by Paige Notaro
“Ok,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t report it, but I found it this morning.”
“What?”
I flailed to pull this thing together. “It was at the nurse’s station when I came in,” I said. “I thought someone had just left it there for me.”
She glanced at her screen. “I do see you didn’t check in this morning. How did you get in?”
Thank god for small miracles. “I don’t check in most mornings. Someone else probably held the door open for me as I walked in.”
“And what time was that?”
My heart flared. There were cameras near access points. They could easily find me if they decided to check. And I had made no effort to hide the card clipped to my waist. Why would I?
“Around nine ten, I think.”
It had been much earlier. I was digging my hole deeper, but it was too late to get out of the lie. Even if I told them everything about Calix, they wouldn’t believe I wasn’t hiding something more now.
The only option was to make them think I had nothing to do with him other than be his nurse. Anyone who used my badge probably would have just dropped it off at the nurse’s station.
It’d be far less cruel than coming to the nurse’s house and offering it in exchange for fucking her.
My ears scalded with rage now as I thought of the calm collected way he had showed up at my door with my card: Oh this little thing? Yeah I just found it lying around, and I didn’t want you to get in trouble.
Last night roared through my head, every thrust of him, from every angle. He had made me beg for him, convinced me he was everything I wanted.
And now I was left with this.
Rhonda made me run over my story again, and I went over it more firmly. It was real. It was possible.
It was just a little white lie that covered up a huge white problem.
I walked out of her office, feeling every eye and camera on me. I had no idea what was coming next. I had gone from flying high to dropping down a well in a span of five hours.
And the same man was at fault for both.
Gangster, Mamá said in my memory.
I had no idea what he was anymore. But I knew one thing. If I was getting interrogated, so was he.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Calix
“You’re back?” Velez swiveled behind his desk in the medical office and checked his calendar. “Nope, it’s just like I thought. I didn’t sleep for two days by accident.”
“Check me,” I said, standing as erect as I could. “If you don’t like what you see, then I’ll go.”
“What I see is a man who won’t listen to good advice.” Velez sighed and hung a stethoscope around his neck. “Man, most of these guys are chomping at the bit for downtime. What’s the issue with you?”
“I’m not most guys.”
“Very insightful, thanks.” He groaned up to his feet. “Alright. Let’s go take a look at you.”
He led the way. I was grateful to be able to drop the act and hobble along behind. Even through the pills, there was a dull hollow ache that came with every step.
My body would appreciate another day off. A week off would still not be enough for a full recovery.
I just had no idea what to do with the free time.
My father and the Storm’s Soldiers were forging a path I could barely endure, never mind aid. I felt wrong in my own childhood home.
This morning, I had woken up wondering if I should join some other organization. That itself felt pointless. White nationalism had been the thing that my father and I shared. When I had strayed as a teenager, he had helped me back. I should be doing the same for him.
The problem was that I had woken with baser cravings too. My dreams had been full of Rosa. Visions of her riding me. Memories of the ways our bodies could writhe together. Echoes of her voice laughing or moaning in my ear.
It took a manual release in the shower to bring myself back down. Thinking about her gave peace in the moment, but just left me wet, dripping and more unsure than I’d ever felt. She was not a real option. But I couldn’t think about nationalism with her near my thoughts.
Coming to work was the only neutral option. Here, at least, I could do my duties without thinking.
Velez went through all the typical checks, then unwrapped the bandage and took a look. He grimaced and I knew what was coming.
Instead, he just gave me a gentle look.
“You really want to get back to work?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Is everything ok?”
“What?”
“Are you doing ok overall? Physically or…non-physically.”
I tugged my leg out of his grip. “It’s just a gunshot. I’ve come through worse events just fine.”
“I didn’t say it had to be about the gunshot.” He stood. “Physical trauma can stir up memories that are long dormant.”
Dormant? I was not afraid of my past. It had forged me into what I was.
“It doesn’t even have to be a recent memory,” Velez said. “Just something that causes obsession. Something from your childhood even.”
I shut my eyes. This was a bit much.
In the darkness, though, I had a vision of my father, kneeling before the open driver’s seat of a car. We were at a gas station, neon lit, the window flickering red and blue under police lights. His hands covered his face and he rocked.
He reached for the leg of the driver. It was my mother’s leg, so small and smooth in his arms. Her shoe sparkled with the pink and blue gems she so loved.
I tried to go to him, but a hand clenched my shoulder.
I looked up right into the nostrils of a black police officer, dark as the night around. He shook his head sadly.
“Stay here, son,” he said. “Watch your brother.”
My right hand was full. I looked over and saw a little boy holding my hand. He sucked on his index finger and swayed and stared blankly at our father.
“Calix?”
I snapped to Velez’s wide eyed face.
“Are you ok?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” That memory was hardly an obsession. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but it could suck me in if I let it. It was the last thing I needed on my mind now.
“You didn’t look fine.”
