Dwelling (6 page)

Beneath Mooney, Johnathan could see Sergeant Cobbett’s barreled chest and pudgy gut, with more chins than a Chinese take-out, cussing more than a sailor on shore leave.
Guys like Cobbett could only exist in the Army during wartime,
only when Uncle Sam needed warm bodies to swell troop surges.
Johnathan watched these faces and many more floating just beneath the brim of his coffee. There were flashes of sound, as well. Shouts. Laughing. Screaming. Gunfire intermittent with small talk about home, about what they were going to do with their deployment capital, the
moolah
they’d earned while in theater, combat action pay, hazard pay, basic allowance for housing, basic allowance for substance, etc., etc.
If you were careful
, he recalled,
you could blow your entire savings at AAFES. The one on Victory was like a fucking Walmart in the sand. Potbellied fobbits getting fat on Burger King and burning money on nonsense junk like basketball shorts, Slurpees, television sets, Xbox, Playstations, Tim McGraw and Cash albums, magazines, every assortment of shit to make crazed hoarders believe they’d found the Promised Land. Anything and everything they could grab up and make themselves feel like they were home, but that was the lie, wasn’t it? The desert wasn’t home and making it feel that way was dangerous. It was all junk food. And junk food kept you docile, complacent. Soon you’d find yourself on mission, with your mind far from the field and back at home, thinking about mama’s chicken dumpling soup or your wife’s soft lips and blush cheeks. You’d think of Christmas trees and caroling, even though you never went caroling a day in your life, but because you couldn’t you wanted desperately to do it. You’d sit there, swinging dick in the turret, thinking about everything but where you were and—BOOM! You never saw the IED.

Or maybe you did. Maybe we all expected to die over there and when those of us who did come home came home confused all to hell. Like, ‘shit, what are we going to do now?’ We’re told we were lucky, brave, and heroic even, but we, I don’t fucking feel very heroic. I feel like a bastard cut loose in a world that’s hardly recognizable anymore. Is this the story I’m supposed to share tomorrow?

Johnathan began to pray, not that he believed in such things.
Why couldn’t Randall mind his own fucking business and go himself? I’m not ready for this kumbaya bullshit. This ‘be proud of your wounds’ lackadaisical baloney.
The ripples in his mug ceased. And from the dark brown murky depths his heart froze. Down below, he looked into the young boyish face of his dead friend, Ricky Smith. He was wearing his Kevlar helmet, the chin strap hanging loose against his Kevlar collar. His Specialist Shield, or
sham shield
, as Ricky and the other E4’s had a habit of calling themselves. Johnathan watched his best friend floating in the mug, watched as his young vibrant face transfigured into molten ash. He was screaming from beneath the ripples, screaming for the pain to go away. Screaming
…
screaming
…
screaming
…

“How are you coming with your speech?” asked Karen.

Johnathan jerked, spilling some of the coffee on the table. Karen looked at him with mild concern. Tabitha was still behind her cereal box, seemingly unaware.

“Still working on it,” said Johnathan gruffly, wiping the brown spill with his napkin.

“You’ll do great. I know you will.” Karen beamed. Her face, her eyes, felt warm and reassuring. Though she may worry about him from time to time, she had no doubt he would be okay, especially in a group of his own fellow wounded veterans.

Looking into her smile, Johnathan could feel the resurgence of tears coming back up. He quickly collected his empty plate and mug and hobbled over to the kitchen sink.

“You’ll get there, John. I know you will,” said Karen, standing, collecting Tabitha’s Cap’n Crunch box, much to her young protest, and joined Johnathan in the kitchen.

Johnathan smiled and took hold of her. He held her close and kissed her, slowly and deliberately. “Thank you,” he said, pulling back, still holding her in his arms. “Thank you for believing in me, even when I can’t.”

