The Cove (7 page)

Most of the questions and comments he heard were exactly what he’d expected. He went on automatic until his responses pretty much became a mantra: He hadn’t done anything special over there; he was damned proud of the job his fellow soldiers had done — and were still doing; yes, the people really live like that. Almost everyone he talked to agreed (now, anyway, not back when the war first started) that the war had been a huge mistake and would only be worth it when and if —
Big if!
— the Iraqis took charge and went after the militias so they could get their government up and running.

As time passed, the conversations devolved. People started telling stories that Ben had heard a hundred times before. Some of the stories were still damned funny while others were downright pathetic, but all of them made him keenly aware how much he was a part of this place, no matter how much he might want to get the hell out of The Cove.

It wasn’t just “home.”

The Cove was a living, breathing community filled with saints and sinners who shared all of their secrets … perhaps a bit too openly. And he was as much a part of the town as the rockbound coast.

“ … so then Rockfish … he starts … he’s flicking his porch light on and off, on and off, trying to warn the
numbnuts
on the boat that the feds were on to ’
em
and
waitin
’ down on the beach,” Danny “Preacher”
Clayborn
was saying. He had gotten the nickname because of the time years ago in high school when he took a hit of acid for the first and only time and started spouting Bible verses non-stop. The name — like most coastal nicknames — didn’t make sense out of context, but it had stuck nonetheless.

“Right … right …” Ben said, nodding drunkenly. He already knew the punch line … as did everyone else gathered around the table. But it was going to be delivered as if it was brand new, and they’d all laugh as if they were hearing it for the first time. Ben gripped his beer glass, his shoulders jerking with laughter as if he had a bout of hiccups.

“So then … so then …” Preacher said, but he was laughing so hard he could hardly catch his breath. A bloodshot, half-crazed look filled his eyes as he leaned back and gasped for air. Tears were streaming down both sides of his face. “Then … then once them feds come up to his place, they ask him what the fuck he’s doing, ’n he says — he says he’s …” Preacher struggle to get the words out. “He says he’s hailing his cats for ’
em
to come in for the night …
Hailing
his goddamned cats!”

The people gathered around the table erupted with laughter that momentarily drowned out the jukebox and everything else. Ben laughed right along with them, but not for long. Leaning back, he pressed his shoulders against the wall as a sudden, inexplicable feeling of emptiness … of utter weariness and of not belonging filled him. The sudden sense of sadness cut deep as he looked around at the smiling, laughing faces surrounding him. He tensed, wondering why he felt so suddenly disconnected from them and everything else. He thought it might be because he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Julia Meadows, but he sensed that it was more than that.

It was odd, though, how Julia was never far from his thoughts.

Remembering her smile … and the way her face crinkled when she smiled … and how her bright, brown eyes lit up … and her long, dark hair floating in the wind when they were out on the water … and her body —

Jesus … Sweet Lord have mercy … Her body!

Everything about her filled him with an urgency that surprised him.

The sudden feeling of dissociation soon passed, and — thankfully — no one noticed, but Ben wanted — he
needed
to talk to someone about what he was thinking and feeling. He’d been hoping he and Pete could have a few words, but his brother was never all that talkative, and since Ben had come home, Pete had been acting downright resentful. Ben had no idea why.

He looked around the bar until he saw Pete. He was sitting in a darkened corner with Rachel “Bunny” Dawkins. His shaggy hair was hanging down over his eyes, and they were almost touching heads as they leaned close and talked. Locked in their private conversation, they were isolated … like there was no one else around.

There was no mystery how Bunny got her nickname. Back in high school — she was a few years behind Ben — she’d earned another nickname: “The Organ Grinder” or sometimes simply “Grinder.” Pete had mentioned to Ben last night that he’d hit a bit of a rough patch with his steady girlfriend, Mona Jenkins. He didn’t go into details. He seldom did about his personal life, but apparently he was dead set on getting even with Mona by shacking up with Bunny tonight … like it would be a problem getting Bunny into the sack.

“’
Nother
one for yah, there?” Phil “
Cunna
” Lippincott asked as he drained the last of a pitcher into his glass and smacked it onto the table hard enough to dent the wood.

“I
dunno
,” Ben said, shaking his head. “’S getting kinda late.”

“You can’t refuse a drink with me,”
Cunna
said. Ben didn’t want to point out that
Cunna
had already had … he couldn’t remember how many beers with him.

“
Lemme
drain the dragon first,” Ben said as he heaved himself up from the table.

When he stood up, he noticed that either something was wrong with his left leg, or else the floor had a serious pitch to one side. When he steadied himself by leaning on someone else’s table, his knee banged against the table leg hard enough to hurt. There was a loud
clink
as a glass fell over and broke, spilling beer across the table.

“What the fuck?” someone said in a tone that usually meant trouble in The Local. But then Ben saw that it was Jerry Hansen, and when they made eye contact, Jerry’s scowl instantly transformed into a grin. He clapped Ben on the back and said, “
Yo
,
Gunna
, my man. Make sure you
lemme
buy you a drink ’
fore
the night’s over.”

Ben nodded, telling himself he wouldn‘t mind drinking at Wal-Mart’s expense, and then
forged
his way to the restroom. When he got to Pete’s table, he noticed that his brother was sitting alone. Ben looked around in time to see Bunny, leaving by the front door. She had her purse slung over her shoulder, and her hair bobbed with every step she took.

“Fuck it, man.” Ben stifled a belch behind his fist. “’S pretty bad when you get shut down by Bunny Dawkins.”

Pete glared up at his brother but said nothing.

“You sure you even got a dick, little bro’?”

“Up yours,” Pete said.

