Bait

by Mia Carson

  “So?” I asked when he didn’t continue.

  “So, you don’t embarrass the base commander when he’s drunk out of his mind, in a Mustang convertible, with some bimbo with her tits falling out all over the place, and you especially don’t call his wife to come see it. I didn’t receive a reprimand, but it was still a CLM.”

  “CLM?” I asked, saying each letter separately like he did.

  “Career limiting move. The official story became he was hypoglycemic at the time because he didn’t have his insulin with him, and the bimbo became a friend bringing him back to the base.”

  “But you didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “I know, and everyone involved does too, but the real story was too ugly. The captain went to bat for me, but in the end, he had to decide how important his career was to him. I was an airman first class, and I thought I was up for early promotion. That didn’t happen. When I first became eligible to be promoted to senior airman through regular time in grade, I was passed over again. When I asked about it, Captain Fillerton suggested that perhaps it would in my best interest not to reenlist. It was what he didn’t tell me that told me everything I needed to know.”

  “That sucks!”

  “Yeah, it does.” He held my eyes for a long moment. “Sometimes things don’t go as you planned.”

  I nodded. “You got that right.” I sighed. “I guess we both got fucked, huh?”

  Before he could answer I heard the patter of little feet. “Mommy?”

  “Yes. baby?”

  “Can Theodore stay?”

  I looked at Levi. I was sure he wouldn’t mind, but I didn’t want to step on his toes. He held his hand out. She didn’t want to go, but I nudged her toward him. She slowly stepped closer and handed the bear to him. He took it and held it to his ear a moment. He smiled and handed the bear back to her.

  “He told me he wanted to live here. I told him that was okay if you promise to take good care of him.”

  “I will!”

  He nodded. “Then I guess it’s okay.” She turned and dashed back down the hall. He stood. “It’s getting late and I need to go. Thank you for talking to me.”

  “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

  He snorted. “That Hamlinton is a town full of gossips and busybodies? I already knew that. But yeah, I think I’ve heard what I needed to hear.”

  He seemed so calm and put together. What I wouldn’t give to be so sure of myself. “I’m glad.”

  “I’ll be seeing you around,” he said as he stepped out.

  I nodded but said nothing as I closed the door. He hadn’t offered to kiss me. I was both relieved and disappointed. I didn’t have any right or expectation that we could start our relationship again, but there was a tiny twinge of disappointment deep down inside all the same.

  He hadn’t said he believed me, but he hadn’t said he didn’t either. I was pretty sure, though, he wasn’t going to stir up a bunch of shit, if for no other reason than out of respect for what we had. That, above all else, was a relief.

  I tucked Abby into bed, smiling to myself as she cuddled the bear Levi had given her. That shit Steve had never given her anything, the asshole. Abby in bed, I called Mom and gave her a thumbnail of our conversation. I could tell by the time I hung up with her she was thawing toward Levi, if not his family.

  I scurried around, doing laundry and other chores, until I finally threw myself into bed. Tomorrow was going to be another bitch of a day. I lay in bed, thinking. Levi was the same Levi I knew five years ago. Calm, confident, and kind. My breathing became heavier as tears threatened. I’d ruined such a good thing. I should’ve never gone to the barn. I’d deeply hurt the man I loved and lost the best thing in my life at the time. I imagined Abby, Levi, and myself as a family. The family that could have been. That thought was more than I could contain. I hadn’t cried myself to sleep in at least a couple of years, but I did that night.

  Levi

  “Your mom said you paid a visit to Ella last night,” Dad said.

  While his question sounded innocent, his tone clearly told me what he thought about it. While I respected his opinion, this was still my life and I wasn’t going to let him run it.

  He and I were performing maintenance on our combines as we prepped them for the work ahead. I stood and watched as the thick oil drained out of the massive machine a moment before I answered.

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.” When he didn’t say anything, I looked at him. “What?”

  “Why are you doing this to yourself? Nothing good can come from dredging all that up.”

  “I had to know.”

  He nodded as he inspected the various belts on the machine. “Did you find the answers you were looking for?”

  I moved to the next grease fitting and attached the gun, squeezing the trigger to inject grease into the bearing. “I don’t know. She still says she was drugged and raped. Her description of the event matches mixing Ambien with alcohol.”

  “The sleeping pill?” I could hear the doubt in his voice.

  “Yeah. The missing memory especially.”

  He grunted. “Sounds like a convenient excuse to me. Did she tell you nobody else agreed with her version of the story?”

  I nodded and moved to the next fitting. “Yeah. She said she got tired of fighting when nobody believed her and just gave up.”

  “Or maybe she finally admitted to herself she made a mistake. She shouldn’t have been drinking beer anyway.”

  I nodded but said nothing. Technically we were underage, but at the barn beer was always available. She and I had shared more than one beer there, and had since we were seniors in high school. Everyone in town knew the seventeen to twenty-year-olds were drinking beer underage, but nothing was said so long as they didn’t hurt anyone and were smart about driving under the influence. What happened at the barn, stayed at the barn.

