That was before the Persian Gulf War, which had officially ended five months ago now, relieving Landon of his fear that the military would reinstate the draft right when he was prepared to turn eighteen.
This celebration was to be Travis’s grand homecoming. Were it even possible, his legend had grown in his absence. He had saved the lives of his entire platoon and now came home a hero, his triumphant return sponsored by the Army itself on behalf of a grateful nation and the father of his platoon’s lieutenant, who happened to be a Senator from North Carolina.
Landon had heard the rumors, of course. Travis had been driving the lead Humvee that had encountered the first mine and had somehow crawled out of the smoking wreckage to fend off a sneak attack, buying his platoon enough time to regroup. There were those who said Travis had been gut-shot and now had tubes where his intestines should have been. Others said he had lost his arms or legs. While still others claimed to have heard from his parents, who had retreated from the community in their desire for privacy, that a bullet had ricocheted from his skull and rendered him a vegetable. Landon simply feared seeing Travis as anything other than perfect. If life could chew up and spit out someone like Travis, then what hope was there for the rest of them?
He jumped up at the sound of the jangling bell over the front door of the store.
“It’s not time for your break yet,” Mr. Booth snapped. “You still need to move those sheets of plywood back under the awning in the yard before those jackasses across the street set my whole inventory on fire.”
“Yes, sir.”
Landon glanced back across the street on his way back into the store. Across the lake, he caught just a glimpse of a soldier as he peeled back one of the canvas flaps on a panel truck. He could have sworn he saw racks of baggy white body suits almost like those the astronauts wore. And then the flap fell closed, leaving him again to the shelves of tools and nails he couldn’t wait to escape.
4:24 PM
Acacia Park was brimming with people when Landon finally hung up his apron and punched out. Mr. Booth had decided to close the store several hours early, thanks to the fact that every parking place up and down Main Street was already filled and the cars seeking any available space clogged the flow of traffic. No customers would be able to reach the store, even if there were any who still wanted to with all of the excitement across the street.
He weaved through the cars and hopped up onto the opposite curb. Everywhere he looked, blankets had been strewn across the lawn in an odd patchwork where families had claimed their spots for the night. The prime real estate under the shade of the tall Acacia and Cottonwood trees had presumably been the first to go. There were coolers and picnic baskets everywhere. Open cans of beer and soft drinks. Bags of chips, popsicles, and ice cream cones. Kids threw balls of all kinds back and forth through the crowd. Shouts and laughter. Tank tops and jean shorts and Umbros. The scents of sunscreen and the sulfurous smoke from the sparklers children waved alongside glow sticks. Multicolored clouds from smoke bombs drifted through the throngs. He heard the clank of an aluminum bat striking a softball and saw it fly high overhead. A car alarm blared at the tail end of its descent.
Landon shouldered through the crowd. He had never seen so many people packed into the park. Everyone in town had to be here. Everyone but his dad, whom he knew had to finish his rounds before he could take off and wouldn’t be here until six o’clock at the earliest, which left him plenty of time to track down Penny so they could at least spend a little time together before his punishment commenced.
An enormous American flag the size of a semi-trailer now backed the stage, above which an aluminum frame had been rigged to support the lighting. Several men in fatigues milled about behind the podium, presumably going over last minute preparations with the mayor and the town councilmen, who were always ready for a photo-op. The rest of the Army men hung apart from the masses, checking and rechecking their firecracker cannons, seemingly reluctant to even share the same air with the rest of the town.
He spied Penny near the bandstand, where her father, ever the manly-man, supervised the lighting of row upon row of grills constructed from halved barrels not dissimilar to the brown trash receptacles stationed around the park. The black smoke obscured the collection of baby blue Porta-Potties and the lines of people waiting to use them. He waved to catch her eye and gestured for her to meet him by the short dock over the lake, upon which mallards cackled and coots bobbed their white-billed heads like pigeons. When she finally reached him, he took her by the hand and led her back toward the aspen grove surrounding the garden of marigolds and geraniums planted to spell out the town’s name.
“So what was the damage?” she asked.
“I can’t leave my dad’s side tonight, and I’m grounded for the next two weeks.”
“Was it worth it?”
She smirked.
“And then some.” He drew her to him and kissed her. “We just have to ride out my dad’s stupid punishments a little while longer, and then we’re free.”
“As free as two people can be when their lives are being financed by parents who still think they own them.”
“You can’t spoil this victory for me.”
He peeked from the corner of his eye to make sure her father wasn’t looking, and kissed her again.
“So how is this going to play out tonight?” she asked.
“As soon as my dad’s distracted by the fireworks, I’ll meet you right back here.”
“And then what?”
“It’ll be dark and no one will be looking…”
“With a thousand people twenty feet away? You’re out of your mind.”
“I live for danger.”
“Says the boy who slept with a nightlight until he was thirteen.”
“Hey. You try living in an old house where hundreds of people died. See if that doesn’t get in your head.”
