American Road Trip

by Sarah Black

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  More from Sarah Black

  About the Author

  By Sarah Black

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  American Road Trip

  By Sarah Black

  A single moment—or a single mistake—can change everything.

  When Captain James Lee Hooker and his lover, Sergeant Easy Jacobs, were in the Army, they made a mistake that got a young soldier hurt. Three years later, they’re civilians again, living far apart, haunted by what they lost. Now that young soldier needs their help.

  With his grandmother’s one-eyed Chihuahua riding shotgun, James Lee climbs into Easy’s pickup for a trip across the American Southwest. They set out to rescue a friend, but their journey transforms them with the power of forgiveness.

  Chapter One

  A PONYTAIL model and a barber walk into a diner. It sounds like a joke, right? But that’s how I always think about that trip. It was a trail of diners and roadside motels across the American Southwest, with green chili cheeseburgers and a shit-bird on four tiny paws named Tino.

  We ended up, me and Easy, with our feet in the sand, staring out at the sky and surf of Malibu, watching the sun go down. But the story really started years before, when the three of us dressed in Army green. Me and Easy, and his cousin, Austin.

  Easy was already in the platoon when Austin arrived, and they looked so much alike it was clear they were related. They had the same sandy-blond brush cuts and eyes of a peculiar blue-gray. Austin was a smaller version of his cousin, an inch shorter and missing twenty pounds of muscle, so naturally everyone started calling them Big J and Little J. Easy put a stop to that pretty quick, telling anyone he could catch and hold in the crook of his big arm that Austin was going to be treated like a man or he, Easy Jacobs, would pound the shit out of somebody’s face, got me? Easy was a tough guy, the platoon sergeant, in charge of logistics, discipline, transportation. I was the OIC, the officer in charge. We were on our way to Afghanistan.

  Austin was just a goofball kid with dreams of being an infantryman like his big cousin. It wasn’t two weeks and he was the little brother of the platoon.

  He was our only bad injury in two tours together. When he got hurt, it tore something in me, something I couldn’t seem to fix. Everybody felt guilty, and the blame was thick on the ground. But it was my fault. I knew it and Easy knew it. So I walked away from him, from the Army, and from the responsibility and blame.

  I remember the relief when my time was done and the uniform came off, like someone had cut tight bands that had been wrapped around my chest, and I could take a deep breath for the first time in years. I had a plan. My last year in, I’d decided to go to grad school, get licensed as a counselor. Easy gave it a thumbs-up, said so many vets, so little time. He told me I’d be a good therapist, and he’d sit on my couch anytime.

  But after Austin got hurt and I left the Army, I couldn’t seem to get it together. The university was like a pretentious version of the organization I had just left, all structure and bureaucracy. All I felt was resentment and an urge to get away. I didn’t know why, or where, and I didn’t care.

  I went for the interview for grad school admission with a chip on my shoulder, pissed off when I went in the door. The professor looked at my resume and thanked me for my service like he might thank the boys who rubbed his car down at the car wash, perfunctory and automatic. Then he started asking me about PTSD, said lots of vets wanted to be counselors to learn to deal with their symptoms, and was I having problems adjusting? Had I experienced any blast trauma? I stared at him, wondering why anyone would call blast trauma an experience, like going to Six Flags for high school graduation. I got up and walked out of the room. He was spluttering behind me, but I could hear the pleasure in his voice as he apologized.

  My mother gave me one of those deep looks that mothers are so good at when I told her what happened. Then she got very brisk and said it was probably just as well because she had a job for me. My grandmother was living alone out in Albuquerque, in the same little house my grandfather had built when he came back home from the Pacific in WWII. Since 1946 the neighborhood had changed, but my grandmother was too stubborn to move and her vision was getting bad and the Meals on Wheels lady had called to say she needed help. I was to go out and live with her, convince her to move into assisted living, get the house ready to sell, and, it went without saying, get my shit together.

