said, ‘‘Ronald Reagan isn’t in the White House anymore, Toto.’’
‘‘Ding-dong, the Cold War’s dead.’’
When our family was stationed here, this place had a buzz. The Soviet threat had imbued people with purpose. More PhDs lived here, per capita, than anyplace in the country, and they were scientists and engineers, like my dad, who took it as their personal mi
ssion to develop technology that would save the lives of American pilots. Of course, I had seen the view from the high school—sports, liquor, sex, fast cars, kids ejecting to more populated and temperate places the instant they got their diplomas, which is why Santa Barbara has a high percentage of China Lake alums. But teenage boredom didn’t make China Lake a death zone. The town was nowhere close to Isaiah Paxton’s dark vision of spook heaven, Antichrist central, a secret, deadly city.
Brian was pointing at a vacant lot, saying, ‘‘Remember when?’’
Luke said, ‘‘Can’t I see what a missile looks like? Please?’’
Brian looked at him in the rearview mirror, half-amused, half-exasperated. ‘‘Fine.’’ Swinging the Mustang into a hard U-turn, he headed off base.
We found what Luke was looking for at the China Lake Museum, a small cinder-block building that housed great themes—life versus death, predator versus prey. A wildlife diorama showed stuffed rattle-snakes and coyotes pouncing on small mammals, with the victims posed in the moment preceding death. A poignant tableau, lunch. But Luke didn’t care about that. He headed straight for the Sidewinder missile.
It was a lean weapon, a slender metal arrow about ten feet long, positioned on the downward arc of flight. Luke looked at it, goggle-eyed, and then touched its guidance fins, and stood in front of it with arms flung outward, as if it were about to impale him. He asked how many of them Brian could load on his jet, and how far they could fly to blow up a target. Brian pointed out a photo of an F/A-18 firing a Sidewinder, explaining how the missile attached beneath the plane’s wing, and how he fired it off, calling, Fox two.
‘‘That means heat seeker,’’ he said. ‘‘Fox one means it’s a Sparrow missile.’’
From across the room a woman said, ‘‘Oh, my hell. Evan Delaney.’’
I turned, surprised and oddly wary. She was six feet tall with shaggy blond hair and round-rimmed glasses, wearing a museum badge.
‘‘Abbie Johnson.’’
‘‘Give the girl a cigar. And it’s Hankins now.’’ She had a bright alto voice and a big smile. ‘‘My God. Last time I saw you I was bent over barfing after running the four hundred.’’
Actually, the last time she had seen me was in court, the day we were sentenced for the pot bust. But I knew what she meant. On the track team I used to take the baton from her in the 4x400-meter relay. She had been whip-crack fast and threw up after every race. We called her the Vomit Comet.
‘‘Not doing much running these days, though.’’ She lifted up her billowy skirt to show me, above her white Reeboks and gym socks, a fat surgical scar. ‘‘Dirt bike wreck, back in college. And I know you won’t believe it, but I said adios to the partying, married a dentist, and started having babies. The fastest little buggers on the street. I’m Mrs. Civic Duty, rah-rah China Lake, and get your jaw up off the floor.’’
It was coming back to me now—that I could never stay mad at her. Though the years had dramatized her physique, expanding it to Wagnerian proportions, I said, ‘‘Abbie, you haven’t changed a bit.’’
She laughed. ‘‘Dammit, gal, you either. What’s your life story? Married? Kids? This your family?’’
Brian had wandered away, but when I introduced him he turned and gave a pro forma smile. Abbie said, ‘‘I remember you!’’ Looking at Luke, she said, ‘‘He’s gorgeous. Your wife must be a knockout.’’
Brian’s smile went starchy. ‘‘We’re getting divorced.’’
‘‘Oh, sorry.’’
‘‘Yeah, well.’’ He looked as if he’d been turned into cardboard. Put him into the wildlife display, he’d have fit right in with the rabbits.
Fortunately the phone rang at the front desk. Abbie went to answer it, and Brian said through his teeth, ‘‘Let’s go.’’ He took Luke’s hand and headed for the door, ignoring Luke’s, ‘‘But, Dad . . .’’ I followed, waving to Abbie on my way out.
She cupped her hand over the phone receiver. ‘‘Tonight. There’s a bar on China Lake Boulevard, the Lobo. It’s Friday. Come on down.’’
Nodding vaguely, I chased Brian outside. Luke was saying, ‘‘Why did we have to leave?’’ and Brian was telling him to get in the car. Luke turned on the whine. ‘‘But I wanted to stay.’’
Brian shook his head. ‘‘In the car. Now.’’ He red-lined the Mustang pulling out of the parking lot.
‘‘Well,’’ he said. ‘‘That was certainly fun.’’
He turned and smiled, and my heart sank. I knew that smile. It was ghastly, all teeth and vinegary eyes, the smile that told you how truly pissed off and resentful he felt. He really was running ragged, with all the sharp bits grinding just under the surface.
