“If anybody’s brain can do it, it’s yours.”
“I just can’t focus. And I’m no good to do anything around here.” He changed the channel. “Okay, I just have to try harder.” His glared at the TV like he was getting mad. I’d seen his mood swings in the hospital, and I needed to do something.
“Look at that,” I said. “Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street. Remember that movie? They hauled in all those bags of mail for Santa Claus and poured ’em right on the judge’s desk. Cool, right?”
“Yeah, cool,” Ben said. “Remember when you wrote to Santa for a puppy?”
“Sure, and he brought me my dog, Red, just like I asked.”
“Good ol’ Santa,” he said. “You thought he’d forgotten till Mom told you she’d heard reindeer walking around the barn.”
“That’s where my puppy was hiding,” I said. Then I stopped. “You remember?” I asked.
Slowly, Ben’s face lit up. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”
Christmas was great. It snowed overnight and Lali about busted a gut over her new bike. We gave Grandpa Roy a fancy bridle, the kind for parades and whatnot. Grandma Jean carried that yarn around in her big bag for a reason. All the while she’d been staying with us, she’d knitted up a pile of sweaters, and now she sent one for everybody. Mine didn’t even have reindeer or snowflakes on it. It was a plain deep green. You’d actually want to wear it.
I gave Ben a phone card and some CDs. There’s not much you can really use in the hospital. He gave me a lead rope he’d braided in his occupational therapy class.
“How’d you make that?” I asked.
“Slowly,” he laughed. “The therapist helped.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No worries, bro’.”
Ben saved his present for Mom for the last. It was a little box wrapped in shiny green paper. She unwrapped it, lifted the lid, and ran her finger across whatever was inside. She brushed a tear off her cheek.
“Don’t cry, Mom,” he said. “I really want you to have it.”
Mom wiped her eyes and handed the box to Dad. He turned it face out so we could see. Right there, sitting on a square of velvet, was Ben’s Purple Heart—the medal the government gives guys who get wounded in wars. “I wouldn’t be here…I needed you there, Mom…all that time,” Ben said to her. “I don’t remember much.” He grinned. “But I want you to know…”
Mom clutched the tiny medal to her heart. Then she kissed Ben on his helmet.
Ben stayed with us for two more days and then his leave was over, and Mom and Dad flew him back. Talking to him, joking with him over Christmas, it was like waking up from a really, really bad dream.
The holiday season seemed to soften Mom up, and she gave me back my skateboard and took me off restriction. Favi was in Mexico with her family, and Mike’s family took a vacation in Hawaii, so I spent my freedom hanging out with Lali. We piled dirt and gravel into a low ring, like a dam, behind the barn. I hooked up the hose and filled it with water.
“It’s almost done, Cammy.” Lali clapped her hands.
“Not yet. It’ll be ready tomorrow.”
It froze overnight, and the next day, we had a sheet of ice to slide around on.
And since Mom had to drop some bookkeeping jobs on account of the extra time she’d spent with Ben in Palo Alto, Dad cut back on more expenses. He sold some old equipment but he didn’t sell any stock. He probably didn’t fancy going up against Grandpa Roy again.
Grandpa Roy had let me drive the pickup and the ATVs and tractors around the ranch since I was about ten, so now I asked my folks if I couldn’t drive into town.
“Everybody knows me. I can do errands for you.” I didn’t add that I was bored. “Mike got his license a month ago. I can drive as good as Mike.”
“You know that’s so he can drive for his mother while his dad’s going back and forth to Oregon,” Dad said.
“Still, if Mike has a license, I can drive too, right?”
“Wrong,” Mom said.
“But I already know how. I could take the truck down to Hawthorne to see Grandma Jean. I miss her.”
“Grandma Jean wants us to visit. She said so,” Lali said.
Mom smiled a little. “That’s not the point.”
“Mike’s dad lets him drive their old Volvo.” I tried one last time.
“You know that’s different,” Dad said.
So that finished my idea of driving to Hawthorne. Or to town, for that matter.
