Finding Sgt. Kent

by Raymond Hutson

  “It’s a long story.”

  She killed the engine and rolled down the windows. “I’m listening.”

  “I haven’t really drank since I first got out.” I belched. “It’s complicated.” I belched again, liquid coming up in my throat. “I’d rather not.”

  “You going to puke?” She unlocked the doors.

  “No.” An Enfield hung in the rack behind the back seat. “That’s a Mark III,” I said, and burped.

  “Good. You know your guns. You were going to tell me about this.” She touched my left temple.

  “There were a lot of them in Afghanistan.” Eyes closed, images flickered past, silent film desert hillsides, sand in my mouth, a conversation with Garcia, but I couldn’t hear him, just some emphatic gestures. He put on his glasses and turned away.

  “Sit up,” she said.

  A police car was passing in front of the truck, turning along the driver’s side. She made some reassuring gesture at the Stetsoned figure behind the wheel and it disappeared behind us. I closed my eyes again and the seat rocked gently. I might have drifted off momentarily.

  “I can put you out right here or find you a place to stay.” She glanced at her watch and turned toward me with a bounce of her hair. “But I’ve got all night to listen.”

  I told her about my afternoon trying to connect with “Uncle Danny,” Danny connecting with my face, Danny’s duct tape, Danny’s little pipe, Danny’s little cabin in the forest, carefully omitting the water-board segment, trying not to slur.

  She sat for a long time just looking at me, unreadable; impossible to say if she thought I was a liar or delusional. She shook her head, finally.

  “A lot of people in the woods like that.” Her face soured. “Did he really wipe his ass with my card?”

  I nodded.

  She started the diesel. “So, you still don’t know who your dad is.”

  “He’s dead. About two years. I found his parents in Sunnyside last week.”

  “Your grandparents.”

  “I’m trying to get used to that idea. I’m afraid they’re going to expect me to be him—and I’m not.” I turned the napkin over and looked at the blood soak. “I’m some kind of warrior son of a dead psycho hero.”

  She put the truck in gear, rolled up onto the road. “Not much of a warrior tonight.”

  “Thanks.” The wind through the cab was tossing her hair. “You are really, really pretty. Prettier than I remembered.”

  She feigned deafness for about a block before glancing over, opaque and humorless. “You are really, really drunk. Put your seatbelt on.”

  We drove out of the town’s neon, up the highway for ten minutes or so, then into the forest, the headlights swallowed by dense thickets of trees that came at us in curves. In a few minutes we emerged into a small valley amid the mountainside’s irregular black walls, a barn and ranch house a half mile further, a three-quarter moon rendering long shadows and the faintest trace of color. We slowed to a stop in front of a long, one-story structure dotted at intervals with dark windows.

  “Only the end cabin occupied tonight. You’ll be in number two.” She helped me down and unlocked a door, turned on the light to a small room of knotty pine. I sat on the edge of the bed and she walked past, lit the bathroom and came out with a wet washcloth. She stroked around my eye.

  “It’s stopped bleeding. Wasn’t as bad as I thought.” She stepped back, regarded me critically. “Might just leave enough of a scar to remind you in the future.”

  I sat, feeling small, like a kid in a chair outside the principal’s office.

  She marched around, aloof and business-like. “Towels in the bathroom. I gave you a room with a tub in case you have trouble standing up.” She rapped a small bottle on the tabletop like a snare drum. “Some Tylenol.” She turned and stepped out the door. “Goodnight.” A moment later she put her head in. “Whatever you do, don’t go out. I let the dogs have the run of the place at night. Could tear you up pretty bad.”

  The tub was long and I lay in it until I fell asleep, waking when it got too cold and my head was pounding. I’d left my meds in the car and who knew what was left of that by now. The room twirled. I knelt next to the toilet and threw up. No blood, but everything else so much like Mom’s Sunday mornings. “Not much of a warrior tonight,” and the look Cheryl had on her face, the tone so matter-of-fact. Woman spoke truth.

