by Suzy Parish
Me, I picked my way around the head and foot stones, trying not to step on someone’s family member. My grandmother said it was bad luck to step on a grave. I never really believed her, but still, it didn’t hurt to be careful, just in case.
Sophie stopped. In the fading light, she knelt at our son’s grave and placed the flowers in a little urn we had added to the headstone.
I couldn’t go any closer. It was the worst kind of fix, trying to be there for Sophie, and yet I couldn’t stand beside Little Mac’s headstone.
Sophie straightened and waved me over.
I shook my head. Can’t do it, Soph. Please understand. I pleaded with my eyes. I looked for a place to sit down while I waited for her, but there were no benches in that section, and I was not about to lean on someone’s headstone. My grandmother would probably return from the grave to scold me.
The light faded quickly. Sophie was an ashen figure in a sea of dusty light and shadows.
I heard her more than I saw her approach. She sighed.
She took my hand, and we walked out of that shadowed place, into the glow of a streetlight that wrapped our home in gold.
We moved in silence, down the stone steps that made their way down the embankment to where the yard leveled off, and up the stairs to our house.
I turned back and looked across the street one last time before we went in.
I love you, son.
~*~
Phoenix bounced around us. We were his god and goddess, and he never let us forget it. I was thankful for his antics.
Sophie trudged across the foyer and hung her jacket on a hook. I could see what a toll all this was taking on her. She understood me, and I didn’t have to explain. She moved to the kitchen wordlessly and started a pot of hot water for tea.
I sat at the kitchen table and absentmindedly flipped through packets of tea she kept in a small basket. “I’ve become friends with a barber who works at camp,” I said. “We sit at Green Beans Coffee, at a little table and drink chai together sometimes. Seeing this tea reminded me.”
The pot whistled, and steam condensed, running down the side of the spout, hissing when it hit the hot burner on the stove.
Sophie opened a packet of green tea, dropped it inside her mug, and poured steaming water over it.
“Do you want some tea?”
Surprising myself, I said, “Yeah. That would be great. I never drank hot tea until I went to Kandahar. I used to make fun of it, you know?”
Sophie handed me a mug.
“Glenn, back at camp, taunted me about my iced coffees in the same way. I used to say hot tea was a sissy drink.” I picked through the tea packets and found one I liked. “You have chai,” I said.
Sophie studied me over the edge of her mug, gently blowing across it to cool her tea. “I never thought I’d hear that come out of your mouth,” she said. A grin pulled at the corners of her lips.
I opened the packet, let it fall to the bottom of my mug, and poured steaming water over it from Sophie’s teakettle. I watched the hot water swirl over the tea bag.
“You were telling me about a barber,” she said.
“I walk him to work almost every day. We have to escort the civilian workers to their shops from the front gate.”
“Why?”
“Security reasons. One of them could be, uh.”
“Oh.” She looked back down into her mug. Her mouth tightened. “One of them could have a bomb planted on him?”
“Yeah, something like that.” I took a drink of chai. The spicy tea warmed my throat. “Anyway, I get to walk with him frequently, nearly every day. He’s teaching me Dari.”
Sophie put her mug down and smiled. “Say something in Dari for me?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Promise.” Sophie leaned forward.
I was afraid she would be disappointed. “Yak roz dee-dee doost, degar roz dee-dee baraadar. This means, the first day we are friends; the next day we are brothers.”
“What a beautiful saying.”
“My pronunciation’s a little rusty, but you get the idea.”
“Did the barber teach you that one?”
“Gul Hadi, he’s become my window to the outside world there, Soph. He’s not like the radicals. He only wants to be left alone to raise his son and live his life. He’s got a great sense of humor.”
“I’ve never known anyone who spoke Dari,” Sophie said.
“I can’t really speak it. I understand a lot more of it now, and I know basic one-word commands that we use for our students in training, that kind of stuff. But this is the only sentence I’ve memorized.”
“Still, that’s something.” She nodded her head and then took a sip of tea.
“Actually, how I met him is a funny story. There’s this sergeant I work with, a really great guy. His name is Thorstad.”
“Thorstad,” Sophie repeated after me. I could tell she was trying to keep everyone straight in her mind.
“Yeah, he’s another one in our tent who’s military. We’re a mixed bunch in tent 29. Travis, Glenn, and I are contractors, and Stockton and Thorstad are career military.”
“Anyway, I call Thorstad the Pied Piper of Kandahar because he keeps candy in the pockets of his BDUs and hands it out to all the local kids.”
“He sounds like a kind person.”
“One day, Travis and I were getting a haircut, and this little kid comes up to me, actually comes up to Thorstad, and holds his hand out.”
“A little boy?”
“Yeah, cute as can be. Thorstad gives him sticks of red licorice whips, and the boy runs off, sits in an empty barber’s chair and thoroughly enjoys the candy. So I asked where he was from, and Travis points to Gul, and says, ‘Well, that’s Gul Hadi’s son.’”
“How old is he?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I guess our age maybe.”
“No, I mean the little boy.”
“Bashir? He’s four.”
“His name’s Bashir?”
“Yep.”
“What does he look like?”
