Jenna's Cowboy (21 page)

He drew his hand back to his shoulder, his fingers closing almost into a fist aimed at her brother’s face.

“Hey!” Will lunged, grabbing him from behind, and caught hold of his arm.

Nate dipped his shoulder and rolled Will over it, throwing him on the other side of Chance. Will’s head bounced against the hardwood floor with a loud thud.

“Nate, stop!” Jenna held Zach close. But he twisted around, watching the fight with wide, frightened eyes, and began to wail.

Still kneeling over Chance, Nate straightened and drew his hand and arm back again.

Dub moved around behind his boys. “Nate, stand down.” His voice was strong, calm, and filled with a note of authority that Jenna had never heard before.

Nate blinked and hesitated.

When Will started to get up, ready to renew the fight, her father nudged his shoulder with the toe of his boot and ordered quietly, “Don’t move, son. Both of you stay where you are.”

Will slumped back to the floor.

“Stand down, Nate,” her father repeated. His stance appeared nonthreatening, but Jenna knew he would pounce on Nate if he had to.

Nate scowled at Will and Chance. Then he glanced down at the way he was positioned on the floor, and confusion clouded his eyes.

Zach quit screaming and clung to Jenna, inhaling on a silent shudder. She cuddled him against her shoulder and rubbed his back. “It’s okay, honey,” she whispered. “Everything is all right now.”

How she wished that were true, but it wasn’t. Tears streamed down her face and her heart ached—for her frightened little boy, for her brothers and a lifetime of trust and friendship that may have been destroyed, for herself and her fear of the man she loved. But most of all, she ached for Nate—for the wounds to his heart and soul, for the inner torment that he endured even now, for the experiences that brought him such pain.
Lord
Jesus, heal him, comfort him. Help us to do what’s right.

Nate turned his head, staring at his still-clenched hand. The blood drained from his face as the implication of the situation became clear. He slowly uncurled his fingers and lowered his hand and arm. As he focused on Will and Chance again, sorrow filled his face. They slowly leaned up on their elbows and warily watched him. He looked at her dad, and Dub held out his hand to help him up.

Nate shook his head and pushed himself to a standing position. It seemed to take all the energy he had. Pale, his shoulders drooping, he began to tremble.

“Nate, come sit down,” her father said gently. His kindness surprised Jenna. Hauling Nate out of there and giving him a good tongue-lashing, if not a plain old thrashing, was more his style. Normally, Dub didn’t tolerate any kind of threat to his family.

Instead, Nate took a step backward, turned, and met Jenna’s gaze. She gasped at the bleak emptiness in his eyes, the despair in his soul. Still clinging to her, Zach sniffed and took a shuddering breath. Tears filled Nate’s eyes, spilling down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Stumbling slightly, he hurried toward the front door.

“Nate, wait.” Jenna started after him, but her mother caught her arm, halting her.

“Let him go, honey. He needs time to get his bearings.”

He jerked the door open and bolted outside, letting the screen door slam shut behind him.

Jenna watched through the open doorway as he ran unsteadily to his pickup. She tried to tug free, but her mother held tight. “No, Mom. He shouldn’t be alone. He’s distraught.” They didn’t know how that felt, what it might cause him to do. A memory burned through her mind.

She stared at the bottle of sleeping pills. Dumped them into
her hand. Curled her fingers around them. Picked up the glass
of water with her other hand. She wanted so desperately to
end the heartache of Jimmy’s rejection and abandonment.
To ease the pain of her worthlessness. A baby’s cry broke
through her despair. Stopped her. Zach needed her. She had
to live for him.

A wave of panic swept through her. “What if he tries . . . tries to hurt himself?”

“Better him than you.” Rubbing the back of his head, Will let his dad help him up. “He’s been eatin’ loco weed with his Wheaties. We should call the sheriff.”

“Nobody is going to call the sheriff.” Dub gripped Will’s shoulder. “Understand me?”

Will nodded reluctantly, then frowned at Jenna. “But you stay away from him.”

Chance hauled himself to his feet. “I agree.” He sighed heavily. “It’s my fault. I should have kept my big mouth shut. I noticed he was annoyed, but I thought I could tease him out of it.”

“You and Nate have joked with each other all your lives,” said her mom. “You had no reason to think he wouldn’t go along with it like he always does.”

