“No. She’s a widow, brother.” All three men seated with him froze in place. They knew what that word meant and were probably rewriting today’s encounter in their own minds with just that single sentence.
Blade pulled in a breath. “She’s from there.” Statement not question, but Monk responded as if he’d asked it, nodding slowly. “I did an honor ride five years ago from the base.”
The three of them had been stationed at the local base, Monk the only one who’d settled here to get away from what he’d left behind. A wife, not liking being alone ten or eleven months of the year, if they were lucky. Friends, who didn’t get why he wasn’t the same free-spirit they’d known in high school. Family, who looked at him sadly as they patched holes in their walls or paid bail bondsmen cash to retrieve his ass from the most recent round of ridiculous behavior. Bosses as they shook their head, holding out an envelope to indicate a termination of employment.
Neptune added, “Dude was corps,” and Wolf nodded. “Had nearly twenty-two hundred bikes on that ride. Streets and roads were lined for miles and miles. Flags everywhere. Patriots had point,” meaning the local chapter of that national MC had been right behind the hearse and cars with family, “and we were next in line. Oorah.”
“Oorah.” The time-worn response to a call to faith and fidelity echoed around the table, Monk’s voice the final one to chime in.
“How do you know her?” Blade pushed back in the seat and Monk looked up to see the waitress coming their way with a tray of drinks.
“Don’t. She was having a hard time today, and something clicked so I knew she was a widow.” He nodded his thanks for the mug of coffee. “Tomorrow’s five for her without him.”
“Oh, man. Death days are the worst.” Neptune reached for the sugar and poured a healthy stream into his black coffee. “No wonder she was having a hard time.”
“Yeah.” Monk glanced around the room, and then looked outside at the bright blue sky dotted with white clouds. No worries there. He blinked and thought he saw mountains in the distance, but a second blink wiped them away. “No wonder.”
***
Amanda
Amanda twisted in the seat of the parked car and gathered up the things she needed for her vigil. She’d done this often enough to know exactly what made her the right level of comfortable to stay as long as she needed. Blanket to sit on, but not too thick, because Martin’s body was surrounded by cold dirt and it was right that she feel some of that. A bottle of water, because the first two years she’d wept so much in the summer sun she’d dehydrated and passed out, waking up hours later with an uneven sunburn on her face that was hard to explain away. Their wedding book, which had turned into a scrapbook of their lives together. Ritual and known, this was what she did.
She climbed out and sighed as she leaned her weight against the door, bumping it with her hip to make the latch catch. Then she started the long walk back through the headstones to where Martin’s grave was. This too was part of the ritual, because she could have parked within ten feet of where the granite was that bore his name, but the trek helped her center herself so she didn’t lose it as soon as she stood in front of him. Alive, while he was dead.
As she got closer, she saw a motorcycle parked just down the row from her destination. Big and black, it had angular handlebars and some kind of fabric wrapped around the pipes, nothing shiny about this bike, but it felt even more imposing for that detail. Another twenty feet and she noticed something else unusual, a man kneeling next to the grave, one hand placing something in the back pocket of his jeans, the other holding a small flag. As she watched, he reached out and stuck it into the ground next to the headstone, adjusting until it stood upright.
This wasn’t someone she knew, no one from Martin’s family or hers, no friends from school. He must have served with Martin. She pulled in a shocked breath, blinking back sudden tears. No, no, not yet. Her throat clicked when she swallowed, even as her mouth flooded with bitter saliva because she hadn’t prepared for this. Wasn’t ready to talk about Martin, to share memories with someone she didn’t know, to listen to their stories and their grief. Then he looked up, and with a swirl of relief, she saw it was the man from the gas station. Stupid. Of course it would have to be him; she’d talked to him only yesterday and told him what today meant. I should have recognized the bike.
