Keeping Promise Rock (24 page)

“Thank you,” he murmured brokenly. “You… you were very kind.” Stefan opened lazy eyes. “Guilt, American?” Crick shrugged as though it was no big deal. “It goes in the collection bucket.”

Stefan snorted and waved him off with a dreamy smile. “At least now you’re not so lonely. Enjoy Paris, American. I very much enjoyed you.” And then he closed his sleepy blue eyes and fell back asleep, and Crick crept out of the tiny little apartment like the criminal he felt like.

In the daylight, he could see the monorail from the window of Stefan’s room, so he started marching toward it in the chill morning. He reached for his BlackBerry six times on the way, because it was his time to chat with Deacon and it was habit, before he remembered that he wasn’t sure what to say.

You’re honest as a horse, Crick.

Shit. That long-ago virtue finally made up his mind for him.

Crick @DP
—
Woke up next to a mistake in Berlin this morning. The
things I’ll do just to say your name out loud.

There was a pause. A longer pause than usual, and Crick wondered if he could please, just please, die enough for his heart to shrivel and cease to beat, because he knew Deacon would never speak to him again.

DP @Crick—It’s not a mistake if it saved your life.

Crick stopped short right there on the sidewalk, which was getting busier by the minute. In that one moment, Crick finally got it. If he hadn’t 160

believed before, he was now a true believer. He would
never
come home to The Pulpit and find his shit out on the lawn.

Crick
@
DP—Save my life? It really did.

DP @Crick—Then tell me you at least used a raincoat—a good
soldier keeps his gun clean!

Crick closed his eyes tight, opened them, kept walking, kept texting.

Crick @DP—Squeaky clean. Don’t want my gun dropping off when
it needs to shoot more than blanks.

DP @Crick—That would piss me off too. I still love you—no
worries.

Crick @DP—I’ll worry ’til I’m home.

DP @Crick—Yeah. Me too.

Deacon,

Paris was everything it’s talked up to be—especially in the springtime. I’ve sent some sketches I made—common stuff, the Arc, the Tower, small cafes, the Seine. It’s almost like an obligation—young art student comes to Paris, bad art ensues.

About the mistake in Berlin—you gave me “permission” before we left, and I thought you were crazy. I underestimated how smart you are about people. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d do anything just to say your name, and the mistake knew it. It always surprises me to find kindness in the world outside of you. I was lucky to find it that night.

But the good news is, I got back to base and got to actually pick out my new driver. I guess they felt like after Jimmy, maybe the army owed me. There was one girl standing in the ranks—she reminded me so much of Amy, and she smiled. (She wasn’t supposed to—they were supposed to be at attention.) I figured any girl ballsy enough to smile, well, she and I should get along okay. Wouldn’t it be something to find kindness (okay—whole different type of kindness) somewhere else out here?

I like the Twitter thing—any technology that gives me instant forgiveness can’t be all bad. Of course, it’s kind of Keeping Promise Rock

like the M-16 thing—it all depends who’s behind the button.

I love you. I want to shout it sometimes. I know you worry about our letters and texts getting read—shades of WWII, haunting us still, I guess, and I’m well aware that nothing’s safe on the internet. I worry too. You need to know that when I say it, when I ask you to say it, it’s because my lungs feel full of dark water, and seeing it or writing it lets me breathe.

I’ll love you forever.

Crick

Marching On

THE first year was incredibly hard, but they found a rhythm to living without each other. It hurt like losing a limb or eyesight or the ability to breathe, but it was doable. At least, that was what Deacon told himself when he got the message about Berlin.

He’d been up late that night anyway, taking his turn with the baby.

Benny never expected him to get up with her, but Deacon liked that part. It was late, the house was quiet, and it was just him and this tiny little person that he had yet to disappoint. So there they were, Parry Angel and Deacon, listening to Deacon sing to The Eels
,
when Deacon’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

“
I’ve finally stopped pretending that I didn’t break your heart
,” Deacon finished crooning, and the baby gurgled. She liked his voice, and he liked making her smile, so it was all good. He pulled out his phone while balancing the baby, read the message, and promptly dropped the phone.

His heart was racing, which was a helluva thing—he’d been expecting this for a year.
Anything, anything, but don’t let Crick be
lonely
—wasn’t that what he’d said to himself? He recovered the phone and ignored the cold sweat on his palms. It was time to pony up.

DP @Crick—It’s not a mistake if it saves your life.

He believed it, but that didn’t mean that when the conversation was over he didn’t slouch down the couch while holding the now-sleeping baby, and sniffle into her flannel blanket.

Benny came out of her bedroom, yawning. “Why didn’t you wake me, Deacon? It was my turn!”

“I like doing it,” he murmured, but she was a smart kid. She flopped down beside him and leaned into the side that wasn’t holding the baby, snuggling like the child she was.

“What’s the matter, Deacon?”

He thought about lying to her but didn’t. This was what Jon was talking about when he said “ask for help”—it would be nice to learn something before Crick got back.

“Your brother just texted. He’s—he
was
—lonely.” She was quiet for a moment, digesting. “But he’s not anymore?” Deacon’s lips twisted a little. “He wasn’t last night.” And she knew what that meant. “Oh.”

He shrugged. “I’ll live. We’ll live. I’m glad he’s not so lonely.” He remembered the text—
There’s not much I wouldn’t do to be able to say
your name.
“We at least get to talk about him. He doesn’t get the same thing.”

Benny nodded against him. “Look—do me a favor. Tell him I said

‘good going’ or something like that. But don’t tell him that I want to beat the shit out of him for doing this to you, okay?”

“Why can’t you text him yourself?”

Benny sniffled against his shirt and wiped her face on Parry Angel’s blanket like he had. “Because I told him to do this, but I’m pretty sure he knew I was kidding, and now that he’s done it… I’m not as good a person as you are, Deacon, and I’m so mad at him for doing this to you….”

