Keeping Promise Rock (22 page)

“Talk about child abuse—I’d call the authorities myself!” A week later, Crick finally wrote with his time slot for their “holiday visit.” He’d asked for early, because there was a good chance he’d be able to use the equipment again in the rotation, and they were slotted to visit a little after Thanksgiving. He also wrote with the news about his leave, which didn’t surprise Deacon in the least.
Stay,
he wrote back.
Hell—take
two weeks, get a Euro-pass, go to Paris and Munich. Visit museums, take
tours—do all that shit you talked about when you were planning to go to
art school. Find the shit I’d want to see—you can take me back later. (Do
anything, anything, but don’t come home just to leave me again, because
I’m weak, Carrick, and it would kill me all over.)
He didn’t write that last part—but he was sort of proud for being honest enough to think it.

Thanksgiving came—Jon, Amy, Patrick, Benny, and Deacon. They set a place for Crick, just because. It was a good day—laughter, generosity, kindness. Crick got a chance to call towards the evening—with someone else in the room, of course.

When Deacon heard Carrick’s voice over the phone, his knees actually got weak, and he had to sit down. He forgot later what they talked about—it seemed sort of superfluous, really, to be talking at all. Their letters kept them caught up on the news, and the small shit seemed just too small for their first conversation in six months. But they muddled through, and Deacon passed the phone around. He looked up sharply when he heard Jon say, “I’ll never forgive you,” but Jon waved him off and finished the sentence in private. The phone finally came back to him, and Crick only had a few minutes left.

“Crick, you’re taking care of yourself, right?”

“Yeah, Deacon—I promised I’d come back. I wasn’t joking about your voice in my head, making sure that I do. I won’t leave you twice—I promise.”

“Good,” Deacon murmured, wondering how the kid had read the part of the letter he didn’t send. “It’s all I want.” 146

“You need to ask for more from life,” Crick muttered bitterly, and then, before Deacon could protest, he said quickly, in a broken voice,

“Look, I’ve only got a few seconds and you know… you know what I’m thinking. Please say it. I need to hear it.” Risky words from Crick, with someone listening on his end. But then, Crick had been writing
I love you
at the end of his letters for months, while Deacon—mindful that Crick’s letters could be read on Crick’s end—had been writing “take care.”

“I love you, Carrick—I’ll love you forever. Take care of yourself and come home and don’t ever break my heart again.” The room around him went silent, and he didn’t give a shit. Crick needed to hear it, and that trumped all of the embarrassment in the world.

“Backatcha, Deacon. I swear, once was enough.” His voice caught, and he finished up with, “I’ll see you next week on the computer.”

“We’ll be there.”

And then they both said, “Goodbye.” Deacon looked up at the silent room and felt a delayed sense of mortification. “I’m… I’m gonna go outside and check on the horses,” he muttered, which was an outright lie, because they all knew he’d checked on them an hour ago, right before dessert.

“Don’t go, Deacon,” Benny said softly, coming up and wiggling her way under his arm. “Stay here and cry if you have to—but don’t go off and be alone. Not tonight.”

Deacon sighed and looked around him, and he saw his friends looking back with concern. All he wanted was to be alone for a minute, but he guessed they’d all be gone in a couple of hours, and then there’d be enough aloneness to swallow him whole. For Benny’s sake, he managed a tired, weak, and watery grin. “Men don’t cry, Shorty—we get choked up.

And if I’m going to get any more choked up, I need some more goddamned pie.”

A week later, he and Benny were dressed like it was church and waiting in the tiny study that adjoined the master bedroom. They were going to see Crick.

Crick—

I know there’s the possibility that letters will get read when they shouldn’t, so burn this one if you have to. I’m looking Keeping Promise Rock

forward to actually seeing you, even on the computer, but I’m afraid too. Mostly I’m afraid all the shit in my heart is going to back up against my tongue and I’ll just stare at you, so damned glad you’re alive that the whole moment will be shot to hell.

