Keeping Promise Rock (26 page)

DP @Crick—night.

Crick @DP—Night, Deacon. Love you.

They got another chance to talk at Christmas, and Deacon did what he could to not look like death warmed over. Christ, the flu had leveled them all this year. He’d sent Patrick to his sister’s place for the month because the elderly man hadn’t gotten it, and Deacon wasn’t sure if he’d survive it if he did.

Deacon and Benny had been too wiped out to do more than decorate (with a lot of help from Andrew), so thank God for the Internet. Deacon had given her a credit card to play with, and she’d invited him in on the fun. Between the two of them—with some help from Crick, who had his own money to play with—they bought out half the Toys-R-Us catalog, and they’d spent a whole lot of time in the last two weeks wrapping the packages that had landed on their doorstep. Deacon had also spent a little bit of time spoiling Benny rotten—T-shirts with her favorite movie, a Jack Skellington book bag, a gift certificate to someplace girly where they could dye her hair instead of having her dye the entire bathroom.

Between Benny, Crick, Jon, Amy, Patrick, and Andrew, he’d answered “What do you want for Christmas?” about six thousand times a day. He’d finally asked for an iPhone and music because it would give them something to spend money on, and he couldn’t say the only thing he really wanted, because everybody knew that anyway.

What he got—besides the iPhone—was a laptop, which was pretty awesome in its own way, because he used it in the living room to show Crick the baby. She was sitting determinedly up, her wide, smiling mouth open and drooling, and playing devotedly with something pink, plastic, and noisy.

Crick was appropriately charmed. “She looks like she’s doing okay,” he said over the sound system. “She’s… God, Deacon, she’s really big.”

“She’s put on some weight since the hospital,” Benny said earnestly.

“We were worried—none of us ate for, like, days.” Keeping Promise Rock

“Except for me,” interjected Amy dryly from the back of the room.

Deacon looked at her and grinned—she was pretty round for two months along, but Jon couldn’t stop doting on her. It was damned cute.

“And you, Deacon?” Crick asked anxiously, and from behind him—

hard to see in the shot—came a female voice.

“Oooohh… make him take off his shirt and see!” Deacon blushed, probably to his toes, and Crick said, “Um, no.

That… that’s for me.”

“You must be Lisa,” Deacon said dryly, setting the laptop down on a cleared spot of the kitchen table. “Pleased to meet you.” Amy and Benny had cooked for days, and the residents of The Pulpit
had done their best to eat, in spite of still catching up from the flu. A cute, round, freckled little face with blond bangs escaping a perky ponytail peered around Crick’s shoulder.

“You’re Deacon,” she said back. “Crick’s been so worried.” Deacon blushed some more. “Well, the baby and Benny had it pretty rough there,” he dodged. “I’m glad Crick had someone to lean on.” Lisa tapped her wrist, and Crick nodded and then said, “Deacon, take me into the other room, would you?”

He’d spent a long time watching the baby play and talking to the family—they both knew that, so nobody objected, and the chatter kept going as Deacon took the computer into the bedroom and propped it on the dresser by the still-empty wall.

“Did you get the….”

“Yeah, Deacon, I got the care package and the presents. No worries, okay? I just need to see that you’re okay.” Deacon shrugged. “I’m tired, but that could be just staying up late and wrapping presents,” he tried with a grin, and Crick shook his head.

“Look—Lisa’s got the media guys outside with some eggnog—take off your shirt and sweater!”

“Crick….” Oh God. That blush was all the way back.

“Please, Deacon—I just need to see you’re not like… you know.

Like you were when Benny got there.”

Deacon sighed. He wasn’t—but not by much. The shirt and sweater came off, and Crick sucked in his breath, and Deacon sighed in the now-176

cold room, unable to look Crick in the eyes. “I’m not much of a pinup,” he said with an attempt at humor.

