by Sarah Black
“You’ve been across the street?”
He nodded, put the little dog down. “I wanted to ask the boys to watch out for your house while we were gone. And look big and tough, like I would tear somebody limb from limb if they moved in five minutes after we left.”
“How’d that go?”
He shrugged. “No promises. But they did fix Badass up with a bandana.”
Tino looked for his food bowls, stared at me until I gave him a bacon treat from the bag on the counter.
“That’s all you get. I don’t know if you get carsick, and I don’t want you throwing up on my shoes.”
Easy gave my Vibram FiveFingers a look. “Do those count as shoes?”
“Let’s get on the road. We should have left two hours ago. We’ll get a sausage biscuit on the way to Winslow.”
“Can I get a kiss before you put on your uniform, Captain America?”
I raised a finger in his direction, then tossed him the bag of dog treats. He caught them one-handed, then pulled me against his chest. Oh, yeah, he tasted just as sweet in the morning light. Smooth chin, warm mouth, smiling eyes.
“Want me to get your little fan?”
I smiled at him. “Yeah, you can toss it into the truck. Want any more of this coffee?”
“You finish it.” He stuffed the bag of dog treats into the top of Tino’s go bag, lifted it to his shoulder. I rinsed out the coffeepot and left the cups upside down in the dish drainer.
Tino followed me out the screen door, made a quick run along the concrete blocks before Easy whistled, and he ran to the truck and jumped. He made it to the running board, and Easy reached down and hauled him into his lap.
When we pulled out, the boys across the street blew their horns, so for a moment, it sounded like two submarines were about to collide in the North Atlantic. Tino stared out the back window at his house, getting smaller, and when we turned the corner and lost it from view, he settled down on the long bench seat, his head resting on Easy’s thigh.
“West on Interstate 40,” I said. “Winslow is an hour this side of Flag.” Easy nodded, slipped on my sunglasses. “He didn’t have a phone with him?”
“He had a TracFone from Walmart. It’s been dead or turned off. I don’t know for how long.”
“I wonder if it’s just out of minutes. If you’ve got the number, maybe we can go online and put some minutes on the phone.”
“Can you do that to somebody else’s phone?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Huh.” Easy glanced at me. “If I drove across the country looking for that boy and all I had to do was put some damn minutes on his phone to check he was all right, I’m going to be pissed.” He grinned at me. “Course, I needed to check on the Mindful Vet too. See if your feet got stuck in some concrete or something. What got you thinking about all that stuff? That mindfulness and meditation?”
I turned to face him. “See, it’s part of my theory. My theory of everything.”
“You have a theory of everything?”
“I do. It’s taken me a couple of years of roaming around, not thinking too hard, to let the theory take shape.”
“Uh-huh.” We drove another mile. “Are you gonna tell me?”
I was more than ready to do so. “I think we’re still tribal. More tribal than we realize. Our nature makes us want to form tribes. But the old ways don’t hold. Now the tribes are corporations, universities, gangs. Each with its own culture and rules of behavior and structure and punishments for straying outside the lines. Some tribes are natural allies, and some are natural enemies, though those lines are fluid and changeable. The most important rule? Don’t betray your tribe. That’s why whistle-blowers are reviled, even though everybody thinks they did the right thing in telling the truth. In their head, they did the right thing. But in their hearts? They betrayed their tribe. And we prescribe death to traitors.”
“The Army was a tribe.”
“Yep.”
“And what are we now?”
I was quiet for a moment. “Now we’re lost. That’s what it feels like to me. We don’t belong to them anymore.”
Easy shook his head. “No, we’re not lost. We’re ronin.”
“Ronin.”
“Yeah. Okay, if we’re not ronin, we’re vets, James Lee. You want to talk to your people, you talk to vets. You’re the Mindful Vet.”
