Hold It 'Til It Hurts Page 3

  Achilles’s short list: food, sleep, Janice, a run through the creek behind his house. He knew the land inside and out, the shady grove that separated his house from Happy Garden, the trailer park where Janice lived. On hot nights, he’d often dreamed of those sweet-smelling woods, and the cool, clear creek that ran through them swashing about his ankles. He hadn’t seen a frog in almost a year. He thought he might even go hunting with his father, which he hadn’t done since high school. He still wouldn’t shoot anything, but he now understood his father’s pleasure at being in the woods away from the concrete and congestion. Hunting had never been about the animal, only the single-minded stalking of worthy prey. He didn’t know what he’d tell Janice, but they could go to the quarry, walk through the woods like they used to. Maybe they’d get serious.

  Troy’s list: the PBR on tap at the VFW, a giant roller coaster, and women, “Anyone would do right now.” The roller coaster surprised Achilles. His brother had explained, “I want to know if they still scare me.” When they passed the amusement park, Achilles jokingly jerked the wheel toward the exit. Troy shrugged. “Does it matter? We have nothing but time now. Nothing fucking else.”

  “Whatever.” Achilles couldn’t remember being so excited. From the DC townhouses to suburban track homes, from scattered subdivisions to the rolling hills and farms: every familiar sight made him giddy as his birthday. The license plates, in English, all thrilled him, but he really felt at home once they were far enough west on I-270 that DC’s Taxation Without Representation gave way to Pennsylvania and Maryland plates.

  Achilles always paid close attention to plates because his father said they indicated who was a real Pennsylvanian and who was one of the capitol-city carpetbaggers who moved for the cheap farmland or to live in one of the subdivisions he called human kennels. Most importantly, he warned his sons, beware lady drivers with old DC plates or new Pennsylvania tags. When he was in high school, Achilles pointed out that everyone who bought a new car received new plates regardless of where they were from. Smiling, his father said, “Son, I only give the advice. Whether or not you take it is up to you.” Achilles grew less certain about how serious his father was but he remained vigilant about reading plates.

  They switched places near Monocacy and Achilles drove the last leg to the outskirts of Hagerstown, from the evergreen-lined interstate to the two-lane highways banked by mounds of red and yellow leaves, to the crisp black roads that fed the new developments and the last few original freestanding five-acre plots, one of which their parents lived on, stopping at last where the arteries of commerce died out at the foot of the unpaved drive that wound through the wooded lot and ended at a cement stoop. The house sat atop a slow rise, commanding a view of the surrounding area, but the lot was so heavily wooded that not even the chimney could be seen from the road below. Achilles had felt isolated in high school, but now he appreciated the seclusion.

  The old Private Property sign at the edge of the lot had been repainted, and next to it three more signs planted: Private Drive! Keep Out! Not for Sale! When the building boom started, barely a weekend passed that someone didn’t tool a fancy sedan up the drive to make an offer on the land. Their father refused to sell because, first, they couldn’t afford to move anyplace better, and second, he wasn’t going to help any big-city scam artist cram twenty-five houses onto land meant for one—“People aren’t meant to be that close together.”

  They crept up the driveway, stopping when they could see the house and the six cars parked around it, which they recognized as belonging to family members. They agreed that the re-up bonus was tempting, but neither could see volunteering to eat any more shit; however, Troy, fingering his Bronze Star, now looked uncertain. Achilles punched his brother on the shoulder, urging him out of the car.

  The sun had set and a strong southern wind hummed through the trees. The sky was shot through with stars and the moon was so bright that when it passed between the clouds, the windows twinkled and the fresh white paint sparkled. They had helped their father repaint the house when they were home on leave only a few months before. Troy had worked on the walls, painting in hurried, broad strokes. Achilles, as always, was assigned to the trim because, his father said, only he had patience for it. It was short work. They only had to cover four walls holding together five rooms: two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom. The front door was in the center of the house and opened into the living room. To the left of the living room was the kitchen and then a short hallway leading to the bedroom the brothers shared as well as the only bathroom. To the right of the living room was their parents’ bedroom. The one-story ranch looked larger than Achilles remembered it. They stood for a moment, taking it in. The living room was dim. Troy pointed to their parent’s bedroom, which was well lit. “That must be where they’re hiding.”

