“So, Roland, how many hajis did you kill?” asked Dalton.
I eyed him through the gun smoke of a living room reeling with bullets and bodies.
“Five.”
“Come on. Five confirmed? You never told me that. Really, Ford? Five?”
I nodded through the smoke. Saw a boy run screaming down a hallway into the back of the house. Or was he a small man? Someone behind me shot him. I don’t know who and I didn’t ask.
“No wonder you’re so fucked up. Here, have a drink.” He poured into my empty glass.
“I’m good for now, Dalton.”
“I only got one. Harris, two,” said Dalton.
“And you’re the only one who still swills the booze,” said Broadman. “I see those ads of yours on TV and I think, that old jarhead drinks too much. It’s the bags under your eyes.”
“They’re known as character bags at the Capitol.”
Broadman smiled, teeth white, eyes brown in the surly red flesh.
“Yet I carry the weight of an entire assembly district on my broad shoulders,” said Strait.
A beat of silence, uneasy and eager to be broken.
Dalton took another drink, then set his empty glass back on the doily.
“When that bomb went off I thought we were all dead,” he said quietly. “The world went red and I was eating road dirt. Thought it was the first place you had to wait to get into heaven.”
Broadman nodded slowly, set his hands on his knees but said nothing.
I thought they might want some privacy for this. I went to one of the wall cabinets, pretending polite interest, but my ears were tuned to the conversation behind me.
Family pictures. The Broadmans. A midwestern interior circa 1985, not unlike the room in which I stood. Two boys and two girls. Mrs. Broadman looking pleasant; Dad in a Levi’s jacket, a trucker’s cap, plenty of hair.
“And I just couldn’t get that knife through the nylon, Harris. I’d hack until the flames got too hot, then I’d fall outside into the rifle fire. Then I’d climb back in and hack away again. It just would not cooperate. The harness. The fire. Good Christ, it was hot in that Humvee. I could smell us burning.”
“You could smell me burning,” said Broadman.
“Yes, that’s what I… meant to say.”
“I saw you take cover behind the K-rails. Leaving me for the snipers or the fire.”
I heard Dalton pour and drink. Went to a bookshelf. Mostly nonfiction on fat subjects — science, nature, history, and biography. Darwin to Durant, Carl Sagan to Jared Diamond. Some obscure books, too, whose titles I didn’t recognize. A few I did know, such as the Complete Works of Malatesta, Volume IV. I remembered Malatesta from nineteenth-century European history class at SDSU, Professor Nicolas Falbo presiding. Malatesta being an Italian political prisoner and activist who wrote voluminously.
“I was coming for you. Then the gun truck arrived and the Spookie blew the Wollies away. I helped the corpsmen get you into the truck, Harris. I was there. I took fire for you.”
“You left me in the road to die.”
“I needed thirty seconds to rest.”
“Fire can eat a pound of flesh in thirty seconds.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“There’s no other way to see it.”
I turned to see Dalton leaning forward in the chair. Back hunched, his elbows on his knees, a shot glass in one hand and his head down.
“I won’t apologize,” he said. “I tried to get you out, and I failed. But I can’t carry that around the rest of my life. I’m not strong enough.”
“I expected more from you.”
“Then or now?”
“Both,” said Broadman.
He walked slowly to a window and turned the shutter wand. I wondered why he didn’t have a remote, as in bungalow six. The sunlight laddered through and caught his molten face and the clear dark brown of his eyes. Looked out for a moment, then cut off the light again. Turned to Dalton.
“I didn’t ask you here for an apology. The opposite. I want to apologize to you. I’ve been silent and bitter for all of the sixteen years I’ve been forced to live since that day. I’m not strong enough to carry that any longer, either. I’ve unburdened myself of much, Dalton — love, joy, nature’s pleasures. Even art and music and other human escapes. Surrendered my belief in our nation and my faith in our gods. Now I surrender my resentment of you. I apologize for hating you so long.”
A long silence as the invisible weights of blame and forgiveness shifted on their invisible pulleys.
I wondered if Harris Broadman had furnished this — his second home — to resemble a time when his world was comfortable and good. The world of the child he had once been. So that he could recline into a beautiful past while he surrendered his tormented present.
Dalton was still hunched in his chair, elbows out and head down.
“Well, of course you know I’m going to accept, Harris.”
“Good. We are now square. And can proceed in our lives.”
“I’d like that.”
Broadman creaked over to the couch and sat back down. “PFC Strait, I’m concerned for Natasha. Are you any closer to finding her?”
Dalton straightened, put his glass back on the coffee table. “Natalie.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“But no. I don’t think we’re closer. Are we, Roland?”
Well, I thought, maybe, but not in ways I could discuss right now. In just the last few hours, I’d heard police suspicion of a mismatch between Dalton’s words and his abduction-day airline flight. And now Dalton’s new best friend, Harris Broadman — after despising Dalton for sixteen bitter years — was expressing concern for Natalie’s well-being. Those two interesting details, plus my boxing scar, which was now itching vibrantly on my forehead.
“We’re closer,” I said.
An affirmative nod from Harris, fire-battered lips pursed and his eyes luminous brown — nearly copper colored — in a slat of light. “If I can be of any help.”
“Thanks,” said Dalton. “That means something to me.”
“What can I give you, Dalton? What on earth do you want?”
“Natalie back.”
“Something I can give. Something I can do.”
Dalton squeezed his knee thoughtfully. “Lemme think on that, Sarge.”
Broadman walked us the long way around to where we had parked outside the Bighorn lobby. He stood in the shade, listening to Dalton’s loud campaign pitch, so I rang myself inside the office to pick up some brochures.
Cassy came from the back. I got a brief glimpse of her quarters again, the IV drip station in the far corner facing the chair and the TV.
“I wanted some maps and brochures,” I said.
“Take what you want.”
“One of each, maybe?”
“There’s plenty.”
“How do you like working for a war hero?”
“He doesn’t pay much, but I trust him.”
“Trust him to what?” I asked breezily.
“Not try anything aggressive.”
“That’s important,” I said, removing the pamphlets one at a time and setting them on the dusty countertop.
“And I enjoy being valuable,” said Cassy. “There are some things Mr. Broadman can’t do because of his health. I understand that. I have cancer and I’m fighting it, but sometimes I can hardly get out of bed. Same with Harris, but it’s not cancer.”
“So you help each other out.”
“All the time. Little things to keep this place running. Run to the big box in La Quinta to pick up lightbulbs. More floor cleaner. The market. The bank. There’s three of us women so Mr. Broadman can concentrate on his studies and writing.”