While He Was Away (11 page)

On the way home—how many hours from now?—Linda will probably debrief me in exactly this manner. Only I’ll be even more tired. I’ll probably have to guzzle caffeine to get my butt up into that attic, and then I’ll be up all night and trying to sleep all day again, and Linda will really let me have it tomorrow.

We stop at a red light. There’s the park with the playground.

And there’s Ravi, balancing at the top of the slide on his skateboard.

That feeling comes over me—that panicky feeling I get whenever David does something like back-flip off a viaduct wall. I roll down the window and shout, “Are you crazy?”

Ravi shades his eyes with his hand. He must realize it’s me, because he calls back, “Nope. Just a superhero.”

Linda peers over my shoulder. “Who’s that?”

“Some guy,” I mutter. And shout, “Don’t kill yourself!”

The light turns green. Ravi sails down the slide and into the air. He makes his landing, steady and sure. The momentum sends him hurtling toward us. Linda kicks the car into gear quickly and drives on. As if he might dent her VW.

“Crazy,” Linda says.

“No.” I sound mad. I am mad. About a lot of things. “Not really.”

Linda smirks. “Gotta love the ‘really.’”

I scowl out the window. Enough about Ravi. I’ll think about Justine, that letter in the attic. What will it tell me? Will it tell me if Justine ever walked these streets like David and I used to do? Was there a playground here way back then? Did Justine and her soldier ever swing on the swings together or kiss there in the dark?

More important, did Justine ever spend time at Red Earth?

I drop my feet on the car’s floor, registering
yes
. Of course she spent time at Red Earth. My grandpa owned the place, after all.

I glance at Linda, wondering if she’s still trying to get inside my business, inside my head, but she’s tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to a song that’s playing in
her
head. She’s smiling. She might as well be the one who’s half a world away. I look out my window again. The houses, apartment buildings, and occasional fast-food joints are dwindling into strip malls, gas stations, and lots of fast-food joints. And up ahead the neon sign for Red Earth flares—a red horizon line and a brown tumbleweed flashing on and off, rolling, rolling, and going nowhere in the neon wind.

We drive around to the back of the two-story brick building and park by the garbage bins. We get out of the VW, and I follow Linda through Red Earth’s back door. Linda calls a cheery hello to Isaac, the ebony-skinned chef, who comes equipped with full mustache and trademark green bandanna covering his dreadlocks. Isaac is tending his griddle—the sizzling sausage there. He salutes Linda with his tongs, ignores me, and goes back to flipping links. He’s all business, that Isaac.

Linda plucks two gray time cards from the metal rack beside the time clock. She hands one to me.

“After you,” she says.

I punch the clock.

Linda gives me a swift hug. “You’re officially one of us now.”

“Yippee,” I say.

Everything happens fast then. Linda introduces me in my professional capacity to Caitlin, the waif-like cocktail waitress with the stick-straight, shoulder-length, pink-streaked blond hair and fake Irish brogue. (“Caitlin tries on lots of different accents,” Linda whispers to me, “but mostly she’s all Irish, to go with her name, I guess.”) I remember Caitlin from school last year. She was a senior. (Apparently she was a hanger-on as well, too old for high school, since she can serve drinks already.) She was all into theater. I saw her play Eliza Doolittle in the fall production of
My
Fair
Lady
.

“I don’t remember you,” Caitlin says bluntly when I tell her this.

Linda whisks me off to say hi to Tom, the sixty-something, bald-as-a-cue-ball bartender with American eagles tattooed on his forearms. He gives me a quick appraising glance, grunts hello, and then turns away.

How welcoming.

While Linda checks the table settings, I restock the salad bar. Fill the water pitchers. Make fresh coffee. With Linda’s help I gradually start hustling around the dimly lit dining room like I actually belong here—only once banging my head on the low-hanging, faux-wagon-wheel lamps that hang over the heavy oak tables. Only twice bruising my shins on the chairs. Only three times tripping over the cold stone fireplace’s raised hearth. And in between all this, checking my cell phone to make sure it’s not on silent, in case David has a chance to call.

