I smiled, and I knew he could hear it in my voice.
“That would be great.”
* * *
Miles came to my apartment the next Saturday afternoon. He carried two long-stemmed roses he had bought at a gas station on the drive down.
“Let me put these in water,” I said.
I turned away so he wouldn’t see me blush.
We set out across town in his pickup, and I asked about his family.
“My dad’s a pilot for Southwest Airlines,” he said.
“No kidding? My dad was a pilot too.”
“Who’d he fly for?”
“Eastern,” I said. “But that was back in the day. He died when I was five.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I shook my head. “It was a long time ago.”
Miles told me about growing up in the Texas Panhandle across the border from Oklahoma. I told him about my half siblings, two brothers and a sister, much older than I am and scattered across the country. He talked about flight school in Alabama where he was learning to fly Apaches, the Army’s attack helicopters. I understood only vaguely that he was training for war. We drove to a park north of the city and pulled alongside an empty pavilion. The sun had lowered in the sky by the time we found a footpath that ran through the woods. Dry leaves had fallen across the trail and they crackled beneath our feet as we walked. Miles pushed aside a hanging branch and held it for me as I passed.
“Do you go to church?” he asked.
He let the branch go and caught up to walk beside me.
“I’m a spiritual person,” I said, “but I don’t go to church.”
Miles pressed. “Do you believe in God?”
I could tell it mattered to him what I said, as if this were some minimum requirement.
“Yes,” I said. “My mom went to church every Sunday growing up. I was raised in a Christian house.”
A hedge, but not a lie. I run more New Age light than biblical. But it must have been enough because on the way back to the truck, Miles took my hand. He slid his fingers between mine as the last light of day seeped through the trees, and he held my hand the entire way home. Later that night, when his breath had evened beside me and he had relaxed into sleep, he held it still.
The next morning I stood at the stove in my kitchen while Miles sat at the breakfast bar. He told me stories about Texas while I fried eggs in a pan. I salted a pot of boiling water for grits, and my roommates joined Miles at the bar. I dished out plates for everyone and all of it—the rowdy boys behind me, the grease popping on the stove, the butter melting in a dish—felt right. It looked nothing like the life I had imagined and yet it was the most natural thing in the world, with Miles there at the center of it.
2
That summer Florida had its worst hurricane season in years. Four storms hit the state, one after the other, knocking down power lines and tearing off roofs. The phone lines at the senator’s office never stopped ringing. On the drive home from work I would open the car windows and gulp the fresh air, already counting down the days to the weekend when I would see Miles and we would set off on some new adventure.
On a dense and humid Saturday late in the summer we decided to visit limestone caverns just south of the Alabama line. Water dripped from the rocks overhead as we shuffled along with the group, following a guide, and Miles and I pressed together in the tight space.
“The caverns date back more than thirty-eight million years,” the guide said, “to when the state of Florida was covered with a warm shallow sea.”
I had the sudden image of salt tides spread over the land, and I stepped closer to Miles to breathe in his sun-warmed smell, like hay in summer. Even in the cold and damp he radiated heat. I still had to catch my breath with him sometimes, the way he made me feel. When I thought of the men who came before him, I thought of weighty materials, of earth and metal, bags filled with sand. I imagined carrying them like a load, being yoked to their desires. They asked too much of me. Miles asked nothing; he took me whole. When I thought of him I thought of water, of running my hand through a clear pool. Even surrounded by him, I could still see myself.
“And these here,” the guide said, indicating the rocks that thrust up from the cavern floor, knee-high, thick-headed, with shafts as big as my fist, “are stalagmites. They’ll grow a cubic inch every hundred years.”
I leaned close to Miles. “Does that look like . . . ?”
He was already smiling. “Sure does.”
The caves had a corporeal quality, like cloistered parts of the earth’s body, damp and dark and moist, lungs breathing in and out. I pressed against Miles’s back and we were a pinpoint of warmth in that vast and humid cavern. The distant dripping of water reached us, a steady plunk-plunk-plunk into a hidden pool, and as the group shuffled forward Miles took my hand. He ran his thumb over the fleshy webbing between my thumb and first finger, back and forth, so that the rhythm matched the fall of water. The guide led us farther into the cave and pointed to small ridges in the rock.
“These marks here?” she said. “Made by the retreating tides. Water giving over to dry land.”
Miles gave my hand a squeeze and I squeezed back, softly at first, then more urgently. Did we feel the tidal pull of our own lives then? Or were we content to simply lean into each other and let the heat of our bodies build in that cold space?
* * *
The parking lot emptied quickly after the tour. By the time we arrived at the car, the other visitors had gone. Miles unlocked the passenger side door and held it open for me as I climbed in. I sifted through the glove compartment and retrieved a folded map, and Miles perched on the edge of my seat as I pored over it.
“There’s a lake not far from here,” I said. “We could go for a swim.”
Miles moved his head close to mine to peer at the map. He looked up to see me looking at him and he leaned forward to kiss me, a slow kiss that deepened and lengthened. I reached up and circled his neck with my arms. He pulled back and looked at me, and I smiled at him as he surveyed the parking lot through the windshield.
