THIRTY

“If I’d had any idea it was him that night, I’d never have doubted you,” Lola said when she’d finished telling Pal about the truck chase. She spoke past a mouthful of strawberries.

Pal waved off the offer of a berry, and picked at the scars on her forearm. “Why didn’t you tell me about it? That’s some scary shit.”

“You didn’t exactly invite conversation.” But since she appeared to be doing so now, Lola chanced another question. “What’s with those?” She pointed at the scars.

Pal put her finger on the first one, the older whitened scar faint beneath the new, still-healing slash that X’ed it out. “Tommy McSpadden.”

She moved her finger to the next. “Tyson Graff. Although, those two assholes being bonded out of jail makes me think I crossed them off too soon. Anyway.” She moved her finger to the next. “Cody Dillon. At least he felt bad about it.”

Lola forced the question through lips that felt frozen. Pal, scarring herself for each of her attackers, and then cutting herself again in a sort of triumph when God or the Creator or whatever you wanted to call a higher power dished out retribution. “What do you mean?”

“When he shot himself. He couldn’t face his father, knowing what he’d done. And shouting, ‘It’s a lie,’ the way he did. I almost feel bad that he’s dead. But not really.”

“It’s a lie,” Lola breathed. “Not, ‘It’s alive.’”

“What?”

“Never mind. What’s that last one?” Even though she knew, mouthing the words along with Pal as she spoke them.

“Skiff. He’s the last one to have gotten away with it.” She dug her fingers into the line of scar tissue, reddening the skin around it. “And he’s the one who caused it all. Without him, the rest would never have had the nerve.”

Lola reached across the table and pulled Pal’s hand away from the scar and held it in her own. “He’s not going to get away with it anymore. You and I are going to talk, and I’m going to take notes like a fiend. And then you’re going to call the DOD, aren’t you? I’ll sit right here with you while you do it.”

She didn’t know why she was so sure; wondered, as the words left her mouth, if once again she’d pushed Pal too far. But she must have sensed some shift in the woman, some new determination that stiffened her shoulders and lifted her chin and produced the first real smile she’d seen on Pal’s face since that ghastly facsimile the day Cody had shot himself.

“Some reporter you are,” Pal said. “Where’s your notebook?” Then laughed outright as Lola dug through the pockets of her cargo shorts to produce the most basic tools of her trade.

Within an hour, Lola’s hand felt clenched in a permanent cramp around her pen. She recorded the conversation on her phone but, always wary of technology, took handwritten notes as Pal talked herself hoarse.

They started easy, the way she usually did with her interviews, lingering over the innocuous stuff, comparing their own first impressions of Afghanistan. “Lucky,” Pal said wistfully when Lola told of her travels around Kabul and beyond, accompanied only by her driver and fixer, her hair tucked beneath a shawl-like duppata. The arrangement that had seemed so limiting to Lola represented unimaginable freedom to Pal, who went nowhere without a full contingent of fellow soldiers, their appearance rendered appalling by helmets, blank-lensed sunglasses, robotic-looking body armor and of course the warning presence of rifles held at the ready. “Can you imagine wanting to talk to anyone who looked like that?” Pal said. “They’d see us coming and run. Which of course made everyone think they were up to something. Me, I think they were just scared shitless.”

Which gave Lola an opening to talk of the one advantage to being a woman, the fact that, unlike the male journalists, people often invited her into their homes, there being no shame in another woman mingling with the females of the family.

“What was it like?” Pal leaned forward. Lola suppressed a start at the curiosity lighting Pal’s features, so unusual was the emergence of anything resembling human emotion on that sharp little face.

“Odd. They’d feed me, of course. They’re the most hospitable people on earth. Even the poorest people would at least offer tea. But when it was a full meal, they’d often put me with the men for dinner. It’s like I was an honorary man. I suppose I should have been flattered, but it made me so uncomfortable, I’d go eat dessert with the women. They were more fun, anyhow.”

“How’s that?”

Lola laughed at the memory, and then again at the welcome realization that not all of her memories of Afghanistan were bad. “Because the women spent a lot of their time making fun of the men.”

“What was the food like?”

“Scary.”

Actual mischief crept into Pal’s eyes. “Like yours?”

“Just for that, I’m taking the last of the coffee.” Lola emptied the dregs into her cup and prepared a fresh pot. The food in Afghanistan had to have been unsafe for a western gut, the vegetables washed in water swimming with bacteria, the meat obtained from a market where it hung, buzzing with flies, all day in the sun. “But it was so good I couldn’t help myself. I ate it all!” she said. “The fruits and vegetables were nothing like the ones here, all good looks and no taste. The flavor was so intense. And for the most part, I never got sick. Just lucky, I guess.”

“Just immune from eating your own cooking,” Pal muttered.

“Let it go. Unless you want kitchen duty,” Lola shot back, warming to the beginnings of repartee, reminiscent of the same sort of smartassery she shared with Jan.

Pal obliged by returning to their earlier subject. “Did you make any friends? Among the locals, I mean.”

