by Sarah Black
Easy was quiet for a moment. “I suppose he could stay in the truck for one night.”
We drove south, through the wild Kaibab National Forest, and then into the Coconino. There were plenty of camping and hiking spots, but I didn’t see how Austin could have gone through these forests on a bike. The terrain was rocky, mountainous, and the elevation was so high that even the days were cold. That would change when we went down into the valley, headed for Phoenix, but I wasn’t sure we were on the right path.
Easy looked over at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Would he have really traveled down this way on his bike? It seems crazy. I mean, we know he was in Flag, but maybe he got down to Phoenix a different way. Hitched with a trucker or something.”
Easy stared out through the windshield. “He was so worried about you when he woke up in the hospital. He kept saying, Is the captain hurt? Did he step on it? I only stayed with him a couple of hours before they medevaced him out, but the whole time, he was asking if he’d done his job. He was your spotter. It was his job to keep you safe. Now he can’t even keep himself safe. He’s lost all his filters, you know? If he ever had a sense of something off, of danger, he has totally lost it. He’ll go anywhere, walk into any building, juke joints on the wrong side of town on Saturday night, wanting to dance with all the women; a pack of junkies in the park, walk right in with them all open-faced and smiling; and try to make friends with the biggest rabid dog he can find.”
I stared at the green outside the window, the dense black and green of the forest. What were we going to do when we found him? Pack him back to his mom in Tennessee? What if he got another harebrained idea to see America? We could spend the rest of our lives tracking him down, trying to keep him safe. But what was the alternative? Was he somebody else’s responsibility? The Army’s? The VA’s? Maybe the best way I could spend my life was looking after that kid who’d tried to protect me, who’d look at me with big soft eyes and blushed. He’d been young for nineteen. Maybe he’d always be that young.
“Have you thought about when we find him? What are we going to do with him?”
Easy made a fist, hit the steering wheel a couple of times, softly, rhythmically. He’d done that before, when we were deployed, to get some of the tension out. “Of course I’ve thought about it. I’ve been riding herd on him since we got home, Captain. I’ve been watching out for him while you were out in Albuquerque teaching yoga at the YMCA. You never even thought to check in, make sure he was okay. Or check in, make sure I was okay. Because FYI? I wasn’t.”
“I thought to check in, Easy. I just didn’t do it. I didn’t have the right. I thought you both would be better off if I left you alone. Why would either of you want to hear from me? I hurt him, I hurt you. I just needed to stay away and stop hurting everybody.” My throat felt thick, full of rising sorrow.
“That is pretty stupid thinking for a man with a degree in psychology.”
I had nothing to say to that. He was going to work through this or he wasn’t. He was going to stay pissed and angry, or not. He would blame me for what I’d done to him when I realized we were both in the Army, heading for the same unit. He would blame me for walking away after Austin got hurt. Not anything close to the way I blamed myself, but he didn’t need to know that. I wasn’t going to explain myself again. I didn’t think I could listen to myself, to those same thin justifications I’d used all these years like rags covering my bones. All I could do…. What could I do? I could stay by his side. I could stay with him, stay with the kid. Be there.
I looked over at him, the profile, the rock jaw, and the bristling flattop. “You know I love you. I always have.”
He acknowledged this with a little huff of air through the nose.
We drove for a while in silence. I wondered if I had been trying to deflect this conversation by telling him I loved him. Maybe. I’d said it to him before. He knew it was true. Easy was a man who knew how to look, and my feelings for him were usually written large across my face. But I also knew my own culpability. A person who spends years meditating can’t deceive himself. I’d felt guilty and responsible, so I stayed in hiding. I didn’t want to face this, or have this conversation.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come and find you. Austin too. I’d done something I couldn’t take back. Just that one moment, you know? I couldn’t live it over again. And once it was done, it was done. And I could never fix it. He was hurt. The damage was done. I felt like I had to atone. Put myself in limbo or something.”