You need to know that I want to touch you. You need to know that I want to say a thousand things that are meaningless and perfect in your ear. You need to know that I dream about your eyes and your crooked grin and that a thousand times a day I start a conversation with you about something stupid and I’m heartbroken when you’re not there to say your bit. You need to know I love you—I’m still mad, but I promised you I wouldn’t be mad when you get back, and I’m starting to think I can keep that one, so don’t worry about it. I love you—that’s the important thing.

I’d die for you, and it kills me that you’re in a place where you might die for your country and I can’t save you. I’m glad you’re hearing my voice in your head to keep you safe—I hear your voice in my head to keep me from losing my fucking mind.

You need to know all these things, and then you need to file them somewhere in your head for later. We’re not half done yet, baby. Neither of us will make it if we break our hearts the way we’ve been doing. I need to live in the moment for Benny. You need to live in the moment for me.

When you get home, the floodgates will open and the flood will clear the pain and it will be just us, shiny and new, with our hands on each other’s skin and our bodies touching so tight we’ll be able to hear each other’s thoughts. When you get home we can be lovers.

In the meantime, we’ll see each other on the computer and pretend to be like brothers. Now that your CO has given his stamp of approval, we’ll text or ‘tweet’ (thanks, Benny) and we’ll talk in code like we’ve been doing, and you need to know that you are still loved. And you need to hold it close to your heart. There’s a reason you didn’t try to back out of your signature on the recruitment papers, and there’s a reason I didn’t try to make you. We need to hold to 148

that—it’s who we are and it’s one of the reasons I think we can love each other through anything. I know you’re homesick, Crick, because it doesn’t feel like home without you. Let’s just hold on so you can come back home in peace.

(And, as off-topic as it may seem, I need to add that if you’re anything like me, you are hornier than a goat in the springtime. Just sayin’, in case you were worried about that end of things—don’t.)

Remember that song at Jon and Amy’s wedding?

I need you, like I want you. Always and forever. I want you like I love you. Always and forever.

Consider that a promise.

Deacon

A Mistake in the Night

CRICK memorized that letter. Then he pilfered from the supply closet and laminated the pages in layers of clear tape, folded it up, and added it to the pictures of Deacon in his wallet. If someone wanted to steal his shit and out him to the U.S. fucking Army, let them. Let them explain why stealing his wallet was better and more honorable than what Deacon had written.

Crick was all ears.

He had his wallet in his pocket like a talisman when he stood in front of the computer and wondered what Deacon would see.

“Jesus, Crick—your chest is like three-feet wide!” Deacon’s surprise was obvious—Crick hoped his delight was only there for Crick himself to see.

“Yeah, big brother,” Benny chimed in—what color was her hair, anyway? Damned bright was what it was! “You’re looking pretty yummy over there.”

Crick laughed at Deacon’s look of disgust. “Ewww, Shorty. Just, ewww.”

“My God, Benny—your hair’s probably visible from space,” Crick said, laughing. They were cute together, in a big brother-little sister sort of way. Crick’s chest was suddenly open and happy, when he’d sworn the tightness would strangle him through the whole conversation.

“And if you can’t see my hair, you can probably see my stomach,” Benny told him, embarrassment clear on her rounding face. She turned 150

sideways in a form-fitting pink-and-black striped knit shirt and showed off the burgeoning life inside.

Crick nodded. “What are you now, five, six months?”

“Six months—she’s due in February, a little after your birthday—but I’m naming her Parish after Deacon and his daddy, so just don’t get any ideas.” Deacon’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and Crick could see—

even on the small screen of the computer—that she patted it as it sat there.

“Parish Deacon?” Crick asked in confusion. “Sounds like child abuse to me!”

The two of them laughed, the sound so spontaneous that Crick knew it must have been a joke between them as well. “Parish Angel,” Deacon told him softly, probably reading the hurt on his face. “Parry Angel—we figured it sounds girly enough to maybe match her room.” He rolled his eyes and faked a gag reflex with enough dryness that Crick could laugh again—but it didn’t last.

