Blind Fall

by Christopher Rice

  He yearned to believe her, but part of him thought she was just so eager to have him back in her life that she would say anything to try to cut him free of their broken past.

  “We better cut it out before we wake the baby,” Patsy finally said.

  “I think I’m going to join him.”

  She was silent as he undid his seat belt and squeezed into the back. He crawled up onto the bench seat at the very back of the Jeep, but, of course, sleep didn’t come. There was nothing to see outside of the windows except the glowing ember at the tip of his sister’s cigarette where she rested her arm out the open window. For a while she flipped stations on the radio. Then, at about two o’clock, they entered some stretch of Arizona where the only broadcast they could pick up was something that sounded like late-night Navajo hour, lots of throaty male voices coughing out primal chants. They sounded too much like the involuntary guttural noises he had heard the wounded make in combat: tremulous sounds that came from the chest, the stutter of words failing to force themselves through closing throats. He wasn’t about to ask her to turn off the radio, and Patsy seemed determined to listen to it, maybe because it was keeping her awake, so John somehow made it bearable by telling himself that the sounds of dying men were exactly what the Navajo singers were trying to emulate. This meant they shared a dark knowledge with John. This meant he had comrades out there in the dark.

  When Patsy gave up and killed the radio, John heard a rattling sound behind him, turned to look into the tiny cargo area, and saw the rattle was being made by the Spartan sword, still sticking up out of the cardboard box containing the last pieces of Mike Bowers’s life, which he had removed from his Tacoma before parking it in the desert. John turned, bent over the back of the seat, and pried open the flaps of the box. It was too dark to see inside, so he reached behind him and turned on one of the dome lights, which sent a faint glow across half of the bench seat without rousing Alex.

  He froze when he saw that the dark mass gathered at the bottom of the box was Mike’s dress blues, several gold buttons staring up at him like coins in the bottom of a grime-covered fountain. Their condition, as well as their position, beneath tattered hardcover novels and framed diplomas, was too appropriate a symbol of what had become of Mike’s life for John to linger on them for too long.

  Is this what Mike would have wanted you to do? he asked himself.

  How could he possibly answer his own question? How could he know what Mike would have wanted when Mike had kept his real life a secret? John couldn’t ask a question of the smiling man in the photos hanging on the wall inside his secret home. He had never met that man because he had never been allowed to meet that man.

  Whose fault was that? Was it Mike’s fault? Or was it the fault of the guy sleeping soundly a few feet away from him?

  John woke up right after Patsy left Highway 89 and began to follow a gravel road down a scrub-covered slope into a broad valley studded with bushy trees that had hardy white trunks. Massive sandstone rock formations straddled the horizon, but soon those were lost to the trees that suddenly crowded the unpaved road they traveled. They passed through a cattle fence that had been left open for them and a humble wooden sign that had something written on it John couldn’t make out. Something about something being “the answer,” but John couldn’t tell if the first word was Atonement or Acceptance.

  The fact that the name of whatever place this was wasn’t posted at the front gate made John both relieved and nervous at the same time. Duncan might have a harder time finding them, but just what the hell had his sister gotten them into? “Atonement is the answer”? She’d gone through a lot of phases after they moved to the desert, but organized religion hadn’t been one of them. Maybe that had changed after he left home.

  There was enough sunlight to sparkle off the waters of a creek moving slowly several yards off to the right, and if John hadn’t been paying close attention, he would have missed the large ranch house that sat just off the road in the middle of a wide clearing fringed with Douglas fir trees. Patsy continued, slowing down as the trees thickened around them. Some of them looked newly planted and were struggling to survive in the parched earth. John had been to Arizona a few times, and the redness of the place always got to him; it made the desert landscape of his adolescence seem anemic by comparison.

  Patsy pulled to a stop near a smaller version of the house they had just passed. Without any words of introduction for their new home, she stepped out of the truck and started down a dusty trail that cut through the trees toward a small house with thick cinderblock walls, a low, flat roof, and a line of clerestory windows running along its side walls. John was relieved to hear the steady thrum of central air conditioning. They stepped through the front door and found themselves inside what appeared to be a small summer-camp cabin.

  Patsy advised them that she would be back in a minute. There were four bunks in all, two against each wall. At the back of the house were a small kitchenette and a bathroom. For a moment John was reminded of his barracks during boot camp; then he saw the frames hanging above each bed, went to one, and made out the words of a prayer printed in calligraphic script: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can…

  “Looks like your sister thinks the best way to teach me how to kill would be for both of us to stop drinking,” Alex said. He was sitting on one of the beds with a heavy blue book on his lap. It looked like he had fished it from the drawer in the nightstand. He held it up so John could read the words Alcoholics Anonymous. When John didn’t laugh at this joke, Alex rose silently from the bed and headed for the bathroom. John turned to the half-open door to the house, knowing full well just who it was from Patsy’s past that would design such a place.