The rest of the décor is pretty minimal, thank God. There are a few old photographs of Killdeer on the walls that I’ve never seen before. I want to check them out, but I have too many other things to think about right now.

I go into the kitchen to get some fresh ketchup bottles. Isaac evaluates me from his griddle.

“Wonder what that’ll look like when you’re eighty-five,” he says, looking pointedly at my tattooed finger.

I shrug. I never think about when I’m eighty-five. Before Justine, I’d never thought much above Linda’s age, actually. Forty was my cutoff.

“I can always get it removed if it starts looking bad,” I say. “But it won’t. I won’t. I love it.”

And I do.

Shaking his head, Isaac turns back to whatever he’s frying now.

At 4:15, when everything seems ready, Caitlin stuffs her iPod into her apron and pops a CD into Red Earth’s player. An Irish band blares, penny whistles shrilling. Linda rolls her eyes, but the band plays on. Stripped of her earbuds, Caitlin wants to chat. She grabs my arm and steers me over to a table near the bar. She pats the back of a chair, and—what the heck—I drop down into it. These Doc Martens feel too heavy. Guess my feet are used to flip-flops and sandals.

“Two Cokes, pretty please,” Caitlin calls to Tom. She seems to have forgotten her brogue for the moment. She’s just a regular Okie now.

Tom fills two glasses and pushes them across the bar to Caitlin. Caitlin hands me one and plops down in a chair beside me. I take a long drink; I didn’t realize I was so thirsty. Over the rim of my glass, I watch Tom, who’s methodically cutting limes into neat little wedges. Tom moves like molasses, tending bar. But Linda knew him when she was a little girl—apparently Tom was an old friend of the family and lived with them for a while—and when he came looking for work because he couldn’t make it on his pension, she immediately hired him.

“Tom’s a
fixture
,” Linda told me one night. “He was like a little brother to my dad.”

Now I’m thinking,
Brother to Grandpa, uncle to Linda, great-uncle to me?
And then,
He knew Justine maybe?

“So you think you’re ready?”

I start at Caitlin’s voice. I’d almost forgotten she was sitting beside me. I look at her. She’s watching me as closely as I was watching Tom, her glossy lips pursed around her straw.

I give a little shiver, pull myself back into now. “Ready or not.” I take in the empty restaurant—fifteen tables, plus the one Caitlin and I are sitting in!—and my stomach lurches.

“It’ll be slow till five-ish, then it’ll be crazy till nine thirty–ish, and then it’ll slow down again till closing. I’ll help you during the worst of the rush, and I know your ma will too. But basically I’m all about the alcohol. If there’s a bunch of folks boozing it up at one table, I’ll be there. I make real money, see, on tips from sloppy drinkers. I don’t have a sugar mama at home like you do. I’ve got parents who make me pay rent. So I’m fixin’ to make some cold, hard cash. Got it? Someday I’ll make my million doing voice-overs in LA, but until then this is it.”

I grip my glass more tightly. “I’m not asking you to carry me.”

“Oh,
right
.” Caitlin rolls her eyes. “Listen. You got clout. Talk your mom into hiring another night person, why don’t you? Someone with a little experience? I mean, sometimes I can barely keep up. This place is hopping lately. I don’t know how you’re going to manage.”

“When Red Earth gets really established, we’ll hire more help.” I push my glass away. My stomach’s suddenly too jittery even for a Coke. “That’s what Linda says at least.” I glance around again. “Where is she anyway?”

Caitlin laughs. “Oh, it’s
Linda
, is it?”

Of course I’m not going to tell Caitlin that I didn’t start calling Linda by her first name until after I got together with David. Saying Linda’s name, and Bonnie’s and Beau’s too, bound David and me even closer. It gave us access to knowledge and perspective, the way passwords and codes work for spies. Say
Linda
, and
Open
sesame!
a kind of door unlocked, and David and I’d find ourselves in a secret place—an interior space, far from all that confined and defined us. Our parents, sure, but Killdeer too. We could do what we wanted there. Talk for hours. Break petty rules. Make out. Whatever. It always felt good.