“Penny!” a voice shouted over the tumult.
Her father was waving his arm over his head to get her attention. Once he had it, he signaled for her to come to him.
She pulled Landon back through the crowd and toward the awkward moment Landon always dreaded. Her father was standoffish and gruff, and there was always that lowering of his brow that suggested he knew Landon was sleeping with his daughter.
“Mr. Davis,” Landon said, proffering his hand.
With a grunt, Penny’s father tugged down his fishing hat, complete with lures should any opportunity arise, and shook his hand with more pressure than necessary. He held it a beat too long as though to show him who was in control of the situation.
“I just heard they’re about to open up the registration desk,” Mr. Davis said. He nodded toward the bandstand, where several folding tables had been set up and were manned by a half-dozen volunteers. Mrs. Woodrow, the librarian, was ostensibly in charge, directing the other members of her book group with her flabby arms.
“Why do we need to register for a picnic?” Landon asked.
“Once you’ve registered, they give you a band. All you have to do is show it to the men at the barbecues and they’ll give you a plate to load up as high as you want.”
“But I mean…really…why can’t we just walk over and grab a plate?”
“Bureaucracy,” Mr. Davis said with a shrug, as though that explained everything.
Landon and Penny made their way into one of the lines, which were already twenty people long. While they waited, easing from the blazing sun into the shade and then finally up the steps to where the line bifurcated at a folding table, they talked about the future, about their dorm assignments and how they would register for the same classes and how they would set up signals in advance to let their roommates know it wasn’t safe to come in.
“Penny Davis,” the old librarian said when they reached the head of the line. She turned around and opened a tackle box labeled D-F. “I hear you’ll be matriculating at the University of Colorado in the fall.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
>
“Good for you.” Mrs. Woodrow’s smile exposed dentures that would have looked old in George Washington’s day. She waited for Penny to offer her right hand as the others had before her, and then clipped a hot pink band around her wrist. “Make us all proud, dear.”
When Landon stepped up, Mrs. Woodrow mumbled something under her breath and turned to find the appropriate tackle box. Apparently there was still bad blood from when he’d shuffled the cards in the card catalogue years ago.
He offered his wrist and received his band without a word. It was like the bracelets they issued at the hospital. The clasp was a little snap on the opposite side from a widened section that displayed his name and address above a slender barcode.
“A little late for 1984,” Penny said. “Big Brother’s watching…what you eat.”
Landon laughed and fiddled with his band until the clasp unsnapped, then closed it once more.
“So shall we try to get one of those government mystery meat burgers before the warden arrives?”
“Too late,” a voice he recognized immediately said from behind him.
Landon closed his eyes for a long moment, then leaned forward, kissed Penny on the cheek, and whispered into her ear. “Remember. Once everyone’s distracted…”
“Come on,” his father said, tugging him by the arm. “We should get some food and find a spot while we still can.”
Landon looked back at Penny and offered a shrug of apology. She smiled and blew him a kiss. It was an image he would always hold close to his heart, one he would later recall during the eternal nights ahead with tears in his eyes and the barrel of a pistol in his mouth.
7:18 PM
“And now it is my distinct honor to present to you a man of uncommon valor, a man who may have left you as little more than a boy but returns to you a hero,” the man at the podium said. He’d been talking for so long now that Landon had forgotten if he’d ever introduced himself at all. He wore his crisp, formal uniform with all sorts of bars and stripes, just like the other men who had spoken with trembling voices before him. Landon heard the whispers from those who could see behind the flag ripple through the crowd and knew that the time had finally arrived. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the most recent recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration awarded for courage in the face of the enemy…Corporal Travis James.”
The man stepped aside and gestured to the flag while the masses hooted and hollered and clapped and cheered and whistled. It was perhaps the loudest sound ever to arise from Mineral Springs. Landon noticed he wasn’t alone in looking toward the western sky where the sun slowly set in a pool of blood over the peak of Mt. Frazier, which always appeared ready to break free and crumble down the slope to bury them all alive.
Bottle rockets screamed as they streaked through the sky. Car horns honked. The lights over the stage snapped on with a brilliant glow.
The flag parted down the middle along a slit he hadn’t noticed. Camera flashes strobed. A dark form emerged from the even darker space behind it. Slowly it resolved into a wheelchair with another shape behind it. Landon recognized Mr. James steering the chair first, standing tall with his chin held high despite the tears on his cheeks. Another man slouched in the chair before him, his head leaning limply against his shoulder, his right hand held palsy-like under his chin. He wore his formal attire, as well, with only a few bars and a big reflective star pinned to his breast. What looked like a horse blanket covered his lap, although the way it hung straight in the front, it did little to disguise the man’s missing legs.
Travis James, the hero, was home.
The applause waned as the clamor of shocked voices disrupted the revelry. One neighbor looked to the next, each of them wearing the same horrified expression. And still Travis’s father stood defiant and proud on the stage, resting a hand on his son’s shoulder.
