by Ginger Booth
“No, Momma,” Emmett sighed. “I’ve advanced to obsessing on what Susie did wrong.”
“Well, that’s progress.”
“Took you what, three years to get past dumping Dad, didn’t it?” Emmett countered.
“Susie’s not worth that much, Emmett,” she advised. “I grew up with your Dad. He was my world. Susie—eh. Well, good. I told your nosy neighbor all three of you were gay.”
“Hey!” objected Cam.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie,” Emma said to Cam, with dripping insincerity. “Were you trying to hide it?”
Cam stared at her for a moment, then gave in. “No. I suppose not.”
“Well, I’m sure my wife Pam would thank you, Emma,” John said, amused. “Pam would think it’s hilarious.”
“Fine by me,” said Emmett. “Though I’d think Cam has better taste.”
Once the dishes were cleared, Emmett dealt out his four sheets of paper again. Cam and John lingered over their Sunday coffee out of curiosity. With the housekeeping squared away, the men had nothing much to do until classes started the next day.
“What. How. Funding. Why,” Emmett said, tapping and naming the pages in turn. “How to do something to help in that migrant camp.”
“You have three columns for ‘what’ and only one for ‘why’,” Emma observed. “Shouldn’t ‘why’ have a ‘why not’ column?”
“‘What’ should split onto separate sheets,” Emmett allowed. “Who does what for whom. That’s three variables. I was grappling with ‘why.’”
“Emmett Christopher MacLaren…” Emma growled warningly.
“Peace, Momma. I want to help,” returned Emmett. “But this isn’t the first migrant camp I’ve ever seen. They’re multiplying like rabbits. ‘Why’ informs ‘who’ and ‘funding.’ I also gotta wonder—why do I want to help these people? I’ve walked away from thousands before, on duty.”
The ‘what’ page had ‘Emmett’, ‘buy $1000 food at the PX and distribute’, and ‘edge of camp’ as the first line of the columns. The ‘why’ list had gotten as far as ‘Americans’, ‘like my family’, and ‘dangerous situation.’
Cam mused, “You know, the first time I ran into a homeless vet, I handed him a hundred bucks. Stopped and talked for 10 minutes. Gave him my appreciation. Gave him face. When I first arrived in the Middle East, I ran into a group of 20 migrants. I had my squad lead them to safety in the next town.”
Emmett nodded and sighed. “Yeah. And by the time it’s a hundred, not much choice but to harden your heart and leave them to their fate. When it got into the thousands, they started to look like the enemy. Like these.”
John was grim. “Three years ago, they transferred me to Florida. The Coast Guard has to turn back the refugee boats. And let them founder. Fire on them, sometimes.” He shook his head. “I thanked God when I got an appointment to the Academy, and we moved back home to Connecticut.”
Emmett nodded slowly, then snatched another blank sheet of printer paper. He labeled it ‘Root Causes’, and jotted down ‘war’, ‘economy’, ‘drought.’ After a brief hesitation, he added ‘climate change.’
Cam tapped the funding sheet, which had a lonely entry of ‘Emmett $1000.’ “Why isn’t the state doing something?”
“Bankrupt, Cam,” said Emmett. “You just got back from the Middle East, didn’t you. This whole stack of states is bankrupt now. Kansas went first. Missouri still OK, Momma?”
“Teetering,” replied Emma. “And FEMA ran dry. Congress keeps failing to vote them any more disaster relief money.”
“Emma, you said the squatters would pay five times what we paid in the PX,” said John. “Exaggeration? I know Pam’s been complaining about food prices, but…”
She shrugged. “My husband farms.”
“Yeah, it’s about five X,” Emmett supplied. He shook his head in disbelief. “Really? I’m the only one who’s been in a supermarket lately?” He laughed. “I see cooking’s gonna be a problem in this household. About all I can cook is eggs.”
“Men can learn to cook, too, darlin’,” Emma twitted him. She tapped a finger on the paper.
“I’ll keep thinking on it, Momma,” Emmett promised. “You about ready to hit the road?” He made to scoop up the papers to leave the table clear, but Cam and John signaled him to hold off. Emmett saw Emma off to her truck.