Easy stared over at me. “Limbo? Is that some Catholic thing? What the hell does that even mean? James Lee, you didn’t lay the IED in the road. You didn’t tell your spotter to get out of the vehicle, start jumping up and down on the spot where he’d seen a wire buried.”
“That’s what got him hurt. Once you’ve got an injury to the brain, it’s probably for a lifetime. That’s what TBI is, right?”
“Yeah, he’s got a TBI, but that wasn’t what got him hurt. What got him hurt was he had feelings for you, had a big thumping heart of an adolescent crush on you. And you knew it and didn’t do anything to stop it. He was acting like an idiot to impress you. That’s what got him hurt.”
I stared out the window again.
“You did the wrong thing with me, pushing me away. I was a man, and we were lovers. We were in love. We could have made it work, and fuck the Army. It was real. Austin was just a kid. He depended on you, looked up to you. You were his captain, and you got a kick out of all those young boys crushing on you. Big black eyes, ripped muscles, silky black hair. You looked like some vid star, and they would have followed you into hell. Not because you were their leader. Because you were you.”
I closed my eyes. I wanted to be anywhere but inside this truck, with this man shoving his angry truth in my face. Did I really do that? Did I take advantage of those kids, play them when I should have been thinking how to keep them safe?
“I loved you then, Jamie, and I still do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see you. I see who you are. And if you even think about trying to walk away again in the fucking middle of this, I’m going to break you into pieces. I won’t let you do it to me again.”
That’s exactly what I was thinking, about walking away. I was picturing walking down this road, my thumb out, anonymous, no history, drifting across America with the truckers, listening to them talk, and meditating. Not doing anyone any good and not doing anyone any harm. Was that the balance I was looking for, between harm and good? Was it a worthy goal for a life, to try to stop hurting other people? Or did I have a tendency to leave when things got too hard and too real?
“I have about said all I’m going to say on this. Oh, one more thing. We had peanut butter and jelly for supper and donuts for breakfast. I’m hungry. I’m stopping at the first diner I see that has burgers on the grill. And you can stop crying anytime.”
“I’m not crying,” I said, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I’m allergic to the dog.”
Chapter Eight
WE RODE in silence for another hour, coming down from the Mogollon Rim, where the earth fractured and left an upheaval of limestone and cracked earth. The land was cut in two, the cool green forest behind us, rocky red sandstone ahead. The temperature rose, and Easy filled up the truck at a gas station just outside of the National Forest. I went inside to check out the hot dogs. They looked old, rolling tiredly on their grill, their little brown hot dog ends curling and dark. Not even Easy would take one of those puppies on. I got a couple of Diet Cokes and climbed back in the truck.
“The hot dogs were a no-go,” I said when he pulled back out on the road south. “Unappealing and unsafe.”
“What about a Slim Jim? Some Funyuns? I know they had Funyuns.”
I reached behind the seat, pulled out a couple of bananas. I handed him one. “This should hold you until the next diner.”
He stared at the banana for a moment, then rolled his window down and tossed it out the truck window. I turned to watch i
t bounce behind us on the blacktop.
Fine. I ate mine—and it was very good—drank my Diet Coke, then retreated inside my lotus, curled up the petals one by one until I was inside, alone, in the quiet and dark. I thought the exercise was about ready to go on the Mindful Vet.
Easy was modeling the grizzly from the front door of the Grizzly Motel. I was happy to leave him to his grunts and misery. I ignored all his efforts to pick a fight and was pleased that my meditative calm seemed to piss him off even more than arguing.
We passed a trading post and battered, dusty roadside attractions selling moccasins, Stetsons, toy guns and arrows. Then there were the flashing neon, waving flags, and lights of the casino. Neon feathers and genuine Indian artifacts in the gift shop. The parking lot was full of trucks and RVs. There was a gas station and, next to that, a diner. I could smell the french fries when we opened the doors of the truck.
I clipped the leash on Tino, took him for a short sprint to the scrubby edge of the parking lot.
