The Brave (18 page)

Delgado led the others into the house and left the two of them in the courtyard and they'd only been standing there a few moments when the Apache above them tilted and swerved off and Danny made the mistake of looking up at it and was dazzled by the beam of its searchlight. In that same instant there was some shouting from inside the farmhouse and a crash of breaking glass and then a burst of gunfire.

When he looked again at his wretched band of captives, his sight still half blitzed by the searchlight, something or someone moved behind one of the women holding a baby. It was a man, a little younger than the others, and Danny was sure—almost sure—that he hadn't been there the moment before.

"He was wearing a white shirt and white pants and he looked me right in the eye and I suddenly thought, holy shit, that's him, that's the guy we've been chasing. The little motherfucker has simply dumped the cammie jacket and joined the crowd, trying to act all innocent. Then Harker hollers, so I figure he must be thinking the same."

This all happened in a matter of a few short seconds, Danny said. Less than that. It was like one extended moment. You could see in the guy's eyes that he knew he'd been rumbled. He was shaking, bobbing, as if he were about to run. Then, all of a sudden, he bent down and Harker hollered again and one of the women shrieked and Danny heard—he definitely, distinctly heard—the clicking sound of what was obviously a weapon being racked. And then he saw it.

"There it was, the glint of a barrel behind the woman's hip. The little fuck has picked up his AK and is getting ready to fire."

And Danny yelled and both he and Harker opened up with their M16s.

Seven dead. An old man, three women, a five-year-old girl and a baby boy. And the younger man who'd reached for his weapon. Except there was no weapon. Only an alloy crutch. The guy was an invalid, only had one leg.

The little girl and the baby lay side by side, their bodies bloody and ripped open by the bullets but their faces untouched. The girl's eyes were still open. The image had engraved itself in Danny's head.

"I see her face every night," Danny whispered. "Every time I close my eyes, there she is, staring at me."

Tom put his arm around his son's shoulders and pulled him closer. It was a long while before either of them spoke again. They listened to the rush and draw of the waves and watched the sun sink, ragged and shimmering, into the ocean.

"They're going to hang me out to dry, Dad. They're going to let me hang there and twist in the wind."

TOM'S FLIGHT home from LA wasn't until the following afternoon so he'd booked a room at a hotel called the W in Westwood. The room was chic and luxurious and about as big as a closet. He was tired but his head too churning for sleep, so he went down to the lounge. It was all darkened mirrors and low lighting and everyone there seemed to be half his age and impossibly good-looking. He sat at the bar and ordered a mineral water and, for the first time in many years, yearned for something stronger.

Back in his room he lay on the bed still half-dressed and watched Jay Leno interviewing some young stubble-faced actor Tom didn't recognize. He tried to concentrate but couldn't. All he could think about was Danny and what was going to happen to him. The thoughts transmuted into anxious, half-awake dreams in which he was hunting through a swamp of tall reeds, parting them with his hands and calling Danny's name again and again until he found himself at the rim of a dark pool. He looked down and saw his son covered in slime and calling for help, stretching his arms up. Tom would wake in a sweat and open his eyes wide and rub his face and try to shrug the dream out of his head but as soon as he closed his eyes again he was back there. Danny's face below him, pale and ghostly and full of fear. Tom lay on the bank and reached down to try to haul the boy out but it was too far. Their outstretched hands just wouldn't touch. And then he saw that Danny wasn't the only one down there and that the water around him was full of floating bodies.

He got up around six and showered and checked out. He hadn't been to LA for many years. There were too many ghosts. The streets were almost empty. He drove across to West Hollywood, cruising past places he remembered as a boy. But everything had changed. Carl Curtis School had long ago relocated, the little park with its petting zoo now built over. He drove up La Cienega then along Sunset and up into the hills, the way Diane used to drive him back to Ray's place. But when he came around the last corner he saw that the gates had changed and the red roof beyond was gone. The house had been knocked down and replaced with a sleek palace of glass and cement.

He drove back down the canyon and headed east and then north on the freeway to the crematorium where they had held Diane's funeral. In those days the place had been surrounded by open land but now every available acre seemed to have been built on and it took him a long time to find it.