“Did you get my birthday card, Deacon? I tried to send it on time.” Deacon had turned twenty-six in late November. Just one more reminder to Crick that his lover—the hero he worshipped—was awfully damned young for all of that.

“Deacon!” Benny punctuated the exclamation with a smack on his arm. “You didn’t even mention it was your birthday!” Deacon blushed so dark that Crick could see it over six thousand miles away. “Didn’t seem important,” he grumbled, and Crick got a good enough look at his face in profile to see how much weight he hadn’t put back on yet.

“It’s everything,” Crick told them seriously. “It was the twenty-ninth, Benny. You make sure you take him out for ice cream or something.

He’s not putting on nearly enough weight.”

“It’s bad enough that your sister cooks with cheese!” Deacon protested half-heartedly, and Crick was able to forget the pain and the worry for the two of them as they teased each other—and him—for the next twenty minutes where he could see. Deacon still looked good, in spite of the thinness. His cheekbones were sharper, and he looked wearier than Crick was used to, but that square-jawed face was just as gruff when he scowled and just as sweet when he smiled—even when it was that fierce, tight grin that he used anytime
except
when they were in bed together.

And his eyes… still that remarkably pretty green, still thoughtful and now….

Had they always been that sad? Crick thought maybe they had been—he’d just been too callow to see it.

The time was over way too quick. Crick almost wished they’d spent it stuttering, staring soulfully at the screen, unable to think of a thing to say. It would have seemed longer that way.

Before it was done, Deacon checked to make sure Crick had gotten his early Christmas present—a shiny new BlackBerry so they could text and Twitter.

“Benny set me up. If we want it to be private, we have to block
everybody,
and not use any terms that get a lot of attention, which shouldn’t be so hard on you—I guess I’m under ‘DP’….” He stopped when Crick burst into raucous laughter.

“Benny—you precocious little shit—you didn’t!” Benny blushed. “I swear, Crick—it didn’t even occur to me until he told me he was getting hits from porn-IDs.” Deacon blinked, those big, pretty green eyes wide and guileless, and it hit Crick and hit him hard.
He’s not just young—he’s innocent.
“What in the hell does it mean, people?” Deacon growled, and Crick had to talk through a lump in his throat.

“It means ‘double penetration’, Deacon. It’s a porn term.” Deacon blinked again, and his mouth opened, and then he turned a bright, computer-console-defying purple. “Jesus—I’m gonna be fighting off those porn people for the next eighteen months. I hope you two are damned happy about this.”

Crick looked at him softly—Deacon, his sweet little virgin, or damned close to it. “Yeah, Deacon—actually, I haven’t been this happy about things in about six months.” The private in charge of the media operations was giving him the “wrap-it-up” signal, and Crick fought the urge to tell him to fuck off because he wasn’t nearly done yet. Instead he said, “Guys, I’ve gotta….”

Deacon swallowed and looked grim. “Merry Christmas, Crick, if we can’t talk before. I’ll be on Twitter every night, nine o’clock sharp, so that’s seven a.m. your time, right?”

Crick nodded, suddenly feeling the huge gift of technology in the little techno-pink thing that Benny had picked out for him. “It’s perfect. I can’t give you any real details,” he cautioned, and Deacon nodded.

“Understood—we’re only interested in four letters. If that’s all you’ve got time for, that’s all we need.”

I’m OK.
“Understood,” Crick said back. “Deacon—I’ve got your letter in my wallet.”

Deacon looked startled and then resigned. “I meant it all.” Code. It’s what they had, and it allowed them to say goodbye.

Crick was walking out of the tent, and one of the privates called out to him. “Hey, Crick, where was she?”

Crick turned around, looking puzzled. “She?”

“Yeah—rumor has it, you’re in love with a girl back home—it’s why you don’t… you know….” Look at the smuggled porn, hound any woman who was assigned to the base, jerk off in the bathroom to the sex pictures Private Compton’s uninhibited wife kept sending him, regardless of regulations.