I thought about getting up and walking away. Luke had talked about his brother working for the garage, so I figured I’d see him first. I figured the dad would be puttering about in the back somewhere, running the books.
It occurred to me that Luke had given me his brother’s number. That Luke had told me to contact him first.
“How can I help, ma’am?” he asked, pulling out his keys. His hands were thick and strong with gray, wiry hairs.
How could he help? “Uh. Well.” I stood, brushing gravel. “So,” I began.
He pressed a lever to the side of the door, creaking open the wide garage.
“Is that your car?” he said, pointing to my Subaru in a long line of cars parked on the street.
I tilted my head. “How did you know that?”
“Buda’s a small town,” he said, turning around and striding toward my car.
“Sir,” I began again, following him. “Sir, I’m not here for car trouble.”
“Is that so?” he answered, unhooking the hood, propping it on its metal stand. “Then why are you waiting outside my garage?”
I recognized his casual stride from the way Luke walked back and forth through a room, as if no one were there, as if he were alone in the woods. But he meant no harm. He was aggressive without the anger. Just matter-of-fact, grabbing on to something he could play with, like a kid goes for a toy left out on the table.
I let him unscrew something or other, making contemplative noises to himself. And then I took a deep breath.
“Sir, I’m married to your son Luke,” I began.
He bolted upward, banging his head on the edge of the hood.
“Ma’am?” he said, holding a purple-veined arm to the back of his head, scowling.
“My name is Cassie Salazar and I’m your son’s wife and he’s been injured overseas.” It came out as three facts. Another great thing about not having a dad is not really being afraid of dads.
He dropped his hand and the how can I help you? demeanor, taking a step toward me. “Overseas as in serving in the military? Luke Morrow?”
I was suddenly aware of my tattoos and tangled hair and red-rimmed eyes. I put my hands on my hips. “Yes, sir. His kneecap was shattered by bullets in Afghanistan.”
For a second, he said nothing. I thought I saw his jaw twitch, but I couldn’t be sure. “Is he coming home?”
“Tomorrow.”
He looked back at the garage, void of customers, and pulled out an old brick-style Nokia cell phone, spitting on the ground. “That son of a bitch.”
Luke
There are three kinds of pain. There’s physical pain, handed to you in gasping, sharp doses. No rhythm to it. Just mad stabbing when the whim hits, like a steel rod into the flesh of a peach. That’s the kind of pain I felt in flashes on the trip to Munich, watching the shadows of paramedics cross the cabin lights.
When Frankie and I had stepped out from behind the jeep, the pain had announced itself, bloody and throbbing. The bullets had pummeled my knee and upper shin until it was a useless sack, but the pain shoved me forward, pushing me to hold the gun tighter, stand straighter with the leg that was left.
“They’re picking us off from the northwest hill,” Clark had said between rounds.
It’d been so quiet. Wind had whipped the NATO flag on the hood.
“Let’s get back in and get a better position.”
“We can’t,” Clark said. “Probably mines ahead.”
Everyone was breathing hard. In sync, in harmony, even then. My socks were wet, sticky, squishing in my boots. I shouldn’t have looked down. Someone’s boots had fallen off their feet, splattered red. Two other pairs of boots, on a pair of bodies on the ground, faces obstructed.
They had started shooting again.
Then there was the ache that had smothered me when I woke up in the hallway of Brooke Medical Center back in America. It covered me like a blanket, lulling me to sleep, calling me to some higher purpose, whispering in a sweet voice, You don’t have to worry anymore, your job is to suffer, and that’s it. Don’t get up, don’t fight, all you have to do is bear it.
I’d heard deep Texas accents answering phones. I’d looked at the hand holding the bars of my gurney. Each nail was painted with a tiny Santa Claus.
Between the physical pain and the ache, or on top of them, or all around them, is the third kind. I suppose you’d call it emotional or mental pain, but that would imply it was knowable, that it could be labeled and stored somewhere in the brain, and you’d just keep on living.