After a long moment, during which the earth itself seemed to stop turning, the applause rose again and the cheers reached a crescendo that reverberated through the valley.
Landon stared at what was left of the kid he had idolized since grade school, whom at one point he would have given his own legs to be like, and suddenly he didn’t feel much like celebrating the Fourth of July anymore. He had thought the sheer level of pomp and circumstance had been ridiculous to the point of parody, but now he realized that there was no other way for Travis to come home again without slinking in under the cover of night like a dirty secret.
He looked over at his father, whose face appeared as pallid as the moon in the twilight. His old man must have sensed the weight of his stare and said the words that would haunt him for the rest of his days.
“Sometimes, son, death can be a blessing.”
9:26 PM
The sun had long since abandoned them to the darkness, and still his father hadn’t left his side. While Landon impatiently waited for his opportunity to sneak away, a part of him was grateful for the steadying presence beside him. Faced with his own mortality in the form of the hero slumped and unresponsive on the stage, he felt somehow betrayed by life. When his mother died, he had felt so alone, a feeling perpetuated by his need to push away everyone who tried to console him, especially his father. It wasn’t until years later when he had become intimate with Penny that he had allowed someone through his defenses. Seeing Travis in this condition didn’t make him fear for himself, but rather for her. If something like this could happen to someone as seemingly destined for greatness as Travis, what did it have in store for someone like Penny? She was his world. If anything ever happened to her, there would be no way he could face a single day without her.
He glanced at his father, flashes of red and gold on his features as he stared up into the sky, and could only imagine how deep his pain must run.
Landon’s vision blurred with tears. How could he have been so selfish?
He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice failed him. They were well past the point where words would change anything, anyway. Instead, he discreetly wiped his eyes and turned his attention to the heavens.
With a whoomp, a cannon fired a shell high above them. A twirl of smoke trailed the comet toward the stars. Red and yellow sparks exploded with a thunderous clap. A blue sphere expanded hot on its heels. They were coming faster now, leading up to the grand finale. All in all, it had been a fairly weak display. He would have thought with the firepower at the military’s disposal, they could have put on a show the likes of which this small town had never seen. As it was, this sad display befitted the occasion.
He lowered his eyes and scanned the crowd for Penny. Through the sea of heads colored alternately red and gold and green and blue, he saw her father working over a hotdog near the grills beside her mother as they watched the fireworks. Penny was nowhere in sight. Turning to his right, he saw Travis and his father still positioned center stage. Neither of them watched the sky. They merely stared into space above the awestruck faces. They were alone up there. The uniformed men who had occupied the chairs on the left side of the stage were gone.
Landon turned a slow circle, scanning through the crowd for any sign of Penny. She must have slipped away and was already waiting for him in the aspen grove. His father still watched the starbursts overhead, but with the distracted expression Landon knew all too well meant that while his old man was physically there, his mind was somewhere else entirely. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, turned away, and ducked off into the crowd.
He stayed low and didn’t look back until he was a dozen paces away. His father hadn’t yet noticed that he was gone.
Everyone seemed enthralled by the fireworks. No one so much as looked at him as he shoved through their ranks toward the south end of the park. Through the maze of bodies, he could see the reflections on the water beyond the cattails as though the lake were on fire. And past it, he saw a gathering of men around the military vehicles. Each of them was in the process of donning one of the white suits he had seen earlier. Were they changing into their wi
nter fatigues or preparing to put on some sort of play? Landon laughed out loud at the thought of these hard men singing and twirling canes onstage. But the way the night had gone so far, nothing would have surprised him.
The crowd thinned at the tree line and he saw Penny waiting for him. Her eyes lit up when he emerged from the throngs. She bounded up to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. His hand traced the contours of her lower back under her shirt and felt the goosebumps rise.
She leaned her forehead against his so that their lips were only millimeters apart. When she spoke, he could taste her breath.
“We don’t have long, do we?”
“I can probably get away with saying I had to run to the bathroom. We’ve probably got fifteen minutes max.”
“Then we’d better make them count.”
She kissed him again as the explosions overhead came faster and faster like his throbbing pulse.
Thoom…thoom…thoom…thoom.
“I want to see the grand finale,” Penny said. She pressed her cheek against his and looked to the sky.
A flash of white drew Landon’s eye. One of the men in the baggy suits took up position fifteen feet away at the fringe of the crowd. He had an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
Landon quickly averted his eyes and saw more of the men in their white suits flanking the gathering, as though forming a ring around the town. All of them cradled their weapons in their white-gloved hands. Bulky white hoods hung behind their heads, draped over the top of what appeared to be scuba tanks.
THOOM-thoom-THOOM-thoom.
He glanced up at the stage in time to see two men take posts to either side of the podium. One of them appeared to look directly at him, the crimson glare highlighting a crescent scar around his right eye. The man smiled and brought his hood over his head. The reflection from the plastic shield hid his face.
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