Almost Crimson

by Dasha Kelly

  “Uuhhh!” CeCe said, turning up her nose. “People spit on these steps. Let’s go by the bus stop. There’s a bench in front of the flower shop.”

  CeCe tipped down the steps in her white high tops, leading them across the street. Quentin followed at a distance, as promised, and stood awkwardly near the curb when CeCe plopped down on the bench. She slid to the edge of the bench, making room for him.

  “I think I’ll stand over here for a while,” he said. “I’m more comfortable standing.”

  CeCe regarded him for a moment, and shrugged. She placed her book bag on the ground between her feet and dug into her pocket. Her two plaits pointed behind her like tusks as she read from her neatly written sheet.

  “OK,” CeCe began. “Why did you go to Vietnam?”

  With hands anchored in his pockets, Quentin said, “My number got pulled. I had to go.”

  “Your phone number?” CeCe asked, tilting her head to the side.

  “My draft number. All the men who were eighteen and older got numbers according to our birthdays. I had a pretty high number and didn’t have to go my first year. My second year . . . ” Quentin’s voice trailed off as he looked away from CeCe. “Turns out I had only been almost lucky.”

  They held the silence between them until CeCe said, “We had to do the Presidential Fitness Test one time and I faked a stomachache so I wouldn’t have to. I’m good at the sit-ups, but I can’t climb up the rope. Maybe you should’ve faked a stomachache.”

  Quentin rumbled another laugh. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “How old were you?” CeCe asked.

  “Only nineteen,” Quentin said. “By the time I turned twenty, I was already in Vietnam.”

  CeCe thought of the apartment manager’s son, nineteen and home from college for the summer. CeCe found him sitting against the wall near the Dumpsters once, listening to his Walkman instead of working. He’d let CeCe listen to the screaming guitars inside his headphones. Skinny and pimple-faced, he was scared of his dad. She tried to imagine the manager’s son in a war movie, but couldn’t.

  “I bet you were really scared, huh?” CeCe asked, tucking her feet beneath the bench.

  “We were all scared,” Quentin said. “So many of us were dying over there, and most of us didn’t even know why we were fighting.”

  CeCe scrunched her nose again.

  “They didn’t tell you?” she asked.

  “They didn’t tell us the truth,” Quentin said, a fervor in his voice.

  CeCe leaned back against the bench. “My teacher says lying is the worst bad habit of all.”

  Quentin looked to the sky, as if noticing it for first time, and let out a deep breath. “Your teacher is right. When you lie, you compromise your integrity. And when you compromise your integrity, you devalue your word. When you devalue your word, you undermine your character. When you undermine your character, you limit your greatness.”

  CeCe blinked.

  Quentin laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was kind of heavy. Do you want me to explain it?”

  CeCe blinked again, and smiled. “You mean lying makes people not trust you, and when people don’t trust you, you won’t get help for all your goals?”

  Quentin’s face burst open with light. CeCe’s heart thumped with pride knowing she could make him smile this way.

  “That’s exactly right, Crimson,” Quentin said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Your mother is the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”

  CeCe’s entire face crinkled at that.

  “Mama ?”

  Quentin’s face twisted this time, stripping the smile from his face. “You don’t think your mother is smart, Crimson?”

  CeCe shrugged. “Deep down she’s smart, I guess.”

  “Deep down?” Quentin repeated. Pulling his hands from his pockets and folding his arms across his chest, his face became stern. “What do you mean?”

  CeCe shrugged again. “I mean, she doesn’t say smart stuff like you just did. She doesn’t say anything, really.”

  Quentin’s face was a blend of confusion and concern. A trail of pedestrians passed between them, excusing themselves and pulling close their satchels and handbags. Once they passed, Quentin gestured to the bench and CeCe slid over for him to sit. He smoothed the front of his shirt and positioned himself on the far edge of the bench. CeCe pulled one knee onto the bench to face him sideways.

  “Why don’t you put your feet right here,” Quentin said, tapping the pocket of his pants. “Don’t worry about the dirt. It’s more important for you to sit like the little lady I know you are.”

