Walking Wounded

by Lauren Gilley

  “I did.” She makes herself a plate. “I thought it was lovely.”

  Lovely. No one has ever said that about him, or anything he’s ever written.

  “Seriously?”

  “I like the way you use language,” she says, and her expression grows thoughtful, brows tugging together. “I could tell you were a poet, the way it read.” She looks at him, withdrawn into her head somewhere. “The way the words sounded as I was reading.” A smile. “A lovely story told in a lovely way.”

  Lovely, again. Is that what his midnight ruminations are? Lovely?

  Lady, you don’t know shit, he thinks, and reaches for his coffee.

  ~*~

  “Your father-in-law,” Luke says when they’re sitting side-by-side at the bar, breakfast well under way, plates keeping warm in the oven for Hal and Maddox (he can’t think of him as “Matt” yet, he just can’t).

  “Mm.” Sandy takes a sip of coffee and says, “Now there’s a literary character for you.”

  Luke crunches a piece of bacon. “Between the original news story, and the way everyone’s building him up, I’m starting to get an impression.”

  “Ah. An impression,” she repeats, using his exact inflection.

  He flicks a sideways glance her way. She’s messing with him, and if the curl of her mouth is anything to go by, she’s enjoying it.

  “I’m also starting to think this is some elaborate practical joke.”

  Her smile widens, truer now. “No. Definitely not that.”

  They finish their food – Luke’s appetite is gone so he just forces down a few more bites and drains his coffee. God, he needs a smoke in the worst way.

  Sandy rinses their plates and stows them in the dishwasher. “Refill?”

  “Please.”

  She tops off his coffee and says, “I’m sure Will’s ready if you are.”

  His messenger bag sits propped against the legs of the stool and he picks it up. “Lead the way.”

  She does, back into the hall and to the left, through a formal sitting room full of dainty-legged furniture that, while in pristine condition, looks snatched from the year of the house’s building. A room untouched, there for show, perhaps for cocktail parties. No signs of life. Through white French doors they pass into another room, smaller, warmer, full of sunlight that gleams softly on buffed wood paneling. A library, with a fireplace, shelves crammed with books, a drink trolley, and two leather arm chairs with footstools angled on either side of the mantle. A man sits in one, his back to the window, and he must be Will Maddox.

  Luke takes a deep breath before he can register the desire to do so. This is his subject, and suddenly, he wants this to go well. To be a good article. He wants this to be the start of his long-awaited rise.

  “Will,” Sandy greets him, voice warm. “I want you to meet Hal’s good friend, Luke Keller.” She motions him forward.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Maddox.” Luke steps in closer and extends a hand. In that moment, he sees that things are going to go disastrously.

  Before him sits a man who was once as large and vital as his son, now papered with careful, complicated wrinkles, his large bones wrapped in frailty, his body betraying him one weakness at a time. White threads of hair combed neatly to the side. A pressed plaid shirt. Khakis, riding high above white sock-clad ankles. He peers up at Luke through thick bifocals, his puckered lips a mess of tiny fissures, his dark gaze so very alive in the midst of his half-dead face.

  This man hates him. It hits Luke like a shove; he feels it in his sternum, and stomach, feels it worming between his ribs. This man who he’s come to interview hates him completely, and he can think of only one reason why that might be so.

  The breath trembles in his lungs.

  But he retracts his untaken handshake and wipes his now-damp palm down the leg of his jeans.

  “Will,” Sandy says, low, displeased. “Don’t be in a mood.”

  His voice is rough from smoking, but not at all the tremulous stutter Luke expected. “I don’t have moods, Sandra. Moods are for women.”

  “And I suppose you’d be an expert on the subject,” she returns, unperturbed. “Would breakfast help?”

  He mutters something.

  “Fine. You be polite to Luke while I’m gone.”

  Dear God, don’t leave me, Luke thinks.

  She squeezes his arm as she passes, whispers, “I’m sorry, but you’ll do great.” And then she’s gone.

  Fuck. That’s all he can think. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  But he has to say something, and it sure as fuck can’t be fuck.