When Emmett returned, his pages were neatly stacked in a corner. His roommates had their computers open on the dining table. His own laptop awaited him, closed. Cam waved him to his seat in invitation.
“We thought we’d do a warm-up on this before school tomorrow,” John said with a grin. “Care to join us?”
Emmett grinned back and dove in.
“Is it that obvious I’m gay?” asked Cam, once they were all deeply into their research collaboration.
John allowed vaguely, with a shrug, “High probability…”
“Uh-huh,” said Emmett.
Neither of them seemed the slightest bit concerned about it. Cam smiled.
“I like your Momma, Emmett,” said Cam. “Your chickens, too.”
Emmett nodded distractedly. “I like your file organization. Quit gold-bricking, Cameron.”
-o-
Emmett and John split up in the auditorium the next morning for their SAMS orientation speech. John joined a mixed bag of senior officers, while Emmett reunited with a scant handful of ILE classmates from the spring. There were fewer than he expected.
The whole room was emptier than he expected, perhaps half the 120 of the previous SAMS class.
A two-star general took the lectern, one Emmett hadn’t seen on campus last year. He laid out a syllabus of horror that went far beyond war.
The draft Calm Act.
-o-
Cam pulled out all the stops for dinner—stuffed chicken breasts and biscuits, bought ready-to-bake, with microwaved green beans and spaetzle, accompanied by a nice white wine, already poured, with water glasses set alongside. It was the first dinner he’d cooked in three years, and he wanted to get off on the right foot.
John and Emmett took their seats, as subdued as they’d been ever since they came home from their first day of classes.
Cam raised his wine in toast, “To a successful school year!”
Emmett half-raised his goblet, then put it down again. “Sorry, Cam. I think… I’m not drinking this year.” He raised his water glass instead. “To an interesting year.”
John nodded, but raised his wine. “And an excellent dinner.” After he’d shared the toast, he added, “I’ll help you with this bottle, Cam, but I think I’m with Emmett. Not a good year for drinking.”
Cam shrugged. “I can pour it out, if it’s a problem?”
“No need,” Emmett assured him, but passed his wine goblet over to Cam. “This really is delicious, Cam. No pizza, huh?”
“Midwest pizza sucks,” John assured him. “Someday you’ll have to come to Connecticut and taste good pizza.”
“Huh.”
“But we came to the Midwest to taste good eggs,” Cam offered cheerfully.
The other two men fell back into gloom.
“Cam…” Emmett eventually ventured. “We need to re-arrange the desks after dinner. We were instructed today to keep our offices locked at home.”
“Joking aside, I am not Bets, and you are not John Junior,” Cam bit out, trying to remain pleasant. That had been the joke. John got this family apartment on-post, but his family backed out and stayed home. That made Emmett the high school aged John Jr., and Cam the middle-school daughter Bets. “I am an Army officer.”
“Look, Cam, it’s not that we don’t trust you,” said John. “They’re doing something—weird—with SAMS this year—”
“John,” Emmett said in warning, shifting uncomfortably.
“No, Emmett,” said John. “We just worked with Cameron on the same stuff yesterday. And he is a brother officer. He’s right. We can’t padlock the office against him. Send him off to his room to stud
y without explanation. Cam, we’ll be working with some highly classified material this year. We’re not supposed to talk to you about what we’re doing.”
Emmett continued raking his food around the plate, like one of those little desktop zen gardens with a play tray of white gravel. Some sirens wailed by on the street in front of their historical brick apartment block.
“So… Cam,” Emmett said. “Anybody you know in your classes?”
“A few,” the younger man agreed. He sat more erect, and applied himself to his beans.
“But not ones you liked before,” Emmett concluded quietly.
Cam had been pleased beyond measure at the way John and Emmett accepted him as gay, without any awkwardness about it. The whole weekend, they’d been like family. This business about locking the office felt like he was being slammed back into the closet. And yes, a couple familiar classmates had an issue with him on that score. And he’d just played right into stereotype, making a fancy dinner.
“Emmett has some classmates from last year,” John attempted, to salvage the supper conversation.
“Five,” Emmett agreed.
