Instead, I called him a motherfucker for getting into my head and fucking with my thoughts, and then I told him I would give the knife back—that I was ready to right that wrong. A lot of bad shit had happened to me recently, and so maybe this would change my luck. Who knew?
Frank said it was absolutely the right thing to do and that he would accompany me. We would even take this private jet he partially owned, so don’t give me too much credit for the hardship. “This is going to heal you better than anything the doctors could ever do for you,” he said. That wasn’t saying much, considering how fucking stupid my neurologists had already proven themselves.
I told Frank that I wanted to do this good deed as soon as possible, and he said we could leave the next day, which is one of the perks of befriending men with obscene amounts of money. A limo would pick me up first thing in the morning.
Hank served me three different kinds of salad for dinner, and nothing else at all—I shit you not. And during salad number two, which was made out of pickled fucking seaweed, I told him I was going away with Frank for a few days, so he wouldn’t have to worry about me. Femke would probably be thrilled.
He ignored my comment about Femke and instead wanted to know where exactly I was going, but there was no way to explain it, especially in front of Ella.
“Personal business,” I said, “long overdue,” and left it at that.
By then I had realized that Hank was talking regularly to all my friends, so I was sure Frank had told my son more than I had. Part of me was grateful for that, because it saved me from doing the hard explaining. But I knew that Frank would give my son the civilian version he could swallow without getting too sick, which is the version we veterans always give civilians, because nine out of ten veterans are truly goddamn compassionate people. We save all the mental suffering for ourselves. Another reason I’m doing this here report too, because I’ve got to thinking that maybe our protecting you from the truths we soldiers have lived for decades hasn’t really done us—or you, for that matter—many favors.
After dinner Hank let Ella watch more television, which was unusual, because he closely monitored her TV consumption. I understood what was going on when Hank motioned toward the back door and then held two fingers up to his lips, meaning, Let’s have a smoke together. I didn’t approve of Hank’s new secret smoking habit, like I said before, but I went outside with him anyway, because I needed one myself.
I gave him a Marlboro Light, put another between my lips, and then sparked up both with a plastic throwaway lighter. Just to put Hank’s dumb ass in its place, I lifted up my cigarette and said, “Heart healthy.”
“One’s not going to kill me,” Hank said. “And you’re not going to buy the bullet anyway, right?”
I was shocked that Hank had used some of my military slang without irony. He had spent his whole life up to that point mocking my service as he tried his hardest to be the opposite of a real man.
He went on to say that he had been too hard on me in the past. Turns out Frank, Timmy and Johnny, Sue, and even Big T had been in my son’s ear ever since my surgery, letting him know that he was paying too much attention to my words and not enough attention to my actions.
He said that even Femke was willing to make an effort to heal old wounds and cease calling me Aap if I stopped referring to her as a “tulip cunt” or a “Euro bitch” and stopped pointing out her country’s many flaws. That was a tall order for me, but a good place to start when it came to negotiating with the Dutch.
“I don’t want to fight anymore, Dad,” Hank said. “I just want my family to . . .” And this is when he started crying again, only this time he really lost it, sobbing, covering his eyes, and saying he was sorry, which reminded me of the night Jessica died.
There was part of me that really wanted to put my arm around Hank and tell him that everything would be okay, but neither of my arms would move, and my lips stayed shut too. A lot had happened, and I needed to stay tough if I was going to keep Death at bay.
My brain was still healing. I wasn’t strong enough for hugs and froufrou talk at that moment, no matter how much I may have wanted to give my son what he so desperately wanted from me. That’s just the way it was. So I puffed on my cigarette and waited for him to finish the boohooing.
He finally did and asked for another cigarette, so I gave him one and put another Marlboro Light between my lips too. I held the flame up to Hank’s smoke. The fire illuminated his tear-streaked cheeks, which made me feel ashamed for my son, so I looked away and lit up my own.
We smoked those down in silence, and then Hank popped in some gum and went inside to wash his hands.
I stood out there gathering my thoughts and watching my breath stain the winter air. It was quiet. I could hear the highway traffic in the distance, like wind over the ocean.
Inside I found Ella asleep on the couch and Hank whispering on the phone with Femke, so I went up to bed and thought about all that had happened. I truly could have thought all night, but the dumbass skiers’ prescribed meds were turning off the lights in my mind, one by one, and then suddenly I was gone.
16.
The next morning, by the time I had showered and packed a toiletry bag, Frank’s limo was outside waiting for my ass.
I looked into the guest room and saw that my civilian son was dead to the world. Ella was still asleep on the couch under an afghan my mother had knitted. It had a huge red apple in the center and our family name at the top in green: granger. My dead mother would have liked the fact that her afghan was keeping her great-granddaughter warm. I thought about how this perhaps might be the last time I would ever see Hank and Ella if that big Indian motherfucker were to keep his promise and scalp me. I knew I was still tough enough to win a fight against Fire Bear, but maybe I’d end up losing so much blood being half scalped that it might prove fatal, especially after my brain surgery—so I drank my family in for an extra few seconds.
In the limo Frank had coffee for me. He let me get in one smoke with the window down before we got on the highway. When I flicked the butt and rolled up the window, he patted my thigh and said, “You have the knife?”
I pulled it out of my camouflage jacket and showed it to him. He looked it over and then said I was doing the right thing.
I asked if Frank was sure Fire Bear wouldn’t try to scalp me. He laughed and said he guaranteed no one was getting scalped, but he had never even met this tall crazy Indian motherfucker, so his promise rang hollow, as they say.