by Robert Price
Tom Hubbard Is Dead
A Novel
Robert Price
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2011 Robert Price
ISBN: 978-0-9847003-1-8(ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-9847003-0-1 (pbk)
LCCN: 2011918718
Prologue
Tikrit, Iraq, October 14, 2003
The tat-tat-tat-tat of an AK-47 leapt from the other side of a wall. Two men dove down as bullets chipped mortar off the building behind them. Silence, and then a second burst, this time from a different direction.
“Holy Christ. Hubbard! Hubbard’s f’ckin’ hit!”
A geyser of blood shot straight up from Tom Hubbard’s neck.
With bullets spraying the ground, sand seemed to explode underfoot and the men dealt as best they could. Scrambling, they dragged Hubbard’s listless body behind what would have to pass, for now, as cover.
Hubbard, however, felt only calm. A comfortable snap had washed-out his vision and dismissed any immediate concerns for his patrol, or, in fact, for anything at all.
Another deafening onslaught sliced the air and kept the men pinned down. For Hubbard, these last thin sounds intermingled with darkness and he found himself back home in Newbury, walking with his sister toward the old family farmhouse as his mother waited at the door. Then, letting his sister’s hand go, Tom shoved off from the dock and swam, ever so smoothly, into the black.
Chapter One
Stepping cautiously, collapsed umbrellas in hand, the mourners filed past rows of weathered headstones, making their way down the slippery slope of the burial ground’s highest hill. The empty thud of car doors echoed off the neighboring houses, lower knolls and far concrete wall of the cemetery. Small American flags speckled the autumn landscape. Thick White Oaks held onto their last orange-brown leaves. Overhead, a few solitary sparrows darted about; dancing black dots against the gray sky. The news crews wrapped up their reports and the workers arrived to pack up the chairs and cover the pit. Tom Hubbard’s gravesite emptied.
Trailing the other mourners, making his way down the hill, lanky Ted Dorsey turned for a final look at his old friend’s grave and, taking his eyes off the path, tripped over a broken headstone.
“That was beautiful,” he said, stumbling to regain his balance. “A real hero’s send off.”
“Right.” Glancing over his shoulder, Neil Bingham rotated his portly upper body and shook his head at Ted’s clumsiness. “Really brought the whole thing to, you know, closure.”
“He called us in January. Told us that he was going back over,” Ted said. “But I still can’t believe … I was shocked when we found out that … I never could picture Tom in the Army in the first place.”
“Never mind a Lieutenant.” Cigarette smoke rolled out of Neil’s mouth. Swallowing hard, he battled an unsettled lump of emotion that threatened to rise up from his stomach. It had first emerged when the white-gloved horn player blew Taps and the honor guard’s Captain handed Tom’s mother the triangulated coffin flag. Until then, Tom’s death had seemed remote to Neil, as though it had nothing to do with him—like the war itself; it happened on the other side of the world.
Neil flicked his cigarette away with a snap and the butt landed in the middle of the narrow roadway just in time for a slow moving black limousine to roll over it.
Taking a deep breath, Ted’s thin face tensed and his cheeks quivered. He glanced back up the hill toward the gravesite and, as two workers loaded chairs into the back of a pickup truck, thought about how much he loved his wife Shelly.
Searching deep in his pants pockets, he fished for the car remote and keys. “That was his sister back from California. Did you recognize her?”
“What a dress.” Neil watched Ted dig for the keys and now had a chance, the first since Ted had picked him up at Logan Airport that morning, to really look at his old high school friend.
Ted’s once wiry body had solidified, and his head, which used to bounce around like a bobble-head on a spring, now cocked permanently forward as if he suffered from chronic sleeplessness.
“I noticed that Tom’s cousin Tony ballooned out some,” Neil said, well aware that his own once-youthful athletic build was also gone; his neck packed weight and almost hid his shirt collar and red tie’s Windsor knot. “Was Tony’s sister there?”
“Melanie? No.” Ted looked down at the wet tips of his cold and uncomfortable feet. He should have worn boots. Shelly, however, had laid out these shoes along with a suit the night before, the same time she had laid out her own clothes for the funeral. But at the last minute her father reneged on an offer to baby-sit the children, forcing her to stay home.
Ted made a half-moon with his right hand on the car’s windshield and, leaning forward, peered in to check if the keys were in the ignition.
“If it’s a remote,” Neil huffed, losing his patience, “and if you had left it in the car, then you couldn’t have locked us out.”
Ted looked down at his shoes again
Neil looked up at the sky. “We’re going to the wake, right?”
“The reception?”
“Whatever.”
One by one, a procession of cars politely inched along the narrow cemetery road before disappearing behind a hill. A light drizzle started.
“You got the keys or what?”
Ted rummaged one more time through the pockets of his slacks. And then, finally, as if searching in a foreign place, put a hand in his suit jacket pocket and found the remote and keys.
“I hate suits,” he said, pushing the little red button on the device.
They climbed into the car and joined the line of traffic slowly snaking through the cemetery, out the wrought iron gate, towards the other side of town to Tom Hubbard’s memorial reception.
