Backwoods

by sara12356

  Beth was always the ace of Q words, he remembered, smiling now at the thought. They’d always kept a dictionary at the table when they’d play, because invariably Beth had come up with new Q-but-no-U words that neither he nor his mother had ever heard of. He’d pulled one that night with his mom: qadi, a type of judge in Islam. It had seemed rather fitting at the time.

  Stretching out on his bed with his head and shoulders propped up on pillows, he balanced the scrapbook against his lap and thumbed through the pages, reading through the articles again. His gaze lingered on a full-color shot, the cover of an issue of Discover magazine that showed Moore standing in among a trio of men, all dressed in white lab coats looking somberly at the camera. Playing God, the tagline read. The world’s leading geneticists race solve the mystery of life.

  He had told Dani about what had happened the night before after she’d returned to the barracks, how he’d noticed Alice outside and had followed her to the lab building.

  “You mean, you went inside the house of pain?” Dani had asked, wide-eyed. “What’s it like? What did you see?”

  “Not much. Just a lot of signs warning about biohazards.” He’d told her about Lucy the Siamang and the curious little playroom where Alice had brought her to play Candyland. He had also mentioned the scrapbook.

  “Dr. Moore won a Nobel Prize?” She’d gawked at him. “You’re kidding! What’s he doing here, working for the Army?”

  Andrew had been admittedly curious about that himself.

  Because he’d been able to tell from Dani’s face, the way her brows had lifted in tandem, that her curiosity had been piqued, he’d said, “The book’s still up in my room, if you want to look at it.”

  That was when she’d talked him into helping her squad fix dinner. “You can show it to me after that, what do you say?” she’d suggested.

  Someone knocked at his door, and Andrew jerked in guilty surprise, slapping the scrapbook closed and shoving it off his lap. “Who is it?” he called, flipping the corner of the bedspread over to cover the book, then rearranging a pillow over top to further camouflage.

  “Corporal O’Malley,” came the reply.

  “Hey,” Andrew said, puzzled as he opened the door.

  “Hey.” O’Malley gave him a friendly nod, then held something out—the shirt he’d given to Alice earlier. “Dr. Montgomery asked me to bring this to you. Said it’d probably be best if Dr. Moore didn’t find it in the apartment.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Andrew took the shirt from the corporal, then carried back to the bed, using the opportunity to drop it on top of the pillow covering the stolen scrapbook.

  “I hear you won last night,” O’Malley said. “The pool tournament. Good job.”

  “Thanks. But I have a feeling Dani could’ve handled those guys just fine on her own.”

  O’Malley leaned against the doorframe, a comfortable posture, folding his arms across his chest. “The way I hear tell of it, you pretty much ran the table.”

  Andrew shrugged. “I got off a couple of lucky shots, that’s all.”

  Even though O’Malley smiled as he spoke and his words were affable enough, something in his demeanor was cool, the same sort of tension palpable as it had been when he’d asked Andrew if he’d found something funny about serving his country. Then, as now, his eyes fixed on Andrew and stayed there, pinning him. “The way I hear tell of it, sounds like you and Dani hit it off pretty good last night.”

  Andrew fumbled for a moment, then said, “She’s, uh, a good player.”

  “I meant after the game,” O’Malley said mildly. “Today, too, out in the garage.”

  He’s been trying to get in her pants since the day he got here, Matt LaFollette had said about O’Malley. Langley said he was the only guy he’d ever seen who was pussy-whipped without getting any pussy.

  “She’s a nice girl,” Andrew said.

  “Yeah, she is.” Unfolding his arms, O’Malley stepped away from the door, walking slowly, idly toward Andrew. “The thing is, Santoro’s a really nice girl. She’s the only girl here besides Dr. Montgomery. I try to look out for her around here on account of that. You know, like she’s my sister.”

  “Sister.” Andrew nodded once. “Right.”

  O’Malley smiled, patently condescending. “You seem like a smart enough guy, Just-Andrew. You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?”

