“That so?” he asked.
“Yes, but go on.”
“After the worst of it was over and men were divided into the living and the dead, I walked over to the water’s edge, barely feeling my leg. So many things had washed ashore.”
“Like what?” Landon asked him.
“I recall a tennis racket, a banjo, a football, some glistening oranges floating in the water—things that soldiers had brought with them. Once we were up on the bluff, we could see the big picture—the war. But it was those peculiar personal items that stayed with me.”
“Then you met Carissa,” she said. “Tell me more about her.”
“I’d like to.” He picked up the photograph of Landon at seventeen. “I just can’t tell you how much this reminds me of her.”
He told Landon that Carissa came to him every day, right outside the field hospital. She ran to him like he was a long-lost friend and embraced him when he stood to meet her. Kasir, she called him, and his name sounded foreign and lovely in her mouth. He was aware, always, of the language barrier. And how to break it.
Mr. Kasir sipped his coffee and paused, wondering what was appropriate to tell a woman. He remembered that it was summer. The countryside was lush. Butterflies were everywhere. There were green hedgerows on either side of the dusty road they walked along. Pecan trees and apple orchards. Cows grazing here and there. Carissa took his hand, and they walked together down a side road that ended in a covey surrounded by long, hanging tree limbs, away from the road. Red flowers grew everywhere; he later learned these were geraniums. She lay on the grass. So he did the same. They were under the tree, looking up at the sky. She pressed his hand to her cheek. He turned to lie on his side to look at her. She turned her face to let him see her eyes.
“We were looking at each other,” he told Landon. “Her eyes, they were full of concern, and her brow was wrinkled with that unspoken question. She didn’t understand English, but I thought it seemed she wanted me to talk to her about what I’d seen. And so I started talking, then I started crying. And she held me. I started shivering—not because I was cold but because I had never loved a girl like I loved her, in that moment. Are you all right with what I’m telling you, Landon?”
“Of course,” she replied.
Her little dog, Alejandro, was begging to be held. She put him on her lap.
“I realized that this battle was right next to her village. She must also have been frightened. Maybe she felt safe with an American soldier, I don’t know. But one thing was for certain: we were both caught up in something that was too much for a young boy and girl to comprehend. But there was something, something she was trying to tell me.”
“A question, perhaps,” Landon said. “A question she wanted to ask you.”
“Yes,” he replied. What he didn’t tell Landon, because he thought it inappropriate, was that she had kissed him, and the question was in the kiss—slow and beseeching.
He looked again at Landon to make sure she was still with him.
“That night, she took me home with her like she always did. Her father prayed over the food before we ate. They bowed their heads, and he said my name. I guess they were grateful to me, to us, for saving their country.”
She smiled. “What a story, Mr. Kasir. What a story you’ve carried.”
Just as it had been with Carissa, words were not always necessary. Mr. Kasir sat in silence with Landon, lost in his thoughts of France. Finally, he told her that he needed to be getting home, that they ought to put up the signs in the yards before the weather got worse.
When they stepped out onto the porch, Landon kissed his cheek and snowflakes danced in the wind.
JASON
When Jason pulled up to his grandparents’ house, he saw that his granddad’s truck wasn’t there.
He knocked, then entered without waiting for a response. His grandmom was sitting at the table drinking orange juice and eating a biscuit. She was ageless, Jason thought. Her skin wasn’t like other old people’s. It was nearly flawless.
A smile broke across her face at the sight of him. She got up from the table and hugged him tight. Then she backed up. He could tell that she suspected something was amiss. He knew he must look distraught.
“Dad’s in jail,” he said flatly.
She absorbed this with a brief furrow of her brow, then turned to fetch a couple of biscuits for him.
“Drugs?” she asked calmly, retrieving a jar of strawberry jam from the refrigerator.
“Of course,” Jason said. “It never stops with him. Where’s Granddad?”
“He had to run over to see one of his renters. I didn’t know it was snowing or I would have put my foot down.”
“It’s not sticking,” he told her.
His grandmom sat and reached for his hand. “Did you go see him?” she asked, looking tenderly into his eyes.
Jason nodded.
She didn’t push for more information. They quietly ate the biscuits she had made from scratch. She made everything from scratch, even the jam that Jason had spread across his biscuits with abandon.
“He told me to ask Granddad to come see him.”
“To post bail,” she affirmed.
“Of course.”
That’s when he heard his granddad’s truck pulling into the carport.
“That’s him now,” Grandmom said.
When his granddad entered the kitchen, Jason rose to give him a hug.
“Jason! What brings us the happiness of a visit?”
Jason looked at Grandmom. He almost didn’t have it in him to repeat what he had just told her.
“It’s not good news, Abe,” she said.
“What, what is it?”
Grandmom stood to collect Granddad’s coat and hat from him, then headed toward the hall closet. Jason stared down at the tabletop, unable to speak.
When she returned and sat back down at the table, Grandmom said, “Abe Jr. is in the county jail.”
Jason looked at Granddad. “It’s drugs again,” he told him, knowing how much it would hurt to hear. He saw the familiar despair descend over his granddad, like lights going out in the middle of a storm, quick and all consuming. “He called me,” Jason said.
