Purple Hearts(2)

Then she said, “You can use your free time to study for the LSAT.”

My gut flared again, and I avoided hitting the bumper of the Honda in front of me by an inch. I wanted to slam my head against the steering wheel.

With her accent, anyone who wasn’t me would have thought she said “El Sot.” The dreaded El Sot. It wasn’t as if Mom were going to smash my Yamaha and force me to enroll in UT Austin by gunpoint, but ever since I graduated prelaw four years ago, the law school seed had grown roots. Now she could bring it back into the sun, water it, talk it into growing until it strangled me. I wanted to play music. Not just any music, but my music with my bandmates, Nora and Toby, somewhere between Elton John and Nina Simone and James Blake. It was the only thing that made me happy. But you can’t eat happiness.

My mother reminded me of that every chance she got, and now that I’d lost the paralegal job, I had nothing to point to in order to distract her.

“The LSAT, yeah,” I said. I took a deep breath.

“You know what, I know you’re going to be short on money,” she continued. “I’ll pay for the prep course.”

The mass in my stomach was taking over my whole torso.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll start looking for courses nearby.”

I swallowed. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Okay, love you, Mom! Bye!”

The mass had spread through my whole body, throbbing, dizzying me. This happened a lot. Like, twice a day, thereabouts. Hence the gut intimacy. I usually chalked it up to student loan–related anxiety, and tried to nail the source of this particular spell: Deeply hungry? Too full? Did I have to pee? Let’s go with hungry, I told my gut. I grabbed a granola bar and bit into the stale oats, trying to keep my head from spinning.

My phone buzzed. I expected a harried text from Mom, but it was Toby.

Plans tonight?

I smiled. A text on a day we didn’t have band practice? And before midnight? This was new. When the traffic stopped, I started replying, Maybe I’ll come over after work, but stopped. I’d let him wait. Toby was a tall, long-haired Cat Stevens lookalike who played a musical instrument. In Austin. He’d be fine. I was probably one of three women who received that text anyway.

My phone buzzed again. It was Nora, who was working bar-back. Where are you?

Traffic, I texted back. Be there ASAP. Also, whatever, Nora.

I got her this job, so she can’t pretend like she’s all responsible. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be on her couch three bong rips in, trying to figure out the bass part to “Psycho Killer.”

I needed to show Mom I was serious. An album by The Loyal, perhaps. As yet unnamed. Maybe a color. Toby had suggested naming it Lorraine, after his cat. We’d have to record it first. The rest—the health care, the money—would fall in line after that. My gut rumbled again, disagreeing.

“What do you know?” I asked it aloud, turning up the music to full blast. “Just eat your granola and be happy.”





Luke


Fort Hood was its own little clockwork town. Equipment boomed and creaked. Gridded roads led to dried-out lawns, to shooting ranges, to seventies-era dormitories, to huge red gateways where vehicles of varying sizes and killing capability filtered in and out. They’d watered the grass, I noticed. Behind our line, family and friends sat in folding chairs, fanning themselves with ARMY STRONG flyers.

Earlier today, when we’d packed up, the blankness of our bunk hit me. Every trace of us was gone. Clean for the next set of recruits. Not that there had been much in the first place—my yellow army-issued towel tossed over the chair, the picture of Frankie’s girlfriend, Elena, in a frame on his desk, the little legal pad where I recorded my running times. But this wasn’t camp. This wasn’t even basic. It was infantry training. The point of being at Fort Hood was to leave Fort Hood. And now we were.

“So relax and enjoy this time,” Captain Grayson was finishing. “Use it wisely. Remember you represent the Sixth Battalion, Thirty-fourth Red Horse Infantry Division, and the United States Army. When you return to duty, you’ll be in a combat zone.”

“No shit,” Frankie said under his breath beside me.

In fourteen days, our company would fly to an unknown base in southwestern Afghanistan. Antiterror unit. Eight months minimum, indefinite maximum, most likely a year. Going to the combat zone was kind of the point of the whole “congratulations and good-bye” ceremony. We clapped.

Across the field, happy people found one another. I watched Clark pick up his kid and spin her around like he was in an insurance commercial, setting her down so he could take his wife’s face by the cheeks, pressing his lips to hers. Gomez jumped on her husband, wrapping her legs around his waist. Frankie had disappeared.

Davies came up beside me, holding his hat. Armando, too. The orphans, drifting together.

“Y’all got people at home?” Davies asked. He was a pimply kid, just out of high school, one of the youngest of us, as dumb as a bag of hammers. He could barely identify the letters on the vision test. Good heart, though.

“My main girl. My sister. They couldn’t get off work,” Armando said, crossing his arms across his wide chest.

“I ain’t got no one,” Davies said. “I hate this part.”