broken a bone. The worst I’d ever suffered was some painful road rash falling off my bike, and this hurt way more than that. But Scooter looked unimpressed by the size of the design and the blood that wept from the needle’s line across my skin while the artist worked, and so I kept my mouth shut and my face blank. Gradually the underside of my forearm took on the large black shield that Elias had worn. It was depressing and satisfying at the same time to watch it take form. This was the standard Elias had carried into battle, and now that he had fallen, it was my job to carry it the rest of the way.
The concept was easier in thought than in practice. I’d gone back to work the day after Elias died, only taking off for the day of the funeral, and that hadn’t been such a great idea. I needed to get away from that damned house for a few days. Every morning when I approached the barn door to milk the cows, my heart rate would start to accelerate. Fresh straw had been spread around inside, but when I cleaned up I could easily see the dark brown stain of his blood on the hard-packed earth. Inside the house, seeing his empty chair was killing me. I did what I could—went out back with the chain saw and cut down the rest of that oak tree he’d hacked up, disassembled the weight bench and took it back to the U-Store-It—but none of it gave me any of the closure I was looking for. Instead it seemed to make it all worse, as if my brother was getting further and further away. I guess Jill could tell how strung out I was getting, because she started encouraging me to take some time off work, and she freaked out about money as much as I did. So I took four days off work and told everyone I was going camping, which was the polite way of saying I needed to go live in the woods for a while or my head was going to explode. Jill approved. She packed me a week’s worth of clothes, with extra socks and moleskin for hiking.
The night before, I felt Dodge watching me while I packed the cooler. When I started packing up my car, he wandered out to the porch and just stood there. After a while he said, “Your car’s not going to make it if you run into bad conditions.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Uh-uh. As much as you complain about it overheating? You really want to be an hour away from civilization if that happens again?”
I shrugged. “I’ve got my phone,” I told him, which was a stupid answer because in our part of New Hampshire you might as well send smoke signals half the time. Where I was going, the only good my phone would do me would be to knock out a rabbit if I was starving and my aim was good. But the truth was I didn’t care. I just needed to get away.
“What would you say to making it a fishing trip?” he asked. “I could stand to go on one of those.”
I smirked, sort of laughed a little. “I hate fishing.”
“Fine, I’ll fish, you sit on your ass and think your thoughts. Either way, there’ll be dependable transportation.”
It wasn’t his big behemoth of an SUV that won me over. My car wasn’t safe and I was okay with that, but the other thing that wasn’t safe was
We left for the fishing trip the next morning as soon as dawn broke. It wasn’t too long before we crossed the border into Maine and, the better part of an hour later, found the lake he’d had in mind. Together we pitched the tent in near silence. True to form, away from the family his obnoxious edge was all but gone. He pulled a six-pack of longnecks from the cooler and handed me one, then set to work getting the fishing tackle in order while I cleared space for a campfire. It was pretty clear that Dodge’s plan was to keep us busy and slightly drunk. It seemed like an inspired idea.
Still, the way he acted threw me for a loop. Most of my life I had hated Dodge. From the beginning he had embodied everything I hoped not to be, and the older I got, the deeper grew my antipathy for him. But recent events had shown him in a different light from what I was used to. When Jill was bleeding to death, Dodge was the one fast on his feet, helping me get her in the car. When I found Elias in the barn, it was Dodge who didn’t get hysterical but instead called for emergency services—something we
And it was a damn good thing, because under stress all I could see were the ways I had failed in the task of becoming a man. My failure as a provider had nearly cost Jill and TJ their lives. In the chaos of it, I blamed Elias but showed no leadership. And then on the terrible morning when I found my brother laid out on the filth-covered floor of the barn, his limp arms and missing face making him look like a scarecrow made of blood, what was the first thing I had done? I admitted defeat, and shouted for Dodge.
I sat on the hard dirt outside the campfire ring and rested my back against a fallen tree. The lake glittered just ahead. It was amazing to look at—a flat silver pool set deep into the black earth that crumbled at its edges like cake. I shoved the hair out of my eyes and sighed from the bottom of my lungs.
After a minute, Dodge came over and sat down beside me. He wore a ball cap with a fishing hook looped into the brim. His dirt-worn jeans were slung low and held up by a leather belt that had seen better days, but still carried an army of items at the ready: keys, buck knife, Leatherman tool.
“Fishing’s gonna be good,” he said. “I can feel it in the air. They’ll be jumping.”
I nodded and twisted a green stick until it split open into threads.
“It’s gotta beat my last big fishing trip, for sure.”
“How do you know?”
Dodge grinned. Beneath the brim of his ball cap his eyes crinkled up at the corners, and his missing side tooth exposed a dark hole. “Told Candy I was coming up here and then took my ass straight to the clinic. Got snipped, checked into a motel, spent three days with an ice pack on my balls and drove home. Bought some fish at the market on the way back and stuck ’em in the cooler for her. Done and done.”
I took a moment to process all this, then burst into a laugh. “You got a
“Sure did. I got all the kids I can handle. Don’t you ever tell her, though. She’d shit a brick.”
“No kidding. She’s always telling Jill how we need to have this ‘full clip of babies’ or something.”
“Quiver-full family. She can want it all damn day, but somebody’s got to pay for it. The day I tap my maple trees and money runs out like the slots in Atlantic City, then me and God will have a talk. Till then, he can want me to have thirty kids, and I can want a nice camping trailer, and he and I can call it even.”
I laughed hard. “Well, your secret’s safe with me.”
“You ready to do some fishing?”
“Yeah, sure. I warn you, I’m not very good at it.”
Dodge clapped me on the back. “Comes as no surprise, boy.”
I kept in good spirits through the time spent fishing and into the night, but over the next couple of days my thoughts got bleaker and bleaker. Dodge seemed to sense this, but it also didn’t seem to surprise him—after all, that was the whole reason we were here in the woods. My brother had died. I needed to grieve. I’d get it all out of my system and return home ready to face life without Elias. I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but it was the goal.
On our second-last night there, we ran out of beer. The next morning after breakfast Dodge set out to replenish the supply. After he drove off I scraped the skillet from breakfast and buried the food scraps to keep animals away. I pulled off my dirty T-shirt and exchanged it for the one I’d left drying on the clothesline overnight, then tucked my nose into the collar to gauge how badly I needed a shower. The test confirmed what I’d suspected—despite the field hygiene, I stank, and yet the fact of it bothered me only a little. The first few days of the trip had felt like the welcome escape I had hoped for, but now, with the last full day mostly over, I felt a measure of panic at the thought of going back. Real life awaited: the shitty job that took only a laughable stab at my expenses, my girl who could shed half her blood and still be twice as tough as I was, my little bud of a son for whom I was the model of manhood. It was what didn’t await me that gnawed at me most. My brother, who had died because he had burned out his usefulness to the country he had served, and also because I was an idiot.
I ducked into the tent to retrieve a fresh pack of cigarettes—the last from Elias’s carton. Since moving back I’d limited myself to two or three a week, mainly because it really pissed off Jill when she saw me smoking. But Jill wasn’t on the camping trip, and so I’d tossed the half-full carton into the SUV before we left. I’d smoked a whole
