Only the Rain(12)
“You’re practically blue,” she said.
“Who knew rain in August could feel so cold?”
“It’s the wind chill,” she said. “Where’s your raincoat? Didn’t you even put it on?”
“Stupid, I know. I started out under a patch of blue sky.”
“Did you think it was going to follow you the whole way home?”
I grabbed her in both arms then and pulled her close, held her to me tighter than I had in a long time. When I finally kissed the top of her head and let her go she looked up at me and said, “You almost wrecked, didn’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re still shook up about it.”
She turned to the bike then and went over to it and started studying it up close.
I said, “What are you looking for?”
“It doesn’t look like you laid it down.”
“I fishtailed once is all. Some idiot in a big black Land Cruiser pulled right out in front of me.”
“You let him have it?” she asked.
“I was too busy trying to stay upright. By the time I got steadied, he was nothing but a couple of taillights.”
She came away from the bike then, back to me, which made me feel a little easier. “Aw babe,” she said, and laid a pair of warm hands on my waist. “I’m sorry you had such a nasty ride home. How was the rest of the day?”
“Good,” I told her. “No problems.”
She wanted to help me get the rest of my clothes off but I finally convinced her to go back in the house and let me do it. Then I sat there on the top of the three concrete steps that go up from the garage floor to the door into the kitchen, and with fingers that were still stiff and stinging I unlaced my boots and wiggled them off. My feet were the only part of me still dry.
Ever since I came home from the service I’ve been wearing my tan desert boots whenever I rode the bike. I told myself it was because they were a lot more comfortable than the heavier and stiffer discount-store bike boots I had, and that was true, but I think another reason they feel so right on my feet is because they keep me attached to that other time. I hated nearly every minute of my time in the Army, yet I’m grateful for it too. You can’t endure as much discomfort and downright pain as a soldier does, and you sure as hell can’t witness as much violence and stupidity and cruelty as we did, without it leaving its mark on you. Wearing my boots while doing one of the things I love best is my way of saying thanks to the Army, I guess. No, not to the Army really, but more to the things I experienced in the Army. I came across so many people a lot worse off than me. A world of suffering, but goodness too. A way of life I’d never imagined existed when I was growing up in Pops and Gee’s house.
And that day as I took my boots off in the garage, as I held onto my dry socks with both hands and looked over at my bike dripping onto the concrete floor, it was like a switch clicked in my brain and I was looking at the cement porch of that house we searched in Iraq—the one with the boy chained up outside, same as that pit bull at the house I’d just left. He was maybe twelve, thirteen years old. Man, we talked about that boy for days afterward, always questioning ourselves. Down’s Syndrome, you said. I can see him as plain as day right now, that goofy, crooked grin when he saw us coming into the yard, like we were the most exciting thing he’d ever seen. That rusty chain, maybe fifteen feet long, fastened around his ankle on one end, around a porch column at the other end. The way the chain had worn away the bottom of the column till it was nothing but a thin spindle, and us wondering how long it would take before it wore through completely, either through the column or through the poor kid’s leg.
I can still see that little bed the boy had up against the porch, made from a couple of dirty blankets. And those dark eyes of his watching us coming and going—eyes full of expectation, I think.
And then we finished the search and walked away and left him there. And couldn’t stop talking about him. Should we have taken him to that dilapidated hospital down the road, where he probably would have been locked in a room and forgotten about? At least he was being fed where he was. I wonder if he’s still there. I wonder if the column finally wore through, and he did what? Just walked away with that chain dragging behind him?
Christ, life is hard. I wish we had set that kid free. I wish it so bad, like it could’ve been the best thing I did over there. But I didn’t. None of us did.
And I sat there on my garage step, Spence, remembering that kid chained up like a dog, remembering that I was now no better than a common thief, and I sobbed like a baby.
The only thing that got me to stop finally was knowing Cindy or one of the girls could open the door any minute, and if they saw me sitting there crying they never would have understood why. And how could they, really? How could they know that in all my time growing up without a father and with a mother slowly dying, and in all my time in the military swallowing sand and bullshit, and in all my time in college feeling out of place and destined to fail, I had never once realized the way I did in that garage how beautiful and fucking ugly the world outside can be.
Anytime Cindy lays her hand between my legs while we’re watching TV in bed, I know what it means. It doesn’t happen very often, what with us cleaning up after dinner, then getting the girls their baths and playing with or reading to them until they fall asleep. By then we’re both exhausted and know we have to get up and start again at sunrise or earlier, so the sexual part of our life usually only happens on weekends, and especially when we get the girl down the street to take our girls to a movie or the skating rink or something. In which case, I’m usually looking at Cindy a certain way long before she has to lay a finger on me.