The cemetery was much smaller than he remembered. There was no grave nor gravestone. Because of all the shame that surrounded her death and probably because of something he had read, as a boy, Tom had believed that this was because convicted murderers weren't allowed proper graves. But he'd later learned that this was how Diane had wanted it. Her ashes had simply been scattered in what was called the Garden of Remembrance. Tom found it and walked slowly among the flower beds under the hot morning sun. There was a stone bench set in a bower of white and pink roses. The smell of roses had always reminded him of Diane and he sat there for a while with his eyes closed, thinking about her and trying to picture her. The image that always came first was of that last time he'd seen her. Dressed all in white, standing in the sunlight in the prison cell. How he wished he'd been kinder to her that day.

He drove out to LAX, returned the rental car and checked in early for his flight. While he waited he read all the newspapers and weeklies. They were full of stories about Iraq but there was nothing about Danny in any of them. The media seemed to have lost interest. At the outset, Tom had expected TV crews showing up on his doorstep but it hadn't happened. The only reporter who'd called him was a friend who worked on the Missoulian and all she wrote was a small piece tucked away on an inside page, with no mention of Tom's name.

It had been a lot worse for Gina. A week of reporters foraging for family reaction and background, but Dutch had soon seen them off. There was a fair amount about the case on the Internet but you had to search hard for it and it was nothing compared to all there had been about Haditha. Maybe it was a simple matter of arithmetic. In Haditha Marines had killed twenty-four civilians. A mere seven dead maybe didn't rate anymore.

They landed on schedule and the Missoula air smelled good and clean and cooler than the air had in LA. Tom found his car and headed east toward town then crossed the Clark Fork to the Good Food Store on 3rd Street to pick up something for his supper. He was going through one of his healthy-eating phases (they usually lasted about a week) and as he was busy loading his cart with organic oranges his cell phone rang. It was a woman's voice and she didn't say who she was, just jumped straight in as if he should know.

"Hi," she said. "How'd it go?"

Tom hadn't any idea who it was or what she was asking about. So he just said hi and oh, not bad and then, thank heaven, some elusive synapse clicked in and he knew he was talking with Karen O'Keefe.

"So, did you get that big movie deal?"

He remembered the lie he'd told her about his meetings in LA.

"Oh, no. Well, things aren't quite at that stage yet."

"Oh."

"I just got back, as a matter of fact."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"No, no. It's good. How've you been? How's your mom been? I mean, about her cat... What was his name?"

"Maurice. Couldn't be happier. That makes her sound mean, doesn't it? But she's thrilled. You know, in a kind of guilty way. She wants to meet you. Do you want to have dinner?"

"What, with your mom?"

Karen O'Keefe laughed. He liked her laugh a lot.

"No, with me. I can bring my mom if you like."

"Another time maybe. Look, I could get us something. I'm right here in the food store—"

"Me too."

"What?"

"Right here in the store. Look to your right."

And there she was, just twenty yards away, grinning at him. She snapped her phone shut and walked toward him. He felt a little flutter in his chest and told himself again not to be a fool.

"First the cat, now this," she said. "You must think I'm stalking you."

"Be my guest."

She said her intention was to buy him dinner but Tom said here they were, surrounded by all this fabulous produce and he loved to cook, so why not eat at his place? She shrugged and said sure and transferred the few things she had in her cart into his and they set off around the store, deciding what they would eat.

Tom pushed the cart and watched her while she did the research, picking things up to inspect them, feeling the fruit to see how ripe it was, checking out the labels. He liked the way she bit her lip while she concentrated, liked the little frown on the freckled forehead, the way she kept tucking her hair behind her ears. In fact, he liked everything about her. Most of all he liked the idea that anyone looking at them might assume they were a couple. He'd forgotten how pleasant that felt.

They bought steak and salad and some exotic French cheeses and fresh raspberries and some gourmet ice cream Tom had never heard of but which she said was the most delicious in all the world. To hell with the diet. She wanted to pay but he wouldn't let her.

She followed him home in her dusty old yellow Volvo station wagon and when they arrived Makwi came bounding out and made a big fuss of him as if he'd been gone for years. Tom's house-and-dog-sitter friend Liz was in a hurry to get away so he thanked her and paid her and then he and Karen took Makwi for a walk up through the forest to the raven rocks.

Tom normally went only to the foot of the cliff but this evening they climbed around and up along the edge to reach the top. The last hundred yards were steep and strewn with loose stone and twice he had to give her his hand and haul her up behind him and when they reached the top she was short of breath and they sat side by side on a platform of rock and stared down over the treetops.

You couldn't quite see Tom's house from here, just the bend of the creek a little farther downstream and the cottonwoods that grew beside it and the meadow where Gina used to keep the horses. The fading light was soft and tinged with blue and, as the sun went down, a tide of shadow rose on the far side of the valley. During the walk they'd hardly stopped talking but now a comfortable silence fell between them. A pair of ravens were mobbing a hawk that had probably flown too close to their young. The raucous calls echoed down the valley.