Granddad slapped his hand on the table. “Why didn’t he call me instead of you?” he roared. “He’s a coward, that’s why. Has to drop bad news on his boy, rather than call his father. I don’t even want to know the details.”
Jason knew his granddad was mad at his father, not him, but he felt guilty all the same. Grandmom must have sensed it because she reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
“He wants bail money,” Jason said.
“Well, he’s not getting it from us,” Grandmom said, though both she and Jason knew that wasn’t true. Granddad was the pushover, the enabler, the father who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—hold firm, who, Jason knew, was likely already working out in his head if he had enough in his checking account or would need to go into savings.
They must have spent thousands on his father, Jason thought, including the cost of more than one stint in rehab.
“I just don’t get it,” Granddad said, starting his usual lament. “How many times do we do this? And if this thing Abe Jr. has is a disease, like the rehab doctor told us, then why didn’t it get cured? I don’t understand. I just don’t get it. That doctor said the only thing that has ever worked is to go to meetings. If it’s a medical disease, how on earth can it be cured in the basement of a church, sitting around with a bunch of other junkies, swapping stories? Nothing will heal him but going back in time, keeping him away from Vietnam.”
Jason had heard this speech before.
“Don’t make excuses for him, Abe,” Grandmom said. “You were a soldier, too.”
“Maybe it was the Agent Orange,” he said.
“I’m not buying that,” she replied. “His troubles are his own, and blaming anything else won’t help him.”
Granddad folded his arms on the table and droppe
d his head.
“Granddad?” Jason asked. “Are you okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you.”
He lifted his head. “Oh, no, my boy,” he said. “You did the right thing, coming to us. I’m so glad you knew where to go.”
Grandmom was already taking pots and pans from the cabinet to fix a meal. She believed that eating a good supper was the only way to feel better. Or maybe, Jason thought, she was thinking of herself; maybe it helped her to be doing something with her hands.
“Do you know what he’s charged with?” she asked from the stove.
“He was selling,” Jason told her. “Oxy, probably. I guess to support his own habit.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Oxycontin. They call it ‘hillbilly heroin’ because so many guys switch to it to save money.”
“And what is it?”
“Real strong painkillers.”
“Did he tell you,” Granddad interjected, “what his bond was set for?”
Grandmom whirled around. “Abe, you are not going to bail him out again. Let him call some of his cronies, if he has any left. We are not spending one more penny on him. We’re not going to enable him.”
Yes, Jason thought. Grandmom had been to Al-Anon. She knew the lingo, and she knew the hard facts.
Granddad got up and disappeared into the living room. Jason followed and watched him pull the sea-green curtains aside.
Jason was surprised to see the snow that was collecting in the front yard and on the gazebo. He sat on the couch. Granddad put some logs in the fireplace, then got that morning’s newspaper and a handful of small wood to use for kindling. He got a long match from a drawer and lit the kindling, then poked at the flames as they began to catch.
“I’m changing my will,” Granddad said, turning to Jason. “I’m giving you all of the properties. When Grandmom and I die, you will inherit them . . . and the people. Your father will get nothing. And your grandmother is right. We aren’t going to bail him out this time. He can spend some time in the Jefferson County Jail. He might have to go to prison again, but nobody is going to save him. All those times I drove to Montgomery to visit him at Kilby, buying cigarettes for him and giving him cash for the canteen, I thought I was helping. I thought I was protecting him.”
“Let him hit bottom,” Jason interrupted. “The only way he can go from there is up.”
Jason stood and walked back into the kitchen, where Grandmom was slicing onions, peppers, okra, and garlic. He suspected she was going to make chicken and sausage gumbo for him. She knew it was his favorite meal.
“We’re not going to bail him out,” Granddad called from the living room. “Not this time.”
Grandmom made the sign of the cross and smiled at Jason.
His granddad walked back to the kitchen.
“If he tries to call you, Jason,” he said, holding Jason’s shoulders and looking right into his eyes, “don’t answer. If it’s going to be hard for you to resist answering, we will get you a new phone, and he won’t know the number. All that matters to me is you, son. Your future, your peace of mind.”
Jason gave his granddad a hug. “Can I have a smartphone?”
“You can have whatever you want,” Granddad said, pulling back from the hug and smiling at Jason. “But what is a smartphone?”
Granddad didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he turned toward the back door.
“Where are you going, Abe?” Grandmom asked.
“I left something in my truck.”
He returned with what looked like a photograph. Jason watched as his granddad retrieved a notebook bearing the name Landon Cooper. Granddad tucked the photograph into the side pocket, face down. Jason had no idea what that was about but figured he would someday.
“Resolve,” his granddad said. “I want you to look up a word for me, Jason. In the dictionary.”
“Granddad, nobody uses a real dictionary anymore,” Jason responded as he followed his granddad back into the living room. “It’s all online.”
But he looked it up anyway. “‘Resolve,’” Jason said. “‘To find an answer or solution, to settle something, to reach a firm decision about, to declare, to decide, and to progress from dissonance to consonance.’”
