The Twelve

For a second, Cruk didn’t answer. He passed Vorhees the binoculars. “Six o’clock, through the tree line. Tell me what that is.”

Vorhees looked. Nothing at all, just trees and the dry brown hills beyond. “What do you think you saw?”

“I don’t know. Something shiny.”

“Like metal?”

“Yeah.”

After a moment, Vorhees drew the binoculars away. “Well, it’s not there now. Maybe it was just the sun flaring in the lenses.”

“Probably that’s it.” Cruk took a sip of water from his bottle. “How’s it going down there?”

“They’ll all be asleep soon enough. A lot of the kids are down already. I don’t think anybody expected it to be this hot.”

“July in Texas, brother.”

“Gunnar wanted to know if he could help. That boy is all heart and no sense.”

Cruk took up his rifle. “What did you tell him?”

“Just you wait. Someday you’ll realize how crazy you sound.”

Cruk laughed. “And yet we were the same. Couldn’t wait to get out into the world.”

“Maybe you couldn’t.”

Cruk fell silent, gazing out over the rail. Vorhees sensed that something was troubling his friend.

“Listen,” Cruk began, “I made a decision, and I wanted you to hear it from me. You know there’s talk about the Expeditionary getting back together.”

Vorhees had heard these rumors, too. It was nothing new; rumors circulated all the time. Since Coffee and his men had disappeared—how many years ago?—the subject had never really died completely.

“People are always saying that.”

“This time it’s not just talk. The military’s taking volunteers from the DS, looking to build a unit of two hundred men.”

Vorhees searched his friend’s face. What was he telling him? “Cruk, you can’t be seriously thinking about it. That was all kid stuff.”

Cruk shrugged. “Maybe it was, back then. And I know how you feel about it, after what happened to Boz. But look at my life, Vor. I never married. I don’t have a family of my own. What was I waiting for?”

The meaning sank in all at once. “Jesus. You already signed on, didn’t you?”

Cruk nodded. “I turned in my resignation from the DS yesterday. It won’t be official until I take the oath, though.”

Vorhees felt stunned.

“Look, don’t tell Dee,” Cruk pressed. “I want to do it.”

“She’ll take it hard.”

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you first.”

The conversation was broken by the sound of a pickup coming down the service road. It drew into the staging area and pulled up to the shelter; Tifty climbed out. He stepped to the rear of the truck and drew down the tailgate.

“Now, what’s he got?”

They were watermelons. Everyone crowded around; Tifty began to carve them up, passing fat, dripping wedges to the children. Watermelons! What a treat, on a day like this!

“For Christ’s sake,” Vorhees groaned, watching the performance. “Where the hell would he get those?”

“Where does Tifty get anything? You got to hand it to the guy, though. He’s not going to die friendless.”

“Did I say that?”

Cruk looked at him. “You don’t have to like him, Vor. That’s not for me to say. But he’s trying. You’ve got to give him that.”

The door to the stairs opened. Dee stepped out, carrying two plates, each bearing a pink wedge of melon.

“Tifty brought—”

“Thanks. We saw.”

Her face fell with an expression Vorhees knew too well. Let it go. Please, just for today. They’re only watermelons.

Cruk took the plates from her. “Thanks, Dee. That’ll really hit the spot. Tell Tifty thanks.”

She glanced at Vorhees, then returned her eyes to her brother. “I’ll do that.”

Vorhees knew he looked like a resentful fool, just as he knew that if he didn’t say something, change the subject, he’d carry this sour feeling inside him for the rest of the day.

“How are the kids?”

Dee shrugged. “Siri’s out like a light. Nit’s gone off with Ali and some of the others. They’re picking wildflowers.” She paused to wipe her brow with the back of her wrist. “Are you really going back out there? I don’t know how you stand it. Maybe you should wait until the sun’s a little lower.”

“There’s too much to do. You don’t have to worry about me.”

She regarded him for another moment. “Well, like I said. Anything else I can bring you, Cruk?”

“Not a thing, thanks.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.”

When Dee was gone, Cruk held out one of the plates. But Vorhees shook his head.

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

The big man shrugged. He was already wolfing down his slice, rivers of juice running down his chin. When all that remained was the rind, he gestured toward the second plate, resting on the parapet. “You mind?”

Vorhees shrugged in reply. Cruk finished off the second slice, wiped his face on his sleeve, and tossed the rinds over the side.

“You should tell Dee soon,” Vorhees said.

Three o’clock, the day draining away. A faint breeze had picked up late in the morning, but now the air had stilled again. Under the tarp, Dee was playing a halfhearted game of roundabout with Cece Cauley, little Louis resting at their feet in his basket. A plump, good-natured baby, fat fingers and fat toes and a soft, pursed mouth: despite the heat, he had barely fussed all day and now was sound asleep.

Dee remembered those days, baby days. Their distinctive sensations, the sounds and smells, and the feeling of profound physical attachment, as if you and the baby were a single being. Many women complained about it— I can’t get a moment to myself, I can’t wait until she’s walking!—but Dee never had; just thirty, she would have gladly had another, maybe even two. It would be nice, she thought, to have a son. But the rules were clear. Two and done, was the saying. The governor’s office was discussing an extension of the walls, and maybe then the ban would be lifted. But probably that would come too late, and until then, there was only so much food and fuel and space to go around.

And Vor—well, what could she do? Boz’s death was an intractable barrier in the man’s mind, the truth distorted and enlarged over the years until it was the singular injury of his life. Tifty was Tifty, he always would be. One day he was being tossed into the stockade for putting a man’s head through a window in a barroom brawl, the next he was producing, through a kind of Tifty magic, a truck of black-market watermelons on a scorching summer afternoon. Probably it was just a matter of time before he ended up in the stockade for good. Yet there was no denying it: Tifty would always be a part of them, and Dee most of all. There were times when Dee looked at her older daughter and honestly didn’t know what the truth was. It could be one thing, or it could be the other. In a certain light Nitia was all Vor, but then the little girl would smile in a particular way or do that squinty thing with her eyes and there was Tifty Lamont.

A single night, not even. The whole thing, the entirety of their affair, had been more like ninety minutes, start to finish. How was it possible for ninety minutes to make so much difference in a life? Dee and Tifty had agreed in the aftermath that it had been a terrible mistake—inevitable, perhaps, a force of years that neither could refuse, but nothing to repeat. They both loved Vor, did they not? They’d made a big joke of it, even shaking hands to seal the deal like the two old friends they were, though of course it wasn’t a joke at all: not at the time and not nine months later; it wasn’t a joke now.