Toward the Sound of Chaos (10 page)

Jake

I
’m
held down on a rickety table by one man on each of my limbs, while another
stands against the wall with a rifle aimed at my head. The infection in my side
burns. I’m running a fever—a pretty fuckin’ nasty one if the hallucinations are
anything to go by. With any luck, it’ll kill me, because these fuckers don’t
seem capable of doing the job, despite their best efforts. When we landed in
Afghanistan we were given names and faces of Taliban leaders, not unlike the personality
identification playing cards of
Operation
Iraqi Freedom
.

Aasif
Bashir had been on that list. I’m staring up at the very same motherfucker I
was sent back to Afghanistan to kill, only we’re in the wrong positions.

He
orders one of his men to hold the muslin over my face as another stands by with
a bucket of water.

“You
will talk,” he says, not in Pashto, but heavily accented English. “Or you will
die, but not before you are begging for your miserable life.”

I
laugh, causing the muslin to be drawn tighter over my face, and then I suffocate
beneath the deluge. Buckets and buckets of water are poured over my face, and
he’s right—I do beg. Between drowning and breathing, my mouth, nose, eyes, and
ears filling with water, I fight, despite my brain telling me not to. It’s instinct,
and afterward, as I lie there with my whole body on fire, my wounds reopened in
the struggle and my lungs burning for breath, I beg for my life. I beg for
mercy, and I beg for them to kill me.

Bashir
doesn’t say a word, but he leans over and licks the water from my cheek.

I
jolt awake, sitting bolt upright, my breaths coming hard and fast. My heart
races and my whole body trembles. Nuke is in my lap, licking my face. He whines
and jumps off the bed, pressing the lamp switch with his nose, which I rewired
into the wall at the right height for this very reason.

“Nudge,”
I command, my voice shaken and so alien after the dream. Nuke rests his head on
my knee, and I pat his fur with trembling fingers. I run my free hand through
my hair and it comes away as wet as it’d been on that table two years ago. I
wipe my sweat off on the sheet and get up, though I wind up pacing the room a
few times before lying down on the floor beside the bed. Nuke lies in front of
me, and though I’m burnin’ up and shakin’ like a leaf, I hold him, taking
comfort in his warm fur.

Several
hours later, I still can’t sleep, and I get up and walk downstairs, opening the
French doors onto the back deck. Nuke follows me out into the garden and down
the walkway to the pier house. I don’t bother switching on the lights; the moon
is high tonight, and I don’t need to see where I’m going because I’ve walked
these boards a thousand times since I got back.

The
last time I came down to the pier house was around a month ago. I open the
front door and stale air greets me. It reeks of salt and dust, but I ain’t here
for the smell or the view. I’m here for what’s hidden in the small pantry
beside the sink.

I
open it and grasp one of the three bottles inside, and then I unscrew the lid
and take a hearty gulp. It burns all the way down, and the nightmare hits me
full force—the water, the shortness of breath, the ache in my lungs. I stumble
over to the couch and toss worn cushions aside and there I stay, looking out at
the moonlight on Mobile Bay, drinking Johnnie and wishing like hell things had
ended differently in Afghanistan.

The
scenery has changed, and the people, but at the end of the day I am still a
prisoner in my own body. I may have been home for a year, but a part of me
never came back, and I’m still the same man now that I was in that building, a
gun to my head, longing for death with no way to pull the trigger.

Ellie

S
unday
after church, Jake didn’t show up at the beach like he always did, and he
didn’t come by the house to finish the gardens like he’d said he would. I’d had
this niggling feeling in my gut since I woke up, this ache inside that I couldn’t
put my finger on. I learned a long time ago to trust that feeling, so when he doesn’t
show up at the duck pond Monday morning, I take Spence to school like nothing is
amiss and then I drive to Jake’s house.

Now
that the huge sand-colored Prairie-style home looms up before me, I wonder if I
shouldn’t just turn right back around, but I steel my nerve. I grab the
container full of snickerdoodles made from Memaw’s recipe that I stayed up
baking until one because I couldn’t sleep—nothing gets my mind sorted like
filling my house with the scent of warm vanilla sugar—and I switch off the
engine and climb out of the car. It’s so quiet here and eerily still. There’s
not even a breeze off the bay this morning—not that you’d get much of one from
the front of the house with all these beautiful trees blocking it. It sure is a
private lot; I bet you can’t even tell that you have neighbors for all this
green around. Jake may not be so great with people, but he has one hell of a
green thumb.

I
close my car door quietly in case he’s sleeping, and I climb the front porch
steps. I knock, but I can’t hear nothin’. I try the knob; it’s unlocked, so I
poke my head in.

“Jake?
You here?”

Nuke
barks, but it sounds as if it’s coming from the back of the house, and then I
hear a terrifying roar of anguish and the sounds of breaking glass. “Jake?”