“Now, tell me what those last two words mean,” Granddad said, using his cane to get situated comfortably in his chair.
“Well, in music, dissonance means lack of harmony, and consonance means in harmony. There’s actually a whole musical lesson contained in those two words, but I won’t go into that now. Let’s just say that dissonance means conflict, in-fighting, disagreement. And consonance means agreement. Resolve, I guess, is that point at which dissonance moves to consonance. We want that in our lives—right now, today, at this moment—and the only way to get it is to break ties with my daddy.”
“I’m so proud you have that music scholarship,” Grandmom interjected. She appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands with an old gingham towel.
“Those words make sense to me,” Granddad said. “That is what I feel. I have resolved that we will not bail him out. I have resolved that all the property will be yours. But I don’t want you to think of being a landlord as your fate, your job. You keep studying whatever it is you want to be. Just remember that the monthly rental payments from the tenants will always provide income for you. You understand what I mean?”
“I do,” Jason said. “And I hope you know how much I appreciate it.”
“You’ll do a good job. I will make all of this official.”
“He’s so young, Abe,” his grandmom said.
“I’m twenty-one,” Jason said. “I can have a drink in a bar now, Grandmom.”
“Well, I’m not planning on dying soon,” Granddad said. “But let me go ahead and show you how I keep up with the renters.” He held out Landon’s notebook. “Here’s what I do. There is a notebook for every dwelling, every renter. I keep them like journals. See how I’ve written when they paid for each month, and if they had a problem getting up the money? I’ve written the things we did to avoid eviction. We are fortunate because we own the houses. We’ve been blessed, and it’s our responsibility to help others less fortunate.”
“Your granddad is being kind,” Grandmom chimed in. “But remember that he worked hard to get these properties. He’s made a name of Kasir. Having a good name is as important as anything in a man’s life.”
“That’s right, son,” Granddad said.
He stood and walked toward the laundry room with Landon Cooper’s notebook.
With her husband out of the room, Grandmom turned to Jason. “You don’t have to keep those notebooks,” she whispered. “All you need is a ledger.”
“I want to do it like Granddad does it.”
She returned to the kitchen to work on her dark roux. When it was coffee brown, she would turn the heat to low, finish chopping vegetables, and render the sausage. The house was already fragrant, and Jason thought about how good it would smell once she added all the right spices.
JET
Jet was in her bedroom, packing for the concert in Destin. This would be the first time she went to a concert alone. But she could make the trip with her eyes closed. She knew Highway 331. The road to the Gulf Coast began in Montgomery, about a hundred miles south of Birmingham. Even though Highway 231 was quicker, 331 was more scenic. Sure, it was rough going fifty-five on a two-lane road. But Jet didn’t mind. It was a never-ending Alabama controversy—which highway was a better path to the Florida Panhandle, 231 or 331. Almost as controversial as which team you pulled for in football, Alabama or Auburn.
She was wearing jeans and a Widespread Panic T-shirt she’d bought at the band’s last area concert. In her backpack were a second pair of jeans, another T-shirt, panties, and a travel-sized shampoo. In her purse were her wallet, a baggie from Sam, and a one-hitter shaped and painted up to look like a cigarette. She had no hotel reservation for the night. Since everything in the Panhandle was probably booked, she would j
ust get back on 331 when the concert was over and look for a place in south Alabama, like Opp.
At the last possible moment, Lenny called and told her he could go with her after all. She hadn’t seen him since he quit the bookstore to work at an emergency clinic. “Just to get my feet wet,” he’d said. Though she was thrilled to have Lenny, some part of her was disappointed. Going it alone had started to sound exciting.
Picking up Lenny was easy, since he was on the way. Jet got on 65 and took the exit to his place in Hoover, a white-flight suburb outside the Birmingham city limits. She wound her way around his apartment complex, which looked like every other apartment complex, and wondered why he hadn’t moved to Southside yet. She was betting that he would, once medical school began.
She pulled up to his building and called him on her cell. “I’m right outside your door.”
“On my way down,” he replied.
He was wearing jeans and a pale blue dress shirt. He also had a backpack with what Jet assumed was his change of clothes. He carried a Styrofoam cooler that Jet suspected had beer inside. He put his things in the backseat.
“What’s with the shirt?” she asked him.
“I knew you’d say that. Can’t a boy look nice?”
She laughed. “Oh, baby, you look gorgeous in anything.”
“If only the boys thought that,” he replied. “Road beer?”
“Not yet. Not until after Montgomery.”
“Have they replaced me at the store yet?” he wanted to know.
“Of course not. I’m working with no help. The corporation loves it that way.”
They passed through Alabaster and Calera.
“I met somebody,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“At Starbucks.” He got a beer from the cooler. “See, this doesn’t begin in a bar, and that’s a good sign, isn’t it? I was having a cappuccino, studying slash daydreaming. I was by the window, and he was outside at a table under the awning. When I noticed him, he was already staring at me. He had his dog with him—a golden retriever, just like me. He didn’t look away when I made eye contact. We just kept staring at each other until he finally came inside. Left his dog tied to a pole. But then he went to the counter and got a croissant. Like, what?”
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