The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (63 page)

“Couldn’t take what?” I asked him.

“Well, for one thing, I don’t condone adultery. And okay, those weeks that I was at Walter Reed, he says he couldn’t get off of work—and I accept that, I understand it. But
he
could have called
me
every once in a while, instead of
me
always calling
him?
But you know what was
really
messing me up when I got down there to Pittsburgh? Was how young he seemed. He kept asking me things like, what did I think of Kanye West’s music, and did I think he should hold on to Kevin Garnett in this fantasy basketball league he was in or trade him. And how he wasn’t just
in
this league; he was
commissioner
of it. Like that was some big mark of distinction: commissioner of make-believe. And I wanted to slam him, one-handed, against the wall, the way he used to do to me, and scream in his face, ‘Stop it! Act your age!’ … I didn’t do it, though. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. ‘Honor thy father,’ you know what I’m saying? So instead, I grabbed my car keys, got out of there, and took off. It was messing with my head, you know? You get out of there alive, more or less, wait for your father to come see you at the hospital you’re stuck at, and when you finally go to see him, he’s younger than you are.”

My mind searched for something useful to say, but all I could come up with was something to ask. “How long were you over there?”

“Thirty-six months total. Got home for Christmas in oh-five. An eight-week furlough, it was supposed to be, but they pulled us back twelve days early. Rumsfeld’s orders. ‘Rummie’s dummies,’ we used to call ourselves.”

“So every time you turn on the TV, someone who’s never been over there the way you have is giving an opinion on Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pull out. Stay the course. I’m curious, Kareem. What are your politics?”

“My
politics?”
He shot me a quick glance, then looked away again. “I voted for W, if that’s what you mean. Both times. No way I was voting for Kerry.”

“You think it’s worth it? That we’re over there for the right reasons?”

He shrugged. “Politics is a luxury you can’t necessarily afford when you’re over there. You just get up, do your job, and embrace the suck.”

He raised his prosthetic hand and made the wrist rotate. A soft mechanical whirring accompanied the back and forth motion. “I was a ‘single-digit midget’ when
this
happened. That’s what they call you when you got less than ten days left before you get out. Only had seventy-two hours to go when we got waxed. Me and my buddy Kelsey, this guy from North Carolina.”

I asked him what happened.

“We were on patrol together in a Humvee, Kelsey and me. And Kelse goes, ‘What’s that up yonder? ’ and I go, ‘What do you mean? Those trunk monkeys on the bridge? ’ And Kelsey goes, ‘No, no, not them, that black thing.’ And I go, ‘What black thing? ’ because I didn’t see any black thing, okay? And that’s all I remember.

“They said that, after the explosion, I was wandering around in a daze, gushing like Old Faithful, and trying to pick up pieces of my buddy with a hand that wasn’t there anymore. I took some sniper fire, they said—couple of Ali Babas shooting at me from a rooftop. Trying to finish the job, I guess. The trunk monkeys who were covering us got one of ‘em, they said, but the other one got away. I don’t happen to remember any of it.

“They medevaced me to a hospital north of Baghdad. Stabilized me and sent me on to Germany. I was there for ten days. Then they flew me back stateside. I was stuck in Walter Reed for six weeks. My wife and my mother came to see me a couple of times. And Kelsey’s family—his mom and dad and his sister. Which was pretty decent of
them, I thought, because, you know. Lose your son like that, your brother, and then you drive all those miles to give comfort to the guy who was sitting right there next to him and survived it?”

I asked him when he’d finally gotten back home to his family.