  It took a moment for CeCe to register his instructions, but then she remembered Mrs. Castellanos’ long-ago reminders about little ladies and pinched knees. CeCe thought the rule only applied to skirts, but pulled both feet to the bench anyway. The wrought-iron railing pressed hard against her back. CeCe remembered her book bag and propped it behind her. Her sheet of questions fell to the ground and Quentin scooped it up, scanning the page.

  “You have a lot of questions about killing and dying here, Crimson,” Quentin said, looking at her careful, cursive letters. “You don’t want to know what I was like as a kid? Or my favorite color? Or how I met your mother?”

  “I guess I’m not so good at interviews and stuff,” CeCe said, embarrassed. “I could only think of asking about what you were doing while me and Mama were here by ourselves.”

  Quentin fell quiet and so did CeCe. He looked from her to face the street and CeCe looked down to her short fingers. A lunch rush of people and traffic buzzed all around them as they traveled backwards in time. The trees netted a canopy above them, sprinkling honeysuckle flowers on the sidewalk.

  “What’s your favorite color?” CeCe asked. “Mine is yellow.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard yellow as a favorite color,” Quentin said. “Mine is red.”

  CeCe’s face lit up. “Like my name!”

  “Exactly like your name,” Quentin said, grinning. “Carla knew how to put the right word in the right place in just the right way. She was real exact about words, too. She’d written ‘crimson’ in a speech once and I changed it to ‘red.’ I told her it didn’t matter. She snapped at me and said if it didn’t matter, there wouldn’t be a dozen words for red. We laughed about that a lot.”

  CeCe smiled at the idea of her mother getting snappy. She thought of Mrs. Johnson and the first day of school.

  “She told me, huh?” Q said, a grin returning to his face.

  CeCe giggled, sitting up higher on their bench.

  “What did you and mama give speeches about?” she asked.

  “We were organizers with the Movement,” Quentin said. “I was one of the field officers who spoke at rallies and block meetings. Your mother helped write many of our speeches.”

  CeCe stared at him, slack-jawed.

  “You never ask your mother about herself?” Quentin asked.

  “Mama doesn’t do so much with her words now.”

  Quentin refolded the sheet of paper and handed it back to CeCe. He turned to focus on CeCe.

  “What do you mean, Crimson?”

  CeCe swallowed. At school, she’d been conditioned to be wary of open-ended probes. Full disclosure would prompt a social worker’s visit. At the corner store or the teller’s window, sharing more details than necessary filled eyes with either pity or disdain. In case Quentin also campaigned to take her away from her mother, CeCe decided to deflect instead.

  “I mean, she doesn’t have a lot to say like she used to with you,” CeCe said, crossing her legs at the ankle. “Why didn’t you come see her, since you liked her so much?”

  Quentin drew in a long, slow full breath. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. CeCe watched his fingers thread in and out of themselves while he built the momentum to speak.

  “I couldn’t, Crimson,” he began. “When I got back from ’Nam I was in bad shape. That place was hell on Earth, and good men
aren’t supposed to suffer hell, Bluebell.” Quentin turned to her. “Is that OK, if I call you that?”

  CeCe nodded. She liked the idea of a nickname, even one she shared with her mother.

  “I couldn’t sleep when I got back,” Quentin said. “Couldn’t be around people. Couldn’t be inside buildings for too long. I had spent four hundred and fifty-three days straight days in jungle warfare. I was messed up. Really bad.”

  CeCe was careful with her question. “You were . . . crazy?”

  “Yes, Crimson,” he said, still looking down at his thick fingers. “I was. I felt like everything inside my head and my soul had been rotted out. That war made me—”

  Quentin stopped himself and looked at her.

  “Made me different,” he finished.

  “Is that when you went to the mad scientist doctor?”

  Quentin scratched the side of his jaw, relaxing his face. “Yeah,” he said again. “A lot of us had to stay in the hospital for a while before we could try being civilians again. Plus, I had to get this taken care of.”