Mike came home from Hawaii, we started back to school, and then the doctors did another surgery on Ben, this time on his skull. They opened it up and put a plastic piece in where the bone had been. Mom drove to Palo Alto again and stayed at the Fisher House.
Saturday, Mike and I were skating in his driveway same as before Mom and Dad grounded me. His mom stuck her head out the door. “Cam, your grandfather’s on the phone.”
“Tell him you need to stay longer,” Mike said. “We’re just getting going.”
I knocked the dirt off my feet, stepped onto their marble floor, and took the phone. “Hi, Grandpa,” I said. I peeled off my jacket and tossed it on a chair.
“Cam, Lali and I are going down to Palo Alto to be with your mom. You need to come on home in time to fix your dad’s dinner.”
“What’s wrong with Ben?” I asked.
“He’s got a fever from the operation. They can’t knock it down. I think he’ll come through okay, but your mom is too worn out to be there by herself.”
“He’s bad, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know. You just come home for dinner. Your father needs family around too.”
“I want to go to Palo Alto.”
“Not this time. We won’t be gone long. It’s done then.” And he hung up.
My stomach clenched up like I’d been punched. I handed Mrs. Gianni the phone and went to talk to Mike.
“I’m going home,” I said. “Ben’s really bad. They’re going to Palo Alto.”
Mike shook his head. “What’s up?”
“He’s got a fever from the surgery,” I said. “Grandpa and Lali are going. Dad’s not.”
“Can’t be that bad, then,” Mike said. “Stay and we’ll work it off on the skateboards.”
“No, I’m going.” I jumped on my bike and took off. I pedaled fast and could just see the ranch road in front of me when Darrell passed in his pickup. He threw it in reverse and lowered the window. “Hey, Cam, I’m going over to get on a bull. Want to come?”
I looked toward my house. My muscles burned from biking hard. I didn’t want to think about Ben anymore. There was still some time before dinner. “Yeah,” I said, and I lifted my bike and board into the back of his truck. I climbed in next to him, and we turned toward the bull ring.
“Haven’t seen you for a while,” Darrell said.
“I’ve been around.”
“You’ll like this little Brahma we’ve got. He’s one nasty bull.” He pulled the truck up next to the bull ring and we got out. The arena smelled almost sweet. I listened to the gravel under my tennis shoes. It sounded sweet too. We climbed the platform and I breathed deep. My shoulders relaxed. Right then, nothing mattered but getting on this new bull. Andy Echevarria was fixing to ride. I leaned over the holding pen to slap the bull into the chute. He mooed at me, and I heard tires crunching through the gravel. I turned and Mike’s dad waved me over. Mike jumped out of the passenger side of the Volvo.
“We were on our way to your house but I saw you when we drove by.” He handed me my jacket. “You left your coat.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I thought you were going home.”
“I was.” I jumped off the platform, level with him.
Mike just looked at me. “We were skating.”
“I had to go.”
“Why would you leave and come over here when we can finally skate together?” he asked. And he stared some more.
“’Cause Ben might die,” I said. “He’s got an infection from the surgery. Don’t yo
u get it?”
“You’re up next, O’Mara,” Darrell called down to me.
“I get that you’re going to ride a bull and your mom will take your skateboard again.”
“Big deal,” I said. When he didn’t answer, I kept talking. “The trouble with you, Mike, is you never lost anything.”
He narrowed his eyes and glared at me. “You better choose your friends. Now.”
“I gotta go,” I said. I climbed back up on the platform. I heard a car door slam. Mike had never been on a bull. He didn’t get it. I lowered myself onto the tight little Brahma and pulled hard on Darrell’s bull rope. What Mike didn’t get was, starting right then, I didn’t have to think.
Mike stopped talking to me at school. Everybody asked about it. “What’s up with you two?”
“Nothing,” I said. Nothing Mike couldn’t fix by letting me do what I wanted. Bull ride. Skateboard. Whatever. I didn’t need my friends telling me what to do. I had parents for that. Mike could rot. I had enough to fret about.
