Like Always

by Robert Elmer

  “Why would you give this to me?” he asked. “Aunt Sydney gave it to you.”

  “It doesn’t work. I still have bad dreams. Maybe it will work for you.”

  “It won’t work for him, either,” Abby said. “It’s just a bunch of feathers and beads. It’s pagan hooey.”

  “Where did you hear that?” asked Michael.

  “That’s what Mom called it. She didn’t like it, but Dad let Liwy keep it.”

  “And now I’m giving it to you,” concluded Olivia.

  “A dreamcatcher that doesn’t work.” Michael took it from her, hoping he hadn’t hurt her feelings. “Thanks, Liv. That was nice of you.”

  “I think maybe you need it more than we do,” she replied, slipping back into bed. His eight-year-old sister, the psychologist.

  He closed the door behind him and stood quietly in the hall, trying to forget what Olivia had prayed.

  “Or whatever he’s scared of.” And what was that, exactly?

  “Michael?” Abby called from the other side of the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t care what happened in the war. You’re still our hero.”

  He was glad the door was closed, so they couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

  “Are you still there, Michael?”

  “Still here, Abs. But go to sleep now. I’m serious.”

  Michael shuffled back to the living room, stumbling over the popcorn bowl. He should never have let them get up, never should have let them talk him into telling the story. At least he hadn’t finished it. He could imagine what his sisters would have told their parents the next day.

  So the thunderstorm kept us awake, and Michael told us a bunch of cool stories about roadside bombs and how his friends got killed, plus there was a little kid playing soccer right in the middle of the road, and…

  Another flash of lightning lit the jagged profile of Bernard Peak, reminding him the storm wasn’t quite over like he’d told the girls. Mom and Dad were still out there, but he knew they’d be fine. He closed his eyes but couldn’t forget the flash of gunfire or the soccer ball at his feet that no one would ever reclaim.

  Here’s the hero who couldn’t do a thing to help his friends, he thought, or anybody else, for that matter. Here’s the hero whos so tied up in his past that he’s letting it sink his future.

  Stupid story.

  thirty-one

  How did it get so late so soon? It’S night before it’s afternoon.

  December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time

  has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

  DR. SEUSS

  Here, let me help you with that.” Will grabbed the other end of the canoe Michael was wrestling up onto the dock. “Don’t need to do everything yourself.”

  Michael just grunted and heaved on the canoe as if Will wasn’t there, and they lifted it into place on the rack they’d built. The old boats didn’t leak anymore, but not too many people would be renting canoes after Labor Day.

  “Thanks,” Michael mumbled.

  “You okay?” Will looked at his son, not really expecting an answer. Michael broke his foot in the eighth grade and didn’t say anything for three days. He’d nearly killed himself at Boy Scout snow camp, because he didn’t tell anyone his long Johns were soaking wet from the ice. “The girls said you were a little, I don’t know…down the other night.”

  “The other night?”

  “Yeah. When you were babysitting. Night of the big thunderstorm?” He tried to sound nonchalant. “I think Abby used the term ‘stressed out.’ “

  “I don’t know why she’d say that.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Look, Dad, I’m the one who should be asking you.” Michael glanced up at the house, where Stephanie was helping Merit cut a bouquet of roses off the bush, the last of the season. “You—and especially Mom.”

  Will followed his son’s gaze as they walked back to the snack bar.

  “I appreciate that, Mike. Really. But we thought you might want to tell us a little more about what you went through.”

  “By ‘we,’ you mean you and Mom?” Michael held the door open.

  “You know what I mean. When you got back from the Middle East, we thought we’d let you come back at your own pace. Get your wings back when you were comfortable.”

  “Like I’m an injured bird or something? one of Mr. Mooney’s charity cases:

  “It’s just an expression, okay?” Will said, holding on to his temper. “You’ve hardly said a word about what you did over there. Maybe it would be good to talk to somebody.”

