A Living Grave (26 page)

“That's what you're hoping for? That I'll just keel over and you get what you want?” Nelson almost laughed. It started as a half-smile, the kind that hides its meaning, then opened up ready to give sound to the expression. What came out never really matured into a laugh, though. It was a cough of dismissal, deep and full of irony. He covered his mouth with a napkin that came away wet with blood. All the men lined up against him looked at the red stain and saw weakness.

“I've got news for you,” Nelson said to them, tossing the napkin down without looking at it. “You think I'm hard to deal with, wait until you have to talk to my wife.”

“You have no wife, Mr. Solomon,” Dauterive said. “You have been checked out pretty good, if I do say so.”

Nelson grinned. I smiled. “Gentleman,” he said, “First, maybe I don't plan on dying to fit your convenience. Second, please meet my fiancée, Miss Katrina Williams.”

I lifted my left hand to show off the diamond sparkling there. No one was smiling.

“Understand—as soon as we're married,” Nelson went on, “Katrina becomes my heir and executor of the trust into which all my assets will be tucked away.”

I was as surprised as they were.

Figorelli said, “It won't matter. She'll have to sell.” But I could tell a little of the air had gone out of his tires. He wasn't nearly as sure as he wanted to be.

Nelson looked over at Dauterive and said, “I have my own lawyer, Mr. Dauterive.”

“He can't do that, can he?” Figorelli asked.

Dauterive said, “Yes. He can transfer or sell his shares before his death.”

There was no reason to include the phrase
before his death
, yet it was spoken with obvious meaning. It wasn't a threat so much as pointing out a timeline. He was telling either Figorelli or Nelson that this wasn't over. I wasn't sure which.

“But you told me that he had to offer them to the partners before he could sell them,” Figorelli said. He clearly had not caught the same meaning that I had.

“But he's not selling them, Byron. He's putting them into trust to provide for his wife.” Dauterive looked from his client to Nelson, then said, “It is a rightly good move.” It sounded like a compliment but this time his eyes showed that the words had real threat. They set the hairs on my body upright and sizzling.

“Ah believe we should leave these people to their dinner now, don't you?” He spoke to Figorelli, even putting a hand on his elbow to urge him away from the table, but there were two other things I noticed about Dauterive at that moment. His accent seemed to thin out when he wanted it to. And it was to him, not Figorelli, to which the four background men looked to at that moment. The one who had been introduced as Sal Rubio, a squat, bald man with eyes like a rheumy pig, nodded so slightly it might have been just a tic. Then he looked at me. He was the last to wander from our table.

They didn't go quickly but it was still a sudden silence. The tension that seeped from my body told me how ready I had been for violence.

Not all of the tension left me. There was still one thing about the encounter bothering me.

“Do they know something about your health that I don't?” I asked Nelson.

He looked down before looking at me. On the table was the napkin spotted with his blood. Nelson turned it over as if hiding the evidence denied it. It was a guilty move. When he looked at me I asked the question again.

“They think they know something,” he said. “Things were bad. For a long time they were very bad, you know that.”

“And now?”

“I was weak. I was wasted and dying. Now I'm living.”

“That's not an answer.”

“I don't have any answers.”

“Are you better? Are you going to keep getting better? What is your doctor telling you?”

“Look at me,” he said.

I did. Even standing there in the faded light of Moonshines he stood straighter and filled out his pants more than when I had first met him. Reaching to touch his face, which had lost some of its angles, I let my hand stroke behind his ear and felt the new hair.

“Do I look like a sick man?”

He was right. What he looked like was a man who had been sick but was mending rather than a man who was sliding toward his death.

“I want to talk to your doctor,” I said.

“Don't trust me?” Nelson asked, smiling.

“You're not telling me something.”

He smiled again. It was easy and quick like a silk sheet pulled over a naked body. Then he relaxed into it and said, “You're right. I was going to wait until I got you into bed again to ask, but I want to marry you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” The word came right through my ears and splashed the back of my mind. He wasn't playing or bluffing.