“Shhh.” He calmed her then and eventually put both the girls to bed.

Then he pulled out the phone.

DP @Crick—Benny says ‘way to go’.

Crick @DP—That girl’s priorities are screwed up.

DP @Crick—You’d be surprised how level-headed she is. Night,
Crick—I love you.

Crick @DP—You are up hella late. Night Deacon. Love you too.

“SO,” LISA was saying, “does this place have any season besides ‘hell, prior to freezing’?”

Crick looked up from his sketchbook and squinted at her against the sun. He was parked right outside his barracks, enjoying the early morning shade and the good light before the desert remembered that it hated human life with a passion and tried to fry them all like chicken.

“It rains for about two weeks in December, and everything gets moldy except you. But I’ve sort of tried to block that out.” Crick’s driver wrinkled her nose and plopped her pert little bottom down on the sand next to Crick’s chair. “I’m so bored.” Crick had to laugh—it was the way she said it. Lisa had been funny and tough in the last month or so, and she had a capable head on her shoulders, which Crick highly appreciated after dealing with Jimmy. He recognized this as an overt offer of friendship, and damned if he could afford to turn one of those down.

“I’ve got boxes of paperbacks in my barracks. Want me to bring them out for you?”

She turned a winsome smile on him and batted her eyelashes. Crick laughed and stood and stretched. He set his sketchbooks down on his chair before he went into the men’s barracks tent and fetched one of the boxes of books that Deacon sent regularly.

He was completely unprepared to find Lisa looking at his sketchbooks when he came back.

“These are really good,” she murmured, leafing through the one on top—the “public” sketchbook, the one that he replaced on a regular basis as it filled up with whatever he was working on at the moment.

“Thanks,” he said, setting down the box and trying not to panic. The Deacon book was right under the public book, and he thought maybe, if he reached out his hand, she’d hand them over without… without….

“Wait, no, can I look?” She didn’t look up for his answer. In a way, it was flattering—she just assumed that his work was good enough that he wanted to share, but then, to his horror, “Ooooh… who’s he?” That was the first one, when Deacon had been younger and Crick’s work was rougher. Her fingers, which had been busy, flipping through the pages of rough sketches of things like camels and tanks and the far-off Keeping Promise Rock

mountains in the morning, suddenly stilled, moved reverently, slowly, as though she felt what Crick had felt as he’d been working.

She reached one of the sketches toward the end and stopped. It was one Crick had made in the hotel in Georgia of Deacon asleep on his side, the comforter rucked up around his waist and one arm stretched out above his head. The other arm was tucked between his chin and the mattress, and his hair—long on top, short on the sides, which hadn’t changed—was tousled and falling in his closed eyes. His expression was almost peaceful, for Deacon. Crick’s breath caught just looking at the sketch—he looked vulnerable and young, and Crick often wondered if the man he went back to would ever be that man, right there in the sketch, that he had left.

The look Lisa turned towards Crick now was eloquent and compassionate. Crick finally moved, his hand resuming normal speed instead of sluggish slow motion, and took the books from her unresisting grasp.

“I… um… I don’t usually show that one around too much,” he muttered with a green smile.

“What’s his name?” she asked, surprising him, and he figured that if he was fucked royally, he might as well enjoy it.

“Deacon. Deacon Parish Winters.”

She blinked. “Do you ever just call him ‘Deac’?” Crick shook his head adamantly. “Never.”

“Why not?”

He closed his eyes and felt foolish and answered anyway. “I like to say his name.”

Lisa reached out gentle hands then and took the sketchbook from him. He resisted at first, but she said, “You know, Crick, you might want to let me keep this one in my lock box. It can’t be all that safe in there.” It wasn’t, in fact. They’d busted two men for stealing in the last three months—Crick had been lucky, and he knew it. But still, Crick looked at the book like he was giving his newborn child to a teenager to babysit.

“I… I like to….”

“How ’bout we meet here after assembly most days—you bring the paperbacks, I’ll bring” —she smiled sweetly—“Deacon, and we can be…

you know….” Her face was suddenly a little bit uncertain and almost as 166

desperate as Crick had felt before he’d left for Germany. “We can be friends?”

Crick nodded and gave her his best smile. “I could definitely live with that, Popcorn.”

“Popcorn?” she asked, smiling that cute little scrunchy-freckled smile.

“You are just so damned perky!”

The little ritual of meeting in that spot to talk about books or home or to just give each other shit lasted until Crick’s last day in Iraq. Besides Deacon’s letters, he figured those moments were the other thing that just about saved his life.

Crick @DP—At the risk of sounding like a teenaged girl, I’ve got a
friend.

DP @Crick—We could send you some make-up and pink slippers if
they make you more comfy w/the idea.

Crick @DP—Do you enjoy being a dick?

DP @Crick—I’m less of one when I get to use mine.

Crick @DP—ROFL now fuck off.

DP @Crick—No, tell me about your new friend.

Crick @DP—She’s my driver. She saw my sketches and thinks
you’re hot. And she wants a human to talk to. It’s a win/win.

DP @Crick—And she’s a ‘she’. I win too.

Crick @DP—I’ve thought of that, but no more mistakes for me
anyway.

DP @Crick—I can live with your mistakes—no worries.

Crick @DP—I don’t need to make mistakes when I have someone to
talk to, so backatcha.

DP @Crick—This is one helluva conversation to have at 140 chrctrs
a shot.

Crick @DP—Think of it as minimalist love poetry. I love you
dickwad.

DP @Crick—I love you too, Gidget.

Crick @DP—Who?

DP @Crick—Neverthefuckmind.

Benny @Crick @DP—I love you both, but you’re both dicks.