by Naomi Niles
I watched him closely out of the corner of my eye, unsure of what to make of the man. He was different. The navy had changed him. He bland and quiet, far too serious for his own good, and didn’t seem to be enjoying himself at all. But there was something pensive about him, like his mind was racing a thousand miles a second. I wondered what was going on inside his head that he couldn’t get past it long enough to have fun.
Michael got up to talk to him, and he waved away the beer Michael brought — a purist, I thought. I liked that. When he braced himself against the chair to get up, his arms flexed, and a shiver passed down my spine. He used to represent budding male sexuality, the embodiment of everything innocent, young and vibrant in masculine nature. Now, he’d fully matured. He wasn’t budding, young, or even vibrant. He was the stoic, brute force behind the masculine spirit.
“How’s the party going?” Carrie, Dwayne’s mother, came up behind me.
“Good. I am starving. I could eat a side of beef and still have room for those ribs.”
“Food’s coming up,” Dwayne’s dad called out from his place at the grill.
“I’ll bet you’re glad to have Dwayne back at home,” I said to Carrie.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this moment. He was stationed in Afghanistan during the war, and it’s so dangerous there. I’ve been worried.”
“He’s lucky to have a mom who cares about him as much as you do.”
“My boys are my life,” she said. “Without them, I’d have nothing.”
“That’s not true.” Jesse walked up, his eyes bright red, and put his arm around his mom’s shoulder. “You’d have your knitting.”
“Put a sock in it.” She wrenched away playfully.
“Sorry,” he said and walked off.
“Well, I better get back to the party. There’s still a lot of cooking to do and tons of dishes.”
“If you need any help, just let me know,” I said, mostly to be nice. I was still dying for a taste of those ribs.
“Hey, little sis.” Michael came out, red in the face with one arm as far around Dwayne’s shoulders as it would go and a beer in his hand. “This is for you.” He handed me the beer.
“Thanks,” I took it from him and set it down, trying not to blush at the way that Dwayne was staring at me. “You should go check on the food.” I glared at him.
“Sorry, I was just trying to be nice.” He staggered off.
“Sorry about that,” Dwayne said. “He had some of Jesse’s tequila.”
“I see that,” I laughed.
He smiled. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“I’m doing well. Lexie and I are running a ballet school in Chattanooga.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s a dream. Most people never get a chance to do what they love for a living. How are you? What are your plans now that you’re out?”
“I’m not sure what I want. It’s a little strange being out, but I’ve got a job lined up in Chattanooga working for a security company.”
“I’d love to-”
“Come and get it,” Dwayne’s dad called out, interrupting our conversation.
Everyone started shuffling around outside, scrambling for a plate. Dwayne disappeared with his ribs while I was left sitting at the table. He was so different. In high school, he had been loud and boisterous, always joking with Michael. Something had snuffed out that excitement, leaving behind a beautiful enigma — solid, strong, and disciplined.
I wanted to crack open his shell to see what was inside. Back in the house, I found him and Michael sitting on the couch. “Hey, sis.”
“Hey, listen, I’m gonna head home.” I’d written my number down on a napkin and folded it up in my hand so that he’d take it when I shook his hand. He took it, his eyes went wide, then met mine with a knowing smile and a look of raw desire so palpable it made me shudder.
Michael turned to me. “Don’t you have something better to be doing than hitting on my best friend?”
“Michael, I’m not hitting on him.”
“Whatever,” he shrugged.
“It was nice seeing you again, Dwayne,” I started to walk out.
“You, too.” The tone of his voice said a whole lot more than his words.
Chapter Seven
Dwayne
The pillar moved out of the darkness, and the light from the hole in the ceiling above illuminated the dirt-encrusted woven cloth. It wasn’t black. It was baby blue with a thin screen so the woman could see out of the eye holes. This was a woman. It wasn’t uncommon for the Taliban men to dress like women to disguise themselves. They must’ve figured it was inconspicuous, walking around in a dirty sheet like a little kid.
She handed me a noted written on yellowed paper that said in English, “Help.” It wasn’t uncommon for women to seek assistance from us. Many of them were sold to their husbands, beaten, and starved, but I knew there was something different about her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have known how to write, much less write in English, and she didn’t have the subdued or hysterical nature of the battered wives.
She led me through to a small room, lit by kerosene lamps with a fire blazing in the oven in the corner where she had a pot of coffee boiling. There were two women sitting in the corner. Their faces were uncovered and painted, poorly, but it was nice to see nonetheless because it represented rebellion against their theocratic regime.
The woman motioned for me to sit down in a corner. When she pulled off her burka, I could see that she had long, black hair that fell below her curvy figure. She was beautiful and capable, not meek or angry like the other women I’d met.
She poured a cup of thick coffee and offered it to me. I took it and drank it slowly. There were the standard greetings as the women came and sat across from me. I understood most of what they said. I’d been speaking more Pashto than English for months, but the quick, disjointed rhythm of the language still eluded me.