Chance walked over to the window and shook his head as Nate spun his wheels, then roared down the road. “I should have picked up on how upset he was.” He studied Will, who eased down in the big red chair and impatiently let their mother inspect the lump on his head. She murmured that he needed ice and went to the kitchen. “He didn’t seem real happy when y’all walked in. Were you on his case about something?”

Will glanced at Dub and hesitated. “He was supposed to mend a stretch of fence down by Muddy Creek this morning. I drove past there on my way to check the cattle in Red Ridge and spotted him asleep in the pickup. He’s been lookin’ worn out lately, so I let him sleep. I figured he’d rest a little and then get it done.

“When I came back by, he was gone. That was fine since it was time to head home to eat. Part of the broken section had been fixed, but the rest hadn’t been touched. I figured he’d go back and finish it this afternoon. When we were outside, I mentioned it, and he looked at me like I was one taco short of a combo plate. He said he didn’t need to go back; he’d fixed the whole thing.

“I told him that he was mistaken, there was still some left to do. He was emphatic that he’d done the job before he rested.” A worried frown creased his forehead. “I think he really believed he’d fixed that fence.”

Sue walked back in and handed Will one of the flat cold compresses they kept on hand in the freezer. She and Dub exchanged a glance as he sank down on one end of the couch.

“When he ran away from the bonfire, he didn’t remember pushing his way through the crowd.” Jenna cradled Zach against her shoulder, gently rocking back and forth. He was almost asleep.

Her mom sat down right next to her dad. She looked at Chance and patted the cushion beside her, then motioned for Jenna to sit across from them on the other couch. After they were all seated, she said, “Nate has the classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“How do you know?” When Zach stirred, Jenna rubbed his back. He settled down and snuggled closer to her neck.

“I had it when I came home from Viet Nam.” Dub focused on his hands and absently picked at a fingernail. “According to a psychologist with the Veterans Administration, I still have it. For most people, it never goes away completely.”

Chance leaned forward to see him better, resting his forearms on his thighs. “What do you mean, Dad? How does it affect you?”

“Now, it’s mostly the memories that occasionally bother me. You know how I get emotional sometimes when I see something about the current war on television, or sometimes when you boys get me to talkin’ about how things were in Nam.”

Jenna and her brothers nodded. Sometimes he was fine when he was telling war stories. Other times, he’d suddenly choke up, even shed a few tears and cut it short. She thought of the times her brothers had tuned into a war movie on television, and her dad left the room.

“The last year or so, I’ve been more forgetful. I blamed it on gettin’ old, but the doctor said it’s a common symptom that’s showing up a lot these days in Viet Nam vets. He said memory problems are affecting the current vets much sooner.”

“When your dad came home from the war, he was a lot like Nate. Jumpy, always on alert, had trouble sleeping.” Sue reached for her husband’s hand, resting it on her thigh. “Nate is probably having nightmares, reliving incidents in his dreams or possibly dreaming about something that he feared the most. Dub kicked me out of bed once.”

Will lowered the ice pack. “What was that about?”

“We figured out later that I was dreaming my helicopter was shot down. I was fighting off the Viet Cong.” He smiled wryly at Sue. “Hit your mom with a blade kick right in the rear end. She flew out of bed and hit the wall.”

“I wasn’t hurt, but it served as a good warning. The next time he started mumbling in his sleep, I bailed out of bed pronto. Good thing too, because I’d no more than stood up when his fist hit my pillow. It happened so often that I kept an extra blanket at the foot of the bed. When he started moving around and mumbling, I’d grab the blanket and my pillow and go sleep on the couch for a while.

“Then one night before I left the room, I understood what he was saying. He was giving a mayday call. So I stayed in the room until the dream was over and he woke up. After I told him what I’d heard, he remembered part of the dream.”

“It was the last time I ever had that nightmare. I’ve had different ones occasionally over the years, but none where your mom had to run for her life. We both slept better after that. But I had other problems—a need for adrenaline rushes for one thing. So I drove fast and took up bull riding.”

“That ended when Dynamite stomped on his leg and broke it.”

“Later, I began having trouble with my temper. Rage that came out of nowhere for no reason.”

“You haven’t done that in a long time,” said Will.