  Andrew met O’Malley’s gaze evenly. “I think so.”

  “Good.” O’Malley nodded once. “I wanted to make sure we’re on the same page, you and me, so we don’t have to have this conversation again. I don’t like to repeat myself. And you got a nice face.” He chuckled, patting Andrew’s cheek. “I’d sure hate to mess it up.”

  With a frown, Andrew knocked his hand away. “Fuck you, O’Malley.”

  O’Malley laughed again, then turned, walking out the door. “See you around, Just-Andrew.”

  ****

  At dinnertime, Andrew headed down to the mess hall with every good intention of backing out of his promise to help Dani’s squad. O’Malley’s thinly veiled threat still weighed over his head, the veritable Sword of Damacles. More than this, though, his own mental remonstrations echoed in his mind, and he knew it would ultimately be in his own best interest to give Dani Santoro as wide a berth as possible for the rest of his stay. As much as he disliked the idea.

  Dani, however, had other plans.

  “Forget it,” she said, presenting him with a large plastic bag filled with green peppers, enough that he had to cradle it with both hands to carry it. “I spent three hours this afternoon trying to clean the silt out of your radiator and flush your fuel lines. You owe me.”

  “You worked on my Jeep?” he asked, surprised and absurdly touched.

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she replied. “Come on over here. We’ll get started on the peppers while the others work on the meat and sauce.”

  As they crossed the kitchen, she paused at different cabinets or steel tables where soldiers gathered, hard at work. At each one, she’d introduce Andrew to her squad members.

  “This is Boston,” she said, pointing to a young man busy lining large aluminum foil baking sheets with pre-cooked corn tortillas. He nodded once in greeting to Andrew, sparing him a glance before resuming his layering. “Over there is Hartford, and that’s Maggitti, Reigler and Spaulding.”

  “Hey,” one of the privates, Reigler, said to Andrew, lifting his hand in a quick wave without letting go of the metal spatula he used to stir ground beef sizzling on the flat-top griddle.

  “How’s it going, man?” said another, PFC Barron, who stood over an industrial-depth sink basin draining enormous cans of stewed tomatoes.

  Dani set her bag of peppers at an empty workstation. She motioned to Andrew and he positioned himself opposite her, watching as she slid an enormous wooden cutting board between them. “Barron, there, he’s from your neck of the woods, I think. Didn’t you say you were from Alaska?”

  “Anchorage,” Barron told her, with a curious glance at Andrew.

  “Fairbanks area,” Andrew said.

  Barron grinned. “Ten bucks says the Seawolves take the Nanooks this year by at least three.”

  Andrew laughed. “You’re on, man.” Because Dani looked at him, visibly puzzled, he said, “Hockey. There’s a big rivalry between the college teams in Anchorage and Fairbanks.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “Me, I watch the Rangers.”

  He tried to hold the pepper the way she did, with her fingertips curled slightly under, to best avoid whacking the tips off inadvertently. She moved her knife easily in a fluid, up and down, hinged motion he tried unsuccessfully to mimic.

  “You’re pretty good at this,” he noted.

  “Yeah? I’ve had lots of practice.” With a demonstrative wave of her knife, indicating the other soldiers, she said, “Someone’s got to show these guys how to cook.”

  “O’Malley said you’re the only woman stationed here. Besides Dr. Montgome
ry, I mean. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “No.” Dani laughed. “Not really. I’m pretty much used to it. You don’t see a lot of women in my line of work. I’m the youngest of four sisters. So these guys here…” Again, she motioned with her knife. “The ones in my regular Guard unit, they’re all like the brothers I never had.” With a pointed look at Reigler, most readily in earshot, she added with a grin, “Some of them, the ones I never wanted.”

  “Yeah, that’s what O’Malley told me earlier, too,” Andrew said. “That you’re like a sister, I mean.”

  “Really?” Her brow arched. “Sounds like you and Thomas had quite the conversation.”