“In May. End of May. They had a party for me—my mother’s people. It was at my aunt and uncle’s. You know those yard signs—‘Let’s Support Our Troops’? They’d stuck them up, all over their lawn, signs and balloons. And there were maybe sixty, seventy people at that party. Friends, relatives, some cousins from Florida that I hadn’t seen in years. My aunt had gotten this sheet cake made and, I don’t know how they did it, but there was this big picture of me on it. This picture of me in my dress uniform. But it was edible, you know? And my daughter? Keesha? When they cut the cake? She was sitting on my lap, eating her piece, and she says, ‘Look, Daddy, I’m eating your face.’ And everybody thought that was so funny, you know what I’m saying? Everybody in that crowded room was laughing but me. Because Kelsey? When his family came to see me at Walter Reed? His father told me, when it was just me and him in the room, that that bomb had blown Kelsey’s face off. So I didn’t think it was funny what Keesha said. And I got so mad that I shoved her onto the floor. Hard, they said. She fell facedown, dropped her cake, started crying. And it was bad, you know? Me, losing it like that with my daughter? With my family watching? … The thing is, you get into these situations over there. Exchange gunfire with four or five hajis, maybe, and when you pursue them, they duck into private homes, apartment buildings. And there’s
kids
living in these places. But it’s self-defense, you know? You see someone rearing back to lob a grenade at you, you got to shoot whether there’s kids caught in the crossfire or not.”

I thought about what Lolly had said about my father—how, after he returned from
his
war, he’d drink himself useless rather than talk about it. This was healthier, right? Talking about it? Getting it out? I just wasn’t sure why Kendricks had picked me to be his sounding board.

“I was … I was thinking about that paper you wrote a while back—the one where you said that, post-Iraq, you felt like Sisyphus, pushing a heavy rock up a hill every day.” He nodded in recognition. “How’s that going? Things going any better on the home front now?” I asked.

He stiffened. Looked at me directly for the first time since he’d sat down. “Why are you asking?” he wanted to know.

“Oh. Well … that paper. How you were reading your daughter a story and, in the middle of it, you had … what was it? A flashback?”

He stared at me and swiveled, not answering.

I grabbed at anything. “So how does that thing work, anyway?” I asked, indicating his artificial hand.

He extended his arm, so that the hand was halfway between us, six inches or so above my desk. “Battery-powered,” he said. It opened and closed, opened and closed. “There’s wire sensors in the fingers that read the electrical impulses in my muscles and nerves.”

“No kidding,” I said. “And were you—
are
you—right-handed or left?”

“Left.”

“Well, that’s a break at least, huh? Less to have to readapt to.”

Open, close, open, close, open, close.

Did
I
own this awkward silence, or did he?”This uh … this guy I knew? Grew up with? He developed schizophrenia when he was in college. His freshman year, I think it was. In and out of the state hospital most of his adult life. And then, when Saddam invaded Kuwait back in—when was that? Nineteen ninety? Guy goes into the library over there in Three Rivers, sits down, and cuts off his hand. Some kind of crazy antiwar sacrifice, I think it was supposed to be. And after? I’d see him sometimes. Him and his brother. Twins, they were. I’d see them at the grocery store, or in Friendly’s. The brother and I had run track together in high school, but I knew them both. They were twins. Did I say that? … Anyway, that guy—he just had a
stump. Nothing high-tech like you’ve got. I mean, sensors in the fingers: wow…. Sad story, though, that guy. He drowned. Suicide, I guess it was. The paper never put it in so many words, but that’s what people were saying at the funeral.”

“And are you telling me all this because you think I’m crazy, too?”

“Oh, God, not at all, Kareem. I didn’t at all mean to imply that—no, no. Nothing like that.”

Apropos of nothing, he asked me if I knew what the seven acts of Christian charity were.

“The seven …?”

“Acts of Christian charity. There’s the seven deadly sins, the seven contrary virtues, and the seven acts of Christian charity.”

What the hell was going on, I wondered. Why
was
he here? I shook my head. “I don’t know them. No.”

“I’m not surprised. I take it you’re like most professors.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re a nonbeliever, right? Too highly educated to humble yourself to a higher power?”

It’s none of your business what I believe or don’t believe, was what I
felt
like saying. Instead, I spouted off some bullshit thing about how my policy was not to discuss my personal beliefs with my students. For emphasis, and a little facetiously, I guess, I stuck out my index finger and, in the air between us, drew a question mark.

We stared at each other for five or six seconds. Then Private Kendricks closed his eyes and spoke slowly and deliberately, with exaggerated enunciation. “Feed the hungry…. Give drink to the thirsty…. Clothe the naked…. Shelter the stranger…. Visit the sick…. Bury the dead…. Minister to the prisoner.” His eyes sprang open. “Speaking of which, how’s your wife?”