  I hadn’t heard from Easy for months when I left for New Mexico, not since he’d gone back home to see if Austin was ready to leave the VA. I didn’t expect to hear from him again. He had his life to live, and I was just a bad memory. If he was smart, and he was, he would put it all behind him and move on. I wanted a good life for him.

  My grandmother’s neighborhood in Albuquerque was a couple of blocks east of Old Town but had missed out on the gentrification. All that was left of the original neighborhood were three houses, a chop shop and garage with piles of used tires out front, a bodega, and a Chinese takeout. Of the three original houses, one was missing all the windows and part of the roof, with plywood patching the holes; one had six motorcycles parked in the hardpan yard; and one was my grandmother’s.

  A chain-link fence surrounded the small yard and someone had put a couple of rows of concrete block along the bottom of the fence. It looked like the place was slowly transforming into a concrete bunker. The little flowerbeds were full of leggy, overgrown flowers and weeds, and the rambling rose that my grandfather had planted for his new bride had grown into a thicket of nasty thorns and dead branches that looked like it belonged in a horror movie.

  I pulled open the screen door, collected the flyer that had been stuck inside the door. Who was soliciting in this neighborhood? Oh, Domino’s, of course. I knocked on the door, then pushed it open, calling out for my grandmother in rusty Spanish.

  An evil fur ball the color of dust launched himself at my ankle, got a mouthful of denim, and hung on. He had tufts of black hair growing out of oversized black ears. They whipped back and forth as he chewed his way toward skin. He opened his mouth long enough to send out a stream of hysterical high-pitched barking, then leapt up and clamped his tiny teeth on my jeans a couple of inches below the knee. I just let him hang there. I thought one of his teeth was stuck in the denim, and I took advantage of his momentary quiet to walk on into the house. One eye was scarred shut. The other was black and beady and full of some strange hatred. Did I know this little rodent? The overgrown ears were as tattered as a boxer’s. I called out again and heard my grandmother’s voice calling from the bedroom.

  I walked into her bedroom, the little dog hanging like a pelt from my leg. She sat up in bed, her long gray hair in a braid over one shoulder. “Tino! Tino!”

  “No, Grandma, it’s Jamie.”

  But she wasn’t paying any attention to me. The rodent had flung himself off and jumped onto the bed. He turned to face me, my grandmother’s trembling old arms wrapped around him, ready to fight to the death to protect his queen.

  “Do what you want to me,” she said. “I’m just an old woman. But don’t hurt my little dog.”

  “Grandma. It’s me. James Lee. Your grandson. Didn’t Mom call to tell you I was coming?” I pulled a chair up to the bed, let her study me over the head of the snarling dog.

  “Jamie? Is that you? What’s wrong? Who’s dead?”

  “N
obody’s dead. I came to see you.”

  “Aren’t you in the Army? I thought you were fighting in the war.”

  “I’m done. The war’s still going on. I came back here to see you, Grandma.”

  “Jamie! Is that you?” She flung her arms out, and I tried to hug her around the squirming protector smashed against her breast.

  “I’ve come to stay for a while, Grandma. In case you need anything.”

  Tino curled up on the end of the bed. When I sat down, his black eye opened. I could hear his dog thoughts loud and clear: Do not approach the queen.

  “I worry about Tino. What will happen to him when I’m gone. It won’t be long now, Jamie. I can feel your grandfather waiting for me. And he was never a very patient man. You look like him, both of you soldiers, so handsome in your uniforms.”

  I used to stay over at their house and go to the Saturday night ball games with my grandfather. When I was very small, he would carry me into the house after the games, my sleepy head on his shoulder. I would hang on when he tried to put me down, and nuzzle into his neck, smelling that fancy barbershop aftershave he always wore. “You need help with your medicine?”

  “I don’t take any medicine.” She waved her hand, doing away with the entirety of Western medicine. “I have my tea in the afternoon. That’s all I need.”

  “I’ll make it for you.”

  “Jamie, you’ll look after Tino for me, won’t you?”

