by A. Gorman
He stares at me as if I’m completely crazy. “I think you have a concussion.”
“I’m fine.” I attempt to push off the car, but the big sweaty wall of muscle stops me from going anywhere. He grips my shoulders hard, as if his hands are the only thing keeping me upright.
“My purse,” I shout, turning back to my door. He tightens his hold and stops me from going anywhere. “I need to call Olivia to come get us.” I look down at Spence who watches us closely and the world twists on its side, my stomach clenches, and I puke all over Jake Tucker.
Since he came back from the war a year ago, I’ve imagined meeting this recluse mountain man in a number of ways: down at the Piggly Wiggly, at the Coffee Loft, and even right here in this very park. What I hadn’t imagined upon first meeting Jake Tucker was that I would mumble some gibberish about his eyes and how his voice sounds like a whiskey lullaby, and then puke all down his shirt. I hadn’t imagined falling into said puke-covered shirtfront either, but I do. Right before I pass out.
You know when you think to yourself that this day couldn’t possibly get any worse? You’d be wrong. The universe always has a way of slappin’ you upside the head and showing you just how much worse it can really get.
* * *
“I still don’t understand how you wound up wedged between the footbridge and a tree? What in the world were you doing?” Olivia, screeches from the driver’s seat of her minivan. She’s taking Spence and I home after we spent all day running tests that I couldn’t afford in a hospital I didn’t want to go to in the first place.
After puking all over Jake and passing out on him, the man had called an ambulance. Then he’d rifled through my phone and called Olivia. Fairhope, Alabama was a small town, and if you didn’t know everyone, you knew of everyone.
Olivia runs the local shelter and training center, Paws for Cause. She rescues dogs from death row, trains them to be service dogs, and pairs them up with eligible candidates from all over America. Olivia Anders is my best friend, and just like with an annoying older sister who is always right and way too fond of saying “I told you so,” I divide my time spent with her between wanting to hug her and wanting to squeeze the living daylights outta her.
“Mamma was watching Jake Tucker in the rear-view mirror.”
“Spencer Mason, you hold your tongue,” I snap.
“You were not?” Olivia asks, her mouth agape.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Mamma’s a fibber donkey,” Spence singsongs, and I can’t help the smile from bursting onto my face even though it hurts my forehead as I laugh.
“Jake Tucker. Really?” Olivia asks as she pulls into my drive. I really wish I could just grab Spence out of the car and disappear into the house to avoid her questioning, but I don’t see that happening on account of the fact she’s sleeping over to keep an eye on me. Damn doctors.
“Don’t act so surprised,” I say, gathering my purse and the Minute Maid Lemonade she bought me from the drive-through at Sonic.
Olivia holds her hands up in surrender. “It’s just that I’ve never heard you talk about Jake. I didn’t even know you knew him.”
“I don’t. Not that it matters much now anyway because I just puked all over the man.” I get out of the car and open Spencer’s door. He climbs out, forgetting his juice as he races for the end of the drive and waves to Mr. Williams across the street. Olivia chuckles.
“It’s not funny.” I wave at Mr. Williams who’s squinting at us.
“What happened to your head? And where’s your damn car?” Mr. Williams drawls from his front porch stoop. He never goes any farther than that last step. Even the mailman comes up the walk because he knows Mr. Williams won’t go down it. He was a Marine aviator in the Korean War and went on to spend twenty years in the military. The man is as old as time. He’s also a terrible landlord on account of his agoraphobia, but what he lacks in repairs, he makes up for in time spent with my son. On the porch, of course, ’cause I can’t see him ever leaving it.
“Oh, it’s in the shop.” I wave the notion away as if it’s no big deal.
“Mamma crashed it into duck pond bridge ’cause she was too busy watching Jake Tucker, and now she’s got a goose egg on her head.”
“Okay, Spence. That’s enough.”
“Was she now?” Williams leans forward on the stoop, like this is the most fascinating news he ever heard. I throw my hands up and walk inside, leaving them all to their laughter.
Stupid hot Marine.
Chapter Two
Jake
One foot in front of the other. I sing the Marines’ Hymn in my head. Funny how those things never leave you. Even now, seven thousand five hundred miles away, I still hear those words I whispered to the darkness. Desert dust cakes my skin, gunfire and chaos send my heart hammering against my ribcage. The blast from an IED shakes the ground beneath my feet until I lose my balance. I can only watch as two of my men are blown apart and the spray of sand and debris rises into the sky like a plume, and then rains down over our shell-shocked bodies. The ringing in my ears is back.
So are the screams.
Every fucking cry for help or scream of terror, of loss, of agony from nine years’ worth of service. I hear it all on a loop in my head. Afghani, American, man, woman, child—it don’t make no difference, because terror sounds the same in the dark, no matter whose lungs it’s ripped from.
Those sounds, tastes, smells—they burrow in bone-deep and they never leave.
Nuke paws at my hip, jumping up. I’m snapped back to the present. And like a fucking head case I’m standing in a busy street of Fairhope, my world on full tilt as cars and people and overexcited children move all around me.