“Ma’am.” Stilted and formal, he dipped his head towards the gravestone. “Wasn’t hard to find. Thought I’d pay my respects.” He moved away, stepping into the middle of the little road. “I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Did you know him? Martin? My husband? Did you know him?” She was overwhelmed with a need to know, counter to what she’d felt a moment ago when it was a stranger who might have served, she didn’t feel this man a stranger any longer. “Martin Stewart?”
“No, ma’am. We weren’t posted together that I know of. But he was USMC.” He lifted one shoulder and took a step towards his bike. “Corps.”
“Makes you family.” She nodded. “You don’t have to, you know.” He paused and looked at her. “Leave, I mean. I don’t mind.”
“Figured you’d rather time alone.” He glanced at the headstone, then back at her. “Mrs. Stewart.”
She dipped her chin and broke free from his gaze. It had been so long since anyone called her that, it felt wrong, almost like she was an imposter. “I’m alone all the time. It’d be nice—” She gestured towards the grave. “—for it to not be just me for once.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
Eyes angled down, she nodded slowly. “I am.” She bent to set the water and scrapbook down, and then began unfolding the blanket. A shadow fell on her, and she looked up to find him close, reaching out for a corner of the fabric. Together they arranged it as she always did, directly to the side of the place where dirt had once mounded. She lifted the bottle and apologized, “I only have the one.”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m fine.” He leaned forwards and plucked a blade of grass, arm propped on one bent knee. “You come out every year?”
“Every week, actually, but I always make sure to come on the anniversary.” She spun the lid off and lifted the bottle for a drink. “His parents come on Saturdays or Sundays, when they come, so I always aim at Wednesday.”
“You don’t get along?” His questions were innocent, skimming along the surface of polite, not knowing the landmines waiting underneath.
“Understatement.” She smiled and stretched out a hand, dusting the surface of the stone’s base. “They didn’t like that we got married so young, and thought I influenced him to join up.” Turning her neck, she looked at him. “Opposite from reality, and they probably know it under everything. But it’s easier to have someone to be mad at, you know? I can take it. They lost a son, so it’s the least I can do.” She rested her cheek on her knees. “They wanted him in Arlington, or in the state military cemetery. Someplace more befitting a man of his”—with one hand she made air quotes—“stature.” He stared at her steadily, not looking away, taking in everything she had to say. That kind of singular focus felt good. “And by stature, I mean money, their money. Family money. I wanted him here.” She turned her head away, and rested her other cheek on her knees, staring at the granite etched with his name. “Where I could come see him.”
They sat in silence for several minutes, Amanda’s memories awash with images of Martin at graduation: from high school, from boot camp, from officer’s training. She didn’t know what the man spent those minutes thinking or considering, but for her, it was all Martin.
“My name’s Amanda,” she said, suddenly aware she hadn’t introduced herself to this stranger, no matter they were sharing a private moment. “So you can ixnay on the am’may bit.”
He laughed softly, chuckling long past when she thought it should have been funny, so she turned to look at him. “Ixnay? Really?”
“Yeah.” She sat up straight, staring at him. “Ixnay.”
“Alex Waterman.”
“Good to meet you, Alex Waterman.”
“Same to you, Amanda Stewart.”
An hour passed by before either spoke again. It was Alex who broke the silence, asking a question she’d never fielded before. “How was it for you, being home, before this happened?”
“You mean staying here while he deployed?” She turned to look at him in time to see a tiny nod. “It was okay. I had the house to take care of, and I worked. I missed him, of course, but he missed me, too.”
“Did you know he was going to join before you married? Or was that a decision he came to afterwards?”
“Oh, no. I knew from the time we were sophomores he would be in the military. It was what he’d planned and worked towards. He did delayed entry our senior year, and we’d planned on waiting until he’d gotten out of basic to get married. None of this made it through to any conversations with our parents, of course.” She laughed.
