An Everyday Hero

by Laura Trentham

  “Your mama wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t make sure you got her.” She shoved the guitar at his chest and his hands came up automatically to take it.

  Anger so familiar as to be a comfort licked like the start of a wildfire. “Fine. Tell her you gave it to me, and then tell her what I did with it.”

  He tightened his hands on the neck and raised the guitar over his head like a rock god ready to shock and awe his audience of one. Splintering the guitar into pieces would hurt, but he craved the pain. It would distract from the deeper regrets that tormented him.

  He tensed his arms to bring the guitar down. She slammed into him like a linebacker. His weight shifted unexpectedly onto his artificial leg. His balance was already shitty and the two shots of Jack didn’t help his reflexes.

  He let go of the guitar to catch his balance, but he was a goner. His shoulder took the brunt of the fall, but his head smacked something hard and sharp. He rolled to his back, his ears ringing. He touched his temple at his hairline and his fingers came away bloody.

  Greer was on the ground too but didn’t spare a glance toward him. She cradled the guitar like she’d rescued a child from a speeding car. She ran her hands over the wood, her voice breathless. “Thank the Lord, I think she’s okay.”

  “What about me? You cracked my head open.” His voice descended into tantrum levels.

  Her mouth pulled down and her eyes crinkled. Good, she should be worried. After setting his guitar down like it was a Fabergé egg, she crawled over to him. The closer she got the more her expression resembled suppressed humor and not worry. “Awww … did Humpty Dumpty take a fall?”

  “I could have a concussion.” He pushed himself up on his elbows.

  “It’s barely a scratch, you big baby. I know you’ve been hurt worse.” Her gaze skated down to his leg and back up, but it held neither pity nor awkwardness. She shook her head and tutted. “What were you thinking? If you had smashed the guitar, I would have given you more than a bump on the head. Your guitar deserves better.”

  Maybe it did. But he wasn’t equipped to care for anyone or anything—not even himself. “I may be down a leg, but I’m pretty sure I could take you.”

  “Ha! Haven’t you heard that I’m a terror to the balls of Madison’s men?”

  “Did Beau finally grow a pair for you to keep in your pocket?”

  Her face changed in a heartbeat. The sass and playfulness gone, hurt and sadness in their place. “I figured word had gotten around to everyone. Even you. Beau and I broke up.”

  His foot did not taste good. If he ever left the cabin or not let all his calls go to voicemail, he might have heard the gossip, but he hadn’t. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She sat back on her knees, her skirt exposing several inches of her thighs. “It’s all right. I mean, all right you mentioned it. Not that what he did was all right.”

  In high school, Greer had been cute in an awkward, gawky way. Until she got onstage. Onstage, she’d transformed and commanded everyone’s attention with a confidence she’d grown into.

  He forced his gaze off her legs. He shouldn’t be noticing her legs or the curves of her hips and waist and definitely not the way the pink V-neck stretched across breasts that for sure weren’t there in high school.

  “How did Beau screw up?”

  “Why do you assume it was him and not me?”

  His gaze zipped down her legs and back up. “Because he’d be an idiot to break up with you.”

  She looked away and smoothed her hair behind her ear as if embarrassed, but the corner of her mouth ticked up for a millisecond before firming. “I caught him coitus interruptus with Marcy Sims.”

  He winced. “Oh man. Awkward.”

  She shrugged. “I should have expected it. My weekends were busy with gigs, and I worked as a bartender during the week. I guess I should have made an effort to come home more often.”

  “Hold up. Are you actually blaming yourself for his wandering dick? He should have manned up and broken up with you before screwing around. Which reinforces my theory that he had no balls to begin with.”

  A smile banished her sadness. “Who am I to argue?”

  A fire ant bit him on the finger. “Fire ants are going to feast on us if we keep sitting here. Come on.”

  He got to his feet with minimal stumbling and held out a hand. She looked up at him, her head cocked. Was she deciding whether he was trustworthy or not? Based on their most recent interactions, he could make an educated guess on which side of that equation he would fall.

