He helped his brother up into the front seat. Ted grunted dreamily. Pat rolled the wheelchair back to the lobby and climbed into the truck a moment later.
“Can we go fishing, Pat?”
“No.”
“Can we just drive out and look at the ocean? I’m hungry, too.”
“Let’s eat in Oceanside then we can go down to the water if you want.”
They ate at a twenty-four-hour place on Coast Highway, then walked, slowly, to a bluff overlooking the beach and pier. They sat on a cold concrete bench. The waves slapped the shore below, hidden in a gauze of fog as the sun rose behind them imperceptibly. Ted asked for a war story and Patrick told him about patrolling at night, racing against sunrise, single column and single file, with the point man working a Minehound and the number two man backing him up because the sweeper couldn’t quickly return fire. And about how when they took contact everyone froze right in place, single file, lined up like ducks but not wanting to step off the path and get blown up. Which is what the skinnies wanted, because single-file Marines made easy targets. And he told Ted about the various IEDs the Talibs made — the pressure plates, the crush boxes, the saw blade IEDs. Ted listened without interruption but telling these things was a burden to Patrick and his heart was far from in it. He’d rather forget than provide entertainment.
“What the fuck really happened last night, Ted?”
“It was just like I said.”
“Two guys with a knife outside a bank with security cameras all over? At dinnertime? With the restaurants open? Two blocks from the sheriffs’ station?”
“Yup.”
“Bullshit, brother.” Patrick had taken a toothpick from the counter of the café. He picked at something, then let the pick dangle from his lips. Ted had taken one, too, and Patrick saw him do likewise.
“I want to confess,” said Ted.
Patrick just shook his head.
“I’ve been hanging around with Cade Magnus and those people at Pride Auto Repair. I’m a Rogue Wolf, pretty sure.”
“Why? Why do that, Ted?”
“We believe the same things.”
“Christ.”
“Christ was white, according to the Wolves. And to history. None of this olive-skinned stuff you hear.”
“Did the Wolves put you up to something last night?”
“Oh, no, Pat. This confession isn’t about last night.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Ted.” Patrick glanced at his brother, then looked out to the Pacific coalescing in the early light.
“It doesn’t take much to fool most people,” said Ted. Patrick studied his brother in profile. “Pat, that guy who robbed me a few days ago that I told you about? I took him to the next level.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a technical Rogue Wolf term. It means I beat up Edgar. But Jessica stabbed me. So I threw her in the pond.”
Patrick leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked down at the damp, gum-stained concrete. He knew how his father must feel. “Was Cade with you?”
“I told you he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“But he was there, wasn’t he?”
“I swear on our parents’ grave. No. But Trevor was.”
“Trevor?”
“One of Cade’s Rogue Wolves.”
“You beat up the robber? Or Trevor did? Your knuckles aren’t even skinned.”
Ted sighed and put his hands into his hoodie pockets without looking at them. “I used gloves. Maybe you could just say something like, good job. Or, way to go, Ted. There are more heroes in this world than just you.”
“I am not a hero and I don’t want to be.”
“It’s how you were born, Pat. Me, I have to work harder.”
“So he robbed you with a gun. Now you say you’ve beaten him up and thrown his girl into a pond. Are you satisfied? Does this make it even now?”
“Yeah. I really got him good.”
“So you’re done. You’re not going to do this again.”
“Oh, absolutely not. We’re even-steven. I just remembered when I was in fourth grade and I got in a fight with Ronnie Stevens and we became friends later.”
“Is that what you want to happen?”
“This went a little too far for that.”
Patrick could see the whitewater below, washing ghostlike up the beach. The caissons of the pier were individuated, and lights came on in the restaurant far down at the end. A surfer stood knee-deep with his board under his arm, as if he’d been trapped there all night awaiting release by sunlight, then fell forward on his board into the water. Two more paddled out through the shorebreak. “I don’t want you down at Pride Auto Repair anymore, Ted. Do you understand?”
“Naturally.”
“I’m ordering you away from there.”
“Okay. I’ll stay away.”
“You have to control yourself, Ted. If you won’t control yourself, who will?”
“Not government, that’s for sure.”
“Who’s talking about government?”
Ted shook his head back and forth quickly, then rolled the hood over his head and snugged it tight. “They get in! They get in!”
“What are you talking about — your ideas again?”
“Yes! I got this new idea in the hospital a few hours ago — how if you make yourself believe a lie to make the world look the way you want it to look, you’ve started to go insane. And after you believe that first lie, every other lie gets easier. And in you go, deeper and deeper. My first lie was that I would become a meaningful man. That I had something that was all mine and really important I was meant to do. That thing I was telling you about on the way home from the airport. I was eleven when I told myself the meaningful man lie. Can I make another confession? You think I won’t control myself. But sometimes I get really, really angry. You don’t know how angry. I want to do terrible things. And I see how they can be done. Exactly how. And usually I talk myself out of them. Usually. I’m afraid someday I’m not going to be able to. And then I’ll mix up my anger with the really important thing I was meant to do. And then, wow, what a random mess that’s gonna to be.”
Ted unzipped his sweatshirt and touched the wounds beneath the clean olive T-shirt his brother had brought him. “Three-Five. Dark Horses. ‘Get some.’ I got some, Pat.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. You fuck up everything, Ted.”
“That’s Dad’s line.”
“I didn’t mean everything. Not everything. Just some things. I wish there was a way for you to not try so hard.”
“You mean give up?”
“Not give up, but... hell... I wish there was a way for you to just put one foot in front of the other and get the mission done. And quit worrying about every damned froggy thing that comes into your head. And just be in the world without having to change it. Man, just be here and let other people’s problems be other people’s problems. Not yours.”
“That makes really good sense. I’m going to try it, Pat. You know, in a way, I’ve been trying to do it almost my whole life! When I turn fast counterclockwise? With my arms crossed and my eyes shut? Really fast? Like you said, it’s unscrewing from the world.”
Patrick felt exasperation and nothing more. This was what he hated most about civilian life — the incredible slowness; the numbing discussions; the goop-thick assumptions that there was plenty of time for all things to be considered, no matter how idiotic and useless and destructive they might be; the truly awful belief that everyone had a right to express themselves any time they felt like it, to unscrew themselves from the world if they wanted to. In civilian life, how long did you have to wait for a thing or a moment to truly matter? In Sangin the way you tied your boots could decide whether you lived or died. And those around you. That’s why you electrical-taped yourself and your gear before patrol, slapping the tape on every surface that could reflect light back to the enemy, everything that could make a sound and give you away. Then you jumped up and down and listened, and Myers would watch and listen too, for even so much as a twinkle or a rattle. It had to be perfect. It mattered. In Sangin, if you simply forgot the extra tourniquet, someone could die. In Sangin if you let even a small patch on your goggles get sanded so dull you failed to see the Talib sniper in the rocks far away, someone could die. If you walked imperfectly and knocked a rock down a slope, someone could die. It all mattered. And that, the mattering, was the greatest pleasure there was. Not the adrenaline-rush of combat, or the mind-blowing alertness it took to survive it. But the knowledge that everything was important and you had to do everything right. You had to be perfect for yourself and the men around you. Because you knew they made themselves perfect for you. It was pure dedication and pure belonging, to be ready, and to risk your life to save another. Your greatest humility was your greatest pride. Nothing else came close. Combat was life at its most meaningful and everything else was an approximation.