If You're Reading This

by Trent Reedy

  “Maybe I could talk to your mom,” Derek said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Okay, maybe not,” he said. “But hang in there, buddy.” We went back to cleaning and reassembling the lawn mower.

  * * *

  That night after work, I stopped at the Gas & Sip to fuel up the Falcon. She ate a lot of gas, but not enough to make me miss riding Scrappy everywhere.

  Just as I finished filling the tank, Sullivan came out of the station. He offered his trademark cool reverse nod and joined me at the pump.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “Um … nothing. Just getting off work.” I hadn’t expected him to want to talk to me.

  He jerked his thumb toward the parking spots in front of the station. “Park the truck. Let’s go for a walk.” He actually smiled when I hesitated. “Trust me, man. It’s cool.”

  I moved the Falcon and paid for my gas, and the two of us set out on foot, walking the streets of this town where we’d both grown up. It was a warm night for late September, and a lot of people our age were out on the square, some cruising, a few skateboarding around the fountain in the center green. At first Sullivan’s route seemed random, but after a few blocks, I figured he had a destination in mind.

  “How did team supper go?” I asked after a while to break the silence.

  “It was cool. Mr. Pineeda was crazy like always. Dozer ate a whole Big Porker.”

  “Wow.” The Big Porker sandwich overflowed with a full pound of barbecue pork.

  We reached the abandoned railroad tracks and headed south. When we were out of town, we stopped on the Runaway Bridge, the gurgling waters of the English River fifty feet below.

  Sullivan picked up a rock and threw it over the side into the water. “So it’s like this,” he said. “I was pissed when I found out you quit. So mad, I couldn’t talk to you all day, because I didn’t want to be a jerk.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” I said.

  “Hang on.” He held up a hand. “I’d like to know why you quit, but Ethan says you’re not talking. You must have your reasons. Just … I want to know if I can convince you to come back. I think Coach will take you back.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re really letting your friends down, Mike.”

  “You mean my friends who give me crap in the halls all the time, who ruined things for me with Isma?” I said. “Friends who spread rumors about me, about Isma, who attack me just for showing up at Nature Spot? Those guys only acknowledge the existence of the guys on the football team, and they can’t stand anyone who isn’t. Somehow letting them down doesn’t feel so bad.” I kind of lied about that last part.

  “Don’t even try to lump us all in together!” Sullivan said. “You criticize people for assuming that anyone who isn’t on the football team is crap, but what does it say about you when you assume that everyone on the team is exactly the same?”

  He had a point, but I wouldn’t admit it. “Still, all those guys were —”

  “They didn’t know you, man. We didn’t know you. How were we supposed to? You never talked to anyone. You never participated in any activities. You went to school and went to work, and that was about it. Anyway, do you hang out with everybody in the whole school? Do you go far out of your way to talk to that kid — what’s his name? The kid with the stuttering problem. Nicky Dinsler’s little brother?”

  “Denny,” I said.

  “Yeah. You best buddies with him?” I’d talked to him a few times, but not very much. Sullivan waited a moment for me to say something, but my silence answered for me. “That’s what I thought. Yeah, Nick Rhodes, and that idiot in your class, Clint Stewart. Their pal Adam What’s-His-Name — those guys are jerks. Nobody likes them. But this isn’t like the movies or comic books. No supervillains here, man. Just normal people. And people can be mean and they can be cool on the same day. Dozer, Moore, Bracken? Yeah, they say a lot of stupid things sometimes, but they’re good guys. Loyal friends. We all came up together.”

  “Yeah, you’re all real close,” I said. “I noticed that.”

  He shook his head. “Rhodes isn’t as good a tight end as you are, Mike. Worse, he gets all upset and loses his mind out there, then we wind up getting knocked back fifteen yards for a penalty. Why you quit is your business, but if it’s because of what happened out there at the fire drill, if you’re mad at the guys … you also gotta know, you still have friends. At least, I’m still your friend.”