“First thing,” he said. “Let's get out of here and tell your family. They'll want to be there.”

“Yes,” I said, just then making my decision. “Yes they will.”

We left Moonshines laughing and holding hands and for the second time without tasting any food. As we passed the bar I noticed Figorelli sitting alone in a dark corner. He saw us but made no acknowledgement.

I didn't waste another thought on the man. As soon as we were outside of Moonshines I called Uncle Orson to let him know that we were on our way.

B
y the time we pulled up at the dock, the smell of steaks over hot coals was coming through our open windows. In the parking lot were two other vehicles that I recognized. Clare's truck was close to the water and made obvious by the glare of the dock's strings of bare bulbs. Nestled into shadow, trying hard not to be obvious, was Major Reach and his rented car. Still watching.

Once out of the truck we started up the bobbing plank walkway hand in hand. At the gate, I stopped, then turned my body to block Nelson. With a quick smile I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and put one hand on the back of his head. It was good to feel the new fuzz on his scalp as I pulled him in for a deep kiss. I don't think he felt it when I lifted my hand and held a single finger up in Reach's direction.

There was no way to see if the major got the message. I was pretty sure he did. Sometimes you feel it when communication is clear. For too long I had been letting him do all the communicating. It was time my message got through. At first it had worried me when he came around with the suggestion that I was somehow taking revenge for what had happened to me. Then it had bothered me that all of this was still going on so many years later. Reach had a bug up his ass about me and most of it was personal. He took a lot of heat when things got messy. As soon as my case became high-profile someone had to get put down. It's the Army way. I understand pissed off. I live with my own anger every day. I was tired of dealing with his.

After the kiss, I disentangled myself from Nelson and asked him to go on inside and make sure my steak had some pink in it. Uncle Orson would just char them all if you didn't keep an eye on him.

As I walked back to the shore, the dome light on Reach's car came on and he stepped out to wait for me.

“This is the last time we'll get to talk for a while, I guess,” he said as I approached.

“You won't hear me complaining about it.”

“I don't imagine I will, but there's one thing I want you to think about.”

“Don't bother,” I said. “I have plenty of things to think about without adding your crap on top. In fact, that's what I came here to tell you. I'm finished. I'm walking away from the bad memories and from you. Rape and betrayal are what happened to me. They aren't me anymore.”

“As far as the Army is concerned, none of that happened.”

A breeze passed over us and I felt the grit of fine sand on my skin. Even if it wasn't there, I saw wisps of dust dancing over us and rolling up into the turquoise twilight. Darkness was falling quickly. I touched the scar at my eye.

When I was a girl and had problems with other kids at school—I had little patience with their teasing—my father would tell me about the goat. He said everyone has a goat inside and anytime it gets away from us we get upset and angry. But some people, he told me, always want your goat because it makes them feel better about themselves to have yours. So whenever someone was trying to push me into something he would remind me to watch my goat and never let anyone get it.

Reach had gotten my goat.

“As far as I'm concerned you and men like you are the worst part of the Army. You hide behind respect and tradition and use the need of the nation to justify what can't be justified.”

“Are you about to lose your shit again? Getting drunk and getting violent—is that all you have left?”

If I could have growled I would have. “You haven't seen me violent. Yet.”

I think he believed me. He eased back a little and said, “We're alike in a lot of ways, Hurricane.”

“Bullshit.”

“It's true. We both wanted to serve our country—”

“You serve yourself. You had a responsibility to your country to serve justice, even if it hurt the Army.”

“Hurt the Army?” He looked incredulous at the idea. “What about hurting soldiers? How do you justify that?” His last question was booming with power and self-righteousness.

“Rice and Ahrens?” I asked. Where Reach had gotten loud I got quiet and I leaned in close so he would be sure to hear. “They weren't soldiers. They were like you. Criminals in uniform and the real shame of the military.”