  Quentin stretched out his arm and rolled back his shirtsleeve. Tentacles of a scar stretched from his forearm toward his wrist. As he kept unrolling—all the way past his elbow—they looked down together at a blackened forearm with a mire of gnarled and charred skin.

  “VC buried mines everywhere,” he explained. “The cat walking next to me, Jake from Salt Lake, stepped on a Bouncing Betty, that’s what we called them. I’ll never forget his eyes when he heard the click. I knew what had happened before he said it. He tried to hold still while the rest of us crept away, but we couldn’t move too fast either in case there were other mines. He couldn’t hold his balance and the trap sprang up into the air. The explosion chased us in every direction. If it had been made like it was supposed to, I would’ve died. I got a dead arm, instead.”

  CeCe watched the side of Quentin’s head as he spoke.

  “Did Jake die?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  “Does your arm work now?”

  “Hmmm, it works for writing and picking stuff up,” Quentin said. “I won’t be playing basketball anytime soon. And I can’t feel anything. Go ahead. Hit me.”

  CeCe looked at Quentin’s arm, and tried to conceal her impulsive delight.

  “Go ahead.”

  CeCe smacked Quentin’s forearm as hard as she could. The sound snatched the attention of a mother walking by pushing a stroller.

  Quentin shrugged, with a grin. “See? Nothing. It’s ugly,” he said, rolling down his sleeve, “but this is what finally got me sent home. I was already over duty and this got me sent to a real military hospital. Letterman in San Diego. I thought I couldn’t wait to get stateside.”

  “They weren’t nice in the hospital?”

  Quentin gave small nods. “Sure, they took good care of us, even the ones who couldn’t really be helped.”

  “Like who? CeCe asked.

  Quentin paused. “Like me.”

  CeCe hugged her knees, sitting up now. “But they let you leave the hospital,” she said. “So they fixed you, right?”

  Quentin was quiet and his fingers stilled.

  “I ran away from the hospital,” he said. He drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and continued.

  “I choked a nurse,” Quentin said. He took another slow breath. “I felt her near my bed. Forgot where I was.”

  CeCe quieted as Quentin seemed to retreat into the past.

  “I jumped on her, pinned her to the wall by her neck,” Quentin said. “I almost killed her.”

  CeCe was still. Quentin’s fingers began to tap again.

  “Crimson, I’m a good man,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt that woman. I could never do something like that. I sang in the choir as a kid. Wrote poetry in high school. Got myself into college. Tried to make a difference. I hate what that war turned me into.”

  CeCe shivered.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I hid in alleys and slept behind a Dumpster that night. Before I knew it, years had passed and I was just another homeless guy.”

  CeCe looked past him to the other men on their library perches. The other crazies. She looked back to Quentin. His face was drawn.

  “Do you live behind the library?”

  “No, no,” Quentin said, clearing his throat. “I got some help a long time ago. A woman used to come to the viaducts looking for us veterans.”

  Quentin told CeCe all about the halfway house, the job at the grocery store, the doctors and therapy. It took him more than two years, he said, to sleep through the night without nightmares. Without weeping.

  “I still use night-lights,” he whispered.

  “Me, too,” CeCe whispered back.

  Quentin smiled at CeCe and looked up again to the honeysuckle sky.

  “One thing that kept me on this side of the grass was thinking of your mother in her wedding dress. Simple and beautiful, like her. She was so happy that day. I was so proud.”

  CeCe’s face loosened like a drawstring, unveiling her shock and awe.

  “You and Mama got married?”

  Slow nod to the sky.

  CeCe watched his face, lost on some distant memory. The afternoon sun reached down to them through the trees, spotting their limbs and the ground with light.

  “You didn’t want to come home?” CeCe asked.

  Quentin opened his eyes and looked up to the dappling trees. He spoke his words, CeCe thought, to God first.

  “I loved your mother with my whole soul, Crimson. She deserved better than what I had become. If I had been a whole person, I would’ve come to her sooner.”

  CeCe’s voice was small when she finally spoke. “What about me?” she asked. “Did you think about me?”