  So he says, “I get it, you know? I wouldn’t want to do this if I were you either. Sorry. Trust me, it wasn’t my idea.”

  Will sits silent, but his eyes snap back to Luke’s face, impossible to read.

  “I’m supposed to interview you for the story I’m writing,” Luke continues. “That’s what my editor sent me to do. But see, the thing is, I’m getting paid whether you say anything or not,” he lies. “So if you want, I can just write something generic and we don’t have to go through all this.”

  The man’s jaw clenches beneath his papery skin. “What’d she say your name was?”

  “Luke, sir. Luke Keller.”

  “Have I ever heard of you?”

  Not the question he expects. It shocks an honest answer out of him. “No. I can guarantee you haven’t.”

  Will frowns. “Which paper do you write for, son? Or are you one of those TV idiots?”

  A startled snort. “Not a TV idiot, I promise. I write for this…” Well, here went some more truth. “This rag in New York. Candid. It’s got a decent readership. Mostly online. And the closest we ever get to politics is what so-and-so’s wife wore at some charity ball.”

  “Hmph. Sounds about right. So what do you want to talk to me for?”

  “Oh, well, let’s see…maybe about the fact that you beat up a protestor with your cane. For starters.” When the man gathers a deep breath, he adds, “I gotta say. The reach you’ve got with that thing.” He mimes swinging a club in a long slow arc. “Impressive.”

  To his complete shock, a slow, rusty grin cuts across Will’s face. “Would you believe I don’t even practice?”

  Luke feels a grin of his own tugging. “Yeah, actually.”

  Will reaches with the infamous cane and taps the plush seat of the arm chair across from him, the one with the view of the window overlooking the garden. “Sit, Luke Keller. Stay a spell.”

  Later, when Luke looks back on this moment, he will know that this was his first glimpse of the sea change. The first second of the rest of his life.

  4

  This is going to take a while. Part of Luke is frustrated by this, but a larger, more secretive, artistic part of him is glad for the challenge of it. When he interviews someone for a piece – which is rarely – it’s all shorthand, tape recorders, and wedging into too-tight corners of coffee shops, his mark shifting, impatient, and nervous as a prospective john caught hiring a call girl. Like there’s something wrong with making a statement that will be put down on paper. People want to be transparent and transient these days. They don’t want anything to stick to them: not mortgage payments, not weekend plans, and not something they said one time to that moody loser with the glasses.

  But Will, he can tell already, is a storyteller. And there’s a grave shortage of those in his life.

  Sandy brings Will a plate of breakfast and sets it up in front of him on a TV tray. She brings fresh coffee for Luke, and gives him another encouraging shoulder squeeze. Promises she’ll be doing yoga in the den and to “holler” if they need anything.

  “She’s sweet,” Luke observes.

  “She’s sweet, yeah. And she’ll gut you like a wolverine too, you push her that way,” Will says. He digs a silver flask from the chair cushion beside him and pours a healthy finger of amber liquid into his coffee. He offers it to Luke, who shrugs, and does the same for himself, passes it back.

  He can tell
from the scent that it’s bourbon.

  Luke lets Will get halfway through his pancakes before he says, “So why did you hit that protester?”

  Will makes a rude sound in his throat. “You really are a reporter, ain’t ya?”

  “Writer. I don’t like to use the R-word.”

  “That’s why you got your little notebook out, then? ‘Cause you’re a writer?”

  “All writers keep notebooks. It’s law. You can’t knock law.”

  “Watch me.”

  Luke sips coffee to hide a smile. “Okay. So. You’re deflecting. Let’s talk protester smack down.”

  “Bah.”

  “I’m sorry.” He almost spits coffee all over himself. “What was that?”

  “You heard me.”

  Bah. So clearly, he’s interviewing one of the old guys from The Muppets.

  “But the protester,” Luke redirects.

  “What about him?”

  “You hit him.”

  “He was being a jackass.”

  “Is that what they put in the police report?”

  “And you’re being a smartass,” Will says, but doesn’t sound all that disapproving.

