by Mel Odom
“I can see that. I’m going to see if I can find a chaplain or two who can help you. Big as you are, you’re not going to be able to carry this load by yourself.”
Baker beamed. “It’s not just me, Sergeant. God is here with me. I’ve felt His touch. I knew I couldn’t walk away from this and leave it undone.”
“Corporal!” Four men carrying a bloodstained gurney charged through the stream, splashing water in all directions. They were part of the U.N. forces. “We need you now! I don’t know if Hakim is gonna make it! He wanted you to baptize him!”
Baker stepped toward the gurney.
The man on the gurney was young. His black skin looked ashen. Perspiration gleamed against his shaved scalp, and his head lolled to one side. Bloody bandages covered his midsection and his thighs. His eyes held a glazed appearance, and Goose didn’t think the young soldier was going to make it either.
“Son.” Baker put his hand on the young soldier’s forehead. “Can you hear me, Son?”
“Yes.” The young soldier’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “I hear.” He focused his eyes on Baker. “I want—I want God.” His breath rattled in the back of his throat. Tremors shuddered through his body and his eyes rolled up into his head.
Baker pinched the young soldier’s nose closed and covered his mouth with a big hand. “I baptize Hakim in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He nodded. “Put him into the water.”
The men holding the gurney lowered the wounded man into the stream, immersing him entirely. Blood floated up from his wounds and formed clouds in the brown water, clearly seen because of the bright sun.
“Bring him up,” Baker said.
The men pulled the young soldier back up. For a moment, Goose thought the man was dead.
Baker took his hand back.
“Thank you,” the young soldier said. Then a final long breath released from his lungs and the tremors that had coursed through his body ceased. He relaxed in death.
“He held on,” one of the soldiers who had carried the gurney whispered hoarsely. “He knew he was dying, but he hung on till we could get him here. He insisted on coming when he heard what you were doing.”
Tenderly, Baker shut the young soldier’s eyes. “It’s done. He’s with God now.”
“Thank you, preacher,” one of the men bearing the gurney said. Together, the four men turned and trudged away with the body of their dead friend.
Tears glittered as they spilled down Corporal Baker’s broad face. He swiveled to look at Goose. “I’ve got to do this, Sergeant. I didn’t mean to desert my post. After all these years, God has put His work back in my life.”
“I don’t think He ever took it away,” Goose said softly. “I think He just made you see again.” He nodded toward the waiting lines that met in the heart of the stream. “Get back to work, Corporal. I’ll see that you get some relief.”
Baker shook his head. “I’ll welcome the help, First Sergeant, but I won’t leave this post. God is making me strong. I’ll endure.”
“I think you will,” Goose said. “As you were, Corporal.”
“God keep you, Sergeant,” Baker said. Then he reached for the next man in line. Goose made his way back to the stream bank. Even as he stepped up onto dry land, the woman reporter thrust a microphone into his face. She was young and beautiful in khakis despite the oppressive heat and the dust that constantly carried through the wind.
“First Sergeant Gander,” she said.
Looking at her, Goose recognized her from that morning in Glitter City. It seemed like that had been years ago instead of hours.
“Miss Vinchenzo,” Goose greeted, though he never broke stride.
“You remember me?” The fact seemed to surprise her and catch her momentarily off guard.
“Yes, ma’am,” Goose answered. “I hope you’ll excuse me. I’ve got a job to do.” He kept moving up the hill, feeling the sharp ache in his knee as he ascended the grade.
“I’d like to interview you,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Just not right now. I’ll have to clear it with my captain.”
“That would be Cal Remington?” Danielle Vinchenzo matched him stride for stride as he marched uphill.
“Yes, ma’am.” Goose kept his answers short and clipped. It was a habit. Talk too much and the media could do almost anything they wanted with what was said. He’d been in front of microphones and cameras a lot. Cal Remington loved media attention, and his men sometimes got caught in the glow of the camera, too.
“Do you have anything to say about what is going on here?” Danielle asked.
“No, ma’am.” Goose waved to Tommy Bono, who legged it over to the Hummer and climbed in behind the wheel.
Behind Danielle, a cameraman loped along with a camcorder on his shoulder. The man struggled to keep the camera trained on Goose and the woman.
“Baptism isn’t exactly standard operating procedure for the army, is it, Sergeant Gander?” Danielle asked.
“No, ma’am.” Goose could see that the young woman was getting frustrated with the interview. He also guessed that the transmission was going out live.
Earlier, Remington had warned that many of the reporters had satellite access again and were broadcasting live interviews with the Turkish army, the U.N. task force, and Rangers. Up till now, Goose had kept himself insulated within the closed perimeter of battlefield ops while the reporters had been kept outside the gates.
“A number of people might see this sudden desire to get baptized as an act of desperation,” Danielle said.
Goose turned and stood his ground so suddenly that the young woman had to back away to keep from colliding with him. He kept a neutral expression on his face. “Is that what you think, Miss Vinchenzo?”
She froze, not knowing what to say.