Crick murmured, “Deacon, please look at me.” Deacon looked up, and across the ocean, across the so-so picture quality, and across the nineteen months of separation, he saw Crick’s eyes, those brown, open, sweet eyes, on his body. “That’s mine,” Crick said now, gruffly. “That’s mine. You promised it to me—you need to take care of it. You hear me? You eat good and you drive safe and you watch yourself on that mean-assed mare of yours, and you make sure that’s waiting for me, you hear?”

Deacon smiled—the soft smile, the one Crick said he only used in bed—and Crick smiled back. There was a ruckus from behind Crick, and Crick said quickly, “I love you.”

“Love you back.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

And then he was gone.

DP @Crick—Dammit, now I’m all horny.

Crick @DP—All my stuff’s in the drawer.

DP @Crick—Can’t use it. It’s yours.

Crick @DP—That shit have a shelf life?

DP @Crick—Maybe I should throw it out and not test it.

Crick @DP—Only if you’re going to replace it!

DP @Crick—I’ll wait until you get home.

Crick @DP—Hold on, baby. I’m coming.

DP @Crick—And sadly, I’m not.

Crick @DP—Not yet, anyway.

DP @Crick—Heh heh heh heh heh…

Crick @DP—Deacon?

DP @Crick—mmmm?

Crick @DP—You’re still a little mad at me, aren’t you?

DP @Crick—Less every day.

The ambulance had rolled into a deep spot in the desert, the two patients hadn’t survived the tumble, and Crick and Lisa were back to back, cradling their M-16s and listening for enemy fire.

“Sorry ’bout the wreck, Lieu,” Lisa said, her voice taut. They’d pulled themselves out of it, checked each other for injuries, radioed for help, and grabbed their guns. That had been about an hour ago, and Crick’s belly quivered as he thought that his life might actually depend on him firing that damned M-16.

Goddammit, he’d made it to the baby’s first birthday and his twenty-second. He’d promised Deacon—he just wasn’t about to break that promise, that was all.

“Not your fault, sweetheart,” he muttered. It hadn’t been. A shell had hit right in front of them. She’d swerved and managed to save both their lives. It was a shame about the Marines in the back of the van, though—

Crick hadn’t lost many patients, and it rankled that he lost these two to a combination of traumas.

“You say that to all the pretty women you get wrecked with?” It was a shitty attempt at humor, but he gave her points for trying.

“Only the ones that keep me in the closet,” he looked back and told her honestly. “Fuck!” Whoever it was over her shoulder, he wasn’t friendly. Crick aimed, fired, and hit. His one and only shot in the war, and he never even dreamed about it, barely even remembered it happened.

Before Lisa had a chance to check her back or see what or whom he’d shot at, they both heard it, and the scattered gunfire over their heads stalled out.

“Sound like a Black Hawk to you?” she asked, her tight little fighting smile fierce and hopeful.

“Hey—think we’ve got enough practice praying to make that stick?” he asked breathlessly, looking overhead. Together, like children and only partially kidding, they started to chant, “Please God, let that be a friendly.

Please God, let that be a friendly” After a few rounds of distinctive air-to-ground fire, there it was: a Black Hawk, landing on the ridge above them—cannyagimmehallefuckinlujah, amen.

It wasn’t until Crick and Lisa were safe back on base, holding shaking hands over a couple of off-duty beers, bruises, abrasions, and all, that Crick checked his pocket to contact Deacon. Holy shit—his BlackBerry was gone. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit—it had been there after the 178

wreck—it must have come out when he’d belted himself into the Huey.

He could get it back, maybe, but when?

“Jesus, Lisa!” He was panicked. “I’ve got to get a hold of him. He’ll be watching CNN—he’ll see all the fighting and I won’t be on the horn—

he’ll think I’m dead!”

It wasn’t until the next evening, when both he and Lisa tried for time on the satellite phone and were denied because of weather conditions, that his CO called him in to watch CNN to see the flooding in northern California. That was when Crick realized that Deacon might possibly have some other shit on his mind.

Broken Levees
,
Dead Horses
,
and Driving While Gay

DEACON’S body ached, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. It had started raining steadily in November and kept it up through December and January, but this last month… well, the ground was already saturated, and February had pummeled them like God had gotten drunk and was pissing on Nor-Cal for sport.