  She surprised him by slipping her hand into his and allowing him to haul her up. The top of her head was at eye level. Taller than he remembered. Prettier eyes too. Hazel that veered toward green. Her thick hair waved to her shoulder blades. He let go of her hand with a palpable reluctance.

  “Take the Martin with you when you go.” His harsh tone was an attempt to cover his sudden awareness of her.

  “Nope.” She scooped the guitar up and clomped up his porch steps. She stopped at the rail, where four shots remained lined up for his obliteration.

  She tossed him a look he interpreted as judgmental, but instead of chastising him, she picked up a shot and killed it. Then, without an invitation, she opened his screen door and disappeared inside the cabin.

  He stared, torn between outrage and admiration. His life had taken on a rhythm since being discharged from the service, driven by the rise and fall of the sun and the spinning of the earth. It was natural and predictable and … boring.

  Greer Hadley was not boring. He was on a roller coaster chugging slowly to the top of the first rise. Anticipation and fear and an out-of-control adrenaline rush lurked. It was not a comfortable feeling. But it was exciting.

  He tackled the stairs, one at a time, and banged into the house. It was a mess. His dirty clothes were piled in front of the small laundry area, cordoned off by accordion-style doors. His clean clothes filled one of the overstuffed armchairs. Folding seemed like a waste of his time. He was too busy staring at nothing and drinking.

  Empty beer and whiskey bottles decorated the mantel, mimicking the way his mother used candles to decorate for the holidays. A yellow jacket buzzed around the lips, on the hunt for something sweet.

  His diet relied heavily on frozen pizza, chips, and Little Debbie snack cakes. Basically, anything that didn’t require cooking. He would eat the fruit and sometimes the vegetables his mother included with the occasional grocery run she made for him, and once a week or so, she would send over a casserole, which was welcome, but he was surviving fine.

  “What a dump,” Greer said.

  “I wasn’t expecting company.” His face heated. Dammit, why was he embarrassed when she was the one who’d barged in?

  Her gaze traveled down his body and back up. “You cleaned yourself up since last we met, so that’s a start.”

  A supernova went off in his chest. He didn’t need to look in a mirror to know his cheeks had gone splotchy. The curse of his fair skin. After her last visit and the poke about his appearance, he had been taking regular showers. Honestly, he’d forgotten how nice it was to be clean.

  She laid his guitar across the mound of clean clothes and wandered to the wall that separated the living area from the galley-style kitchen. Crossing her arms and tilting her head, she studied the hole he’d put through the wall with his fist. He rubbed his still-sore knuckles even though it had been a week since the incident. An empty picture frame hung askew, providing a border for the jagged hole in the wall like it wasn’t an accident and rather part of an avant-garde art show. Broken glass crunched under her flip-flops.

  “What were you going for here?” She took a step back and held her hands up as if framing a scene. Humor played at the corners of her mouth and her arching brows. “Commentary on the rotten core of our pillars of society—I assume this is a load-bearing wall—or an expression of the beauty of rage?”

  He needed to fix the wall before his parents noticed. They would for sure
haul him off to the VA for the counseling he’d avoided thus far. He hadn’t worked up the courage to leave the cabin to face people who would remember him as the football star or the soldier. He didn’t know who he was now.

  She squatted down to pick up the picture he’d punched out of its frame, shaking shards of glass off it. Wearing his football uniform, he stood tall and proud and smiling before his last high school football game. A bittersweet moment frozen in time. The confidence and optimism of someone on the verge of setting off in the world shone from his toothy smile. The boy in the picture was a stranger.

  Greer ran her finger over his innocent, smiling face. No doubt, she either pitied the man he’d become or wished for the old one back. He plucked the picture out of her hand, crumpled it in his fist, and tossed it over his shoulder. Later he’d rip it into pieces and flush it down to the septic tank, where it belonged.