Driving back to the airfield to pick up my Explorer, we passed an elementary school on base. Fire trucks were parked on the playground, cordoned off behind yellow police tape. Near them stood two dozen people swathed head to toe in green protective gear with air tanks on their backs.
Startled, I said, ‘‘What’s that—the hot zone?’’
‘‘Hazmat training.’’
‘‘At a school? What in God’s name does the cafeteria serve for lunch?’’
‘‘This is a weapons testing facility. How many hazardous materials do you think I carry every time I lift off the runway?’’ He snorted. ‘‘I mean, air warfare is purposely lethal.’’
I was remembering what Isaiah Paxton said to me about testing plutonium and anthrax, his assertion that the navy threw Christians to the isotopes and microbes.
‘‘Have you been vaccinated against anthrax?’’
‘‘Six shots over eighteen months. You shouldn’t look so shocked. The world is a nasty place. Grow up and smell the coffee, sis.’’
I gave him a slow, cold look. We cruised along the schoolyard fence. One of the people in protective gear watched us pass, face hidden behind a plastic faceplate.
I said, ‘‘Why don’t we back up and unkink whichever string is tangled so tight?’’
‘‘After experiencing the past twenty-four hours, you think I’m the one who’s tangled up?’’
‘‘Brian—’’
‘‘It’s simple, Evan.’’ He chopped his hand against the dashboard. ‘‘Here, good guys. There, bad guys. It’s my job to see that it’s them, not me, who ends up in a smoking hole."
Famous last words.
8
I don’t hate guns. Like most military brats, I grew up around firearms. My father kept his .45 at home, and his friends occasionally returned from overseas with souvenir weapons dubiously acquired in foreign alley-ways or from opposing forces. They’d let us shoot them at the firing range. I know how to sight a target down the barrel of a rifle, and how to steady my hands against the recoil of a semiautomatic pistol. The kick you get when you pull the trigger is literal. But it’s a rush I didn’t want lying dormant in my house. I didn’t own a gun and didn’t care to.
The argument flared up after dinner that night, starting with a quarrel about Jesse. Brian and I were doing the dishes, getting ready to take Luke to see the new Disney movie, when he phoned. I told him about all that had happened, and talked to him about seeking a restraining order, and mainly tethered myself to the sound of his voice. He said he’d gotten a line on something interesting, a family who had quit the Remnant and might talk about the church. After a while I put Luke on the line and went to help Brian load the dishwasher. We could hear Luke’s end of the conversation, yeps and uh-huhs, Jesse doing most of the talking. Brian had his back to me, scrubbing a skillet.
He said, ‘‘I don’t want Jesse applying for any restraining order.’’
‘‘Please don’t dismiss the idea. It protects you and gives you leverage in court.’’
‘‘I mean I don’t want him doing the work. I don’t need a lawyer in Santa Barbara. I’ll get someone here.’’
‘‘I just thought—’’
‘‘It’s my responsibility. I’ll handle it.’’
‘‘Jesse’s a good lawyer.’’
‘‘Jesse isn’t Luke’s father. I am.’’
I stood there with soapy water dripping from my hands. ‘‘Brian, I have never for a moment forgotten that.’’
In the living room, Luke giggled over the phone. ‘‘That’s so gross!’’
Brian made a wry face. I felt a gnawing sensation in my stomach.
Brian and Jesse rubbed each other wrong, had from the start. Wires had crossed the minute they shook hands. Brian and Tabitha were visiting, and we met Jesse for dinner at the Palace Grill, where you shouldn’t possibly have a bad time. There’s Cajun food, a voluble crowd, and Louis Armstrong on the stereo. Tabitha was in a winning mood, feeding Brian bites of her crawfish étouffée, saying, ‘‘Baby, you’ll love this.’’ The sign on the wall said, LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULER.
But the good times hadn’t rolled. Jesse had, and that was the problem. As soon as he said hello, Brian’s self-assurance withered into awkward diffidence, with typical symptoms—staring, fumbling for words, patronizing Jesse with praise. So, you’re a lawyer? Quite an accomplishment. You have a house, your own place? That’s great. And Jesse responded, shall we say, sharply. He wielded the sarcasm like a cannon.
Brian, looking at the wine list, quietly asked me, ‘‘Does Jesse drink?’’
Jesse said, ‘‘Not tonight, he’s driving. But he talks.’’ He picked up his fork. ‘‘He even feeds himself.’’
And later, caught staring at the wheelchair, Brian said, ‘‘That looks real, uh, sporty. You must play a lot of basketball.’’
‘‘Not a day in my life.’’
I jumped in. ‘‘Jesse’s a swimmer. He was NCAA champion in the two hundred butterfly his senior year.’’
Tabitha said, ‘‘Wow, awesome.’’ Brian looked at him, perplexed, and Jesse knew he was trying to work out the timing, wondering, Before or after the accident?