You Are Here(64)

Peter ruffled the back of his hair and yawned, stumbling to his feet. His clothes were wet with dew, and when he glanced out over the battlefield, he found it hidden by a low-hanging fog.

“Morning,” Peter said with a nod, ambling past the officers. He fumbled for his keys, then opened the passenger-side door and reached in to grab his cell phone, which was making a series of faint beeps, its battery nearly dead. He rested an elbow on the roof of the car, scrolling through his missed calls, his heart picking up speed when he guessed it was Emma who had been trying to reach him.

One of the troopers cleared his throat a bit too forcefully, and Peter glanced up at them over the top of the car. He raised his eyebrows and tried his best to look polite, though all he felt was impatience. There suddenly seemed about a million places he should be, a thousand things he needed to say and do, and two people he wanted desperately to talk to. He didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries with two cops in pointy hats and overly tight pants.

“Everything okay?” the taller one asked from behind aviator glasses that made him look like a bug. Peter slipped his still-beeping phone into his pocket and nodded.

“Are you lost, son?” the other asked, and Peter couldn’t help laughing at this, shaking his head and grinning like an idiot, because for once in his life he was lost, yet somehow, as unlikely as it seemed, he’d never felt quite so sure of himself.

“I’m okay,” he told them, feeling a lot like Emma, bold and spontaneous and unafraid. “Just passing through.”

“Where to?”

Peter shrugged, still smiling. “I don’t know yet.”

“Right,” said one of the troopers, reaching for his walkie-talkie. He glanced at his partner, rolling his eyes in Peter’s direction with a remarkable lack of subtlety. “Your call, Joe.”

Joe was now working a sesame seed out of his front tooth with his pinky, having apparently lost interest. He shrugged. “Don’t let it happen again, kid. This is a historical site, not a hotel. If you can’t tell the difference, I suggest you get yourself a map next time.”

Peter nodded, just barely managing to keep a straight face. “Thank you, sir,” he said, appropriately solemn. “I’ll do that.”

The messages had been left only minutes apart, all of them late the night before. In the first she didn’t even bother with a greeting, instead launching right into a recitation of the names of important battlefields—in alphabetical order—until the phone cut her off. In the second one all she said was, “Those are all the places I promise to go with you on the way home if you’ll just do me one last favor.” Then there was the sound of yelling in the background, and a whistle, and then muffled laughter before the message came to an abrupt end.

Peter had pulled over to the side of the road once he was far enough away from the state troopers, and he now jabbed at the numbers on the keypad, impatient for the next message.

“Sorry about that,” it began, and Peter smiled almost reflexively when he heard her voice again. “I think my brothers have somehow reverted to whatever age they were when we last lived in this house. Anyway, this is my version of an apology. I know it’s not great, but I’ve messed up everything else so far, so why not this, too?”

There was a short silence, and then she cleared her throat. “So, look. I’ll go to all those old battlefields with you, and I’ll even listen to you talk about them, if you’ll come back here and pick me up first. There’s just one more thing I need to do before heading home. I understand if you’re already too far away, or if you just don’t want to come, but it would mean a lot if you did. So if you can, meet me back in the cemetery tomorrow morning at eleven, okay?”

Peter kept the phone pressed to his ear long after it had gone dead. And then, once he felt prepared to start the engine again, he swung into a U-turn and pointed the car east once more.

But there was one thing he needed to do first, and it wasn’t long before he found himself standing outside a gas station that straddled an intersection between two backcountry roads, a small cabin of a building that was now more yellow than white. There was a phone booth to one side of it, looking out of place between an air pump and a display of feeble-looking purple flowers, and Peter heaved open the rusted door.

The glass was clouded with dirt, and the space inside smelled of cigarettes and stale beer. He dug in his pockets for change while reading the various inscriptions etched into the booth, proclamations of love and hate and revenge and loss, all tagged with initials in an effort to leave some kind of mark on the world.

Nearly out of money by now, he only managed to come up with two nickels and a penny, and so he picked up the phone and dialed the operator to make a collect call. He played with the cord as he listened to it ring, wondering what his dad had been doing, wondering if he’d even accept the call. But a moment later his voice came over the line, a gruff hello that gave nothing away.

“Hi, Dad,” Peter said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. “How are you?”

There was a brief pause. “How am I?”

“Yeah, sure. How are you?”

“What is this, a social call?” Dad practically spit into the phone. “How am I? Well, I’m fantastic. Really. Just wonderful.”

“That’s great,” Peter said, bobbing his head.