“He has nut brown skin and hair the color of black licorice, that bluish-black color. His eyes are the color of Little Mac’s.”
“His eyes are green?”
“Green as yours.”
“Oh, Mac, I’d love to see him. Do you have any pictures?”
“No, afraid not.”
Sophie twirled her mug, spinning the tea bag around inside.
“Some of those pops you send me go to him. He loves them.”
“That makes me happy knowing we’ve done something for him. Tell me, is there anything his family needs that we can help with?”
“I’ve been turning that same question over in my mind, Soph, and the things they need are out of our jurisdiction right now.”
“Like what?”
“Like a decent education. Gul is limited by what he can provide. A barber doesn’t make much of a salary. Don’t get me wrong. Compared to what a lot of people are living on there, Gul’s doing pretty well.”
“Well, I can keep sending pops though, right?”
“Right.”
“And if there is anything else you stumble on that we can do for them, you already have my agreement, even if you can’t get hold of me first,” she said.
“Agreed.”
I took a sip of my chai. Drinking chai and talking about Gul Hadi and Bashir. I glanced up at the kitchen clock. “It’s getting late. I’d better finish packing for the beach and set the alarm. We need to leave by seven.” I groaned as I said it. I was so tired, and we had little time to sleep. Maybe I could catch a nap in the car if we took turns driving. I moved to the bedroom and started packing clothes for the trip. I had a flashback to when I laid out clothes for Afghanistan. It wasn’t that long ago. I glanced up, and Sophie was carefully folding her clothes, placing them in her bag. I smiled to myself. At least this trip Sophie is coming along.
26
“Let’
s unpack later. I want to walk on the beach.” Sophie had dropped her bag beside the bed and was already changing into sandals.
The delight in her eyes was like medicine to my soul. The beach had become an annual pilgrimage for us. We spent our honeymoon there, and the memories drew us closer every time we came back. After a six-hour drive, the beach called to us.
I threw the sliding glass door open and let the ocean breeze into our condo. I stepped out onto the balcony of our seventh-floor room and filled my lungs with salty air. A group of pelicans flew at eye-level. They studied me with beaded black eyes as they passed.
A strip of white beach stretched across the horizon. From my vantage point, I could see a pod of dolphins rising and dipping in the waves. Already, stress was leaving my body; my shoulders felt loose. “Come on. I’ll race you to the beach,” I said and slid the patio door shut.
Sophie ran ahead and tried to block me from the doorway. We pushed and pried at each other’s hands on the door, but she managed to slip beneath my arm, turn the handle, and fly out the door like a bird freed from a cage. She sprinted to the elevator and mashed the button several times. She looked back at me, teasing, laughing.
I caught her just before the doors opened, wrapped my arms around her, pulled her to me for a kiss. I heard the elevator doors open and a gasp. We must have been a spectacle, there in the hallway. Let them look. Hadn’t they ever been in love?
Downstairs the sun beat heavily in a three o’clock scorcher. I took my shoes off, and Sophie threw her sandals beside the pool. We ran down the wooden boardwalk to the white sandy beach. My feet sank into hot sand. It was soft and gave way with each step, making it hard to keep up with Sophie. She splashed into the surf ahead of me, turning back to wave me on.
“Come on, Mac! The water feels good!” She wrapped her skirt around her legs to keep it from the waves. The waves splashed against her and threw droplets of salt spray across her top. She looked giddy, drunk on salt water and sun.
I waded into the water beside her, knee-deep. The currents pulled at the sand around my feet then pushed me back again toward shore. It was everything I had dreamed about for months, and I meant to enjoy every minute.
Sophie’s eyes gleamed green as the tide. Her cheeks were flushed from the run and her hair curled in ringlets from the humidity. She kicked her foot through a wave and sent a spray of water in my face. Sophie giggled.
It was healing to be back at the beach. I breathed in the ocean air. If I closed my eyes the warmth of the sun and the fresh breeze took me back seven years to our honeymoon. Another spray of water hit my face, and when I opened my eyes, Sophie was running up the beach, laughing.
“Catch me,” Sophie said.
I took off through the waves, jumped to the hard-packed sand and pursued her. I finally trapped her at the pier. This time she threw her arms around me. She brushed the hair from my face, hair that I’d let grow wild in Afghanistan. She traced my beard with her fingers. “What made you grow a beard? When we were dating, I begged you to grow one, but you always refused. Now that you went off without me, you come home with one.”
“I wanted to try something new. I was tired of rules, you know? At HPD, I wasn’t allowed a beard.”
She tickled my face and brushed her fingers across my beard.
“Do you like it?” I asked. “I mean, you begged me for a beard for all those years.”
She smiled up at me and tickled my chin. “As a matter of fact, I do like it. It makes you look like a surfer.”
“I always wanted to surf. There aren’t many waves to catch when you spend your summers lifeguarding in a pool.”
~*~
We drove down the beach to our favorite restaurant. The host at the front door handed us a pager. “Wait time is approximately an hour,” he said.
We spent the time looking through gift shops across the street, waiting for the pager to buzz when our table was ready.
