“Stupid curfews!” Kent kicked a clod of dirt six feet into the air.
“It’s life, kid. Get used to its rules. Only at my age, we call them deadlines.” Marty grinned, ruffled his hair and made a notation on the pad he carried. “If you guys can find odd jobs folks around town want done, that would help raise some funds for our plane. We can’t fly it without a motor.”
“I saw a shaggy ol’ lawn by my house. I could ask about mowing it.”
“Yeah, and there’s that woman with all those flower beds by me. Somebody’s gotta dig ’em for her.”
The boys all joined in, and the list of things grew exponentially.
“You’ve got the general idea. See you on Friday.” Tucker waved them off and turned to Marty. “You go ahead. I want to get some of this mess cleaned up. If Ginny’s dad goes for a walk, he’ll kill himself on our odds and ends.”
“Thanks, man. By the way, how’s the column coming?” Marty blinked at him innocently, pretending they were in total agreement on the subject.
“It’s not. One write-up. That’s all I agreed to do.”
“Tucker, your first column was fantastic! Just wait till people get a chance to read it tomorrow, and you’ll see how great you are at this stuff.”
Great. Yeah, right. He’d prattled on about the landscape in Africa, the lush forests and the sparse poverty. He’d stayed away from discussing his job. He wasn’t going there. No way!
“I’m serious. The way you describe things makes them personal, close. People like that. They feel like they can see the world through your eyes.” He clapped a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “It’s a gift, man.”
“Yeah, a gift.” Now that was funny.
“That fund-raising group Ginny’s leading will want to know more. You know that, don’t you? You’ve only whetted their appetite.”
Tough. Tucker wished he’d never allowed himself to be conned into it in the first place.
“You could always discuss somewhere else,” Marty suggested. “You’ve traveled all over the place.”
Tucker nodded. “I guess.”
But Africa was his beat, his favorite place in all the world. And now it had been ruined, tarnished, stained by something that should never have happened.
“I don’t think I can write any more, Marty. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.” He kept his voice low, avoided the other man’s eyes and the pity he knew he’d find there.
“It’s up to you, of course. But I’d really appreciate it. So would the rest of Jubilee Junction.” Marty waved a hand and walked across the street to his car. Seconds later he was gone, and Tucker was alone.
He forced himself to ignore the protest of muscles not fully healed by concentrating on clearing the branches into a huge pile, out of sight of the Browns’ home.
“It’s a good start.” Adrian Brown stood behind him, his eyes on the freshly begun tree house. “You’ve got your work cut out for you with those boys.”
Tucker grabbed one of the folded lawn chairs he’d stood against a stump and opened it up.
“Here, have a seat.”
“Thanks.” Adrian sank into it with relief, unable to hide the strain around his mouth.
“You’re sure you want to be out here?” Tucker wrestled the last of the branches onto the heap, then sank onto the grass, feeling just as tired as Adrian Brown looked.
“I’m sure. I need some fresh air.”
Something in the words sent Tucker’s head jerking up to inspect the older man.
“Why?”
“I’ve got myself a little problem.” Ginny’s father tilted his head against the chair, slouching, eyes closed, breathing slowly, deliberately.
“You know what’s wrong with you.” It was the only explanation. Tucker’s fingers wrapped around themselves a little tighter, but he said no more, waiting.
“I don’t, but the doctors think they might.” He straightened, opened his eyes and peered at Tucker in a Ginny-like glare that was uncanny. “At the appointment today one of them tried to prepare me for the possibility of stomach cancer. If they’re right, my daughter’s going to need every friend she has.”
Adrian wanted to know if Tucker would be around when Ginny’s grief required a shoulder to lean on. But how could Tucker give his word to a man who was facing the biggest challenge of his life when Tucker knew he couldn’t keep his promise?
“Does Ginny know?”
Adrian’s stare did not abate in spite of Tucker’s silence. When he finally spoke, his words shocked Tucker beyond belief.