  I slid a window up next to the bed, opened a second in the bathroom, basking in the breeze, steady and clean. A small black digital clock glowed on the nightstand. No TV. No phone. I turned off the light and lay there for a few minutes, and remembered Garcia telling me one time that if a guy was throwing up, and his pupils were a different size, it meant head injury. I was kicked in the head, wasn’t I? I went back in the bathroom, turned on the lights and looked at my eyes, and they were equal, and then it occurred to me that if I had a serious head injury I wouldn’t be hopping around the room. Alcohol makes you stupid.

  I pissed in the toilet and it was pink. Very stupid indeed. I stood there, dick in my hand, looking at the guy in the mirror, face like a bowl of crushed cherries. I’d never looked like that. That bad. Never in my whole stupid life so out of touch, out of control, out of bounds. I wiped up some of the pee that missed, some puke as well, took a couple of Tylenol and lay down again, thinking I’d never really thanked Garcia, what I might have said to him, and now he was dead; wondering just how big an asshole I had been when he retrieved me in Kamdesh.

  –––

  I woke slowly as the room grew light, head still throbbing, expecting my bunk at Camp Eggers, waiting for the food carts at the psych ward, the futon at my apartment; a child’s wail from a dream, bringing me fully into the day, became a small whine outside the window, white cotton curtains fluttering. Pulling on cool, stiff jeans felt good. I ran cold water in the bathroom, put my head under the faucet and drank, couldn’t get enough of it. In the mirror, bruises over both biceps, an abrasion shaped like the side of a boot along my rib cage under my right arm. A thigh was turning purple. Lifting the left leg or taking a deep breath threatened to awaken all the agony of the night before.

  On the step outside my door two liver spaniels lay in the sun. One just looked at me and yawned, the other sat up and sniffed my hand. I squatted and petted it. Cheryl meandered across the lawn, plaid blouse, fingers in her front jean pockets, headed my way.

  “These the dogs you warned me about?”

  “Cassie and Cedric. Only dogs here.”

  I looked around. The place was greener than I expected, the sky brilliant, the contrast of the clouds and sun over the horizon, all of it at once, too radiant, too grand. “I must have really been an ass last night, huh?”

  She shrugged, touched my cheek. “I’ve met worse. God, I should have given you some ice.” She turned and took a few steps toward the pasture.

  I followed. “How’d you end up being there, right then?”

  “Paul, the bartender, called. Said there was some screwball asking around about me. I got curious.”

  “You go there often?”

  “Darts. Tuesday afternoons. Women’s league.”

  “Screwball, huh?”

  “He might have used some other word. I sat across the street and watched you hit Charlie. What did he say to you, anyway?”

  “You saw me start a fight?”

  “Didn’t say you started it. Figured he must have said something, that’s all.”

  “You know him?”

  “Everybody knows everybody here. Charlie Cole. Sheriff’s kid.”

  “Great.”

  “Don’t sweat it. You did him a favor. His dad probably arrested him anyway.” She stopped at the corral fence and hung an arm over it. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “That you go off, fight in some awful part of the world, and come home to this. Sort of represents my town.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I took another painful deep breath and coughed. “It’s weir
d. In the Army everybody’s on the same side. Here, everybody’s for themselves.” I felt awkward, shirt stiff with blood and dust, jeans with a tear like a hanging tongue. Couldn’t remember zipping my pants. “I should get back to my car, if there’s anything left of it.” I backed away. “I really appreciate this. You could have left me there. Wouldn’t have blamed you if you did. I just had some funny notion in my head.”

  –––

  We drove back to town, me making small talk about the trees, how the drought might leave them for the beetles, trying to remember anything old Dunham said about the forest when I was a kid. I went on about the Afghans cutting down the cedars in the mountaintops without any kind of reforestation—Allah was going to do it for them—and she nodded while I tried to prove I was an ordinary person who could talk about ordinary things, be interesting. The little red poppy hung from her shift lever.