More
barking and a scratching sound too, as if the dog’s been locked out and is desperate
to get in. I run down the hall. The house is huge and I’ve never been inside
before, but I realize when I reach the kitchen and family rooms that the
barking is coming from upstairs, so I double back through the hall and take the
steps two at a time. The scratching starts up again and I follow the sound
through another hall leading to the main bedroom. Inside, Nuke scratches at a
closed door, tearing away strips of varnished hardwood. He doesn’t even
acknowledge my presence, he’s so desperate to get in.

I’d
heard those same noises the night Jake had shown up on my doorstep. He needed
me, and now Nuke needs to get to him. From beyond the door, Jake roars, and the
loud thud of flesh hitting the wall repeatedly sends a chill down my spine.
That’s not a sound I’m unfamiliar with, though it is one I hoped to never hear
again in my life. Despite my fear, I twist the knob. The door is locked.

“Jake.
It’s Ellie. Let me in,” I say, surprised at how steady my voice sounds. Another
anguished cry and the door I’m leaning against rattles on its hinges. I press
my palms to it. “You let me in this bathroom right now.”

“Go
home, Ellie.” He grunts, and he don’t sound like himself. I glance around the
dark room. The sheets on the four-poster bed are tangled in a heap, and on the
nightstand there’s not one but two empty bottles of cheap whiskey turned on
their sides.

Oh
Johnnie, you always were a mean bastard.

“I
ain’t going nowhere, Jake, so unless you open this door, I’m gonna find a way
to break it down. If that means I have to call the police or the fire brigade
or the fucking mayor of Fairhope, I will.”

“Did
you just curse?” he says, and his voice sounds less angry now. Drunk, but less
angry.
Hooray for small mercies
.

Nuke
scratches at the door again. I tell him to stop, but I’m not his handler, so he
doesn’t listen to me. I let out a sigh and lean my head against the wood. “Open
the damn door, Jake.”

The
sound of the lock popping open rings out like a shot. My whole body goes tense
and Nuke barks. With trembling hands, I turn the knob. It opens.

Glass
tinkles across the floor, swept up by the door as it swings wide. Every fiber
of my being braces for the worst, but it isn’t as bad as it sounded. A broken
mirror—that’s for sure—and a couple of items on the floor—pill bottles,
cologne, some hair product, and a broken man, sitting in amongst the debris he
made. Nuke tries to push past me, and I grab onto his collar.

“Nuke,
stay,” Jake says, his bloodshot eyes meeting mine across the room. The dog
whines but sits back on the carpet, panting and clearly distressed.

“You
fool of a man, what have you done to yourself?” I stare at the blood trailing
down his forearm. There’s a gaping hole in the wall where the mirror used to be
and blood smeared across the drywall around it. Carefully, I cross the floor,
glass crunching under the soles of my white tennis shoes. I don’t even think
about not touching him—I just reach out and draw his arm to me in order to
inspect the damage. He wrenches out of my grasp with a grunt and the astringent
scent of liquor rolls over me.

“You
been drinkin’, Jake?” Obviously, I already know the answer, but I ask anyway
because I need to get him talkin’. I don’t like the way his eyes seem to look
right through me.

The
corners of his mouth turn up in a bitter grin. “Yeah, I been drinkin’.”

I
pick up the bottles of pills strewn all over the floor and set them on the
counter. “How many of these did you take?” I snap.

“None.”

I
discard the pills in the trash because they wouldn’t do
no
good
after they’ve been rollin’ around in
glass. “You shouldn’t drink when you’re on meds.”

“It
don’t fuckin’ matter anymore.”

I
snap my gaze back to his and grit my teeth. “It matters to me.”

“Why?”

“Because
I care about you,” I say. “We care about you.”

His
eyes get all squinty and he slurs, “You don’t even know me.”

“Is
that what you think?” I snap, losing all patience with him. “That I don’t know
the man I’ve been letting into my house? I know you, and the Jake Tucker I
know—the Jake Spencer knows—is not this Jake.”

He
smiles that twisted grin again, and so help me, I’ve never wanted to put my
hands on a person in anger so much in my life. I want to slap that smirk right
off his beautiful face.

“Maybe
this is the real Jake; maybe I’m just another asshole you hardly know tryin’ to
get in your panties.”

I
stare at him in shock, and I won’t lie, it takes a moment to recover, but like
any southern woman worth her salt, I’m a master in the art of backhanded
compliments and southern charm. “Then you clearly ain’t as smart as I thought
you were, ’cause this Jake? He don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere near my
panties, but the other may have. Looks like now we’ll never know.” His cocky
smile falters. “Now, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get up.”

He
laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “What do you know about it? You can’t even
see what’s right in front of you.”

“Oh
I see it,” I huff. “I’m real familiar with how mean a bottle of Johnnie Walker
can make a man.”

“That
the reason you never talk about why Spencer’s daddy ain’t around?”

“Yeah,
that’s the reason,” I say folding my arms over my chest. “Because, it’s a long
painful road that I walked away from and one that I don’t wanna have to
revisit. And considering where you been, Jake Tucker, I thought you might know
something about that.”

“What’s
his name?”

“It
don’t matter.”

“It
matters,” he says through his teeth. “Believe me, it matters.”

