Welcome Home

by Eric Smith

  I am weary because I belong nowhere and to no one. —Jase.

  I’m going to repeat that.

  I am weary because I belong nowhere and to no one. —Jase.

  I’ve never met Jase. I don’t know his age or his particular circumstances or if he drinks coffee by the gallons or his Mountain Dew in a Big Gulp. I only know he wrote this naked thing on a truck stop shower stall in Cookeville, Tennessee. It was just above a crude poem about beer. About what you would expect from a ten-dollar shower with a rusted-out drain. After I finished rinsing off, I bought a single Sharpie for three dollars and eighty-nine cents from a lady named Denise who called me “Sugar bun,” and I defaced my first piece of public property.

  Below Jase’s quote, in large block letters, I wrote:

  Me too. —Kevin.

  I don’t know what I was hoping. That Jase, whoever he was, might revisit the stall and see my addition? That someone else would see there were two of us and not feel alone? All I knew was loneliness wasn’t something I felt; it was something that attacked my chest like a CPR compression, and a shower stall was as good a place as any to admit I felt pretty damn tired to be only eighteen years old.

  I’ve never shared that story.

  Back then, I was Kevin Taylor, and I was too full of piss and inertia to believe someone else might need to hear it.

  That might sound like a rough description, but people liked me just fine. As a society, we value people who keep their ruckus on the inside and polish their outsides like church pews. I realized this fact on February 12, 2010, two years before I showered in that truck stop.

  I was standing on a gym floor like this one. It was maple. Polished. There was a dead spot near the half court mark. There was a dead spot in me too. Completely invisible unless you knew where to look. It was basketball homecoming. I had a crown on my head, an overly tanned girl on my arm. Mr. Carson, our principal, introduced me. “Kevin Taylor is the son of the late SPC Louden Taylor (pause) and the late Jonna Taylor. His guardians are Max and Rita Keller (pause) and the entire town of Barclay, Kentucky.”

  Mr. Carson said other things about the National Honor Society and Future Farmers of America and basketball, but I heard only those first two lines. The whole gymnasium heard only those first two lines. How do I know? Because they stood up, one by one, and clapped. Like there was something extremely brave about being an orphan. Or maybe they were clapping for themselves since they were the entire town of Barclay, Kentucky. It was so clear in that moment that I had a choice: be made of glass or made of steel.

  People clapped for steel.

  That’s when I started collecting controllable feelings: ambition, gumption, adrenaline. Things no one could take from me when I was napping in Algebra II or shooting a free throw against the Rockham County Rebels.

  For those last two years of high school, I’d slept here, there, and everywhere, but primarily in Mr. Keller’s basement. Home to his prize collection of Reader’s Digests, four thousand golf balls stored in egg cartons, a couch (my bed) from his frat house days, and some ceiling mold that looked like an outline of Abraham Lincoln. Abe and I had many conversations about my future. I needed Abe’s advice before Mr. Keller, a good-hearted and logical man, could say, “Now, Kevin, have you considered what will happen after graduation?”

  Now, Kevin, have you considered . . . was his favorite way to start conversations.

  Considered it? I was downright doggish. The Kellers’ generosity had boundaries. Known boundaries. They loved helping, but they didn’t necessarily love me. Didn’t hate me either. So it wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t permanent.

  Finding a cost-effective way out of Barclay Memorial High School wasn’t easy. But I was pretty sure I’d heard the undeniable sound of a new controllable feeling in Mr. Keller’s living room when I was babysitting his youngest, Nelly—a feat I performed often and actually enjoyed. She had chewed off and then proceeded to swallow the horn of her favorite My Little Pony. Not her first rodeo with swallowing things.

  Thank you, Sophomore-Year First-Aid Class, I knew what to do.

  Thank you, aptitude.

  Calmly, I wrapped my arms around her stomach, making sure they were at her belly button, below her breastbone. I squeezed Nelly until the piece of My Little Pony was out rather than in, and we were both tearstained and shaking. She from the ejection of Hasbro, me from relief and pride. She had forgotten it by the time I made her a grilled cheese; I remember it perfectly even now.

  My Little Nightmare.