“I’m stir-crazy, that’s what.” I sighed. “I’m tired of not having anything to do, doc. I’ve been back three weeks. I don’t know how to sink back into my old life.”
Velez nodded and wrote something down in a folder. “It’s not an easy transition for anyone. You excelled in a combat environment. It’s hard not to have anything to fight for.”
I startled as if he’d punched me. He’d stumbled right into the heart of it. I looked at my injured leg. “You’re right.”
“You’ll make it.” He ripped off a paper and handed it to me. “Until then, here.”
It was medical clearance. “Thanks, Velez.”
He gave me a sage smile, way beyond his age and clapped me on the back. “No problem, soldier.”
I went out into the full Georgia sun. The grass roasted under the heat, but I just felt it like a cool tropical breeze. I’d never actually felt one of those. They didn’t have them even in Savannah. My life had been harshness interspersed with fragments of relief.
At least today offered a bit of that relief.
I wound past the long flat buildings of the base and reached the armory. The outside was done double over in concrete and the walls were reinforced. Much of the building was underground other than the front and delivery access-ways.
I buzzed in past the private who was standing guard out front. The card was a new thing to me. They didn’t use them as much in forward operating bases.
Just touching it made me think of Rosa with a pang of guilt.
I hadn’t meant to use her, but I had: her card and her body. She might walk around with a short fuse, but it hid something soft and vulnerable inside.
With a flash, I reme
mbered what she had said the morning after I was admitted. Her father had been killed, too. It was a different thing than losing your mother, but it had left a mark. The way she had said it, she must have been there. She must have a gas station memory much like mine.
I had brushed it aside like a comment on the weather. Couldn’t blame that on the meds.
I walked in, shaking my head.
The inside had the hard smoky appeal of a bunker. It was made purely to stand through open warfare. Buzzing fluorescents cast down clinical white light. The seductive scent of grease and sintered metal hit me full force.
“Corporal Black,” a voice drawled. “In the flesh, more or less.”
Behind the only manned counter, Private First Class Raynor James gave me a crescent white grin. He seemed taller and lankier than I remembered. He was rubbing oil into the matte black parts of a disassembled sidearm.
“They put you in charge while I was out?” I asked, buzzing in through the side.
“Sure did.” He jabbed out a hand and I shook it.
“Good.” I hobbled a stool over to the inventory computer and sat down.
“It’s boring as shit, man. I don’t know how you tolerate it down here.”
“It’s all for the cause.”
“I get that and all.” He stood over me now, wiping the barrel. “But it must be a real buzz kill after two years killing all those ragheads.”
I prickled with irritation. I wasn’t out there to quench some blood thirst.
“Blood begets blood,” I said. “The less we spill, the less white blood others will want to spill.”
“Oh, no doubt. No doubt.” He went back to the counter.
The kid was itching for combat duty. I was sure the message hadn’t gotten through. It had felt hollow even while delivering it.
Raynor was the first man I’d turned after arriving. He was already into racial politics before he enlisted. It had taken a simple nudge to get his help with skimming weapons off shipments to the armory.
Maybe I hadn’t sold him the cause right. I tried for a bit but couldn’t remember how I’d recruited him. It felt like an altogether different man who had done it.
I went through the files to make sure things were still settled from last month’s shipment. I started working on plans for the next one, almost by routine.
Raynor filled me in on base news. He had some other guys interested in the movement here. They were all teenagers though. I didn’t want to deal with them.
He quieted down whenever soldiers came in requisitioning gear for exercises or training. Eventually, we worked in silence.
Another man came in. I didn’t pay attention, till I heard Raynor’s voice lift. Then I recognized who he was talking to.
“Calix, mi hombre,” the new voice called out. “How are you doing?”
I looked over and saw Montego grinning at me like a jackal from across the counter. He had strong, wicked features even without tat mouth. I was sure he was something more dangerous before he enlisted - more dangerous than myself, even. The only thing he hunted, now, though was misbehaving soldiers.
Soldiers such as myself, for example.
“I’ve been dying to talk to you, man,” he said.
“Can you come in?” I said. “It’s hard for me to walk.”
“Sure thing.”
He ticked his head at the door and Raynor opened it for him. He scratched a chair across the concrete and sat down by my desk.
“Leg good?” he said.
“For a gunshot.”
He nodded, staring at my pant sleeve.
“Do you want to see?” I said.
“Na, I don’t really do blood. I trust the doctors.” He laughed wildly. “What happened, man? How did you do this?”
“It’s a stupid accident. People die of simpler shit all the time. I was just lucky.”
He shuffled in closer. “But tell me about it. I mean, like what happened?”
I clasped my hands on my lap to keep them still, then gave him the same story as I gave Rosa.
Montego nodded at everything I said vigorously. When I finished, he simply kept nodding. “Mmmhmm. Yeah.”
“That’s it.”
“What, uh, make was the gun you have?”
