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“Yeah, well,” Bobby says, “there isn’t much choosing about it when the alternative is bad enough.”

“A son of mine.” Dad shakes his head. “Thrown out of the army.”

“Not too pretty, is it?” Bobby says. “I’m sure you won’t blame me for not hanging around pretending I’m some kind of hero in front of your friends.”

He waits a moment for Dad to say something, but no response comes, so he turns to Mom. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you before you got everyone over here. Or maybe I should’ve just stayed away.”

“Don’t say that,” Mom tells him, her voice cracking.

“What are you going to do, feel sorry for yourself now?” Dad says, and I want to yell at him to shut up. I want to order him and Mom both out of the room because they aren’t doing anything to help, just like they didn’t help the last time Bobby got in trouble and they sent him off to the war.

Bobby just smiles a heartless smile, his mouth like a cold, twisted strand of wire. “No. What I’m going to do is get the hell out of here. This isn’t where I belong. Not anymore.” He dodges around Dad and heads for the hall, bumping his shoulder against the doorframe on the way out.

“Bobby,” Mom cries, but Dad just says, “Let him go.”

Let him go
. That’s all.

For a moment I stare at Dad, expecting him to change his mind and go hurrying after Bobby. I want to hear him say, “Come back, son. We don’t care anything about any general discharge. Getting caught with drugs doesn’t change what you did in the war. You’re still a hero to us.” But he doesn’t say that. He just stands there.

“God.” I look from Dad to Mom and back. “I can’t believe you two. Can’t you see this is all your fault? All this talk about being a hero and you were such big cowards you wouldn’t stand up for him when he needed it most. Well, if you’re not going after him, I will.”

I burst out of the room, but when I get to the top of the stairs, Bobby’s already halfway down and doesn’t turn around when I call after him. Chuck is standing at the bottom of the stairs, but Bobby doesn’t even seem to recognize him. He just tears open the front door and leaves it hanging open behind him.

Outside, about halfway down the block, I finally catch up to him. “Hey,” I say. “Do you think a stupid general discharge means anything to me? Who cares? It doesn’t even sound bad. So, you had some hash on you—a soldier has to unwind after being in battle. We’ll get a lawyer and fight it.”

“Go home, Ceejay.”

“You don’t even have to go to the lawyer’s office. Just give me the discharge, and I’ll take it over there Monday morning.”

“You think I saved the paperwork? It’s not like I thought someone was going to want to hang it on the refrigerator.”

“But it’s stupid. They just can’t do that to someone like you.”

He stops and glares at me. “Someone like me? What do you think I’m like, Ceejay? You think I’m still that same guy I was in high school? You think I’m the tough dude who protected you, who stuck up for little dudes against bullies? Well, I’m not. That guy got killed in the war.”

He stares at me for a moment, and it’s like someone else is looking through his eyes.

Chuck pulls up to the curb in his truck. “I figured you might need a ride,” he says through the open window. Bobby looks off down the street. “Do me a favor, Ceejay. Go back to the house and pack my stuff up in my duffel bag. I’ll come get it tomorrow.”

“You mean you’re not going to stay at home?”

He opens the door to the pickup. “I don’t even know what home means anymore.” He gets in the truck and I stand there and watch it get smaller as it heads down the road.

This isn’t right, I tell myself. This isn’t right. Nothing is right in this whole frigging world.

Standing on the front porch, Mom looks like someone slapped her, while Dad looks more like he’s ready to slap someone, anyone. “Good job, Dad,” I say as I walk up to the porch. “You really handled that well.”

He just glares at me. Mom reaches her hand toward my shoulder. “Ceejay,” she says, but I just brush by. Inside, people stare at me like I’m some bank robber’s sidekick, but who cares? They’re not my friends. I don’t have anything to say to them. Instead, I go out to the backyard where Gillis, Tillman, and Brianna are still hanging around scarfing burgers. “What the hell happened?” asks Gillis with his mouth full.

“Nothing,” I tell him. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

We pack into Brianna’s car and drive by Chuck’s, but no
one’s there, so we drive around looking for Bobby. Up and down the streets we go, but no luck.

