A Living Grave (8 page)

“You remember Sala Bayoumi. He mentioned that he'd had contact with you before he ever met with Rice.”

“No,” I said and let my response sit there between us. I knew about interrogation too.

“How is that?” he asked. “He remembers you so well.”

“I, and every other MP officer involved in information gathering, met with dozens of contacts. We worked tribal leaders, nationalists, Ba'athists, Sunni and Shia militias, smugglers and arms dealers, and criminals of every type, including U.S.-government sanctioned contractors. There are more of them I don't recall than those I do.”

“Hurricane Katrina,” he said, dragging the phrase out and letting it drip with spite. Then, stepping back from my door, he spread his hands like he was displaying a title and said again, “
Hurricane
. That's a good name for you because you're a dangerous lady. I was just stopping in to give you a heads-up, a courtesy call, you know. I have an appointment to talk with Sheriff Benson and didn't want you feeling . . . inappropriately targeted.”

Reach walked out. I put the tips of two fingers on my scar, then closed my eyes. There was no darkness behind my lids. It was all dirty haze and old blood drying in fine, dead soil.

It was my father who pulled me out this time. His call came through to my desk after only a few minutes. The sharp trill of the phone echoed at first like the fast thunder of an M240 machine gun. On the third ring the illusion of war and violence faded and I opened my eyes.

“You don't sound right,” was the first thing he said after my hello.

“Busy day,” I said, trying to sound bright and lively.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

There were a million things I wanted to tell him, but I said, “No.”

“Okay.” The sound of his voice said it was not okay at all but he would live with it. “Your uncle said he saw you last night.”

I smiled. Everything was sane and proper again. Home and green. We talked for a few minutes, family stuff and a little cooking. He wanted to cook a pot of chicken and dumplings for Sunday dinner if I would promise to come up to Nixa. My favorite, but I didn't feel like I could promise. There were too many swords hanging over my head. I didn't mention to him the one sword that dangled with a honed edge or the major who was hoping to cut the string.

“Are you busy with the man you met?” Dad asked.

I don't care how much I expect these questions, they always catch me a little off guard. It was taking me a few moments to compose a response, so Dad jumped back in.

“Your uncle told me,” he said needlessly.

At least it was needless to me. I knew where he'd gotten his information, but he sometimes feels the need to explain himself when he rummages around in my life. It'd been that way since my mother died. That was while I was in college. Ever since, my father and uncle had been trying to become some kind of weird, manly mother hens. They failed wonderfully and it only made me appreciate them more.
Them
, not the questions or the constant push to become the kind of girl I'll never be, a normal wife and mother.

“I know who told you,” I said back, realizing as I did that it was just as needless a comment. “It's not what you think.”

“Who says I think anything?”

“You always do, Dad. Nelson is a nice guy, but I'm not sure he's in the right place for romance. Neither am I.”

“If the world waited for the right place or time there'd be no people at all.”

I guess my answer was the silence he heard on the line as I touched at the scar beside my eye. It wasn't intentional. I just didn't know what to say.

“You know,” he said, sounding cautious with his words, “it's okay with me whatever happens. As a matter of fact, it's perfect if I'm the only guy in your life forever.”

“Thanks Dad,” I said and I meant it. “But Uncle Orson would get jealous. Besides, what would the two of you do if you weren't trying to get me married off?”

Then he asked me a question that set the tiny hairs on my spine up and tingling.

“Are you having problems with the Army?”

“Why would you ask me that?” I didn't even try to keep the suspicion out of my voice. My father's military career had long ago transitioned into a civilian consulting job that had lots of contacts and influence in the intelligence community. This wasn't the first time he'd let me know that he was aware of things he shouldn't be. When he didn't answer, I prodded again. “What do you know?”

“It's just a question.”

“Something like that is never just a question.”

“I'm guessing from your response that there is something going on with the Army.”

My career had not gone well; there was no way of hiding that. He knew that there were legal issues and that I had made enough noise about something that the Army wanted me out as quietly as possible. He knew all that and he knew that I didn't like to talk about it. This was the first time he had ever directly asked me anything about it and it had me on the defensive.