  “Just coincidentally a friend who might help you win more games?”

  “Yeah!” Now Sullivan sounded mad. “Yes, fine. We need your help. Okay? I need us to make the playoffs. I need a scholarship. The way our district is shaping up this season, we can lose only one more game and expect to make it to postseason. So, yeah, I’m your friend no matter what, but I’m also asking you to get back on the team and help us.”

  I didn’t know if I should believe him or if he was telling me what I wanted to hear just so I would help him get what he wanted. More and more, that’s what it all came down to, the lies versus the truth. What was real. What really counted.

  Sullivan clapped me on the shoulder. “So, sorry to get all weird and emotional on you, but I wanted you to know that.”

  Neither one of us spoke for a while after that. The river valley began to melt into darkness, and we spent some time chucking rocks into the river. “Good luck tomorrow,” I finally said. “I hope you guys win.”

  “I hope we win too,” he said.

  * * *

  That talk with Sullivan helped me survive Friday. Seeing the guys again and again around school in their game jerseys constantly reminded me of my failure.

  Mrs. Potter hadn’t returned yet, so I couldn’t get access to that old computer back in her office. I told myself that was why I had to delay watching the rest of Dad’s videos, but there was another reason. With these letters and videos, my father cheated himself into the future. He lived again and communicated with me in ways that challenged me to be a better person, while at the same time offering that sense of approval from a father that I’d never had before. These last two videos would almost certainly be the last I ever heard from my father, and I felt a sense of dread at that knowledge.

  These thoughts bounced around in my head as I finished reading Hamlet Friday night by the lonely light of my desk lamp in my quiet attic. We exist as the words of our thoughts or our mouths, I thought. If I played out the rest of Dad’s videos, his existence in the present would diminish. “The rest,” Hamlet says as he dies, “is silence.”

  A knock came from the bottom of the attic stairs. It was too early for Mom to be back from work. Mary had sneaked out to the game, and that was probably over by now. “Go away!” I yelled.

  “Mike, I need to talk to you,” Mary said as her head popped out of the stairwell.

  “No. I’m serious. Go away.” I got up and went to block her way up the stairs. She pushed past me and came into the attic. “You’re not staying,” I said. “Get out of here!”

  She pulled out the metal folding chair at my desk and sat down. “Don’t you even want to hear how the game ended?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Mary leaned back in my chair. “North English beat us twenty to fifteen.”

  “Great,” I said. “Now leave.” Not only did I not need a reminder that I wasn’t on the football team anymore, I really didn’t want to hear about how the team had lost.

  “I talked to Isma,” she said. “I told her you missed her.”

  “You what?” How did Mary know Isma wouldn’t talk to me? “Why would you talk to her? What do you mean, I miss her?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Mike, seriously. Everybody’s heard about what happened. How you kind of screwed up during that fire drill —”

  “Yeah, I know I screwed up. I don’t want to talk about it. Would you just leave?”

  “Isma’s cool, Mike. You found yourself a really pretty, really great girlfriend.”

  “She�
��s not my girlfriend.”

  “She still likes you.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said. “Why? Did she say something?”

  Mary laughed. “You’re such a dork. No, she didn’t flat out say ‘I still like your brother,’ but she mentioned you quit football and …”

  “And what?”

  “And I can just tell she still likes you! Women can tell these things.”

  My sister was hardly a woman, but I didn’t want to argue about that. Anyway, if all she had was some kind of mysterious feeling that Isma still liked me, I’d rather just be left alone. “Gee, thanks for telling me all that,” I said. “That’s so useful.”

  “Would you knock it off?”

  “Knock what off?”

  “This attitude! This total loser act.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I never thought I’d be saying this, but you’ve actually been pretty cool this year, Mike. You were good on the football team. A couple dorky girls in my class have crushes on you. Your truck is old and I hate the color, but at least you’ve got your own ride. Then you also had a girlfriend.”