Deacon had spent three sleepless days loading up the back of the truck with sandbags and either schlepping them to The Pulpit
to bank up the levee side of the ranch and build an inner ring of bags around the house or to the National Guardsmen, helping to bank up the levee itself. It was late now—Crick’s calling time, actually—and he hadn’t called in three days. Deacon was starting to think of the storm as a blessing, because it meant that he didn’t have to think about it, didn’t have to watch CNN and see what might be happening at the far ends of the earth, didn’t have to imagine Carrick, dead, mutilated, or suffering—he could just load sandbags and try to save his fucking home.

Which was what he was thinking when the truck gave out on the way back home from the sandbagging site at the fire station, right smack-dab in front of Sandy’s Bar
.

A bar, God? Really? I haven’t heard from Crick in three goddamned
days, and You park me in front of a bar? I’m seriously starting to think
Crick was right about You, ya big fucker.

Deacon looked up at the sky as he said it, and since the rain kept pissing down, silver against the black, he figured that God could give a shit about what one Deacon Winters thought about his grand-and-fucked-up plan.

He tried to call Jon for a jumpstart—it was the alternator; he knew it because the damned thing had been threatening to quit all week—but the storm was wreaking havoc with the satellite reception and cell service was down. He figured he could go inside and use the payphone and call him—

he’d call Benny, but she wasn’t there. She was visiting her grandmother in Natomas, mostly to keep the old bitch from threatening them with Child Protective Services because Benny was living with a man eleven years her senior. Patrick was still up at his sister’s in El Dorado Hills, and Deacon was thinking seriously of sending Benny, Parry Angel, and even Amy, Jon, and Andrew up there if the storm didn’t get better by the next day. If the levee broke, there might not be enough of The Pulpit for the sandbags to save.

Fuck. He sighed and rested his head on the steering wheel of the vast and ancient Chevy.
Okay, Deacon—you haven’t even wanted a drink since
before the baby was born. Go in, get a soda, call Jon for a jumpstart, and
get the fuck out of here.

And it should have gone that way too.

He walked in and was mildly surprised at how many people would brave that weather to come and get drunk and watch CNN. He eased his way into the bar and looked blankly at the row of once-familiar labels at the back and then looked at Sandy—a three-hundred-pound bearded biker who fed about a thousand cats from his trailer behind the bar—and asked for a soda.

“A soda?”

Deacon smiled faintly and nodded. “Seven-up would be great. I gotta go make a call….”

“Deacon? Deacon Winters, is that you?”

Deacon turned and blinked. “Becca—Becca Anderson?” Jon’s old girlfriend was there, looking a little worse for the past ten years—her hair was dyed now instead of natural, and she was one of those women who got lean-skinny as she aged instead of comfy and round. Still, she was tiredly pretty for all of that.

“Deacon!” she squealed, giving him a wholly unwanted—and very personal-feeling—sort of hug. He smiled politely and tried to disentangle himself. He hadn’t been blind to Becca’s attempts to get between him and Amy—he’d just never wanted to hurt Jon by telling him that Bec was a skank whore, that was all. He’d been relieved when Jon told him that he’d had a longtime crush on Amy at the end of their senior year. It meant that his friend’s taste had improved and that the odds of his heart getting carelessly ripped to shreds were considerably diminished.

“Good to see you, Bec,” he lied, and then he looked up and nodded when his soda arrived. He took a drink and sighed a little—the sugar tasted good—and set the drink down again.

“I gotta go make a call,” he murmured, and Bec shook her head.

“Stay a while, sweetie. What are you doing here anyway? Did you know that boy?”

Deacon’s heart literally ceased to beat. “Boy?”

“Yeah, hon.” Becca nodded at the TV, where CNN was showing scenes of the stepped-up violence around Kuwait. “You know—that one boy, he used to get riding lessons from you? A couple of years younger than us… you know….”