“He probably doesn’t want to be found,” Brianna suggests.

“I wouldn’t if I was him,” Tillman says.

I whip around and look at him in the backseat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I just don’t think I’d want to go back to the party after freaking out big-time like he did.”

“He doesn’t give a damn about that,” I shoot back.

“Then what is it?” Brianna asks.

I don’t really want to tell them about Bobby getting kicked out of the army, but they’ll find out sooner or later. No need to sugarcoat it either. I tell them about the hash and everything.

“But that doesn’t mean Bobby has anything to be embarrassed about,” I say. “The ones who gave him that stupid discharge should be embarrassed. They should be ashamed. Squeezing everything they can out of a soldier, then throwing him over for one mistake.”

“You can’t really be shocked, though,” Gillis says. “I never could see the military lifestyle mixing too well with a dude like Bobby. Too many rules.”

“Shit,” adds Tillman. “I wouldn’t last six months in the army myself.”

“Just think,” says Brianna, “now you don’t have to worry about him going back to Iraq anymore.”

They’re just trying to help, I guess, but I still feel all tangled up. Driving hopelessly around Knowles doesn’t do any good either, so after about an hour, I have Brianna drop me off at home.

The party’s over, of course. I’m sure Mom and Dad didn’t come out and explain Bobby’s exact situation, but everybody was bound to know something weird was up. I can just imagine
how it must have gone. Mom putting on her smiley face. Dad taking his station at the grill, trying to crack bad jokes. People probably hung around for a while just to be polite—it’d be rude to let the food go to waste. I’m sure they even tried to look like they were having fun. But after tossing their paper plates and plastic forks in the trash, one by one, two by two, three by three, they made their excuses to leave. And that’s out of politeness too. Only bad guests would keep their hosts smiling fake smiles any longer than they have to.

When I walk through the door, the parents are in the backyard cleaning up. Usually I’d help but not right now. I don’t want to see my parents. Don’t even want to hear their voices.

In my room, I crank up “Emerald Soul” and blast it loud and heavy. I have this feeling I need to be somewhere else, like another dimension or something, but I don’t know how to get there. And yes, I’ll admit it, the tears come flooding out. That’s okay, though. Nobody’s around so it doesn’t really count.

When the song ends, I dry my stupid eyes and pick up my phone. I have to talk to someone, but who? Definitely not my sisters. They always take our parents’ side against me. Chuck wouldn’t be bad, but he wasn’t home when we went by. For a long time, I lie there just holding the phone. It’s smooth and warm in my hand. Finally, I dial every digit in Mr. White’s phone number but one. Then I take a deep breath and press the last one too.

“Hello?”

“Padgett?” Using Mr. White’s real name for a change sounds funny coming out of my mouth.

“Ceejay?”

I ask him if he has time to talk and he says he does. Only Mr. White wouldn’t have anything else to do on Saturday night. At first, I mumble around, not sure of where to start, but
then he says, “It’s about Bobby, isn’t it?” and I tell him yes, and everything busts out from there.

I tell him about the restaurant the other night and all the beers Bobby had today, how he talked about the song “Emerald Soul” like it was a magic spell that somehow got drained of its power, and how he freaked out thinking the burgers smelled like burned human flesh. And how he finally admitted the army booted him out for possession of hash.

Luckily, Mr. White listens without coming back with a single theory about why Bobby did what he did. I slide off the bed and sit on the floor and pour out my memories of Bobby before the war and how we were the only ones in our family who were the same and what I thought and felt the whole time he was away. I ramble and ramble, and all Mr. White says is
yes, mmm-hmm
, and
I see what you mean
, and that’s exactly what I need.

I talk for over an hour. My mouth is dry and my throat is sore, but I can’t hang up. Even when the words stop coming, I can’t hang up. After a stretch of silence, Mr. White says the best thing he can right now, “I could come get you and we could go riding around if you want.”

“That’d be good,” I say. “I’ll be standing in the driveway.”

Once he picks me up, we go driving in no particular direction, neither one of us saying a word. He must sense how hollow the town seems to me right now, so he heads into the country, onto the narrow highways and fire roads. Finally, he parks beside a field that’s clotted with old oil-patch equipment.