  He walked outside, into the strengthening glare of the sun. Just up the bank of the creek was a small circle of trees with a stone bench in the center. There was a man sitting on it, a baseball cap shoved down over his head, a cigarette sending up a curl of smoke from his right hand. He didn’t move as John entered what looked like a meditation garden. Behind the bench was a statue of Jesus on a stone pedestal. Right next to John, a matching pedestal supported a statue of Buddha. There was no denying it was a beautiful spot. Just above the tree line, on the horizon, you could see the sharp-edged sandstone formations that people around here called mountains. They were changing color in the light of the rising sun.

  Eddie Shane took a sip from his coffee, pulled a rumpled soft pack of Marlboro Reds from his shirt pocket, and extended it to John. John held up a palm. In the years since he had broken Patsy’s nose, Eddie’s watery blue eyes had slipped deeper into his face and the lines around his mouth had multiplied, as if the skin around his jaw were tightening to the degree that it might tear at any given moment.

  “There’s coffee up in the house,” Eddie said, as if they had already spent the past few weeks in each other’s company. “I can run up and get you a cup. I imagine you don’t want any of the other men to see you. That’s why we put you down here. Privacy and all.”

  “We can’t sleep in the same place,” John said. “That’s not going to work.”

  Eddie’s fixed expression suggested that he had moved past the place in his life where he could be surprised by anything other than death. “You and your friend, you mean? She didn’t tell me his name. She hasn’t told me much at all, so you don’t have to either if you don’t want to.” When John didn’t thank him for his offer of coffee, Eddie nodded slightly at his own cup as if he were prepared to face the fact that solicitous remarks weren’t going to get him back in John’s good graces.

  John felt foolish for having let the comment slip from him, but the truth was he hadn’t known what else to say, such was the shock of seeing Eddie, whose departure Patsy had celebrated as much as John had. But clearly he had cloaked himself once again in what he had once referred to as the “the language of recovery,” a phrase that had seemed absurd the first time John heard it come out of
the mouth of a big-rig driver from just outside Dallas, Texas. The truth was, it wasn’t smart for him and Alex to be sleeping under the same roof, not if John was going to achieve any status as an instructor, but he could have asked Patsy to buy them a tent to pitch out in the woods.

  In the silence that followed, Eddie lifted his gaze to John’s, and the two men just stared at each other. Eddie wore the resigned look of a lifelong inmate whose execution day had finally arrived. In a flat, emotionless voice he said, “I did wrong by you and I did wrong by your sister. I hit your sister because she told me what I was and it wasn’t who I wanted to be. I hit her because I couldn’t accept the truth and I left you without saying good-bye. If there’s anything I can do to make up for it, please let me know.”

  “You rehearsed that one, didn’t you?”

  “Yours wasn’t the only home I left in the middle of the night, John Houck.”

  “How many of them did you go back to with that little speech?”

  “All of them. Including yours. But you were gone by then. Iraq, I hear.”

  John nodded, braced himself for some smart-ass remark about the ongoing war on terror, but Eddie apparently thought better than to deliver one. But his slow nod gave the impression that he was equating his own recent struggles with the ones John had been through over there, and that made John’s blood boil.

  After the silence between them grew uncomfortable, John said, “So, what is this place? Some kind of AA church?”

  “AA doesn’t have churches. This is my own deal. A recovery home for men like myself. Usually I’ve got a full house, but right now attendance is low. I’ve got four up in the main house, so you guys have got down here all to yourself…which your sister said was how you would want it. I’ve also got land. Your sister said you would want that, too. There’s a couple acres of it over there that I haven’t touched yet. Maybe I’ll sell it off someday. I don’t know. About twenty miles up the road, land prices jump sky high.”

  John nodded, wondering how a big-rig driver, and a drunk, could come by this much land this close to one of the nicest parts of Arizona. Eddie must have sensed he had a question he didn’t feel comfortable asking because he cleared his throat and said, “When you go through the kind of things you went through, when you see that kind of stuff, I mean—”

  “War,” John said clearly and forcefully so that Eddie would have a chance to be very confident of the statement he was about to make.

  “Yeah, war. I guess it can make things in the past seem like they’re further away than they actually are.” He studied John, who did his best to give no reaction. “I’m just saying—you and me and your sister. It wasn’t that long ago.”

  John knew what he was trying to say, but he decided to let Eddie twist a little bit more by playing dumb. “Guess it’s a good thing you apologized, then.”

  “Apologies are for pussies,” he said quietly, but his choice of language betrayed his anger. “I asked if there was anything I could do to make up for it. But it looks like I’m already doing it, given that I haven’t asked you who you’re with or just why you need to hide out here with a bunch of recovering drunks and speed freaks like myself.”

  John tried to freeze the man off with a glare, but it did nothing to deter him. Maybe his most recent benders had not forced him to suffer the way a wounded Marine might, but it was clear they had showed him far greater horrors than the pissed-off brother of a woman he had punched.

  Eddie had shuffled off in the direction of the ranch house just up the creek by the time John realized that he hadn’t thanked the man. It didn’t matter, he guessed, given that Eddie hadn’t waited around for a thank-you.

  When he got back to the outer cabin, John found Patsy and Alex standing together in the tiny kitchenette, unloading several bags of groceries that Eddie had apparently purchased for them prior to their arrival. Once again, the sight of them behaving with the relaxed air of tourists on a weekend getaway made his fists clench, and he stood in the doorway like an angry father waiting to be noticed.