  “I don’t think so. You guys have other things to worry about.” Michael shook his head and turned away. He picked up a brush and a bucket and started cleaning the counter.

  Is this how he plans to cope?

  “Come on, Mike,” Will said. “You can’t just pretend nothing ever happened.”

  Michael shrugged and kept scrubbing. “I learned from the master.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean you’re great at just plugging along at everyday life, pretending like Mom’s not even sick. Especially after all the reporters got bored and left. Mom’s not so bad at it herself.”

  “We’re not talking about Mom right now, Mike. Look at me. We’re talking about you, about what happened to you.”

  Michael spun back to face his father, brush in hand. “So if we just talk and talk about my problems, everything that happened to me is going to be all better?”

  “I just thought—”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know about your life, but my life never seems to work that way.”

  “My son, the philosopher.”

  “Not me.” He huffed. “I’m not the one with the problem. Mom’s the one who’s being voted off the island, and you just stand here like you can’t do anything about it. Or you won’t.”

  “Wait a minute. I—”

  “Wait? That’s just it—the waiting. Why are you always waiting? Why don’t you do something?”

  Will couldn’t look at his son’s pleading eyes. He had no good answers. “I explained everything to you. You know why we can’t.”

  “Yeah, but if it were my wife, I would do something, instead of just sitting around and… Aw, forget it.”

  Michael threw his brush down, stepped over the bucket, and headed for the door. He must have exhausted his quota of words for the day. Will hadn’t heard his son say that much to him all at once in a long time.

  He watched Michael leave, slamming the door. Then he kicked the bucket so hard that soapy water sloshed all over the floor.

  “Do something?” Will yelled, throwing a roll of paper towels at the mess before falling to his knees. “Sure, I’ll do something. I’ll work on my to-do list while my wife gets sicker and sicker. I’ll scrape paint and fix docks and…”

  He leaned his forehead against the floor in surrender. “And I’ll pray, I guess.”

  Water soaked through his jeans, but it didn’t matter. He scrubbed the floor, adding his own tears to the suds.

  “This is where You wanted me anyway. Right, God? On my knees.”

  He knew the answer.

  He mopped once-dusty corners as he prayed, using his shirt sleeves to attack a grimy spot, scrubbing and scrubbing until paper towels and his knuckles shredded. He almost didn’t hear the door open, and he didn’t turn to see who had stepped inside.

  “Sorry,” he snapped, “we’re closed.”

  “Oh dear. Will?”

  He peeked over his shoulder. His wife stood in the doorway, breathing hard and holding an armload of white roses. These days her face seemed pale enough to match. He scrambled to his feet, tossing the shredded paper towels aside and tucking his shirttail back in.

  “I was just, uh…the floor needed cleaning.”

  “You wouldn’t rather use a mop?”

  “Right. Next time. I just kind of got going and, uh.

  She cradled the cut f
lowers from their yard, and their soft, heady fragrance drifted into the room. She never took her eyes off his face. “Will, are you—”

  “Here,” he interrupted as he stepped forward, nearly tripping over the bucket. “Let me put those in some water for you.”

  Merit paused for a moment before surrendering her flowers.

  “Can I do anything?” he asked, rumbling the roses into a vase.

  Merit was still trying to catch her breath, but she crossed her arms and looked him straight in the eye. “As a matter of fact, you could get those dead mice out of the refrigerator. Feeding that poor hurt hawk is one thing, but if I open that door one more time to see those horrible little eyes bulging out at me from inside that plastic bag, I’m going to—”

  “Say no more.” He held up his hand. “I’ll have Michael take care of it.”

  “You sure you don’t mind?” Stephanie asked as they pulled up in front of the Mercantile in the Land Rover. “We could do this later.”

  Michael shook his head. He was happy to do anything to get away from his dad just now.

  “No problem, really,” he told her. “Mom wanted them out of the fridge, and I really didn’t want to clean the bathrooms this afternoon anyway.”

