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“You go back to sleep, Ceejay. Come see me tomorrow at Chuck’s. Just you, nobody else.”

“I can’t go back to sleep. I have to talk to you. I have, like, a million questions.”

“I know. But not now. We’d wake everyone up, and I just can’t do that. You have to trust me. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later.”

“But is anything wrong? Are you in trouble or something?”

“Just come by Chuck’s tomorrow and we’ll talk then.”

I chew on my bottom lip for a second, but there’s nothing to do but agree. “I’ll be there,” I tell him. “Right after work.”

“Work?”

“I’m working with Uncle Jimmy this summer. Tomorrow’s my first day.”

He smiles for the first time. “Uncle Jimmy,” he says fondly, like the name by itself is some kind of private joke.

“I can skip work if you want me to.”

“No,” he says. “You can’t let Uncle Jimmy down. Come by afterwards.” He stands, and I expect him to lean down and wrap his big arms around me, but he doesn’t. He just says, “See you tomorrow,” then walks across the room and opens the door, careful to keep it from making a sound. Then he’s gone without
even looking back. No kisses, no hugs, just the shadow of the feeling of his hand on my shoulder.

What just happened? I ask myself. It’s like I saw a ghost, only instead of fright, I’m filled with nothing but a burning whirl of confusion.

Work! I can’t stand it. All I
want
to do that next morning is head straight to Chuck’s apartment. What I
have
to do is start my new summer job working for Uncle Jimmy just like Bobby did back when he was in high school. Ace in the Hole Home Improvements is the name of his business. He paints houses, does carpentry work, builds decks, even mows lawns and plants trees if the price is right. The work isn’t real steady during the winter, but I think Uncle Jimmy likes it that way. He’s one adult who never completely lost that wild side of himself. Every once in a while, he’ll still get in a bar fight if he has to. I guess he’s my favorite uncle.

Up to now I’ve really been looking forward to working for him, even though I suspect the parents lined it up because they thought doing some manual labor would be good for me. The
thing is, though, if I can save enough money for a down payment, Dad says he’ll cosign on a car for me at the end of the summer. It’ll be a long way from new, but at least I won’t have to depend on my friends—or worse, my parents—to take me everywhere I want to go. Still, how can I think about that after Bobby’s visit last night?

This whole morning, while getting ready for work, I can’t quit thinking about him. What is he doing back so soon? You don’t just get out of the army without a mile of red tape, do you? And why didn’t he call so we could have a big party? I figured we’d have all our friends and relatives over for a humongous blowout, celebrating the return of our war hero. The main thing that eats at me, though, is why was Bobby so distant? Why didn’t he pick me up and whirl me around and hug me till every ounce of worry I ever had about him squeezed out into the air?

Riding to work, I try to think of a way to bring up the situation without breaking my promise to Bobby, but it’s not an easy subject to steer my way into while Uncle Jimmy’s going on about his big weekend at Roadrunner’s Roadhouse and how he wrestled Heath Pugh in the parking lot—again. Usually, I’d enjoy a story like this, but it’s kind of annoying when I want to talk about something serious.

“You know what?” I tell him. “Maybe you should get married and slow down a little. You might live longer.”

“Hell, Ceejay.” He laughs. “Marriage wouldn’t slow me down any. Take this situation at your house with Diane Simmons sniffing around in her low-cut blouses.”

Diane Simmons is this church woman who’s been bringing food by our house when Mom’s out of town at Grandma’s.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “If she pranced into my house while my wife’s away, I’m afraid I’d be tempted to partake of more than just the potatoes and gravy.”

“Really? Ms. Simmons?” Up to now, I haven’t paid much attention to her, but come to think of it, she does wear her blouses pretty low-cut for a woman all the way up in her late thirties. “Don’t you think she might be a little too churchy for you?”

“Are you kidding me? Some of those holy rollers come with the hottest fires burning down below.”

“I guess you’re about the only one who would notice something like that. I’m sure my dad doesn’t see anything but the hot meals she brings by.”

“Don’t kid yourself, girl. Your old man might be married, but he’s not dead.”

I shake my head. “No, he’s not dead, but he’s asleep on the couch by nine o’clock every night.” I’m not the least bit worried about my dad getting hot for some church woman’s freckled cleavage. He’s the most predictable person on earth. Anyway, it’s Bobby who’s still on my mind.