“Look, Mac. That gelato shop wasn’t here our last visit,” Sophie said, dragging me by the arm to a pastel colored store. “Let’s see what flavors they have.”
“OK, if we have any room left, we’ll stop in here after dinner.”
As we entered the door to the shop, our pager buzzed.
“Come on, Mac. Save room for dessert.”
We crossed the street and entered the restaurant. The server led us through a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd to our table, dodging trays balanced on the arms of other servers, squeezing our way between tables placed so tightly there was little room to pull a chair out.
Live music blared from a small stage. Alongside was a faded couch. Patrons sat on the couch, drinks in hand, enjoying the music. A local band was in full song.
The fish was served up quickly. I plunged my fork in and enjoyed the best fresh seafood I’d had in months.
Sophie twined her fingers in mine as we ate. “Time for dessert.”
“I’m ready. Just let me move around a little bit first, make some more room for it.” I leaned back and patted my bloated stomach.
“I don’t know if you need any gelato.” Sophie laughed. “I don’t even know how you finished that platter. It was huge.”
I paid our check, and we hiked across the street once again to the gelato shop. The crowd stretched from inside the shop out into the street. We joined the end of a long line of dessert seekers.
“Are you sure you want to stand in this long line? We can come back tomorrow,” I said.
“I’m really craving gelato.”
“OK, I guess I can walk it off on the beach later tonight. There’ll be fireworks at midnight.” I stretched my neck to see how much longer we would be in line.
That was when I saw him, a ghost of a boy. His curly, strawberry-blonde hair grew almost to his collar. Faded blue shirt. He was dressed in the khaki cargo shorts I’d picked out for him and red sneakers. His socks were mismatched. I never could find the right socks, and the day we went for a haircut I’d dressed him.
He grasped the hand of a man about my age. I couldn’t see the boy’s face. “I need to find a restroom. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“All right, but don’t be too long. The line’s moving quickly.”
I worked my way alongside our line and inched closer to the boy. As I caught up to them, he turned. My heart was pounding and my throat constricted. For a second, I wished.
But his features were not my son’s.
He looked at me curiously, and the man with him studied me as if I were some kind of stalker.
I ducked quickly into the restroom. The walls echoed with stall doors slamming. The hand dryer whirred, and toilets flushed alternately. I ran to a sink, splashed cold water on my face, scrubbed my hands, and dried them off. In the mirror, I saw them. Fathers and sons, a parade of what might have been. I had to get out of there. I was feverish and frantic, like an animal caught in a trap. Why did I agree to the beach? We should have gone to a solitary place, a cabin in the mountains. Not the beach, where every other person had a small child in tow. I made my way back to Sophie just as she was about to order.
“What took you so long?”
“Long line.” My voice wavered when I said it. I glanced around to see if the boy was still there, but he’d disappeared.
We carried our gelato to a picnic table outside the shop and sat down.
I was grateful for the distraction because the specter of that little boy still haunted me. I scooped the cold dessert into my mouth and swallowed. “I don’t understand the pointlessness of Little Mac’s death,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I was still reeling from the encounter in line.
Sophie put her spoon down, mid-bite. “What do you mean pointless? His death was not pointless.”
“But it seems meaningless. Isn’t death supposed to have some kind of meaning? Your father died serving his country in the military. My dad died from burns he had rescuing those teenagers from that wreck.”
Silence.
“You haven’t talked about t
hat wreck in years,” Sophie said.
“Yeah. I never told you how my dad described it to me. The screams he heard coming from the car. But he sacrificed himself. He said he never felt the flames when he cut them loose from their seat belts. It didn’t register until he saw the charred flesh on his arms. When he went back in for the third one that was when the car exploded. He passed the day after he told me that story.”
“That’s when you decided to be a cop, wasn’t it?” Sophie gazed into my eyes.
“Yeah, I wanted to be like him. I wanted to save people. I wanted to make things right.”
I’m sure she saw in my eyes that I hadn’t made things right, that I had only made things terribly wrong. I looked away.
“You couldn’t save little Mac. You tried, babe. You tried.”
“What good was the end of his life? He was too little to affect the world around him. His death had no meaning.”
“Maybe he had more influence than you know. It’s my prayer that God will use his death to help some other little boy.”
“Why didn’t He help Little Mac?”
“I don’t have an answer for that, and you know it. That’s an unfair question. I just know God was there, and He will use it for good. He promised me.”
27
That night, back at the condo, we fell into bed exhausted. Moonlight from the window made a muted glow across Sophie’s face. I watched her sleeping so peacefully next to me. Smoothed her face with my fingers, felt the softness of her cheeks. Her mouth puckered in a pout. I traced the outline of her lips with my finger.
Little Mac looked so much like her. He had my hair but her features. What kind of man would my boy have been? Would he have made a difference in this world? Forgive me, son.
I tried to watch Sophie, steal one more look at her, but it was impossible to keep my eyelids open.
I awakened to the sound of my own voice as it echoed off the plaster condominium walls. My arms thrashed through the depths of sleep. Flailing, desperate to get help. Cold sweat covered my face and ran down my neck, soaking my T-shirt. Even in my dreams, I failed to rescue him.