  Chapter Two

  OVER THE next six months, I became familiar with the strange world of elder care in America, and I got to know the kids who ran the chop shop and the couple who cooked Chinese on the corner and the bus drivers who ran the route between Grandma’s house and the grocery store. Grandma spent most of her time in bed, but she still got up in the morning, washed up, and changed into a clean nightgown for the day. She let me brush her hair, fasten a new braid over her shoulder.

  It was a sunny April afternoon. Tino was out in the yard on guard duty, walking the perimeter fence on top of the concrete blocks. I heard her call out. “Esteban! Esteban, come here, I’m falling.” Esteban was my grandfather. She had confused me with him a few times when she was just waking up from sleep. I pushed into her bedroom. She was holding on to her walker, and I saw her sway. She looked at me with such profound relief in her face that I relaxed.

  “Grandma, you scared me!” I reached out to wrap my arm around her back, and she sank backward into my arms.

  “Esteban.” She fell into my arms, her eyes locked on my face, and just for a moment, I felt another pair of arms reach out and wrap around us both. I thought I smelled a familiar barbershop aftershave. By the time I carried Grandma to her bed, she was with him. Tino was out in the yard, howling like a mad coyote.

  There was no will, and as far as I could see, no evidence of property taxes paid since the 1980s. I cleared as much of the paperwork and back taxes as I could; then I hired an estate lawyer to try to sort everything out. My mom was her only daughter, but there were second cousins scattered all over the country. I reached out to all of them I could find, but none were interested in coming back to Albuquerque and taking on the job of getting the old house back in shape.

  “What a mess!” The lawyer stared around at the street, at the concrete blocks and chain-link fence, at the boys across the street swarming over a low-rider truck painted the color of ripe plums. “Bad neighborhood, dangerous neighbors. This is going to be a challenge.” She turned back to me. “The good news is you can live in the house until it’s all figured out, if you want to. But you don’t have to. I mean, you have no legal obligation to stay here. How many cousins did you say? Seven?”

  Tino and I exchanged a look. I could read his crazed little face. Tino was thinking, You’ve killed the queen, now you’re going to burn down the castle?

  I WAS still living in Grandma’s little house three years later, walking through the days like a shadow. Tino and I had arrived at détente. I had a job teaching chair yoga and tai chi to the seniors at the local YMCA, and I started a blog for veterans called the Mindful Vet, wrote a daily post about the benefits of meditation and living a mindful life. I thought I was probably talking to myself. It was a pale ghost of the life I had wanted to live, but something kept me drifting through the days, doing what I needed to do. I missed having Grandma to take care of, and I missed the guys. Not the Army, but the guys in my unit. And I missed Easy with the bone-deep ache of sorrow and loneliness and lost love.

  I stopped cutting my hair when I took off the uniform. It grew longer, and I brushed it out with my grandmother’s hairbrush and made it into a braid over my shoulder, like she had worn. I wore black leggings and a tee shirt with a pair of Vibram FiveFingers to teach yoga and do tai chi in the park. The old men watched me and occasionally joined in when I offered to show them some good moves for arthritis. They just shook their heads at the braid and the leggings.

  Henry had joined the chair yoga class after his heart attack, and he followed me to the park after class one day in early May to watch the tai chi. He looked like a bulldog and kept working his jaw like he wanted to spit out a mouthful of words. He was mad about his heart, his bypass, his medications, healthcare in America, the state of the economy, the state of the world. Mostly he was mad because a nutritionist had suggested he consider becoming a vegan, and he was still outraged six months later. He consented to chair yoga, but that was as far as he was willing to go. So I was surprised that he followed me to the park. I thought maybe he was lonely and the people he usually complained to were avoiding him.

  He settled on a bench and, after watching for a few minutes, mentioned that if I had been a soldier in Vietnam and stepped on Bouncing Betties, as he had done, twice with the same damn foot, I wouldn’t be able to balance on my toes like I was doing. “Those fucking mines. It’s a miracle they didn’t take my balls off.”

