29-ch22

It is not the otherworldly scent of The Stunner’s lovingly blended coffee that rouses The Statistician from sleep this morning. The Stunner and The Drifter did not return last night. Today they are on the road somewhere together, moving farther and farther away from The Hall of Indifference.

What jolts The Statistician awake today is the pungent essence of rubbing alcohol and antibiotic lotion. It burns his nostrils and eyes.

Time Bomb is bent over the chair where she’s set her overstuffed, name-brand-of-the-month cosmetic bag. She’s rummaging frantically though its contents.

“Damn it,” she says. “I was sure I brought a tube of …”

She is naked from the waist down. Upon her right butt cheek is a three-inch tattoo of Wilma Flintstone. The skin around Wilma is swollen and irritated.

When she notices that her husband is awake, Time Bomb says, “Hey, hi.” She arches her back, sticks her ass out, and says in her rare flirtatious voice, “So … what do you think?”

Despite The Statistician’s distaste for tattoos, his penis immediately rises to Red Alert status. It’s been so long since he’s seen his wife in this position. Their honeymoon was the last time.

“Yabba-dabba-doo!” he says, slipping out from under the covers, dropping his pajama pants on the floor. He advances, grips her waist just above the hips, centres himself behind her.

She leaps away from him, spins around, and yelps “Are you crazy? Get that dirty thing away from me! Do you want me to get an infection?”

“I just … I was … I just thought …”

“I need some more antibiotic cream,” Time Bomb says, any trace of flirtation now erased from her voice. “Go into town and get me some, okay? And some rubbing alcohol, too.”

“Are you coming with me?”

She slides onto the bed, lying on her stomach.

“Bouncing over the back roads won’t be the most enjoyable experience for me at the moment.”

The Statistician sighs and reaches for his pants.

“Okay. See you later, then.”

Wilma Flintstone smiles smugly at The Statistician as he closes the bedroom door behind him.

Behind another closed bedroom door, SuperKen is looking at SuperBarbie’s naked body. She is curled up in a tight ball on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, sobbing so violently that she’s almost hyperventilating.

Beside her on the rug is a paper cup half-filled with her own urine, and the wand from yet another pregnancy testing kit. No blue line has appeared on the wand. SuperBarbie is still not pregnant.

SuperKen knows that the right strategic move in this volatile situation would be to kneel down beside her, rub her back, stroke her hair, and comfort her, but his rigid leg braces prevent him from doing this, so he just drags the wheelchair over and sits beside her.

“Hey, come on,” SuperKen says, “why don’t we just try again?”

“Pointless!” she gasps. “It’s pointless!”

“Aw, come on, sweetie. Come on, now.”

“Just go. Just go away. I want to be alone now.”

He leans forward as far as he can, reaches out to touch her.

She swats his hand away.

“Go. Now.”

SuperKen shrugs, stands up from the wheelchair, and limps out of the bedroom. He takes one last look at his naked wife before pushing the door shut.

A good soldier knows when it’s time to retreat.

The Statistician rolls down the driver’s-side window of Hippie Avenger’s VW Microbus and hangs his right arm outside. Cool, damp air from last night’s storm rushes around his face and neck. Wet gravel hisses beneath the spinning tires.

He wishes that Hippie Avenger had come along for the ride, but she wanted to take a bath “before the morning bathroom rush hour.”

The Statistician vaguely remembers an old-fashioned drugstore in the one-stoplight town near Mr. Nice Guy’s cottage. He hopes it will be open on a holiday Monday; he doesn’t relish the idea of having to drive all the way back to the city to get a salve for Time Bomb’s I’ll-show-you-who’s-boss tattoo.

He wheels the Microbus up to the curb beside The Village Apothecary. A hand-lettered sign in the bay window announces, YEP, WE’RE OPEN, FOLKS!

Inside the cluttered, musty shop, a lanky young man with an unkempt red beard struggles to hoist multi-roll packages of toilet paper onto a shelf above his head. The job is made more difficult by the fact that he is missing his right arm at the elbow.

“Here,” The Statistician offers, “let me help you with that.”

“I don’t need any help,” he snaps. “I can do it myself.”

At the back of the narrow shop, perched atop a rickety stool, a heavy-set woman in a pink track suit admonishes, “Don’t take it out on the customers, Stevie.” Then she says to The Statistician, “He hasn’t been in much of a mood since he got back from overseas.”

“Oh?” The Statistician says, to the boy, not to the woman. “Where did you go?”

“Vacation in Afghanistan,” Stevie says, waving his stump in the air.

“He did us proud,” his mother beams. “He got hit while he was dragging fallen men out of the line of fire.”

“No big deal,” Stevie says. “Any one of the other guys woulda done the same thing for me.”

“It was a big deal. He’s being awarded the Star of Military Valour.”

“Mommmmmmm!”

“Hey, one of my friends was injured over there, too,” The Statistician says.

