He loved it here. He loved his people. They were his people, weren’t they? They drove him nuts, but he was inspired by their generosity. And they laughed so much. He hadn’t known funny before. So with or without his savior, or his sanity, he wanted to stay. He had made another sit-up station, for reverse sit-ups, again with a decomposing rubber mat, but not decorated by a single condom. Well, it was too far into the bush. After the horror movies these kids watched they were all scared of the woods—Indians. Millennial Indians. Nobody had vandalized his outdoor heavy bag ’cause that was too far into the woods as well. He beat the wood ticks off the bag with a host of vicious side kicks. It had taken a world of groin pain to free that adhered scar tissue. But he could now lift his leg as high as his brain. Haha, God, he said when he walked with God. You saved me for a reason—so that I could develop my crazy showgirl kick.
Sometimes he didn’t feel the shift occur; he was just back there sliding from his sleeping bag, then flying. The sentries guarding the former office building where the Marines were barracked had been expecting a water truck. Instead a yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck sped straight past and the bomb it carried detonated in the lobby. The building went up into the air in pieces and then the pieces, with Marines in them, rearranged as they came down. Father Travis felt the dream flying, the down slamming, but not the slashing and tearing of his body. The black whirling energy became black crushing silence. Then the screaming started. It wasn’t until he tried to get to the others that he realized he couldn’t move. That’s when he started screaming too, not for help, but Get off me, because he understood that he was the meat in a steel and concrete sandwich and could feel the rubble shifting. Dust in. Dust out. Scream the dust out. Take a breath of dust. Scream again. Then voices. We got one. Get off that slab. He’s in there. We need a crane.
A skinny, shirtless, tattooed Marine slipped in next to Travis and then somehow he lifted things—the beam—and pushed—the slab—and bore him out to other arms. Father Travis knew exactly who that man was. He’d spoken to him on the phone. Vast strength had entered the slim man as he was rescuing his friends, the way it did with mothers rescuing their babies. They’d talked about that. They kept in touch, but he didn’t get together with the other guys and the families of the dead. He didn’t go to Camp Lejeune or the memorial reunions. He feared the black energy and how he could not control his breathing once the shift occurred.
Father Travis switched the jump rope along his thighs, then started it whirling. He was living out Newton’s Third Law—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Time was the variable. Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life. Or was it the other way around? He thought of Emmaline.
THE GREEN CHAIR had rested in the barn for two months and nobody noticed that it was gone from the kitchen. Nola was ready to say that she was going to restore it, if Peter asked. But it was just a green wooden chair, and who cared? Yet this painted chair was key. It would be the last solid thing her feet touched. She’d push off and kick the backrest down. But the part where she strangled, not good, she was not ready, she was afraid of that when she put her hands around her neck and squeezed. The feeling made her gag and she went wooden and cold until she thought maybe she would get the release she needed if she killed Landreaux instead of herself. Sure, she might go to jail. Maybe for a long time even. She’d plead guilty, but who would not understand? Even Maggie would understand, perhaps even approve. Peter would understand—part of him would envy her, in fact. Only LaRose wouldn’t get it. He’d lose out. She saw his face, devastated, crumpling, pasted over Dusty’s face, devastated, crumpling.
Boxed in, she thought.
Then she had another thought—their tradition worked. Dazzling act. How could she or Peter harm the father of the son they’d been given? She closed her eyes and felt the heavy warmth of LaRose as she rocked him to sleep, legs dangling over her legs, breath steaming a passage to the crater of her heart.
ROMEO HELD ON to his first love, but generally did not like women, especially when they got older and turned into scabby vultures. They could tear a man to pieces with their biting talk. Always, he tried to placate them. Always, he tried to bring them gifts. In his work, Romeo often came across pockets of reservation conference swag—extra T-shirts, mouse pads, soft-foam-grip hand exercisers, mini-flashlights, pens and pencils, water bottles, even pristine fleece throws embossed with acronyms and symbols. His special stash of these objects was contained in his giant wheelchair-accessible bathroom.