We stop in front of a big two-story house where Uncle Jimmy has a painting job lined up. The house looks pretty white to me, but I guess they want it whiter. Uncle Jimmy’s hired man Jerry is already there, leaning against the side of his old clunker pickup. He’s a skinny little guy with a lopsided mustache. Uncle Jimmy warned me he was kind of slow, but at least he’s cheerful. A real morning person. Can’t wait to get our equipment unloaded so we can get to work.

Painting, though, has never been my thing. I did paint the walls in my room, even the trim, but that’s all. It’s pretty boring, the same thing over and over, nothing artistic about it. I can see myself getting carpal tunnel by the end of the summer, but who cares? I just want the day to go by so I can do what I really want to do.

Finally, lunchtime rolls around. While we’re scarfing our
burgers at Coby’s Grill, Uncle Jimmy takes up the story of his weekend again. This time he goes into how he went home with a woman named Claire Fountain. She’s recently divorced and moved in with her crabby old mother, so when they went back to her house, Uncle Jimmy had to crawl in through the bedroom window. Then, come morning, he had to climb right back out the same window. “Made me feel like a burglar,” he says. “And she expects me to call her the next day? Ha!”

Jerry looks flustered over the idea of someone having sex in the back room while the woman’s mother watches TV in the living room, but I think he admires Uncle Jimmy for it at the same time. Me, I love Uncle Jimmy, but stories like that just confirm my theory that, young or old, men are mostly dogs.

Finally, we get around to the topic of Bobby when Uncle Jimmy says he’s going to hate having to turn Bobby’s motorcycle back over to him when he gets home. He’s been taking care of it ever since Bobby shipped out. Except, of course, when Bobby’s come home on leave.

“The ladies love a man on a motorcycle,” he says.

So here’s my opening, the perfect excuse to pick Uncle Jimmy’s brain about Bobby. I’m like, “Maybe you’ll have to give it back to him sooner than you think. I hear sometimes they let soldiers come home early.” I’m just throwing it out there like I haven’t heard a thing about him really being back.

“I doubt that,” Uncle Jimmy says. “Probably be lucky to get home next month like he thinks. I mean, I hope he does—don’t think I don’t—but they make it pretty hard to get out of the military these days. It’s ridiculous. With that jackass Bush in the White House, you never know. He keeps sending troops back every time they think they’re going home.”

Then I guess he realizes that might sound harsh to me, so he reaches over, pats my knee, and says, “But don’t you worry,
Ceejay, I’m sure he’ll be back next month just like he said he would. You know Bobby. Nothing can get that boy down.”

“But what if he showed up, like, tomorrow?”

“Don’t get your hopes up about that, Ceejay. I mean, it would be great, but if he showed up tomorrow, I’d be worried that he was AWOL or something.”

I don’t say anything back. All of a sudden, I feel like the reality of the world is about three sizes too big. Bobby AWOL? I just can’t believe that. Once we go back to the job, I try to put it out of my mind. Everything’s going to be all right, I tell myself. The war’s over now, at least where my brother’s concerned.

Finally, we wrap up work for the day, and I can’t wait any longer. Instead of going right home and asking Brianna or Gillis to come give me a ride, I coax Uncle Jimmy into dropping me off in front of Chuck’s apartment complex, telling him a lie about having a friend who lives there. No shower. No change of clothes, just my paint-spattered jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. I even have paint in my hair, but that’s all right. If I put off seeing Bobby one more second, I’ll explode.

Waiting on the porch after I ring the bell seems to take forever. I’m like, Why doesn’t Bobby rip the door open? Isn’t he as anxious to see me as I am to see him? Finally, the door swings back. It’s only Chuck. He looks stoned.

“Uh, yeah, hi, Ceejay,” he says, rubbing his beard. “I almost forgot you were coming.”

I look around his shoulder to see if Bobby’s behind him, but instead I see Amber Galen, the cupcake twin, standing by Chuck’s CD tower looking for some music to play.

“Where’s Bobby?” I ask.

“We have to go get him.” He turns around and calls to Amber, “You coming with us?”

Her face twists into a sneer. “Are you kidding? You couldn’t get me out there for a million dollars.”

“Well, lock the door when you leave.”

Walking down the stairs, I ask Chuck where we’re headed, but he just goes, “Don’t worry, nowhere too weird.”