With Ben sick again, I skated alone at the Grange to let off steam. At night, I walked over to the Ruizes’ and played video games with Favi. Dad scrubbed the kitchen till it shined. And then he did crossword puzzles. And we waited. This time Grandpa did the calling, and he said they had Ben on some “big gun” antibiotics. “The doctors say he’ll pull through fine.” I didn’t trust it. My family had lied to me before, so I didn’t feel any relieved.
After a few days, the phone rang, and it was Ben himself. He sounded good. “I’m sending Mom and Grandpa back to you pretty soon,” he said.
“Great.” I carried the phone with me out toward the barn. “I heard you were pretty bad off.”
“Yeah, well, that’s so. But they got the fever stopped.” We shot the breeze for a while, and just before we hung up, Ben said, “Hey, remember that kid I saw in the hospital when you were here? The one who looked familiar? He showed up in my room to visit me after Mom left last night. He just came and sat down.”
“Maybe it’s the fever messing with your mind,” I said. “What would that kid be doing coming to see you?”
“No, he was here. He didn’t talk, though.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah, it was.” He stopped. “Hey, the nurse is coming in with meds. I gotta go.”
“Take care of your pretty new head,” I said.
“Prettier than yours, bro’.”
Now that sounded like Ben.
In February, they brought Ben home again, this time for a ten-day “visit.” He was moving better and had a walker that the VA hospital had fixed up special so he could hang on to it with his artificial arm. He could use the walker to stand up and even take some steps. His speech was still pretty good, and his head looked almost normal after they patched him up. His hair was still growing in, but he didn’t have to wear the dumb blue helmet anymore.
“Hey, Frankenstein,” I said.
“Hey, dog face.”
“Look at that, you’re standing up. You decided to get off your butt?”
“Say tush,” Lali said.
“Stop that,” Mom said.
“Stop what?” Ben asked. The old Ben seemed to be coming back.
The days with Ben were good, but the nights were a different story. I slept upstairs and Ben slept down, but that first night, he screamed loud enough to wake us all no matter where we slept. I shot out of bed and skipped stairs on the way down. Mom and Dad tore downstairs right after me. Ben was sitting up in bed, eyes open, shrieking.
“Ben, wake up.” Dad shook him. Ben took a swing at Dad but missed him. “Ben,” Dad yelled, “you’re dreaming!” He shook him again, hard. Ben stopped screaming and looked at us blankly. You could see him trying to place where he was. “Ben, you’re all right,” Dad said quietly.
“I had a dream,” Ben said. He was shaking. Mom turned on the light. Ben’s face was ashy white.
“I’ll get you some water,” she said.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I was dreaming. Bad stuff.”
He sipped at the water and set the glass down next to his new hand on the piano bench. “They say I got more memory back along with my speech. It’s bad. I can’t sleep.”
“Your dreams,” she asked, “are they about the war?”
“It’s like I’m still there,” he said. “I can’t stop them.”
“Well, you’re safe with us, you’re home,” Dad put his hand on Ben’s shoulder.
“They were shooting at me. The noise. It wouldn’t stop. All that fire.” Then Ben saw me. He stopped talking and looked around, like he knew where he was. “Are you all up?” he asked.
“No, Grandpa Roy’s deaf,” I said. “And Lali sleeps through anything.”
“What day’s tomorrow?” Ben asked.
“Saturday.”
“Stay up with me, Cam? We can watch a movie.”
Mom and Dad kissed him good night and went back to bed. The TV reception was gone, except for the Kung Fu channel, since Dad had turned off the satellite service to save money. So, I rummaged through the DVDs and old videos. I put on Top Gun. Ben had always loved it, but as soon as the planes started firing, he got all sweaty. “I’ll find something else,” I said. “It’s just a stupid movie.” We settled on one of Lali’s little kid movies about panda bears. I stayed with Ben till he fell asleep. The sun was lighting the sky behind the mountains when I got back to bed. I had chores to do, but they would wait. I closed my eyes.
The next day, Ben seemed fine. But I was worried. I called Grandma Jean.