  “They sure aren’t hidden too well,” said Achilles.

  “Probably don’t want us to be too surprised.”

  “Right,” said Achilles. He smelled food and hoped his aunt Rose had made baked spaghetti with hot dogs. He scanned the cars again. As far as he could tell, Janice’s wasn’t there.

  Before going in they slammed the trunk and doors, kicked dirt and gravel, stomped on the porch. Just before he opened the door, Troy said, “Remember, act surprised.”

  Achilles nodded, standing tall. They wore desert BDUs and all their medals—peacocked, they called it—Infantry badges, Airborne wings, the whole bit. Achilles felt a sense of relief, like he had come up for air. Troy was bringing home a Bronze Star for saving Wexler’s snatch, but Achilles was bringing home Troy.

  Aunt Betsy, their father’s only sibling, and her husband sat on the love seat, their two sons on the couch. Red, white, and blue streamers were strung from corner to corner. ACHILLES and TROY were spelled out in winking, glittering, purple-and-gold letters. The ceiling was literally covered with balloons, each one individually taped up, and a large American flag covered one wall.

  “Wow,” said Troy, throwing his hands in the air. “This is nice.”

  “Yeah,” said Achilles, putting on his biggest smile. “We didn’t expect this.”

  Aunt Betsy’s face moved from concern to alarm as they peered around the room. “You don’t know, do you? Oh God! You don’t know.”

  They didn’t know. Discharge papers in hand, the brothers had made several last-minutes adjustments to their final itinerary: spending a morning in Heidelberg; stopping off to see Merriweather, who was en route to Walter Reed; flying through Okinawa to see a friend from jump school. They didn’t know their erratic agenda kept them one day ahead of the news that had shadowed them since Kabul. They didn’t know—they couldn’t—that two hours after they flew out of Bagram AFB, word reached the XO, who sent it on to the chaplain; or that the evening after they flew out of Turkmenistan, a messenger arrived in the barracks where they had billeted the previous night and scared the holy-living-Motor-City-shit, yes, all one word, out of poor Lance Corporal Jason Conrad, who didn’t believe it was a mistake and couldn’t be consoled until he had called his mom in Brewster-Douglass; or that the next morning, while they were dressing for the funeral, a green sedan with government plates would park in the driveway and two E5s in class As would regretfully inform them that their father had died in an unforeseeable accident.

  Aunt Betsy was correct: they knew nothing. Balloons and streamers, flags and flowers—at that moment all they knew was that the house was decorated for a party, but everyone was dressed for a wake. Aunt Betsy shepherded them across the living room to their parents’ room, the three long steps feeling like three thousand with her all the way muttering, “Oh dear.” Between the overhead lights and the lamps from which the shades had been removed, their parents’ room, usually dim, was as bright as a crime scene. Their mother knelt in the middle of the floor, surrounded by boxes and piles of papers and old photographs, the stack closest to her topped by two large blue envelopes. Her eyes dull as stones, before she even spoke, Achilles knew the
ir luck had run aground and silently cursed Troy for squandering it.

  Their mother stood and wiped her hands on her pant legs as if shedding dust that only she could see. One deep breath in. And out. Another. “Your father was involved in a head-on collision. With a rig. He was giving a coworker a ride home. Laura Goman.” She said the name as if they would recognize it. “They died instantly.”

  Their friends from the squad maintained a series of complex and contradictory unspoken agreements: today is better than tomorrow, so do it tomorrow; honor the past but don’t live in it, and listen without interruption whenever it’s mentioned, but don’t encourage it as a topic of conversation; and firstly, never ask permission or apologize; then, most importantly—Be there. So Achilles didn’t feel guilty about showing up at his friend’s door at four a.m. Surely Wages expected this after they talked.