  But for once, someone needed me rather than me needing them. I had control of life itself. I liked the hell out of that idea.

  That became the path. Nelly’s Heimlich to mower blades. Eight hundred earned dollars to passing my EMT class. A Google search to a job interview. Three days after I wore a cap and gown and pretended to care, I started my motorcycle, waved goodbye to the Kellers, and rode four hours south to Reston, Tennessee, with nothing but a duffle bag, some gasoline, and a thousand bucks I’d gotten for graduation. Ambition, gumption, aptitude, and Kevin Taylor.

  I stopped only once. At a truck stop in Cookeville. You know the one.

  That trip turned into an interview with Captain Luke Estes and a job with Reston County Rescue. I had held that job for six months when Rachel Goodson knocked on my apartment door and stuck out her hand.

  “You’re new to town, and I thought you might like a free Christmas tree,” she said, hand extended, smile so big it jumped off her face and landed on mine.

  Rachel’s dad was in charge of one of those pop-up lots around the corner from Luke’s. When that night ended, I had a pine tree in the living room and a redhead napping through Star Wars: Episode V on my couch.

  Fast-forward four months. There’s a piece of glossy paper in my front pocket that I’d torn from Luke’s Sunday paper without asking. I carried it around, fiddling with it until it rested completely flat against my thigh. The thing was feather-light. The thing was anvil-heavy. Paper can be heavy, people.

  It was called the Jewel of the Nile. A square engagement ring that was way above my pay grade, but perfect for Rachel.

  She appreciated very square things. “Kevin, can’t you see us in one of those salt-box houses?” she’d ask when we drove down Baker Street. “You know what my favorite aisle in the grocery store is?” she’d ask when we were at Market & 5th. “The cereal,” I’d answer, because that one long row was uninterrupted by other shapes. She even wallpapered her bathroom with a collection of floppy disks she’d gathered from yard sales and swap meets. Being a mostly square creature myself, I liked that about her. She would love the Jewel of the Nile.

  The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t afford a ring or even the paper it came on. The problem was Luke, my captain, and my closest friend. Who, if you need to picture him, has salt-and-pepper hair, is every bit of five-foot-five, and has a chest made for cage fighting. I trusted him, okay? I trusted him more than I trusted anyone. I’d . . . well . . . I’d cried in front of him. On my mom’s birthday. I’m making a big deal of that because I never let myself cry, even though Luke was a tough-ass water faucet around clear blue eyes.

  But that barrel chest of his harbored a massive heart that had little cause for jewelry stores. Not anymore. Not after he lost Lucy. I’d overhead him say to one of the other guys on the shift, “Stregg, ask me about hitting a vein, or planting raspberries, or even how to rewire the fan in the kitchen, but keep that engagement junk for someone younger.”

  Yeah, I heard Luke say that to Stregg, but I figured I wasn’t Stregg. Stregg was thirty-one and already had been engaged four times and divorced once. Luke wasn’t one for variance. He also liked square, sure things and controllable feelings. Stregg couldn’t get control of a hose coming off the truck, much less his love life.

  Asking Rachel to marry me was the kind of question that required . . . not a father, as I clearly didn’t have
one, and not a mother, as I didn’t have one of those either, but at least a parental-type conversation. People shouldn’t just get engaged without running heart facts by someone with life smarts. Should they? I didn’t think so. Even Stregg wanted Luke’s approval, and he had perfectly good parents he could ring up or visit.

  You have to know that the last time I’d fallen in love was with Molly Jessup. She could pop her shoulder in and out of its socket and didn’t mind raising her hand in math class and saying, “I need you to explain that again.” That was fifth grade. My parents were still alive, and they’d each employed the useful tactic of saying, “We’ll talk about love later, Kevin.”

  It was later.

  And Luke was the closest thing I had to a parent besides Mr. Keller, who had been kind enough to forward my diploma, which I had put in a kitchen drawer next to a whisk. He’d also mailed a twenty-dollar bill and a note that said Good Luck, Kevin. I was smart enough to know Good Luck, Kevin meant Goodbye, Kevin. Smart enough to know this wasn’t fifth grade, and Rachel Goodson could do a helluva lot more than wrench her arm out of its socket. She was the sort of girl who’d kill a whole Saturday making flash cards to help me pass my medic test. She studied origami because, “Kev, paper is mostly free and people like tiny gifts.” She watched every second of Apocalypse Now during my military movie stint knowing it would give her nightmares.