  “You’d rather help deliver a bunch of dead mice to help feed a hungry kestrel.”

  “Better than cleaning a bathroom.”

  The jingle bells announced their arrival, while Mr. Mooney rang up a couple of hunters wearing green camouflage coveralls and orange hats. Michael wondered if they wanted to hide or be seen. And it reminded him…

  “Ah, lunch!” Mr. Mooney said, spotting their package. “Kevin’s going to love you for it.”

  “I’ve got four of them this time.” Michael held up the Ziploc baggie. “Couple big ones too.”

  “Here you go, Kevin.” Stephanie approached the perch in the corner of the back room. While Michael watched, she carefully slipped on a leather glove and fed their injured bird of prey.

  “How much longer before he’s good to go?” Michael asked. “What’s it been, now—since April?”

  “Something like that.” Stephanie stepped back as the little kestrel daintily tore the mouse into bite-sized strips. “We won’t know how strong that wing is until we give him a real flight test. I guess it depends on if he’s healed or not. And if he’s imprinted on us.”

  “We don’t want that, right?”

  “Right. No good getting him too comfy with people if he has to make his own way in the wild.”

  Michael wondered if there was a real-life application there. “So what should I do to offend him and keep him ticked off at us?”

  “Just be yourself.”

  “Thanks a lot.” He wished she didn’t have a point.

  Stephanie moved with liquid grace around the bird, part crocodile hunter, part runway model. Michael couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Neither could Kevin the kestrel, but for entirely different reasons.

  “Hello?” Stephanie broke into his thoughts, and he realized she held her hand outstretched toward him. “Hand me another one, please?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” Michael passed along another rodent treat and imagined for a moment how Jessica Frazer would have handled this. The thought made him chuckle. His ex-girlfriend would have freaked at the first sign of a dead mouse, not to mention feeding one to a bird of prey with sharp talons and a beak that could rip things into shreds.

  Between Jessica and Stephanie, there was no comparison. He wasn’t sure when he’d figured that out, but today it was obvious.

  “What’s so funny?” Stephanie asked, but he waved an excuse.

  “Nothing.”

  He’d never seen a girl handle a wild bird quite like this. Someone who wasn’t worried about breaking a fingernail.

  At the same time, he wondered about imprinting. Would the same idea they’d applied to rehabilitating Kevin the kestrel now apply to him? How comfy could he get here in Kokanee Cove? Would he just have to fly away again, the way he’d done before?

  “Michael?” Stephanie’s voice brought him back to reality once more.

  “Here.” He shook his head, cleared his thoughts.

  “You sure?” Her voice changed as she fed the bird another mouse, which Kevin accepted with a wary bob of his head and a soft screech. “You look like you’re on another planet.”

  The front door bells jingled, and Michael peeked out to see the hunters leaving. The hunters in camouflage. The memories hit him full force in the gut, despite the promise he’d made to himself about leaving it all behind.

  Stephanie looked at him like he was coming down with a fever. “Are you okay, Michael?”

  He turned away and started for the door to the front room, but she held him back by the sleeve.

  “Michael, what is going on with—”

  “Nothing, okay?” He pulled free but stopped trying to escape. “I’ve just been thinking.” He leaned one hand against the door, unable to move.

  “Is it the thing with your mom?” Her voice softened and she looked at him with those big eyes, tender and a little afraid. Prettier than he’d realized at first.

  For one crazy moment, he thought maybe she would understand, the way no one else could. Maybe if he told his story, just this once, he could really and truly bury this thing. For good.

  “I’m sorry.” Stephanie turned back to the bird. “It’S really none of my business.”

  Maybe not, but he knew he had to tell her. What a way to kill a relationship before it’s even begun.

  “All right, you want to hear the story?” he asked. “You want to know what’s wrong with me?”

  She turned back with questioning eyes. “I’m not trying to be nosy, Michael. I’ll listen, but you don’t have to—”

  “When you hear it, you’ll probably go screaming out the door.”

