The Heart You Carry Home (10 page)

It was here on this green that Ben had first played the fiddle for Becca. His relationship with the instrument had always been complicated—just like the relationship with his dad—but when he played for her, the melodies sounded different: bright and new and layered with astonishing color, much like the lushness he'd experienced in the Smokies. Even without the instrument in his hands, the music swirled around them, a score to the life they were building.

But now, as Ben lay drunk on the college green, the fiddle lay in pieces on the floor of Becca's childhood bedroom. Except at the wedding, he had barely played since leaving for his second tour. He couldn't take the violin to Iraq, and then, when he was back home, the music hurt. The nightmare of the seminar room—that was how he felt when he held the bow now: disgusted, trapped, sick with shame.

Ben pulled himself to his knees and looked skyward. From some unexpected place inside himself, he began to pray. “Tell me what to do, Dad,” he said. “Help me. Please.”

He'd heard many stories of people being filled with the Holy Spirit and driven to upend their lives, like Becca's mother deciding to move to her Christian commune or a college friend who'd gotten the Call one Saturday afternoon while mowing the lawn and felt the force of God so powerfully, he later told Ben, that he'd jumped off the mower and fallen to his knees as the machine kept going and crashed into the house. But no such guidance for Ben. His father wasn't listening. His father was dead.

Ben staggered to his feet and stumbled back to the car, but the Breathalyzer beeped at him with disapproval. “Fine!” he snapped at the instrument. At a twenty-four-hour diner near campus, he ordered breakfast and a large cup of coffee. He sat there until sunup. He'd lost an entire day.

B
ECCA HOPED TO
sleep through her father's departure, but the clomp of boots yanked her awake. It was just after six, and when she looked out the window, there was only blankness. The cabin was hidden in a cloud. Moments later, she heard the engines rumble, then grow faint, then disappear. Becca closed her eyes, hoping to forget that she'd ever asked her father for anything. A second later, though, Kath burst into the room. “You better get dressed,” she said. “We can't waste time.”

Becca clamped the pillow over her face.

“The men're stopping for breakfast in town, so that'll buy us half an hour.”

“He doesn't want me going.” Becca groaned, realizing what her aunt had in mind.

“He doesn't
think
he wants you. But he does.” Kath wrenched the pillow away. “I'm his sister. It's my job to know what's best for him.”

“Seems more like it's your job to be a big pain in his ass.”

“That's a girl!” Kath smiled. “Now, clock's a-ticking.”

Becca was doubtful, but she wasn't ready to quit running. And she wanted payback—wanted to show King that he had to accept her, to
deal
with her. He'd invaded her life, not the other way around. She'd been fine without him. “Give me ten minutes and we're out the door,” she said.

Kath liked classic rock, so Becca sat through hours of Neil Young, CCR, and ZZ Top. All the way through the Arkansas Grand Canyon, snipping the corner of Missouri, and blazing into Kansas, her aunt belted out songs at the top of her lungs. “Looks like we beat them,” she said, pulling into a Love's gas station outside of Oswego.

“Here?” The Love's was a small concrete island in the middle of endless prairie. Surveying the landscape, Becca saw nothing but grass and sky.

“Your father and his friends stop for gas every hundred and twenty miles, otherwise somebody throws a fit. Also, I know that King prefers Love's. He's partial to the heart logo.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“Honey, those men're like children. They need things constantly. They're going to stop here and you're just going to have to trust me on that.”

“Can't you at least wait until they get here before you go?” Two hours back, Kath had announced that once she'd dropped Becca off, she was turning right around.

“We can't give those fellas an excuse to send you home. Call me on the pay phone if you run into trouble.” She planted a wet kiss on Becca's cheek, then squeezed her niece's shoulder with a grip that seemed to concentrate the strength of her entire body. “Don't look so somber, kiddo. You're on an adventure.”

Reluctantly, Becca climbed out of the truck.

“Oh, wait!” Kath rolled down the window and held out a blank envelope. “Give this to Reno. Reno, and only Reno.”

