He inhales deeply, his eyes narrowing, blinking quickly. He has something in his hands. An envelope? Dog tags dangle, the end of the chain wrapped around his index and middle fingers.
“Reagan. I know this is a surprise…I should’ve called first, I guess.”
“No, it’s fine.” I shiver, my wet clothes starting to make me cold. “But I need to change real quick. I’ll be right back.”
His eyes touch mine, start to flicker downward, and then move quickly back up. He closes his eyes as if berating himself, then turns away. “Sure, of course.” His fist clenches around the dog tags, and the paper crinkles. I know what he has in his hands: the letter. I just know it.
And I’m not ready. Not ready. I need a minute to compose myself. So I jog up the stairs to my room, strip out of my wet clothes, rinse off in the shower, and dress quickly. I pull my damp blonde hair back in a twist and clip it up. Standing at the top of the stairs, I work up the courage to go back down, to hear what Derek has to say. To finally address the emotions I’ve worked so hard to bury for so long.
When I go down, Ida is scooping mac and cheese into a plastic bowl for Tommy. I pour a cup of coffee.
“Derek? You want to go out on the porch?” Derek is clutching his mug in both hands, as if afraid to let go. He’s staring at Tommy as if seeing a ghost, and I don’t think he heard me. I touch his shoulder. “Derek?”
He starts violently at my touch, jerking so hard his coffee sloshes onto his hands. “Shit!” He sets the mug down, and then glances at Tommy and stutters, “I—I mean, shoot. Shoot.”
“Are you okay?” I reach for him, worried he burned his hands, but he shies away, subtly, but enough that I withdraw.
He grabs the mug again, shrugging. “Yeah. I’m just—yeah. Fine. Sorry about that.”
I gesture at the front door. “Porch?”
He stands up. “Sure.”
I precede him outside onto the porch, take a seat in one of the antique wicker chairs. Derek doesn’t sit down. Instead, he stands on the top step, staring out at the rain-shrouded Texas farmland.
Eventually he speaks, not turning to look at me. “I don’t even know where to start. What to say. I thought about it the whole way here from San Antonio, but…I just—I just don’t even know.” He inhales deeply, his shoulders rising and then falling as he lets the breath out. Turning, he extends his hand, dog tags swinging. “Here. One of the guys from Golf…I thought these were gone. They took ’em, when they captured us. I thought they were gone. Then when the Raiders brought me back—Voss had these. You should have them.”
My hand trembles as I reach out to take the tags, warm from his hand. I stare at them:
BARRETT
T. M. O NEG
234 56 7890
USMC L
CHRISTIAN
I clutch the tags and fight for composure. “Th-thank you, Derek.”
He shakes his head. Then he reaches into the back pocket of his dark blue jeans and withdraws a folded envelope. He turns to face me. His hands shake violently. He clenches one fist, transfers the envelope to his other hand, and clenches it, trying to still the trembling. I stand up, set my mug down on the floor, cross the porch to stand beside Derek.
“Is that…what I think it is?” I ask.
He unfolds it, stares at it rather than meet my eyes. Nods. “I—kept it. He gave it to me. To give to you. If I made it—if I made it back.”
“All that time? You kept it—held on to it…through everything?”
He swallows; I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah. I promised him.” He’s rubbing at the envelope with a thumb, rubbing at what are obviously bloody fingerprints. With what I can tell is a concerted effort, he looks up at me. His eyes are red, searching mine. “I swore—I’d tell you. You were—you are…his everything. I swore on my soul, I’d tell you that. Those were his last words. He wanted you to know he—he loved you.”
I reach for the envelope, a tear trickling down my cheek. Derek, somewhat hesitantly, relinquishes it to me, but he never takes his eyes off it. It obviously has enormous significance to him. I touch the bloody fingerprint. I wonder if it’s Tom’s blood, or Derek’s. Or someone else’s. I won’t ask, though. Gingerly, slowly, I open the flap and pull out the letter. It’s been folded and unfolded and refolded a thousand times, creased and lined, dirty, the two pages molded in a curve, as if carried for ages against a body.
Thomas, my love.