“That’s not many,” Cam observed. “Does it normally take longer to finish the thesis for ILE? I’d hoped to do it the same way you did, Emmett, ready to start SAMS next fall. Get both programs squared away together.”
Cam hadn’t the slightest doubt in his academic abilities. None of them did. They’d proved their skills to each other yesterday. Cam would do the optional thesis for the ILE master’s degree as a matter of course, and he’d qualify for the highly selective, highly analytical SAMS program as well.
“You won’t have any trouble, Cam,” Emmett assured him. His phone rang, and he stepped into the living room to take it. Not that there was a wall between dining area and living room—it was one long open swath of hardwood flooring. His voice carried back to the dining room.
“Jesus… Yeah, me too… Thanks for calling… Jake? You know you can always talk to me, man, right?”
Slowly, Emmett returned to the table and stared at his food, his silverware untouched. “Cam, awesome dinner,” he said quietly. “I’m just… Four. Four classmates from ILE now. John, you remember I introduced you to Noah Matthieson, from Arizona? He, um…”
“Emmett, are you alright?” Cam asked in concern.
“No. I’m not. Noah killed himself. That’s what the sirens were. I’m sorry, Cam, I can’t eat this. Three times today I thought of doing the same as Noah.”
John cried, “That’s extreme, Emmett!”
“Is it? Is it really, John?” Emmett bit out, staring at John, haunted. “I’m from here. I’m staying here.”
John dropped his eyes, and grimly considered Emmett’s position. Connecticut was still green and lush. The Calm Act prescription was unthinkable here by the banks of the dying Missouri River—Emmett’s home.
Cam looked back and forth between the two of them. “And I’m not allowed to know what this is about? You went to class today for a warm welcome to SAMS. And now at least two people are suicidal? Including my roommate. But it’s none of my business?”
“Classified,” John whispered.
“John,” Cam demanded, “give me one good reason I shouldn’t go straight to the school commandant.”
John replied softly, “Noah Matthieson made your point already. Loud and clear.”
Emmett rose slowly. “I need to walk it off.”
“Not alone,” declared Cam.
“Agreed,” said John. “You just earned yourself suicide watch for the night, Emmett. Thank you, for telling us. You are not alone. We’re family.” He put a hand on Cam’s back. “All three of us. Family,” he insisted.
In the end, they rearranged their desks to face each other, screens to the walls, and called it close enough. Emmett killed the bottle of wine that night and fell asleep reading on the couch. Cam bedded down in front of his feet, so Emmett couldn’t get up without tripping on him.
Chapter 3
Interesting fact: Army Majors of this era would typically have already served multiple tours of duty in the endless quagmire the Middle East had devolved into. The uneasy NATO states bordering Russia were also common postings.
“Sure you don’t want to come, John?” Cam asked. “There’s room in the SUV. Last chance.”
“Nah, I’ve got tennis singles, and that dinner tomorrow,” John declined. “You boys have fun.”
The trio stayed close—that first weekend cemented them as family. But John was two ranks above the pair of Majors. He ran with a more rarefied social circle on post. He probably would have, anyway, but the switched SAMS agenda made him even more intent on networking. And not just in person. He seemed to spend most of his spare time catching up with old friends and acquaintances, by phone and online.
Cam’s boyfriend Dwayne Perard was visiting for a long weekend, and Emmett’s best friend Zack Harkonnen as well. Left together while their hosts were in class, Zack and Dwayne had gotten along splendidly. But class was over for the weekend. For Friday night, they headed out on a road trip.
“Race riots!” cried Dwayne, riding shotgun, as they set off. “You sure know how to show a guy a good time, honey,” he teased Cam.
More cute than handsome, and five years younger than Cam, Dwayne’s cafe au lait skin and bouncing ear-length dreadlocks qualified him as the least white of the expedition. Emmett claimed to be about an eighth Cherokee and who knew what else. Cam and Zack were pure northern European, in two shades of blond to prove it.
“Remember that riot in Amman?” Cam replied, with a grin.
“Yes, Cam. But not fondly,” Dwayne squelched him. “National Guard, remember? I signed up to help people in natural disasters. Not to get dragged into foreign cluster-fucks like Amman.”
