One of the men was missing both legs below the knee. He had a pair of replacements that were little more than metal poles that ended in tennis shoes. The other man was hairless and all of his exposed skin was pink and rough and Chapel knew he must have been in a fire. The woman had a trim, athletic body but she had an inch-wide scar running from her forehead down into the collar of her shirt.
Another man came onto the stairs while Chapel stood there, this one with a white plastic hand.
All four of them stared at Chapel with a look he knew pretty well. It was the look he wore on his own face when people he didn’t know saw him with his arm off. A wary expression, because you just didn’t know how they would react.
Chapel nodded to the four of them, then nearly jumped when he heard something bounding toward him. It turned out to be a dog, a big mutt with scars on his head and only three legs. A pair of actual dog tags jangled at his collar.
The dog ignored Chapel and ran straight to Julia, who erupted in laughter and excitement. “Hey there, fella, hey there,” she said and bent down so the dog could lick her chin.
Chapel left her and Angel to the dog and followed Dolores into the kitchen. “I wasn’t expecting to see so many people here,” he said. “I thought it was just you and Top. And I guess Rudy.”
“I wasn’t expecting visitors while it was still dark out,” she told him. “I figure we’ll both find a way to cope.”
Chapel grinned for a second — then let his mouth fall open when he saw they weren’t alone. Another guy with a crew cut was standing by the kitchen counter, breaking eggs into a large bowl. He had an artificial arm, a yellow resin prosthesis that ended in what Chapel knew was called a voluntary closing hook — a complicated mechanical hook fashioned from stainless steel. Clearly he’d had it for a while, as he was breaking the eggs without actually squashing them.
“It’s okay, I’m used to people staring at it,” the man said, making it sound as if this was not okay at all.
“Hi,” Chapel said, trying to get back on the right footing. “I’m Jim.”
The wounded man swung around and stuck his hook out at Chapel. “Ralph. Nice to meet you — want to shake?”
Dolores squealed in anger. “Ralph, you have a bad night?” she asked. “That why you’re down here so early making a mess in my kitchen?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ralph said.
“You think that means you can be rude to my guests?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s all right,” Chapel said. He reached over and shook Ralph’s hook, even though it meant getting raw egg all over his fingers. He considered showing Ralph his own prosthesis, then thought better of it. It might make the man jealous — Chapel’s arm was generations beyond what Ralph wore — but also it would mean he would have to take his shirt off to prove it. “Listen, Dolores, I really need to talk with Top. Is he around?”
“He’s upstairs naked and snoring in his bed, where everybody ought to be this time of day. But it sounds like you’ve woken up the rest of the house. I’m sure he’ll be down soon. In the meantime — you want orange juice or coffee?”
After all the energy shots he’d consumed, Chapel was clear on that. “Juice, please. Do you mind if I, uh, ask a question?”
Dolores went to the refrigerator to get a family-sized carton of orange juice. She poured him a glass and put it on the table. “You want to know who all these people are. You should have already guessed. They’re Top’s boys. Just like you.”
“You know Top?” Ralph asked. A lot of the anger left his face in the same moment.
Chapel nodded. “When I came back from Afghanistan, I was in a hospital for about six months. Top did my physical rehabilitation. I don’t mind saying, I was pretty much finished before I met him. I was considering suicide, frankly. Top taught me how to live with my… injuries. He did more than that. He taught me how to live in general.”
“All the boys in this house could tell you the same story, or one close enough nobody gives a shit,” Dolores said. “Rudy was the first. He showed up here one day in a sorry state, drunk to the gills and barely able to talk. Top and I took him in, because what else were we going to do? He was a marine, once. Nobody else wanted to help him. Not the VA, not any hospital. So we put him in a spare room and let him dry out. We figured it would just be for a few days. I got him into an AA program, got him doing his twelve steps.”
Chapel couldn’t help himself. “It looks like they didn’t work.”
“He falls off the wagon sometimes. I can’t lock him in his room — this isn’t a prison or even a halfway house. Some nights it’s more than he can handle, the memories, the things he did in Vietnam. So he goes out and gets drunk. He knows we won’t carry him inside but he also knows we won’t kick him out.”
“Those are the rules,” Ralph said.
Dolores nodded. “That’s right, Specialist. We help him as best we can. And we make sure he doesn’t sleep under a bridge and maybe he eats a meal or two every day. You can’t fix a broken man — that’s something he has to do on his own. But you can give him a chance.”
“What about the others?” Chapel asked.
“They came, one by one. Top never says no. We’re full past capacity now, but we don’t turn anybody away. Most of them, their families couldn’t handle the PTSD. The screaming in the night, the anger problems. I’m sure you know how that works.”
“I do,” Chapel said, staring at his glass of juice. He’d gotten his own PTSD under control — most of the time — but it hadn’t been easy.
“If they can’t live someplace else, they can live here,” Dolores said. “As long as they need it.”
“That’s — incredible. Incredibly generous,” Chapel said.
Dolores shrugged. “They sacrificed something for their country. An arm, a leg, a chance at a normal life. Now that’s generous. We just do what we can. I just wish we had the money to buy a bigger place. If the boys can hold down a job, they help out a little with money. Some of Top’s boys do better than others — those that don’t live here, I mean. They help us out too, as much as they can.”
Chapel had a feeling he knew who one of those donors was. Top had been a master gunnery sergeant in Iraq. The men who served under him had been his original boys. When he started working as a physical therapist, all his patients got to be his boys, too. A lot of people owed Top more than they could ever pay. Rupert Hollingshead was one of Top’s boys. It was why he’d given Chapel a job, back when they first met.
“Forgive me, Dolores, but you’re a civilian, aren’t you? You never served in the military.”
“Only because when you sign up they don’t let you choose if you want to be a general or an enlisted,” she pointed out. “If they’d been sensible enough to put me in charge, I would have accepted their offer.”
Chapel smiled. “I don’t mean anything by it, except — I can see why Top started doing this, taking in his boys when they needed him. But why did you agree to it? You didn’t have to do this.”
“Maybe not. But there is no more persuasive man on earth than Top. He talked me into marrying him, didn’t he? He could talk a fish into moving to Death Valley because the real estate was so cheap.”
Chapel had to admit she was right about that.
It wasn’t long before Top came down for his breakfast.
Top was not a tall man, though he had a barrel chest and thick neck muscles that made him look as powerful as a horse. He was not a particularly good-looking man, a fact accentuated by the scar tissue that surrounded one of his eyes. He was missing one arm and hadn’t bothered to put on a prosthesis. He was also missing a leg, and so he came down the stairs one step at a time, carefully placing an artificial foot on each riser.