  Even if I hadn’t thought of Luke parentally, the apartment I rented was over his garage. He would notice if Rachel’s Kia stole a permanent place in the driveway.

  I put the conversation off as long as I could manage.

  It had been Thursday for all of five starlit hours. Which meant I’d had four days of babying the Jewel of the Nile through work and sweat: mostly ambulance runs that week. Two grand dates worth of seeing Rachel laugh and eat Ramen and play knockoff video games on my knockoff system on my knockoff living room rug. Two dates’ worth of praying she’d never do that with another guy. Ever. And four days without asking Luke his thoughts.

  That paper ring was practically a firework in my pocket.

  Luke had given me many things—a chance at this job, low rent, family meals—and I hadn’t asked for any of them. So now, when I needed something, really needed something, I wanted him to hear me out.

  Luke’s smoke-bitten voice would maybe choose an easy rebuttal: you’re too young (eighteen, but nearly nineteen). Or a logical one: you haven’t been dating her that long (four months, fourteen days, seven hours, if you were counting from the Christmas tree, which I was). Or the true one: you can barely afford yourself. I had answers ready on why the diamond ring picture in my pocket was attached to a necessary question. And most of them sounded like, “I love her,” and none of them sounded like, “and I know it’s a terrible idea.”

  The sun wasn’t nearly as awake as the moon. Our ambulance sat kitty-cornered on the side of I-24, lights blinking, siren quiet. A crew of state troopers finished brushing debris from an overturned semi. We were finally in the truck after being on our feet for most of the night when I decided it was time to pony up and break the news to Luke. I fiddled with the Velcro around my medic scissors, watching miles of headlights crawl by in the emergency lane. Where were all those people going? Were they late? I wondered.

  I hated feeling late. Especially when Rachel was the thing I was late to. The picture of the diamond ring traveled from my pocket to Luke’s hand.

  Luke unfolded it slowly. A torture. He coughed, letting the corners of his mouth settle into a grin he used only for jokes, and that’s when I knew I was screwed. His two thumbs tapped the steering wheel as if it were a kick drum. “Aw, thanks, Kip, but you’ve got too much facial hair to be my type,” he told me.

  Kip was my station nickname. One step above Kid.

  “For Rachel,” I said, the scissors now in my hands, opening, closing, opening again. “And I’m going to fold it into an actual ring. Like her origami gifts.”

  “You asking for advice or approval?” Luke wanted to know.

  When I didn’t answer, he returned the ring with some sharp words. “You can’t answer that, Kevin, and you’re probably not ready for marriage either.”

  That prompted a tight-lipped, arms-crossed question from me. “That your way of telling me no?”

  “I’m not telling you anything yet. Except that’s not a ring. That’s a picture of a ring. So you’d better be really sure you’re doing this for the right reasons.”

  I wanted to fire off a “You’re bitter because your wife died,” or “That picture stands for a promise.” Or even, “I’ve got my shit together better than half the people my age,” but Landon and Trey hopped inside and closed the back doors.

  The remaining forty minutes of our shift was given over to breakfast and ritual tasks. I was tired and ready for a shower when I walked to the parking lot. I was thinking if Luke didn’t understand, maybe I’d find somewhere else to live. I’d done it before. I’d do it again.

  You guys, that idea lasted a split second. Anger wasn’t made of real movement. Anger was only a waterwheel, recycling the same old feelings that went nowhere. I didn’t want or need another adult who was good, but disappointing. Kind, but dismissive. So I reminded myself that even if I moved across the country, Luke would stay close. He’d write. He’d call. He wasn’t a Now, Kevin, have you considered man, and I owed more than my anger to a man like that.

  Yes, I wanted this thing with Rachel, but it couldn’t be either/or.