“No. And she won’t. Not until they’ve diagnosed it for certain. Not until I can’t keep from telling her. Do you understand?” Adrian’s tortured eyes begged him to grasp his meaning.
“Yes.” Wanting to spare a loved one? Yeah, Tucker knew about that. He understood the need to protect her from pain. Wasn’t that what he’d told himself he was doing for seven years?
The silence of the evening closed in around them. Birds twittered more softly as they nested for the night. Children’s voices quieted, then disappeared as parents shuffled them off to bed. At last there was only the soft whisper of wind through the leaves, the periodic hum of a car engine passing out front, the gurgle of the water running down the riverbed.
“Tell me,” Adrian murmured, closing his eyes once more. “Tell me about your time over there, Tucker. All of it.”
Tucker cringed, forcibly containing the words. No! He didn’t want to say it, think about it, relive it all over again. Weren’t the nightmares enough?
“Please tell me, Tucker. Help me forget my pain for a while.”
That soft, plaintive request was his undoing. Tucker inhaled, filling his lungs with fresh, new air as he let out the foulness of the past.
“It was summer over there, hot, humid, unbelievably sticky. Tensions were so high you could cut them with a knife. There’d been a riot. Another one.”
Ginny heard the murmur of voices from her position on the back porch. She studied the gloomy dusk for her father’s familiar stooped figure, but she couldn’t see him.
Curious, she stepped off the deck and walked the length of the backyard, ears pricked as words and phrases floated toward her on the night air.
“…bombs. I close my eyes and I can still smell the stench of it. Burning rubber, petrol. And the voices. Oh, my Lord, the voices. They screamed with terror, and anger, and hate. But mostly with pain. Always with pain.”
She stopped, hidden by three of her biggest maples. She saw her father seated in a chair, wearing his warm fleece sweater. Across from him, Tucker sat on the grass, speaking in a soft, hesitant voice that grew stronger with each phrase.
Without a word Ginny sank down on the grass and crossed her legs, eyes riveted to Tucker’s expressive face lit by the last flicker of evening light.
Every nerve of her body clenched with anticipation as she listened to him speak, watched his eyes light with a feverish glow, saw his hands clench and unclench on his knees.
He was talking about his past!
“I was only there because of my—friendship with the head of a rival faction, you know. Ulysses—that was his name. Every other journalist had been kicked out or fled to safety. But Quint and I—” his mouth creased in a rueful grin as he shook his head “—we were like two hound dogs on the scent of a skunk. We wouldn’t leave, not for anything. We knew this was our turn, the chance of a lifetime. We didn’t intend to mess that up.”
“I see.” Her father sat unmoving, his eyes closed.
Ginny, too, waited.
“It was like a scene from the Apocalypse,” Tucker blurted. “Like a terrible movie being played out. Only I wasn’t part of it. I was floating above it, commentating on it, directing Quint to take that shot. There were bullets ricocheting all around us, but we dashed in and out of storefronts, behind tanks, anywhere we could find shelter and grab another shot.”
He stopped. Ginny could hear the rasp of his lungs as he drew in air. Beads of sweat formed on hi
s forehead and upper lip. His fists didn’t unclench at all. He seemed to be forcing the words out.
“There was some shelling, mortar fire. We ducked it by inches, but we made it to the top of a little hill, the perfect vantage spot to capture the whole scene. I yelled at Quint to pan the area, then focus on me. He argued at first, said he couldn’t film me with that background, that I’d get killed.”
Tucker stopped, rubbed a hand across his face. Ginny swallowed hard when she glimpsed the tremors that shook that hand.
“I laughed at him.” His voice dropped. “By then I was thinking award. Me, the winner of television’s version of the Pulitzer. I could imagine how it would play on the six o’clock news. I insisted he stand up and film.”
“That was your job, son.”
Tucker ignored the interruption.
“So we shot a sequence. But the wind picked up and blasted sand across my microphone. You couldn’t hear what I was saying, though the pictures told the story well enough.”