“Nobody’s around,” he said. “Parking lot’s empty.”
“Do you think . . . ?”
“Do you?”
He raised an eyebrow, a question, and I raised mine, an answer.
“I’ve never—” I said.
“Me neither.”
“But maybe we could . . . ?”
The passenger door stood open to the afternoon and the air was hot and damp, an exhaled breath.
“If we were quick,” he said.
“If we were quick.”
“But how would we—”
“Like this?” I said.
Miles whispered, “Is that—”
“Just like that.”
We were all talk until suddenly we stopped talking. The day stilled except for a light breeze at the tops of the trees. They leaned together, talking in whispers. A bird called out. Then silence. Miles’s breath echoed in my ear, and I watched a droplet of sweat bead on his forehead and run down to his ear. It hung there for a second before falling to my chest and sliding beneath my shirt. I kissed him and his mouth tasted like salt water. Beneath us the caves reached down to the earth’s molten center, the place where the planet is hottest, and the ground heaved up and collapsed onto itself with a shudder that left fissures in the pavement.
Afterward we drove twenty miles west. I navigated on the folded map and Miles held my hand as he drove. He looked over at me from time to time and smiled. I smiled back. We were like cats licking our paws, slow and content. We found the lake tucked back behind a stand of pines, three hundred yards off the main road. By then the sky had clouded over and a cold wind coursed over the surface of the water. A single family gathered on the man-made beach at the water’s edge. In a folding camp chair a heavy woman with oily skin and red splotches high on her cheeks sat surveying the lake. Her hair was short and wispy, the color of old copper. I walked to the edge of the brow
n water and stood with my hands on my hips. I looked over my shoulder at Miles.
“Do we go in?” I said.
He scanned the dark lake. “I don’t know, babe.”
The woman in the camp chair leaned forward.
“You all thinking about going swimming?”
“Thinking about it,” Miles said.
“Might better wait awhile,” the woman said. “My boys seen a water moccasin just a few minutes ago.”
I took a step back.
“Here?”
The woman pointed to a spot by my feet.
“Right over there.”
I backed out of the water and ducked beneath the sheltering beam of Miles’s arm.
“Should we go back?” I said.
Miles surveyed the water and the almost deserted beach. My skin pricked with goose bumps.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
That was how life felt then, danger lurking in the sweetest days.
* * *
On a Friday afternoon a few weeks later I left work early and drove west through Tallahassee and north into Alabama to the outskirts of Fort Rucker. Outside Miles’s apartment in the late afternoon I stood on the tips of my toes and felt above the light for his spare key. My fingers came back covered with dust but otherwise empty. I lifted the rug in front of the door and hunted beneath the lip of the step and in the corners, but no key. I checked my watch. Miles wouldn’t be home for another hour. I thought about sitting in my car and cranking the AC, but I hated to waste the gas. Instead I fetched a book from the backseat and settled myself on the staircase beside Miles’s door. Before long, gravel crunched under tires and gave off the sound of rubber rolling in. I looked up to see not Miles’s pickup but another, smaller truck. Jimmy Hyde. He climbed out of the cab of his truck and hoisted a pack over one shoulder, and as he moved up the walkway toward the building I turned back to my book.
“Hey, there,” he said.
He stopped in front of me and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.
“Hey, Hyde.”
“Jimmy,” he said. “I hear ‘Hyde’ all day. You locked out?”
I raised my hands in front of me, palms open.
“Locked out,” I said. “Am I in your way?”
“You’re fine.” He dropped his pack to the ground. “Miles forget to leave you the key?”
I held my place in my book with one finger and closed the front flap.
“Looks like it. He normally hides the key over the light there”—I pointed—“but I can’t find it.”
Jimmy reached above the light and felt across the flat strip of metal.
“Anything?”
“Nothing.” He bent down to the doormat. “Did you check under the rug?”
He lifted the mat by the corners and glanced to the left and right, then lowered it back in place.
“Guess you’re stuck,” he said.
I shrugged. “Miles’ll be here in an hour.”
Jimmy leaned one shoulder against the side of the building. Sticky heat draped over the apartment complex and shimmered in pools above the pavement.
“How was your drive up?” he said. “Hit traffic on I–10?”
“Just the usual.”
I marked the page in my book and set it on the step beside me.
“How’s flight school?” I said.
“They work us hard.”
“That’s what Miles tells me. You’re flying Black Hawks?”
He nodded. “UH–60s.”
“How do you like it?”
“They’re good aircraft.”
As a car pulled into the parking lot I looked past Jimmy, hoping to see Miles.. But a woman in cutoff shorts stepped out of a faded El Camino. She hoisted a toddler on her hip and headed for the stairs at the far end of the building.
“How’s Tallahassee?” Jimmy said. “Miles told me—you’re working for a senator down there? Is that right?”
I nodded.
“How’s that going?”
“It’s okay.”