Karen said nothing. She pulled Johnathan closer and hugged him, hard. It was a deep meaningful hug filled with warmth. He closed his eyes, breathed in her sweet shampoo.
What is that? Fructis?
Whatever it was, he loved it. When he opened his eyes again, he could see his coffee mug still sitting on the kitchen island. Ricky’s burnt corpse was screaming silently beneath the dark brown ripples.

CHAPTER 7

BOBBY’S CURSE

Bobby

Dusk was coming. Bobby had spent the entire day walking, partially running, something he hadn’t stopped doing, even after his hasty exodus from the Army and the embarrassing
Chapter 5-13
handed down from some quack
fifth-floor wizard
. Bobby was heading south, on a wayward journey toward Santa Fe, toward Luna’s place in Hitchcock, toward his cage.

Bobby had to stop several times to scrape shards of broken glass from what remained of his shoes. These were his best pair, his only pair. Worn to the bone Nike Jordan’s. The elongated check mark well faded beyond recognition. These were Bobby’s old running shoes from his soldiering days, back when they had been pearl white and the logo burned bright red. Now the only thing that burned was the heels on his feet. He could feel blood pooling in his socks.

Bobby ignored the pain, as much as he could. He could not stop, not without consequence. Not for drink. Not for food. Not for anything. Not even the itching desire to panhandle on some littered intersection holding another poorly constructed cardboard sign inked in blood to make enough change for a bottle of whiskey.
No
.
Not today
. Bobby kept his feet moving. Dusk was coming and tonight there would be a full moon.

Luna would have taken off the locks.
Please God, let Luna have unlocked the cage.
Bobby prayed. Over on the horizon, the sun was dying into a ridge of commercial buildings and multiplexes. From the look of the sun, Bobby knew he hadn’t much time.

He started trotting as fast as his bloodied feet would carry him. Each step was a painful reminder that he desperately needed new shoes. In an attempt to block out the pain, he thought of Luna and the last time he’d made the trip toward that old, rotting batting cage, his temporary salvation.

Luna owned land on the outskirts of Hitchcock, land her grandfather had left her. It wasn’t much to look at now, overgrown with rotting logs and orange-rooted Oriental bittersweet weeds, but Bobby could tell it had been something else entirely in some past era, perhaps when her grandfather had been alive. From what little Luna had mentioned of the man he seemed the type to enjoy gardening, mowing, and battling with stubborn weed-eaters, a real panorama of blue-collar culture.

The batting cage was hardly visible now, blanketed with a vast civilization of vine weeds. Bobby favored the Madeira vine the most because the weed made everything it covered seem like large green sleeping giant. Though most of the cage was covered, the east side of the fence, which faced Luna’s modest two story country home, was free of debris, as was the gate and the curious collection of Master Pad locks and the three thick steel chains wrapped around the post.

Luna would keep it locked.
Except for today, she keeps the batting cage locked…Oh God, I hope she unlocked it. What if she didn’t? What are you going to do hero? What if she’s not there? The area is rural enough, but there are still people around. How far would
It
go? In towns miles away. No telling. No telling. Jesus, I hope she unlocked the gate…I hope she’s there.

Bobby turned right down some unnamed, war-torn back-country road, the afterbirth of Houston proper. There was an awkward signpost, bent deep at the gut, its head hanging low in an overextended bow.
Route 510
.

Kicking up pebbles and trash, empty soda cans, and beer cans, Coors, Bud Light, Lone Star…
God I could go for a drink about now
. Bobby pressed on. The debris tumbled down from I-45, disregarded from the countless thousands of travelers heading either toward Galveston or north toward downtown Houston. The roar of passing cars grew steadily lower, much to his pleasure. Bobby hated the noise.

Getting ready to cross the road and into the underbrush, a cantankerous rumble rattled up from behind. He twisted his neck and watch as an old aqua-blue colored Volkswagen Bus pulled by. The driver must have been a novice, grinding between second and third gears. Bobby smiled. A puff of angry grey smoke plumed out of the exhaust. A snap-crackle-pop proceeded as the driver found his gear. The Woodstock era van with the flat nose and near oval windows and wood paneling down the skirts reminded him of when he first met Luna.