  “So what?”

  “So don’t just give up!”

  “I don’t need advice from my annoying little sister.”

  “You do too.”

  “Get out of my attic.”

  Mary stomped back down the stairs. A moment later, her bedroom door slammed. I had questions to answer on the study guide for English, but somehow the prince of Denmark’s pain didn’t seem to matter much right then. I closed my book and flopped back on my bed, thinking of Dad’s videos and how lost and miserable he’d been and how I felt the same.

  Monday brought Homecoming Week. A bunch of people dressed up for Monday’s “Blast from the Past” theme, wearing hippie outfits for the sixties or huge hairdos for the eighties. I went as the Great Depression. No costume required.

  After school that day, I took Dad’s red-bull bag and went to the library. Mrs. Potter had returned, and I couldn’t wait any longer. When she let me set up in her office, I sat down to watch my father’s last messages to me.

  Dad waved at me from where he sat. The white tower room shined brightly as the sun slanted columns of light through the dusty air. “Hello, Michael.” He checked his watch. “It’s Friday, July twenty-second, 2005.” He wiped his hand down his face. “I’ve … um … stopped counting the days. Anyway, it’s been a couple months since I made my last video for you, so I figured I’d better borrow Gardner’s camera and make another.

  “To tell the truth, it’s been a rough couple of months. It’s real depressing to have to stay longer than we thought we would. Your mother has agreed not to divorce me at least until after this deployment, and I’m hoping I can get her to come around and avoid it altogether.” He shrugged.

  “Listen, I wanted to say that maybe I shouldn’t have told you about that. It’s just that the whole thing had surprised me, and I was upset. I had this idea that you should know the whole truth about life and your parents. Now, though … I don’t want you to be upset with your mother about this divorce thing. She deserves better than that, and anyway, if you’re watching this video, the situation hardly matters because it means I died, or I will die, before any of that happens.”

  I paused the video and dropped my gaze to the floor. Then I looked at the image of my father. I’d sure let him down on all that he’d just asked of me. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said out loud. I resumed the video.

  Dad leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin on his folded hands, looking directly into the camera. “One night,” he said quietly, “right before we came on our guard shift at zero one, PFC Gardner walked into his tower to find the soldier he was supposed to relieve had brought a live grenade to the tower with him. He told Gardner to leave. Said he was going to blow himself up.

  “Gardner was smart. He keyed up his radio during the conversation so I would hear. I joined the two of them on the guard tower. The guy was just huddled in the corner, tears running down his face, his hands shaking and his finger on the pin. He kept talking about missing his kids, wanting to go home. It took a while, but eventually me and Gardner talked him into handing over the grenade. They sent that soldier back to the main base at Bagram to get some help. I hear he’s doing okay.”

  Dad was quiet for a moment, but then he smiled. “We’ve been doing a lot of toy-and-candy missions for the kids in villages all over Farah province. You should see the look on those kids’ faces when they get a brand-new toy, maybe their only toy. The boys get together and make little wars with their new plastic army men. The girls will hold a Barbie doll or a fuzzy stuffed animal like it’s their own baby.” Dad folded his arms and rocked them back and forth in a cradling motion. “Yeah, maybe handing out toys and candy doesn’t win the war, but these kids have had it rough, and it’s good to see them have some fun.”

  He grabbed a cigar from off camera and lit up, coughing a little. Then he cleared his throat and smiled. “Another thing that has really cheered people up has to do with this young Afghan girl named Zulaikha who we came across in a village called An Daral. We were on a mission there to see about building them a new school, driving down this narrow lane on our way to the river. All of a sudden, Corporal Andrews shouted down into the Humvee, telling us to look at this girl who was standing near the wall.”

  Dad frowned. “She was ugly, I have to say — disturbing to look at, with her upper lip not joined in the middle, and her top teeth so crooked that they stuck straight out from under her messed-up nose. I guess they call this cleft lip. She was born that way. I felt so sad, seeing her like that, knowing that doctors could fix that, but she’s had no access to medical help.”

