“Jesus, Broker. He came on the property?”
“It’s cool. When Griffin came over, he brought the sheriff-”
“The
“Ah, oh yeah, I left something out. The kid’s dad is the garbageman; he was driving the truck yesterday morning, and he flung our garbage in the ditch while I was watching. So I collected it, took it to his garage, and dumped it in front of his office. Ah, that’s why the sheriff came out.”
Nina grinned. “Christ, Broker; we came up here to keep a low profile. And you started a war?” She shook her head.
“Me? He started it, asshole came at me-”
“Well, I guess this explains you being more snaky than usual.”
Broker unfolded his arms and went back to making the brisk scrubbing motion with his hands. “No sweat. It’s all taken care of. The sheriff is affecting a rapprochement. I’ll meet him halfway, maybe replace the kid’s shirt that got bloody, like that. Griffin went and talked to the guy…”
Nina actually laughed, and it was good to see her bubble with spontaneous humor. “Harry? Oh, great, and he’s so good at quiet diplomacy. He’ll just cut the guy’s throat, along with his wife and kid, kill the pets, burn the house, and spray the land with dioxin so nothing ever grows there again.”
They were both laughing now. Infectious giggles. Months of pressure surfacing and popping like cold bubbles.
Kit wrenched open the porch door, deep glower creases in her brow. Clearly, she felt left out. “Keep it down, you guys,” she announced. “I’m trying to
“She right,” Nina said. “Get a hold of yourself.” She rinsed a dish in the sink and handed it to Broker, who obediently put it in the washer.
Despite her show of annoyance, Kit went fast into sleep, tucked in happy with her risen bunny. Broker and Nina stepped carefully down the stairs. As they walked into the kitchen, their eyes met once, then glanced away. It was mutual.
The laughing jag at the sink had exhausted the requirement to talk. And the loud drifting silence dwarfed mere language. Broker thinking how the vectors of their lives had flashed in tangents, fiercely independent; now they had been united during this crisis. The big dangling question: Now what?
The wrong word might betray a lurch of hope or fear, precipitate an avalanche. Tip her back into the darkness.
For months they’d moved in a clumsy deliberate weighted dance around each other, two deep-sea divers in old hard suits. They’d bump surfaces, but their skin remained remote, not really touching, covered by layers of protection. Air hoses trailing, getting tangled.
And that was also in the signal of their eyes. Careful now, kicking off the deep-sea weights. Could be danger in ascending too fast.
So they treaded forward, side by side, through the tactile silence. They were coming up from a great depth. Still braced for the riptides, undertows, and threats…
…that had coiled and thrashed in the close shadow of madness.
Griffin had built a plywood platform in one corner of the office off the kitchen that supported a queen-size futon. The bed was covered with a lush green-and-orange quilt of vaguely Polynesian design. Bolsters and pillows to match. The colors were an exception to the stern North Vietnamese blacks, browns, and grays that Griffin favored. A souvenir perhaps, left behind from some forgotten amorous interlude. The bed beckoned now, a shallow protected place. They rambled there.
Still no words.
Nothing needy or hungry. Slow moves with no wasted motion. Nina striped off her clothes efficiently-the precocious birthday girl unwrapping a present. Chaste almost, until you saw the grinning skull-and-crossbones tattoo on her right shoulder. And the scars.
Two pairs of jeans mingled on the floor, socks, underwear; his shirt, her blouse. Chilly on the porch. Goose bumps. An almost adolescent scramble to get under the sheets and quilt.
Christ. How long? More than a year.
Since he’d strayed with Jolene Sommer.
Their first kiss was tentative, gentle. Cautiously, they found each other with a slow innate mastery of all things physical. They did it almost weightless, hummingbirds guarded on a bed of eggshells. She was especially wary, having lost control and not sure she had regained it.
Broker was making love with a woman who matched him scar for scar. His fingertips grazed the slick braille on her hips, her butt, her shoulder, her legs. And the one he couldn’t claim; the cesarean below her navel. Her birth canal had been scarred by fragments of the Kalashnikov round that had clipped her hip. After Kit’s difficult birth, the doctor told them they would be taking chances having another child.
Still no words. A final perfect fit of hope and fear. They took courage for granted, were less honest about being stubborn.
What was she thinking behind her green eyes? Probably what he was thinking: What happens now that we’re getting through this crisis?
Will we go back to who we were before?
Will we be changed?
Slowly she fingered the pack of cigarettes and lighter from her jeans, put one in her mouth, and lit it. Then she held it to his lips. He puffed but did not inhale, watched the smoke curl up to the tongue-and-groove ceiling. He remembered the Vietnamese connection. ARVN soldiers jotting on slips of paper, then burning them in the predawn. An airstrip at Phu Bai, Broker watching, waiting for the helicopters that would take them in. Smoke was the prayer language of the dead.
No words.
Chapter Thirty-three
Harry Griffin passed a fitful night that was not altogether unpleasant. Sometimes, like now, when he’d get excited, this auxiliary energy kicked in. He woke up, ready; electric in the dark. And it seemed as if all twenty-five years of his sobriety surrounded him like a thick magnifying lens. Images from his past life jumped up huge, in aching detail.
Four-thirty A.M. He got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and heated water, ground coffee, put a filter in the Chemex coffeemaker.
Waiting for the water to boil, he went into the living room and sat on a cushion in front of the fireplace. He folded his legs in a half lotus, shut his eyes, and tried the TM trick: let his runaway thoughts stream away like rising bubbles. Tried to calm down.
Didn’t work. He startled when the teakettle shrieked, boiling over. So much for the tricks. He got up, poured the water into the ground coffee, and slit the cellophane on a fresh pack of Luckies. Since he couldn’t get his night horse back in the barn, he settled down to ride it out with coffee and cigarettes.
Sitting at a stool at his kitchen snack bar, he held out his right hand, thick-veined, bone prominent, absolutely steady. Vividly he remembered the last person he’d killed. Ten years ago, when he got talked into that last-minute hunting trip in Maston County…
