I’d been up, walking circles around Cassie’s apartment, for days, but this was the first time I’d tried the stairs by myself, using the cane the hospital had given me.
Even so, my stiff legs were practically itching to run. I started to remember the last time, the day before Frankie and Rooster and I found out we were heading to the Pakistan border. I’d hit the track at dawn, leaving Rooster and Frankie sleeping in the little wood-paneled room, untouched air in my lungs, holding two truths at once: that everything was hard, and that everything was going to be okay.
And then it hadn’t been.
The memory hooks came. If we hadn’t gotten in the jeep, if I’d blocked Frankie, if, if, if. The daily desire for cloud head was rising, wanting to erase it all. I pushed it away. Not here, not here, not now. I’d taken only one this morning.
I’d put Rita in charge of my prescription, instructing her to stagger them out to twice a day, no matter what I asked. She understood.
Not a second later, as if to reward me, Jake turned down Cassie’s street in his car. “You need a hand getting in?” he called through the open window.
I limped toward him. “Nah, it’s good.”
“Well, look at you,” he said.
The whole drive to Buda we barely spoke, just listened to the local sports radio station’s pregame analysis. It was the conference championship, they were saying. The Bears were favored to win.
We were late. Of course, precisely when I had plopped my cane onto the first row of bleachers, hauling my gimp leg like a sack of potatoes, the band director tapped his baton on the stand. Everyone rose in silence, their hands on their hearts, poised to sing the national anthem.
Thump. I had been concentrating on propelling myself to the next step, not noticing that the talking had died down. Kerthump.
Everyone’s eyes were pulled toward the sound. “Poor guy,” I heard. “Morrow’s son. Veteran.”
The band director, being the patriot that he was, waited until I had made a slow, rotisserie chicken–like turn to face the flag.
“Oh, say can you see,” the voices began around me.
“Move to give him your seat, Carl,” I heard.
Jake and I kept our eyes ahead. I didn’t want anyone’s seat. All I did was get shot at and come back home and sit on a stranger’s couch eating pills. I didn’t deserve anyone’s seat. For the thousandth time that day, I wished I was cloud head. No.
About halfway through the first quarter, Jake and I had finally made it to the only open seats in the third row.
“You good, man?” he asked, helping to ease my lower half into a sitting position.
“Yeah,” I assured him. “Just don’t ask me to get you anything from the concession stand.”
Jake laughed and I felt an inch of relief.
One of the Bears’ post players had just dived for the ball. Out of bounds. The whistle blew.
“Good hustle,” I said.
“Yeah, they’re scrappy this year,” Jake replied.
The game resumed.
I could barely remember what I had been thinking the other night, calling out to Cassie to watch me stand, my tongue like a dead fish in my mouth, but I remembered what I had wanted. To be better. Jake wasn’t going to start talking. This was my job, without a safety net.
“Remember—” I swallowed. “It’s hard to believe this is the same place I took you for basketball camp.”
“Yeah, I think about that sometimes. When I go to games.”
“You were good, too.”
“I was all right. I had to quit to start working at the garage.”
I shook my head, remembering him coming home with Dad when he was just fifteen, on the rare days I wasn’t off somewhere getting high, his jeans covered in motor oil. “You grew up too fast.”
“We both did.” The ref called a foul on the Bears. Jake threw up his hands, groaning with the crowd. “Aw, come on!”
“Nah, not me. I was just a shithead.”
“Yeah, but before that.” Jake took his eyes off the game, onto his hands folded between his knees. “After Mom died.”
“How could you remember that?” He was just a baby.
“How could you not?” His voice went up, thin. “I mean, I don’t remember Mom. But a few years after that, I remember Dad had you walking me to day care. Walking me home.”
I’d help him into his clothes. Mostly my old shirts. My Batman shirt, which I had been mad didn’t fit me anymore. I had forgotten all this; it was so long ago. I shrugged. “Day care was just down the street.”