“Nothing I can't handle and nothing I need you to be involved in. There are things we've never discussed, Daddy, and I want you to respect my privacy here. All right?”

In the silence coming from his end of the phone I could feel something like vibrations on a spider's web. After the assault in Iraq, I'd tried hard to keep the details from my father. I'd thought both that he couldn't handle it and that I didn't want to shatter illusions he had about his beloved Army. There were times, though, that I felt like the only illusions were mine.

“Daddy?” I pressed again.

“You know you can come to your old man about anything, don't you?” he asked.

“Do you know something?” I asked, suddenly sure that it was another needless question. He didn't respond and I thought he was about to say good-bye, so I said, “Yes, Dad. I do.”

Instantly, it was like a curtain had been dropped that separated the man from my dad. It was the same on his end. His voice was much brighter when he said, “I can be pretty helpful at times. And I don't just mean Sunday dinners and picking out your husband for you.”

“You wouldn't have picked this guy, Daddy.”

“What?” A wave of new concern came through the phone line. “Why? Orson said you acted like he was a scrapper.”

“He is, Daddy, but there's something else. Something you wouldn't approve of.”

“What are you trying to say, sweetheart?” His voice was so serious and burdened with concern that I almost felt bad for him.

“He was a Marine,” I told him and then quickly added, “I have to go.”

N
elson was escorted from the hospital by wheelchair, a fact that seemed to embarrass him no end. When I brought the truck up to the release door he was fussing like an old hen with the woman who had wheeled him out. She seemed to tolerate it well. He was wearing the same clothes that I had first seen him in. They were still bloody and filthy with roadside dirt.

“No one brought you clean clothes?” I asked him as soon as he climbed into my truck.

“I don't know who it would have been,” he said, looking at the shirt and pants like he was noticing them for the first time. Then, brushing at dirt on his knee, “Sorry about that.”

The short stay in the hospital had diminished him. Instead of being a vigorous, laughing man, he was tired and worn down. He had been bigger lying on the ground.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “Don't you have family around? Friends?”

“I am a man without baggage,” he answered, trying to sound glib but not quite managing it. “Without relations baggage, that is. I've been carrying around that thing in my lung for a while.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he echoed my words. “You've heard of government cheese? I have government cancer. I was in the Kuwaiti oil fields when Saddam's boys got all pissy and set the wells on fire. Fat lot of good it did them. We still kicked their asses and went back to finish the job later.”

He laughed. Suddenly he seemed to be the man I had first met.

When I didn't laugh with him, he said, “Hey, don't get all gloomy on me.”

“Who says I'm gloomy?”

“Look in the mirror.”

“Actually, I was feeling like a jerk for thinking what a bad day I'd had.”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “Someone else's cancer will do that to you. Perspective. God, I could use a beer.”

“No beer,” I told him. “But I do have this.” Reaching into the console, I pulled out the jar of whiskey Uncle Orson had given me.

“Is that the real stuff?” Nelson asked, grinning at the jar. “Like illegal, cooked in the woods, moonshine?”

“It is.”

He started twisting the lid.

“Don't do that,” I warned. “I think that's the last thing you need right now.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Nelson teased. “I'm crazy but not stupid.” He lifted the lid slightly and took a whiff from the opening. “Whoa, I think that's better than we make at the restaurant.” Sealing the lid back tight, he then shook the jar and watched the bubbles in the light.

“Restaurant?” I asked.

“A guy I went to school with was starting a distillery restaurant and asked me to go in with him. It's been nothing but a pain in the ass and so far bleeds money. He's wanting to buy me out, but at a big loss for me. I figure if I'm taking a loss I may as well do it fighting.”

“Distillery restaurant? I've never heard of anything like that.”

“It's like a brewpub, only instead of beer you distill whiskey or rye or whatever. It sounded like a good idea but between the city, state, and the feds, there are more regulations than putting a combination strip club and gun shop between an elementary school and church. Remember I told you I knew someone who might know something about bootlegging? Gabe Hoener. He's our master distiller. You should talk to him. We'll go there for dinner.”

“Dinner?” I asked. “Are you telling me or inviting me?”

“I'm just hoping.”

He seemed to have grown in stature since leaving the hospital.