“You met me,” Cam reminded him.
“It wasn’t all bad,” Dwayne conceded. “Where are we going?”
“Route 73 straight down to I-70, then east into Kansas City,” Emmett directed. “No, on second thought, let’s jog onto Route 5 when we reach it, and go closer to the river.”
Dwayne frowned at a map on his phone. “That’s convoluted. This says the shortest route to Kansas City is to cross the river in Leavenworth.”
“That bridge isn’t entirely open,” explained Cam. “And Emmett and I would like to see something down by the river.”
“That camp you told me about, Emmett?” Zack asked. “I’d like to see that.”
The squatter camp came into view as the late October sun fell low and red. Dust in the air made for another slow and spectacularly bloody sunset. The stench assailed them even through the closed SUV windows. But it was a different stench than the unwashed summer swelter and latrines. The camp stretched before them, a sea of burned-out wreckage.
“What is that smell?” Dwayne asked, holding his nose.
“Dead bodies. Some of them burned,” Cam explained shortly. He pulled off the highway and drove toward the camp. “Emmett, do you remember where we were in August?”
Emmett hung onto the driver’s seat behind Cam and navigated for another half mile to the edge of the camp. “Stop here? They’re all gone, Cam. You can wait in the car, guys.”
Emmett and Cam got out and looked around, trying to match their memory of the encampment with the destruction around them. Dwayne and Zack also climbed out of the car, but hung back, hands over their lower faces, staring.
“We ran out of time,” said Cam bitterly. As school got underway, and John and Emmett grew strange with their secretive studies, progress on the camp relief plan had stalled.
Emmett shook his head. “I decided to sponsor a couple families. Found them a church sponsor in Minnesota. Gave them money to get there, buy food for a while. Best I could do for a thousand bucks. They made it out. I don’t think this was a natural fire, Cam.”
“Agreed. Who would do this? And how the hell wasn’t it on the news?”
Emmett declined to voice his suspicions. Instead he pointed out, “Th
e river. Could drive straight across it now. Some might have made it.” He squatted down and pulled out his father’s cross, hanging with his dog tags on a chain. He closed his eyes to pray for the dead.
Cam kicked a blackened cooler, a charred chair. His foot hesitated at an abandoned doll, filthy with dust and soot, but still whole. He turned and walked back to Dwayne to share a wordless hug. As Emmett dragged himself back, Zack’s hug for him wasn’t as intimate, but certainly heart-felt.
“Still up for race riots?” Cam asked, as he started the car.
“Yeah, I need that,” Emmett insisted.
“You need that like you need a hole in the head, Emmett,” Zack suggested.
Cam sighed. “Next stop Kansas City riots. Although, I heard there was another migrant camp by the I-635 bridge, Emmett.”
“Not anymore,” said Emmett. “They cleared it out. Moved the people to migrant detention.”
“‘Detention’?” blurted Zack. “Like a concentration camp? Who the hell did that?”
“National Guard,” Emmett replied. “Aren’t you glad you resigned your commission, Dwayne?”
-o-
Dwayne changed for the evening at the hotel. To Cam’s embarrassment, his boyfriend had his cute gay hoodie look down pat. Baggie jeans sloughed down toward high-top pink sneakers with neon green laces. The actual charcoal hoodie had both arms sliced off at cap-sleeve length, to show off buffed biceps. A white muscle shirt peeked beneath, but rode up to leave the lower belly bare. Dwayne tied a rolled-up red polka-dot bandanna around his neck, and added authentic Disneyland Mickey Mouse ears to keep the dreads out of his face.
“Dwayne? What does that even say?” Cam asked, aggrieved.
“Comic relief, in a dreary world,” explained Dwayne. “It says I’m not angry, sweetie. Just like yours says…” He considered Cam’s starched tattersall Oxford shirt, tucked perfectly into tight brand-name jeans, and expensive running shoes. “Well, you’re gay. And so very preppy.”
“Do I look alright for this expedition?” asked Zack uneasily. Tall, blond, solid and Finnish, Zack wore his normal jeans and work boots and a flannel lined denim shirt, tails flapping.