He shook his head, then clasped it in both hands. His voice was so low, Ginny had to hunch forward to catch his words.
“I insisted we shoot it again. I had better words, more description, a different take. Quint was furious. He said we needed to get out of there. Just about then Ulysses came along and backed him up. He wanted us gone and he wasn’t prepared to debate the subject. The whole area was going to be a pile of rubble, and we needed to get out immediately.”
Tucker lurched to his feet, paced across the little clearing in jerky, odd-gaited steps, his hands thumping his thighs in an unknown rhythm.
“But I couldn’t let it go. Not me. No, I knew that Quint’s pictures were prize quality, you see. He’d win an award for those shots. And I wanted a share of whatever glory he would get. I was senior man, I gave the orders.”
His voice fell into a calm, even rhythm, almost devoid of feeling.
“Ulysses, buddy that he was, agreed to give me five minutes if I paid him a hundred American dollars. He figured he could hold them off that long. If we hadn’t shot what we needed by then, we had to leave. He promised he’d get us out safely for another hundred.”
The silence stretched so thin, Ginny was certain they’d hear her breathing. Her body froze, but her heart cried out to go to him, to hold him, love him. But it was like before. She could do nothing. Nothing but wait.
Finally Tucker spoke again.
“In the end we got only two minutes, one minute too many as it turned out. Quint called me every name in the book, but then he stood up and filmed exactly what I asked for. The guns started, the mortars boomed, but he stayed right where he was, recording it all as I said my silly little piece.”
The breeze died. The moon, full and bright, slid out from behind a cloud, capturing Tucker in its spotlight. He stood, face ravaged with guilt as he finished the story.
“I had just finished giving my name and station identification when a bullet buzzed past my ear and caught Quint. He said, ‘I’ve got to go, Tuck,’ then tipped forward to give me the camera before he hit the ground. He was dead. My best friend, a man I loved like a brother, was dead. Because of me.”
Tears dripped down Ginny’s face at the stark grief she could hear. The moon was gone. Tucker stood in the shadows, alone.
“Do you want to know what I did, Adrian?”
“You checked to see if he was still breathing.” There was no condemnation in her father’s tone, no blame.
“Oh, yes, I did that all right.” Tucker whirled, his face twisted by a savage smile. “I managed that much for my friend.”
“Good.”
“Don’t congratulate me! Don’t act as if I did something noble. I didn’t.”
In a flash, the anger left, dissipated like a morning mist.
“I picked up Quint’s body and carried it to the Jeep Ulysses left waiting.” His mouth was a line of white, his teeth glistening. “But I made sure I had the tape.”
Adrian Brown said nothing.
“Did you hear me? I was so moved by my friend’s death, so traumatized by the carnage going on around me, that I had enough foresight to open that camera and grab the video so we would have something for the spot they’d held open at the station.”
Tucker flopped into his lawn chair, drained of everything but loathing. He felt no relief, no cleansing, no forgiveness. The stain lay upon him, drowning him with guilt. He was no better than a murderer.
“You were hit, too, weren’t you? Your eye?”
Adrian Brown studied his face, noting the faint scar lines.
“We were ambushed on the way to the Jeep. Ulysses, too.” He refused to say any more, but the memories didn’t stop. He winced, remembering the ragged, searing pain, the thoughts of home, of Ginny.
“So you carried Quint to the Jeep, then went back for Ulysses, ignoring your own injuries.”
“Yeah.” Tucker snorted, anger stinging his cheeks. “Big hero!”
“Tucker, did you ever cut yourself enough slack to realize you were in shock? It does funny things to your mind. You don’t act normally.”
“Another excuse.”
“Not an excuse. An explanation for grabbing the tape. You trained for years to be a reporter. It’s what you’ve done, what you love. It became instinctive. Did you really expect yourself to act like a medic?”