Reach squared his shoulders and tried to pull himself straighter, ready to say something back, but I didn't let him. “And before you try to put another one of your lies at my feet—get this—I never did anything to those men. My hands are clean.”

“I know you didn't,” Reach said, then quietly relaxed against his car like he had suddenly won something from me.

“What?”

“I know you didn't arrange for Rice to be killed or for Ahrens to be run out of every job and relationship he didn't screw up for himself. I know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, you had nothing to do with the death of Sala Bayoumi.”

“Then why are you still here trying to be a splinter in my ass?”

“Because even though you didn't do them, they were done in your name.”

I stopped and thought about that. Who could and would take that kind of action for me? I'd asked the question before. Uncle Orson denied that he could do such a thing. I fingered the scar and closed my eyes for a moment. Everything I was seeing was turning to dust and the dust was sucking the color of the night into itself. Behind my eyelids there was darkness, but it began to fill with the roaring sound of Humvees and thick, knobby tires on broken pavement. When I heard the first pops of AK fire I opened my eyes again.

There is someone else
.

“Fuck you,” was all I could say.

“Oh, that's right. You're getting it now. Daddy is the dangerous one, isn't he?”

“That's not possible,” I said. The refutation was frail and without power.

“Daddy was spec ops in Vietnam. Bet you didn't even know that. Phoenix program—know what that was? Identification and elimination of civilian supporters of the Vietcong. That's some heavy stuff there. Extralegal stuff, operating as they did in Cambodia and Laos. Those were the men responsible for the helicopter interrogations. You know, take up two that won't talk and throw one out. The other guy always spilled his guts. They got a lot of solid intel.”

“You're just making things up now,” I said. I was looking at Reach but I was seeing Daddy and his face was blowing into dust.

“Who still works for the intelligence community?
Consulting
, they call it now. Who has access to Congress and military contractors? Whose name came up when it turned out Sala Bayoumi was involved in black-market weapons supplied to insurgents? Turns out nothing much is beyond Daddy's reach. Not even a prisoner in the custody of Homeland Security.”

I closed my eyes again and was instantly within the turmoil of wind and dust. I could feel my wounds again as if they were fresh and bleeding out the heat and color of my body into the desiccated soil of a land that hated me. The pain was an echoing that passed through me and through all the moments of my body since then. For the first time since it had happened to me I saw the faces of the men who had inflicted themselves on me. They had faces and names, histories of their own. It was all gone to me, though. They were that moment. They were what they had done and they would never be other.

Blood dripped from me. Tiny red splashes in dead, brown earth. I could see myself. For once I was not trapped in the pain and horror. I was outside. I was my father. I was watching my child suffer because of the people he believed in.

Rage
.

I opened my eyes and let it all drop from me.

I understand
.

Trying to keep it all from my father had made it worse for him. It was my fault in a way.

When I opened my eyes Reach was there, staring at me like he had just delivered the best news in the world.

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked him. “Why even come here? You've tortured me for two weeks. Why?”

“It wasn't your name that came up when Homeland talked with Bayoumi. It was your father's. But he's a careful man. We put surveillance on his phone and computer before I put a little pressure on his baby girl. Then he wasn't so careful.”

“Do you have him? Is he in custody? Is that why he doesn't answer his phone?”

When I asked the questions, Reach studied my face. Hard. He must have seen something that satisfied him because he nodded before he smiled a snake's smile. “That's all I needed to know,” he said.

“What?”

“You don't know where he is.”

“Do you?”

“We will,” he answered. “Soon.”

If the last time he'd gotten my goat, this time Reach snatched the whole herd. I think it was what he wanted. It was probably what I wanted too.

When he moved away from the car I raised my right hand in a fist. It wasn't subtle. He saw it coming, but that was what I wanted. Reach raised one hand to block my strike and the other to take his own swing at me. Instead of completing my punch, though, I absorbed his block and raised my left under his cocked arm. Both of his arms were up and blocked. When I pushed, his stance opened. With my right knee I put a hard shot right into his groin.