“Yeah, okay. Vets are our tribe. Our tribe, they would have had difficulty accepting us. Even today, we’d have been outsiders. Or at least outliers, you know? Not everybody, I mean, there are lots of strong warriors who can see people for who they really are. But that warrior’s code, it’s like part of the DNA. The unit comes first. The tribe comes first.” We were treading on ground that was uncomfortable and bound to lead to an argument. I didn’t want to fight. “I could be wrong. Maybe things are changing.”
Easy shook his head. “I never believed that. You know I thought I could fight my way through, force the world to respect me honestly. But I’ve come to believe you were right. Not about everything, Jamie. But they might have cast us out. At least ostracized us, made us ineffective as leaders. I wanted to tell you, maybe you were right. Last couple of years, I’ve seen the ugly truth in people’s faces. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”
I reached over, took his hand. “America is full of ronin. Plenty of room in the West for outcasts. So what happened the last couple of years to change your mind?”
He shrugged. “I just decided when I got home, I’d never hide again. I was done with hiding, pretending, trying to get along. I thought it screwed up your head, trying to pretend, and it was going to screw up mine too. I was mad all the time.” He looked over at me, showed me a fist with some new scars across the knuckles. “I was mad all the time because it didn’t work. My family knew, but they still wanted to keep it quiet. My uncle was afraid no one would let me cut their hair if they knew I was gay.”
“What? That’s bullshit.”
He shrugged. “I thought so until I had the first hundred assholes sitting in my chair, mouthing off. Just little comments, you know, about marriage equality or trans rights or the Supreme Court, and they thought they were talking to one of the tribe.” He looked over, smiled at me. “I didn’t cut anybody’s throat, but it was a near thing. And I got tired of being mad and pretending. I’d had enough of that with you.”
“So it’s really my fault you went into redneck bars and looked for some bare-knuckle fighting? I take it that’s the cause of your scarred-up knuckles?”
“I was just trying to get some guys to take off their shirts. But the entire state of Tennessee has been overindulging in barbecue and beer. It’s a sad state of affairs, James Lee. You look good, though. Sleek, like a cat. Must be that yoga.”
“You look good too. You look better, actually. You look like a piece of pie with ice cream on top.”
“Okay, then.” He thought for a moment. “Wait a minute. How does this tribe thing mesh with the meditation and mindfulness shit?”
Mindfulness shit? “Well, that part of the theory is still evolving.”
“Maybe the ronin can only survive by cultivating a strong mind and a strong body.”
I thought about this. “Maybe. It sounds good. But I don’t know. If it sounds good, it’s probably too easy. The truth seems to be more complicated than a good tagline.”
“You have a complicated mind. Could things actually be less complicated than we make them?”
“If they are, I’m really gonna feel like a fool. Want to stop for a biscuit, or can you hold out for lunch? There’s a diner in Winslow.”
“I can hold out. You want to bet the special of the day involves a cheeseburger and some roasted green chili?”
I studied the landscape, the straight road sliding through the red rocks and the big truck humming. “Listen, do you think he might have reached out to some other vets? Maybe Austin went looking for his tribe. We could check with the vets groups, maybe the VA.�
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Easy tapped one finger on the steering wheel. “I think not. We both tried when we got home, just checked in, you know, but mostly the vets were going out to the shooting range, breathing in lead dust and talking politics. Austin shouldn’t shoot. The concussive force, you know, could make the TBI worse.” The finger tapped some more. “But you may be right. He might be looking for his tribe. Maybe this is my fault. He needed more of something, I don’t know. But I didn’t see he was lonely, looking for something. I was lonely too, but I knew what I was looking for. What I was lonely for was out in Albuquerque, growing his hair.”
Chapter Six
THE SPECIAL was a three-piece chicken-tenders basket, with fries, for $5.99, or a green chili cheeseburger with fries for $7.99. The menu also featured Navajo stew, with mutton and potatoes and fry bread, and Cobb salad. I tried to leave Tino in the truck after he made a trip around the perimeter of the parking lot.