  “You’re welcome to leave. Unless you want to clean up for me.” The bite in his voice veered unattractively toward peevish.

  Her lip curled. “I’m not your maid.”

  “You’re not my therapist either.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Why are you here, Greer? ’Cuz I sure didn’t invite you.”

  Her mouth opened and closed, then she shook her head. “I don’t know. You were nice to me once, and I thought I could return the favor. That’s dumb, I guess, considering the situations aren’t even comparable.”

  He racked his brain. He remembered her, of course, but they hadn’t run in the same circles. “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t even remember.” She barked a laugh.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  “It’s so weird.”

  “What? Me?”

  “No, that an incident can make such a big impression on one person and not at all on another.” She chuffed and shook her head. “You remember Wayne Peeler?”

  “The Weasel?”

  “He was harassing me in the hall one day before World History. I’m adept at handling handsy assholes nowadays—bartending and playing gigs bring out all kinds—but back then I didn’t know what to do. I froze. You grabbed the back of his collar, shoved him into the lockers, and whispered something in his ear. I don’t know what you said, but I’m pretty sure he tinkled in his pants. He left me alone after that.”

  Emmett vaguely remembered the incident, but not what he’d whispered. Probably an R-rated threat of an ass whooping. He’d held enough power and cache at the school to make threats stick like tar even if he lacked the feathers to actually follow through on a beat-down.

  “Glad I stuck up for you back then, but you don’t owe me anything, if that’s what this is about.” He waved his hand between them.

  “Did you know Wayne is a deputy now?”

  “I’d heard something to that effect. Has he let the power go to his head?”

  “Straight to the little head between his legs,” she said darkly.

  He tensed. “What’s that supposed to mean? What happened?”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “I don’t get out much.” He didn’t bother to check his sarcasm. “Tell me.”

  She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Nope. You’re going to have to get the story from someone else, which means having a conversation with an actual human. And it’s a good story. Let me know what the rumors are, and I’ll fill you in on what really happened. Toodleloo.”

  She waved her fingers and stepped around him. She moved faster than he could and had skipped down the steps before he made it onto the porch. She turned around and walked backward, holding up one of his shot glasses.

  “Here’s to you. Here’s to me. May we never disagree. But if we do, then screw you. Here’s to me.” She tossed the shot back, dropped the glass at her feet, and quick-stepped toward the tree line. He watched until she disappeared.

  Only when his cheeks grew sore did he realize he’d been smiling the whole time. He cleared his throat and set his mouth in a line even though there was no one to judge him. The sun had fallen below the tree line, casting dusky fingers over the field. Lightning bugs blinked and drifted into the treetops. He retreated to the house when the mosquitos began to feast, leaving the remainder of the whiskey shots untouched.

  No one had been in the cabin since he’d moved in. Two weeks at the big house was all he’d been able to stomach. His nightmares had awakened his parents and they kept trying to get him to talk, talk, talk. Which was the last thing he’d felt like doing since coming home. He craved silence and solitude and … nothingness.

  Except, with Greer come and gone, restlessness had moved in and made itself at home. He paced, and then for lack of anything else to do, performed some of the PT exercises they’d given him at Walter Reed. He hadn’t seen the point in keeping up with them when his future consisted of the rocking chair on the porch of the cabin. Rocking the years away had seemed a good, solid plan at the time. Now, he wasn’t so confident.

  He grabbed a dustpan and broom and cleaned up the broken glass. He looked around for the wadded photo. It was nowhere, not even under the couch or the antique buffet. While he was in this rare mood, he folded his laundry, put it away, and loaded the dirty clothes into the washer.

  For the first time in a long time, his mind and body were tired. The spate of activity had worn him out. He collapsed on the couch and eased his artificial leg off. As much as he hated looking at his stump—it for sure wouldn’t win any beauty pageants—a physical relief accompanied the freedom from the prosthetic.

