The Drifter

by Nick Petrie

  “Lewis, you better get out of here before the cops come,” said Peter. “And take this guy with you. He’s a friend of ours.”

  Lewis opened his mouth to talk, but Peter shook his head.

  “He’s a friend. And I’ll deal with the cops,” he said. “I’ll find you in a few days. You know we’re still missing one asshole. Skinner’s still going to make out like a bandit on this.”

  Lewis nodded. Then ducked in cautiously to peck Dinah on the cheek. Dinah didn’t lean in to the kiss, but she didn’t move away, either. Her eyes were shining.

  The sound of the sirens grew louder, and came from all directions.

  “Come on,” said Lewis to Midden. “We gotta skate.”

  As the two men jogged across the bridge to disappear into the tangled streets of Brewer’s Hill, Peter turned to Dinah. “You’re okay?”

  “Oh, hell, no,” she said, tears streaming down her face. She pulled her boys close with a ferocious smile. “But I’m good.”

  “I’m going to take off for a few minutes,” said Peter. “Get hold of my dog. I don’t want the cops to shoot him. But I’ll be right back.”

  EPILOGUE

  The British Virgin Islands were a boater’s paradise, with steady winter winds, sheltered anchorages, and excellent restaurants. The sailing yacht Skin Deep swung on her anchor in thirty feet of turquoise water off Cooper Island. Manchioneel Bay was crowded with boats, the Christmas tourist season in full flood.

  The fifty-foot cruiser was a beautiful boat, her sleek lines much admired by the charter tourists from Indiana and Missouri in their smaller rented plastic tubs. Skin Deep’s owner had brought her in by himself, the boat apparently rigged to sail single-handed with every modern convenience.

  Like the boat, her owner was handsome with an aristocratic charm, clearly a man of means and much invited to dinner at the Cooper Island Beach Club. He flirted shamelessly with the wives and daughters and impressed the men with his broad knowledge of fine wines and the financial markets. When asked what he did for a living, he smiled broadly and said only that he was an investor whose biggest bet had paid off handsomely. Then changed the subject to various routes through the islands to South America. He planned to make Rio in time for Carnival.

  After dark, the reggae grew louder in the beachside bars. Daiquiri-stunned tourists steered their buzzing dinghies uncertainly from the Beach Club to their chartered tubs. Nobody noticed the silent swimmers easing through the black water toward Skin Deep’s teak-trimmed stern ladder.

  Three forms floated like ghosts up her side and into her salon. Footprints wet on the deck, and warm as blood.

  Then came a moment when the boat rocked violently, but only for a moment. Perhaps just a rogue wave in the night, from a ship passing far out at sea.

  Then Skin Deep’s hatches slid shut one by one. The generator started up and the air-conditioning came on, the metallic purr floating softly across the water. For a long time, no other sound could be heard.

  In the morning, the charter tourists noticed that Skin Deep, that elegant sailing yacht, seemed to have slipped her moorings in the night and headed off to sea.

  —

  Standing behind the big chrome wheel, steering past Great Dog Island, Lewis was sorry they couldn’t keep the boat.

  When the news of the bomb came out, the markets panicked. Even though the bomb didn’t actually explode, Skinner’s scheme paid off in a big way.

  So once they had the account numbers and passwords, once the money was transferred and laundered, Lewis could buy his own boat. They all could. They could buy a damn fleet.

  Although he was probably just going to go back home. He and Dinah were really talking again. And those boys. He was crazy about those boys.

  He didn’t know if it would work out. But he could try.

  It was amazing what happened when you started doing the right thing.

  He could see Midden and Peter inside the boat’s salon, talking quietly with Skinner, who lay wide-eyed and duct-taped on the teak floor. Skinner’s laptop was open on the chart table, waiting for the satellite connection.

  The lights of Virgin Gorda were gone behind the headland when Peter came out of the salon with two cold bottles of Red Stripe.

  He took a deep breath of the cool night air to settle the white static and closed the door behind him. “It’s done.” He handed Lewis a beer.

  Lewis smiled, his tilted grin wide. “How much?”

  “You won’t believe it,” said Peter. The breeze felt clean on his face, and the lights on the distant islands looked close enough to touch. The boat lifted on the waves and he felt his shoulders loosen and drop. “More than an honest man could make in a hundred lifetimes.”

  “Never said I was an honest man,” said Lewis, his grin white in the dark night. “Four-way split, right?”

  “Our deal was eighty-twenty, remember? Eighty for you, twenty for Dinah.”

  Lewis shook his head. “I invalidate that agreement, motherfucker. Make it an even split, four ways. You, me, Midden, and Dinah.”

  “What you do with your money is up to you,” said Peter. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  “We’ll work that out,” said Lewis. “I got some ideas. Midden and Josie talking about the vet center, want to get it going for real.” Lewis flashed the tilted grin again. “Got some decent funding now. Do some good in the world. Could use us a jarhead.”

  “I can’t spend the winter in Wisconsin,” said Peter. “If I’m stuck inside more than twenty minutes, I start climbing the walls. It took me eight Xanax to manage the plane trip here.”

