Chapter 10
Andrew is here for ten more days. Ten more days to set myself up for marriage and the rest of my life.
I tell myself it’s good it’s only ten days because once it’s done that’s it. Then the next time I see him we’ll have the wedding and it’ll be done.
In fact, if I had it my way, we’d get married right this instant. I imagine him tugging me away from the breakfast table now, and the priest would magically be here, and we’d smile and kiss, people would clap and then because it was such a surprise the party would be small and we’d stay only long enough to make people happy, and then he’d carry me off to our new house, whichever one that’s available, I don’t need a new one, and I could finally relax.
That’s what I really want. But that’s a silly girl’s fantasy, so I say yes when he comes in and asks me to dinner down by the water. I feel better after that. Then I run down to the docks to pick up a bucket of American anchovy, as my zizi calls them, sections three dash seven stockfish as everyone else does, for everyone else’s supper.
I wave and smile at Gino and Benito the entire way along the shore until they decide they would rather give me their three fish bladders instead of storing them inside of our Uncle Stonington’s lunch pail, and then I go to the main dock to pick up the fish.
Lium and Hale are in the bait shop nearby, and I swear I hear them snickering at my back while one of my grandfather’s goes through his entire basket and tries to show me every single one of the clear eyeballs, and I keep on having to compliment floppy dead fish whose tiny backbones his stuttering big hands keep crunching.
When I’m finally in possession of them, resettling the wide basket against my side, I happen to look up and notice the brothers still watching us. I say good morning, and they say hi and we start talking about the weather, which we all agree is very dry for this time of year.
When I say “we” I mean that I say it, Lium says if you say so baby, and Hale winds some heavy duty line that apparently has no end. We also remark on the lovely fish I just got, the early hour, and the shape of a certain cloud.
“I hear you scared the boys last night,” is the next topic we happen to land on.
Lium laughs low in his throat and puts a thing with a tiny feather onto an even tinier hook.
“You’d better be careful, just so you know,” I add. “They all think you’re amazing now.”
Honestly, they couldn’t stop agreeing over and over again that those two are really great guys. As far as I can tell, their assessments are based solely on the fact that the brothers could have squashed them into American anchovy paste and didn’t. Scientific method-wise, it’s not too solid, but I think it’s good anyways because it balances out what my aunts have been saying.
Lium keeps putting together the teeny lures and I watch him, back and forth, following his hands. Plucking something from a box that has lots of smaller boxes inside it, holding the piece up, putting it back, or stringing it in.
“How’d you end up there, anyways? You weren’t out back when it happened, right?”
Hale shrugs and I guess it’s my fault, having caused that extra upward movement, when he plops a heavy barrel on the floor, causing it to make a jangle that can’t be good.
Lium looks up from his work, but I think it’s less because of Hale and more because of me, because I’m the one he waits for to settle back down.
“We heard yelling,” he says and shrugs.
“Huh,” I say to that. I reach into the box for an impossibly small speckled feather and twirl it between my fingertips.
“So, how’s the husband?”
It’s my turn to shrug, “Good, we’re having dinner tonight, down here, actually.”
Lium gets up and starts dropping pieces of old metal parts into the blackened barrel.
“Well, have fun with that.”
“Thanks, I will.”
He grunts. He’s stopped chucking metal around, and now he’s just standing in the middle of the shop with the barrel hitched on his side.
“You going anywhere in particular with that, Lium?” I’ve fished my necklace out of my uniform’s collar and I’m working the little feather into it.
When I’m done, he’s got his sharp gaze on me, and I feel like explaining why I’d never get in trouble for taking one little feather from my own uncle’s shop, until like last night I get distracted by the two copper rings.
“Yes,” he says. I have to replay the last few seconds of my life on audio so I can remember what I’d asked him. Oh, yes.
“Are you going there any time soon?”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know, I was just wondering.”
“Don’t you have better things to wonder about? Go wonder about your boyfriend or something.”
“My goodness, somebody’s cranky this morning. I’d tell you where my uncle usually puts his scrap metal except I don’t know where that is. I wish you the best of luck in figuring it out, though. Hopefully it’s before your arms fall off. Goodbye, Lium.” And I march out of the shop, taking my fish and my new feather.