“Because if that’s what you think,” Goose went on, “if you think that those soldiers out there aren’t going to hold the line when the time comes … well, ma’am, I sure wouldn’t be standing where you’re standing when the train comes through.”
All around them, the men who had been privy to the conversation suddenly erupted in an explosion of applause and shouts of encouragement.
“Hoo-rah!”
“That’s telling her, Sarge!”
The cameraman behind the young reporter swung around to capture the reactions.
Instead of being angry as Goose had expected, Danielle nodded and smiled in acknowledgement. She switched the microphone off. “Very good, Sergeant Gander. I’m not giving up on getting your story, though. Another time?”
Goose swung himself aboard the Hummer and made his injured knee as comfortable as he could. “At my invitation, ma’am, it would be my pleasure.” He touched his helmet respectfully, then waved Tommy into motion.
As they wheeled around, Goose looked at Baker standing in water up to his waist in the middle of the stream, the two lines of men leading up either hillside. At the moment, Goose wasn’t worried about the men or even the Syrians. He had no idea what Cal Remington was going to do when he learned that one of his corporals was baptizing men while being covered by international news networks. Or that his first sergeant, the man who knew what he wanted done, was responsible for leaving the corporal in place.
The strains of the invocation somehow remained clear even over the roar of the Hummer’s engine, ringing in Goose’s ears.
“Just as I am, of that free love,
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
Here for a season, then above,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”
30
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 8:37 A.M.
Voices woke Joey. He tried to retreat from them and drop back into slumber, where he didn’t have to face all the pain that awaited him, but he didn’t have any luck. The voices kept intruding because they were voices he didn’t expect in his house.
H
e pushed himself up into a sitting position in Chris’s bed. Even after all these years and the nights he’d spent “camping out” with Chris under a sheet while they fought off bears and pirates, he still forgot about the bunk bed above and slammed his forehead into the stout frame. Yelping in pain, Joey rubbed his forehead and ducked under the overhead bed. In a way, that pain felt good. At least there was an understandable reason for that feeling. The pain he’d felt when he woke up was caused by stuff too weird to ever explain. And he knew that the pain in his head would fade in minutes. He didn’t think the other would ever go away.
Despite knowing that he wasn’t going to find Chris there, Joey still looked through both beds. His heart felt cold and leaden inside his chest. Before he could stop himself, he was crying. His fists knotted in the sheets and he wanted to rip them from the bed.
But the rage inside him died stillborn because he knew the defiance would do no good. He’d dreamed over and over of getting to the child-care facilities. He’d arrived late every time. When he hadn’t dreamed about being late, he’d dreamed about leaving the house last night without saying good-bye to Chris. He’d heard Chris in this room, playing with his action figures, doing the voices for all of them. Some of those voices had even been different. And Joey had slithered out the door like a spy in a James Bond film.
Joey closed his eyes and wiped his face.
All he’d had to do last night was step into the room for a minute. “Hey, Squirt. I’m outta here. Catch you later.”
And Chris would have said, “Okay, Joey. Have fun. After while, alligator.”
Now he never would.
Guilt smothered Joey like one of Grandmother Gander’s homemade quilts. He didn’t know if getting to say good-bye to Chris would have changed how he felt now, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his head that he would never have the chance again. He reached down and picked up Chris’s tattered teddy bear, then tucked it tenderly under one of the blankets on a pillow.
The voices continued. He thought he heard someone crying.
Thinking about Jenny and wondering if she was still there, wondering if his mom was going to have anything to say or ask about Jenny and not knowing how he was going to handle that, Joey walked out into the hallway in his socks. Last night his mom hadn’t asked too many questions about Jenny. Learning that Chris had disappeared had blown her away. He’d never seen her cry so much.
And he couldn’t help feeling so much of that was because of him. If he could have told her he was with Chris when he disappeared, maybe it would have helped.
Or maybe he would have disappeared with Chris. At least then Chris wouldn’t be alone, wherever he is. Joey still had no definite ideas about where that would be.
The news programs all had people on them speculating about why the disappearances had occurred. The theories ran the gamut from aliens from another world to terrorists to some kind of weird fluctuation in the space-time continuum that had drawn the missing people over into an alternate time stream where they were actually supposed to exist instead of the one they were in.
If the guy giving the presentation about the space-time continuum theory had looked more like Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation instead of Yoda, Joey might have bought into that one. But the Yoda clone looked like he was a recovering homeless person.
The voices grew louder.
“What am I supposed to do, Mrs. Gander? I need to find my mom.”
Bewildered, Joey stopped and stared into the living room.
At least twenty kids were gathered there, some of them flopped on the couch and the easy chair. More of them sat in the floor. Most of them looked like they’d just gotten up from bed. All of them watched the television news footage about the disappearances and the fighting going on in Turkey and Syria, like the TV might hold the answer to all their unsolved problems.
Joey recognized some of the kids from around the base. He recognized others from the files his mom sometimes carried home from work. Of course, he was never supposed to look at those files, but he had anyway because who could have resisted them just sitting there in her file case. He’d wanted to know how messed up other kids’ lives were, to get a better idea of where his own life had gone wrong. He felt guilty about looking at the files now.
