Her eyes go all disappointed. “What are you talking about? It’s me, Brianna.”
He stares a little longer. “Brianna Caster?”
“Yeah.” A smile starts on her lips.
“Well, goddamn, Brianna,” Bobby says. “Who the hell went and painted you all black?”
The smile turns into a big hurt zero.
“No one painted her black,” I say. “That’s just her look now.” Brianna didn’t have the Goth thing going last time Bobby was back on leave.
“Shit,” he says. “You look like a bowling ball. I liked you better when you were just plain fat.”
“Well,” Brianna spits back, “I liked you better when you weren’t such a drugged-up asshole.”
She’s trying to be tough, but I know she’s hurt. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” I tell her. “He’s too wasted to know what he’s saying.”
Bobby smiles, loose-lipped and droopy-eyed. “Wasted again!” he yells. “Hallelujah!”
The front door swings open, and out walks Mr. White with a cup of coffee.
Bobby’s like, “Coffee? I’ve always been partial to beer,” but he goes ahead and takes the cup and sips a little. “Instant, huh? That’s some pretty bad stuff.”
Mr. White sits next to me, and I ask him if the captain’s really qualified to work on the pickup. He gestures toward the sculptures. “Anyone who can make those won’t have any problem on a bent grille.”
“Maybe he’ll turn Chuck’s grille into a sculpture,” Bobby says, “like a dragon or something, swooping low across the road.” He starts to take another sip of the coffee but just then a loud metallic pounding starts as the captain goes to work—Bam! Bam! Bam!—and the red tin cup drops from Bobby’s hand and clanks onto the wooden porch.
His head whips around like he’s expecting to see someone coming at him. His shoulders hunch up to his ears, and an expression I’ve never seen before twists across his face, a combination of rage and a sick kind of fright like his life is in danger.
“Goddammit,” he cries, looking at the spilled coffee on his pants. “Where’d that noise come from?”
“It’s all right,” says Mr. White. “It’s just the captain working on your buddy’s truck. He’ll have it fixed up better than new in no time.” His voice is mellow and soothing, the way a doctor might talk to a patient. I’m not sure whether to appreciate that or find it annoying.
Brianna doesn’t take the same tone, though. “Wow,” she says. “Paranoid much? You’d think someone was shooting at you.”
Bobby glares at her. The fright is gone from his face, but some of the rage still boils in his eyes. “Don’t talk about shooting, goddammit.” There’s no kidding around in his voice. “You don’t have the right to talk to me about that.”
“God,” she says. “When did you lose your sense of humor?”
He looks away. “Some things aren’t funny.”
“A little coffee stain never hurt anybody,” Mr. White says as he kneels down to get the tin cup. “I’ll fix you another one.” He gives Bobby a gentle pat on the knee. “Then we’ll go watch the captain work. The dude’s a wizard with tools.”
“Yeah,” says Bobby, still simmering. “That’s what we need—a wizard.” He stares toward the tree line as if he thinks something might be hiding there, something that might come charging toward us at any moment.
20
When Mr. White gets back with more coffee, Bobby takes it and heads off toward the barn with Brianna right behind him. I start to follow, but Mr. White grabs my arm. “Why don’t you stay here for a second,” he says softly. “I want to talk to you alone.”
Brianna looks over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
“You go on,” I tell her. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Well, hurry up,” she says. “I don’t want to be left alone with two crazy guys.”
She and Bobby disappear around the side of the house, and it’s just me and Mr. White, one on one. “So,” I say, sitting back down on the edge of the porch, “what’s so private that you need to talk to me alone?”
He sits next to me, almost touching me. “It’s about your brother,” he says.
And I’m like, “Look, don’t lecture me about my brother. An accident like that can happen to anyone. He’s just blowing off steam. He’s been in a war, you know? Besides, he’s probably just not used to driving anything that doesn’t weigh a couple of tons and doesn’t have a machine gun mounted on it.”
“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “I’m not putting your brother down for anything. I’m thinking about him and the captain. The captain really likes him. He told me he did.”