“Why?
You gonna go to Charleston, find him, and beat the crap outta him for hurtin’
me? The best thing you can do for me is to not become him.” I take a deep
breath and wonder why we’re talkin’ about me at all when there’s clearly more
important things going on right here. “Why didn’t you show up at my house
yesterday? And why are you drinking in the middle of the day?”

“Day,
night, it don’t matter. The nightmares don’t stop unless I’m three fuckin’
sheets to the wind.”

I
sigh and grab the washcloth from a rack. Running warm water over it, I wring
out the excess and crouch down to his level. “Give me your hand.” He shakes his
head. “Give me your goddamn hand, Jake.”

He
doesn’t extend it out to me, but he doesn’t pull away either when I grab his
forearm. I get a good glimpse of the damage he’s done. He don’t need stitches,
far as I can tell.

I
gently start wiping at the mess and get to my feet a few times to rinse out the
washcloth. As the blood is washed away, his scars become more pronounced. This
is the first time I’m seeing him in a shirt that doesn’t have long sleeves. It
makes me want to cry because his skin is a patchwork of pain. It tells a story
of hate and unimaginable cruelty, but there is splendor in it, too. There’s a
tale of courage, survival, immeasurable strength, and beauty in the face of
such ugliness. They tried to destroy him, and they failed.

I
trace my finger over the deepest scar on his forearm and blink back tears.
Jake’s whole body stiffens. I decide it’s best not to push him any further by
touching him again, but that don’t mean I’m going to go easy on him either.
“So, you got any rubbing alcohol? Or did you drink that too?”

He
closes his eyes and leans back against the tub. “Under the sink.”

I
pull out the rubbing alcohol and a first-aid kit and get to work disinfecting
and bandaging the worst of his wounds. He hisses when I place soaked cotton to
the cuts, but he don’t say much beyond that. I take several towels from the
rack and lay them across the worst of the broken glass. I’ll go in search of a
dustpan soon, but right now I need him away from sharp objects and anything
else that might cause him harm.

“Okay,
Marine, on your feet.” I gently grasp his arm and help him stand. He’s not the
easiest man to move, but somehow we manage. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Words
I never thought I’d hear coming from those sweet lips of yours,” he slurs as I
lead him out of the bathroom and over to the bed.

“Knock
it off, Jake.” Not that a part of me isn’t thrilled to hear those words—my
vagina is doin’ cartwheels in my panties right now—but I have no intention of
letting him see that. I won’t be with a man juiced up on liquor. Been there,
done that, got the emotional scars to prove it.

I
shove him back on the bed. His big body lands with an “oomph,” and I bend to
scoop up one leg at a time and place them on the mattress that he barely even
fits on.

 “I
knew you weren’t a Bama girl. What are you doin’ so far from home, Elle? Livin’
on struggle street all alone with your boy. I bet there’s a hint of that
entitled little South Carolina rich bitch in you still. Wanna know what it
feels like to play with a man from the wrong side of the tracks?”

“No.
I don’t. I’ve played with those kinds of men before, and it always leaves a
mark.”

Jake
is hardly from the wrong side of the tracks. I don’t know much about how he grew
up, but I was willing to bet he’d inherited this house from his granddaddy. The
house itself isn’t even that old, but this land is worth a fortune. I know that
much. It might be a long way from Water Street, Charleston, but it is certainly
a departure from Struggle Street, as he’s been so kind to point out.

I
draw the curtains and cover him with the rumpled up top sheet hanging from the
edge of the bed.

“Haven’t
you babied me enough for one day?”

“That
depends. Are you done behaving like a child?”

He
narrows his eyes at me. “Leave me alone, Elle.”

“I
ain’t leaving, because I don’t trust you not to hurt the Jake I actually do
like. He’s still in there somewhere, soaked to the bone with liquor, and this
guy? This hotshot bad boy Marine? He isn’t that Jake. He’s just a sad, lonely
man lookin’ for someone to lash out at. So you can say whatever you want to me,
Jake Tucker. It don’t matter, ’cause all of it is the Johnnie talking, and all
of it is just a front for how alone you feel.” I turn out the lamp and head for
the door. “Sleep it off. When you feel like hell for every harsh word you said,
you come see me. I’ll be in your kitchen when you wanna act like a real man.”

“Hoity-toity
bitch,” he grumbles, sinking farther into the pillows.

“Nasty
drunk,” I fire back, and order Nuke onto the bed with him, and then I leave and
close the bedroom door behind me.

***

By
six, he still hasn’t woken, and though he don’t deserve it, I bring him supper.
I had to do a little shuffling throughout the day, cancelling my appointments
and asking Olivia to pick up Spence. Ordinarily he would hate that kind of
change to the routine, but Olivia means dogs, which means Spence is well taken
care of and happy to be there.

I
set the tray on the bedside table. I’ve already been in here two hours ago to
let Nuke out to do his business while I cleaned the puke from the floor. Jake
had reached out to me, but I had no desire to pander to this man’s whims. I
only cleaned up the mess so it wouldn’t stain the carpet. He hadn’t really been
lucid then, but now the scent of food rouses him. He opens his eyes and groans.