“Cam, I’m glad to hear your voice.”
“Me too. How are you?”
“How are you? I can tell—is something wrong?”
“Ben had this nightmare. It was awful. I don’t know what to do.”
Grandma Jean sighed. “Honey, you don’t always have to be the one who fixes things. Let your parents and the doctors take care of it. They will.”
“Are you sure? I wish you were here.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
Just talking to her made Ben’s dream seem less scary.
But that night, it happened all over again.
“They said this could happen,” Mom whispered to me after Ben went back to sleep.
“Do you think he wakes up every night?” I asked.
“Oh, I hope not. It’s the memories. He’s got to sort out the awful memories.”
“How long?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “I wish he were home for good.”
“Let’s give him something else to think about,” I said. “Let Grandpa Roy and me take him to the bull ring. Let’s do something he loves.”
“In the morning. We’ll talk in the morning.” Then Mom went to bed, and I was so beat I lay back in the easy chair and slept next to my big brother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’ve got to be honest. For months Ben seeped into everything we did. “How’s Ben doing?” everyone asked. They asked it at the feed store and at church, at school and at Grandpa’s bingo night. Ben wasn’t doing well. But we smiled and said, “As well as expected,” or “Thanks, he’s getting along.”
So when we got pulled into Ben’s nightmares and his remembering, there was only one thing I could think of doing that would take my mind and his right off his troubles. On a bull, you don’t have time to think about anything. Mom wasn’t so excited about me taking Ben to the bull ring, especially with the ice on the roads, but Grandpa and Dad got it right away. Grandpa called Tom Lehi, and Dad called Earl Wallace, Darrell’s dad, and the Echevarria brothers—Andy’s dad and uncle. Then they went a step further. They said they’d set up a chute in the Salt Lick corral. We’d all meet up there Sunday after church. Grandpa talked about laying a bonfire, and soon enough, the old guys were thinking about food.
“We’re fixing to do a bull ride,” I told Ben.
“Now?” he asked.
“Yeah, right now. Everyone’s coming up Sunday. You can show off your new head.”
Ben laughed. “It looks okay, huh?”
“You look good,” I said. “The girls’ll be hitting on you, for sure.”
“Don’t think so,” he said. “They like guys who can walk.”
“Don’t talk like that, you dork,” I said. “Sometimes you’re just way dorky.”
“Who you calling that?” he asked. And, you know, he threw his pillow at me.
We only had three days till Sunday, so Dad loaded some of those green portable railings into the pickup, and after school I helped him and Grandpa. We took the gas-powered auger, ’cause the ground was half-frozen, and some bags of cement. The corral at the salt lick was a loading area for putting the stock onto trucks. It had a V-shaped chute that ran into the corral for penning the cattle and another chute that ran out of the corral and up about four feet high for loading them onto a truck. Dad had added some extra height to the corral and doubled up the rails a couple of years ago when the government Bureau of Land Management, the BLM, wanted to use it for some wild horses, so it was stronger than your regular rail cow pen. But there wasn’t any bucking chute. Dad was looking to fix that.
Now, we had a perfectly good bull arena in town with solid sides and a real chute, but no one suggested we use it. I’m guessing they all understood—the salt lick was the center of our ranch. It was the center of us, really. It was where Lali’d learned to ride a horse and I’d roped my first calf. It was where Mom and Dad came to picnic when they were tired of the rest of us. Grandpa said it was the best place to break a green bronc, so he was figuring there’d be a little salt lick magic for bull riders, too. This was the place to cheer Ben up.
As luck would have it, the loading chute backed right to the gravel road, so Dad parked the truck next to the corral without having to venture into the mud alongside the fence. “I’m thinking we can block off a bucking chute in that one,” he said, pointing to the broad chute that narrowed to the corral gate. “We can fix the gate to swing wide, and after the rides we can run ’em off into the loader.”
“The steers are gonna fly right off the end of that ramp. A bovine bungee jump—is that what you’re meaning to do?” Grandpa Roy asked, laughing.
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