  Andrew laughed dryly. “You could say that, yeah.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Andrew didn’t expect the warm welcome he’d received from Dani’s squad mates would be extended that night in the mess hall, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. O’Malley, however, was conspicuously absent.

  “I wonder where he is,” Dani murmured with a puzzled frown.

  “Yeah,” Barron, said. “It’s not like O’Malley to miss a meal.”

  “He needs to,” muttered another soldier, Reigler, making the others around him laugh.

  “The Major was looking for him earlier,” said a third, Spaulding. “Maybe he’s in a briefing or something.”

  After supper, Andrew offered to help with the remaining dishes. “No, thanks,” Dani said, plucking his tray from his hands before he could sputter in protest. “We’ll take it from here.”

  Back upstairs in his room, he lay down on his belly atop his bed, watching a video he’d borrowed from the staff library downstairs, the cringe-worthy Universal Soldier with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

  When Dani came to the door, she knocked softly and he scrambled up. Without even asking who was there, he opened the door, then smiled. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself,” she said. “Still want to let me see that scrapbook?”

  “Of course. Sure. Come on in.” He sidestepped to give her room. “You want a beer?”

  “You bought one of those six-packs from the PX?” she asked, eyes widening. “They’re, what, fifteen bucks?”

  “Twenty,” he replied, fishing one of the still-cold bottles of Bud Light—the only variety the canteen offered—from the pack beside his bed and twisting off the cap. “But it’s okay. My wallet’s all dried out now. My money, too.”

  Taking the bottle as he held it out to her, she shook her head and laughed. “You’re crazy.”

  Sitting down against the side of his bed, she took a long swig. “Oh, man,” she said, closing her eyes and sighing happily. “That’s good. I haven’t had a beer since I got here. I haven’t wanted to pay that much for them.”

  He leaned against the wall, but reached out to tap his own bottle against hers in a toast when she offered. He couldn’t help but notice yet again the conspicuous absence of a wedding ring on her hand.

  “Okay, let’s see it,” Dani said, and his attention snapped from her finger to her face.

  “What? Oh, the book. Okay. Sure.”

  She scooted back on the bed to make room as he sat down beside her, lugging the scrapbook out of its hiding place in a dresser drawer and setting it between them. He showed her some of the articles he’d gone through, giving her time to read each.

  “This place is a hospital?” Dani asked, tapping the photo of Moore and Alice standing outside of Gallatin.

  “A state mental institution, I think it must be,” Andrew replied. “She told me her mother had to get a court order to have her committed there, and Dr. Moore had to petition for another one to get her out.”

  “How long was she there?” Clearly, the haunting image of Alice cradled in her father’s arms, her eyes vacuous, as if she was a life-sized doll, troubled Dani. A slight cleft had formed between her brows and her lips had pursed, an unhappy frown.

  “Three years.”

  “God,” Dani whispered. “How could someone do that to their child?”

  “I don’t know.” Andrew shook his head. “Alice told me she used to be violent, hitting and kicking. She said she was better now, but still, I can’t imagine. I mean, it’s a little strange sometimes, the things she does. But she’s a nice kid.”

  Closing the scrapbook, Dani pushed it away as if it was something soiled. “I don’t understand. You said Alice told you Dr. Moore was doing things to those chimpanzees to make them smarter, their brains grow.”

  “Siamangs,” he corrected.

  “Whatever. I wish we could get into that lab and snoop around some, try and find out what he’s up to out there.”

  As he swallowed the last of his beer, he pivoted, tossing the bottle with a practiced ease into the waste can in the far corner. “We can. I know the pass code. Alice gave it to me.”

  “You’re kidding,” she exclaimed, beaming. “Let’s go, then.”

  “Wait.” He caught her hand as she moved to leap from the bed. “It’s still daylight out. There are soldiers all over the place. We need to wait until it’s dark, when everyone’s gone back to the barracks and Moore’s working in there alone. Otherwise we’ll get caught.”

  “Oh.” She nodded, and with a dejected sigh, sat again. “Shit.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve got plenty of beer. And a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.”

  She groaned.

