Brodie smiled in the dim light. “Some of them perhaps,” he said whimsically and then explained, “I wanted to apologize for the other night.”
Kristen dismissed the apology as unnecessary with a brief shake of her head. “You have nothing to apologize for, Captain. On the contrary, I wanted to thank you,” she added as she motioned toward his hands. “I’m sorry you hurt your hands.”
Brodie’s shoulders lifted in light laughter as he glanced down at his scarred knuckles. “Bastard had a head like an anvil.”
Kristen chuckled, too. “I guess you’d know.”
“Spike’s always telling me to go for the body and stay away from the head,” Brodie explained, saying more in ten seconds than he’d said in the last four hours. “I guess I oughta listen to him more.”
“He’s a good man,” Kristen agreed. Then, not sure why, she asked, “What happened, sir?”
“Lieutenant?” Brodie asked, a bit surprised by the question.
“I…” she paused and then explained, “I meant, I was a little surprised by your reaction.”
Brodie nodded and then said softly, “We all have our demons, Lieutenant. Some of us just aren’t as good at hiding them as others.”
Kristen briefly saw an image of her father, lying in the bathtub of his apartment and felt the same terrible sickness that always accompanied the image. The perfect memory so many people admired was her secret curse. Silence once more engulfed them, and Kristen found herself filled with questions for him. But the walls of etiquette between them were as strong as ever.
Thus she was surprised when she heard a voice ask, “What are yours, Sean?” The sound of her voice startled her. It was as if someone else had asked the question.
Brodie’s head turned slightly back toward the bow. She caught a glimpse of his face in the lingering light. His eyes narrowed and his square jaw tensed slightly. It was clearly something he didn’t talk about; something deep within him he kept hidden away. She could almost feel the struggle within him.
“I’m sorry,” she offered, “it’s none of my business, sir.”
For the next few minutes, the wind and the sea were the only sounds reaching her ears. She regretted saying anything to him now, feeling she’d overstepped the line between them. But then he spoke, his voice calm as it normally was, but at the same time it sounded almost distant, as if he were somewhere far away. His face was shrouded in darkness except for his eyes which were still visible as he stared out into apparent nothingness. “My old man,” he told her, “was an oilrig worker. A roughneck, if you know the meaning.” Brodie glanced at her. She nodded without comment. “He’d go into the oil fields for weeks at a time and when he finally came home his favorite pastime, when he wasn’t swilling beer, was using my mother as a punching bag.”
Kristen could hear the pain lingering even now after so many years. His distant, almost ghostly voice continued, “By the time I was in junior high school he’d learned better than to do it in front of me. But every now and then I’d come home from ball practice and find her banged up pretty bad and him long gone.”
Kristen could feel physical pain within her as he told the story, empathizing with him, and wishing she could take some of his pain away. Without his saying it, she knew he was sharing a particular memory from his past he’d never shared with anyone else.
“One afternoon, I came home late. He’d been there. I guess there wasn’t enough beer in the fridge or some other foolish thing. Well, he’d beaten her so badly she was never the same.” Brodie paused for a few seconds, and she could almost feel him struggling to keep his emotions in check. He took a deep cleansing breath to calm himself before resuming. “She spent a few weeks in the hospital, but they said he’d caused some sort of cerebral something or other and after then it was just a matter of time.” He cleared his own throat and finished, “I lost her a year later during my first semester at the Academy.”
“I’m sorry.” Kristen could think of nothing more useful to say. Given a different time and place, she might have embraced him, willing him to lean on her. But that option was not available to her, despite how she felt. The walls of etiquette that they’d briefly allowed to slip between them had been rebuilt and she would not allow them to slip again. She’d convinced herself it was the best thing, the logical thing to do.
Brodie shrugged his shoulders and looked toward her, ending his tale with a perfunctory, “Anyway, I guess in too many ways I’m a lot like him.”
Kristen stood stoically, ignoring the chill wind and aghast at the glib way he compared himself to his wife-beating brute of a father. She carefully formed her words, trying to hide her emotions, “You,” she began sternly but paused as her voice cracked slightly. She felt her anger growing, and she forced calmness she didn’t feel into her voice. “You are nothing like that.” She swallowed her anger and allowed her sympathy to replace it. “Please don’t even think it for one second.”
Brodie didn’t appear to believe her, but he said no more about it, concluding a few moments later with simply saying, “Well, that’s my demon. I live with it every day and do my best to keep it locked away.”
Kristen heard his statement, but also heard a gentle invitation as well.
She’d never spoken about her father to anyone, not even the counselors who’d stayed with her until her mother came and got her after his death. Grief counselors and two different psychiatrists had tried to get her to talk about the event, hoping that through talking and venting her emotions of the terrible night, she might be able to find some release from the horrific images plaguing her. But no one had ever heard a word pass her lips regarding the long night when she’d sat calmly in the bathroom with her father’s body.
Could she tell him? Could she dare bare her soul to anyone? Even him?
No!
But no sooner had she determined she would stay silent about the subject, she heard herself speak, “My dad,” she whispered softly, “was a great guy.” It was a strange sensation as a part of her she had denied for too long began speaking. It was as if the rest of her was just an unwilling participant. “He took me sailing, hiking, backpacking; we did everything together whenever he was in port. He took me on base and gave me tours of whatever submarine he was stationed on. Some of my earliest memories are playing with some of his fellow shipmates on board. He was just wonderful.” She turned her face to the breeze, feeling it might somehow cleanse her of the grief and pain she’d carried for so long. “He was a chief petty officer and was gone a lot, and I guess the few months a year my mother had with him weren’t enough for her.”
Brodie watched her in the darkness. His sharp eyes upon her normally unsettled her, but she no longer felt the piercing gaze she’d always found so debilitating. “He came home from an Atlantic patrol and found out that my mother had left him.” Kristen paused for a moment, remembering the utter devastation on her father’s face when he learned his wife had deserted him. “I was staying with him for a couple weeks while they were going through the divorce. I knew my dad was hurting, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I thought it was my fault they were breaking up and really didn’t understand it… I mean, I always thought marriage was this permanent thing and parents stayed together forever. But I guess my mother didn’t quite see it that way.”
There was another long pause. She looked off into the black night, remembering every detail of the event as if it had just happened. Brodie said nothing, nor did he move. It was as if she weren’t even aware of him any longer as her soft, distant voice continued to speak to the wind. “I’d been at one of those day camps. You know the type where they have activities and swimming for the kids while their parents are at work during the summer.” Kristen hesitated as she felt the anguish rising up within her and the pain washing over her. But unlike the past, she didn’t fight it. She let the pain and anguish come. Her voiced cracked as she resumed, “I came home and saw my father’s car in the driveway and knew he was home. But when I came in the house and called to him… he didn’t answer.”