Sunrise (32 page)

“You want some help?” Dakota asked.

“We’re good for now. Ian, help me get this out.”

“Sure thing,” Ian said, taking the opposite side of the gate.

Once sure they each had a secure grip, Jamie and Ian lifted the gate out of the truck and carried it to the opening. There, they leaned it against the wall, took a few deep breaths, then turned their attention to Dakota, who quickly retrieved the screws from his pocket and set them in Jamie’s hands.

“This won’t take too much longer,” Jamie said, counting the screws and then the number of holes in each hinge. “All we need now is an electric screwdriver.”

“Which is here,” Erik said from the porch. He set the tool down on the railing and looked out at them.

“Hey,” Dakota smiled. “You feeling better?”

“Better,” Erik nodded. “But still not one-hundred-percent. I’m usually not such an asshole.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Steve grinned.

“Besides,” Ian added. “You don’t have to apologize for something you already are.”

Erik flipped him off. Ian laughed and saluted the gesture right back. “It sucks being sick,” Erik said, the hint of a smile appearing on the corner of his lips. “I feel like a dick for having been such a bitch to you guys on the way up here, but there’s not much I can do except apologize.”

“Like Steve said, don’t sweat it.”

“I’m not.” Erik handed the electric screwdriver down to Jamie. “Better hurry up with that gate. Desmond’s making cake and a whole bunch of other shit.”

“Cake?”
Dakota asked.

“How the hell’s he making cake without milk and eggs?” Steve laughed.

“The kid’s a magician,” Jamie chuckled. “Didn’t you know?”

“I do now.”

“We better hurry then,” Ian said. “I want some of that cake, whatever the hell it’s made from.”

They cleared the dining room of all its unnecessary contents and added three more chairs. Seating rearranged, a china cabinet pushed and arranged into the living room, an American flag removed from its golden poles, but never allowed to touch the ground—it was this process that struck a chord in Dakota’s chest and played Mozart across his heart as he watched Jamie fold the flag into a triangle and place it into its embossed-wood display case. The name
Carter Marks
briefly winked back at him, but didn’t remain in view as Jamie wrapped his arms around it and pressed it against his chest.

His father’s,
he thought, watching his boyfriend leave the room with a sense of guilt in his heart.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done this here,” Steve sighed.

“He’s ok,” Erik said, gripping Steve’s shoulder. “It’s not easy to take a flag down, especially when it’s for someone you loved.”

“Have you had to do it?” Dakota asked.

“Once. For my uncle. That was different though…he died here, at home. Not at war.”

Dakota pushed the conversation into a different direction by commenting on how large the dining room was and how it would be nice to have everyone sit down for dinner just in time for Jamie to return to the room. While Steve and Erik continued to talk—Erik retelling a story from his and Jamie’s childhood, Steve nodding and commenting as needed—Jamie sought Dakota’s eyes from the threshold and smiled when their gazes met.

“Sorry about that,” Jamie said, drawing all eyes in the room toward him. “I forgot it was in here.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Ian said.

“We know it’s tough,” Steve said.

“Thanks, guys, I appreciate it.”

“Desmond says dinner’ll be ready in ten,” Ian said, sticking his head into the room. “One of us needs to go get Kevin and his kids.”

“I’ll do it,” Dakota said, stepping toward the threshold. He stopped in midstride to run his hand along Jamie’s arm and lace their fingers together. “You gonna be ok?”

“I’ll be fine,” Jamie said, kissing his hair. “Go get ‘em. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Dakota squeezed Jamie’s hand one last time before heading for the door.

The cold, early-November air snaked along his body and curled around the base of his neck as he made his way across the front lawns and toward the third house. The wall now freshly-raised, the barricade from the outside world in place, Dakota felt peace as first his foot fell onto a stepping stone, then landed on the grass. Like an Olympic runner pulled from the track and placed in the woods, each stepped seemed foreign, strange and alien in a world that shouldn’t seem to exist. It felt odd to feel safe after months of feeling as though his life trembled on trapeze wire.

Pausing to consider himself, Dakota climbed up the three brief stairs before he raised a hand to knock.

A flicker of movement stirred the curtains in the window near his side. The deadbolt on the other side of the door snapped out of place and the door opened.  “Hey,” Kevin said, bracing his upper arm against the doorjamb. “Something wrong?”

“We haven’t seen you around,” Dakota smiled. “Are you guys all right?”

“We’re good,” Kevin said, glancing back into the house. “I didn’t know what to expect, but…this wasn’t it.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Dakota paused. He thought he saw another flicker of movement behind the curtain—this time complete with two pairs of eyes—but returned his attention to Kevin. “I’m don’t mean to bother you, sir, but Jamie asked me to come over and invite you all to dinner. Desmond’s making something special to celebrate the wall.”