A dizzy woman with a head overflowing with lush red hair, which he thought was odd at the time. He’d never known a black woman to have natural looking red hair before. Portions of it she had pulled together by rainbow-colored juju beads and a flower-print bandana, covering most of her clumped and crusty looking dreadlocks. She wasn’t old enough for
Woodstock
, but perhaps she’d been to
Burning Man
a time or two.
Not much older than me.
Her skin was moderately brown and smooth. Her eyes told the story of a few traveled off-beaten paths. Yet, despite the weathered bags clinging beneath her remarkably bright greens, she beamed with absolute tranquility. Despite the discovery of a full-grown, naked homeless man sleeping—
more like passed out
—near a shallow brook around the northern reaches of her estate, she stood there smiling, amused perhaps. But she wasn’t scared. That in itself said something about her character.

Yes, Bobby remembered the morning well. Naked. Cold. Hungry. The bitter taste of iron in his throat.
Dear, God, what did I eat?
He recalled wondering. His nails were dirty; the ground around him looked patted down, the way deer beds look in the woods amongst a thicket of underbrush. He was covered in an unpleasant mix of sweat and grime.
The transformation always took a toll
.

Bobby could see vaguely in his mind, running toward the rural south of Pearland, trying desperately to reach the old oil pumps, the ones that ran without the need of a crew, or at the very least, the bayous. He wanted to get there before…
the change
. Bobby could recall only flashes. Pain mostly. But sometimes he could remember an image. He remembered once looking at his hands, the skin kneading like dough, stretching beyond rational limit in hellish Polaroids. The feeling of
changing
was always the strongest. The change itself was an echo of memory that clawed up his spine, memories of bones snapping with a sound eerily similar to pecan shells cracking, revealing the delectable nut inside, black fur sprouting with the sting of needles. His teeth would grow, sharpen. Nails would elongate and curve downward. His human form would disappear; reforming into something else…something Bobby did not have a word for, because he’d never actually seen the form itself, only the shredded memory of it.

And then he would black out. His mind protecting him from the horror, or so he’d assumed. Then he would come to, in the morning, waking with a terrifying jolt from the nightmarish dreamscape. Naked. Cold. Alone. Lost.
Where had It gone this time? Did It—
I
—hurt anyone?
And there was Luna, smiling down at him.

If she only knew
, Bobby remembered lamenting.

Luna had been collecting flowers, or something, from the overgrown juniper bushes near the outskirts of her property, her grandfather’s estate—land he’d left her in his
Last Will and Testament
. Luna didn’t talk about her parents much, but had mentioned something about a car crash and…well…Bobby could fill in the blanks.

The morning of their first meeting, Luna had found him the way Bobby typically would find himself, dirty, naked, and unabashed. Waking in his
birthday suit
, as he remembered his mother always called being naked, but it never bothered Bobby the way
normal
folks would be bothered by it. Being
exposed
felt cathartic. What surprised him the most was how
normal
Luna seemed with it all.

It was like stumbling upon strange naked men in the field was an everyday occurrence for her.
Whatever had been going on in her mind, none of it mattered. She had been kind to Bobby. And for that he felt he owed her more than his usual gruff demeanor. He hadn’t felt or allowed kindness in some time. He would never mention love, but something was there, an unspoken bond stronger than mere acquaintanceship, neither would approach. And she took him home. Gave him access to a hot shower and a warm meal of kimchi flavored Maruchan Ramen Noodles.

Bobby remembered thinking about Seoul, South Korea then and how it had been years since he’d tasted anything with kimchi. The spices and the shower and the clothes she allowed him to borrow were more kind than words could describe. He was eternally grateful. He’d never had the pleasure of meeting a woman as kind as she, except for maybe Karen, Mags’ little sister,
Johnathan’s wife
.