“If the men don't show up, I'm reading it,” Becca threatened.

“They'll be here,” Kath said. Then she waved and pulled onto the highway.

Large flat clouds had materialized, literally from the blue, and floated by, casting gulfs of shade and sunlight across the Love's. At least there'd been radio reception in the truck, which had made Becca feel slightly more tethered to civilization. King once told her that across large swaths of America, you couldn't get anything but static or, if you were lucky, a single station blaring Christian rock. He said he liked to hit the scan button sometimes, simply to remember his place in the world. “It's like they tell you in AA,” he'd said. “Some things are beyond your control. Accepting that is a kind of freedom.”

Becca wanted to ask King about those travels, but she'd learned it was best not to come too close—with either hugs or questions. Only now, Kath was instructing her to defy the warning. In the truck, her aunt had sung loudly to “Break on Through to the Other Side.” A not-so-subtle message.

Becca sat down on the curb with Ben's duffle and Kath's old motorcycle helmet, which fit her much better than King's spare. After about twenty minutes, a minivan pulled into the Love's, and out of it came a father, a mother, and a spool of children. It was like one of those circus acts where more and more clowns pour from the car. There were six kids in all, a mix of boys and girls, and the mother herded them into the store. In the sudden quiet, the father looked relieved. He leaned against the van and discreetly scratched his butt.

Becca could hardly imagine growing up in such a family. The very notion of a family vacation was strange. Where were they going? she wondered. What was it like to ride in that van? She was too young to think seriously about having her own children, but she wanted them. So did Ben. They'd spent long hours discussing what theirs might be like, laying the imagined foundations of their future home.

Soon, the kids funneled out of the Love's, sucking on various candies, laughing, and complaining. Becca watched the mother shepherd them into the van and then the van pull away. That life was not to be, at least not for her and Ben.

Shortly thereafter, she spotted the bikes. All black leather and chrome, Reno's and Bull's resembled oversize beetles. Beside them, the purple Gold Wing was like a My Little Pony. Becca felt the bubble of a laugh in her throat but was too nervous to let it out.

Bull saw her first. He wasn't wearing a helmet and she didn't like the sauntering kind of look he had in his eyes as he drove slowly toward her, like he was preparing a come-on. “Well, look who showed up,” he said when he'd cut the engine. “You're just like an angel, aren't you, touching down from the sky.” Bull waved his gloved fingers, simulating sprinkling fairy dust. Couldn't he just let her be? But Bull was the least of her problems. She got up and walked to her father, but when King saw her, his eyes widened in an old, familiar way. A way that made her stop walking. He shook his head, slowly at first, then faster. He shook it as if he could will his daughter to disappear. Then, without warning, he kicked a large trashcan, sending it toppling onto the cement. “I said no,” he growled, his belly heaving and his face turning red. “
No
, Becca.”

She was at least ten feet away, but she shrank from his outrage.

“Why did you come?” Spittle flew from King's mouth. “Why didn't you tell Kath that you weren't going to be part of her crazy shit? Goddamn it!” His voice lunged at her. “I helped you the best I could. You could have shown me a little respect.” He kicked the trashcan again, and it barreled into the pump. Becca felt like he'd kicked the wind out of her.

“Not much love out here at the Love's,” Bull said and followed King into the convenience store.

“Your aunt really fucked up,” Reno said, though he was clearly accusing her too.

It was true, she thought. King
had
helped her. She had no business demanding more. That's what her brain said. But her heart begged to differ. She deserved her father's attention! King knew what Ben had done to her. He'd seen the evidence and barely responded. It wasn't right.

“So what's Kath's brilliant plan?” Reno said. “Surely she's got one.”

Becca handed him the letter, and he tore it open. She watched his eyes move back and forth over the page. “Shit,” he said, crumpling the paper in his palm. “Shit.”

“What?”

Reno uncrumpled the letter and read it again. “Shit.” He took a couple of deep breaths, then put the letter in his pocket. He pulled a half-smoked cigar from his jacket and lit up.

