Meet Me Here (14 page)

The sun is coming up, a thin line of light drawn across the mountains as we drive back to the Waffle House. When we get back, everybody gets out, and I ask Phil if he’s okay. He stands there for a moment, holding his ribs.

“Shit,” he says. “Takes more than a bunch of damn titty babies to do me in.”

Phil’s words are like dawn bringing light, and everybody laughs, one big exhale. Even Jake smiles. Then Phil says, “That kid ain’t gonna be pitching for the Braves anytime soon, is he?”

Wayne nods, but I can tell he’s still worried. When Phil sees it, he comes over and wraps an arm around his
shoulder. “Your brother ain’t made of the same stuff you are, you hear me? Not even close.”

Wayne nods as Phil looks over at Sinclair and says, “What about this kid? Like he was in the pits at Daytona!”

Ray pushes Sinclair playfully until his hat falls on the asphalt. As he picks it up, Sinclair says, “Hell, I probably could’ve done it ten seconds faster.”

They laugh even harder, giving Sinclair shit. “Boy, you don’t know a damn thing about nothing.” But then Phil comes and pulls me aside. Jake looks over but quickly gets pulled into whatever story Ray is telling. Phil puts both hands on my shoulders and stares at me for a second, smiling.

“You ready for today?”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Okay, okay.” He looks over my shoulder, at the group of friends. “You know why your brother was with those guys, right?”

I hesitate. I’ve trained myself to not say anything to anyone. The last few months have been about smiling and agreeing and never—
never
—letting people on the outside know what was really going on. But Phil looks as if I could tell him anything. I don’t know how to do it or if I even
can. So I drop my head and don’t say anything.

“I didn’t know. Not until tonight.”

“Hey, listen—listen to me.” He bends over so he can look me in the eye. “You don’t worry about your brother. We take care of our own. You understand that? When you leave, we got this. You understand me?”

The tears well up, a rogue wave of happiness. Or maybe it’s simple relief. Whatever it is, all I can do is stand there with my arms hanging uselessly. He claps me on the shoulder once.

“Your brother’s a tough son of a bitch,” he says. “You may not be able to see it, but he’s going to be okay.”

I want to believe him. But Jake stopped fighting so long ago, and it feels like I did, too. “Sometimes I think he’s not going to get better.”

“He may need his ass kicked a little bit,” Phil says, smiling. I must look confused because he says, “I’m saying we’re going to watch out for him. That’s all. Make sure he doesn’t go off fucking around with any of the other cheesedicks out there.”

“I think he needs help,” I say.

Phil nods slowly, exhaling deeply. “Well, that, too. But son, nobody can do anything alone. And that’s my point:
he isn’t on an island. He’s a part of me, and I’m a part of him; that’s what it means to be brothers.”

Phil stares at me as he finishes, his face certain. As if there weren’t any other option. And maybe there isn’t. Maybe that’s the real secret of being a brother, the commitment that isn’t based in obligation but in something deeper. Love? Compassion? And if Phil knew my plans, if he would try to talk me out of it right now, I just might go, restarting that old fire with words like
brotherhood
and
honor
. Everything I’ve seen on display in the past hour. That’s all I ever wanted: people who would stand beside me no matter the odds.

“I’m scared,” I admit.

He treats the statement with the same calm regard as everything else I’ve said.

“Anybody who says they’re not scared is lying and most likely the biggest coward you’ve ever met. Everybody’s scared, and you have good reason to be. Better than most. If you aren’t scared, then you’ll never be courageous.”

The thought works its way inside me, expanding all the cracks of my plan with thick doubt. Could I do a complete 180 and by this afternoon be a full-on saluting soldier? I don’t think so, but the way he’s looking at me, the way
he stares at me with his calm confidence, I still remember why I wanted to be.

“I’m going to go have a word with your brother,” he says. “But then I want you two to get out of here, all right?”

He walks over and says something to Jake, the two of them separating from the rest of the group. As it happens, Wayne walks over to me smiling. I hobble and meet him halfway, at my truck.

“All right, Bennett.” He reaches out and, yawning, slaps my hand. “For real, if you get into some shit and need a wingman, you call me.”

