He leaned against the railing as Salimony sprang down the stairs two at a time and Messina lit a smoke. Patrick could smell the pine trees that grew between the buildings. Bostik had grown up in a house near a pine forest and Patrick wondered if the Timbers reminded him of home. He thought of the Mako now trailered out in the barn, and felt the same giddy satisfaction he’d felt years ago when he saw the first bicycle that was his, brand-new, black, and gleaming, waiting for him under the Christmas tree. It was interesting to him that before he bought the Mako it was just a used boat of debatable value, but after he’d handed over the money and hitched the trailer to his truck, it became the most valuable inanimate thing in his life. His present and his future. And it added to Patrick’s satisfaction that Iris had been there when he bought the boat, because she was his present and future too, in a way that felt real but almost too precious and fragile for him to look at straight on. She had been there. She had seen and approved. “I bought a boat,” he said to Messina.
“Then let’s go fishin’.”
“You got it.”
“We could have a perch fry.”
“We can get yellowtail out there, even tuna when the water is right.”
“I’ll bet Boss went back to Crescent City.”
Salimony came back with the manager, a husky ex-Marine who pounded on the door and got the same response that Patrick had gotten. He pounded again. “I don’t know what to tell you. He paid his deposit and first month, and he didn’t say anything about taking a trip. The policy here is, if the tenants want their mail collected or their patio plants watered, they have to let me know. Or set it up with a friend.”
“Well, is his car here?” asked Salimony.
“The garage doors are remote and I don’t keep spares,” said the manager. “You can open it by hand, but if you damage it, you pay to replace it.”
The four men went down the stairs and around to the garage entrance and Messina knelt and spread his fingers under the weatherproofing and lifted. The door rolled up noisily and Patrick first saw the upended patio chair, then the shoes and pants, then the limp white arms, bare torso, and acutely angled head of John Bostik, USMC, roped to a garage rafter. The smell was bad and his eyes were bloodshot protrusions in the purple swell of his face.
Patrick’s mouth parted open as he looked at his friend, but no words came. Then he was aware of setting the chair upright near Bostik and stepping onto it, his pocketknife out and open and in his hand. He heard himself order them to hold the body, then he reached up and started sawing through the rope. He stood almost face-to-face with Bostik. The smell and the sight of him sickened Patrick. He heard himself speaking, words of comfort but no joy, a soft monotone, a caress. Then the knife hissed through and the rope jumped and Bostik glided down feet first, borne by friends. Patrick helped them settle Bostik to the oil-stained garage floor, then worked off his dog tags. Patrick found a roll of blue shop rags and broke off two and set them over Boss’s face. Salimony went outside and puked in the bushes. Then the three of them sat down around Bostik, cross-legged, stunned and silent.
And you realize this is not what he had promised. This was not the mission he had accepted. He beat the hajjis, beat the heat and the cold and the snakes and the odds, and he made it home. But the war came after him, across mountains, oceans, and time. And it caught up. So he kicked the chair and finally got away. You know that a part of him will stay with you and a part of you will go with him. And this is what you all had promised, to be always faithful — semper fidelis.
While Oceanside Police and Fire processed John Bostik, Patrick got the Bostik family number in Crescent City from 411 and made the call. He felt like he was in a nightmare but knew that it was real and he wouldn’t have the blessing of waking up. He told Mrs. Bostik what had happened to John, and said he was very, very sorry but wanted her to hear it from somebody who knew and loved him. She was speechless. Mr. Bostik took the phone from her and Patrick explained again, then asked if they could stop by, very briefly, to pay their respects. Sixteen hours later the three men rolled into Crescent City in Patrick’s truck. It was four in the morning and raining hard and luckily they’d brought jackets for the cold.
The Bostik home was off of Kings Valley Road, midway between town and Pelican Bay Prison. They found the driveway and parked away from the house. Patrick, who had driven the first five hours and the last five, spilled out of the truck and tried to shake the blood down into his legs then climbed back in. He lay his head against the rest but his stitches stung and he couldn’t doze. He listened to the roar of the rain on the roof and looked through the fogging window at the darkness.
Sunrise came late over the redwoods and a small yellow house appeared. It was tucked back in the trees and smoke wobbled up from the chimney. In front of the house was a small square lawn with a concrete birdbath exactly in its center. It was raining lightly and the tops of the redwoods were intermittently lost in the shifting fog.
“Think they’re awake yet?” asked Messina.
“It’s almost eight hundred,” said Salimony. “They have an afternoon flight out, right, Pat?”
Patrick nodded, this information given him by Jake Bostik yesterday evening when Patrick called to make sure they were still welcome to come by. He saw a light come on in the house.
Jake Bostik was tall and slender, a corrections officer at Pelican Bay. Janet Bostik was petite and pleasant-faced though her eyes were puffy and red. They were much younger than Patrick had pictured them. Mrs. Bostik put mugs beside the coffeemaker and a stack of salad plates and two boxes of supermarket donuts on the kitchen counter. Jake set up TV trays in a living room with a picture window. While the coffeemaker gurgled and wheezed Patrick listened to the rain tapping overhead and watched it spill over the gutters into a brick planter dense with ivy.
He heard shuffling and turned to see a boy come from the hallway. His face was slack from sleep and his hair was peaked up on one side and down on the other and he looked very much like John Bostik. He was skinny and peach-fuzzed and had a blanket over his shoulders. Patrick guessed sixteen. Without a word or a look the boy went into the kitchen.
“Nine-Eleven was what got John going,” said Jake. “He wanted to go fight. He was ten years old. I was thirty-one and I think I’d have enlisted if I wasn’t married and a dad.”
“Me, too,” said Salimony. “I really wanted to do something. I wrote Bush a letter saying I’d keep an eye out for terrorists at school. And I did. Never saw any.”
“But later I had a bad feeling about the wars,” said Jake. “It seemed right at first to go after bin Laden. Then Iraqi Freedom, the way they marketed it like a car or something... it seemed not necessary. Honey, we talked about this?”
She nodded and looked out the window. “And way back then, neither of us thought both those wars would still be going on by the time John could enlist, which he did, at seventeen. I was against it but there was no stopping him. Seventeen — that’s a year older than Kirk is now. That’s Kirk in the kitchen. I didn’t think either war was worth John losing his life over. Or Kirk or any American boy. Not worth it. I’m just a nonpolitical mom. That’s what I thought about those wars. I still do.”
Kirk came into the living room holding a cup of coffee in one hand and the blanket snug around his shoulders with the other.
“I’m still going to join up,” said Kirk. “The second I’m seventeen.”
“Why?” asked Salimony, one leg bouncing.