“Go,” I said, pointing to a dried-up piece of tumbleweed. “I am at the end of my fucking rope with you. Pee or get off the pot.” Tino turned his back on me, raised a leg, and aimed in my direction. Pee or get off the pot? I was tired; I couldn’t even think up a decent metaphor for a little one-eyed shit of a dog.
When he was done and enjoying a careful sniff in the dirt, I picked him up and tossed him back in the truck. I poured some water into his little bowl, gave him a bacon treat.
“Now, get on your pillow and take a fucking nap. We’re leaving the window down so you don’t suffocate. You make sure the truck doesn’t get stolen.”
“You always take out your bad temper on that little dog,” Easy observed, leaning against the hood. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“And you always take out your bad temper on me. So fuck off. Besides, Tino started it. The first night I was at my grandma’s house? He climbed in my duffel bag and peed on my clothes. Every single thing I owned. He peed on my boots, for Christ’s sake.”
He bit his lip to keep from grinning at me. “Yeah? I totally get that, James Lee. I’ve wanted to pee on your boots since the day I met you. But that was more in the nature of marking my turf. ”
I really had nothing to say to that. The casino diner was glass and chrome, shiny and air-conditioned until it was frosty. It felt good for the first thirty seconds; then it was just a bit too cold. The waitresses were wearing cardigans. The décor was self-consciously Americana Roadside Diner, with posters of James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause, Elvis wearing a lei, and Marilyn, her white halter dress blowing beautifully around her legs.
Easy pointed at James Dean. “Ronin,” he said, and picked up a menu. I wondered why the people on the walls of this diner were all dead. Actually, they had all died horrific deaths.
Easy ordered a double. My green chili cheeseburger had roasted green chili, grilled onions, and tomato relish, so it looked like a Mexican flag when I cut it in two. Easy’s double came with everything, and he wasn’t two bites in before the bun disintegrated and the enormous burger came to pieces on his plate. I could have told him that would happen, but I kept silent, suspecting he did not want to hear my opinion about his food choices. He ate a couple of fries to calm down, then approached the problem by sequestering ingredients with his knife and moving them onto the two burger patties one forkful at a time. My technique, honed on Double XLs.
I suggested next time he order a normal-size burger and I would give him the other half of mine. He raised his middle finger in my direction and then reached over and gave my hand a squeeze that felt like apology.
He cleaned his plate, as was appropriate, he told me, for a boy who grew up poor in Tennessee. I gave him the rest of my fries. I wanted to feed him. I wanted to give him bites of pie and ice cream every day for the rest of our lives. I wanted to watch him eat warm chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven and drink cold milk. I wanted to bake his birthday cakes.
“Okay, what’s next?” he asked, stretching back in the booth.
“Let’s take a look at the casino. See if there might be anyone who would remember him.” The place was enormous and, if we were going by the parking lot, packed with people. “Let’s just take a look. I don’t have a good feeling about this. We can see about getting a room for the night if you’re too tired to keep driving.”
The casino was a huge space, with too-bright lights and lots of young servers with long black hair and empty smiles, wearing black polyester uniform pants and tired white blouses. They looked very young to be carrying trays full of highball glasses, margaritas, and strawberry daiquiris in the middle of the afternoon. The people at the slots and game tables mostly looked past sixty-five, women with bright makeup that looked two days old, only a smear of lipstick left, fingers black from handling the tokens. They didn’t move except to push the tokens in, their eyes glassy, reflecting the spinning colors of the lemons and cherries as the wheels spun around and around.
My stomach lurched and I turned away, my fist tight over my mouth. “I need to get out of here.”
Easy took my arm, pulled me outside. “That’s like some kind of movie where people turn into zombies. Did you see the woman with the CamelBak strapped to her back? She was sucking on a plastic straw? I think she was wearing a diaper under her pants.”
I stumbled on the way to the truck, leaned against the dark orange tank like it was home base. I wanted to lay my head down and cry.