“Not as much. When it does happen, I can control it better. But it really affected me when y’all were growing up. It was hard on all of you.”

No one said anything. For several years the whole family had walked on eggshells, never knowing what would set him off or when. He’d never hit any of them, but he’d thrown Will and Chance to the ground a couple of times.

Jenna swallowed hard. Like Nate had done a few minutes before.

“God has helped me a lot these last fifteen years. Healed a lot of wounds I didn’t know I had. Most people weren’t aware of PTSD in those days. I’ve read lately that there were some folks studying it back then, trying to figure out what was going on. But I don’t think many vets knew about the research and possible treatments.”

“We didn’t know what it was,” said her mom. “We just knew the war had changed him. We muddled through on our own, with love and God’s help.”

“Some people didn’t make a recovery. That’s why there are so many Viet Nam vets who are drunks, drug addicts, homeless, or have spent time in jail. The divorce rate is a lot higher for vets who served in a war zone than it is for civilians, as is the suicide rate. I’m one of the blessed ones. God has been gracious to me, as has your mother.”

“Let me go put Zach down,” Jenna said softly. She stood carefully so she wouldn’t wake her little boy and carried him into his old room. They’d left a bed and plenty of toys there for him to use on the days when she was at the ranch house. She got him settled and prayed over him, asking God to wipe away the memories of what had happened earlier. “Please, God, don’t let him be afraid of Nate.”

When she rejoined her family, she studied her dad’s face, then her mother’s. “How do we help Nate?”

“You should go see him.” Her mother checked her watch. “Give him about another hour.”

“No,” Will said ardently. “He’s dangerous.”

“Mom, Will’s right.” Chance glanced at Jenna and frowned, probably because she was glaring at both of them. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“No. He needs Jenna. The rage has passed for now.”

“How do you know?” Will jumped to his feet, then flinched. “We can’t be sure of that.”

“Jenna should go talk to him.” Her father pointed at Will and motioned for him to sit back down. “Stick that ice back on your head. It’ll take the lump down and cool you off.” Grumbling, Will obeyed. Dub turned to Chance. “You go with your sister but stay in the pickup. You’ll be close if there’s a problem. Right now Nate needs to know that he hasn’t destroyed his chance at the one thing he wants most in this world—Jenna’s love.”

18

Nate sat in back of his house, tears pouring down his face. The drive from the Callahans was a blur of dust, heartache, and terror.

He vaguely remembered throwing Chance to the floor, then Will jumping him. Tossing him aside had been easy. But what had triggered the rage? Nothing Chance could have done deserved that kind of response. But that’s all it took lately—nothing. He assumed he’d been ready to hit Chance, otherwise Will would have stayed out of it. And if he’d been about to deliver the same kind of blow the first time as he was the second, he would have crushed his windpipe.

He could have killed his best friend.

And Jenna and little Zach would have witnessed it. It was bad enough that they had seen what they had.

“What kind of monster am I?” His chest ached, and a wave of dizziness hit him, adding to the pounding headache he’d had all week. Leaning against the headrest, he swiped at the tears that wouldn’t quit.

Disjointed scenes from the war flickered through his mind like an old movie reel. Taking fire, returning it. Laughing with a kid, running with a wounded child. Hiding behind a rock in Afghanistan, diving into the sand in Iraq. A rocket attack in the mountains of Afghanistan, pinned down by the firefight. His buddy hit and dying. Another man wounded. Back in Iraq, the truck ahead of them hit an IED. A rocket took out the Humvee behind them.

Yelling at the top of his lungs, he beat his fists against the dashboard. “Make it stop, Lord. Please, make it stop!”

Sobbing, he slumped forward and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, resting his forehead on them. Lost in pain, he cried out to God for help, for peace—for forgiveness. He believed fighting to protect his country was right and necessary. He’d never harmed anyone who wasn’t trying to harm him or someone else, but he still felt guilty for the lives he had taken. And for the men he hadn’t been able to save.

Nate didn’t know how long he sat there. Minutes? Hours? His tears spent, he slowly straightened. His hands still shook, though he didn’t know if it was from nerves or the cold. He’d left his jacket at the Callahans. When he pulled the keys from the ignition, they slipped from his fingers. He left them on the floorboard. He was too tired to care.