“Oh yeah?” the kid says. “What’s his name?”

When The Statistician mentions SuperKen, Stevie drops a package of toilet paper on the floorboards.

“You gotta be friggin’ kidding me! You know OC Douchebag?”

“Stevie!” the woman yelps. “Watch your language!”

“But, Mom! Remember the guy I told you about? That quarter-inch admiral who was always giving the big inspirational speeches about …”

“About the time his basketball team was down by ten?” Stevie’s mom says, jumping up from her stool. “And how they all pulled together in the final minutes to win the championship?”

The Statistician has heard that story many times himself. SuperKen had dunked the basket that won the game, of course.

“That’s the guy!” Stevie says. “OC Douchebag!”

His mother doesn’t correct him this time. Instead, she chortles, “The Parachutist!”

“No, it’s not the same guy, then,” The Statistician says. “My friend is in the infantry, I think. Definitely not the Air Force.”

“Nah,” Stevie laughs, “We just call him The Parachutist. After what happened, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. What happened?”

Stevie glances at his mother, then at The Statistician, then back at his mother again. “Well, if he’s your friend, I probably shouldn’t …”

“Please?” The Statistician says.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Stevie says. “You’re his buddy and all. So, like, what exactly did he tell you?”

“He said that neither Aerial Ordnance, nor Improvised Explosive Devices, nor Area Denial Munitions were factors in his injury. Or something like that.”

“Well, he’s right, they weren’t.”

“He said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss it.”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s true,” Stevie says, “but I can understand him not wanting anybody to know about it.”

“So what happened?”

Stevie glances again at his mother again. She shrugs and nods.

“Well,” he says, “we were on the transport plane, right? A C-130 Hercules. One big-assed plane, eh? Anyway, we had just set down on the airstrip, and OC Douche … your buddy, well, he decides to give this rousing speech about how God’s on our side, that we’re fighting the good fight, going after the infidels, et cetera, et cetera. Well, nobody’s really listening, and the commander’s looking at some maps up front. Well, normally on a Hercules you just wait for the rear cargo door to open before disembarking, right?”

“Sure, right,” The Statistician says, as if he knows a C-130 Hercules from the Millennium Falcon.

“Anyway,” Stevie continues, “the OC gets himself all charged up, throws the side hatch open, and charges right outta the plane, hollering, ‘Follow me, boys! Follow me!’”

It sounds to The Statistician like something that the Male Athlete of the Year would do.

Stevie kneels to pick up the fallen package of toilet paper. It’s tricky with just one hand, but he manages it.

“Like I said,” he continues, “the Hercules is a big-assed plane. And you normally exit out the back, so there was no ladder or steps or anything at the side hatch. The OC fell all the way down. Smashed his legs up real good.”

“No medal for him, I guess,” Stevie’s mom says.

“Probably not,” Stevie says, as he leaps in the air and tosses the bundle of toilet paper up onto the top shelf, like a basketball star sinking the winning basket.

When The Statistician arrives back at the cottage, SuperKen is sitting on the front steps outside.

“Hi there, OC,” The Statistician says.

“Hi … hey, did you just call me OC?”

“That’s your rank, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, but …”

“At the drugstore up the road, I met a kid who served with you in Afghanistan.”

SuperKen’s eyes widen. Play it cool, he tells himself. Play it cool. A good soldier never shows fear in the face of the enemy.

“Oh, yeah? And what was this soldier’s name?”

“His mother called him Stevie. He didn’t look to be more than twenty.”

“Tall, skinny kid? Red hair?”

“That’s him.”

“Private Steven James. Good kid. Good soldier. How’s he doing?”

“He’s missing an arm from the elbow down.”

SuperKen’s face turns white. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t know. Oh.”

“He was restocking the shelves. He didn’t want any help.”

“Good for him. Good for him.”

The brown paper bag containing antibiotic cream and rubbing alcohol for Time Bomb swings back and forth in The Statistician’s right hand.

The index fingernail of SuperKen’s right hand taps arhythmically on one of his titanium leg braces.

Finally, SuperKen says, “I suppose you’re going to tell everyone.”

“No. I’m not going to tell everyone.”

SuperKen thinks of SuperBarbie, naked and sobbing on the floor upstairs.

“I suppose you’re going to tell my wife, though.”

“No, I’m not going to tell her,” The Statistician says. “But you probably should.”

SuperKen sticks out his jaw. “And are you going to tell your wife that you fooled around with your brother’s girlfriend while she was still your student?”

“I … you … how …?”

“I’m not a math prodigy,” SuperKen says, “but I can put two and two together.”

The Statistician straightens.

“Yes. Yes, I’m going to tell her. She’s going to find out sooner or later, and I’d rather that it was from me.”

The Statistician steps around SuperKen, up the stairs and into the cottage.

“As a matter of fact, I’m going to go tell her right now.”

SuperKen says under his breath, “You’re a real hero.”