“Yeah, so?”
He pauses to adjust his glasses, like he needs them to focus on what he has to say.
“Well, I think it’d be good for the captain—and your brother too, actually—if they hung out some, worked on the aero-velocipede and all. And of course, you’d come with him.”
“Are you kidding me?” I have to give him a long, hard look after that. “Why would my brother and I want to spend our summer hanging around a place like this?”
He tucks a stray strand of his long hair behind his ear. “Oh, I don’t know. It could be the perfect place to launch the misfit revolution. After all, you’re the only one I ever met who didn’t act like that idea was too weird.”
“Yeah, but that’s only because I liked thinking about getting the hell out of this town and—I don’t know—having a cause or something.”
“Hey, revolutions have to start somewhere.” He smiles, and then he does something really unexpected—he puts his hand on my knee. It’s not like he’s suddenly going all Gillis horny on me, but it’s still strange. Not just because it’s Mr. White’s hand, but also because I don’t really have all that many guys putting their hands on my knee.
He doesn’t leave it there for long. He pulls it away and starts talking about how important Bobby and the captain will be for our revolution. “Of course, you’ll be the general,” he says, “but you’ll have to admit—even if you don’t like the captain—he’s definitely a misfit.”
“I can’t argue against that,” I say, but my mind is still going over the hand-on-the-knee thing. First, Mr. White tells me I’m beautiful, and then he sits here on the porch with me, practically shoulder to shoulder, and puts his hand on my knee. I’m starting to think all this talk about Bobby hanging around the captain is just a way of getting me to start coming out here. Maybe he even has a crush on me. How stupid would that be? I mean, me and Mr. White? It’s ridiculous. If there was ever a bad boy’s girl, it’s me. Mr. White—he’d probably faint if someone challenged him to a real fight.
He goes on talking about how I’ll probably start liking the captain sooner or later and how fun it is working on the sculptures and the aero-velocipede. I let him ramble. He’s not really bad-looking once you get used to him, but he’s so skinny. And the white overalls and painter’s cap—no one dresses like that. I can just imagine the crap I’d catch from my friends if they saw me sitting around with Mr. White’s hand on my knee.
This whole time the captain’s hammering has kept up pretty consistently, but suddenly it stops, and Mr. White looks off in that direction. “They must be about done,” he says. “Come on. Let’s go over to the barn and see how they’re doing.”
He hops up and walks ahead while I follow a few steps behind. It’s not like I want to show up at the barn—where Bobby and Brianna are—practically walking arm in arm with the likes of Mr. White. But watching him ahead of me, I’m shocked and almost disgusted with myself. I mean, who would’ve thought a skinny, stringy-haired dork could have a sexy walk?
21
Back by the barn, Brianna sits on the ground with a bored expression. Mr. White sits a few feet away from her, and I have to wonder if he’s hoping maybe I’ll plop down in between them. No way. Instead, I stand next to Bobby.
He sips at his coffee, all fascinated by the captain’s skill with tools and hi
s nonstop stories. He almost looks hypnotized. It reminds me of how we used to catch horny toads when we were kids and rub their stomachs. They’d get these satisfied little smiles on their faces and lie there all stretched out and stiff. My dad said that was their way of protecting themselves—playing dead.
I have to admit there’s a big difference between the way Bobby acts out here with Mr. White and the captain and how he acts with the likes of Dani and Jace. It’s like a peace comes across him. I’m just not sure why. Maybe it’s the sound of the captain’s voice, because I don’t see how anyone can hardly follow the stories, the way they jump from topic to topic. At one point, he’s telling us about hanging around with rock stars in L.A., and the next thing you know he’s in a strip club.
“Never play in a strip club on acid,” he says. “It’s too freaky, man. It’ll break your heart. No, man, strip joints are the saddest places on earth.”
I don’t hardly know what to make of it, but Bobby rocks back on his heels, smiles, his eyes nearly closed, and in almost a whisper, says, “Not quite the saddest, dude. Not quite the saddest.”