  My motorcycle sat propped against the station basketball goal. It was the only thing I owned outright. The kickstand was broken when I bought it, and I’d never had extra money to replace the part. Luke’s 4Runner was nearby. Luke was nearby too, making the same lonely, eye-squinting march to the parking lot.

  “You still good to work at my mom and dad’s tomorrow?” he called out of his rolled-down window. He was always inviting me to family meals.

  “Leaving at nine?” I asked, as if we hadn’t been terse earlier. As if we weren’t driving to the same address.

  Luke gave me a thumbs-up. “Sleep on it.”

  I timed my response with revving the motorcycle, letting it roar over my words. “Yeah, you too.”

  I didn’t sleep. Rachel called, and it’s shameful, but I picked a fight so she wouldn’t come over. I know. I know. Bad idea, but I had to square this with Luke, and I didn’t have a clue how to do it.

  The next morning I climbed into his 4Runner, and he passed me a pair of gloves from the cargo pocket of his pants. “We’re weeding the beds,” he said. I’d be lying if I said I noticed that he had an envelope in the same pocket he’d had the gloves in. Anything that might be in that envelope was far from me.

  All I could think was:

  “She makes me happy, Luke.”

  “Hear me out, Luke. Be the person who listens.”

  “Don’t make me write messages to someone on shower stalls in effing Cookeville, Tennessee, Luke.”

  Luke must have been thinking about the late sixties. He asked if I’d ever seen The Graduate and cued up the soundtrack. I reminded him I’d been born in 1994. So no, I had not seen The Graduate. But I would soon enough. I could feel him mentally downloading the film as we drove. Feel us flopping onto the worn leather couches in his den, eating chili, and splurging on undercooked brownies and big glasses of whole milk. We’d talk about Stregg or my upcoming medic test. Maybe we’d even talk about how my mom always overcooked brownies and bought fat-free milk.

  When we reached Luke’s parents’ house, they had splurges planned for lunch. Slow-roasted pork. Watermelon. Baked potatoes. Things I would never buy for myself. Things that parents buy and think nothing of.

  We worked—planting, digging, weeding, hauling—until there was salt on our skin. We worked—me faster than Luke, him quieter than me. I knew he was thinking about Rachel and me. About Lucy, his wife. How they were once my age. They’d
married at nineteen, and I would be nineteen in two months. The only thing he had at my age that I didn’t were parents to pay for the groom’s cake.

  Finally, he asked if he could ask me a question and I agreed.

  “Do you think you’d be marrying Rachel if your parents were still alive?”

  Again, I couldn’t answer his question.

  “’Cause it seems to me that you’re rushing it,” he said in a way that was neither cruel nor hasty. He’d slept on it. He’d thought about it. He was giving me his parental opinion.

  “I’m not trying to,” I told him.

  “That sounds about true,” he said, and then we worked until it was time to go to the sun porch for pork shoulder and conversations about the flowerbeds.

  I felt the oddness before I took my place across from Luke. Candles on the table. At lunch. Real dishes instead of paper plates. Freshly cut mint in the tea. Add to that the whole Estes family beaming like secondary suns, and something was certainly going on.

  Mr. Estes prayed and after his amen he cut his eyes expectantly at Luke and said, “Son?” instead of “Helen, pass me those rolls, please.”

  Luke drummed his hands on the edge of his plate the way he’d drummed them on the wheel of the ambulance. I wondered if he’d told his parents about the Jewel of the Nile, about how stupid he thought I was.

  Luke took a white business envelope out of his pocket and set it on my plate like a meal.

  Ten percent—a hopeful, boyish ten percent—thought it was a loan for the Jewel of the Nile. Which would have been crazy kind, but if Luke had come around to the concept, I was good for paying him back. Ninety percent knew there wasn’t money in that envelope.

  Luke said, “Kevin, we’ve never talked about this, but I thought . . . well, I thought you might be open to letting us be your family. Not replacing your parents or anything, but . . .” His voice drifted off.

  I already thought of Luke as family. His parents too. And I’d heard so many stories about Lucy that I could taste the salt on her famous fried chicken. I knew Luke’s couch was still concave with her shape. I never sat in her indentation, so it was like the three of us were watching television together.