  The oddity of not seeing his leg still struck him on occasion. It was a truth learned as a child: certain things belonged in pairs—shoes, hands, eyes, and legs. He flipped the lights off, laid back on the couch, and pulled a blanket over his legs so his mind wouldn’t struggle with the incongruity and his heart didn’t have to deal with the loss.

  Greer danced behind his closed eyes like a shadow boxer. She’d left the damn guitar. Tomorrow he’d use it as target practice and hang the remnants in the water oak at the edge of the road so she’d see it when she came back. God, he could just imagine the tongue lashing she would dispense. He smiled to himself in the dark.

  Even though he was tired, he couldn’t sleep with his thoughts riding a merry-go-round pushed by Greer. He reached for his cell phone, the screen light making him squint. He hesitated, weighing the implications of reaching out, but he wasn’t a cat. Curiosity wouldn’t kill him. Hopefully.

  He hit his parents’ phone number and prayed his mother picked up. Not surprisingly, his prayers once again went unanswered.

  “Hello.” His father’s gravelly voice brought forth memories of watching him in the ring training yearlings.

  Emmett’s hand tightened on the phone. “Hey, Dad. I wanted—”

  “What’s wrong? Do you need help? I can be there in ten minutes.” It sounded like he was already on the move.

  Emmett sat up. “No. I don’t need help. Jesus. I’m fine. I’m on the hunt for information.”

  “About what? The therapist your mother mentioned?”

  “Can we occasionally talk about something besides my fucking leg, please?” His voice broke like glass, leaving jagged edges ready to cut.

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  Emmett wasn’t sure if his father was referring to his cursing or the blow-off. Not that he planned to ask. It was easier if no one looked behind the curtain. The view was sure to be a wasteland. He wanted his parents to stay safely tucked away in the little room he’d designated for them. One where they still thought of their son as a hero.

  “I didn’t call to argue. Can you put Mom on?”

  Her voice came on immediately. “Emmett, sweetheart, what do you need?” The eagerness in her voice churned guilt in his chest.

  “What have you heard about Greer Hadley?”

  “She came by here and I gave her your guitar. A nice girl.” A few beats of silence. “Did she drop it off?”

  Was Gr
eer a nice girl? He rather hoped not. “Yeah, she dropped it off.”

  “You should start playing again. You loved it so in high school.” There was a hope in her voice he couldn’t quite squash.

  “Maybe. Right now, though, I’m more interested in Greer. What’s the scuttlebutt around Madison?”

  “Oh. Well, as to that…” She cleared her throat.

  Emmett swung his foot to the floor and leaned forward. Like any good Southerner he could sense juicy gossip like a dog could sniff out fresh-cooked bacon. “What’d she do?”

  “It’s not really for me to say.”

  “She told me she caught Beau cheating on her with Marcy Sims.”

  “Goodness me. I didn’t realize Beau and Marcy were fooling around. Greer has been through some hard times, but she has a good heart.”

  His mother was either too much of a lady to gossip or wasn’t in the loop. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?”

  While he cringed in anticipation of her coddling and pity, he wasn’t immune to her desperation. When he was a kid, he’d loved sitting in her lap and even having her cut up his peanut butter and jelly into perfect triangles. His lunches had been envied by all.

  “I’ve been craving one of your casseroles. In fact, I’m running low on staples too.”

  “I’ll make you a big pot of hoppin’ John. Enough to—” Silence crackled over the phone. “Actually, I’m volunteering tomorrow and won’t have time. I forgot.”

  “As soon as you can manage would be fine. Could you put Dad back on now?”

  “What is it, son?” his dad asked.

  Son. Biologically, it was a certainty. They shared too many physical traits for Emmett to think he was the spawn of the mailman, but he’d fallen well short of the legacy his ancestors had blazed in military service, from the Revolution to the Civil War and through the post 9-11 conflicts around the world.

  However, now was not the time to delve into their complicated family history. “What’s Greer Hadley’s story?”

  “She’s a troublemaker. I told your mother not to give her your guitar. Did she upset you? Do I need to have a word with her father at church on Sunday?”