At least that’s what Ben thought he said. He couldn’t hear him over the constant din. The knuckles of Pete’s hand gripping his nearly empty beer glass went white. Shaking his head, his mouth so tight it looked like a stitched wound, he pushed back, got up from the table, fished his wallet out and dropped a twenty next to his empty glass. He bumped against Ben’s shoulder, knocking him back as he walked past him.

“Hey!” Ben called after him. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by that.”

But Pete was out the door without a backward glance.

His mood somewhat deflated, Ben continued on to the restroom, passing his father who was holding forth at the bar. When he entered the restroom, his nose wrinkled at the all too familiar stench of urine and pine disinfectant. One of the surest signs he was home was the smell of the restroom at The Local. Chuckling to himself, he relieved himself at the yellow-stained urinal and then zipped up. Somehow, he navigated back to his table where there was a freshly poured beer waiting for him.

For the next hour or two, he nursed that single beer until his head gradually began to clear … at least a little. After several more stories — none of them, thankfully, at his expense — Ben looked at his wristwatch and declared that he had to leave.

Everyone at the table disagreed, insisting that he stay a little while longer. To them, that meant until last call at one o’clock. But Ben begged off, claiming that he was still jet-lagged from the flight from Germany on his last leg home from Iraq.

“Hell, yeah,” Preacher said. He rolled his eyes ceiling-ward and did a bit of rough mental calculation. “It’s gotta be
mornin
’ over there in I-rack,
wouldn’t’cha
say? You’d ’bout be waking up right now.”

“Good
morning,
Baghdad!” Stan “Diesel” Payne shouted, doing a piss-poor imitation of Robin Williams. “Time to get up ’n go out
inta
’ the desert ’n kick some sand-nigger ass,
mutha-fuckas
!”

A few people at the table laughed, but most of them stared into their beers. Diesel could be such an asshole sometimes. Earlier this evening, though, some people had been talking about how with all the Somalis living in Lewiston, the city was turning into “Little Mogadishu.” Ben had heard more than enough of that
Hadji
crap from other soldiers in Iraq, but he realized he’d been foolish to think people back home wouldn’t be just as prejudiced. People like Preacher and Diesel — hell, some if not half of the people in The Local right now — probably shared racial and religious stereotypes that were so ingrained in them nothing was ever going to change them.

Especially when they were drunk.

And as drunk as he was, he knew enough to let it slide … at least on his first night home.

“Fuck it,” he said. “I’m beat to shit.”

He ran the flats of his hands across his face as if he had splashed himself with cold water. It took some effort to focus, but at least he wasn’t as buzzed as he had been earlier.

He glanced over to the bar where
Capt’n
Wally was still holding court, regaling people with his stories, probably bragging about his new boat. His face was flushed bright red, and his shining eyes twitched back and forth. By the look of things, the
Capt’n
was just getting started tying one on. He was knocking back shots of dark rum. Ben was sure that — like so many times while he was growing up — sometime later that night, probably not until two or three in the morning, he’d hear his old man stumbling into the house, muttering curses as he tried to negotiate the stairs. And more than likely, he’d be passed out on the couch in the living room when Ben got up in the morning.

Ben drained what was left of his beer and placed the pint glass down carefully on the table.

“That’s it for me.”

“
Com’on
,
Gunna
,” Mike “The
Veg
” Tomlinson said with a pleading look in his eyes. He leaned close to Ben and blew near-toxic alcohol and halitosis fumes into Ben’s face. “I ain’t bought you a drink yet.”

His eyes were so rimmed with red there was no white showing. The unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth bobbed up and down when he talked.

Don’t you dare light that up now,
Ben thought,
or we’ll all go up in flames.

“Sorry, man. I
gots
to get me some sleep,” Ben said in a slur. Before anyone else interfered, he pushed away from the table and stood up. The floor tilted like the deck of a wave-tossed boat, and he placed one hand on Preacher’s shoulder to steady himself.

“You
aw’right
there, bud?” The
Veg
asked with a hint of concern in his expression. Ben knew that not a damned one of them was in any better condition.

“Yeah … Sure. No worries,” Ben said. He smiled and nodded, then took a deep breath, hitched up his jeans, and started toward the back door. He nodded a few goodnights to people as he passed, but it was with immense relief that he stepped out onto the landing. The screen door slammed shut behind him, sounding like a gunshot in the night. He jumped, ready to hit the dirt, but then realized where he was and, leaning his head back, took a deep breath of fresh ocean air. The air was cool enough to make him shiver, and he caught the fresh smell of rain in the air. Off to the west, clouds were gathering on the horizon, blotting out the stars.

Sliding his right hand lightly along the weathered railing, he made his way down the steps to the narrow alley that ran between The Local and a small restaurant that changed owners and names about every year or two. The alley was dark, the buildings cutting out the night sky like stencils. It took a while for Ben’s eyes to adjust, and for a while, the darkness flickered as if fireworks were going off in the distance. At the foot of the stairs were three or four overflowing trash cans. The stench of rotting garbage was thick enough to make him gag.

He started up the alley, heading toward Main Street. He was drunk enough not to trust his eyesight and coordination on a winding path in the dark. Much safer to walk home under the streetlights. But staying on the street was the long way home. An extra mile, at least. After a brief mental debate, he opted to take the shortcut home like he usually did when coming home drunk from The Local.

The path skirted the edge of the harbor and wound over Miller’s Hill and through some neighbors’ backyards. Ben was drunker than he cared to admit, so he took a moment or two to look around and get his bearings. The gentle slapping of the waves against the dock pilings and wharf was soothing, and once he was past the garbage cans, he paused and looked around, savoring the night.

No dry, desert heat.