“And what exactly is it that you're hoping?” It was a teasing question. A flirtation. Nelson was the kind of man who put me at ease and let me think about all the things a man could be in my life. That also makes me incautious to a degree that I'm not used to. My inept flirtation, combined with the dark shadow of the unknown sitting between us, made the moment more than it was supposed to be. The answer I had expected was a laugh or some half-veiled innuendo. What I got was a look that said the question was much harder than he was ready for.

I reached over the compartment between our seats and took his hand. I didn't look at him. I didn't smile. I just held and enjoyed the feeling when his fingers returned my grip.

On the last bend in the road before the turn into Nelson's drive, I noticed a car in the rearview mirror. It was a late-model, midsized sedan, generic and white. Everything about it read
fleet vehicle
. Either it was a rental car or government issue.

Nelson's home was filled with light and art. Saying it was a log cabin was to say it was made of logs, but the accuracy of the description stopped there. We entered through the garage side that faced the road, but he escorted me directly to the front side that was shaped like the prow of a ship made mostly of glass. It looked out over a deck of cedar plank and rail poles onto a Vista Vision view of a wooded canyon wall that dropped 200 feet to the lake. The room itself was all wood grain, glass, and art. Some of the art was obviously his own, but most pieces—framed original paintings and bronze statues—were by others and given special treatment. The exception was one corner between a huge river-stone fireplace and the bank of windows. That space was for working. There was an easel with all the tools of his trade on a spattered drop that protected the hard pine floor.

“Would you like something?” he asked.

I shook my head and pointed to the painting sitting on the big easel. “That doesn't look like what you're known for.” It was a portrait of a woman wearing a niqab, only her very expressive eyes visible over the dark fabric. “I thought you only painted landscapes.”

“Actually, my first big success was a painting of a pair of old cowboy boots. Not so much the painting itself, but the poster, then T-shirts. It was licensed by the boot company for advertising. That let me quit my job and paint full-time.”

“And her?” I nodded at the painting of the Muslim woman.

“I saw her once in Iraq. She was just standing there against a wall, watching as we passed.”

“You remembered her enough to paint her years later.”

“It's all memory, I think. Even if I'm looking at it while I paint. A photograph is perfect memory of one fraction of a second. Painting is like a slow-motion memory and anything but perfect.”

He was beginning to sound sad again. Sad or tired or both. I was about to say something about leaving him alone to rest when he asked if I minded waiting a moment while he took a shower.

“Not at all.”

For a few minutes I looked at paintings. The landscapes were there, some racked in the work area, some hanging on display. Other paintings were what drew me, though. They were like mile markers in life, a place where a crossroads had been passed or a new destination had been spotted in the distance. Faces and places with people moving, life roiling and active and imposing itself, not just life, but
Life
—capital L—marked the difference between then and now. I liked the new work so much more.

After I had pawed through Nelson's work, uninvited, I went to his bedroom. In the bathroom beyond, he was showering and the water must have been hot. A fog of steam seeped from the cracked door.

I moved close enough to listen to the water splashing against his skin. The same heat that washed over him billowed out to caress me. The scent of soap, simple and strong, carried out on the frothing air.

I want to be in there with him
.

Proximity was temptation, I'll admit it. I imagined myself undressing and getting into the water with him. Then I wished I was the kind of woman who would. I had to correct my thinking. I was the kind of woman who would. I was just the kind of woman who couldn't.

Still, the warmth and scent of the air drew me to the door, where I pushed it fully open and let myself bask.

“I'm at the door,” I told him and I stopped on the threshold.

He was in a glass shower with every surface fogged. Within, he was a barely darker shade of gray feathered out to white.

“You're not coming in, are you?” he asked, but it was really a statement. The tone was not teasing or disappointed. It was just a fact and understood.

“No. Do you mind that I'm here?”

His hand came up to the glass and wiped away a narrow slice of mist right at eye level. Then he looked out at me. I was reminded of the painting on his easel, the woman in the niqab. Or more accurately, I thought of the lingering memory of the woman's eyes.

Nelson's eyes had a weight to them as well. As quickly as I felt the weight, he let it go and a smile fell into his look. “There is only one other place I would want you to be.” There was the tease, the easy good humor.

