Now he saw a big chestnut mare ridden by a girl, cantering around Dora. He heard the hollow clop-clop of hooves and the music of Dora’s voice floating up toward him. The air was sweet from the river and the moon was a sliver caught in the sycamore branches. He padded softly down to the grandstand and sat in the front row and watched.
Dora was a pretty red-haired woman in her late twenties. Tonight she was wearing jeans and paddock boots and a red cowl-necked sweater. Her hair shined in the arena lights. Ted smiled with pride. As he watched the horse and rider circle her, Ted thought of the first time he’d gotten on a horse. Why it had reared up, nobody could say. But the gelding’s neck had broken his nose and he had landed hard on his back, his breath knocked out of him. When he came to his senses he was looking up at his mother. He could hear his father cursing and the departing thump of his boots and the more distant thud of hooves. Now he pictured his mother’s face, her beautiful face, the furrow of her brow and the throb of the vein in her forehead, and beyond her the blue sky and white clouds. The horse was named Feather and it was the last horse he’d ever touched.
The lesson ended with a quick hand of applause from Dora. Ted watched the girl lead her horse toward the boarding stalls. Her parents were waiting for her on the other side of the arena and the dad put his arms over his daughter’s shoulders and they all walked slowly past the dressage arena. Dora glanced at her watch as she came from the lighted arena toward him. With a giddy tickle in his heart Ted waited until she was close, then jumped from the darkened grandstand, stumbling slightly. “Hi, Dora!”
He heard the intake of her breath. She stopped abruptly and it took her a moment to identify him. “Ted? Ted? Don’t be jumping out at me like that!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, so what are you doing?”
“Watching, Dora. That’s all. I came to see you.”
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m so sorry, I thought you would see me, even though the light’s not good.”
“Yeah, okay, well I didn’t see you. My heart’s still pounding. Jeez...”
Now Ted felt a twinge of fear too, a little tremble in his gut and a flutter in his heart, as if someone had just jumped out of the darkness at him. “You’re right, Dora. I should never have done that. I’m really sorry. Can I walk you to your car?”
She looked at him, but in the half-light Ted couldn’t read the expression on her face. “I guess,” she said.
He fell in beside her and she moved over and they headed for the parking lot. Ted looked up at the clubhouse and restaurant on the hill that overlooked the property. Through the windows he saw a few diners, candles on the tabletops, a waitress delivering something. He shifted his glance down to Dora to see her jaw set tight and her lips firm and her brow bent into a frown. “Dora, can I buy you a drink or dinner? I really didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’ve eaten, Ted. No thanks.”
“Glass of wine? Decaf?”
“No and no. I think you’ve had enough to drink, too.”
“Maybe a little too much. Good lesson tonight?”
She didn’t answer. Ted listened to the crunch of their feet on the decomposed granite walkway. He looked down at her petite, lace-up boots, then at his own special-order, extra-extra wide walking shoes which, even fitted with unbelievably expensive orthotics, let his collapsed feet slosh and yaw with every step.
“I asked you not to come here again, Ted. What part of that was I not clear about?”
Ted still felt her fear and now he was feeling her anger, too. He didn’t know why other people’s emotions got into him so quickly and strongly but they always had. They could drown out his own. “I just came by to say I won’t be coming by anymore.”
“That’s lame, Ted.”
“I know. I’m starting to get mad at me, too.”
“I’ll call the sheriff. You know that, right?”
“Please don’t.”
“This is the last time you come here, then. The next time I’m pulling out my cell phone and calling them on the spot. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes, Dora, I do.” Do I ever, he thought. He needed to calm her. He cupped her upper arm very softly. “The moon is nice tonight, isn’t it?”
She tried to pull away but Ted’s grip automatically closed. A reaction. His hands were very strong and always had been. She yelped and wrenched her arm free and he heard the clink of keys. She whirled. He’d never seen her angry and the anger spoiled her face and he felt responsible. “Ted, you’re a nice guy, and I thank you again for giving me that ride weeks ago. But it doesn’t entitle you to follow me around the rest of my life, touching me. We’ve been through all this. You scare me. You’re drunk. You’re weird.”