Then the captain’s off in a different direction. “You should’ve seen my brother at sixteen,” he says. “He was pure. You ever been to the Rocky Mountains? No? Well, they have these streams up there, never been touched by a speck of pollution. That’s how my brother Kyle was back when we were growing up right here in this town.”
Bobby sits on the ground and leans back on his elbows. “I’d like to meet him. He sounds like a good dude.”
“Yeah.” The captain’s voice goes soft. “I wish you could, man. I wish you could. I taught him how to play guitar, but he was the real musician. His fingers flew up and down the fret board. He knew almost all the Beatles’ stuff. We were going to California together. I would’ve probably ended up backing him on bass. He would’ve been the front man, the singer. Sixteen years old and he had a voice like Howling Wolf. He read the Romantic poets and wrote lyrics no one could touch, except maybe Dylan.”
“What happened?” Bobby asks. “Why didn’t he keep playing?”
“He turned eighteen,” the captain says. “That’s what happened. He turned eighteen.”
I’m like, “What’s so bad about eighteen?”
The captain stops working and stares at the bumper of the truck. “The draft,” he says, rubbing his fingers through his beard. “The goddamn draft—that’s what’s bad about turning eighteen.”
“Vietnam?” asks Bobby.
“Yeah, Vietnam.” The word seems to put a dark spell on the captain. “I tried to go down and tell them to take me instead, but they wouldn’t do it. It was against their rules. So I said I’d sign up and that way they could put me and Kyle in the same unit together, but they wouldn’t take me. My brain was too out of whack.” He taps the side of his head. “Isn’t that ridiculous? They’ll drop you off crazy when they’ve got their good out of you, but they won’t let you in that way.”
“I hear that,” Bobby says.
“Yeah.” The captain nods. “And then I was home right here at this house the day those soldiers walked up to the front door in their perfect uniforms and brought the news that Kyle didn’t make it. Sniper fire.”
He goes quiet then, and we all sit there in silence, kind of like we’re at a funeral. Mr. White looks at me like, See, I told you there was more to the captain than you thought. And I have to admit he’s right. It’s weird. Somehow I’d never thought of the captain having a kid brother he loved. I don’t know what I would’ve done if Bobby hadn’t come home from Iraq. Maybe I’d go crazy too.
When the silence has lasted long enough, the captain picks up his mallet to go back to work on the bumper. “And that’s when I took off for California,” he says. “No way I could stay around here anymore. But now I’m back and I see Kyle in everything, man, in the grass blades and the streams and the brick buildings downtown. He’s everywhere.” He looks at Bobby. “He’s even in you.”
Bobby nods. “Thanks. That’s a real compliment.”
As the captain works, it hits me he’s working on more than just the truck. The same with the sculptures. It’s like he’s trying, over and over, to fix something that went wrong a long time ago.
By the time he gets the grille pounded into decent shape, Bobby is barely awake, even though it’s still light out. The plan is for me to drive him back to Chuck’s in the pickup—we both figure it’s not a good idea for Mom and Dad to see him like this—and for Brianna to follow us, so she can drive me home to face the parental interrogation about where we’ve been and why we didn’t come home for dinner.
I help Bobby up, but he’s so unsteady on his feet, Mr. White has to help me get him to the truck. After he’s safely tucked into the passenger side, I turn around and Mr. White is standing right in front of me, maybe a foot away. “So,” he says, “you see what I mean about the captain? He loved his brother just like you love yours.”
“Yeah, maybe he’s not completely bad. He’s still a lunatic, though.”
Mr. White scratches his cheek. He seems a little nervous. “I was thinking, maybe I should give you my phone number in case you want to talk sometime, you know, about your brother and everything.”
“Your phone number?”
“Yeah, you know? The number for those little things people hold in their hands and use to talk to each other?”
I don’t have much—or any—practice with guys wanting to give me their phone numbers, so it’s not like I have an excuse prepared for turning him down. I’m just like, “Sure, yeah, okay.” What else am I going to say—“No, you’re too frigging weird”?