  Wages lived in New Orleans’s Mid-City neighborhood, at the corner of Carrollton and Banks, in a sagging rust-colored duplex across the street from a Catholic school surrounded by enough barbed-wire fencing to pass for a jail. “Look for the house with the scowl,” he’d instructed, and indeed the black metal awnings tilted toward each other like the furrowed eyebrows of someone who didn’t want to be disturbed.

  The house had two front doors but one long front porch with a single set of stairs in the middle. On the neighbor’s side of the porch: a clear plastic bag stuffed with balled-up diapers, a broken skateboard, a food can filled with cigarette butts. The wood around the windows was pitted and chipped, the paint on the siding peeling badly, which, given the color—shades of red, burgundy, and garnet, the colors of corrosion—created the impression that the entire house was a ship abandoned at sea, and now surrendering to the waters. When he’d helped his father repaint their house—or was it now his mother’s?—his father had even hired someone to repoint the chimney. Compared to Wages’s home, their house sparkled like a palace. Achilles felt awkward about seeing his friend’s house in this condition.

  The screen door was pitted with rusted metal and had pebbled glass slats that pivoted like Venetian blinds. Achilles rapped gently on the door frame, pressing his palm against the nearby slats so they wouldn’t rattle. He heard music coming from within the house, but it could have been the neighbors. He didn’t want to wake anyone unnecessarily. He knew Wages’s wife Bethany, a nurse, worked odd hours. Wages, on the other hand, like most of them, barely slept.

  Achilles had liked Wages from the moment they met. Wages was a skinny six feet, but unnaturally strong. He was the guy who never complained or wilted under the hundred-pound pack, the guy who never dropped it, but slid out of the straps and set it in the sand as smoothly as slipping off a sweater. Carrying that pack was like carrying a man on your back all fucking day, and Achilles soon discovered he wasn’t up to the task. He could do it but he didn’t like it. He didn’t like how the tight straps felt like walking around in a full nelson. He didn’t like how the deep ruts it wore into his shoulders always itched or how his feet calcified as his arches fell under the extra weight, so that even now they hurt all the time, especially when it rained and his legs stiffened like pencils glued to rocks and he walked like he was wading through water. Most importantly, he hadn’t liked becoming so used to an unnatural burden that he felt naked without it. Not Wages. He did push-ups with that pack on and one-armed pull-ups without it, even though he was thin as the wind.

  The Wages who answered the door, though, had filled out a lot. The bright blue walleyes, avian nose, and squat, broad forehead were all there, but closer together. His face was puffy, and his cheeks bowled out like he was holding his breath. He looked bigger all around, like the adult version of himself. Christ, he was even wearing a black suit and had his red hair in a ponytail. It was like seeing someone who had rehabbed or recently returned from the hospital. They might not be any happier, but they were always heavier, the cheeks filled out, the stomach softened by rich food and a sedentary lifestyle. He looked sickly, pallid. Wages was the first one he’d seen since they’d returned, and it took a moment for Achilles to realize that Wages was simply rehydrated and he wasn’t sickly pale; he’d just lost the Afghani-tan.

  All anxiety faded, and Achilles wheezed as his friend lifted him off his feet in a bone-crushing bear hug and spun him into the house, which smelled of garlic and fresh-baked bread. The Delfonics wafted out of the speakers.

  Achilles fingered Wages’s lapels.

  “Who died, right? I know,” said Wages, quickly adding, “Shit, sorry man.”

  “It’s cool,” said Achilles twice, wanting to let it pass. “You do look like you’re going to a funeral.”