“Of course.” He smiled at her, a full spreading of his lips that changed his face entirely, making him more approachable, softened the hard lines he wore most of the time, and turned up his good-looking level by several notches. She wasn’t immune to the fact he was handsome, in that bad boy way that hadn’t ever been her go-to for desirability. But this, what they were doing by sitting here to honor Martin, turned any idea that the meeting might be seen as tawdry into a lie, showing instead that it was a brilliant sign of respect for her dead husband. That smile on his face, however, turned the corner from attractive to smoldering hot in a moment. She stared at him a moment until he frowned, losing the grin to an expression of puzzlement. “What?”
“Nothing.” She turned away, back to the headstone, feeling as if she’d somehow betrayed Martin. Which was stupid, because he wasn’t around to betray. He was gone, long gone, and the permanence of his being not here struck her hard, like it always did out of the blue. It took her breath away and, in a moment, she was crying hard, shoulders shaking as she wrapped her arms around her knees, tucking them close to her chest to try and stop the pain flooding through her.
As he had at the gas station, Alex gathered her into his arms and held her. Wordless, gentle, and with an air of understanding that reassured her this was normal, this was grief, this was living without the one person you always thought you’d have. This was pain, and anguish, and sadness, because of all the firsts Martin would never see. All the firsts stripped away from her future, dropped to the bloody sand in a faraway land.
She cried as she did every year, unable to speak or breathe, choking on the mass of impotent wishes that swelled inside her chest.
This year, unlike the ones that had come before, she wasn’t alone.
***
Monk
Alex waited for her tears to slow, for the sobs to become less heartbreaking. It took a long time, but eventually, she stopped shaking, and her breathing evened out. He’d adjusted his hold on her a couple of times as weariness overtook her, Amanda’s body slumping against him as her muscles weakened.
He didn’t try to tell her it would be better, or that she’d get over it. He took the waves of grief that emanated from her body, and absorbed them as best he could, giving her a safe place to pour out her pain.
Instead of telling her it would pass, he decided to share how his family had dealt with a loss like, and yet unlike hers.
“When I was twenty-five, my younger sister went missing. I was deployed overseas in the sandbox, about to head home on leave, and got a text from my mom asking if I’d heard from Tracey. She was twenty-one and finishing up college, and my folks didn’t try to treat her as anything other than the grownup she was. But her roommate had called. She hadn’t come back to the dorm, and a quick check with her professors found her absent that day. I looked back at my messages from her and found the last three had been a week earlier. Funny pictures and jokes that I hadn’t responded to.” Amanda sighed and went to pick up her head, but he cradled her skull close with a quiet, “Shhhh.” She settled against his chest again.
“My folks got the runaround from the cops. Some song and dance about her being an adult, and sometimes people just got tired of their lives and left. She wasn’t in a relationship, didn’t have kids or a pet, didn’t own a car or a house. A prime candidate to just pick up and vacate, in their eyes. Me and my folks, we knew different.” He stroked her hair and knew by her stillness she was listening intently. It was good to take her out of what she’d been stuck in for so long, and even if it hurt to tell this, that’d be worth the effort.
“She was the good kid.” He snorted. “Not like me, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
Amanda did interrupt him then, and he smiled at her determination. “You seem plenty nice to me.”
“Nice, sure. But good? Not always.” He stared at the flagpole yards away, at the center of the graveyard. “Not hardly ever.” With a quick breath, he pushed past those memories and continued on. “Tracey was the kind of kid who texted, even away at college. She kept the ’rents in the know with her life. Voluntarily, probably because they didn’t demand it of her. Those texts, random things about food and friends, going out to parties, and made it home safe—they stopped the night she went missing.”
“Oh, no.” Amanda pulled away, and he could feel the weight of her stare on him, even as he refused to meet it.