I leaned back a little. Grabbed onto the edge of my desk. “My wife?”

“That day you told us she was in prison? I looked her up on the Internet. She got five years for killing that boy, right? Negligent homicide?”

“Vehicular homicide. She’s okay, thanks. How’s
your
wife?”

His blinking became rapid. His smile was bizarre. “I couldn’t tell you because she’s taken out a restraining order against me. That’s how off-base the justice system in this country is.
She’s
the one who broke the ninth commandment, but
I’m
the one who gets court-ordered to stay away from my own home.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was, too, but I was also just about done with this conversation. I stacked some already-stacked papers. Looked up at the clock. “So you have that appointment at four, right? I guess we better—”

“This is the value system I risked my life to protect? So that some clueless female judge can sit there and accept another woman’s lies as gospel? Tell a father who’s served his country to the best of his ability that he can only see his child for one hour, twice a week? Under the supervision of a
social
worker?”

He stood up, but rather than heading for the door, he walked over to my bookcase. His back was to me. I felt a trickle of sweat from my underarm. Proceed with caution, I told myself.

“You know, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “I’m not at
all
saying that you’re … but are you getting any counseling? Because, after all you’ve been through, it might be good to talk with someone who can help you over the rough spots. Get you back on track with … your domestic situation. Maybe someone who works specifically with vets on these kinds of—”

He did an about-face. He was wild-eyed. “I’m
not
a vet. I’m active duty.”

“Oh. Okay, sure. My only point is, talking to someone could—”

“I
am
talking to someone,” he said. “I’m talking to you.”

I GOT TO THE PRISON
late, and once I did, they took their sweet time calling her up from her unit. By the time I was okayed to enter the visitors’ room, we had twenty minutes.

She studied me as I approached her, the way she always did. We embraced across the table and sat. “Crazy day,” I said.

“I can see that. Something wrong?”

“Nope.” I smiled. “You look nice today. You get a haircut?”

Mo smiled back. Cut
and
styled, she said. She’d finally gotten an appointment with someone in the cosmetology class. First time since she’d become an inmate that she hadn’t had to cut her bangs with her nail scissors.

“They teach cosmetology here?”

“Oh, yes. Hairdressing, industrial cleaning, nurse’s aid training, data entry. They’re traditionalists here at DOC. They like to prepare us for the kinds of crappy minimum-wage jobs that are waiting for us when we get out.” She reached up and touched her hair. “Thanks for noticing, Cae.”

“Hey, no problem.”

“So why was your day so crazy?”

I gave her an edited version: told her about the in-class skirmish between Ozzie Rivera and PFC Kendricks, but nothing about Kendricks’s office visit later on. (I was still trying to process that one.) Told her about the shimmy in my steering wheel, but nothing about Eric and Dylan’s having shown up in my class. Had to have been a mini-version of that “vicarious flashback” I’d had up at the Mark Twain House, I figured. I’d never told her about that episode either. Figured the less said about flashbacks—vicarious or otherwise—the better. Far as I knew, she hadn’t had any in quite a while. But maybe I was getting the edited version of her life, too.

“So what else is new?” she asked.

“Well, let’s see. Moses told me cherubs&fiends.com has started turning a profit. They’re getting two, three hundred hits a day some days. Says he has to hire a third person to keep up with the orders.”

“What’s selling better?” she asked. “The cherubs or the fiends?”

“Oh, the fiends, definitely. Four to one, he says.”

“And what about the civil suit? Anything new there?”

I shook my head but must have given myself away because she looked skeptical. “Well, maybe there is. Junior left me a message. Says he’s talked with the Seaberrys’ attorney and wants to run a few things by me.”

“Are they talking about a settlement?”

“I don’t know, Maureen.” I said it a little more defensively than I’d meant to. “I haven’t had a chance to call him back yet.”

“You haven’t had a chance, or you’re avoiding calling him back?”

I cracked a half-smile. “You know me too damn well. You know that?”

“Well, I just know how hard it must be for you to think about losing the farm. It’s so tied up with your family history. I must say to myself fifty times a day, ‘If only I hadn’t—’”

I stuck my hand up like a traffic cop. “Don’t, okay? Wasted energy. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.”