The adults here don’t pay me much mind when I retreat inside my head like that, but the kids often do. Maybe it’s because sometimes I stare at them and see something else: blood, bone, a mass of raw meat where their faces should be. I look down at my dog and pat his head. “Good boy.”
I turn my back on the town as they make ready for the festivities. Unease prickles down my spine. Everywhere I look the town is painted red, white, and blue. The fourth of July.
God bless America.
This is one holiday I could do without. When everyone in town gathers by the pier to celebrate America’s independence. I’ll be holed up in my house trying not to regress again when I hear the sound of the fireworks. On any given day I feel as if I’m taking one baby step forward and eight giant leaps back. In my head, I repeat the bullshit mantra of my shrink: Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.
I count today’s goods, marking them off in my mind with a big green tick just like he told me to.
Coffee? Good.
Running? Good.
Seeing the footbridge taped off and the massive tree at a lean earlier? Jury is still out on that one. Mostly because the second I’d heard the crash, I’d dropped to the ground like I was under fire. It took a few beats for Nuke to bring me back, and when I’d realized I was here, and the beat up red Datsun was wedged between the tree and the bridge, and there was a chance that the woman and her kid were in danger, I hadn’t thought much of anything except that I needed to get them out. That’s how it is with me. That’s why I find it so hard to function like a regular adult, because half of me will always be in a war zone, eyes always scanning for danger, seeking out ways that I can be useful and fight, and the other half barely functions. My mind is fragmented, broken into a million little shards, and no amount of meds or Zen quotes from my shrink will change that. My brain fights me at every turn, and it wins, because how do you fight a battle that only wages within your head? How do you undo everything you’ve done? How do you forget the screams, and the faces of your brothers as the light drains from their eyes?
Doctor Crenshaw may be right—there may be something good in every day, but there’s so much bad that outweighs it.
I pick up the pace, loping into a sprint, my aching legs protesting with eac
h step I take. Nuke pants at my side as I run through town as if the devil himself were chasing me. Truth be told, I think he jumped on my back the day I deployed and the bastard hasn’t moved since.
When we’re a little farther from the pier I can breathe easier, though the tightness in my chest doesn’t fully let up. Sweat pours off of me. Despite the injuries I sustained in that desert, I’m in peak physical condition so I know it ain’t the jog that’s got me gasping for breath. I lean over, my hands rest on my knees, and my dog jumps up to lick at my face despite his own exhaustion. I scratch behind his ears and whisper in a ragged voice, “I’m good, buddy. I’m good.”
I glance down the road. From here I can see the red and white tape sectioning off the footbridge. It fights against the breeze off of Mobile Bay and I watch it move in the wind and think about yesterday’s checklist.
Morning Run? Good.
Crash? Bad.
Blue eyes and . . . what was it she said again? Whiskey lullabies? Jury’s out on that one too, for far too many reasons.
I unclip Nuke’s leash and allow him a moment to shake and just be a dog. Normally, I’d never let him off-leash here or anywhere else around town, but he’ll likely spend the next twenty-four hours cooped up inside with me so just this once, I let him go. His eyes dart right to the ducks in the pond but he doesn’t make a move towards them, though his head is high, his ears straight, and his tail slightly wagging. I head for the beach, needing to feel the bay water on my feet and the sand beneath my toes. It’s then that I notice the beat up red Datsun parked a couple yards away. My eyes scan the beach for that mane of windswept blond hair and that of her son’s. And there she is, watching the water, as her son plays in the sand just a few yards away.
I take a step forward and then falter.
I should leave them be.
I’m glad to see her doing better. The last glimpse I had of her was as an ambulance carted her off on a stretcher, her son screaming for his mother as Olivia tried to wrangle him into her minivan. Now, less than a day later she’s here, alive, and clearly feeling well enough to get back behind the wheel, even if her car is a little more beat up than usual.
Walk away, you pussy, before this becomes another of those bad moments.
I take another step forward and gunshots ring out. The squealing whistle of the bullets assail the air around me and my body moves on autopilot. The kid screams and covers his ears. Nuke and I take off down the beach, headed right for the both of them. An explosion sounds, a loud boom overhead, and she turns toward me just as I shout, “get down.”
Our bodies collide. She hits the sand beneath me and I shield her from the hail of bullets and debris.
“Get off me,” she yells, beating my arms and chest. On shaking limbs, I lift my weight off of her and turn to see my dog attempting to console the screaming child. There’s a boom from overhead and my gaze zeroes in on the idiots occupying a wooden row boat. They’re setting off fireworks. The afternoon sky is ablaze with red, white, and blue starbursts.
“Get OFF!” She shoves at my chest more forcefully this time.
The kid screams with every bang and the woman is frantic beneath me. Disorientated, I sit back and yell for Nuke to heel, but for the first time since I adopted him, he doesn’t obey. I get to my feet. The blonde is already running down the beach, and despite the fatigue in my muscles I run across that sand faster than I ever ran across any battlefield.
I reach her son before she does and find the kid flat on his back, squealing in delight as Nuke licks his face and whines.
“Nuke heel.” My dog clambers off the kid’s body and sits by me.
Breathing raggedly, Ellie drops to the child’s side. “Baby, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mamma.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. He about licked me to death though.”