They had been talking about her parents, how her father had been much older than her mother and had been dead now for many years. She said she never really knew him. Now it was her turn to ask the questions and she asked Tom about his parents and he told her that he too had never known his father. That, in fact, he'd never even met him and didn't know whether he was alive or dead.

"Aren't you curious?"

"A little. But not enough to find out."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"I know where he lived thirty years ago. I saw him once."

He paused. Those green eyes were fixed on him, waiting for him to go on. Gina was the only person he'd ever told. Karen O'Keefe suddenly seemed to sense that the subject was delicate.

"I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"No. It's fine."

And he told her about Diane getting pregnant at fifteen and how his grandparents had pretended to be his parents and how, many years later, when he was in his early twenties, he had gone in search of his father and, with surprising ease, had managed to find his address. David Willis was by then in his late thirties and living in a town called Tunbridge Wells in the southeast of England. Tom had considered writing a letter but could imagine the poor man's shock at opening it. Diane, after all, had never even informed him that she was pregnant.

So, on one of his rare trips to England, Tom had rented a car and driven down to Tunbridge Wells and found the house on a leafy suburban street.

"It was a sunny Sunday morning. People were out in their gardens and mowing their lawns and I drove slowly past the house and there was this man, washing his car in the little driveway. It was a Volvo, just like yours, only a lot cleaner."

Karen O'Keefe laughed her lovely laugh.

"What did he look like?"

"Tall, slim, good-looking. I got all those genes, obviously."

"And then?"

"I drove on past, turned around, came slowly back and parked up under some trees, just across the street from the house. And I sat there for a while. And watched him. And then a little girl, maybe five or six years old, came out of the front door and he pretended to point the hose at her and she giggled and squealed, sort of daring him to drench her. And then he lifted her up and put her on his shoulders while he finished hosing the car down."

"Your little sister."

"I guess. Half sister, anyhow."

"Go on."

"And then I just started the engine and drove away."

"And never got in touch?"

Tom smiled and shook his head.

"Why?"

"What would I have said? Hi, I'm Tom, the son you never knew you had. It seemed to me that, to do that to him, to drop that bomb into his life, I needed a reason. I mean a good reason, not just curiosity. Which, when it came down to it, was really all I felt. There was no... connection."

They were silent for a moment.

"And what about your mother? Is she still alive?"

"Oh, no. She died a long time ago."

"Brothers and sisters?"

"A sister. She died in a car accident when I was thirteen."

"That's tough."

"Yeah. It was."

The lie seemed tired and worn. It was a long time since he'd heard himself tell it and he had a sudden urge to confess how Diane had really died. But how could he tell this virtual stranger what he'd never managed to tell anyone? Not even in therapy, not even Gina. It would be too great a betrayal. That was the thing with lies. Like the gnarled and twisted pine trees that grew along the Front Range, the longer they lived the stronger they became. One of the ravens swerved in front of them on a gust of warm wind and it gave Tom the chance to end the conversation. He stood up.

"I'm getting hungry, how about you?"

"Sure."

He called Makwi and she came trotting out of the trees, panting after what had obviously been another hectic hunt.

"Do we have to go look for a body?" Karen said.

"Did your mother get another cat?"

They walked back down the trail and hardly spoke until they reached the house. Tom poured her a glass of red wine and a soda for himself and then set about cooking the steaks. Karen O'Keefe lit the candles out on the deck then came back in and sat at the kitchen table and put the salad together.

The last time they'd seen each other, he'd given her the tapes of the interviews he'd recorded with the old Blackfeet about the Holy Family Mission. She was buzzing with ideas about how they might be used in the film she was determined the two of them would make. He leaned against the divider and watched her ripping up the lettuce as she went on about it. He liked the way she talked. It was a kind of western drawl, both nonchalant and earnest at the same time.

The steaks were good. And while they ate he got her talking about herself. About going to college in Boulder, then after that to UCLA film school, about some of the documentary films she'd made since. The subjects were mostly social and environmental issues and sounded quite radical both in style and content. One she'd made, about a coyote-killing contest in a small town in Wyoming, had won an award the previous year at Sundance. One of the hunters had sent her a note saying if she ever dared show her face there again, she'd get the same welcome they extended to coyotes. The film she was working on at the moment, she said, was about Iraq war veterans.