  The black pickup was still parked tightly behind my car, the rest of the lot empty, Closed sign in the tavern window. “Looks like your friends might have got themselves arrested last night.”

  I climbed out of the truck and stood for a moment. “Shit.”

  She rolled down her window, sat there, truck idling. The parking lot was adjacent to a car wash, at the same level. I lifted one end of the railroad tie and moved it aside. She applauded.

  The four beer cans still lay on the floor and I swept them under the seat, then turned my car around and came back, driver to driver next to her. I dragged the tie back in place.

  She put the truck in reverse but stopped after a few feet. “You want to make any money?”

  “Doing?”

  “I’ve got a load of hay coming around noon.” She glanced skyward. “Supposed to rain like stink early afternoon. Could use some help. Get it inside faster.”

  I followed her back out to the ranch, took an antidepressant on the way, tried to swallow it when she wasn’t looking in her rearview. Her truck was battle-worn, dirty in the way work trucks could be, with a fuel tank and nozzle set across the bed just behind the cab. Diesel for farm equipment, I guessed. Was nice, made sense, to see a truck without monster tires or some stupid decal in the rear window—a giant marijuana leaf, or Calvin pissing on something. On her left lower tailgate, a black-and-white bumper sticker: NO WATER, NO FOOD.

  –––

  Shortly before noon, Miguel arrived with a five-ton flatbed stacked with bales, a stumpy, grizzled fellow over sixty, some unspoken familiarity between them, a loyalty. They’d known each other for decades, possibly since she was a child.

  “What you have to remember about horses is they keep needing fuel whether you ride them or not.” She handed me a pair of hay hooks. “Ever use these?”

  “In another lifetime.”

  Miguel had back problems and only dragged a few bales before he settled into a rambling conversation of broken English, sitting on a paint-stained chair just inside the barn door. The hay, it turned out, was grown elsewhere on the property. Miguel baled it and drove it in.

  We stacked the first level on a half-dozen pallets; she paused and looked at the spaces between them.

  “I figured about five inches, for air.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “Lets the cats get in after the mice, too.”

  “You have cats?”

  “Just barn cats.” She arced her gaze across the hayloft. “Probably up there watching us, right now.” She hooked another bale. “Don’t like cats?”

  “Cats are fine. Just allergic to them.”

  “I never let them in the house.”

  We moved another dozen bales, another layer. Get busy and pain falls into the background. “How big is this place anyway?”

  She set her hooks down and gestured. “When I was a kid, we had over 2,400 acres. That house way down there sits on what used to be our spread.” She pointed through the door to a mobile home about a mile away. “Now we’re down to 246,” she sighed. “Had good years. Bad years. Dad sold off parts piece by piece. Put me through college.” She stepped into the sun, pointed, perspiration pressing her blouse to her flank. “Part of it runs up to the ridgeline. Other side is national forest land, so it’s not like anyone is going to build up there.”

  We started stacking again. “What did you study?”

  “All kinds of stuff. Boys, mostly. Got a teaching degree, then got married.” She slung another bale. “Big waste of time.”

  “Getting married, or education?”

  She looked at me, mouth askew. “We’re getting kind of personal here, aren’t we?”

  Eight or ten bales remained when the first drops fell. We worked speechless and fast, both retreating into the open double doors when the cloudburst hit, drops kicking up tiny puffs of hay dust until they coalesced into a thin sheen of mud, Miguel driving off slowly, windshield wipers flapping out of sync.

  She set the hooks in a bale near the door, cocked her head. “What do you sell yourself for?”She looked at me from the door, cocked her head.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I never asked you. What did you expect to get paid?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just the exercise is enough.” My ribs ached, my legs ached, but now it was a good hurt.

  “I’ll fix you dinner.” She pulled her gloves off and started to the house.

  “Room two still mine?”

  She turned. “Till the maid kicks you out.”

  “How will I know what she looks like?”

  She didn’t turn but called back loudly, “Don’t know. Haven’t had one since 1996.”