  Luke shrugs. “I can’t deny that.”

  Will eats with a methodical steadiness, like someone who’s used to putting away calories out of necessity. It reminds Luke of his reflection, the glimpses of it he sometimes catches in his office window back home, as he shovels in a stale pastry stolen from the break room because he’s woozy, but not because he’s hungry.

  “I don’t normally eat breakfast either,” Luke says.

  Will grunts something that sounds agreeing and swallows. “Sandy won’t let me get away with skipping it. I gotta take my pills with food.”

  “Ah.”

  “Something to look forward to if you ever live to be an old man: enough pills to kill a horse every day.”

  Luke’s fingers tighten on his pen. “If?”

  “Not everyone lives that long,” Will says, and studies his pancakes as he cuts them into smaller and smaller bites with the edge of his fork.

  Loss, Luke reads in his voice. The man has lost someone. His wife. At his age, probably siblings, friends. Co-workers.

  But those are all people he would have lost to time, and illness, and their long years on the earth.

  He glances around the room, spots a sequence of framed photos on the mantle. “May I?” he asks, rising, indicating the pictures with his hand.

  Will stares at him a long moment, syrup dripping off his fork, and finally says, “Sure,” in a low, tight voice.

  Luke steps in close to the fireplace – lingering smell of wood smoke, heap of pale ashes on the grate – and drops his head over the photos. Some are colored and new, staged portraits like his mother used to make him sit for when he was younger: the Maddox family all arranged, Matt, Sandy, and the two daughters. There’s one of Matt and Will, taken recently, Will seated, hands propped on his cane. One of Matt and Sandy, arms around one another. One of the two girls when they were babies. And a faded sepia-toned photo in a heavy silver frame that catches Luke’s eye: a scene snatched out of time. A girl in a belted white dress, her hair pinned up and curled artfully over her ears. A man on either side of her, both young, smiling, handsome, their smiles easy.

  Luke knows before he asks, but he asks anyway. “Is this you over here?” Because there can be no denying the broad shoulders, and large square hands, and lock of nearly-black hair falling over the young man’s forehead. It’s Matt Maddox from the old school photos that circulated when he ran. No, it’s Will Maddox, from before Matt was even a gleam in his eye.

  Will doesn’t answer so Luke takes the frame off the mantle and returns to the chair, tilts it toward the man. “This is you, right? When was this taken?”

  Will has gone bone-white, the wrinkles around his eyes throwing harsh dark shadows down his cheeks. Oh shit, Luke thinks.

  “Will? Mr. Maddox?”

  “That’s me,” Will croaks. He looks away from the photo, hands curling tight on his silverware.

  Silence slips between them; the sunlight shifts on the carpet, like it’s making room for the ghost that pauses and lingers by the hearth. Luke has messed up, he knows. And they haven’t even touched the protestor incident. So somehow he has to press onward, even if it feels like someone is now watching them from the corner of the room.

  “Who else is in the picture?” he asks, quietly.

  He doesn’t think Will is going to answer. But he says, “That’s my wife, Leena. And that’s – that’s Finn. My friend.”

  ~*~

  Will lapses into what can only be called a stupor. Luke fears he’s gone catatonic, so he searches out Sandy, frantic.

  She stands with arms raised above her head on a hot pink yoga mat in the middle of her living room, following the instructor on the TV. She turns to face him as he barrels into the room, expression serene, but brows tucking when she catches sight of his face.

  “Everything alright?”

  “No, I think I killed your father-in-law,” he blurts. His palms are damp with fear-sweat and he can smell the anxiety lifting off his skin.

  To his shock – and maybe horror – she laughs. “What?”

  “He’s just…” He waves a hand in front of his face, as usual, at a loss for words. Give him a pencil or a word processor, and he can talk your ear off. But face-to-face? He’s a total idiot. “There was this old photo – and I shouldn’t have – but I asked about it – and he got all…” Another wave, totally hopeless.