Assessing that there’s no permanent damage, she turns on me. “Your dog needs a muzzle. He attacked my son.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. He’s not usually like that.” I grab Nuke’s collar and clip on the lead. He whines, but sits awaiting my next command. “He’s trained to detect distress. Granted, he’s only supposed to talk me off the ledge, but I guess your son needed him more.”
“He could have killed him,” she snaps and crouches down in the sand by her kid. She doesn’t touch him, or offer him physical comfort, which surprises me. “Baby, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he says, impatiently. “What’s your dog’s name, mister?”
“Nuke.”
“Oh my God, you’re bleeding.” She takes his arm to inspect his wounds further, but the kid pulls away.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t like to be touched,” he shouts, covering his arm from her view.
His hands make a warding gesture and she nods, speaking slowly and calmly as she says, “I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I silently observe this exchange. The kid scoops up fistfuls of dry sand and lets the grains sift through his fingers. Nuke whines and butts his head against my hand. The woman sits, studying her kid for a beat before rising and turning her angry glare on me.
“Your dog did this.” She points to the scratch along his arm.
I feel sick that he got hurt, but I know Nuke didn’t mean no harm. “I’m truly sorry, ma’am.”
“Don’t you dare ‘ma’am’ me.” She pokes her finger at the air in front of me, and I flinch as if she were really making contact with my skin. “Spencer, we have to go.”
The kid continues sifting sand through his fingers, watching on as if mesmerized, and I think I understand the peace he finds in that one repetitive motion.
“Spencer,” Ellie says, all patience gone and the smallest bit of hopelessness leeching out of her voice, as if she were battle-weary but summoning the morale to keep on moving. “Please, baby?”
He jolts back to the present and stares at his mother. There’s a vacant kind of recognition there as he assesses her and the grains of sand sticking to his hands, and then he brushes them off and slowly gets to his feet.
“I’ll pay for the doctor’s visit,” I say, as if that makes up for throwing her on the ground in one of my episodes and allowing my dog to hurt her son, even if it was an accident. “For you both. I guess I hit your head pretty hard, and you should get it checked out after yesterday.”
She flushes beet red and glares at me. “I don’t need your help. Just put a leash on your damn dog.”
My dick twitches with her anger. It’s been a long time since I felt anything but distrust towards another human being, but this woman stirs something within me that I thought was long dead.
“Yes, ma’am.” I grin down at her. The insane urge to invade her space, to lean into her and provoke her even more, just to see what sort of a reaction I’d get, fucks with my head, and causes sweat to bead across my brow. She turns on her heel and stalks away, her little boy waving to me and Nuke, and then trailing along behind her.
“You’re supposed to keep me outta trouble, not in it.” I flex my hand and Nuke butts his head against it. If he ignores my commands and deserts once more, I’ll have to speak with Olivia, but I can’t risk anyone taking him away from me. I know my dog. He charged that kid because he believed he was in distress—sometimes he just doesn’t know his own strength.
“Pull that shit again and I’m gonna head straight to your supervisor,” I say, but I smile as we set off for home. “Now don’t go gettin’ ahead of yourself. I ain’t asking for her number. Can you imagine datin’ a woman like that?”
Nuke glances up at me as he trots along the beach at my side.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m serious. That kind of woman would have your balls in her handbag by the time you’d paid the check on your second date.” Even as I say those words, though, I know they aren’t true. Her mamma bear instincts had been out in full force, but I’d watched that woman from afar a number of times. I know she’s fiercely
protective of her son, but she don’t strike me as a bitch, even if she did chew me out like I was back in the Marine Corps.
I decide to go easy on Nuke on the way home and we stroll by the water, even though everything tells me to hurry because those morons in the rowboat were just the very beginning. The later it gets, the more anxious I become.
Once we make it back, I dish up an extra-large portion for Nuke’s dinner. I don’t bother fixing myself something. Instead, I go around closing all the curtains in the house and retreat to my bedroom. I start off on the bed, but within seconds I huddle on the floor beside it, and I’m sweatin’ so bad the carpet beneath me is damp.
The first pop sounds and the trembling begins. I squeeze my eyes tightly closed. I cover my ears and the explosions get louder. My bedroom window lights up with each bright starburst of fireworks painting the sky. My quiet tree-lined street explodes with color.
Outside, the whole town celebrates. I imagine the kids are squealing as they chase one another with sparklers and celebrate a freedom they know nothing about, but in this room, my dog’s even breathing and the licks to my face are the only thing keeping me from puttin’ a gun to my head.
God Bless America.
Land of the free and the home of the brave.
Chapter Three
Ellie
Hell and damnation. Could my luck get any worse?
I took Spence home and with a lot of struggling, an epic meltdown that I just didn’t have the heart for, and half a tube of Neosporin plastered all over the bathroom floor later, I’d cleaned up the scratches on his arm. We’d finally made it to the market before they closed, though there’d been another meltdown there about the way Tina Tisdale had stared at him a moment too long at the checkout, which of course had led to every woman and her dog telling me how I should raise my child with a firm hand and how tantrums shouldn’t be tolerated.