Full Measure: A Novel (25 page)

“Some kind of stomachache,” said Patrick. “I’ll let him tell you.”

“He eats a lot of takeout,” said Caroline.

Archie shook his head. “Well, I’m sorry his stomach is upset, but the Farm Credit Bank in San Diego passed on us, Pat. They were our last real hope for a loan. The Norris family is now officially unleashed and on its own.”

“I’ll work extra hard tonight,” said Patrick, checking his watch. “Fridays are big money.”

“What a joy to be unleashed,” said Caroline, draping her arms over their shoulders. “Woof.”

*   *   *

Patrick was right about the big money. He found himself racing between pickup and delivery, then back again for more. How fast he could do the job seemed important. A sheriff’s deputy pulled him over on Alvarado for doing sixty in a forty-five. They talked about the wildfire then Afghanistan, where the deputy had a cousin who was deployed. His cousin knew the Marine who was murdered last week by one of the Afghan army soldiers he commanded on patrol. Slow down, he told Patrick, handing back his driver’s license—woolies aren’t worth dying for and neither is pizza.

But it was hard to hold down his speed. Firooz and Simone had three vehicles going, and every time Patrick came through the Domino’s door they were making and baking pizzas as fast as they could, ordering each other around in Farsi, trying to keep up with the phone and Internet orders in English. On his next run he swerved to miss a Chihuahua darting across Main with its leash still attached, then pulled over and ran down the witless dog, which bit him before he could hand it over to its owner.

He came home at nine o’clock, counted his tips and slipped the bills into an envelope he kept under his mattress. Seventy-eight dollars and change. Not bad.

He showered and walked down to see Ted. The night was close and smelled of soot and an owl huffed through the darkness above the barn. Patrick knocked on the bunkhouse door and stepped in, the dogs wedging past him. Ted sat at his computer table, as usual, playing one of his games. He said he was feeling okay—the pain pills worked like magic and he’d just made it to the next level of the game. Patrick crossed the big rustic room and set a hand on Ted’s shoulder, looking down at the monitor, where the running bull-headed figure tossed wolves into a starlit sky. Patrick saw that Ted had hung several Evelyn Anders campaign posters on the bunkhouse walls:
THIS TOWN IS YOUR TOWN.
A tall stack of
Village View
newspapers sat on the computer table and Patrick noted the front-page picture of Evelyn Anders and George’s two young friends. Article by Iris Cash. Ted looked up at him, smiling.

“Why all the pictures of someone you don’t like?” asked Patrick.

“Reminders that I need to do something big and meaningful.”

“Collecting pictures of Evelyn Anders is big and meaningful?”

“Come on, Pat,” Ted said meekly.

“Why do you dislike her so much?”

“Well.” Ted went back to the game for a long moment, guiding his character through the ruins of what looked like a medieval castle. “Evelyn babysat me once. I remember it. Very clearly. You might, too. She kept coming to the bathroom door to ask me if I was all right. She really cared. I was in the bathtub just taking my time, washing everything extra good. You were watching TV in the den. The next day I made her a thank-you card with a frog on it. I mean I cut out a picture of a frog and glued it on, not a real frog. I don’t remember her ever sending me anything back. Like a card or something. Nothing. Nothing. I asked Mom if Evelyn could babysit me from then on but Mom wanted Agatha, the old one. Ick. She smelled like lilac and she wore orthopedic support stockings to hold in her varicose veins. Always asking if she could make me something to eat but her just being there totally like took away my appetite.”

Patrick wasn’t sure what to say to all of this. “You’re not drawing more cartoons of the mayor, are you?”

“I promised you I wouldn’t.”

“Leave her be, Ted.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I talked to Cade and Trevor. You’re not welcome at Pride Auto Repair anymore.”

“Not welcome? Or banned by you?”

“You’re better than the Rogue Wolves any day, Ted. You don’t need them.”

“They’re not the Dark Horses.”

“They’re angry children.”

“Maybe that’s why I like them.”

Patrick went to the door. “Are you playing straight with me, Ted? No cartoons of the mayor? No more hanging out with those people?”

Ted looked at him, the monitor light playing off his face. “You have my word, Pat. So … can I ask you a question?” Patrick waited. “What do you think I would have to do to make Dad respect me?”