I break down. I cry so hard I can’t see.
“He—Tom carried that letter, unopened, all through the campaign,” Derek says. “He wouldn’t read it. Said he was saving it. Then…then our convoy was ambushed and—he got hit. They took us. He was in a bad way. Somehow they didn’t find the letter when they searched us. I don’t know why, but they didn’t. He—I read that letter to him a hundred times a day. Day after day. Every time he came to, I’d read it to him. It kept him going. Kept—kept me going. After he—after Tom died, it was all I had. That letter, and my promise to find you. To tell you he tried, so hard, to hold on. That he loved you, and he wanted to come home.”
“Derek…I don’t even know how to thank you.” I put the tags in the envelope with the letter and tuck it in my back pocket. I look up at him, and can’t help but ask. “How—how did he die? I know I shouldn’t—shouldn’t ask. But—but I—”
Derek nods, and I’m not sure what he’s nodding about. “He was wounded, in the battle. The ambush. Stomach wound. He held on for—for weeks.”
“He suffered?” Stupid, stupid question.
Derek squeezes his eyes shut; his jaw grinds, fists clench. Turns away. “I—he…fuck. Fuck.” He stumbles down the steps, out into the rain, head bowed, shoulders arched, heaving. After a minute, he straightens, grinding the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. He takes a deep breath, turns, and comes back, damp from the sluicing rain. “Sorry. It was a bad situation, Reagan. I don’t know what else to say. It was bad. I did my best for him, but there just wasn’t anything I could—could do. I tried. He deserved…he should’ve been the one to make it. I think that every fucking day. It should be him here. Not me. So—so I’m sorry. So, so sorry. It should be him, but—but I couldn’t save him.”
“Derek, no. You can’t think like that. I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. I—”
He shakes his head and cuts me off. “I know. I know. But I can’t not think that. It’s true. It’s all I can think about.” He gestures at the letter. “You have that, and the tags. So…I’ll go. See ya.”
I follow him toward the steps and stop short of actually grabbing his arm. “Wait, how’d you get here?”
“Bus from San Antonio to Prairie View.”
“How’d you get here from Prairie View?”
He digs a heel in the mud. “Walked.”
“That’s a long walk.”
He shrugs. “I’ve marched farther carrying full gear. Don’t mind it.”
“Where will you go?”
He shrugs again. “I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere. Iowa, maybe. They want me back at the Medical Center for more ‘rehabilitation’” —he spits the word, bitterly— “but fuck that shit. Been there three months. Done with it.”
“You can stay here.”
He shakes his head. “It’s fine. I’ll walk.” He starts down the steps. “Told you, I don’t mind it.’
“Derek, don’t be ridiculous — it’s miles from anything, it’s near dark, and it’s pouring rain.”
He stops, heedless of the rain beating down on him. “Why do you want me to stay here?”
I swallow and blink and hunt for words. “You—you were Tom’s best friend. You came all this way to honor his last—” My voice breaks, and I have to start over. “To honor his last request. I can’t—I won’t just turn you out in the rain.”
“All right. I don’t want to inconvenience you.” He jerks his head at the barn. “I’ll stay over there.”
“There’s the couch, I could—”
“Not a good ide
a.” He nods at the front door, where Tommy is visible through the screen, watching, listening. “I don’t sleep well.”
“Bad dreams?”
He shrugs uneasily. “You could say that.”
“Okay, then. The barn it is. I’ll bring some things over. Blankets, a pillow. There’s a little workshop in the back. You can sleep there.” I pause, and then ask, “Have you eaten? There’s some leftovers—”
His voice goes a little sharp. “Reagan. I don’t need any of that shit. I’m fine.” He strides across the mud toward the barn. “Thanks for the hospitality,” he says over his shoulder.
I let him go, sensing his need to be away, alone.
In the house, Tommy is leaning against the doorframe, watching me through the screen. His eyes are heavy, tired. I pick him up and cradle him against me.
“Mama?”
I kiss his temple. “Yes, baby?”
“Who guy?”
I hesitate. “He’s…a friend.”
Tommy lifts his head, leans back in my arms, peers at me. “Mama sad?”