  “She said she only had two beers. According to her, everyone agreed. Don’t you find it a little suspicious that she was so wasted after only two beers?”

  He paused to look at me. “Exactly. That’s why I think her story is a bunch of shit. You weren’t fooling anyone, Levi. Judy and I both know you and Ella were drinking and having sex. We didn’t like it, but I also knew if we tried to stop it, you’d only try to hide it more. We trusted you, and we trusted her. I guess, in hindsight, we shouldn’t have. Not her.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Dad. Yeah, we’d sometimes drink a few beers, but we weren’t having sex.” I could tell he didn’t believe me. “You know the first time I made love to Ella? Two weeks before I shipped out, on her birthday. We were both virgins until then.”

  He paled slightly. “Did you—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted. “I used a condom. When you first told me she was pregnant, it scared the shit out of me. I thought it might be mine. My point is, she wasn’t this wild party girl looking to get laid every chance she got. She was looking forward to leaving for college. We were going to get married. Why would she go out and do what everyone said she did? It doesn’t track with what I know about her.”

  He looked at me for a long time then pointed to a bearing. “Don’t forget the idler. I don’t know. Why did she change her story then?”

  “Maybe because nobody believed her?”

  “Do you believe her?” he asked.

  Did I? I wasn’t sure. Like Dad, it bothered me she had backed down and changed her story. I would have much preferred her to stand her ground, come hell or high water. I was the type of person who wouldn’t change what I believed if I thought I was right, and I didn’t care who it pissed off. The truth was the truth, whether anyone believed it or not. But I wasn’t here, and I didn’t know the pressure she was under.

  It also bothered me the police didn’t believe her. I knew the cops in town were honest, and if there’d been even a scrap of evidence to support her story, they’d have pursued it to the end. Apparently, Steve never de
nied they’d had sex, only the charges of rape. But even if she did decide to fuck him, we’d been so careful. Why would she suddenly throw caution to the wind and ride him bareback when she wasn’t on the pill? She was smarter than that, and two beers shouldn’t have been enough for her to forget what could happen.

  The other problem with the story is Cat was her best friend. I couldn’t see Cat drugging her just to get her in trouble or as a joke. That made no sense. Cat was wild as a March hare, but because she and Ella were close, she’d always respected Ella’s boundaries and never tried to poach me or steer Ella to someone else.

  Finally, there was Steve, who’d always been an asshole. He might have been good looking, and he certainly had his share of female companionship, Ella was among the group of girls in school that didn’t like him. Even if she had decided to cheat on me, I had a hard time imagining her doing it with Steve Calhoun.

  “I don’t know, Dad. I know she believes it. Whether it’s actually true or not, I can’t say.”

  “You need to stay away from this. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

  “I’m not.”

  He nodded. “What’s done is done. You can’t change it.”

  “I know.”

  “You just need to move on with your life.”

  “I know,” I said, my tone slightly sharper. I knew he was trying to look out of for me, but I was twenty-five years old. I wasn’t a kid anymore. “We’re done. I had to twist her arm to even get her to talk to me. She clearly has no interest in me anymore.”

  “That’s good, but what about you? Are you still interested in her?”

  “No, I guess not. It was good to see her again, but as you said, what’s done is done and I can’t change it.”

  He slapped me on the back. “I know it’s hard, son, but it’s true that time heals all wounds. I know you’re hurting. I could see it every time you came home, but each time you came back you seemed better. This time most of all. I know you loved Ella, maybe you still do in a way, but you’ll find someone else and you’ll forget all about her. You’re a good man, and some woman will be lucky to have you. You’ve made me proud.”

  I flushed. “Thanks, Dad, but don’t go all soft on me. I don’t think I can stand that.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Get your lazy ass back to work then,” he ordered.

  We spent the next couple of hours going over the combine, thoroughly checking it over to make sure it was in good repair. Having a combine breakdown in the middle of the harvest could potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in crop loss, plus Dad did some contract harvesting for other farmers. We had a pair of 9870s, real brutes of a machine, and I was at the front inspecting and greasing the header. Once we were finished with this one, we’d bring the other one into the shop and start the process all over again.

  Dad had stepped out of the shop for a moment, so I was left alone with my thoughts. I returned to Ella. Despite what she’d done, I felt bad for her. Her rented trailer was old, small, dull, and sun bleached on the outside, worn and slightly tattered on the inside, but it was neat and clean. The entry was into the kitchen and dining room, in the center of the trailer, with the living room to the right in the front, and the bedrooms, bathroom, and a connecting hall to the left at the back. She still had her Escape, but I could tell she was just getting by.

  I couldn’t figure out why I still cared. By her own admission, she wasn’t totally sure what happened that night. I couldn’t decide if it mattered to me if she’d wanted Steve to fuck her while she was under the influence of a drug or not. On the one hand, she wasn’t herself and not totally responsible for her actions, but on the other, maybe she had let him fuck her. Could I forgive her for that? If I got shit-faced and fucked someone other than Ella, should I expect her to forgive me?