All of the kids in the files had been dealing with problems: anger management issues, new stepparents, divorced parents, dead parents, parents who cared too much and parents who cared too little, drug problems and drinking problems, poverty, self-esteem, and learning disorders. Compared to them, he was normal. He just wasn’t happy about it and didn’t know how to change it. He stared at the kids.
What were they doing in his house?
“I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do, Anna,” his mom said from the kitchen. “We’re not going to panic. We’re going to take this one step at a time. As soon as the phones come back on again, we’re going to find out where your grandparents are and how they’re doing.”
“My grandparents?” Anna slapped the kitchen table. “Mrs. Gander, I can’t live with my grandparents! My mom didn’t even want to live with my grandparents!” The young teen’s voice was almost a shriek.
“Anna,” his mom said patiently, “calm down. We’re in the damage control phase. You remember the damage control phase from counseling, right?”
Dazed, Joey walked through the living room to the kitchen, having to step over the bodies that nearly covered the carpet. He detected the aroma of fresh-baked cookies. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.
His mom stood at the stove, using a spatula to remove fresh cookies from the baking sheet. She wore an apron. Baking was something his mom used as an outlet for her stress. Joey could always tell when his mom had a bad day because she would turn the stove on, get the apron out, and pull out her to-be-tried recipes. During days when the weather had been too wet or too cold, she’d also spent time baking with Chris. She’d never done that with Joey.
Jenny stood at the counter with a couple of young teen girls. They poured flour and other ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
Other young teens and some older teens sat around the dining room table or on the floor up against the two back walls out of the way of the baking. A young teen girl with braces smiled shyly at Joey. A boy with a sullen expression said, “Mrs. Gander, Joey’s awake.”
Joey’s immediate impulse was to ask the guy who’d made him watch commander, but he curbed the words. No matter what was going on, he had the definite impression that a smart-alecky remark wasn’t going to be a good idea.
His mom turned to face him. Flour marked one of her cheeks and her bangs. “Good morning, Joey.”
Joey nodded.
“We have company,” his mom said.
“Yeah,” he said sourly. “I kind of got that.” His mom hesitated, then looked over at Jenny, who was looking back at her. “Jenny, could you talk to Joey and explain things?”
Jenny smiled. “Sure. You’ve got another batch of cookie dough ready here.”
“Good.”
Jenny wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “We’ll need some more flour and sugar before we make another batch. We scraped the bottom of the canisters to get this one.”
“Okay.” His mom nodded, already making decisions the way she did when she got on a mission. At least, that was what Goose called it when his mom got into the get-it-done-yesterday mode. “We’ll work on peanut brittle next. I was planning to make some for Easter, so I have the necessary ingredients. Maybe Joey can go to the commissary for flour and sugar later.” His mom looked at him. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, Joey?”
He didn’t answer at first, too stunned to reply. Chris had vanished, Goose was in a border war, and she was baking with juvenile delinquents from all over Fort Benning. “Sure. I don’t mind.” But he did mind. He just couldn’t tell her that.
“Let’s go, Joey.” Jenny looped her arm through his in a manner that was just too familiar after everything they had been through last ni
ght. She pulled him after her toward the utility room off the kitchen.
Joey reluctantly followed her, suddenly resenting the fact that Jenny was still in his house. At the same time, he knew from the looks on the faces of most of the teenaged boys in the kitchen that he was the envy of them all with Jenny on his arm.
Jenny led him through the small utility room and out the back door. They stood on the covered back porch amid the ceramic pots that would hold plants and flowers a month or two from now.
If things ever get normal again.
The outside temperature was still cold enough that Joey could see his own breath for just an instant before it faded away.
“I know things must be confusing for you right now,” Jenny said.
“Hey,” Joey said hotly, “contrary to popular opinion, I’m not exactly a little kid.” The anger and resentment got away from him before he could contain it. “So you can save the baby talk.”
Jenny took a step back and wrapped her arms around herself. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Me?” Joey couldn’t believe it. “It’s not me, Jenny.” He waved toward the house. “My house is filled with people I don’t even know. I can’t even talk to my mom without somebody hearing me.”
Jenny’s eyes narrowed. “Those are kids that your mom is counseling. All of them are missing their parents, brothers, or sisters. None of them had anywhere to turn.”
“So they have to show up at my house?”
“That’s kind of selfish, don’t you think?”
“Selfish?”
“Yeah. I think them showing up here says a lot for the kind of person your mom is.”
“They’re in my house!”
Glancing over her shoulder, Jenny said, “Why don’t you try to keep your voice down.”
“Because I don’t want to,” Joey said, exasperated. “This is stupid! My little brother disappeared last night! I thought my mom was going to totally freak out!” He let out a pent-up breath because his lungs were suddenly too full to breathe. “I get up this morning, she’s got a houseful of strangers. And she’s baking cookies like everything is all right. Everything is not all right!”