Patrick thought a moment. “He respects hard work.”

“There isn’t anything I can do. Nothing I’m good at. I mean, besides driving the taxi.”

“He’s got more in his heart for you than he can let on. It’s the Norris way of being a man.”

“He makes me feel bad.”

“You shouldn’t. You’re a good man. You just haven’t found out what you want to do yet.”

“Naw,” said Ted, turning back to the screen. “I’m not good. But thanks. Thanks for saying so.”

Patrick set his hand on his brother’s shoulder again and watched him play another minute of his video game. He looked over at the cages and saw minor movements inside them. When he glanced at Ted’s face he saw how far away he was, how lost in a one-dimensional world that didn’t exist, with beings that had no equivalents on this planet.

“You can leave the dogs with me,” said Ted.

*   *   *

Out in the barn Patrick turned on the lights and sat a while with
Fatta the Lan’
, noting her fine overall shape and condition. Her gunwales were smooth to the touch. He wiped down the engine housing and waxed it, then took a light rubbing compound to the hardware and railing. The aft drain was developing a stain so he used rubbing compound on that also and it came right up. With a file he ground a small ding out of the prop of the electric motor, running his finger over it to make sure it was smooth. It was nothing that would have affected her performance but a blemish nonetheless.

Later he poured a tall bourbon and got the blankets from the workbench and made up his bed in the boat. The night was cooling so he got a sleeping bag, too. In the dark he lay face-up on the deck, safely enclosed by the curving sides of the craft, listening to the crickets and the muted hoot of an owl somewhere out in the trees.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Saturday night Iris threw a dinner party for two of her girlfriends and Patrick, Salimony, and Messina. Arriving before the other guests, Patrick saw the spit-shine that Iris had put on her bungalow. There were fresh-cut flowers, music from the stereo in the living room, and many candles. The candles were electric and for amusement Iris kept dimming them and turning them on and off with the remotes. She wore a periwinkle blue dress and flat sandals with rhinestones on them. She seemed happy and nervous. She was leaving early the next day for her yearly fall trip back to Kenton to see family and friends and Patrick saw how important to her this party was.

“I’ll help out all I can,” he said. “I brought wine and beer. The guys are easy.”

“I hope it’s all okay. I made enchiladas and salad and dessert. If you can just talk to everybody and maybe change up the music that would be great. Oh, and make margaritas out back. Do they smoke?”

“They do whatever you order them to. They’re Marines.”

“They’ll love Nat and Mary Ann.” Iris smiled quickly and dimmed the candles. “I’m going to miss you, Pat.”

“It’ll be good seeing your family.”

“I’m really looking forward to later tonight.” Patrick blushed.

Her friends arrived together, bearing more wine, flowers, and food. Patrick helped them unload and shook their offered hands. Natalie was a tall Latina, Mary Ann petite and blond. They worked with Iris at the
Village View
—Natalie as a photographer and Mary Ann in display advertising. Natalie was pretty and full-bodied, and her jeans and blouse made no apologies for this. Mary Ann wore a red cowgirl shirt and a denim skirt, and one side of her hair was held back with a comb while the other fell free to her shoulder. Patrick watched the three friends converge midkitchen to view, touch, and converse with one another in the way that women do. They forgot he was there or acted like he wasn’t, but either way, he enjoyed being there.

Salimony and Messina came together too, close-shaven, scrubbed clean, and bearing twelve-packs of premium beer. Salimony was tall, and though bone-thin in Sangin, had filled out some. His trousers and shirt looked new. Messina was a short knot of muscles, proud in a tight black T-shirt and Harley boots. Patrick introduced them to Natalie and Mary Ann, and short Messina kissed the back of tall Natalie’s hand, making all three women laugh, which made Messina blush and smile and punch Salimony in the gut, but not hard.