“The wall?” Kevin asked, peering over Dakota’s shoulder.

“They finished putting up the gate.”

“I only just woke up, so I wasn’t sure what you were talking about.”

“We finished it about an hour ago.”

“That’s great,” Kevin smiled, reaching out to set a hand on Dakota’s shoulder. “As to your invitation, are you sure that would be acceptable?”

“He invited you,” Dakota said. “You’re one of us.”

“Thank you, son. And give your boyfriend my thanks as well. Me, Mark, Arnold and Jeh…I mean…we
will be over in a few.”

“Take your time. We’ll wait for you.”

Dakota waited for Kevin to close the door.

When he turned, stepped off the porch and started to make his way back home, he sighed.

Kevin had known about him and Jamie.

And he still can’t remember that Jessiah isn’t alive anymore.

However sobering the thought, he couldn’t let it get to him.

Regardless of another’s circumstance, despite someone else’s troubles, he had his whole life ahead of him. He might as well start enjoying it now.

“They comin’?” Jamie asked.

“Yeah,” Dakota said, shrugging his coat off his shoulders. “Smells good in here.”

“I know.”

“He just pulled the cake out of the oven,” Ian laughed, sticking his head out for a brief moment before carrying a pan of something into the dining room.

“How much did he make?” Dakota inquired.

“From the looks of it, enough to feed an army,” Jamie said. “Hey, is something wrong?”

“Huh?”

“You look bummed.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, leaning up against Jamie.

“Ok,” the older man said, setting his arms over Dakota’s shoulders. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“It’s nothing we need to talk about. Just something I realized when I was over at Kevin’s.”

A knock came at the door.

“Come in,” Jamie called.

The door opened. Kevin and his two children stood in the doorway, dressed from head to toe in winter gear.

“Good to see you,” Jamie said, gesturing them into the house. “Come in, come in.”

“Thank you for inviting us,” Kevin said, reaching out to accept Jamie’s hand over Dakota’s shoulder.

Dakota shrugged out of Jamie’s grasp so he could stand at his side. “How are you guys?”

“Doing better. Thank you for inviting us, Jamie.”

“You’re one of us now,” Jamie smiled. “Friends gotta stick together, right?”

“They sure do,” Kevin nodded.

“Get in here!” Steve called. “Dinner’s ready!”

“I just finished the cake!” Desmond added.

“Cake?” Mark said excitedly.

“How’d he make cake?” his older brother questioned, equally excited.

“I don’t know,” Kevin laughed, gesturing his children into the kitchen, “but I know I want some.”

When the father and his sons had fully disappeared from view, Dakota turned to face Jamie.

“Everything fine now?” Jamie asked.

“I’m fine,” Dakota smiled, reaching down to take Jamie’s hands. “Just thankful.”

“For what?”

“You…us…life.”

“I think we all are,” Jamie said, sliding an arm across Dakota’s shoulders before leading him toward the kitchen. “Trust me. I
know
we are.”

CHAPTER 13

The first touch of snow began to fall in the middle of November.

“Beautiful,” Jamie whispered. “Just beautiful.”

“You act like you’ve never seen snow before,” Ian taunted, throwing himself onto one of the couches.

“Not since we got back from Iraq,” Erik said, stepping up to join Jamie beside the window.

“After being there for a week,” Jamie said, “you
wish
it would snow.”

“Like Canada.”

“Or Europe.”

“You were in Europe?” Dakota asked.

“We stopped off over there for a fuel run,” Jamie said. “Right, Erik? Or was that somewhere else?”

“I think that was the Netherlands,” Erik frowned. “I can’t remember. I was so jet-lagged that I could hardly keep my eyes open.”

“I remember now,” Jamie chuckled. “You had the same problem on the way back.”

“I threw up.”

“On me, no less.”

Dakota raised a hand to hide his chuckle. Erik offered the same look regardless. “I don’t do well with planes. Seriously.”

“You don’t do well with anything,” Jamie howled, slapping his thigh before falling back from the window. “You got sick in the jeeps, in the tanks. Hell, you even got sick in the cars over there.”

“It’s a fucking desert you prick! What did you expect?”

“He’s always had a problem with moving beyond the speed of foot,” Jamie said, nudging Dakota’s side and leaning in as though he were about to reveal a secret. “He can’t even sit in a swing without hurling.”

“Fuck you,” Erik laughed, lifting his middle finger.

“What’s going on?” Desmond asked, stepping out of the hallway in boxers and an undershirt.

“Nothing,” Jamie said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I heard yelling and wasn’t sure,” the boy said.

