They walked into the backyard. Small copper lamps threw light in neat low circles. Patrick saw a brick patio with a picnic table and benches beneath an arbor that was owned by a fat grape vine twinkling with lights. Downhill was a small lawn with a good-sized magnolia tree in the middle and more lights dangling in the low branches. The fence was overgrown with bougainvillea. Patrick looked at all this, surprised to be interested in it. The ordinary really could be awesome. The picnic table was set with a fancy cloth, utensils, two bottles of wine, and four glasses. “Do you like red wine or white, Pat?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But which more?”
“Oh, both about the same.”
She smiled and handed him a corkscrew. “Then maybe you could open that white and we’ll have a glass before dinner.”
“No screw top? Just kidding.” Although he wasn’t. Opening wine bottles was another skill that, as an eighteen-year-old on his way to becoming a platoon machine gunner, Patrick had not learned. He found the foil cutter and folded it out and got the heavy metal wrapper off. The opener was pretty much self-evident. The pop of the cork surprised him and he felt a quick bolt of adrenaline shoot through him. “Look, I didn’t dive for cover!”
She looked at him uncertainly.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Again.”
He poured two glasses, slopping some on the nice tablecloth and trying to mop it with his finger. Iris lit candles and turned on music that played through a pair of tiny speakers. They sat side by side at the picnic table, looking out over the rolling hills of Camp Pendleton. It stretched all the way to the beach, which he pictured, wincing as he remembered the brawl with the MPs. He could feel the now smaller bandage up there, obnoxious on his skin. He banished the incident from his mind and concentrated on what was before him: the U.S. Naval Weapons Station, the railroad tracks stitching to the coast, the broad black sky above. He could feel Sangin reaching back for him through Pendleton, where it had all started — enlistment, training, deployment. From here Pendleton looked peaceful and sparse, a face put on for civilians, not at all like the war machine it was.
“We’re not in Kenton, Ohio, anymore,” said Iris. She told him a few things about her childhood and she used good words, which made it easy for Patrick to see: the endless cornfields with the farmhouses built up close to the straight flat roads; the barns and outbuildings farther back; the streams wandering by, sheltered by green thickets of poison ivy and sumac, copperheads, water snakes, and turtles. She told him that summers got so hot the asphalt edges of the roads would bubble and melt and stick to your shoes. She had a big black horse named Elmer and he was gentle as could be. And after he died she got a yellow mare named Calliope. There in Ohio, said Iris, it was all about the Browns, the Reds, and the Indians, and, of course, the Buckeyes. If she never saw Kenton again it would be too soon.
“Except to see family,” she said. “It’s funny, though — I have good memories of a place I never want to go back to. Mom and Dad, they were married to the corn crop, but they sure got us kids around after harvest. We went to D.C. and New York, Boston, Chicago, all through the South, to St. Louis and Denver. Then later to L.A. and San Diego. Patrick, I took one look down at San Diego when our plane was landing and I knew I was going to move close to there. I was twelve. Here’s another funny thing. Years later, when I came out here just after college, I drove around the whole county for two weeks, looking for just the right place to find a rental and a job. And of all the extra cool places in San Diego County, I picked Fallbrook, which is the most like Kenton. Oh yeah, I’m a brave one. Not exactly Magellan!”
“It all comes down to what home means,” said Patrick, startled by his lameness. He now felt required to say halfway intelligent things. “I mean, you know it when you see it, like you did. But I never had that. I never went to a place and knew it had to be mine. I got to see places too — mostly in the West. I liked it all. My favorite city was Missoula, no ocean but tons of rivers. My main thing was the fish. Besides the Pacific and any river that has fish in it, my favorite place was the Grand Canyon. And my favorite place in the Grand Canyon was halfway down it, where I could see up to the top and down to the bottom in one look. But I never thought of moving there.”
“They say it’s harder to stay than to go. I’m glad you stayed. I’m staying, too. I’ve got a trip to Kenton planned soon, and I already can’t wait to get back.”
She took his hand and Patrick felt a strange rush go through him. Not the terrible bone-freezing excitement of combat, but something warm and unrelated to self-preservation or death. It made him uneasy. He fished his phone from his pocket and showed her the pictures of the carburetor from Fatta the Lan’, before he’d refurbished it, broken it down in the bucket of solvent, then reassembled and put it back in place in the Mercury.
“Nice,” she said.
“And check these.” Next he showed her the fishing pictures of Ted and Glorietta Bay and the swells and the big snapper that had just about done them in. He wasn’t surprised how many fish pictures there were. “Sorry. I always take too many of the fish.”
“You’re proud.”
“That thing weighed twelve and a half pounds.”
“Was it good?”
“Oh, man, it was illegal good.”
He put the camera back and she took his hand again and again he felt that wholesale foreign rush go through him. Cruzela Storm sang a love song. When it was over Iris went to the kitchen and returned with a heavy red French oven. Patrick stood and when she leaned to set it on the table her honey hair fell forward and Patrick couldn’t take his eyes off the play of the candlelight on her extended arms, the bend of her body in the yellow dress. She wore padded mitts. She set the lid upside down on the table and steam roiled up from the pot. Iris stripped off the mitts, glancing at him. “Caught you looking.”
“I can’t not.”
She smiled and brushed her hair off her face. “Please kiss me.”
Patrick wasted no time on this direct order. It was a young couple’s kiss, awkward, then strong, then hungry. Patrick felt weirdly, blessedly anchored. Time passed. Without breaking the kiss he blindly tapped his fingers around the tabletop for a mitt and found one. He set the lid back on the pot with a sharp clank. “It’ll keep,” he said.
“I won’t.” She led him inside and across the hardwood floor and down the small hallway to her room. There it was dark except for a small lamp by the bed, and the room smelled clean and there was a window with nothing but hills and sky beyond it.
“I’m not super good at this yet,” he said.
“No worries. I’ve done it a million times.” They were both grinning when she turned off the lamp. “Now I’m the one just kidding.”
They undressed each other cautiously. Patrick released the backside bra hook with only minor struggle. Her whispers were warm in his ear and he got meanings but not words. He whispered back calmly, crazily ready, biting his tongue for painful distraction. Her bed was a foreign country, its surfaces and smells clearly no part of Patrick. The new nation welcomed him. Invasion. Surrender. Occupation. Oh, Iris. Nothing like this, ever. Window in wall, sky in window, stars in sky. Again and again, then sunrise.