  He rose from his chair and reached his arms up, stretching. Then he crossed the room and leaned on the big cement ledge at the base of the window, looking out in silence for a moment. “Helping this girl was not one of our official missions from the Army.” Dad turned back to the camera. “But Andrews wouldn’t give it up. He bothered every officer on base. He offered to pay any costs himself. He even wrote to Congressmen about it. I asked him why it was so important to him to help this girl, and I’ll never forget what he said. He was even more serious than he usually is, and he just stared at me and said, ‘Please, Sergeant. I don’t know if I can make it if we don’t do this. I’ve seen too many bad things in this war. Too much goes wrong over here. I need something to go right.’ ”

  Dad stood up straight. “Finally, our physician’s assistant was able to get the girl to one of our doctors in Kandahar for the surgery she needed. You should have seen her when she came back, Michael. It was a miracle of a difference. There was just one tiny scar. Otherwise you’d never know the girl had ever had a cleft lip.

  “Corporal Andrews was right. We needed to help Zulaikha. She needed the surgery so she could talk, eat, and drink right, but we needed to help her. We needed to win one. She’s helped me find more joy and purpose through the difficult period of this involuntary extension. She’s reminded us all of the importance of dedication to our mission of helping the Afghan people build a better country. Zulaikha is an inspiration, a brave little girl in a tiny village in Afghanistan, who has no idea that I owe her more than I can ever repay.”

  Dad puffed his cigar, then sat back down in his chair. “I was talking to Ortiz and the guys in the Gentlemen’s Smoking Club the other night. MacDonald has even joined us now. You remember how I talked about the Cowboy Way, about not knowing the best way to do something, and having no guarantees that anything would work out right, but trying anyway?” He flicked some ash. “I’ve just realized it’s more than that. It’s like those old Western movies from the fifties and sixties where the good cowboy wore the white hat. While the cowboy didn’t always know how to handle a certain problem, he knew what was right, and he’d ride into town and do his best to stop the bad guys. I should have figured that out a long time ago. The Cowboy Way isn’t just about making things up as you go along. It’s about ma
king things better for everyone.

  “Try to help people, Michael.” He shook his head. “When we were in Texas training for the war, some of my fellow soldiers and I went into Austin for fun. A homeless man on the street asked if I had any change. All I had in cash was a dollar and a quarter, but I figured the Army was paying me pretty well, so I gave the man my money. One of my buddies said that was a stupid waste and the bum should get a job. I thought of that part of the Bible where Jesus says something like, ‘I was hungry and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me a drink.’ I had to try to help that man at least a little bit. You’ll make zillions more five- or ten-dollar bills in your lifetime, Michael. And sometimes just listening and understanding someone, letting him know he’s not alone, can make all the difference.

  “That’s your mission with this one, Michael. I’ve asked you to do something nice for Mary and your mom. Now I want you to find a way to help others. It’s a mission I hope you’ll stay involved with for the rest of your life.”

  Dad looked down and didn’t say anything for a long time. He didn’t look up when he spoke again. “I wish I had figured this stuff out a long time ago, before they sent me to the war. When I left home, you were only seven years old, and you looked at me like I had the answers to everything in life. Truth is, I don’t know how much these letters and videos have taught you about what it means to be a man. That’s because I don’t have many real answers. I’ve been tripping through life, mostly clueless. If I ever make it home, I’ll live the Cowboy Way and start changing some things. I’ll take a risk and put in for some better jobs. Your mom talked about wanting to go to college, but neither of us really knows how to get all that stuff started. If I make it home, I’ll make sure she uses the G.I. Bill benefits I’ve earned in the Army. I owe her that. I owe you all so much.”

  He took a long drag on the cigar and blew out smoke a moment later. Then he stood up and walked toward the camera. “I miss you all so much.” The video froze.