“Oh, yeah.” He cleared his throat, suddenly thick with tears. “Two weeks went past, and nothing. I got home finally, just in time. I was over at my folks, helping organize the stuff volunteers needed, about to go out and put up posters when I looked out to see my folks’ pastor pull up at the curb, followed by a cruiser. It was like I was frozen in the spot. I saw the men get out, watched the three of them cluster at the end of the sidewalk. I didn’t get to the door before my mom, but I was there to catch her as she fell. Tracey’s body had been found in a copse of woods close to the school’s campus. Their best guess, she’d been dead before she’d even been reported missing.”
“Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry.” She patted his chest gently, and he nodded, the movements rough and jerky.
“I don’t know what was hardest on my folks. Knowing she’d been dead for so long, or the fact they didn’t know she was already gone. Mom kept saying things like a good mother should have known.” He shook his head. “Took the whole family a long time to come to grips with the fact sometimes bad things happen to good people.”
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated, and he ducked his chin to stare into her eyes. Red and swollen, they were welling with tears again. “So, so sorry.”
“Sounds trite, I know.” He shook his head. “Trust me, I know how it sounds, because I’ve bitchslapped myself for saying it to my folks, to mothers and fathers of men who served with me, but it’s true. We can’t control the bad things that happen, but we can work to get to a place where that acceptance doesn’t tear us apart.” He stroked the fall of her hair, smoothing out the tangles from when she’d been pulling and yanking at it. “You aren’t there yet, but you gotta do the work and get there. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
She moved back, and his lap felt emptier than he expected, the chill all along his front more biting, even in the heat of the evening. “I can’t. I miss him so much.”
He pushed up from the ground to stand and dusted off his ass, then looked at the gravestone with the single name, no room for a spouse, and he wondered if she understood what that had meant when she’d purchased it. “You will, because you deserve to.”
The rumble of the engine and pipes were loud in the cemetery, and he sat for a moment fiddling with his glasses and bandana, settling everything into place. Then he offered her a brief two-fingered wave, and used the winding, gravel paths to idle out to the road. A different car than the one she’d driven yesterday sat in the parking lot, listing to one side on a low tire.
He pulled out onto the road and rolled the throttle, easing into the first gear change, then laying into it and rocketing through the rest. Even with the glasses, the speed and wind
teased tears from his eyes and he blinked hard as he tried to outrun his memories.
Chapter Two
Amanda
She braked to a stop and looked around at the empty lot as she parked the car. Her gaze flicked towards the crest of the hill, searching, and she didn’t know if she should be relieved or disappointed when no one waited for her there, either.
Blanket, water, and scrapbook in hand, she closed the door and shoved the keys into her pocket. Same car, different story this year. She’d gotten a gift certificate in the mail about six months ago for the local repair shop, and it had been more than enough to cover the work needed. No more half-done fixes, everything was running smoothly now. She just wished she knew who to thank.
At Martin’s grave, she’d already spread her blanket and gotten set-up before she noticed it. An American flag was placed next to the headstone, and the granite looked wet. She touched it with her fingers and smelled. The liquid held the distinctive odor of whiskey.
Amanda looked around again, hopeful, even knowing she was alone, and felt the tears start to slide down her cheeks.
“I miss you.”
She did, probably always would. But as the biker had promised, the past few months had eased around a corner somehow, and life had gotten easier.
“I got a new job. Did I tell you?” An opening had been posted on social media for a night manager at a local hotel. She’d looked at the pile of bills that never seemed to get any smaller, and had called the next day to start the application process. “Started last month.”
She wiped both cheeks before picking up the scrapbook, and she flipped towards the back. “That’s why I haven’t been here as much.” The night shift hours were wrecking her head, but after nearly six weeks into it, she felt like she was finally in the groove. The first time she’d slept through her normal visit to the graveyard, she’d lost it, climbing into the shower in her pajamas and crying until the water ran cold. I can’t tell him that. The illogical nature of her thoughts didn’t matter, because on this anniversary of his death, for this span of time, for these hours spent here one day a year, it was all his.
Twisted Tales of Mayhem: 2019 MMM Special Edition Anthology Page 15
