Chapter 11
Later, we talked in the darkness with the raw honesty of new lovers. For me it was mostly confession. For Nelson it was a strange kind of stage setting. He kept trying to thread the needle between plans for life and plans for death. The carefulness with which he spoke of the future said to me that his statement about not dying may have been more wish than promise. I didn’t have the courage to ask.
Maybe the future is best without promises.
I told him everything that had brought me to this place. He couldn’t ever know me without knowing about the assault and everything that came after. My bloody experience in the field hospital and waking with the unit commanding officer beside my bed. The CO didn’t ask about insurgents that had taken and done this to me—he told me about them. When I told him it was men under his command who had done these things, he told me that I was confused.
I told Nelson all about the horrible convalescence in a military hospital in Germany. Army personnel, some of them lawyers, some just bureaucrats, visited me daily with sad faces and offers. If I accepted their truth and signed their papers I would be given an early but honorable discharge and stateside treatment. When I asked why I hadn’t been interviewed by the Criminal Investigations Division they always said they didn’t know anything about it.
It was a nurse who finally understood what was happening. She had seen it before. She called CID. Captain John Reach was the investigator that showed up. He took detailed notes, said the usual sympathetic things, and disappeared for a week. When he came back he said his investigation was complete, there was no evidence of the assault and no charges would be filed. Then he warned me.
Most people who never run up against the peculiarities of military law are astonished to learn that it is a crime in the service to accuse any superior officer of illegal action without bulletproof evidence. Nelson had been a marine and knew the code. Like most service people, though, he had never seen it in action. I had accused two men, both superior in rank to me, of rape. The only evidence I could give was my absolute knowledge of who had done it.
That was where the real honesty began. I admitted to Nelson, and myself for the first time, my own complicity in what happened. I had accepted my fate. I bought the Army line that the chain of command was sacred and over all else; it was the Army itself, the institution that I loved, which needed to be protected. After everything, I refused to resign. Then I was sent back to active duty with my company. Both of my assailants had been promoted and I had a new reputation within the command. It took another month for me to understand that there was no going back.
I would never fit into my unit again and probably nowhere else in the Army. So I talked to a reporter. I filed official reports with everyone I could reach. The institution responded with charges of its own and threats of a court-martial. I heard later that I was saved only by the intercession of a member of Congress. It was something I never expected or understood. I was saved, but my career was dead. Even after that I had tried to stick it out. Then came the patrol where my men all explained to me how they felt and, under fire, refused my orders. I’d almost had to shoot the corporal to regain control. It was over. My resignation was accepted without resistance.
I wasn’t even supposed to have been in combat situations. Officially women weren’t allowed in battle, but the wars on terror were different kinds of wars. There were no front lines and no facing armies. Everything was mixed up with civilians and militia groups, and women in the American military were under fire. No one wanted to hear about their successes or their failures. They just wanted the problems we presented to go away.
Nelson made the comment that at least it was over and behind me. That’s when I told him about the reappearance of Reach in my life and the accusation that I was somehow responsible for the killing of one of the men that had raped me.
He said he wouldn’t judge me if I was. I laughed, truly grateful for that statement.
Nelson told me his story. The contrast was stunning. Not because his experiences in Kuwait and Iraq were so different. Living and fighting within the artificial night created by a thousand oil-well fires had left its mark on him just as indelible as those on my skin and, ultimately, more dire. The contrast was that his story was all after war. Even dealing with the cancer in his lung, which was small-cell and aggressive, he had hope that his story was still ahead of him.
I hope so too.
When the talk slowed and the rain had become a steady drizzling, I turned my body into Nelson’s and cuddled onto his lap. I kissed him while I pulled his hand down between my open legs. Then I told him, “Do it again, please.”
He laughed and the warmth in his voice was joy in my ears when he said, “Anything for you.”
* * *
The next day was full of light and humidity. Moisture rose from the ground, giving the day a steam-heat texture. Every breath was like sucking through a wet blanket. Nelson said it was good for landscapes, that water droplets colored the air and made the heat ripple as it rose. He spent the morning painting on the top deck of the houseboat and only came down long enough for breakfast. I don’t think he was really hungry—he barely touched food—but I could tell he liked the company. We smiled at each other like kids with our first crushes. It all felt so good and, since I was on suspension already, I called and cancelled my next appointment with the therapist. That was a liberating feeling.
Dad and Uncle Orson tried to ignore us but I know they were laughing about it when we couldn’t hear. The pair of them had argued that morning in the parking lot. It wasn’t the usual kind of argument I’d seen between them a million times. This one was real. The fact they’d felt the need to sequester the conflict out in the parking lot, out of my earshot, said a lot as well.
It passed quickly, though. Afterwards, they went to the grocery store, still bickering. But I had the feeling that something big had been left unresolved. Something about me. When they came back, they carried enough food for a dozen breakfasts and then cooked it all.
We had grits and French toast, bacon and ham, eggs both scrambled and fried, and biscuits. Everything was slathered in real butter and enough grease to clog even my uncle’s sewer-pipe arteries. It was delicious and the best time—with the exception of the past night—that I’d had in years.
We had an entire day like that. The night was another thing of beauty and secrets. Nelson and I barely slept. But nothing good ever lasts.
The goodness ended just before noon the next day with the rumble of loud pipes. Eight motorcycles, some carrying two riders, came slowly down the road and aimed right for the dock. As soon as I saw them coming I grabbed the ancient Colt .45 that Uncle Orson kept under the counter and stuck it into my belt at the small of my back. “Call 9-1-1,” I said. Dad followed me. Nelson was on top of the houseboat and I would have shouted to him to stay there if I didn’t know he would ignore me. I went to the end of the dock ramp and waited.