I want to be naked for those eyes
.

“I need to shave. Hand me the razor by the sink?”

That brought me all the way into the room. I'm sure that was his thinking. After handing the razor over the top of the glass, I was tempted to open cabinets and drawers looking for anything feminine. One box of tampons and I would be running. But there was nothing feminine about the room. It wasn't masculine, either; more temporary, like a hotel bathroom.

“How long have you lived in this house?” I asked.

“A year.”

I thought of my year. Then I thought of my last decade. It was like this room. Time waiting to be filled in.

My head began swimming in the heat, but a shiver of cold ran down my spine. It settled in between my thighs. I took a step, not to go anywhere but to shift my body. The pants I was wearing felt tight and my hips tingled with an internal blossoming, a waking feeling of both warmth and chill. It was a confusion of needs that walked on tiny feet up my body. Under my bra my nipples hardened and I couldn't pretend ignorance of what I was wanting anymore.

Nelson shut the water off.

I took a long, deep breath of the moist air.

He opened the shower door and then reached through to grab a towel from the bar.

As I stepped back the thought that I should turn away entered my mind. That's all it did: It entered and just waited to be noticed. I took no notice or action.

When he stepped out, the towel was wrapped around his waist. His face and scalp were freshly shaved, pinking his skin and making him look almost boyish. Water was still dripping from his shoulders and running in thick drops down his chest, pulling all the hair and my gaze downward. The center of his body was gaunter than I had expected. He had lost more weight than I had imagined. I could tell by the line of his ribs and the skin of his belly that looked both tight but soft. Even though his stomach was flat, the front of the towel covering his hips wasn't.

He wasn't aroused but he was definitely aware that I was in the room.

I wanted to say something. Nelson stepped forward and put his hands on my face and drew me into the softest, most genuine kiss I had ever experienced.

As soon as our lips parted, though, what he had said about painting and memory passed through my mind. This was a moment just like that. I couldn't help wondering if a year from now, or twenty, this moment would be as static and real as a photograph or painted, filtered through my thoughts until it becomes more than it ever could have been.

That's the funny thing about memory. Everything colors it. Everything that comes after the event and everything that precedes has a say in the remembering. The real irony is that it works the other way around too. All those things in your memory can conspire in delicate, black whispers to color every moment of your life with shades of meaning. My memory paints my life with color, pale and drained of vibrancy until everything is surrounded by a spent and split cocoon. It offers no protection; instead, it seems to confine me within the filmy chamber at the same time as it invites in all the terrors of the world. Inside a dirty translucence with echoes both of color and history, I fight until I have to break away.

It wasn't graceful. I made excuses. At least in my mind they felt like excuses. In word and deed I'm sure they were much less. That's to say, I ran from the room. I ran from Nelson.

* * *

I didn't run home. That would have been a sane action. And while I might not have been sane, I wasn't quite insane. I had sense enough to leave the county I was employed in to get drunk. Up in Christian County there was a place I knew but was not known in. It was new and still not quite broken in. The old place was called Wooly's before the fire. The owner had been keeping fireworks in the basement to sell at a summertime roadside stand. When the place went up, everyone within ten miles watched the show.

Wooly's was now Shep's, Wooly having gone up with a bold white chrysanthemum burst. People in the area now call the finale of any fireworks display the big Wooly. Shep had rebuilt a much nicer place, killing the character of the red-painted cinder-block roadhouse. He still served cheap food and beer along with the music of local bands.

It was Friday-night crowded when I got there. Exactly what I needed. Inside, I took the only booth I could get and sagged into red glitter vinyl to hide and drink. After the first beer I had another with a whiskey back. I don't care what anyone says about drinking for pleasure or loving the taste, you don't have a boilermaker unless you mean business. The whiskey was house brand. That meant it was about as strong as hard water. But it was cheap enough to get the job done and enjoy the ride getting there.

I thought about the jar in the console of my truck. Clare Bolin's whiskey. If I needed to get quick about it, that was my hole card. Drinking blew away the dust that always seemed to hang at the edges of my vision. It let the colors come but muted the meanings. For me it was like watching my own life on television with the sound turned off. I knew what was there, but didn't have to listen anymore.