The awkwardness continues. Neither one of us has a pen, so I have to dig one out of Chuck’s glove compartment. But now there’s nothing to write on, so Mr. White goes, “Hold out your arm.”
“What?”
“Hold out your arm.”
He grips my wrist with one hand and writes his number on my forearm with the other. I look past him to make sure Brianna isn’t watching. Luckily, she isn’t.
“You can call me anytime,” he says.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” I tell him, and walk around and climb into the pickup. I tell myself that when we get Bobby to Chuck’s apartment, I’ll wash it off, but for some reason I don’t. And the funny thing is, as I’m riding home with Brianna, I keep my arm turned so she can’t see it, but I can feel it there on my skin, practically like it’s glowing.
22
Almost as soon as I open the front door, the parents are all over me.
“Where were you?”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Where’s Bobby?”
You know the drill. It’s like they expect you to think of what they want every second of the day. So I lay out this story about how Bobby wanted to get together with some of his old friends from around town, and we just lost track of time. Of course, Dad doesn’t think losing track of time is a good excuse, but he buys the story. After all, it’s pretty much true. I just left out some of the details.
Mom’s all deflated because Bobby’s spending the night at Chuck’s. She’s worried he’s going to get sidetracked with his friends and not make it to the big barbecue party on Saturday, but I tell her not to worry. “He wouldn’t miss that for anything,” I tell her. “That’s practically all he could talk about—how great it’s going to be.”
That calms them down, so they let me off with a warning about how I’m sixteen now and need to be more responsible. I’m tempted to come back with a wisecrack about how responsible they were to let their son get shipped off to a war, but I figure it’s best to leave that alone for a while and just head to my room, where I can put the earbuds in and crank something loud.
Of course, the truth is Bobby never said he was charged up about the barbecue, but I can’t help thinking it might actually be good for him, get him around normal people instead of Captain Crazy. It’ll also give him a chance to see how much respect everyone has for him and what he’s done for our
country, even if the judge and lawyers and all the other dickheads gave him a bad deal by sending him over. He’s a hero and everybody knows it. Well, almost everybody.
I can’t believe it the next day when Mom tells me Lacy won’t be coming back from Grandma’s for Bobby’s homecoming. I’m like, God, what a self-centered little creep. I call her and lay right into her before she can even get hello all the way out of her mouth. I’m all about how much Bobby’s meant to our family, to us kids, to our town, and to the whole country. “I’m sure you met some pimple-faced boy over there in Davenport you think you can’t live without,” I tell her, “but you need to start thinking about someone else besides yourself for a change and get down here and support your big brother.”
But she has her argument ready. “It’s not any boy, Ceejay. It’s Grandma. She needs help around the house.”
Right. I’m not buying that, not with Mom always going around advertising how great Grandma’s doing with her treatments. “Are you telling me Grandma can’t get by one weekend without you? I mean, what do you do for her anyway? I have to do your chores for you half the time.”
She comes back with how she does a lot, that Grandma even taught her how to cook, which makes me laugh. “Sure,” I tell her. “What do you do, make toast? Besides, what’s Grandma ever done for us in the past but treat us like stray cats. I’m talking about you being here for your brother’s homecoming from the war. The war, Lacy. Can you get your little peanut brain around that? Bobby was always here for us back when he lived at home. One hundred percent. Grandma sure wasn’t.”
“He was there for you.” Her voice sounds small.
“What?”
“He was there for you, Ceejay. You were his pet. He hardly even talked to me, acted like I was too little to bother with. I mean, I love him and all, but you two were the ones who were close. It was like you had your own club and the rest of us weren’t invited to join.”
How about that? Mommy and Daddy’s little princess trying to act like she was the outsider around the house. Ridiculous. I’m like, “Hey, we tried to include you a lot more than Grandma ever did. Remember that time we played Storm the Castle at her house? Bobby was Sir Lancelot and I was Joan of Arc and—”