Sinclair walks up as he says it, looking confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing, man,” Wayne says. “I’ll tell you later.”

Before they walk away, Wayne says, “Screw it,” and pulls me into a hug. He nearly crushes me, but I put my arms around him. When we let go of each other, he fakes a punch at my stomach and says, “You’re getting weak, son. Shit’s pitiful.”

As I watch them walk away, I’m struck by how much I’m going to miss Hickory no matter where I end up, a thought that until now hasn’t really materialized for me. This town, these people are like DNA. Pulsing in my veins,
making my body work. It’s why I’m so worried about leaving, about letting them down. It’s like denying a part of my flesh.

Phil is still with Jake. He points; Jake nods. He raises his arms animatedly, and Jake nods more. Ray has gone into the Waffle House, for a drink or to use the bathroom, and once Wayne and Sinclair roar off into the night it’s just me leaning against my truck. The only sound is the cars on the highway and Phil, muffled but adamant.

I look around, more out of habit than any other reason. When I do, I see the backpack casually leaning against my front tire. I almost turn away before I realize what it is. But then it’s all I can see. In the past few months I’ve never seen it anywhere but on Jake’s shoulder, between his feet; it might as well be another limb. But here it is.

I act casual, trying not to draw attention to myself as I walk toward the front of the truck. When I get there, my hands are sweating. I could reach out and grab the backpack right now. Could run off into the night with it. Instead, I lean against the truck again, watching as Jake nods and Phil talks. They haven’t looked at me once.

I turn around and unzip the black canvas bag with a near-perverted joy. It feels illicit the way my heart is racing.
When it’s open, I don’t know what I expect. Cash. Drugs. Maybe pornography. Instead, it’s a rock. An unspectacular piece of sandstone about the size of a football.

“What the hell?” Jake says from behind me.

I spin around, the rock in my hands. When he sees it, his eyes go wide, and he takes a step back. “Put it back in the bag,” he says quickly.

“What the fuck, Jake? This is what you’re carrying around? A goddamn rock?”

“Put it in the bag,” he says again. “Please.”

I’ve never seen him this freaked out. He won’t stand still; his eyes are like hummingbirds flitting through the air. I half expect him to swipe the rock from my hands and hold it close, like a child who’s gone missing. Instead, he exhales and drops his head.

“Can we go somewhere else and talk about this?”

“Not until you tell me what this is about,” I say, holding up the rock again. He won’t look at it. Every time I move it, he cowers like a shamed dog.

Jake finally snatches the rock from me in one pained swipe. Once he’s got it zipped back up and stowed behind the seat of the truck, he turns to me and sticks his hand out for the keys.

“We have to do this now.”

“Do what?” I ask.

But Jake only shakes his head.

We drive slowly through the early morning, the birds coming to life all around us. The fatigue of the night is finally catching up to me, and the entire world feels fuzzy, drawn by a child. I have to pinch my leg to keep myself awake. Fifteen minutes of driving and we’re parked in the turnoff area right before the River Road bridge. We sit there for a second, not saying anything as cars zoom by us—first shift at the mills.

“So . . .” I say, but Jake doesn’t take the hint. He sits there, staring, thinking. About what, I can’t tell until he nods once and says, “So we were over there. And it’s just crazy, right? The entire town was already destroyed.” He drops imaginary shells with his hands, blowing them up in his lap. “And there’s this church, or maybe it’s a temple. Either way, it’s old. Like older than anything in this country by a thousand years, if not more. And it’s all blown to hell. Just rubble. Guys were always grabbing stuff to bring home, you know? But I wanted something special.”

He looks at me cautiously, as if waiting for me to catch up.

“So the rock is from . . . a church? Why does that matter?”

“We shouldn’t have even been over there. That’s the damn point.” He hits the steering wheel and falls back into the driver’s seat. He sits there breathing hard, not saying anything as I watch him.

“Dad won’t like that attitude,” I joke, but only for a second. His eyes are so serious, so vacant I’m not sure how else to respond.

“It’s not a political thing,” he says simply. “You know where I was?”

“The Middle East?”