  I showered and managed to find one clean shirt and a change of underwear. The rest of my clothes were filthy, rolled in the legs of one stiff pair of BDUs. I used to be better about this, everything in its place. I was living like a coyote.

  I shaved with bar soap and a well-used throwaway razor, fascinated by the abominable face in the mirror, wondering if she liked looking at me, some perverse interest in violence. Some chicks liked boxers. My right eye was swelling shut.

  She had a grill smoking on the porch of the big house when I came out, lifted a raw steak with a fork as I walked up.

  “I don’t know whether to cook this or put it on your face.” She studied me empathetically. “Sorry I didn’t get you any ice.”

  “You already apologized. I didn’t deserve any anyway.”

  I motioned at the Volkswagen parked outside unit twelve. “Newlyweds? They never came out.”

  “Writer. Stays in there most of the day, sometimes he walks to the end of the pasture.” She smiled. “Lot of broken pencils in his trashcan.”

  “Not much business for mid-August.”

  “Been some problems this summer. How do you like your steak?”

  “Rare. Medium. Whatever’s easiest.” The afternoon sun lit up the valley wall like marble. “Who wouldn’t want to come here?”

  She uncovered a bowl of slaw and half a loaf of garlic bread, pointed at a chair.

  I sat down.

  “Cat attack in May. Don’t know if you heard about it. Made CNN.” She spooned slaw onto my plate. “Jogger, young woman, over on a forest road.” She gestured at the peaks beyond the pasture. “They found pieces of her, under the brush. Family is suing the Forest Service.”

  “And?”

  “Mid-June I got a letter from our insurance carrier, saying if the cat isn’t captured or euthanized, they can’t provide liability.” She stood, took my plate and forked a steak onto it. “I take horses with tourists up all along those trails. That’s what this place is all about.”

  “Panther?”

  “Panthers are black. South American. Mountain lion. Cougar. Same difference.”

  “They ever attack somebody on a horse?”

  “Probably. Not in my lifetime, though. Not when there’s a dozen people on horses. They’re just too timid.” She tore a piece of bread loose. “Jogger was probably alone, running, cat’s instinct is to chase. Late spring they can be pretty hungry.”

  “I can
pay for my room if you like.”

  She laughed. “You are so kind. No, you’re my guest. I appreciate any effort you make here, but I really wanted to get to know you.”

  “You don’t know how glad I was to see you last night.”

  A shy silence fell for several minutes. Three horses crossed the corral. The wind picked up softly and lifted our napkins. My head wasn’t hurting anymore.

  “Anyway,” she said, “at this rate we won’t make enough this year to write off the new roof on the barn.”

  The barn had a gloss-red metal roof, still wet from the rain and clearly much newer than the graying cedar that supported it. “When did you put it on?”

  “May.”

  “You can depreciate it over seven years, you know.”

  “You do taxes?”

  “Seasonal, a couple of years after college.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Was the law in 1995. I’m no expert. You’d want to check it out with your accountant.”

  “You’re looking at her.” She smiled, shook her head. “I thought you were in the Army the whole time.”

  “I was out for three years. Got an AA in Missoula, worked a couple of seasons at H&R Block. I’m not a CPA or anything, but I remember that.”

  “It’s a small operation,” she said. “Just twelve units. No hot tub or pool, either.”

  “No TV?”

  “None of the rooms have one. No internet either.”

  “I’d think people would find that relaxing.”

  “I’m not sure people even know how to do that anymore.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I can get internet in the house, over my phone service, but it can be a real time waster. Stare at the screen long enough and you get numb in the head.”

  We sat and talked, about Colville, the Dunhams, basic training, the books I’d read, Iraq, Herzegovina, Fort Lewis. She talked about living in Okinawa, her mother who died of breast cancer, going to grade school for American kids in Italy. We talked about how odd rock music had become, everybody pissed off about something, and how everybody you heard about in the news was a victim of somebody else.