“Weren’t sure about what?” Erik asked, narrowing his eyes.

“It reminded me of the way my parents used to fight.”

No one spoke as the boy made his way to the couch beneath the expansive southern window and seated himself on it. The laughter now gone from the air, Dakota cast a glance first at Jamie, whose expression seemed to be chipping away by the second, then at Erik, whose mouth simply melted from its frown into a neutral position. Ian, meanwhile, appeared troubled, as his usually cold eyes seemed lighter than they normally did.

“Sorry,” Erik mumbled, breaking the silence everyone else seemed afraid to. “You never told us about that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Desmond said.

“I feel your pain, bud,” Ian said, stepping forward to join Desmond on the couch. “My parents used to fight all the time.”

“About what?”

“About my father for not being home more often, about my grades, about my friends and how I was running with the wrong crowd.”

“They were probably worried about you getting into a gang,” Erik said. “Guess it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“I got dragged into it because I was a pussy, not because I’m Mexican.”

“I wasn’t insinuating that.”

Ian settled back onto the couch. “That’s a touchy subject.”

“I should’ve worded that more carefully.”

“It’s ok. Besides, I shouldn’t have snapped at you anyway. I just took a lot of shit back home and I’m
still
bothered about it.”

“You never mentioned where you came from,” Dakota said, sitting down on the edge of the couch.

“I was born in the States, but spent half of my life in Mexico. Thirteen years. Thirteen
fucking
years.”

“How come your family didn’t stay there?” Desmond asked.

“Gangbangers kept jumping my dad,” Ian said. “Funny…we left Mexico to get away from that and we go right back into it when we got here.”

“That’s when you moved to the MRS,” Dakota said.

“The what?” Desmond frowned.

“The MRS—Mount Rushmore State. It’s a South Dakota thing.”

“Anyhow,” Ian said, “like I was saying, we moved to South Dakota when I was thirteen and I got the same kind of shit I got in Mexico. I’d get picked on for being half Mexican, get ridiculed for not being
‘a real Mexican,’
and asked if I was in a gang or if I planned on being in one from
everyone,
including teachers, which is why I snapped at you.”

“It’s understandable,” Erik said.

“You wouldn’t believe the names I’d get called.”

“I can only imagine,” Dakota said.

“Beaner, poncho, greaser, wetback. Hell, they even called me a
guero
because of my skin, which pissed me off because it was always used in a negative way. So, to get back to my point—whenever I wasn’t getting harassed for
being
a Mexican, not being
enough
of one or being asked if I was in a gang, I’d sit at home and listen to my parents fight.”

“What’d they fight about?” Desmond asked.

“Like I said earlier—my dad being gone, money, my grades. That kind of shit.”

“Did your parents split?” Dakota asked.

“Happened when I was fifteen. Mom caught Dad with some bimbo bitch with fake tits and kicked him out. They divorced almost immediately.”

“That had to be hard,” Jamie commiserated. “It sucks growing up without a dad.”

“I could care less about that asshole,” Ian growled, eyes once again chilling. “What pissed me off was what the assholes started doing to my mom.”

“What assholes?”

“The fucking white guys who chased my mom because she was Mexican. They’d start hanging around the house after my dad left and would do one of two things—try to get with her because she was now ‘free real estate’ or call her a whore.”

“I’m guessing this didn’t end well,” Erik said.

“I beat one of the fuckers up when he got all touchy-feely on her when I was walking home from school, said he’d kill me if he ever saw me again. I got
so fucking fed up
with all of it that I just wanted to leave her alone.”

“Did you,” Dakota paused. “I mean, is this when you joined the gang?”

“No. This was after I started beating up the guys who jerked my mom around and after I got jumped for protecting her.”

No one said anything. Even Desmond, whose problem had since transgressed into Ian’s own revelation, remained silent, his issues long placed behind him in order to let Ian speak.

“I got beat up one night coming home from a friend’s,” Ian said, leaning forward to brace his hands between his knees. “Four or five guys. One of them came at me with a switchblade, slashed my arm, then stabbed me in the leg. I ended up fighting two of them off before these two big guys came up, wrestled them off of me, then bashed the one’s face in with his brass knuckles. They ran off like a bunch of pussies.”

“Are those the guys you were running with?” Dakota asked.

“The guys who shot at you and Steve. Yup. That was them.” Ian tilted his head up to look at Dakota, then turned his attention toward the mantle and big screen TV ahead of him. “I’ll admit it, they were good guys, guys I considered friends. Hell, they saved my life, but they’re better off dead, especially when they started killing people that didn’t deserve it.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Jamie said.