  I turned the problem over in my mind. I wasn’t as pure as the driven snow in all of this. As soon as I heard the news she was pregnant, I’d fucked the first woman I could find to spread her legs. I could have waited to find out if she’d actually been raped, but instead of trying to be there for her, I’d gone balls deep in some woman every chance I got.

  I finally decided it did matter. If Ella had allowed Steve to fuck her because of her own actions, I couldn’t forgive her for that, no matter the circumstances. But, if she’d been drugged against her will, then it was rape, pure and simple. From that moment on, in my opinion, her hands were clean. Now, the question was, had she been drugged? She believed it, but I knew from my time as an MP, peoples’ memories were notoriously unreliable. Had she been drugged, or had she just convinced herself she’d been to try to assuage her guilt? I had no way to know. I thought about talking to Cat, but if she were willing to lie about it in the past, why would she admit to doing it after all these years, especially since if she had slipped something to Ella, that would make her culpable in rape?

  I growled out loud to the empty building. Thinking about this was making me nuts! I wanted to believe Ella, desperately wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe she loved me and wouldn’t fuck me over like everyone thought she had, but there was so much evidence against her. All I had was her word.

  I could go digging, but I’d promised her I wouldn’t cause trouble. Everyone seemed to be willing to let that sleeping dog lie, including Ella. Did I really want to stir that shit up again just for my pride? Even if I found out she was telling the truth, then what? She didn’t say Steve was the one that drugged her, and she admitted she was so out of it, for all she knew, she had asked him to fuck her. If he didn’t know about the drug, then did he actually rape her?

  God knows I’d fucked the shit out of plenty of women who were probably too wasted to legally give consent. I didn’t force myself on them, but I knew they were well lubricated. If they were coherent enough to come onto me, or I felt they were lucid enough to understand what was going to happen when I was coming on to them, I fucked them anyway. Did that make me a rapist? I didn’t feel like it did.

  Dad reappeared and I shoved the problem aside. Thinking about it was doing nothing but twisting me up anyway. I should just forget about her. Maybe I’d call Mackenzie and see if she was serious about catching up. I decided I would. I was going to forget the whole thing with Ella. I had my answer, and it was time to move on.

  “Hey, Dad! These cutter blades look pretty rough.”

  “Shit!” he spat as he stepped around the machine to where I was standing. “I meant to pick up some new ones when I was at the dealer the other day and completely forgot.”

  He examined the two rows of serrated knives that oscillated at the bottom of the header, the wide harvesting head hanging on the front of the machine. The knives were responsible for cutting the sorghum so it could be sucked into the combine and threshed.

  “Yeah, they look pretty beat up. I’ve already had them sharpened a couple of times. Monday, you can run into town and pick up a set. Probably should get two because the others are just as worn as these.”

  I almost groaned in despair. Replacing all the knives on a forty-foot draper header was a time-consuming, pain-in-the-ass job. Times two. With two machines to do, I’d spend a half day removing all the little bolts, taking off and replacing the knives, and then putting all the bolts back in and tightening them. It wasn’t hard work, but it was tedious as hell. You had to work stooped over for the top row of knives, and lying on your back for the bottom. Add to that, the blades were nearly razor sharp when they were new, so by the time I was done, I’d probably look like I’d been juggling cats from all the nicks, cuts, and scratches.

  “Swell,” I muttered.

  Dad chuckled. “I’ll let you do that. You still have young, nimble fingers.”

  “Swell,” I muttered again, causing Dad to laugh.

  “Have I mentioned how glad I am you’re home?”

  “Swell,” I said a third time, looking away so he wouldn’t see me smile.

  We finished the first combine and went to work on the second. By the time we finished the se
cond harvester, it was approaching dinner, but with the exception of replacing the cutter blades, both machines were fit and ready for work.

  One thing about farming, it left me with a sense of accomplishment. I’d enjoyed my job in the Air Force, but what I did there was just a stepping stone. I had to pay my dues, Time in Service, as the Air Force called it, before I’d have the opportunity to work with the dogs. That was what I really wanted to do, and that was the reason I’d selected the Air Force. The Air Force was responsible for training all the military’s dogs, no matter the branch they served in. I was going to put in my time as an MP until I was eligible for additional specialty training to work with a dog. After being a handler for a few years, I was going to apply for transfer back to the dog training facility where I would begin training new dogs and handlers.

  Unfortunately, after the incident with the colonel, that path was closed to me, and I would spend the rest of my career struggling for every promotion. But here, I could look at the equipment Dad and I spent the day servicing, equipment worth nearly a million dollars, and say, ‘yeah, I accomplished something today.’ It was a good feeling after my last year in the service when I felt like I was doing nothing but spinning my wheels.

  After dinner, while Dad watched television as the Cowboys played the Giants on Sunday Night Football, and Mom caught up with Kamron and Rebecca, my two older sisters, I wandered around outside, trying to decide what to do. I was waffling between calling Mackenzie and not. I’d gone so far as to look up Dolly’s number on the internet to see if Mackenzie was working tonight and wanted to have a beer after she got off, but I hadn’t hit dial.