“My name is Anisa.” She pointed to an elderly woman to her right. “This is Gita.” And to a younger woman farther to her right. “And this is Pari.” Pari smiled. She was young and plump with a cheerful nature uncommon to women in that world.
“It’s nice to meet the three of you,” I said.
“Why are your men here?” Gita asked. “This is not your country. We have enough problems of our own without you coming here and blowing people up.”
“Gita,” Anisa interjected. “This man is our guest.”
“I’m sorry,” Pari said to me. “She can be a bit mean sometimes.”
“Mean,” Gita laughed. “I’m confronting a murderer.”
“Stop.” Anisa waved her away. “We said we weren’t going to do this.” The old woman looked offended, but stepped down.
“Do you know what’s happened in the village?” Anisa asked.
“I just arrived.” I wasn’t sure I was saying things right, but they seemed to understand.
“He won’t help,” Gita said.
“You don’t know that,” I told her. “We’re friends.” I motioned between us.
“Do friends kill one another?” she asked.
“No,” I said, hoping it would calm her concerns.
“I told you,” Pari seemed to light up. “They’re not here to hurt us. It’s just like the Galan said.”
“What happened?” I asked Anisa.
She was graceful, with her back straight and her brown eyes filled with determination. “A group of men came to the village and took all of the girls who’d reached their time.”
“I’m sorry.” I looked from Pari, to Gita, then Anisa.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Gita said. “We want our children.”
“Do you know where they took them?”
“Some of the men know,” Anisa told me. “But they won’t tell us. We think they were paid to keep quiet.”
“That’s the only way they could know who to take and who to leave behind,” Pari explained. “They knew
who’d bled.”
“You think they’re being married off?” I asked them.
“Of course they are,” Gita laughed. “Why else would they take the girls?”
“In my country, we don’t do things like that, so we’re not familiar with the way you do things.”
“It’s not like we have a choice here,” Gita said.
“No, you don’t, and that’s why I’m going to help you. I need to know who these men are and where to find them.”
Anisa pulled out a map of the village scrawled on a piece of wood with what looked like charcoal. She pointed at a square in the corner. “This is Amir al-Fatin’s house. He’s weak. He’ll give in if you apply enough pressure.”
Gita smiled. “Make him hurt.”
I laughed. “I’ll try.”
Pari left while Gita was gathering her things. She turned back to Anisa before leaving. “It’s not proper.”
“Look around. We’re starving. Who are we to say what is and isn’t proper?”
Gita shook her head and walked out. “I should go.” I started to get up.
“Are you sure?” Anisa asked. I wasn’t. I wanted to stay, but this could get both of us killed. Unmarried men and women weren’t supposed to be alone together. Like Anisa said, the people were starved. They’d assume the worst.
“I could take another cup of coffee.” She poured it for me and offered me a piece of noni, their soft flatbread.
“No, thank you.”
She came up behind me, pressed her hands against my shoulders and began kneading them. She knew how to press into the soft places, graze the hard ones, and how to make her finger flow.
“I should go.” I started to get up.
“You don’t have to.” She walked around to sit in front of me and met my eyes. Her hands were soft, neither rough nor dirty. When she moved them over my cheek, the skin tingled, and I tensed up.
This wasn’t a poor woman, not by Afghani standards. She must’ve been independent before the Taliban took over. She’d been deprived of so much. How could I deny her this one moment? My heart wasn’t in it, but I’d do what I could to help.
I let her kiss me, and she moved her hands over my body and lay me down on a cushion. She stood up and began unwrapping the loose black fabric held together by a knot at her shoulder. “Is this okay?” she asked in English.
“If it’s okay with you,” I said.
She fell on the ground crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She shrank back away from me.
“What is it?” I knelt down in the corner beside her.
“Men don’t believe in love here. They ride us like horses and throw us away. We’re traded, raped, and beaten.”
“I know.”
She crashed her lips to mine, and I realized that this was her first truly intimate experience. She pushed me onto the floor and started to unwrap the black piece of fabric that’d been knotted at her shoulders.
Something crashed, and I looked behind me. A man wearing a white turban was standing behind me. He was holding a rifle. Anisa jerked back and ran into the corner as he advanced on me. I reached down to grab the handle of the handgun in the pocket near my knee.
Anisa jerked back, and I heard her cursing, using a string of words I’d never heard before. The man stepped over me, grabbed her by the hair, and threw her to the ground. The sound of the blast shot me up out of bed.
I looked around. I was laying my old room. The smell of bacon and coffee was rising up the stairs into my room. I got up and began smoothing out my bed, folding the ends and tucking the edges of the blanket under the mattress. Then I stood up to inspect my work. It was perfect.