He doesn’t give up much more information as we drive through town either. I ask if Bobby’s with Mona again, but he changes the subject. He wants to know what I think of Amber. It’s like he’s a high school kid again, trying to pry out some top-secret scoop about his girlfriend. I tell him I don’t know her all that well, but that it’s pretty surprising to see her at his place.

“Why’s that?” Chuck asks, lighting a cigarette.

“Because she’s kind of a stuck-up bitch.”

“So?”

“Well, stuck-up bitches usually don’t hook up with guys like you.”

“What kind of guy is that?”

“You know, Chuck—losers. No offense.”

“That’s all right.” He exhales a puff of smoke. “None taken.”

Pretty soon we’re outside of town and heading down a familiar road. Again, I ask where we’re going, but he just tells me to wait and see. There are only two places I know of out this way—Captain Crazy’s and Tillman’s sister’s. We pass the spot where the captain’s winged giraffe sticks up over the trees, so that just leaves Dani’s place.

“What’s Bobby doing out here?” I ask as we head up the gravel drive to the trailer.

“Nothing,” Chuck says. “Just needed to pick up some product, that’s all.”

Dani comes to the door, and when we go inside, there Bobby is, scrunched down in the big orange easy chair. Facing him, on the other side of the coffee table, Dani’s boyfriend, Jace, sits on the couch stuffing weed into the bowl of a wooden pipe. A gray-blue cloud of smoke hangs in the air above them.

Dani sits next to Jace, and Chuck squeezes in next to her. Now, I figure surely Bobby will bounce up from his chair and grab me, but he doesn’t even say anything. He just points a finger like he’s shooting me a hello. Like we haven’t seen each other in about five minutes or something. Then he turns away and takes the pipe from Jace. He poises the lighter above the bowl, closes his eyes, and says, “God is great, God is good, thank you for this dope, amen.”

It’s too weird. So many times I’ve imagined him coming back and me running into his arms, but now all I can do is take a seat on the floor next to his chair while he sucks on the stem of that pipe. I feel like I’ve done something wrong somehow, like I’m being punished. Maybe he’s mad because I took his room when he left. Or maybe he thinks I’m on the parents’ side just because I still live with them. It’s stupid to feel guilty when I haven’t done anything, but I can’t help it.

Jace goes back to telling a story that he must have started before we came into the room, something about how pythons have been introduced into the wild in Florida and are making their way across the rest of the country, living off raccoons and squirrels and family pets along the way. He heard a story about a two-hundred-pound python swallowing a bulldog right in front of the kids who owned it. They were traumatized.

He takes the pipe back from Bobby. “That’s why I told Dani not to let little Ian sleep on the floor anymore. A python like that would slurp him up whole in a second.”

“Jesus, Jace,” Dani says, scowling. “Don’t talk like that. Ian might hear you.”

Jace waves that away. “He can’t hear anything. He’s sound asleep in the back room.”

“You know what?” Chuck says. “Those pythons have been known to slither into cribs too. I saw an interview with one. All he said was, ‘Mmm-mmm, that was some good baby.’ ”

“Shut your face,” Dani tells him, firing him a nastier look than the one she shot Jace.

Bobby smiles, but not much. He looks kind of out of it, which isn’t like him. Sure, in the old days, he smoked weed now and then but just enough to add to whatever fun he was already having. Now, the way he handles that pipe and the way he looks at it when the lighter flashes over the bowl, it’s like nothing else matters in the whole universe.

The pipe keeps going around, and Dani keeps bringing out beers, but Bobby never talks much—no stories, no jokes, not a single one of those belly laughs of his that can make you feel like the whole world is funny. Even when Jace starts into this ridiculous BS about how he should be the star of his own TV reality show, Bobby just lets it go. I mean, how boring would that show be? Who wants to watch a part-time tow-truck driver sit around in his girlfriend’s trailer house, smoking weed and talking about pythons eating bulldogs?

I’m like, “Hey, Bobby, why don’t we get out of here, go get a Coke somewhere.” But he just goes, “Coke’s not really my thing right now, Ceejay.”

My stomach feels like it’s made of lead. I want to leave so bad, to get out of there and go someplace where we can
talk—just us, nobody else—but he seems determined to melt into that orange chair while his eyelids droop farther and farther toward closing altogether. It’s like he’s ready to stay there all night, but finally Jace takes to the wrong subject.