He shakes his head. “The
cradle of civilization
. That’s where the Garden of Eden was. That’s where the devil came into the world, man.”

We never went to church, not like a lot of people in this town. Maybe on Christmas or when my mom’s extra-fundamentalist relatives would show up for a weekend. They’d drag us, wearing the only ties in the house, to whatever church they felt was
anointed,
and we’d sit through the sermon, through the healing, and then usually through a second, even longer testimony. But Jake has never talked about God once in his life, at least as I can remember it.
And here he is carrying on about Eden and the devil, and I’m not sure what any of it means.

“So, the devil—” I say. He pulls the backpack out from behind the seat and goes to open the door. I stop him.

“Jake, c’mon, man. What are we doing here?”

He shakes the bag and says, “We have to get rid of this.”

“And what’s that going to do? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Jake’s eyes flash, and for a moment I think he might hit me again. I scoot back in my seat, but that’s not it. When he pulls the rock out of the bag, he looks almost sick. He sits it on his lap, and we both stare at it.

“I fucked up when I took this,” he says. “That’s when everything went to complete and utter shit. Two weeks later the entire squad got attacked. The war was already over, man. And we get attacked?” He shakes his head, like he just walked into a cobweb. “I can’t even get myself dressed in the goddamn morning, Thomas. I wake up, and everything feels too hard. Too much to even try.”

I sit there, not sure what I’m supposed to say. How I can help him at this point? It’s a rock, nothing more. But no matter how many times I tell him that, I don’t think it will matter.

“You saved people’s lives,” I say.

He shakes his head, rubs his eyes. Before I can say anything else, he looks over at me and says, “I can’t take a chance keeping this—especially if you end up over there, too. We need to balance the scorecard. We need to make things right because . . .”

He fades away, spinning. Gone. Normally when this happens, I walk away. But not only do I want him to finish the sentence, I’m not going. And if I tell him, maybe that will be the answer. Maybe that’s been the answer all along.

He looks at me, eyes glassy. “If you went over there and got fucked up because I did something stupid, I’d never forgive myself. I need to fix this. You’re my brother, man.”

He looks up at me, like sharing this with me would somehow cause me to break away from him. I don’t think twice.

“I’m not going to the army. I’m leaving.”

He doesn’t immediately respond, and I don’t know how to say it any clearer, so I just shrug. When I do, he cuffs me in the back of the head and pushes me hard against the passenger side door. “What the fuck do you mean you’re not going?”

“Look at you,” I say. “How can I go? How do you expect me to go over there when you’re—”

I don’t think I can say it. But then he yells again: “Say it.”

“You’re all fucked up,” I finally say. “And I don’t want to come back like that. I don’t think I can do it. If going over there did this to you, I’ll never be able to handle it.”

Jake sits back, the anger fading momentarily. He looks at the backpack in his lap and then, without warning, punches the steering wheel. I’m pretty sure he’s broken his hand when he brings it back, but he doesn’t react. Only stares at me.

“You committed,” he says. “They’ll throw you in the brig, Thomas. That’s fucking
prison
.”

I balk. I didn’t know that would happen. If anything, I thought I’d have to mea culpa up over at the recruiter’s office. Live with the shame. But
jail
?

The truck gets really hot, and I feel like I can’t breathe.

“I’m going to—”

Jake cuts me off. “What? Do you really think Dad would let you do this? And even if he did, where are you going to go?” The disdain in his voice is worse than anything he could do to me. The way he’s looking at me, like
I’m something that needs to be scraped off a boot.

“I don’t know. California. Or maybe Canada. Somewhere.”

“Are you fucking serious?
Canada
. Let’s say that happens, what the hell are you going to do once you get to Canada?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Work.”

“Where were you going to live? How were you going to buy food? Do you have a passport?”

I nod halfheartedly, but I can’t answer his questions. Even the answers I do have now seem unreasonable, a kid dressing up in his dad’s suits and pretending to have a job. I look past him, to the road. It’s 7:00
A.M
., and I still don’t have a clue about anything.

“If you do this,” he says, “you’ll never be able to come back. He’ll never understand this, and you know it. And if you think he’ll just let you go . . . well, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”