The boy makes an unnecessary amount of noise putting the barrel down.
“Hey, wait,” he calls.
“Yes?”
He comes around and holds something up between his fingers. It’s another feather, a little bigger than the one I took, and perfectly white.
“Here,” he says.
I’m touched, “Thank you, it’s so pretty.” I take it from his pinched fingers, and run a crisp edge over the thumb that’s clutching my basket. Then I tuck it into my bun and pat it a few times.
“How’s that? Is it staying?”
He touches it, “Yeah, you’re good.”
“Great! I’ll see you later maybe, but I’ve really got to get back so I’m not late to the base.” I take a few steps backwards and tuck a spiral behind my ear.
“You’re a soldier?” he sputters.
I frown. “Oh, no. I could never do that. No, I’m trained to support the soldiers. You know, run around after them with a bunch of equipment, translate the PRTs, do gps sets, code switching, field analysis, hack other people’s stuff. You know.”
“No.”
My first reaction is to sigh. But he is our guest, after all.
“In the M.S.A., we have specialized people who assist the military people,” I shrug. “Basically? I just go around sticking whatever the guys want into analysis programs, and then I just read back whatever comes out. I generally use an aural modality setup with visual backup,” I shrug again. Tell it to me in human, specialist, as one boy liked to tease.
Fun kid. I felt bad for him. Got the TAG team command. Talented and gifted, as it were. Offering advanced students advanced challenges. I got stuck there after one particularly interesting Problem Solving Tuesday where I found a use for a small aircraft that was just sitting there in the hangar, all lonely. Sad, really. I just took my partner and we flew, over all the other kids who were swimming through the sound, which had been set on fire. It was February and there was no way I was getting in there.
The other kids said it was cheating after they joined us at the rendezvous, dripping, exhausted, singed, and they found out we’d already won the problem set. The instructors made them do push-ups for complaining. Looking back, it’s no surprise people gave me cold looks, after that. I think they were relieved when I got moved to the TAG team.
So that’s how I ended up there. Another kid got in after he hit a target between the eyes across state lines. And another finished some obstacle course in record time, while carrying his partner who’d broken his leg. That’s how most of us got there. Flashes of impressiveness, I guess they were.
But this commander kid, he was brilliant all the time. Naturally brilliant, and he knew it. I’d say ninety percent of the words he ever spoke to me were those orders, to speak something in human, specialist. And make it something I can use. I remember during one final exam, in Field S
tudies, the enemy team gas-attacked our position and he wanted to know why I let them break through our chatter bubble and find us. And tell it to him in human, specialist.
They tore it down, hard, sir. Well fix it. I am, sir. Great, tell me when you did, specialist. Yes, sir. Private Hosea, don’t just leave him laying there, pick up Private Dennison and stick a mask on him, will you? There’s vomit. And Specialist High-Land wants you to scoop the fucking barf out of his Goddamn mouth, I don’t wanna tell his mommy her baby hero died on his sandwich, if that happens, bitch is yours, Hosea. Sir? What! Not fixed but I did find their position. Really? Yes. Ok, hit them with something good and old-school, I want to hear them screaming from here. Yes, sir. Next time specialist, I’m buying you some steel to make that bubble-shit with. That would be nice, sir, but diamonds would be better, I think, hard plus they’ll play with the light. Diamonds then. Thanks, sir, oh! got it. A whole truckload of fucking diamonds, specialist. Thank you, sir. Goddamnit specialist, what’d you do to them, fucking Hadley’s out there trying to take his pants off. Oh, yeah, that’d be the grove of double-poison oak I just sent them into, sir. Oh, huh, I was thinking napalm or something but this works too, I guess, fuckit specialist, what’m I gonna do with you, alright, let’s move out people, eyes on me, Hosea, get the specialist and make sure she doesn’t trip on a daisy, on my signal in….
“You don’t look like someone I’d want to drag out onto a battlefield.” Rude boy. But fair enough.
“Yes, well, let’s hope you never do,” is what I say to him. And then I really do go. With fish and two new feathers.