“You don’t get it, Adrian.” Tucker forced himself to relax, to explain so the older man would see that he wasn’t anything close to a hero. “We shouldn’t have been there. Quint wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t pushed him.” The pain in his gut burned anew.
“That’s true. But did you ever consider that if not for you and Quint, Ulysses might have died?”
Tucker heard the words first, then his mind absorbed them. A flicker of hope bubbled its way to the surface of his mind.
Maybe—He tamped it down.
“Ulysses wouldn’t have been wounded except for me.” He stood in front of Adrian. “Don’t search for an excuse. There isn’t one.”
“Is that what this is about, Tucker? Finding an excuse for living?” Adrian pushed himself out of his chair, his face contorted with pain as he slowly straightened.
“No!” Tucker waited for Adrian to regain his breath.
“You’re sure?” The older man set a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It happened, son. Just like you told young Tom. Like it or not, it’s a part of your past, part of you. But it doesn’t have to ruin your future.”
“You were listening?” Tucker frowned.
“I’m always listening. It’s the only way I learn anything.” Adrian shuffled past the freshly cut stumps. “I’m going to take a pill.”
“Okay.”
Adrian took a few more steps, turned and held out a hand.
“Thanks for telling me.”
“I can’t imagine what good it could possibly have done to you to hear it.” Tucker shook his hand, feeling the weakness in those tired muscles. “But you’re welcome.”
“Talk to yourself like you talked to Tom, son.”
“I’m a better teacher than I am a student.” Tucker managed a smile.
Adrian returned it. “Practice makes perfect. For teachers and students. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Tucker waited until Adrian had made it safely inside the house, then turned and started toward the tree house, his eyes catching a flicker of red in the evening light. He sighed.
“You can forget about sneaking past me, Ginny. I saw you hiding there.” He kept right on stacking the trees they’d cut to supplement the wood the church had donated. As he worked, he waited to see what she would do.
“What can I say?” She stood, dusting off her jeans, red fuzzy slippers glowing in the night. “I take after my father. I’m always listening.”
He almost laughed. That was Ginny. Brazen, straightforward, shoot-from-the-hip. And he admired that in her.
“I just have to clean this up, then I’ll get out of your way.”
“You’r
e not in my way.” She grabbed the end of the tree he was moving and lugged it over to the stack. “My gorgeous trees. They were so lovely. You are going to have the boys plant more, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” He twisted to look over his shoulder. “I’m sorry we had to use them, Gin. But it was that or wait until we could raise enough money to buy some more wood.”
“I know.” She patted the trunk lovingly. “Dear old things.”
Tucker grabbed another one. “This time when we plant them, we’ll avoid the geometric puzzle you created.”
She didn’t even argue. Instead Ginny grabbed the other end and puffed her way over to the stack he was making. She managed to continue the pace through four trees. Tucker figured it was a miracle she hadn’t killed herself by then in her ridiculous wedge-heeled, slide-on slippers. He had to do something. So he claimed he needed a rest and headed for the river.
Naturally she followed.
Tucker sank down on the bank, grunting slightly when she half fell against him as she lost her balance.
“Sorry.” She wiggled until she was comfortable. “I slipped.”
“I wondered how long it would take.”
“Don’t start on my shoes again. These are my very favorites.” She held out on dainty foot for him to admire.
“Lovely,” Tucker told her, and meant it. “But they aren’t logging shoes.”
“Well, no. They’re not supposed to be.”
The full moon had escaped the clouds and cast its silvery glow over everything, creating a wonderland scene. How long ago Africa seemed.
“Tell me about your work, Tuck.”
“Don’t you think we’ve had enough maudlin sentiment for tonight, Gin?”
“I don’t want to hear maudlin sentiment. I want to hear about where you were, what you were doing.”
He searched her face, found nothing but wistful curiosity.
“I’ve traveled a lot,” he began, then yelped at the elbow she planted in his ribs. “Well, I have!”
“Duh!” She shivered, then snuggled a little closer. “Tell me the good stuff, Tuck.”
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