But he’s called them Mom and Dad, I suddenly realize, every time he’s spoken about them on the phone.

“
Linda’s
in the kitchen, where she so often is these days.” Caitlin flicks her pale eyebrows. “Seems the other new member of the crew needs lots of attention.”

“Isaac?”

“Yeah.
Linda
took a big risk hiring him. I heard
Linda
—”

“Will you stop with the
Linda
!”

Caitlin laughs. “Cute.” She chucks me under the chin. “Anyway, I heard
her
telling Tom. Isaac said he wouldn’t work here unless he got a bigger salary than any of the previous cooks. He actually
has
decent restaurant experience. She was worried at first, but now it seems like the risk might be paying off.” Caitlin polishes off her drink. “Isaac’s food will turn this place into a high-class joint, mark my words. What with the Southern-Down-Home-Cooking-Meets-Tex-Mex-Meets-Cajun-Meets-Irish-Fare thing he’s got going on.”

“A true kitchen god.” I’m a little less queasy. It feels good to joke with someone a little.

“Just make sure you don’t rub Isaac the wrong way, or we’ll all suffer. He can be a real—”

“Bastard!” Tom shouts.

Startled, Caitlin and I both look at him.

But Tom’s not talking about Isaac. He’s shaking his fist at the TV above the bar. “They did it again!”

Caitlin claps her hands to her chest. “Watch the volume, Tom, why don’t you?”

“Just look at this.” Tom stares up at the TV. “
Iraq
.”

He’s watching the news—a special report. A hazy video flickers across the screen. It shows a Hummer, on its side and twisted. Bodies litter the dusty road.

So far I’ve successfully avoided the news. The special reports.

“A resurgence in violence,” the reporter says.

Caitlin snorts. “Who
are
these assholes, anyway? Can somebody tell me? Tom? You were in Vietnam. You know everything.”

Tom doesn’t answer or look away from the TV.

“Penna?” Caitlin asks.

Numbly, I shake my head. There had to be a war. That’s all I know. There was evil out there, and we had to defeat it. That’s what David always said before OSUT. That’s one of the reasons he told me he enlisted.

Tom is gripping the bar so tightly that the eagles on his forearms bulge. He looks back up at the TV. “
Listen
to the man, will you?”

Caitlin ignores him. “And what is an EID exactly? Every day, it’s war this, war that.”

“Show a little respect, and maybe I’ll fill you in,” Tom mutters.

Caitlin shrugs, then glances at me and clucks her tongue. “Uh-oh. Now look what you did to the boss’s daughter. Doesn’t look like she likes that show either. You’re nearly as white as the driven snow, Penna.” Caitlin slings her arm around my shoulder. “Come on, now. They’re there. We’re here. It’s okay. Look. It’s not even us hurt. Those are
them
.”

Now there’s another clip playing across the TV screen. U.S. soldiers are moving through rubble that was a marketplace, the reporter is saying. One of the soldiers carries a limp, black-haired boy. The rest carry guns.

The boy makes me think of a young David or Ravi.

“Help me out here, Tom. She looks like she might faint or something. Don’t hurl, kid, okay?” Caitlin gives me a brisk pat. “Just another day in Baghdad. Come on now.”

“An IED is an improvised explosive device.” I hear myself saying this. My voice is flat and dull. “A homemade bomb.”

“That’s right.” Tom considers me.

Caitlin claps her hands together, falsely enthusiastic. “Aren’t you the G.I. Jane!”

“I took Current Events.” I shiver. What I don’t say is that before OSUT, David talked about stuff like this. He liked gaming, and a lot of times the games he played were about war. Sometimes I sat down with him at his computer and watched him go at it. I took a few shots myself, popped off a few of the virtual bad guys. I learned some things that way—lots more than I ever learned in Current Events.