Reach hadn't expected that but he had expected something. When he doubled over, rather than grabbing his battered bits, he pulled a 9-mil from behind his back. There was no time for me to go for my weapon. I didn't need to.

Three shots cracked like thunder in a clear sky. Two bullets hit the car close behind Reach. One struck the rearview mirror and the other, the .22, punctured the fender with a tinny
plink
. The third shot fired had been a shotgun blast. When I turned I saw Clare just bringing the pump-action 12-gauge to level after firing it into the air. Between us were Uncle Orson with a rifle and Nelson with the .22 revolver. My own army.

Reach froze except for his hands. Those he opened. The gun, he let dangle from the trigger guard until I took it from him.

“Get in your car,” I told him.

Once he was seated behind the wheel I dropped the magazine and ejected the chambered round before tossing everything in the backseat. I leaned down to the window so my face was level with his. It was my turn to smile. I turned it on big and bright and I leaned in closer to whisper. “Come around me or my family again, we won't just talk. The Ozarks can be a dangerous place where the bodies are never found.”

Sure, Reach could file charges. He could bring in feds to handle it, even. But he wouldn't. If it didn't serve the job at hand he couldn't be bothered. He was a tool in a machine. I walked away feeling so much better. I had gotten my goat back.

* * *

Uncle Orson's table was spread with smoking steaks and vegetables pulled from the garden that day. Butter was melting into sloppy golden pools within huge russet potatoes. Beside each plate except one was a sweating bottle of beer. Before I sat down I traded the orange soda at my place for a beer. Uncle Orson didn't say anything but I got a look.

I filled everyone in on what Reach had said about Daddy.

“He'll be all right,” Orson said, passing around the plate with the T-bones. “Don't worry about your father. I know for a fact that he has ways of handling problems.”

“You know more than that, don't you?” I asked.

“I know what I need to know. So do you. Anything more and we become something he needs to worry about.”

Nelson groaned loudly. For an instant I thought something horrible had happened. Then he smiled while chewing. “This is amazing.” He didn't say it, so much as moan it. “I was so hungry.”

That was when my mouth started to water and I realized how hungry I was as well. As I dug in, Nelson laughed at me. I returned the laughter and moaned into my own bite of grilled beef.

“Ohhh, this
is
amazing,” I said. “The best ever.”

“Clare made a marinade,” Orson said.

Clare nodded but didn't say anything; his mouth was full. At that point everyone's mouth was full. For a couple of minutes the weight was gone. There was no talking. It was a good feeling—a surrender feeling. Eating wonderful food with people you love and trust—family—has a way of leveling out the world. It brings your problems down and your joys up. Outside was full night. The tail of the pig had already gone over the fence. It was happening a little earlier each night. Water moved slowly under the dock. Cool air let itself in through the screens. It carried the scent of home—water filled with fish and woods full of juniper.

Life. I felt like it had become a beautiful picture with something deeper behind it. Like one of Nelson's paintings.

“Nelson and I are getting married tomorrow,” I said.

Everyone stopped. The three of them looked at me as if I had said
the CIA is telling me to kill the pope
.

“Tomorrow?” Uncle Orson asked. It was a nudge as much as a question. I could hear the sadness in his voice. The suggestion it carried—that I was not thinking of my father—bothered me.

Daddy would be the first to understand
.

“Wouldn't you rather wait until we know about your father?” Nelson asked.

“No. We don't know how long that'll take. I'm tired of putting my life into pockets and waiting for the right time to live.”

“Courthouse opens at eight in the morning,” Clare said. “You both have to be there with ID to get the license. Judge Shea will do it, but he acts like you're pulling his teeth since his wife left him. That was twenty years ago. I can officiate if you want.”

Nelson and I were both flat-faced stunned at the suggestion. Uncle Orson just cut a big slice of baked potato and pushed it into his mouth, skin and all. Once he swallowed he said, “Keep your mouths open like that you'll let the flies in. Clarence was a preacher before he was a teacher.”