Heaven Should Fall

“Thought you needed to go to the pharmacy.”

“Well, they won’t have it ready for half an hour. I can work.”

He pondered that, then shook his head. “Just replacing some lightbulbs and a lock.”

I nodded and slipped past him out the door. As I clipped TJ’s car seat into place in the back of the Jeep, I could see him in my peripheral vision standing steady at the window, watching me. I figured he knew then that something was up. Anxiety buzzed in my veins like a swarm of bees. You can climb in this car and drive south and never come back, I told myself. But that would mean starting from scratch with TJ, with a new doctor and a new set of paperwork to get medical care from the state. It would set us back by months. That time meant pain, and infection, and all the risks that had convinced me to overrule Cade in the first place to get the state’s aid for TJ. I had made this decision already. It was too late to second-guess myself.

It was only a few more days. We could make it.

* * *

I got home shortly before lunch. Candy was preparing macaroni and cheese from a box and ignoring the slapstick fighting her sons were doing all over the dining room. I settled TJ into his high chair with a bowl of rehydrated peas and hoped he would survive the older boys while I went looking for Cade.

It was Saturday, and normally at this hour on a weekend he would be catching up on lost sleep, having returned to bed after finishing his morning shift. Now, though, his sleep schedule was particularly skewed by the night watches, and I found our bed empty. Returning to the first floor, I caught sight of him through the broad windows of the screen porch, standing at a table set up outside the shed. I headed out across the yard, and as I approached I felt a wave of dread at the realization that he was working on another pipe bomb right out in the open air, not even attempting to conceal himself. So Scooter wasn’t exaggerating, I thought. I moved toward him cautiously, wondering if he had assumed I was away from the house and would startle at seeing me. But instead he only looked up and raised his hand in a wave.

I called him in to lunch, and he took his time, finishing up the details of the bomb and making small talk with me without any hint of apology or shame. As he spoke I watched his hands—those palms beautiful and square, his fingers as strong as a pianist’s and firm in a handshake. I thought about how it had felt when he cupped my face, kissing me for the first time, enveloping my jaw in his warmth. He had so much potential then, so much skill. And here he was now.

“You know what we need?” he asked, and when he spoke my name it shocked me back to the moment at hand. “A weekend away. No whining kids, no animals to feed, no parents in the next room keeping things all quiet and inhibited. No sitting watch at three in the morning like we’re the goddamn Branch Davidians. Just you and me in a motel room someplace, getting friendly.”

I supposed that was his way of telling me the strain of it was getting to him, too. I supposed that, like the government jobs he still applied for and the college-class schedules he still composed before each semester, this was his way of reaching out to touch the Cade he had been before Elias died. That Cade just needed a break from the daily grind, and nothing in his life was so overwhelming that an afternoon of good sex couldn’t knock it back into perspective. He wanted so much to believe that, deep down, he was still the same guy. And for better or worse, I suspected that was true.

“There’s an alumni weekend at our alma mater next month,” I said sarcastically. “We could go to that, if you haven’t blown yourself up by then.”

He snickered and came around to kiss me. “‘Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.’”

So this is how it is now, I thought. I imagined the freedom to work under the light of day must have felt pretty good to him. The arrogance of it filled me with a rush of bitterness, but I tried to ride it out and let it go. I wasn’t going to be here much longer. And his trust in me, now, was unfounded. As soon as TJ came out of his surgery, I had phone calls I would make.

Cade brushed the dust from his arms and walked over to the spigot to wash his hands. As the dirt fell away, he mentioned, “I’m heading down to D.C. on Monday.”

“To blow stuff up?”

“No,” he said, in a voice that suggested I was being ridiculous. “Gonna put out some resumes. Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration. See if I can get any nibbles.”

“You’re kidding, right?” He wiped his hands on his jeans and glanced up at me, and I continued, “You really think you could pass a background check right now? Seriously?”

“Sure I could. My record’s clean.”

“Cade.”

He stood and shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta have a plan A and a plan B. I’ve been on Plan B ever since we moved here, but I’m still amenable to Plan A. In fact, I’d prefer it. Whether or not they give me a fair shake is their call. In the meantime, I can multitask.”

I shook my head. “That’s insane.”

“No,” he said right away, his tone strident. “What’s insane is the state of this country, and the state of the VA in particular. It’s shameful and it’s a dishonor to the people who served. I’ve never wanted to do anything with my life except make this country better, and through the proper channels. But whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it’s the right of the people—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. To alter or abolish it. You’ve said.”

He shot me a reprimanding look and began walking toward the house.

“TJ’s surgery is Wednesday,” I said, falling in step just behind him.

“That’s okay, I’ll be back Tuesday night. I wouldn’t miss his surgery. Dodge and I will go down in his truck and I’ll leave you the Jeep. I doubt the Jeep would make it that far anyway, with the tires the way they are.” He stepped through the porch door and waved to TJ. “Hey there, little buddy.”

At the sight of his father TJ slapped the high-chair tray with both hands and arched back with a grin of utter delight. Nothing could make me feel more awful than that. In the long run, though, maybe it was healthier—for my son to come away with some deep core memory of a father who loved him, and to imagine the idealized man he might have been. Because I often wished I’d stopped there, too.

Chapter 31

Cade

It was tiring, sitting watch every night, trading off with Dodge and Scooter every couple of hours. The baby woke up what felt like every ten minutes even when I was in bed, and after a few weeks of that, the sleep deprivation was killer. Scooter moved in for the duration. We set up an air mattress in the cellar and threw a blanket on it, and that was where he slept.

Dodge came into the shed one evening while I was working on the project. The solder gun was out and a bunch of circuitry maps were spread out all over the worktable. He leaned against the table for a while and watched. Out of nowhere he said, “Scooter’s a government plant.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t think?”

I set down the roll of solder and the gun. “Of course not. How would he be a plant? He didn’t just pop up out of no place. He’s local. And he just got out of high school, like, a year ago.”

“Sure seems like one to me. Never takes any initiative of his own. Always just does what we tell him.”

“That’s because he’s not too bright.”

“He helped Randy’s wife that one day. Didn’t bat an eye.”

I gave him a dirty look. “He helped get my dad to the hospital when Candy decided she was going to act like a small-minded bat-shit moron and let him die in his bed. That’s the only reason Jill brought Lucia over. Because your wife wouldn’t help her.”

“What’s Jill doing consorting with Randy, anyway? How does she even know him?”

“From the funeral.”

“So she says. I ran into her at the U-Store-It, all alone, making a phone call from the office. Said she was calling the kid’s doctor. What do you figure the odds are of that?”