They came to the car that ran out of gas, an old Jaguar Vanden Plas into which Dora quickly disappeared. The door locks clunked and the engine started and Dora backed up fast, gravel blasting up against the chassis. In seconds she was far down the road, making a left onto Mission and punching it hard up the hill.
Chapter seventeen
The next day Patrick spent ten hours pitching straw and four hours delivering pizza. Driving home from the pizza place someone slammed a car door. Patrick cranked the wheel sharply right, jumped a curb and slammed on the brakes, the grille of his truck stopping inches from the Gulliver’s Travels storefront window. He was breathing heavily, sweating hard. Myers and Zane were up the sidewalk under the theater marquee, looking at him. How the fuck did they get to Fallbrook? They merged with shocked pedestrians, whose drop-jawed stares brought Patrick back. It was terrifying to lose control of his mind and memories and even body. He unlocked his hands from wheel, repositioned them, and backed onto the street, thanking God he hadn’t hit anyone.
By the time he began pulling apart the Mercury outboard it was ten at night. The light in the barn was good and Patrick was pleased to find the motor in decent condition. The artillery on Pendleton commenced and Patrick flinched and went to one knee. Steady, he thought. Steady. The ghosts in his heart roiled and wavered and he was back in Sangin — Myers and Zane lying shredded against the rocks, Pendejo’s brains on the wall, Sheffield’s boots lying yards from the rest of him — all knots in the outstretched line of his memory from Sangin to Fallbrook, from Fallbrook to Sangin. He pictured hauling that line back, across continents and oceans, hand over hand, dropping the slack into the hold of his waking mind. When he was done he closed the lid. His breath was short and his body washed in sweat. He took a deep breath and felt the flutter of his heart.
He cleaned the points and injectors and hooked up the new battery. The carburetor needed cleaning so he disassembled it at one of the workbenches and let the parts soak in solvent. He ate another piece of the pizza that Firooz and Simone had pressed upon him, as they did after every one of Patrick’s shifts. The smell of the solvent reminded him of cleaning the SAW and the 240 and his mind went AWOL again and he couldn’t pull it back this time.
By the third day in theater you get your preview vision. Which is when you see something happen that really didn’t happen, and then it does happen, exactly how you saw it. So you’re seeing an event ahead of time. The problem is sometimes you’re think you’re having a preview vision and you’re not. So that turns every single thing that you imagine into something real, and if your imagination is filled with death and mutilation and agony, which in combat it will be, then you see ugliness and mayhem everywhere you look. So these things become your starting lineup; you can’t make substitutions. On patrol you see Sheffield trip an IED about fifty feet in front of you. And when you open your eyes Sheffield is still walking and there was no explosion. And then five seconds later an IED goes off and Sheffield crumples over, smoking and screaming. Lots of us grunts had those preview visions. Our theory was that you’re aware of more than you think you are, so things register on your senses without you knowing. I don’t know how I could have seen that IED, though. It was buried in the rocks and rocks were everywhere you looked. The skinnies made the IEDs out of wood and plastic so our mine detectors couldn’t pick them up, and they covered them with their own shit so if the bomb didn’t kill you whatever was left of you got infected. Preview visions were common for machine gunners like me, because we usually patrolled to the rear, to put down the fire when the contact came. Later on the tour I saw Lavinder shot by a sniper and I hit the ground. Bostik was behind me and next I know he’s looking down at me, laughing his ass off. There was no shot and Lavinder was fine. Thirty seconds later Lavinder gets shot dead by a sniper up in the rocks just about exactly how I saw it happen. We put some heavy fifty on the rocks and for once the air strike came fast. When the Blackhawks cleared out we climbed up there and went rock to rock, killing Talibs whether they needed it or not. I felt like taking scalps but didn’t. I put fire into a corpse just because. You just get pissed and lose it sometimes. Later I felt shame. Lavinder was one of those guys you hated to lose because he was happy so much. A happy guy was hard to find. It could be contagious but annoying, too. Once I asked Lavinder why he was always happy and he said it was because he knew he was going to die over there. And once he’d accepted that fact, the pressure was gone and every minute he wasn’t dead yet was another minute to be happy.