As Bobby ate, he discovered another uncanny aspect of his new benefactor. Bluntness. He’d just slurped up what remained in the bowl when Luna asked, “Do you know you’re a werewolf?” Bobby nearly spit. “A what?” he asked on the verge of laughing. But he searched her eyes and found no humor there, only curiosity, and perhaps a little concern as well. He’d thought it was maybe pity, but from what he could gather, Luna did not strike him as a woman who pitied. Pity is not a kind virtue.

“I don’t know what I am,” Bobby had said, stabbing at the lone noodle that remained in the bowl. “But…”

“But you change. Something happens every twenty-nine days or so, give or take, you become something…well…My Memaw called the creature
rougarou
. I think that’s French for ‘white wolf,’ or close enough to it. But the others from her coven simply called the condition lycanthropy,” Luna said matter-of-factly.

“Coven?” Bobby had asked.

“Is that a problem?”

Bobby did not look at her. Inwardly, he was dismayed. He’d never imagined It, the thing inside him, his,
How did she say it?
condition, had a name.
How does she know so much?
Why does this all feel so normal for her?
Doubt had bubbled, but he quickly dismissed it. Sanity lost its seat in Congress when he started waking up naked, bloodied, and with broken shards of memory, glimmers of some unpleasant, impossible thing every month for the last year.
Too often
, Bobby could admit that much to himself.
Too many risks. Too many nights.

“That’s okay, hun, you don’t have to say it out loud, but you know what I’m talking about. What you’re doing is dangerous. Letting the wolf run free,” Luna continued.

“What am I supposed to do?” Bobby finally had said.

Silence lingered between them for some time. Neither would speak, but Bobby had thought about it, he’d thought about
It
a lot. But
suicide
was somehow not an option for him. He’d tried before, God knows he did. Several times, but he always pulled back at the last moment, as if some cruel cosmic force was keeping him from jumping in front of moving cars, or some overpass, or his favorite, overdosing on pills and booze. Whatever or whoever the puppeteer was, it kept him in his condition. Not allowing him to end the pain, the loneliness, the misery of being what he was.

“Look,” Luna had said, “my grandpappy was an avid baseball fan, even played for the Galveston White Caps minor league during the 1950s, or so I was constantly reminded when he was among the living. Anyways, even after he stopped playing professionally, he loved
‘going to the bat,’
as he called it. He built a small batting cage here on the property. It’s mostly overgrown now with vine, but it hasn’t rusted away. The links and the gate are still strong. Strong enough…”

Bobby recalled glaring at her. His eyes darting back to his barren bowl. For the first time in a long while, he felt…ashamed.

“You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. I’m just offering you a safe…well, a relatively safe place to keep yourself when the moon is full. It beats the hell outta letting it roam willy-nilly, don’t you think?”

“What do you want?” Bobby remembered asking bluntly. He hadn’t wanted to ask, he thought Luna was too kind of person to have any ulterior motive, other than helping an absolute and total stranger. He didn’t want to believe her kindness was some cruel ruse, but he’d lived on the streets long enough to know better than to trust anyone, no matter how you felt about them.

“Huh?” Luna had sounded genuinely taken back.

“What do you want?” Bobby repeated.

“Nothing, Bobby…” Luna looked hurt, or so he remembered. “I’m just offering. I’m not selling you some timeshare…though the idea sounds pretty good, right? Maybe find some other
rougarous
. Maybe set up a row of cages. Charge rent. Make some good money doing that, huh, hun?” Her sarcasm had been thin, but evident.

Bobby recalled feeling embarrassed. He couldn’t look at her. He had felt ashamed for even asking, questioning her motives, despite having just met her. But could he really be blamed? How long had he been living on the streets? How many people had gazed upon him with
that look
, the look of superiority and disgust? How many signs had he held asking for just a little bit of change to buy a cheeseburger or maybe something a little stronger to make the cold and lonely sufferable nights with the memory of yesteryear a little bit easier and had been ignored? God forbid he held a sign that said
‘
Help a
Veteran
.’