  Sandy lowers her arms and faces him fully, a knowing light coming into her eyes. “Oh. The old one, with him, and Leena, and Finn?”

  “Yeah.” He can’t catch his breath.

  Sandy nods, expression sage and patient. “It’s okay.” She steps past him. “He gets like this sometimes.”

  Helpless, he follows.

  Will still sits with his gnarled hands clenched over his cane, his head bent forward at an angle that looks painful.

  “Mr. Will,” Sandy greets, softly, setting her hand on top of his head. “Did you go away in your head again. Come on back now.” All Southern honey and gentleness. “Come back to us. That’s right. Come on.” She strokes his hair and Will’s eyelids flutter. His head lifts and he’s back.

  Luke exhales in a rush, exhausted from the panic. “Shit,” he whispers.

  Sandy looks at him with a patient smile. “He likes to have his hair stroked,” she says, and that ought to hit Luke in a weird way, but it doesn’t, so great is his relief.

  “Okay,” he says, nodding.

  Will blinks a few times and says, “Is it lunch yet?”

  “No.” Sandy collects his breakfast plate. “But I can bring more coffee.”

  “Yeah, do that.” As she moves to comply, Will looks up at Luke. “Well don’t just stand there. Don’t you have shit to ask me?”

  Luke falls into his chair, boneless. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  ~*~

  “The protester,” Luke says, yet again. “Come on, man. Just talk about it already.”

  Will snorts. He’s recovered from his episode and working on a bowl of cashews Sandy brought him. “Little punk. Protester, my ass. He was a rioter, that’s what he was, that whole bunch of them. Spray paint cans and baseball bats. Hal and his boys were having to shove them back.” He mimes doing so with his hands. “One of ‘em pushed through, gunning for my Matt with his paint, screaming the most horrible things at him. Fucker had it coming. Back in my day, if you acted like that, you got popped.”

  And sometimes, Luke thinks, that’s a practice they ought to continue. “What did he say?”

  Will shrugs. It might be a twitch of some sort, but Luke sees it as a shrug.

  “What?”

  A head shake.

  “Mr. Maddox,” he says, sighing, “we’ll go off the record, okay? At this point, I’m just personally curious. What did he say?”

  Not looking at him, Will says, “All kinds of shit
. Said Matt was evil, said he was ‘worse than Hitler and Satan combined.’ Those were his exact words. Crazy shit. Said he hoped Matt dropped dead. Said he hoped someone shot him. That he was a homophobe, and racist, and wanted to kill women.”

  Luke takes a deep breath through his mouth and lets it out through his nose. “Well. That’s the sort of thing that gets thrown around in Washington.”

  Will shakes his head. “But he was wrong. So wrong. Fuck him. So I popped him a good one, right in the mouth. I don’t like people telling lies about my kids.”

  ~*~

  When says he needs a moment to take his medicine, and Sandy comes in with one of those awful day-of-the-week pill containers, Luke excuses himself to the back porch, where he proceeds to shake a Marlboro from the pack in his pocket and lights up.

  He leans against the deck rail, lets his gaze wander across the roses planted just below him, and takes a deep, deep drag, his lungs sighing with relief.

  When will Hal be back? he wonders. How the hell long can they run?

  It’s not even eight in the morning, dew glitters on the grass, and he feels like an entire day has passed.

  Perhaps the old man’s playing a joke on him, he thinks. Or the Maddox family. Or, unthinkably, Hal. But how could Hal be so cruel after…

  No, there’s a story here. He can feel it, a low-level buzz like when the TV’s running silently to itself in the next room. Something weighs heavy on Will Maddox, something that’s tied up in a hatred of prejudice, an assault charge, and an old photo. His knee jerk response is to recoil; this could all be a waste of time. But he’s never written a single thing that mattered for money. And maybe this can matter. Maybe. Whatever it is.

  He hears the door open behind him and turns, thinking it’s Sandy. But it isn’t.

  A girl – late teens, early twenties, probably, if the smooth shape of her face can be believed – steps out onto the deck and gives him the sort of direct look that made him blush and squirm when he was in school.