“Not really. Mostly I just interviewed people and moved on,” Lola began. “But there was one—” She stopped, teetering, fighting for balance at the lip of a bottomless chasm.

“Who?”

Lola closed her eyes against the images at the forefront of her brain, but that only threw them into sharper focus. The chasm yawned. Lola swayed. She grabbed at the table. “Never mind. Not important.”

A chair scraped. Footsteps. Hands on hers, clasping them tight, pulling at her, turning her in the chair. She opened her eyes. Pal crouched before her. “You want me to spill my guts to the whole fucking world about the worst thing that’s ever happened to me? I say you’d better start talking.”

Lola forced the words. “I can’t. I haven’t. Ever.”

Pal’s grasp tightened. The tiny bones in Lola’s hands crunched. “You can. I’m living proof. What was that little lecture you gave me about not cowering before the shit that scares us? Well, right back at you. Close your eyes if it makes it easier. But start talking. Get it out.”

Lola squeezed her eyes shut. “His name was Ahmed. He was a fixer,” she began. She felt herself leaning even farther over the edge, Pal pulling just as hard against her fall. She steadied herself. And, against all odds, kept talking.

Lola awoke in her bed, with little idea how she’d gotten there and none of how much time had passed. She had a memory of Pal leading her to the room, her arm around Lola’s shoulders, and urging her into bed beside Margaret. “You did great,” Pal whispered so as not to wake the girl. “You’re going to need to sleep now. You’ll feel better when you wake up. We’ll finish my interview and do the DOD report then.” Lola couldn’t even muster the energy to tell Pal she could have shouted without disturbing Margaret.

Lola’s throat was dry. She opened her eyes. The light hurt. She squinted against it, almost expecting to find herself back on a Kabul street, bloodied bits of human flesh beneath her feet, the grievously wounded flailing about, screaming for help or, worse yet, lying in the grey silence that precedes expiration. Pal had said she’d feel better after sleeping. She wasn’t sure. She went first to the bathroom and then the kitchen, waiting in the doorway as the room swam into focus, the humble Formica table, the long counter, Pal standing at it, doing something with food. Pal glanced her way.

“Welcome back to the world. It’s nearly lunchtime, and we’ve got a long afternoon ahead of us. I’m fixing some food for us, and Margaret, too. Poor kid. She’s been so good out there all morning. She’s teaching Jemalina some tricks, apparently. God help us.”

A can opener sat on the counter. Lola sniffed. Tomatoes. Oh, Jesus, she thought. Not ravioli. Something sizzled in a pan. A familiar, buttery smell. Lola let herself hope. “Is that—?”

“Grilled cheese. Tomato soup, too. Canned, but it’s all I’ve got. I know it’s hot food on a hot day, but comfort seemed the way to go. Here.” She set a plate and a bowl in front of Lola, and called Margaret indoors. Lola finished her sandwich before her daughter had even settled in her chair, breaking yet another rule, this one involving waiting to eat until everyone was seated. Pal raised her eyebrows, buttered another piece of bread, and slapped it into the pan, topping it with thick slices of cheddar and another piece of buttered bread. “Do you mind waiting for yours, big girl? Your mom had a long night and she’s in the middle of a long day. What say we take care of her before you and I eat?”

Margaret swelled at the “big girl” and nodded assent. “I’m teaching Jemalina how to fetch,” she announced. Bub’s ears stood up at the word “fetch.”

“Sometimes she beats Bub to the ball.” The ears flattened. Bub’s lip curled.

Lola held her bowl to her mouth and slurped directly from it. The more quintessentially American the food she inhaled, the farther Afghanistan receded.

“Rude, Mommy.”

Lola tilted the bowl high. Pal retrieved it and refilled it before she could even ask. “How can a chicken fetch a ball? It’s too big for her beak,” Lola asked in the interminable seconds before the bowl returned.

“She rolls it. Do you want to see?”

Pal stepped in with Lola’s soup and a second sandwich. “Your mom and I have a lot of work to do this afternoon. Why don’t you teach Jemalina a new trick, and then tonight, we can have ourselves a regular chicken circus? I’ll call Delbert and invite him up to watch. Maybe he can bring some popcorn.”

“Or ice cream.” Margaret cut her eyes toward Lola, who’d begun to think of Wyoming as the Land of No Rules.

Pal returned to the table with a sandwich and two plates. She cut the sandwich in half and put a piece on each plate. She went back to the stove and upended the pot over two mugs, filling each one about halfway. “One for you,” she told Margaret, “and one for me.”

She sat down. Raised her own sandwich. Took a bite. Swallowed. Put it down. Reached for her mug. Another swallow. Licked a bit of soup from upper lip. Back to the sandwich. Lola held her breath. It was the most food she’d seen Pal eat since she’d met her. Margaret watched open-mouthed.

Halfway through her sandwich, Pal raised her eyes. She looked from Lola to Margaret and back again. “What?”

Lola caught Margaret’s eye and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, rearranging her face so as not to reveal the relief welling within. It was just a start. Pal had a long way to go. But she’d planted her feet firmly on the path. “Nothing at all. Eat hearty,” she said to Pal. “We’re going back to your story next.”