  “You’re looking at the new head of security. I got the poker pit at Carousel Casino. Now I chill out in the monitor room and tell the other losers who to scope.” He checked his watch. “Can’t be late my first day as boss. I was about to leave a note for you.” He handed Achilles a big manila envelope the same size as the blue one in the bottom of Achilles’s bag. “Here’re the keys and a map.” He looked at his watch and bit his lip, which meant he was counting. Pushing Achilles toward the door, Wages said, “All right, I’ve got just enough time to give you the bird’s-eye.”

  When they turned to leave, Achilles pointed at two sabers in the umbrella stand next to the door. “What’s up with that?”

  “She’s not allowed to answer the door without a weapon in arm’s reach. This is New Orleans,” said Wages. “I want her to use a gun, but you know how women get about that. This is just as good because there’s hella chance anyone can take a sword away from her. I hardly can.”

  Achilles had forgotten Bethany was a fencer. A photo of Wages and Bethany at a beach hung on the wall next to the door. She had round eyes and pert lips, and her face was prettier than he remembered. He’d only seen her in wallet-sized photos, and the one thing he recalled was that she had chocolate nipples even though she was also redheaded. The beach photo was flanked by pictures of Wages and Bethany with their parents. Wages had entered a land where Achilles would never follow. He couldn’t see himself living like this, with a woman, let alone with his motley family on display: two black kids adopted and raised by white parents, charity cases like those bobble-head African orphans on late-night television. Both the fact of it and the withholding shamed him.

  Wages tapped the photo of them standing in the surf. “She keeps this up to remind her of what she’s working for.”

  Wages was stepping into the road before Achilles remembered that they didn’t need to maintain strategic distance. He jogged to catch up. They crossed the street toward the school, slipped through a gap in the barbed-wire fence, and climbed up the permanent fire escape to the roof, which offered an unobstructed view of downtown and the surrounding one- and two-story houses, a spotter’s wet dream. By the time they reached the third set of stairs, Achilles’s shirt was stuck to his back. Troy wouldn’t want to be here long.

  Wages, whose temples barely glistened, ran two fingers along his forehead and slung off the sweat. “Can you feel it? We’re right in the center of all this water.” He pointed toward the tall buildings downtown. “The river’s in front. The lake’s behind. Water above and below. Don’t it feel great? The air’s alive.”

  Achilles felt it and didn’t like it. When he’d opened the door at his last refueling point, the thick air had poured into the car like waves over a breaker and ridden shotgun the rest of the way to New Orleans. The air-conditioning in his father’s old truck wasn’t strong enough for the South, the only place he’d been that gave literal meaning to the phrase “in the soup.” The sun had been down for hours, but the tar roof was still sticky underfoot.

  It made sense that Wages liked it. Achilles had hated the desert, the air so dry it grated, gnawed at you like an animal sniffing out blood. He said it was proof there was no Mother Nature, only motherfucking nature, and none of it gave a damn about man. Achilles had liked the valley where they spent their last months and thought the spartan simplicity beautiful. He�
��d been loath to leave the drifting dunes and ragged rocky brows. True, it was unforgiving, but that was what he liked about it. No guardrails, no seat belts, and no airbags. If the whole world were like that, he and his friends would be kings.

  Wages unfolded a tourist map across the top of an air conditioner, pointing as he talked. “This X is the church. That’s downtown straight ahead where you see the cell towers and the JAX sign. That’s the French Quarter, the center of the city, and also known as the Vieux Carré. The church is to the left, Uptown is to the right. None of it is more than a few clicks from here.” He gestured toward downtown. “A little more to the left, where it gets dark, that’s the church where I saw Troy. It’s called St. Augustine. It’s in the Tremé district.”

  Downtown, straight ahead of them, cell towers blinked their silent warning like fireworks in slow motion—pop … pop … pop. A sign winked JAX. Uptown looked like a continuation of Wages’s neighborhood, just another stop upstream on the same river of streetlights. But where the X supposedly was, the Tremé, there was no light to be seen, save for one neon cross that shone cobalt blue. First their father’s funeral and now this: Troy vanished into the night, as if finding his birth mother were more important than his duty to the woman who had raised them.