  “Or we could talk about your kids.”

  At this, she smiled again. “Deal.”

  ****

  Dani returned to her room long enough to grab a small photo album. She and Andrew sat against the headboard of his bed, their knees drawn to their chests, sipping beer while she gave him the photographic grand tour.

  “This is Eme in her Cinderella dress,” she said, pointing.

  “Did you make that?” he asked, leaning forward to peer more closely.

  “God, no. I can’t even sew a button on straight. They sell them fancy like that now. She’s got one like Cinderella’s, one like Sleeping Beauty’s.”

  “You must miss them a lot,” he remarked.

  Her eyes grew sad and somewhat forlorn. “Yeah. It’s not as bad as when I was sent over to Baghdad, but…” Her voice faded as her eyes grew glossy and, blinking, she turned her face away.

  Andrew said nothing, feeling awkward and intrusive, until he saw her shoulders relax as she regained that momentarily lost composure. “You were in Iraq?” he asked and she glanced at him, nodding.

  “I was in maintenance, so it’s not like I’d see any kind of action. Just what was left of the Humvees and Strykers after an IED attack. I was stationed at Camp Liberty north of Baghdad.”

  “How long were you over there?”

  “A year and a half. I haven’t been back very long. Not even six months.”

  “How did you wind up in the National Guard anyway?” he asked.

  She laughed without little humor. “The usual way, I guess. I enlisted. Me and Tonio, we used to live in this crowded little apartment in the Bronx. We talked about moving out, getting our own place, a real house, but we couldn’t afford it. I’d quit my job with the city after Max was born, and all we had was Tonio’s paycheck coming in. So every Wednesday, my mom would come over and sit with the kids while I’d haul all our clothes over to this 86aundromat on foot. I’d come home, have lunch with them, help Mom get Max and Eme down for their naps, then walk back over to pick everything up.”

  Her expression had grown distant, pensive. “One day, I walked past a Guard recruiting office up the block from the laundry. I must’ve passed it a thousand times, but I’d never really noticed it before. They had a big sign in their window. ‘Twenty-thousand dollar sign-on bonus. ’ That was all it took.” With a smile, she glanced at Andrew. “I could think of a lot of things we could do with that.”

  “I bet.”

  “I took what’s called an off-peak quick ship,” she said. “That means I agreed to leave for basic training right away, putting me in the ser
vice before the first part of November. In exchange for that, they gave me the money upfront. We used half of it as a down payment and bought a little townhouse over in the East Bronx, a neighborhood called Castle Hill. Two bedrooms, two baths, its own little yard.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  She shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t know why I did it, other than I guess I had dollar bills flashing in my eyes. You know, like they do in the cartoons? I didn’t ask anyone, didn’t tell anyone what I was going to do. I just did it.”

  He blinked at her, surprised. “What did your husband say?”

  “He was upset, of course. Wouldn’t you be?” Another glance. “Tonio and I never fight. I think that’s the closest I’ve ever seen him come to losing his temper with me. And mi madre.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Your mom?” Andrew asked, having wracked his brain back to high school conversational Spanish.

  Dani nodded. “She’s always hated that I was into cars and engine work, that I wasn’t this picture-perfect daughter like my sisters, who used to make tostones or albondigón or pastales with her and now have babies and husbands and white picket fences, all that bullshit. She thought marriage would change that, change me. And I guess she was right, for awhile anyway. She was pretty pissed when I enlisted. And it was hard to make Max and Eme understand. They don’t get things like money. All they knew was that Mommy would be going away.” Her voice grew choked. “At Christmas time, no less.”

  Her eyes dropped to her beer bottle again, and she toyed with an upturned corner of the damp label. “You want to know the worst thing? A part of me didn’t even care, not at first. I mean, of course I missed them. They’re mis niños, my kids. But by that point, I’d been a stay-at-home mom for almost five years. Tonio was never home, always picking up swing shifts and late nights and then he said he could get paid double time on the holidays. It was like I couldn’t escape.”