When I walked downstairs, there was a buffet set out on the island. My mom had cooked everything that she could think of, from biscuits and gravy to pancakes, and she wasn’t done. She was standing in front of the stove adding strips of bacon onto a mountainous pile she’d built up.
“Are you feeding the whole county?” I came up behind her, and she jolted.
“God, you scared me.”
“Sorry; what is all this?” I grabbed a mug and poured myself some coffee.
“It’s for you and your brother and your dad, and I’m making everything so you can have as much as you want.”
“I’ll have whatever I want for the next ten years if you keep it up.”
“You and I both know that once your brother’s good and high, he’ll come out here and eat half of what I cooked.”
“Good point.” I grabbed piece of toast.
“Don’t tell me that’s all you’re eating.” She sighed.
“For now. I’m sure I’ll get something else later once I’ve finished my workout.” I took a sip of my coffee.
She went back to her bacon, flipped the rest into the pan and turned off the stove. “What are your plans for the day?”
“I’m gonna head down to Chattanooga and start looking for a place to stay.”
“Did you need me to come with you? I know the city really well, and I know you haven’t been there but once in ten years.”
“No, I kind of need the time to think.”
“What are you getting? A one bedroom?”
“I don’t know. I’ve saved up quite a bit. Most of the pay they’ve given me went straight to savings. I could probably get a house if I wanted to, but I’m not sure I want to go to all the trouble, so I’m thinking I might rent one for now until I decide what I’m going to do.”
“Your life’s kind of uncertain right now, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“I hope you find your way.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll be fine.” I walked back upstairs to start my workout.
I hadn’t had a chance to rent a car when I landed, since my family whisked me off to their barbecue, so I was left to drive my old mustang, an ancient project car that I’d built in high school. It was jerky and needed to be painted, but it got me into town.
I had a list of places all written up. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or where I wanted to live, so I chose places that looked nice and checked around the neighborhood online to see how things were.
The first place was on the edge of the city in a newer housing complex. When I pulled onto the street, I was shocked at just how small the houses were. They were thin, two-story cookie cutters, each with a small patch of grass in front that’d been advertised as a lush garden.
The houses were all made from cheap, uniform parts no better than tissue paper, which meant the landlord was price gouging. They were three times the price of anything else I’d seen online. I gave the agent the finger when I passed the house then drove off.
The next house wasn’t worth looking into. When I turned onto the neighborhood, I saw that there were bars on every window and thugs walking around talking to hobos that’d posted themselves near light poles and street corners.
The third one was my safety. It was a square blue house, not much bigger than an apartment with a chain link fence surrounding it and a long telephone wire that fell down the light pole and attached itself above the front door. The houses around it were older, but there were no thugs on the street corner or bars on the windows. The neighborhood was normal, blue-collar, middle America.
An ancient yellow beetle pulled up beside my car across the street and a large, elderly woman got out. She had big blonde hair, so high it added a foot onto her normal height. She waddled towards me her hair swinging back and forth. She wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she was looking me over, hunting down any sign of weakness. I let her, pretending not to notice.
“Mr. Howell?” she asked.
“Yes, my name’s Dwayne.” I held out my hand.
She shook it, and her icy shell melted into a warm smile. Then she met my eyes. “I raised three boys in this house, and I loved it almost as much as I loved them. I need to know that you’re going to take care of it, you understand?”
“I do, and you don’t have to worry. I’ll leave t
he place cleaner than when I got here.”
“Good; come with me.”
There was a small square living room, bare, with white, ceramic tile and black grout. The kitchen was simple, but it had the necessities, and the bathrooms were small, but they’d be easy to clean. “It’s not much, but it’s not trash, either.” She walked me into the master bedroom. “I’ll need you to use rugs. I can’t be replacing scratched tiles, and if one of those things breaks, it’s hell to fix it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I walked over to the bedroom window to take a look outside where I saw the silver and scorched brown trunk of a massive eucalyptus tree.
“You’re military, aren’t you?”
I turned to face her. “How’d you know?”
“The way you hold yourself and your hair, of course. You can live here. I can tell you’ll take care of it.”
“I will.” I nodded my head. “I think I’ve made my decision. I want the place.”
“Really?” She sounded excited. “You have no idea how relieved I am. I’ve got a single mother with two sets of twins — two,” she repeated, “and she’s been asking nonstop if she can rent the place. I almost said yes just to shut her up, but I know little kids. They will tear this place apart.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Would you like to go over the paperwork now?”
“That’s fine. How soon can I move in?”
“As soon as you need to.” I spent some time going over the lease and talking to the landlord. She wasn’t picky or difficult to deal with, just determined and protective of her house. I did my best reassure her before I left to go get myself something to eat before driving back home.
I chose a small burger place a couple of blocks away and found a booth in the back so I could have some privacy. My phone started ringing when I sat down. “Hello?”
“Hi,” said a man’s voice. “I’m looking for Dwayne Howell.”