I rattled off one of the ones we had at home.
“That’s a military model,” he said.
“My father has a civilian version.”
“Ok, ok.” He thumbed through something on his cellphone. I realized I might have been recorded the whole damn time.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“You got somewhere to be?”
“I’m kind of hungry.”
“Ah ok. Hey, we can talk in the mess hall. I got no problem with that.”
A faint smile lingered on him as it always did. He liked to play up the crazy Mexican angle. Now I noticed how light he was other than his black hair. Rosa and he and Velez came from similar cultures and yet he looked different from all of them.
“Shall we go?” He clapped the arms of his chair.
“I don’t want to be interrogated while I eat.”
“Interrogated? Man, this is just a talk. I’m interested.” He sighed out to the room. “Ah, it’s the curse of the police. No one wants to talk to you.”
“I can talk to you,” Raynor said. He must think it was a way to appeal to me.
“I don’t want to talk you, Private. I’m busy interrogating Corporal Black here.” Montego’s smile vanished. “Alright, let’s just get this done, then.”
“Ok. What do you need to know?”
“From you, only a couple things. The truth is for me to find on my own.” He tapped his phone. “So I have the police report here. Why did you tell them we came to visit you?”
“Cause I was in pain and they were bugging me.”
“You lied to them.”
I tightened my legs by reflex and winced. “Nothing big.”
“You told them it was your army weapon that went off.”
Montego’s eyes bore into me. I decided to try the truth. “I didn’t see that it was their business. They would have pressed me more about a civilian weapon.”
“So which one was it.”
“I told you the truth. It was my father’s gun.”
Montego stared me down, but neither of us budged. “Can I see this weapon?”
I shrugged. “If you really want.” We had one available and I could have it fire a bullet before he could get to it.
“What I really want is the bullet that broke up in you.” He thumbed his chart. “Imagine my surprise when I read that we already came and took it. Was that another lie to get the police away from you?”
“More or less.” I glanced at my computer screen as if I was bored.
“Or was it to get them away from the bullet?” Montego asked.
“The bullet, me, the case, whatever,” I said. “I just wanted them to leave me to my own stupidity.”
“So you aren’t surprised I don’t have the bullet?”
“Huh?”
“Well, I told you I wanted the bullet, and you are not curious why I don’t have it? Maybe you’re a wizard and you don’t even know. You can make bullets disappear just by wishing it.”
He seemed to be tracking every twitch of my eyes. I could feel them making big moves. “I don’t even know what you want with it.”
“I just want to see if it’s consistent with the damage in your legs.”
“Ok.” I shrugged. “So check it then.”
“I would love to, but no one knows where it is. Do you?”
“No.” I channeled the truth to help me with that. I had dumped it in a random garbage can miles away from my house.
“You don’t know why it’s not in the hospital storage room?”
“I don’t know.” I stared right through him.
He seemed to be reading everything off my face. It didn’t matter though. Without proof, he had no evidence of a crime.
I breathed noisily.
Finally, he stood up.
“I might have more questions later,” he said and simply walked out.
Raynor waited till the door had shut on him and spat at the ground. “Fucking wetback.”
I just shook my head. The MP just understood his duty. Somehow, I felt more annoyed at Raynor than anything Montego had said.
“I’m going to lunch,” I said. “Keep an eye on things.”
“Hold up, I’ll get someone to cover,” Raynor said, reaching for the phone.
“No.”
He glanced at me, and I added. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk. I just want to eat quietly.”
“Got it, boss.”
I soaked in the sunlight and fresh air for a bit before heading into the mess hall. It was already after noon, so the place hummed instead of roared. There were plenty of empty tables and though a few men tossed me a smile or a nod, they let me be.
The food was much better here than a combat base. Better than even the hospital. They had set us up with lasagna for the day, and I let it melt in my mouth. Italian food was a glorious thing, even when not done right.
A couple people in the nationalism movement looked down on Italians. Some of them looked down on Russians, too. That had always seemed more like a Nazi thing than what we stood for.
My father had drawn his lines around Europeans of all types. It had always made sense to me, but suddenly, my brain filled with questions.
A lot of Italians were much darker than Montego. He might come from a different culture, but the Italians had been that once, too. His kids might fit right in as white nationalists.
But maybe those kids would be friends with Velez’s kids. They’d argue to include them on the basis of culture, not skin. They might even argue to let in Rosa’s kids.
My throat clenched. I didn’t want to think of Rosa being a mom, of being someone else’s wife. I forced myself to shove it down and keep going.
The point was not that she was special. The point was that the culture cut stronger than skin.
I’d noticed it even while deployed. A lot of Afghans were pretty much white. But their values were way off. I’d managed to set my questions aside then. Now everywhere I looked, the same situation presented itself.
I was supposed to be charting a new course. Something to bring before my father. Instead, I could only wonder one thing: Who exactly were we fighting for?