  “Got people you can talk to about that,” said Lewis, not unkindly. “Don’t have to be no permanent condition.”

  Josie had told Peter the same thing, before she’d kissed him good-bye. She was staying in Milwaukee. She had work to do.

  “Here’s the thing,” said Peter, and opened his arms to the warm Caribbean wind. A smile spread across his face. “Mostly I’d just rather be outside. Someplace where the weather isn’t trying to kill me.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The plight of America’s veterans is very real.

  Most veterans come home and restart their lives. They go to work or school, reconnect with their families or start new ones. Thanks to improvements in battlefield medicine, more injured veterans survive their physical wounds than ever before.

  But our country still doesn’t put enough effort into helping those veterans settle back into civilian life. There’s a great deal yet unknown about traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, war wounds that are often not visible but can lead to significant challenges for those affected.

  When I began researching this book in 2010, veterans had a significantly higher rate of homelessness and unemployment when compared to others of similar age and background. I’m glad to note that, according to 2013 reports by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, these statistics are improving. But Stars and Stripes reported in 2014 that veteran suicide rates were actually getting worse, not better. Clearly these challenges are still substantial for everyone involved. For a country with our wealth, history, and ideals, we can continue to do better for those who have given so much to serve their country. On the positive side, many cities are making great strides in eliminating homelessness among veterans, although this remains an ongoing issue.

  —

  I’m not an expert in veterans’ affairs. My primary goal is to entertain you, my readers. But if I’m lucky, perhaps the stories I invent will also have the ring of some kind of truth, will make you feel and think.

  I made a point to avoid writing about Peter’s life overseas because I wasn’t there.

  But in the years after 9/11, as the wars and those who fought them on our behalf became a significant part of the national conversation, I began to r
ead and watch documentaries about service members’ experiences, both during war and coming home. I had friends and professional acquaintances and customers who’d been in the service, and talking with them illuminated a part of the American story that I hadn’t quite understood before.

  Perhaps the most meaningful conversation I had was also one of the shortest. It was seven or eight years ago, but I remember it clearly.

  I was inspecting a small older home for an Army veteran and his wife. He was at least fifteen years younger than me, back in the States for less than a month. He was smart and curious and polite.

  When I learned where he’d been, I said to him, as I often did in the early years of those wars, “Thanks for your service.”

  “Man, don’t say that.” He shook his head. “Don’t say ‘Thanks for your service.’ It drives me nuts.”

  “Okay.” We were down in the basement. It was musty and cold. His wife was upstairs measuring for curtains. “What should I say?”

  I can’t begin to describe the expression on his face. Equal parts haunted and proud and relieved.

  “Just say, ‘Welcome home,’” he told me. “That’s all.”

  So that’s what I’ve said for many years, and I say it again now, to all those who have served.

  Welcome home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was fun and challenging to write, and I didn’t do it alone. I’d like to thank many people who have helped me along the way.

  Thanks to Margret, sweet patootie, artist and reader and expert editor of far too many drafts, and to Duncan, my hero and role model. I can’t wait to see what you both do next.

  Thanks to Mom and Maryl for many years of encouraging literary criticism.

  Thanks to Dad for spreadsheets and fatherly advice, some of which I actually acted on.

  Thanks to Bob and Dani for a quiet space to work on Washington Island. Thanks to Taylor for her encouragement, and Robbie for his enthusiasm.

  Thanks to Danny and Chuck for all those excellent conversations, diatribes, and rants.

  Thanks to Aimee O’Connor for an encouraging read at a crucial time.

  Thanks to Collectivo Coffee (formerly Alterra) for being my second office, where the java is strong, pastries are available, and there are voices other than the ones I hear in my head. ¡Viva la revolución!

  Thanks to Brett Elver for answering my questions about finance—the liberties I’ve taken with reality are mine, not his.

  Thanks to WFB friends for shared meals and liquid therapy and for making all those fantastic kids.

  Thanks to Dale W. Davis, the first Marine I ever met, force of nature and certified piece of work, and to his wife, Jan, a strong woman and force of nature in her own right. Thanks for the great conversation and advice over the years.

  Thanks to my teachers, including but definitely not limited to David Shields, Charlie D’Ambrosio, Maya Sonenberg, and David Bosworth in Seattle; Warren Hecht in Ann Arbor, who taught me to write a good sentence; and Mike Huth of SHS, gone but not forgotten. Thanks to Scott Wilson for his carpentry tutorial, and for our continued friendship since then.

  Thanks also to many writers, including but not limited to Nathaniel Fick, whose book One Bullet Away helped illuminate one Marine lieutenant’s thinking; Tim O’Brien for The Things They Carried, which sure cleared up one young man’s idea of war as glamorous; Phil Klay for Redeployment, which was a personal revelation for me as both reader and writer; and David Finkel for the reporting and writing in Thank You for Your Service. These last three should be required reading for all aspiring architects of future wars.

  Thanks especially to those men and women who shared their experiences online or in person. I still haven’t talked to enough of you.