In the backyard they drank and ate guacamole made from Fallbrook avocados. Patrick noted the small labels identifying the fruit as that of
Manos del Sol,
“Hands of the Sun,” which happened to be Lew Boardman’s ranch, and bordered the Norris Brothers’ groves on one side. Patrick wondered again why Boardman had stayed lucky through drought, frost, and fire, while the Norris Brothers had suffered mightily. In Sangin he’d decided that God was luck and this seemed as good an explanation as any. Iris had a light hand with the spices and the guacamole was excellent. Patrick made margaritas and manned the music. He followed the recipe on the mix bottle and tried to play upbeat songs. Iris had added more small twinkling lights to the big magnolia tree. The evening sky was a gray blanket drawn down over the orange ball of sun. Salimony and Messina moved one of the picnic benches end to end with the other and the six of them sat across to watch the sunset. Natalie fixed her camera to a tripod and set the timer and got a shot of all of them lined up with the last of the sun on their faces. The men stole glances at one another because this time of the evening was special at FOB Inkerman just before patrol. They’d smoke and crack dark jokes and say awful things about one another’s mothers and sisters and girlfriends. But never about the wives, never the wives, because they all knew the high odds of their marriages being destroyed by the war, the high odds of their wives no longer being able to live with them after deployment, the reasonable odds that, even as they smoked and joked and waited to go kill or be killed, their wives back home were being talked up by a man, some guy with a good haircut and kind eyes and a few bucks in the bank. So you only joked about that at your own peril. Then, as soon as the light was gone, they’d set out, the enemy less able to shoot them. And they fell into that jagged mix of hypervigilance and grinding patience that it took to be up all night, moving quietly along the rat lines, looking for the best cover in which to hide and fire, knowing they had to get the job done and get back before the sun rose again or the Talibs would cut you to ribbons from the rocky hillsides before you could make Inkerman.

“How about a toast to the United States Marine Corps?” asked Iris.

“How about to the three prettiest girls in California?” asked Salimony. He smiled broadly and his nervous leg bounced up and down like it wanted attention.

They raised their sloshing margarita glasses to the sunset and drank and Patrick heard the French door to the house open behind them and a woman’s laughter.

He was surprised to see the two men stepping out to the patio. They were Marines he recognized from Pendleton. Not Dark Horses. A woman walked along between them, arm in arm with each. Patrick looked to Iris, who was more than surprised. She rose as if to confront them but Messina jumped up and said he’d invited them—sorry he forgot to say something but these are great men with nothing to do tonight! Patrick saw Iris try to hide the disappointment. The men and woman ambled across the yard toward them and Patrick noted that they were drunk. Messina introduced them as Grier and Marcos and told Patrick to whip them up some drinks. “And who the heck are you?” Messina asked the woman.

“I’m the stripper!”

Christ, thought Patrick. Iris looked at him very doubtfully.

“Not really.” She giggled. “Just Mindy.”

*   *   *

Iris’s dining room table only sat six so Patrick brought in chairs and the crashers got corners and plates on their laps. Everyone drank at speed except for Natalie, who was sober three years. Messina watched her intently. Patrick kept an eye on the interlopers and kept getting up to fetch and pour more wine. He’d learned to twist the bottle at the end of the pour to keep it from dripping. He felt grown-up. The table talk was spirited and from the bleachers the three crashers offered a chorus of drunken but good-natured commentary. When Grier leaned back he nudged the framed aerial photograph of the Cash family farm with the back of his head and it fell off the wall but he hung it back up, undamaged, with exaggerated care. In the kitchen Patrick helped Iris get the trays ready. “That dumbbell Messina,” she whispered. “How could he do this?”

“I’ll get rid of them if you want.”

“We can’t be rude, Pat.”

“Yes, we can. This is your dinner, Iris.”

“Then I’m sure not going to let them ruin it.”

“I have bad feelings about this.”

“I won’t cave in to negative thinking.”

Patrick ignored his anger. Back in the dining room he poured the red wine and Marcos held out his empty margarita glass and offered a glassy grin. Patrick didn’t serve him. Finally seated, Iris asked Mary Ann if she’d like to say a prayer and everyone around the table joined hands. It was brief and heartfelt. In the silence after “amen” Grier burped and Mindy shushed him.

“You three,” said Patrick. “If you can’t behave yourselves, you’ll have to leave.”

“Says Colonel Patrick Norris of the Three-Five!” said Grier. He was a big man, heavier and older than Patrick.

“We’re not so bad are we?” asked Marcos.

“Patrick is right,” said Mindy. “So we’re going to behave starting right now.”

“Man,” said Salimony, “these enchiladas are good.”