Damned perceptive child. I blink, summoning a smile. “No, baby. I’m fine.”
He doesn’t believe me, clearly. He puts a hand to my cheek. “Kiss?”
I kiss his forehead. “Kiss.” I tuck his head against my shoulder and carry him upstairs to his room, lay him down in his bed. “Time for bed, sleepyhead.” He doesn’t argue, and he’s asleep within seconds, Buzz Lightyear clutched under one arm.
Back downstairs, Ida is drying the last of the dishes. She sets a plate in the cupboard, drapes the towel over the oven handle. She turns to me, eyes assessing. “That boy…he’s very troubled.”
“Derek, you mean?” I sigh. “He served with Tom.”
Ida nods. “I saw a news program about him. A psychologist was saying that someone who’s been through what he has…they never really recover.” Ida rummages in my junk drawer, finds the tube of hand lotion and rubs some onto her wrinkled hands. “My Hank, he served in Korea, you know. He doesn’t talk about it much, never has, really. But I know it still affects him. The things he experienced, the things he saw and did.”
“Tom never talked about it, either,” I say. “I asked him once. After his second tour in Iraq. He just told me there wasn’t much to say. He did his job, and that was it. But I knew he was…protecting me. From the truth.”
Ida nods, then glances out the screen door, watching headlights approach. Hank coming to pick her up. “Men will do that.” It’s clear she has more on her mind, but she just sighs and hangs her purse from her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Ida.” I lean in and hug her. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She smiles at me, pats my cheek. “That’s what family is for, dear. And you’re family.”
Tom’s parents are both gone, his mother from cancer before I met him, and his father from a heart attack a few years after Tom and I married. My own parents are both alive, living in Tulsa. They never approved of Tom, and they’ve never forgiven me for eloping with him at nineteen. They’ve never met Tommy, and I don’t think they ever will. So Ida and Hank are really my only family. Except Brian, my brother, a career Marine stationed in Okinawa. He visits sometimes, when he gets leave long enough to get back Stateside, which isn’t often.
Hanks honks the horn, and Ida leaves.
The house is silent, and I’m finally alone. I pull the envelope from the back pocket of my jeans. Gather the dog tags in the palm of my hand, stare at Tom’s name. Allow myself a few tears, wipe them from my chin.
“I miss you, Tom.” I whisper it to the dog tags. “Why didn’t you come back? You promised you’d always come back.”
I can’t look at the letter. I simply don’t have the strength. I’ll lose it if I read those words, written so long ago. If I imagine him reading them. If I imagine Derek and Tom, huddled together in some cave or whatever, Derek reading the letter over and over….
I should bring Derek some food. A blanket. A pillow. Something. But…I just can’t. I can’t face him. Can’t handle seeing the ghosts in his eyes, the ache of memory in his posture.
A dirty secret: Sometimes I sleep on the couch, because I hate the memories that live in the empty expanse of my bed.
Another, dirtier secret: Sometimes the weight of loneliness is heavier than the weight of missing Tom.
CHAPTER 7
DEREK
Sleep is impossible. At the hospital they gave me drugs to help me sleep. They were necessary, physically, because it’s literally impossible to find rest. At best, I’ll doze off, wake up sweating, screaming, panicked, reliving combat, imprisonment, beatings, torture.
I never told anyone about that, the torture. Not during debriefing, not to any of the psychologists or shrinks or doctors. The Taliban fuckers, they’d shove slivers under my fingernails, long jagged shards of wood, for no reason I could ever fathom. Burns, cigarettes or lighters. They broke the ring finger of my left hand. Kept re-breaking it, over and over again, day after day, until the pain drove me insane. If I’d had so much as a hunk of rock to hand, I’d have cut the finger off. Eventually they left the finger alone. I re-broke it myself and tried to set it, but it’s crooked, hurts sometimes. Aches when it rains, shakes now and again.
The hospital made me crazy, too. Cooped up in a little room, a hospital bed, a window overlooking a parking lot. TV, tuned to sports, as if I cared. I used to care. Football. I loved football. Now? It’s just irrelevant. I can’t make myself care. I tried to watch Sports Center during the long hours alone in the hospital between rounds of physical therapy and head-shrinking. It seemed so stupid, so empty. So pointless.