  And last but definitely not least, thanks to the wonderful Barbara Poelle at Irene Goodman Literary Agency for taking time out of her third trimester sabbatical to read this book and find it a home (yes, she’s that kind of agent). Also to the astounding Sara Minnich at Putnam for her extraordinary eye and ear, as well as the rest of the design and editing team at Putnam. They are the reason you’re reading this today, and I am supremely grateful for their time and patience and professional expertise.

  If you’re reading this in a language other than English, that’s due to the efforts of Heather Baror-Shapiro, of Baror International, who boggles my mind.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NICHOLAS PETRIE received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington and won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan; his story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 short story contest in the The Seattle Review, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he has worked as a carpenter, remodeling contractor, and building inspector. He lives in Milwaukee, and The Drifter is his first novel.

  KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF NICHOLAS PETRIE’S NEXT NOVEL

  Burning Bright

  1

  When he rounded the curve on the narrow trail and saw the bear, Peter Ash was thinking about robbing a liquor store. Or a gas station; he was weighing his options.

  On foot with a pack on his back, he was as deep into old-growth redwood country as he could get. Although most of the original giants had been logged off decades before, there were still a few decent-sized protected areas along the California coast, with enough steep, tangled acreage to get truly lost. In the deep, damp drainage bottoms thick with underbrush, redwood trunks fifteen feet in diameter shot up into the mist like gnarled columns holding up the sky.

  But Peter hadn’t counted on the coastal fog. It had been constant for days. He couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in any direction, and it made the white static crackle and spark in the back of his head.

  It was the static that made him want to rob a liquor store.

  The closest one was at least a few days’ walk ahead of him, so the plan was still purely theoretical. But he was putting the pieces together in his mind.

  He didn’t want to use a weapon, because he was pretty sure armed robbery carried a longer sentence than he was willing to take. He didn’t want to go to actual prison, just the local jail, and only for a few days. He’d settle for overnight. Although how he’d try to rob a liquor store without a visible weapon was a problem he hadn’t yet solved.

  He could put his hand inside a paper bag and pretend to be holding a gun. He’d probably have to hold something, to make it more realistic. Maybe a banana?

  Hell, now he was just embarrassing himself.

  Any respectable liquor store employee would just laugh at him. Hopefully they’d still call the cops, who would put him in the back of a squad car, then at least a holding cell. Maybe overnight, maybe for a few days. It was a calculated risk.

  The problem was these woods. They were so dense and dark, the coastal cloud cover so thick and low, that he hadn’t seen the sky for weeks. The white static wouldn’t leave him alone, even out here, miles from so-called civilization. It pissed him off. He’d wanted to walk in this ancient forest for years. Now he was here in this green paradise and he couldn’t enjoy it.

  Peter Ash was tall and rangy, muscle and bone, nothing extra. His long face was angular, the tips of his ears slightly pointed, his dark hair an unruly shag. He had wide, knuckly hands and the thoughtful eyes of a werewolf a week before the change. Some part of him was always in motion—even now, hiking in the woods, his fingertips twitched in time to some interior metronome that never ceased.

  He’d been a Marine lieutenant in Iraq and Afghanistan, eight years and more deployments than he cared to remember. Boots on the ground, tip of the spear. He’d finished with his war two years before, but the war still wasn’t finished with him. It had left him with a souvenir. He called it the white static, an oddball form of post-traumatic stress that showed up as claustrophobia, an intense reaction to enclosed spaces.

  It hadn’t
appeared until he was back home, just days from mustering out.

  At first, going inside a building was merely uncomfortable. He’d feel a fine-grained sensation at the back of his neck, like electric foam, a small battery stuck under the skin. If he stayed inside, it would intensify. The foam would turn to sparks, a crackling unease in his brainstem, a profound dissonance just at the edge of hearing. His neck would tense, and his shoulders would begin to rise as his muscles tightened. He’d look for the exits as his chest clamped up, and he’d begin to have trouble catching his breath. After twenty minutes, he’d be in a full-blown panic attack, hyperventilating, the fight-or-flight mechanism cranked up all the way.

  Mostly, he’d chosen flight.

  He’d spent over a year backpacking in the Western mountains, trying to let himself get back to normal. But it hadn’t worked. He’d finally forced himself outside his comfort zone to help some friends the year before, and it had gotten a little better. He’d thought he was making progress. But they’d gone back to their lives and Peter had gone off on his own again, and something had happened. Somehow he’d lost the ground he’d gained.

  Lost so much ground that even walking through the foggy redwoods in the spring was enough to get the static sparking in his head.

  Which is why he was contemplating the best way to get himself locked up. Get this shit out of his system once and for all.

  He wasn’t thinking it was a good idea.

  Then he saw the bear.

  —

  It was about thirty yards ahead of him, just downslope from the narrow trail that wound along the flank of the mountain.

  At first all he could see was a mottled brown form roughly the size and shape of a Volkswagen Beetle, covered with fur, attempting to roll a half-rotted log down the side of the mountain.