“I think we need to get him a leash,” Easy said, looking into the truck window at him. Tino gave an enormous sigh, full of pathos and regret, and flopped down on the seat. Guilt moved across Easy’s face when he looked into the window at the little dog.
“That dog is playing you. He is a master manipulator.”
Easy gave me a wide-eyed look. “Really. Got a bit of a blind spot, Jamie? He’s just a little old one-eyed dog. What’s the deal?”
Tino’s morning badass ’do had fallen over limply and pointed out from his head at a forty-five-degree angle. “What’s the deal? Some are blind, and some just will not see.”
Easy reached into the truck, pulled Tino out, and tucked him under his shirt. “Amen to that, brother.”
We pushed into the diner, air-conditioned with the magical smell of onions and burgers on a grill. Outside the wind blew dust around in puffs of hot air, like there was some crack in the earth and heat was escaping.
Easy sat down across from me in a booth, and Tino settled against his leg with a long sigh. “Hey, they got breakfast all day long. I wonder if they have biscuits and gravy.”
“Had your cholesterol checked lately?”
“I’m getting pie too. I saw they had cherry pie à la mode on the special board.”
“Can we split one?”
Easy grinned, and I felt my insides go liquid and slide around my heart. “Every time I smell cherry pie, I get a boner hard enough to drive steel spikes into the ground. Makes me want to come find you, throw you over my shoulder, and take you off someplace cool and quiet where we could stay in bed for a month, making love.” He studied my face. “God, I love your mouth. Always have. It makes my knees go weak.”
I might have blacked out for a second, because when I blinked, the waitress had appeared at our table with a coffee pot. She filled both cups and dropped a couple of plastic cartons of milk on the table. I heard some discussion about biscuits and gravy.
“Okay, home fries, then.” They both turned to look at me. “Jamie, they don’t have grits.”
“Well, then. Omelet, spinach and onions.”
The waitress never looked up from her pad. “You want cheese with that? Bacon or toast?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. Did he tell you about the pie?”
She gave us both a look that would have done Tino proud. “I heard. One slice of cherry, two forks.” She gave a sniff, marched back to the kitchen to put in our order.
Easy stared out the window, raised his coffee cup to his smiling mouth.
When the waitress brought our plates, Easy studied mine and I studied his. He pointed a fork at me. “See, what you do is you only order what you actually want to eat. Without considering what comes with the thing. I grew up poor. If the menu said you got bacon and toast, you ate bacon and toast.”
I studied his pile of scrambled eggs drenched in green chili, the roasted potatoes, thick toast slathered with butter. He popped a piece of bacon in his mouth.
“Uh-huh.”
He laughed out loud. “I think you need to take me in hand before I get totally out of control and end up wearing an XXL.”
“Maybe I’ll do just that.” There was something in his eyes then, and I reached across the table and took his hand. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t mess with me like that. I thought once before you might take me in hand. It just about killed me, James Lee. I don’t know if I can take you walking away again. It seems like it was so easy for you, leaving. It’s not so easy for me.” He put his fork down, leaned back in the booth, and put both hands over his face. “This might have been a mistake, coming here.”
I picked up my fork. “You need me to apologize again, Easy? You weren’t the only one hurt. I did what I thought was right and at the time you agreed. We’re talking about something different now. You and me, we’re different men than we were back then.”
“Maybe we are. I’m just in a mood, worried about the kid.” He sat up and tucked into his eggs, slipped a piece of bacon under the table for Tino. “God, I’m really starting to love this green chili on every damn thing. Except the pie, of course.”
“You need to try that apple with green chili and pinons they make down in Pie Town. You want to talk about a good pie, they nailed it.”
“You always watched what we ate, all of us. I never knew if you were gonna come across like a kickass boss and lower the boom, or fuss like a mother hen with one chick.”
“Which did you like better?”