  “Ouch. I was a soldier, Henry. Afghanistan. Two tours.”

  He sucked in a deep breath and blew it out in a little huff through his nose. “Okay, then. You know what I’m saying.”

  “Yes, I do. Which foot?”

  He stared down at his feet. “The left one. They blew it to pieces. Damn thing still hurts when it wants to rain. That’s why I moved to Albuquerque. To get away from the humidity. That and the VA.”

  “The VA’s good here?”

  “It’s the best. Don’t you go?”

  “No.” I moved into the next position. “I don’t want… I don’t want them. I don’t know why.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I get you.”

  “This position is called the Archer. See how you move your arms like you’re pulling a bowstring? It opens up your chest.”

  Henry watched me some more. “I could probably do that. Even though those damn doctors have opened up my chest already. Did you know they split the sternum in two when they cut into your heart? Crack it right in two. Then they staple it back together with wires.”

  A sternum stapled together with wire sounded worse than stepping on a Bouncing Betty. I thought I heard someone say my name. “James Lee.”

  I moved back into position.

  “Hooker! Captain Hooker.”

  I turned my head and the braid slithered off my shoulder, hung down my back. I looked straight into Easy’s face. He looked good, a couple of years older, but still himself, something stern and smart in his eyes. He was a complicated man who passed himself off as just one of the guys. “Easy Jacobs! What are you doing in Albuquerque?”

  “Looking for you.”

  Henry was up, checking out the newcomer. Easy looked like a soldier, a tough guy in jeans and boots and an old tee shirt. Henry looked him over with approval, then turned back to me, studied the long black braid hanging down my back. “So. Captain Hooker. You were an officer?” He shook his head in disgust, planted his cane on the grass, and limped away.

  I turned back to Easy. He was staring at my hair. “What?”

  “Shit, James Lee. Don’t you know a decent barber?”


  “I guess I was waiting for you to show up.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as I opened my mouth. His face turned cold, mouth set in a tight line. There was too much water under the bridge between us for jokes like that. Too much water under the bridge, over the bridge. That bridge had washed away in a flood. “Sorry.” I took a step back. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Captain, there’s trouble.” He was staring after Henry, watching him walk away. Or maybe he was just avoiding looking at me. “It’s Austin. I came to get some help.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “He needs rescuing. We owe him, James Lee.”

  “Okay, sure. Of course I’ll help. You don’t need to pull out a piece of lumber and hit me over the head with it. How’d you know where to find me?” I walked over to the bench, slung my bag over my shoulder.

  “Your mom. She said she sent you out here to check on your grandmother three years ago, and now you won’t leave. I left my truck in your driveway. Those gangbangers across the street told me where you were.”

  “Oh, shit. You left a truck in that neighborhood? It may not be there when we get back.”

  He smiled for the first time. “Relax, James Lee. Nobody’s gonna steal that truck.”

  I handed him a bottle of water out of my bag, unscrewed the top from another, and took a long drink. “So.” We headed across the street. “You still working in that barbershop with your uncle?”

  Easy shook his head. “The county opened a methadone clinic just two stores up from the barbershop. Then my uncle’s prostate cancer came back. He got so disgusted he closed the shop. I didn’t have enough business to keep the place going on my own. Nobody came downtown anymore except when they were coming to the clinic or getting on a bus out of town. Then Uncle Wiley told me about Austin, gave me his old pickup, and sent me off to find him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” Easy drained the bottle of water, threw the empty into the trash can on the corner. He studied the street. The wind was blowing a plastic bag down the street. It was catching on the posts of abandoned mailboxes, hanging for a moment, then letting go and flying to the next. The chop shop was busy, their parking lot full of glossy low-riders getting buffs. A homeless man was sitting at the bus stop, muttering into his beard, turning his head to talk to someone only he could see. Down at the end of the street, the motorcycles peeled out of their yard in single file. My grandmother’s house sat alone, dusty and tired, Tino standing on a concrete block and barking through the chain-link fence like a tiny gargoyle.