  “That’s a silly thing to say.” She smiled at him as she wiped her hands on a paper towel. “Just tell me. You know I won’t scream…too loudly.”

  He wanted to believe her. Maybe he did.

  She crossed her arms. “I’m just kidding,” she said. “But really, it’s okay. Whatever it is, you know God is in—”

  “Sometimes I wonder, Steph.” He shook his head slowly. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I did.”

  He had to say that, had to offer his disclaimer and an easy way out. But he also knew it was too late to turn back. Who else could he tell? Not his dad and certainly not his mom or the girls.

  Stephanie waited, lips pressed tightly together, like she was holding her breath. Like she understood.

  “So we’re on escort.” He blurted out the story as fast as he could. He needed to get it over with, this obsession, this splinter in his soul. “Convoy from Samarra to Mosul. On our way through this town, Bayji. Not a very friendly place, especially since the highway narrows into the marketplace, and a lot of bad guys hung out there. Anyway, there’s a bunch of women crossing the highway, so we slow down, right?”

  He took another breath and tried to keep the emotion from creeping into his voice, tried to stop his lip from quivering. Stephanie just stared at him with those wide, beautiful eyes of hers. The kestrel fluttered his wings and continued eating.

  “And then this kid comes out of nowhere with a flat, old soccer ball, kicks it right at us. Twelve, maybe thirteen years old. The ball rolls under the tire of our Humvee, right? What are we supposed to do? Run over it? So Williams gets out and reaches down, and that’s when all hell breaks loose.” He paused and swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  For saying “all hell breaks loose” to a pastors daughter or for crying in front of her? He wasn’t sure. But he had to finish.

  “And this kid is right in the middle of it all. I mean, bullets flying, everybody’s screaming—Arabic, English, it’s crazy. Williams gets hit in the hand, so there’s blood everywhere. We’re returning fire. I can’t tell who’s who.”

  “Did you…?” she managed, though it was only half a question. Michael co
uld tell her hands were shaking.

  “I don’t know. That’s the part that really gets me. I don’t know what I shot, or who, or how. I try to remember, but it’s just bits and pieces, and they’re scrambled. All I know for sure is that the kid didn’t walk away. Everybody said he was part of the ambush, a way to make us stop and get out. I don’t know. I just see him lying there.

  He couldn’t go on, couldn’t escape the fractured nightmare that had played and replayed in his mind. So he hung his head and sobbed like a little boy, no older than the one who had been gunned down in the dusty streets of Bayji. By the insurgents? By accident? He would never know. He cried like the mother who came out only minutes later to gather the body of her son.

  “I’m so sorry, Michael.” Stephanie rested a soft hand on his shoulder, exactly like Merit would have done. “But you know it wasn’t your fault, don’t your “Wasn’t it?” He snapped his head up. This part he knew. “I shouldn’t have let Williams get out. We should never have stopped. I could have kept it from happening. That was my job!”

  “No. It doesn’t help to say that.” That sounded like something Merit would have said too. She held up a finger to quiet him. “You can’t say that.”

  “But I could have,” he argued, out of breath and wanting more than anything to be wrong. “I could have.”

  “You couldn’t. Don’t you see? It wasn’t your fault. Nothing was your fault. You were doing your job and it was hard. And you can’t bring that little boy back to life by blaming yourself for something you had no power to change.”

  He buried his face in her soft shoulder and let her hold him. She was right. He couldn’t do anything about what had happened. Couldn’t change it. He’d tried, but he couldn’t.

  He couldn’t change what was going to happen to his mom, either.

  thirty-two

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep.

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  ROBERT FROST, in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

  Stephanie paused for a moment, first to catch her breath and shift the package in her arms, then to watch the woods fill up with snow. It brought to mind the words of her favorite Robert Frost poem, the one she had memorized in fifth grade. The lines seemed to fit this afternoon, especially since it was also the darkest day of the year.