“All of it. Every. Damn. Bite.” It was all I could do to keep breathing, to sit there with a fork in my hand and meet his stormy eyes. “Sorry, Jamie. I don’t know why I keep bringing up old business. I’m all over the place today. I can’t seem to settle.”
The waitress slid a piece of warm cherry pie across the table and set down two desert forks. The scoop was butter pecan, and she had decorated the slice with a smiling face of whipped cream, the nose a bright red cherry. Easy smiled up at her. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about!”
She shook her head. “You two are steaming up the windows.”
WE WALKED around town after we ate, holding out a postcard and a picture of a young soldier lost in America on a ten-speed. Nobody could remember seeing him, or maybe they just didn’t like us asking. It was a funny town, the people reserved and impatient. They tried not to make eye contact. Easy pointed up the street with his chin. “They’ve had enough strangers around here.” Two cowboys leaned against lampposts, opposite sides of the street, dust on their boots. “It’s that old Eagles song, right? It’s that Winslow.”
“Probably. I can’t imagine more than one town named Winslow, Arizona.”
Easy opened the door to a Dollar Store. “Leash.”
I followed him back to the pet section. “No lame toys. Nothing with bells inside.”
He ignored me, picked out a respectable black collar and leash. “The little guy has got to get walked when we stop, and if he doesn’t have a leash on, he could run into traffic.”
I said nothing. Just took a moment to imagine.
Easy gave me a tough guy look. “I thought Buddhists were supposed to carry bugs to safety in trees and shit like that.”
“I’m not a Buddhist. I’m the Mindful Vet. And that little shit is the spawn of some demon from a Mexican hell.”
“You need to do some of those stretches or whatever you do, get your Qi back in alignment. You’re cranky, James Lee.”
“Maybe I am. We better head on into Flag.”
WE PASSED the Petrified Forest National Park. Then the landscape changed as we traveled west, the rocky red-brown earth, with crumbled thrusts of sandstone and gypsum, moving into rolling hills, and then into the high evergreen forests of the mountains around Flagstaff. The air smelled like pine, cool and damp and green after the dusty heat of Albuquerque.
We stopped at a roadside motel that had a stuffed grizzly out front, standing guard over the smoking station. It wasn’t the grizzly from the postcard, though, and after Tino peed on the bear’s pedestal, we decided to head on i
nto town and keep trying. I made Easy stop at a grocery store, and I bought peanut butter and jelly, bread and bananas, instant coffee and mineral water.
“Ronin provisions,” I explained, stashing the bag on the floor behind my seat. “I don’t want to run out of funds and be stuck somewhere waiting for you to cut enough hair to get us back on the road.”
Easy was studying the men in the parking lot. “This place needs a decent barber. Look at those beards. Do these boys think if you shove a wool cap down over your head, you don’t actually have to bother with a comb? Or shampoo?”
I looked where he was pointing out the window. “I think those caps are alpaca,” I said. “They look Bolivian to me.”
“Whatever. I do not approve.” He put the truck into reverse, pulled out. “The men in Albuquerque had decent haircuts. Good facial hair too. Kept everything neat and trim.”
“My grandfather went to the barber shop every week his whole life. Got a trim and his neck shaved and dusting powder and some aftershave I’ve never smelled since. I don’t know what it was.”
“Might have been bay rum. The old guys, they liked to spruce up on the weekends to take their wives out dancing. They always splashed on a bit of bay rum.”
“You like to spruce up too.” I glanced at him. “It’s colder up here in Flag. Maybe that’s why they all need beards.”
Easy gave me a look. “I don’t see the Navajo men wearing beards like that. They live out here.” We had seen several Navajo men around Flagstaff wearing their long hair in a tidy bun at the nape of the neck. Easy had suggested my hair would look fine in a bun. “Hey, look.” Another roadside motel on our right, with a standing grizzly by the front door. It was called, big surprise, the Grizzly Motel.