Two of the riders were those I had encountered before: Cotton Lambert and, leading the pack, Leech. I’d suspected he was the one who had jumped me in Nelson’s driveway, but seeing him, I was sure. He was wearing a shiny-new metal brace over the knee I’d hit with my baton. Riding on the back of his bike was a woman. Even with glassy eyes and a bad dye job she looked more like a housewife than a biker girl.
Almost in unison the bikes died but no one got off.
“I want to talk to the painter.” It was Leech talking.
“You’re under arrest for assaulting a sheriff’s detective. The person you need to talk to is your lawyer,” I told him.
The whole group laughed like I’d told a joke. Looking at their numbers, I guessed I had.
“You ain’t no cop no more,” he said.
“Where do you get your information?”
“Shit, lady, everyone knows about that. You beat up a little kid. Tough cop.”
“Tough enough,” I said. “How’s your knee?”
“Fuck you,” he said but without much spirit. “Tell the painter it’s time to sell out and get out.”
“Sheriff’s department has already been called. They’re on their way,” I told him.
He spit his derision on the asphalt. “Lady, you local Barneys don’t worry me none. We’re making this county ours and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.”
He started his bike and the others roared to life right after. Without another word they circled and left. I could hear their pipes long after they were gone. As I was following the sound I caught sight of another generic-looking sedan parked in the lot. A rental car with Major Reach sitting behind the wheel. He was looking my way.
It never rains but it pours. I took a deep breath and glanced behind me. Dad was there just a few feet away. He looked ready to chew barbed wire.
“Did anyone call 9-1-1?” I asked.
Dad didn’t answer. He was staring across the lot at Reach, who must have stared back because my father spit into the lake. I had never see that man spit in my life. The gesture was so malevolent and intentional it made me wonder how well I knew my father after all.
Behind him, the shop’s screen door flapped open. Uncle Orson and Nelson both stepped out. Uncle Orson was holding a cut-down double-barreled shotgun, Nelson a fifty-year-old J. C. Higgins .22 revolver. They were both grinning like demons, just a little disappointed they didn’t get to shoot anyone.
“What do you think?” Uncle Orson asked.
Of course not.
“What’s a Barney?” Nelson asked.
“Barney Fife, deputy of Mayberry,” I heard Uncle Orson answer.
I’d turned and taken a couple of steps to go out and talk with Reach, when I had a thought. Sure enough, Dad was right behind me. “Wait here,” I told him. He didn’t even look at me. “Please?”
That time he looked. He nodded his assent, but I could tell he didn’t like it.
“Nice car,” I said as soon as I got close enough for Reach to hear.
“I’ll send a bill for the other one. Uncle Sam doesn’t like holes in the accounting.”
“You can just drop it off out there.” I pointed to the center of the lake. “That’s where all the junk mail goes.”
“You’re funny,” he said in a way that suggested that he didn’t really think so.
“What do you want, Reach?”
“Major Reach, United States Army. A full twenty years. Don’t you forget it.”
“That’s the beauty of being out. Your rank doesn’t mean squat to me. I get to save my respect for real soldiers, not just any piece of polished brass that shows up. Now you’re taking up my day. What do you want?”
“You need to come in and have a sit-down. There are a lot of questions you need to answer.”
I laughed. I’d learned a lot in the last several years. “Kiss my ass,” I told him.
“You can be compelled,” he said.
“That’s the thing. I can be compelled if there’s evidence or just cause. But you’re no Mr. Nice Guy and you’ve never been subtle. If you had the authority to compel anything we wouldn’t be here talking. You’re firing blanks in the dark, hoping to scare me. I don’t scare as easy as I used to.”
His eyes narrowed and I could see the muscles in his jaw knot up and release like he was trying to crack nuts with his teeth. I was right and he knew it too.
“There is new evidence,” he finally said. “It seems that Homeland put Sala Bayoumi into special rendition. He’s being questioned out of country and he’s using a lot of familiar names. Yours is definitely on the list.”
“I thought you said evidence,” I said.
“The evidence is a wire transfer from a U.S. Intelligence account to Bayoumi before Rice was killed.”
I looked over the top of the car into the houses and greenery sloping up and away from the lake. It was hard for me not to see the sand whipping over mud walls and feel the blood dripping from me again. Hard, but not the impossibility I had come to believe it to be.
“You better rethink that one, Reach. It’s going to blow up in your face.”
“Would you consider yourself a credible, uninvolved source?”
“No game on this, and you can check it out. I never had access to any funds while I was in and I sure haven’t had access since. Looking for an intelligence op that would authorize killing of a serving Army officer is above your pay grade.”
I expected some kind of comeback or new accusation. Instead, Reach looked past me. When I turned, there was my father. He was looking just as hard at Reach.
I turned around and started walking back to the dock.
“Hey, Hurricane,” Reach called.
Without answering I stopped and looked back.
“The other guy, Captain Ahrens. You remember, he was a lieutenant when you knew him. Did you know that he’s been married three times? Seems every time he finds true love his wife gets a mysterious package that contains the entire written file on your case. All your statements. Your description of his ring and how you said you knew who he was. Funny thing how they all believed it. Poor son of a bitch can’t see his kids, can’t have a marriage, he can’t even hold a job. What do you think of that?”
“Karma,” I said. “She’s a bitch.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Karma just can’t seem to let this one go.” He started the car and did a wide turn passing between me and the dock to go out the same way the bikes had.
As soon as he passed, I ran to my phone and called Darlene. This was the best chance we’d had to catch Leech. By the time units responded, the road was empty.