  “These are just some basics,” Patsy said. “Make me up a list later and I’ll make a run.” In the car the night before, he had already made up a list of the essentials he would need. It would land him on some kind of watch list if it fell into the wrong hands.

  “Where are you staying?” John asked.

  Patsy studied the list he had just handed her. Alex busied himself loading bottled water into the fridge, as if he were about to be caught in the middle of a marital squabble. “Up at the house,” Patsy said casually, but she had stopped unloading bags and was giving John a level stare, both hands open against the counter in front of her.

  “Add a tent because we can’t both sleep in here,” John said.

  Alex pulled his head from the fridge, gave John a shocked stare. Patsy glared at him as if he had just shoved Alex off his feet. He should have known they would interpret it as a homophobic comment and found some way to head it off at the pass.

  “I’m going to be doing my best to simulate a training environment here, and during no part of my training as a Marine did I ever sleep under the same roof as my instructors.” The surprise went out of Alex’s expression, and he returned to the task of loading the fridge. Patsy didn’t look like she would be so easily deterred.

  “We’re here because you want to help Alex. How’s that going to be possible if you’re too freaked out to sleep under the same roof with a gay guy?”

  “Can I talk to you outside?”

  “I’m not sure,” she answered.

  But she followed him out the door and toward the edge of the creek. Once they were face-to-face, she brushed strands of hair back from her forehead, folded her arms over her chest and cocked one eyebrow, as if she were about to get a lecture from a five-year-old.

  “Eddie Fucking Shane?” he asked when the silence became unbearable.

  “You all had a nice chat?” John didn’t respond. She continued, “I’m sorry. You have a problem here?”

  “I have a problem with the fact that he broke your nose. Yeah.”

  “I did, too. That’s why I didn’t marry him.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Aren’t you a little busy to be this concerned with my private life?”

  “Aren’t you a little too old to be dicking me around like this?”

  She dropped her arms from her chest, sucked in a deep breath, and stared at the creek next to them for a few minutes. “Eddie asked me if he should write you a letter when he came to see me. To apologize. I told him you probably didn’t want to hear from him. He said if that was the case, then he shouldn’t contact you because the way they do things in AA, they’re not supposed to unburden themselves at someone’s else expense.”

  “That’s nice of him. How could he afford this place?”

  “He couldn’t. I gave him most of the money. Efrem left me enough to live off for the next ten years, and between that and what the bar rakes in, I had it on hand.”

  “Eddie’s apologies sound pretty profitable if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you. And given the help I’ve been doling out recently, I’d take those AA meetings up the creek over what you’re about to do out here any day.” She pulled the list out of her pocket and grimaced at it. “Jesus Christ, John. Since when do I know how to pick out ammunition clips?”

  “You’re going to stay with him? Up in the main house?”

  “Yes, John. You want to know why? Because he’s the only man I’ve ever met who will go down on me for three hours.”

  His cheeks on fire, John brushed past her and started for the cabin. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, John. We sleep together every now and then, out here in Arizona. Where I don’t even live.” When she saw that this had stopped him, she continued. “I give second chances, John. I don’t do third or fourth chances, but Eddie’s only on number two. And guess what? So are you.”

  “If he hurts you again, I’ll kill him.”

  “Or you could j
ust stick around.”

  Before he could only fumble for a response to this, Patsy started for the main house, John’s grocery list held out in one hand beside her as if it gave off a sour odor.

  Inside the cabin, in one of the nightstand drawers, John found a pad and paper, which he removed quickly, before Alex could emerge from the shower. John carried the pad, paper, and a pen into the woods, and followed the creek in the direction Eddie had pointed earlier that day when he had said there was additional land.

  The trees thickened a little along the creek’s bank as he walked up the gradual slope. He came to a large clearing that looked like it had once held a storage shed, or possibly another house, that had burned to the ground. The large boulders lying in various locations throughout the clearing suggested they had been placed there by human hands, adornments to whatever structure had once occupied the dusty expanse between short, dry pine trees.

  He sat against one of the boulders and proceeded to draw an outline of a male figure. He didn’t bother to add any facial features. The number-one rule of hand-to-hand combat was that your opponent did not have a face. He had a head with two soft spots on either side called temples that could only effectively be struck with pinpoint accuracy. He had two highly vulnerable areas in the middle of his head that had only the softest layer of tissue for protection; these were called eyes, and targeting them was the perfect way to bring him to his knees. John had been trained to the degree that he could ward off any attacker’s blow with a quick series of defensive movements that could end in the attacker’s death, but he had no intention of teaching all of these to Alex.

  Many of these moves were about striking a sensitive part of the assailant’s anatomy so that their instinctive physical reaction would override their conscious thoughts. But for Alex, John would have to streamline this, teach him only the best places to strike, leaving out the blows everyone learned from the movies. Uppercuts to the jaw were out. They had to be delivered too forcefully, and the risk of injury to himself was too great. Punching a guy in the nose looked great on TV, but a skilled assailant could train himself to endure the watering eyes and bleeding that might follow.