  CeCe focused her eyes on the knobs of her knees, away from the single stream of tears traveling the weathered curves of his face, like crystals against black velvet. He turned to her, insisting on her eyes.

  “Bluebell, I didn’t know about you. Carla’s letters stopped during my first year over there. Two years ago, I was fresh off the streets. From living in that viaduct. I got up the nerve to call our old number. You answered the phone, and I knew. I will never forget how small and perfect your voice sounded. I knew I had to get stronger. I knew I had to be ready to meet you.”

  CeCe let her questions flatten and fall away from her tongue. She watched the Quentin clasp his hands together, not looking at her. She could see the tips of his fingers whiten beneath his own grip.

  CeCe lowered her feet to the sidewalk. She slid closer to him, keeping her hands pinned beneath her knees. Tentatively, she leaned her cheek against his shoulder. They were quiet for some time. CeCe felt warm through her skin and inside her bones. Quentin felt solid next to her, while her mother always felt like a paper crane, ready to collapse at any moment. CeCe burrowed closer to Quentin, her father. She looked up to smile at him and her face crumbled into a landslide of tears.

  “Sir?” a woman’s voice floated behind them. CeCe and Quentin wiped, sniffled and turned to find a tall, elderly woman holding a clutch of tissues.

  “I’m so sorry to intrude,” she said. “The door to my flower shop was open and, well, I thought you two could use these.”

  The woman leaned in with a bony hand.

  “Thank you,” Quentin said, humbly, taking the tissues and handing some to CeCe.

  “Thank you for everything you sacrificed for this country,” the woman said, looking fondly at CeCe. “I wish I could offer more.”

  CeCe saw his chest expand a little as he accepted the woman’s praise. He raised his chin as he looked at her.

  “If it wouldn’t be going too far, do you think you could give my daughter one of your prettiest yellow flowers?”

  The woman beamed and disappeared into her shop.

  As CeCe’s bus approached, she hugged her father tightly. Quentin lifted the vase of flowers to her once she had climbed the three short steps. He’d offered to ride home with
her, but CeCe knew her mother would be under the comforter by this time of the afternoon. He did not wave from the sidewalk as CeCe’s bus pulled away, but she could see his heart leaping. CeCe could see it in his eyes.

  CeCe gazed at her flowers all the way home, turning the vase around and around in her lap. The shopkeeper had filled a small fish bowl with yellow snapdragons, roses, gazania, and daffodils. There was even a yellow ribbon tied around the lip.

  CeCe pulled the arrangement close to her face and breathed in. She never wanted to forget this moment, this smell, these exact shades of sunshine, lemon, maize, construction hat, yolk, taxi, sunflower, bumblebee, mustard . . .

  SEVENTEEN

  GHOST

  CECE NEEDED THE FRESH AIR of a drive after talking with Pam and decided to drive to the grocery to pick up a few items. Her cart was empty, but for a carton of milk, a bag of oranges, and a packet of chicken breast, when she spotted him somewhere between cereal and canned fruit. His maroon T-shirt, long plaid shorts, and white sneakers floated by like a vision.

  She planted in the middle of the aisle trying to harness her galloping heartbeat. CeCe had seen Rocky only a handful of times since he moved back from Nashville. She’d gotten accustomed to missing him, but the pang was sharp on days like today. Pam was her go-to friend for strategy and tough love, but this situation called for Rocky’s wisdom and philosophy.

  CeCe walked in front of the deli cases, accelerating a bit after peering down each empty aisle. Careening past the floor cleaners and light bulbs, CeCe’s neck stretched around the corner before her cart. She glimpsed the maroon shirt and tilted her cart into the aisle of coffee filters and seasonings. An unwelcome panic tightened around her chest.

  “I’ve listened to you complain about your mother since we were sophomores,” Rocky had said to her nearly nine years prior. It was the night they graduated from high school, when their affectionate bickering had sliced their friendship wide open. Rocky made another impassioned plea for her to apply to schools and leave Prescott. CeCe had stammered through her justifications before whipping back accusations of Rocky being arrogant, selfish, unsupportive, and an insincere friend.