Heat rolled off the pavement in waves and in the distance rotor blades chopped the air with a steady thwack-thwack-thwack. Jimmy stopped leaning against the brick wall and took a seat on the bottom step, near enough that I could smell his end-of-the-day mix of sweat and hydraulic fluid.
“So, how long have you and Miles been dating?”
“About six months now.”
“Is that all?”
I laughed. “Seems like a lot to me.”
“I shouldn’t be talking.” Jimmy shook his head. “My longest relationship lasted three months.”
“You’re kidding. Three months?”
He smirked. “Guess I haven’t met the right girl.”
I kicked at the dirt under my heel and looked over the empty parking lot. Jimmy watched me from the corners of his eyes.
“Think you’ll have to go overseas?” I said after a while. “To Iraq?”
“Or Afghanistan. Looks like I’ll be headed that way once I get done here and they assign me to a unit.”
I heard tires ground the pavement in the parking lot and saw Miles’s truck pull in. Jimmy stood and dusted his hands on his pants.
“Guess I’ll be leaving you,” he said.
Miles stepped out of his Chevy and waved. I waved back. He came up the concrete pathway with his pack hefted over one shoulder.
“Hey, man,” he said. He tapped Jimmy on the back. “How you doing?”
“Good, good,” Jimmy said. “Just got home from class.”
I stood, smiling.
“Hey, babe,” I said.
“Hey.” Miles leaned forward to kiss me.
“What are you doing out here?” he said when he stepped back.
“I’m locked out.”
“Did I forget to leave you the key?”
“No big deal,” I said. “Hyde kept an eye on me.”
Miles turned to Jimmy.
“Were you watching her for me?”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said.
“Well, thanks, man.”
“Anytime.”
Miles unlocked the front door and I picked my book up off the stoop. Jimmy hoisted his pack and headed up the stairs.
“Dude,” he called over his shoulder to Miles, “I love your girlfriend.”
That Sunday morning we drove to church on base. At the security checkpoint I handed my driver’s license to Miles and he passed it with his military ID through the window. The guard inspected both cards, looked at the military decal on the windshield, and waved us through. The base was deserted, the brisk hum of weekday activity ceased. Normally there were soldiers everywhere, crisscrossing streets in their smart uniforms, hurrying down sidewalks on important errands. I straightened the hem of my skirt and stared anxiously out the truck window.
“Can’t you drive any faster?” I said. “We’re going to be late.”
Miles pointed to a speed limit sign as we passed. “That’s as fast as I can go. If I get a ticket and it gets back to my instructors, I’m in big trouble.”
“Seriously?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. And you better not get a ticket on base, either.”
I looked across the seat at him. “Or what? Don’t tell me you’d get in trouble for that, too.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. If a wife or girlfriend is caught speeding and it gets back to your commanding officer, then you get a stern talking-to.”
“What would they say? ‘Control your wife’?”
“Something like that.”
“Jesus.”
Miles gave me a sharp look, and I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said as he turned into the church parking lot.
During the service a slick preacher spoke in front of the crowded church while his done-up wife sat in the first pew, holding a baby in her lap. She laughed indulgently when he made jokes at her expense. The praise band took the stage, a mix of boys in their late teens who held their guitars with stiff arms
. They were mostly the kind of young men who let the hair on their upper lips grow in thick and dark, whose palms are always clammy, who take on a wistful faraway look when they talk about doing missionary work overseas. The lead singer, though, was pure rock star. He wore a microphone headpiece and ran down the aisle during sets high-fiving parishioners. When the band wasn’t playing he sipped water from a bottle and dabbed his forehead with a towel. I made paper airplanes with the church program. When a man came around with plates of wafers and wine for Communion, I declined, and on the church steps afterward I carefully avoided taking the preacher’s hand.
In the truck after the service Miles loosened his necktie and cranked up the radio. I lowered my window and let the warm breeze blow in. With church behind us, the day felt suddenly light and limitless.
“Where to now?” I said.
Miles tilted his head as he considered.
“Want to see an Apache?” He pointed to a stretch of grass in the distance. “They’re having an exhibition. They’ve got Black Hawks, a Chinook. One of the guys from class told me he took his wife. You can climb up into it and everything.”
I hesitated. When the U.S. invaded Iraq the year before, I was vehemently, vocally against the war. I was angry about the politics of it and angry at the lives lost—on both sides. I understood why Miles had joined the Army. After September 11 he felt like it was his duty. He said he wanted to step up so that someone else would not have to. I respected that and I was proud of him. But I struggled with the realities of the Apache. The Army calls them gunships; the pilots call what they do hunting. I looked at Miles beside me and his face was radiant.
“Let’s go,” I said.
He pulled into the parking lot alongside the exhibition field, and I followed him across the grass.
“Here she is,” he said in front of the helicopter.
I reached out to touch the side the way I might touch a strange animal. The metal had warmed in the sun and I flinched from the heat. The helicopter was wasplike and barbed, frightening, and it was all I could do to keep my feet rooted to the ground.
“You want to sit inside?” Miles asked.
Unremarried Widow Page 2