“Are you gonna tell me what she said?”

“Not right now.”

“Well, can you—”

“Look.” He opened and closed his cracked lips around the cigar, exhaled a cloud of smoke by her ear. “This is what's gonna happen. You're coming with, for now.” Reno broke into a cough, his lungs rattling like they were full of spare screws. He put his hand up to hold her off. When he'd recovered he said, “I'm responsible for you, so don't give me a hard time, please.”

“I'm responsible for myself.”

“Yeah, but thanks to the ever-cunning Katherine Keller, you're stranded unless somebody is kind enough to give you a ride.”

“Give me your phone so I can call Kath.”

“She ain't gonna tell you different.”

“Give me the phone.” Becca held out her hand and Reno obliged. Kath picked up right away.

“So they showed up! O ye of little faith!” her aunt declared.

Becca presented her case. For a moment, the line was silent. When Kath finally spoke, her voice was cold as chilled milk. “It's complicated, honey. I've instructed Reno to explain. But you've got to let him do it on his own time. And don't worry about your father. He'll come around.” Kath hung up.

“You're not fucking serious!” Becca practically threw the phone back at Reno.

“I can take you to the nearest Tennessee-bound bus,” Reno offered. “I'll remind you that you're the one who wanted to come, or who let Kath talk you into coming, or however it happened. But if you want to stay, you can't go making a fuss. I got enough on my mind.”

He looked so haggard, so genuinely stressed, that Becca backed down. “I just don't understand what's going on. My dad's kicking trashcans, and my husband—”

Reno hung his head and nodded. “I am truly sorry. If I had known, I would have punched him harder.” Reno rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “Listen, as you may or may not already know, we're headed to Utah to see our old commander. But the rest of it—Kleos and all that. It's gonna take a while to explain.”

“What's Kleos?”

“It's where the CO lives.”

“And?”

“And we're hitting the road in about five minutes, so if you want a drink or something, you'd better get it quick. It's gonna be a hundred and twenty miles before we stop again.”

That afternoon the landscape flew by in alternating stretches of farmland and prairie. Sometimes there were cows, sometimes horses, sometimes just grass. Once in a while, there were windmills in the distance, massive white trees stripped of their limbs. Two rest stops and two hundred and forty miles later, Becca looked at a map and realized they'd hardly gotten anywhere. She felt like they were swimming against a current, like they were spinning their wheels. When they finally stopped at a trailer park in a nothing town called Bluff, they still had three-fourths of Kansas to cover before they would even get within shouting distance of Colorado.

Becca set up the small tent that Kath had loaned her. When she'd finished, she found Reno crouched over a camping stove making coffee in a French press. “What are you doing?” She gaped.

“What does it look like? You think I'm not
sophisticated
enough to use one of these?”

Becca's face turned red.

“You've got to be one of the singularly most judgmental people I've ever met,” Reno said. “You know that? Nearly as bad as your mother.”

Becca looked at her father for support, but King wouldn't meet her eye. Miserable, she made herself a peanut butter sandwich and sat down by the stove to eat. Kleos—the name felt lodged in her brain like a splinter. She tried to pry it loose, but it wouldn't budge.

After dinner, she climbed into her tent and curled up on her side, but the bruises ached. She turned over, but it made no difference. She took some ibuprofen and folded her hands in a ball against her chest. She was more than lonely; she was downright homesick, a foreigner in a strange land.

H
ELLO, BEN,” SAID
Kath. She opened the door but made no move to hug him. She was exhausted from the long drive out to Kansas and back. And now her blood boiled up against her tiredness; to think her lovely girl had endured pain at the hands of this man! There were many reasons to have sent Becca off with her father, among them the possibility that her presence might actually divert King from his dangerous project in Utah. But most of all, Kath had wanted to keep her niece away from Ben.

“She's not here,” Kath said, inspecting the bruise on his face. She smiled to herself. Reno always pulled his weight. Still, in this moment, Ben did not look enraged or capable of violence. He looked worn out and sad.