“That’s big government in bed with big business,” said Ted. “Fifty thousand is nothing to them. She’ll draw a fat pension and they’ll raise the rates whenever they want. No wonder we the people can’t win.”
Patrick watched the next story, about an Al-Qaeda magazine calling for American jihadists to start forest fires in America in the summer and fall. Apparently “detailed instructions” were published online. Patrick looked at the pictures of the bearded, turbaned, smiling men who published the magazine and they looked pretty much like the skinnies he’d spent thirteen months in Sangin trying to kill.
“You missed a couple,” said Ted.
It was a relief to get away from all of them, to walk into the Domino’s kitchen, get his blue, black, and red work shirt on, pack the deliveries into soft-sided warmers and insulated pizza sleeves while he talked to Firooz. Firooz and his wife Simone were Iranian refugees who had come here decades ago, after the fall of the shah. He had been a veterinarian and she a schoolteacher. They were humble people, willing to be of service, and now they owned the franchise. Firooz kept touching Patrick — on the arm, the shoulder, patting his hand. He and Simone helped Patrick carry out the warmers and set them securely in the cab of his truck. Patrick attached the Domino’s sign to the roof of the polished black Ford F-150 — used but low mileage, a graduation gift from his mother and father — then climbed in. He hit Mission and gunned it for Stage Coach. He’d never known, before deployment, what a pleasure it was to drive a good vehicle on wide safe streets and feel those V8 horses stretching out with no IEDs to blow him to smithereens.
Three short hours later his work was done and Patrick sat outside in folding chairs with Firooz and Simone. The night air was damp and in the spray of the parking-lot lights Patrick could see mist and ash settling. They talked about town and business and the big election coming up and the several federal and state agents, not to mention local sheriff deputies, who had come around to talk with Firooz and his wife lately. Something about an online terrorist site they’d never heard of. Inspire.
“We can live through these suspicions,” said Simone. “They are unfounded and ridiculous. And nothing, compared to what we have been through. This is our country.”
Patrick counted his tips — eighteen dollars — and a few minutes later, Simone and Firooz sent him home with a large, three-item pizza.
Chapter eight
Three days later, after ten hours of field labor, Patrick took the night off from delivery work. He showered and shaved and tried on clothes he’d left at home before deployment, which were too large for him after thirteen months of combat and meager rations. Zero hot meals a day. One cold shower a week. Some of his older high school clothes fit.
He met Iris Cash at Salerno’s. The dining room and bar had few customers on this weeknight, even with several Fallbrook restaurants having recently folded. Iris took a bar stool facing Patrick across a small round table. She launched straight into the arson evidence and the reward and who would do such a thing to this peaceful little town? Then she was off on Cruzela Storm and Georgie’s brave friends and lighted crosswalks, and how she’d already gotten the school district to lock in a date for Warrior Stadium, and a pledge of deeply discounted food and drinks from Major Market; and she’d been promised page one, an above-the-fold placement for an article and pictures in The Village View next Thursday, which would trigger the North County News and the San Diego Union-Tribune and the networks to follow and kiss my exhaust! Iris wore a frayed and faded denim jacket over a lacy blouse, and jeans tucked into boots. She had a quirky smile and smelled floral. Patrick earnestly faced this blizzard of words and expressions and sensations, easily the most pleasant minutes of his life for well over a year.
The waitress brought their drinks and Patrick told Iris about the irrigation and painting and how it took a long outdoor shower just to get the soot off him before showering inside. He tried to match her emotional energy, but since coming home, he was having trouble staying interested in himself. It was hard to stay focused on things that couldn’t kill you. Even when they were good and important things. He found himself arranging the salt and pepper shakers and the bottle of hot sauce in the same relative positions as Myers and Zane and himself at 2200 hours on December 10 on the night patrol up to Outpost Three, wondering for the thousandth time, at least, how it was that Myers — touching down in Patrick’s footprints while Patrick followed those of three other men ahead of him, and all of them behind Bostic with the Minehound and Zane with his splendid nose and instincts — had tripped the IED. How was that even possible? How had Zane failed to detect it? Bostic?
“So, are you going to stay in Fallbrook and work the ranch?” asked Iris.
“For now. I’m delivering pizza, too.”
This seemed not to faze Iris. “Do you like growing things?”
“Not really. I don’t seem to have farming blood. I want to guide anglers on the bay in a boat. But now, I’m trying to do what’s right.”
“I heard you lost almost all the trees.”
“Just a few left for sure, out of eighty acres.”
“You don’t have to talk.”
“I want to talk.”
“If you say so.”
Patrick returned from some far place. “Want to get a table and have dinner?”
“I’d like that. Can I ask you something?”
Patrick nodded and drank. He felt the strength of the liquor. After a year of almost no drinking, even a small amount hit him hard.
“Can you tell me three words that will help me understand you?”
Patrick thought for a moment. “I miss it.”
Her expression went from concern to astonishment, which she quickly dropped. “That’s... three words, all right. You do want to talk. Let’s get that table. The osso buco here is terrific. Oh, can I just say one thing to you?”
“Please don’t say thank you.”
“Welcome home.”
After dinner Patrick drove them out to Oceanside and they walked the pier to the end and watched the fishermen bring in mackerel and bonito from the flood-lighted sea. The landed fish spasmed wildly against their plastic buckets. Patrick nodded at some of the Marines in and out of uniform, and some of them acknowledged him. In town he took Iris to the Galleon, a bar popular with his fellow Pendleton Marines. They got two stools at the bar and Patrick bought a round for them and for the four Marines who were already there. The jukebox played a country song, then some metal, then “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” the opening notes of which brought shouts of “I can’t get no!” and raised glasses all up and down the bar. Patrick knocked back the bourbon and signaled for another round. Iris gamely drained her lemon drop, sat up straight, and took a deep breath. “Don’t let me get too stupid tonight. I have work in the morning.”
“I’ve got your back.”
She smiled at him and Patrick saw the doubt in it. The bourbons seemed strong to him. He ordered beer backs with the next round and Iris declined. The alcohol kicked in and Patrick felt calm and alert. He knew he was drinking for all the good things he missed, and he wondered what it said about him that what should have been the worst thirteen months of his life were in fact months of excitement, purpose, and selfless loyalty. Good things. Two rounds of drinks later the young Marine next to him asked where’d he’d been and Patrick told him Helmand, the Three-Five, and the boy nodded respectfully. Patrick’s Third Battalion, Fifth Regiment had suffered more casualties than any Marine battalion in the war. They were known through history as the Dark Horse Battalion, and their motto was “Get Some.”