“This is no place for the Mindful Vet.” Easy put his arms around me, pulled me into his big chest, and stroked my back like I was an infant. “For a man with your delicate sensibilities, casinos are like one of the seven levels of hell.”
“The lowest,” I croaked. My head was still spinning, sickly perfumed air clogging my mouth. “How can people breathe in there?” I pressed a hand to my stomach. “My cheeseburger was poisoned. You didn’t poison me, did you?”
“No, Jamie.”
Tino popped up from his pillow, scratched forlornly at the edge of the window. Easy bent over to study him. “How’d he lose that eye, anyway?”
“Badger got in the house.”
“A badger?”
“Through the dryer vent.”
“Huh.”
EASY WAS in a good mood with a double green chili cheeseburger under his belt, even though we had not been able to do any detective work in the casino. I reminded myself that he was not a man who could fast with any grace. We stopped southeast of Phoenix at a roadside motel that had dusty aqua and pink lawn chairs in a circle in the courtyard around a portable fire pit. I pointed this out to Easy.
“This is a sign. A hopeful sign of people desiring community.”
“Okay, but let’s make sure they have HBO and free Wi-Fi. We’re not living in the stone age.”
I went into the office and registered, and when I came back outside, Easy was standing next to the truck, Tino in one hand, my little oscillating fan in the other. He looked tired and dusty, a spill of green chili down his tee shirt. If I hadn’t already been in love with him, the sight of him holding my fan and my evil little one-eyed dog would have done the job.
After showers, I nixed the idea of a quick nap in favor of Silken Brocades in the courtyard. It had been two days since I’d done a full routine, and I was feeling it. “My Qi is in disarray,” I said, heading out of the hotel room. “I can’t even imagine the state yours is in.” I thought it might resemble a kitten buried under a pile of cheeseburgers. No, not a kitten—a little baby mountain lion. I would put that on my list of things to do, free his Qi, then stand out of the way when the baby exercised his claws.
He followed me out to the courtyard and tied Tino’s leash to one of the rusty lawn chairs. The roadside motel was built into an outcropping of sandstone, so it looked like it would be buried one day if the rocks above tumbled down. The highway was very close, and the rumble and rush of wind when the big trucks came around the curve at speed was going to rock us to sleep tonight, like the so
unds of the ocean. I imagined the old couple who lived here had stopped hearing them a long time ago. It was improbable enough, eight single-story white board-and-batten hotel rooms, a parking lot, and a courtyard with those hopeful chairs and fire pit, that it appealed to me.
We were on the second brocade, Easy following my movements, when the old man who had checked us in came out to sit on a lawn chair and watch us. He had a small portable oxygen tank in a harness over a plaid cotton shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. The green oxygen tubing came up from under his shirt and curled around his ears. He had a cigar the size of Tino in the pocket of his shirt, and I wondered if things were about to get interesting—the fire pit, the oxygen tank, two veterans doing tai chi, an evil one-eyed dog, and a cigar.
I forced myself to concentrate on what I was doing. This was the result of stopping practice for just a few days. Concentration gone, emotions all over the place.
Tino gave a long, heart-rending sigh, and the old man moved over until he was sitting next to him. He reached down, gave Tino a scratch behind the ears.
He watched us carefully, and with apparent enjoyment, until we had finished the eight brocades. Easy sat down next to him and I started a yoga routine. I sat down when I was finished, listened to the old man tell Easy about being a parachute rigger. He had a tattoo on his forearm, a little parachute with a square underneath. He’d been Army too.
“I wanted to get away from the uranium mines,” he said. “My people are from up there in Utah, and the only thing to do up there is work in the mines. There’s not a man in my family lived longer than sixty except me.” He gestured to the oxygen tank. “It’s gonna get me too, but I’ve had ten good years they never got to live.” He pulled the cigar out of his pocket, smelled it long and deep, then put it back where it had been. “Course, I helped it along, and so did the Army, dumping Agent Orange on my head when I was eighteen. But these things happen. I guess they had their reasons.”