The rain finally stops, and the clouds gradually clear as the hours of the night crawl by. I’m lying in an animal stall. I passed the first hour or so cleaning the stall out and laying down fresh hay. I checked out the workshop, but it was…it was a Tom space. Full of baseball memorabilia, NASCAR posters, a few of his old high school baseball trophies, a baseball signed by Nolan Ryan. The tools, the car parts. It’s all Tom. He talked about this place almost as much as he talked about Reagan. He grew up on this farm, planned on phasing out of the Corps and going back to farming. Talked about taking apart engines with his dad and old Hank down the road. Riding horses across the pastures, breaking colts, and breaking his arm in the process once. He used to spend hours in the shop, getting away from the miserable reality of his dying mom. He always regretted that, not spending more time with her while he had her around, but it was always too hard for him, he said, to see her lying on the couch, skinny and sick.
So, yeah, I’ve never been here until now, but I know this place, this barn, the workshop. Hours and hours spent marching on patrol with nothing to do but talk to the buddy beside you, you relate all sorts of shit you never thought you’d talk about. For Tom, it was always this place. The land, the barn, the house.
I’m exhausted, sleepy. But when I close my eyes, I see Tom, clutching my hand, begging me to tell Reagan he loved her.
I told her, buddy.
I manage to catch a couple hours of fitful sleep before the dreams wake me. Dawn is painting the horizon with a gray-pink brush, visible through the open barn door. I rise, brush the hay from my clothes, lace the combat boots. Stretch the kinks out of my back and head outside. The grass is still wet, creating a pungent smell. It’s early, probably barely five in the morning, but it’s already warm.
The farmhouse is still and quiet. I can see into the kitchen from where I stand, no sign of movement. The farmhouse is a classic model of rural Texas style. Deep front porch, three steps up. Gables and eaves, white wooden siding in need of paint. Thick green grass around the sides leading to the backyard, where cottonwoods and willows surround a small green pond. Out in front of the house, there’s a circle drive, gravel, a patch of not-as-green grass with a small maple tree in the middle of the island. The drive is a good three-quarters of a mile to the nearest road, which is only a slightly wider track of g
raded gravel leading away in a ruler-straight line. The barn is a huge building, faded wood, ancient peeling red paint. There’s a good fifty acres in open pasture to the north and east of the house and barn, cotton to the south, hay to the west. The pastures are fenced, what must be miles worth of actual wooden fencing. Hell of a lot of upkeep, I think. Especially for a woman like Reagan. Alone. Plus a kid?
How does she do it all?
From where I stand, though, I can see a shitload of things that need doing. Several fence boards down, the steps up to the house loose and needing replacement, peeling paint all over the place. Getting toward the end of harvest season, and the hay and cotton need to be brought in, then baled and sold.
The sun peeks up over the horizon now, washing the land golden-red-orange. Open land, as far as I can see. Peaceful. Quiet. I can see why Tom loved it here. After the dead desert of Iraq and the often-barren terrain of Afghanistan, the miles of crops and lush green pastures of Texas are a welcome change. I’m not at peace, but as near as I can be. In this moment, at least.
I’m restless, though. Hungry. Worn out from dodging dreams.
I spy some boards sticking out of the bed of the rusting blue pickup truck. Crossing the yard, I peek into the truck bed. Some fifty new planks of treated wood, a big box of screws. Screw gun in the cab. The keys…under the sun visor. I start the truck and aim it toward the section of fence in most need of repair. I yank off the hanging, broken slats, tossing them aside. Screw the new board up. Repeat. Repeat. Move down the line, replacing boards. The sun rises fully, heating me until I shed my shirt. It’s tedious work, but it keeps me occupied. There’s a vertical post rotting through toward the north end and, conveniently, a new post and a shovel in the truck bed. Pulling the old post out has me grunting and cursing, but I manage it, dig the hole deeper, replace the post and fasten the boards to it. I steadily make my way along the fence line that divides the north pasture from the east, which, thankfully, is mostly intact.
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