We get out and climb the fence, and he leads me over to an oil drum lying on its side, and we sit there and look across the field. “I love the way this stuff looks in the moonlight,” he says. “It’s like modern sculpture.”

“Looks like the rust and the weeds are taking it over.”

“They’re not taking it over,” he says. “They’re taking it back. It’s beautiful.”

He picks up a pebble and tosses it in the direction of the rusted remains of a pump jack. You have to like the way he looks right now. I’m not going to try to kid anybody and say he’s handsome, but his face has character. You know, like Abraham Lincoln or somebody.

“Have you ever thought about what it’d be like if you died?” he asks.

“You mean like would I go to heaven or hell?”

“Yeah. Or anything. It doesn’t have to be heaven or hell necessarily. I mean, who wants to go to heaven with a bunch of jerks who didn’t understand you while you were here? No, if I died I’d want to have my ashes spread out in a field just like this. That way it’d rain and the sun would shine down, and I’d end up part of a stalk of grass or a weed, even. That’d be good, I think.”

“You might end up being part of a worm.”

“That’s all right. Worms aren’t so bad.” He smiles at me and I have to laugh. An hour ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever laugh again.

“So, does that mean you don’t believe in God?”

“I didn’t say that. But maybe God’s not sitting on some throne up in heaven, moving everyone around like a bunch of chess pieces. Maybe God’s everywhere. You know?” He waves a hand toward the field. “That’s how I look at it. God could be like this pure energy. For all I know God could be the Yimmies like the captain’s always talking about.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “You’re going to have a hard time convincing me God’s hanging around here.”

He studies me for a second. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Here I am,
rattling on about some theory while you’re worried about your brother.”

“That’s all right. I guess I just need to have hope, huh?”

He’s quiet for a moment, his face somber.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says. His voice sounds odd. The confidence has cracked. Suddenly, it occurs to me that maybe he has some things he needs to talk about too.

“You know, it’s weird,” I tell him. “You talk about what you’re going to do in the future when you get out of this town and all, but you never talk about your past life, like why you moved from the city to a dumpy little town like Knowles in the first place.”

“You don’t want to hear about that.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I want to hear about it. You’ve listened to me whine all evening. I’d be pretty crappy if I couldn’t return the favor.”

He picks at the back of his hand like he’s trying to remove a scab. “Okay, but it’s the same old story you hear a million times—boy thinks everything’s fine at home, or at least not too screwed up, and then
bang
, his parents split up.” He pauses. “My mom and dad were both social workers—you’d think they’d get along great, having so much in common and all—but I guess she was having an affair with their boss, this older dude with a big, fat head. Apparently Dad had no idea. Then this department supervisor dude got some bigger job out of state, so Mom comes in and tells Dad she’s leaving him.”

“Jesus, that’s pretty ugly.”

“Yeah. She gave me the whole tired cliché about how just because she and Dad fell out of love, that didn’t mean she quit loving me. Then she moved away and I haven’t seen her since. So much for her still loving me, huh?”

“I don’t know. People do weird things.”

“Dad pretty much lost it, started drinking, missing work. Got fired from his job and ended up working at a Big Buy store, wearing one of those blue vests and a name tag. He hated it. Then he got fired from there too. Next thing I know it’s like I’m the parent, trying to save him from himself.”

He pauses for a moment before going on. “Finally, he had this bad car wreck with me in the car. He was drunk and blew through a stoplight. This little Toyota rammed right into his door. He was the only one who got hurt—broken leg—but he ended up in rehab. I guess he was lucky he didn’t get tossed in jail. So, anyway, I moved over here to stay with my aunt. He’s back home now, but he’s not exactly in shape to take care of anybody but himself for a while. Maybe that’s why I want to save the world—because I couldn’t save my family.”

“Maybe,” I say, not really wanting to get into the psychology business right now. “So why didn’t you move in with your mom?”

He stares across the pasture for a moment. “I talked to her about it, but she said it wasn’t a good time. Something about how she was trying to put her life together with her new dude. Maybe later, she said.”

I’m like, “Wow.” I mean, what else can you say?