“None at all,” Ian nodded. “Anyhow, the rest of my story is pretty simple, no ‘Ian quests to fight the dragon’ Disney shit. The guys offered me a place with them, they initiated me, then they got rid of anyone who gave me or my family shit, starting with the assholes who fucked with my mom. Needless to say, word got around. Fast.”

“The words on your shoulder,” Desmond said. “The K.R.D. What is that?”

Desmond reached up to rub the raised black ink on his shoulder. “My gang.”

“What does it stand for.”

“Kill…” Ian sighed. “Rape. Destroy.”

Again, everyone was silent.

“In the end,” Ian continued, looking up at everyone in the room, “shit worked out. I ran with them, I got caught in a stint, I went to jail and they watched my mom’s back the whole time I was there. That stuff doesn’t much matter, and to be perfectly honest, it’s not something I want to share with anyone, but when I got out and the world ended, they stuck with me until the very end. Few people do that.”

“True,” Dakota said.

“That’s some tough shit,” Jamie concluded.

“Anyway,” Ian said, pushing himself to his feet. “Erik was saying something about helping him out with the stuff in his place, something about me and Steve rooming up there to give you and Dakota some space.”

“We don’t mind you being here.”

“We don’t,” Dakota said.

“I know,” Erik said, “but I gotta do it eventually. Better start before the blizzards get too bad.”

“Guess we’re off then,” Ian said, starting for the door.

“Ian?” Desmond said, standing.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Thanks. I mean, for talking about that. It means a lot that you trusted us.”

“Don’t mention it, kid. Anytime, anywhere, just hit me up.”

Ian and Erik left without another word.

“You think Desmond’s ok?” Dakota asked.

“Why do you ask?” Jamie said.

“I’m not sure.”

They stood on the balcony that extended from the master bedroom. Poised at the tail of the house like perfectly arched brows on the surface of a porcelain face, it allowed a near-excellent view of the neighboring farm and the expanse of nothing that lay beyond it. As the snow fell—cascading first from the heavens, then flipping through the air like Christmas fairies gone amok—Dakota tried not to shiver in the breeze that drifted toward him. It wasn’t cold, not by a longshot. He shouldn’t be shivering on a day like this.

It’s just a breeze.

Was it, though? A gust of air didn’t summon the image of a young man tormented by his life, by the parents that existed for the sole purpose of taking care of him, nor did a flake of snow speak of tears shed from sitting in a room all alone, crying because they wished they had someone to talk to. The wind was nothing—not a memory, an emotion, or anything similar to false hope in a hopeless situation.

The wind is nothing.

“Nothing,” he whispered.

“You say something?” Jamie asked.

“Huh?”

“You’re mumbling.”

Dakota shook his head to free the flakes that had accumulated on his eyelashes. He grimaced as the frosty imps bit his cheeks with their soft and fleshy teeth.

“You only mumble when something’s on your mind.”

“I know.”

“There’s not much we can do for Desmond if he’s thinking about his past. We’re not doctors.”

“We don’t have to be doctors to help someone.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Jamie said, leaning forward. He reached up to run a finger through the hairs on his chin and stopped in midstride. Frowning, his hand slipped from the air and fell to the railing before him, where his fingers spread and began to make their own little angels in the snow below them.

Now he’s starting.

Dakota slipped a hand in the older man’s pocket.

“It was a stupid thing to say,” Jamie said.

“No it wasn’t. Is there something you want to tell me, J?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“They used to give us downers if something was bothering us.”

“Who did?”

“The army.”

“Is that legal?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what our commanding officer did.”

“I thought Armstrong was your commanding officer?”

“Armstrong wasn’t our CO. He was someone we tagged along with after New York… well, during it, I should say. Me and Erik ran into him when we were running from the hospital.”

“The one where they were keeping people with bites?”

“That’s the one.”

“Did you ever take any?”

“No. Tried to, sometimes, but couldn’t do it. Seeing how bad they fucked Erik up as a kid turned me off to them. That’s the whole reason I don’t even take Tylenol.”

“I just thought you were stubborn.”

“Well, I am,” Jamie chuckled, “but that’s not why I don’t take Tylenol.”

Laughing, Dakota leaned against Jamie’s side and looked out at the field. A flicker of movement silenced him. “Did you see that?” he asked.

“What?” Jamie said.

A gun went off.

*

She raised her club and hit it in the head. First once, then twice, then a third time, she beat its skull to a pulp, then lashed out with her foot. Its ankle broke upon impact, brittle with age and decay, before it fell, twitching, fingers flailing like a dying dove’s wings.

Raising her head, the woman allowed herself one throaty laugh before she raised the bat over her head and brought it down one last time.