LEIF (Blake Security Book 3) (6 page)

NEW ORLEANS

PRESENT DAY

LEIF

              “You wanna play catch?”

              I was immersed in my thoughts and it took me a second to process the little voice was talking to me. When I finally looked up, Hunter was standing there, staring at me with those big blue eyes and holding a baseball in one hand and a Ninja Turtle glove on the other…backwards. “What’s that buddy?”

              “Do you know how to play ball?” I’d missed out on playing sports as a kid, but I tossed a ball around in the army with the guys more than once.

              “I do okay. What about you?”

              “I played t-ball last year. This year I get to play real baseball, but I need to learn how to catch better and throw farther.”

              “Well, the first thing we need to do is turn this around,” I told him, taking hold of the glove. I took it off of him and said, “Hold out your hand with your palm up.” He did as I asked him, and I slid the glove back on him. “It’s a little big.”

              “Yeah, Mom bought it,” he said like it explained everything. I tried not to smile.

              “Well, that was nice of her.”

              “Yeah, she’s nice…but she doesn’t really know anything about t-ball.”

              “No?”

              “Nope. She claps when I hit the tee, and she bought me a Paw Patrol bat and a Ninja Turtle glove.”

              “Not cool?”

              “It makes me look like a baby.”

              “Well, I’m sure that’s not what she meant for it to do.”

              “Nah, I like both of them, but I’m not four anymore.”

              “No, you’re not. Sometimes I reckon it’s hard for a mom to see that. You wanna throw the ball around a bit?”

              “Yeah!” His eyes lit up, and he looked as excited to play ball with me as I was that he asked me to play. I followed him out to the center of the backyard, and he threw it to me first. I saw right away what he was doing wrong, but I was afraid of hurting his feelings, so I picked it up where it had rolled and threw it back without saying anything. He put his glove out and held it there in front of him while the ball went over his head. “I suck,” he said.

              I did laugh then. “I don’t reckon your mama would be too happy to hear you say that word.”

              “Nah, she’d yell at me. But I really do.”

              “No, you don’t. Everything takes practice; that’s all you need.”

              “We don’t start practice for two weeks.”

              “You can practice anytime though. We’re practicing right now.”

              “Will you be here every day?”

              “When your grandpa’s home, I’ll be here, otherwise I have to be with him.”

              “Can you practice with me?”

              “Sure, buddy, as much as we can.” He grinned again. He looks so much like his mama. He bent down, picked up the ball, and started to toss it to me. “Can I show you something?”

              “Okay.”

I went over and stood behind him. “Lift your arm like you’re going to throw it.” He raised his arm up, and I took hold of it gently and pulled it back over his shoulder more. His little arms were so skinny. “Okay, hold that pose for a minute.” I went back around and stood a few feet in front of him and held out my hands. “Okay, with all your strength, launch it into my hands.” He put his little tongue out to one side and with a big “oomph” he let the ball go. I had to take a step back because he’d thrown it so hard, and it landed right in my hands. I think I was more tickled than he was. We whooped and hollered and high fived. It was a good feeling that doing such a little thing for someone could make them so happy. I hadn’t made anyone happy in a long time.

              “What’s wrong with your arm?” I looked down and realized my sleeve had pulled up and Hunter was staring at the scars on my arms.

              “There’s nothing wrong with it now, buddy. Those are scars. I got burned a while back.”

              “Can I touch it?”

              “Sure.” I watched his little face as he took one of his fingers and slid it slowly along one of the longest scars.

              “It’s smooth.”

              I smiled. “Yeah, the scars are smoother than the rest of it.”

              “How come?”

              “I’m not sure, buddy. I think because it’s newer skin maybe.”

              “How’d you burn them?”

              I wasn’t sure what you were supposed to tell a kid about war so I said, “I was at work and there was an explosion. It burned my gloves and the sleeves of my jacket caught on fire, too.”

              He made a face. “Did it hurt?”

              “Yeah, it did, buddy. I’ll bet your mom has told you to never play with fire, right?”

              “Yeah, she says it all the time.”

              “Well, she probably wants to make sure you remember. She doesn’t want to see you get hurt. It hurt awfully bad, worse than anything I ever felt.”

              “Did you think you were gonna die?” I thought about Gonzo, and while I watched him melt away, I did indeed think that I was going to die.

              “Yeah, buddy, I did.”

              “Were you scared?”

              “Yeah, I was really scared.”

              “My dad died. He was a soldier.” My chest suddenly hurt.

              “I’m sorry to hear that, buddy.”

              He shrugged. “I just wish I could have met him. I have a picture of him. Do you wanna see it?”

              I didn’t. I didn’t want to look at Leif Thompson’s face ever again. Just thinking about what he’d done to his family…both of them, made my stomach turn. But there was no way I could tell this little boy no. “Sure, buddy, I’d like to see it.”

              “I’ll be right back.” He ran into the house. I stood there and tossed the ball up and down while I waited for him to come back. I wondered how Karli would feel about me playing ball with her son. I didn’t have to wonder long. I heard the sound of her voice, and it cut through every raw nerve in my body.

              “Hunter what are you doing with that?”

              “I’m showing the guy.”

              “What guy?” Hunter raced back through the door, and Karli appeared almost instantly behind him.

              “This guy.” I caught the ball I’d just thrown up and gave her a little smile. She didn’t smile back.

              “Why is he showing you a picture of his dad?” Karli looked anxious. I tried to give her a reassuring look. I wasn’t about to say anything to Hunter about his dad. That wasn’t my place.

              “He just asked if I wanted to see him.”

              She looked like she was holding her breath as Hunter handed me the photo. I looked down at the face of the man I’d impersonated. Hunter’s blue eyes looked at me out of the photo and looking at it that way made it a little easier. I swallowed the bile in the back of my throat and said, “He’s a handsome guy.”

              “He was a soldier, and he was really brave, and he fought all the bad guys.”

              I smiled, and then I glanced at Karli. Her eyes were filled with tears. Damn. Hunter looked like he expected me to say something though so I said, “I’ll bet he was an amazing guy. I’d like to be that brave someday.”

              “Me too! When I grow up, I’m gonna be in the army too and fight the bad guys.”

              “You know, sometimes army guys do other things too besides fighting.”

              “Like what?”

              I looked up at Karli, and I saw that she was thinking the same thing I was…that day we ran into each other in Texas. It was the day I decided absolutely that fate or karma or whoever it was really wanted us in each other’s lives…if only for a moment.

********

KILLEN, TEXAS

2014
             

After I was injured in that explosion, I spent close to six months in the hospital in Germany. I had at least ten surgeries during that time. I was burned over eighty-five percent of my hands and arms, and there was a lot of damage to my lungs because of inhaling all of the chemicals that were burning that day. Our truck and the truck following us had been full of cleaning supplies that only served to make the explosion more lethal. I had to have one of my lungs removed and multiple skin grafts from the backs and sides of my thighs to cover the areas on my hands and arms where the skin was completely gone.  I lost three fingers, they re-made two of them for me. I also had a concussion…and the vision of Gonzo roasting to death in front of me haunts me to this day. You would think that a guy who had been through all that would want to run as far and as fast as he could from the army, but like I’d told Karli once, I ain’t never been accused of being normal.

The day I walked out of the hospital and reported to my new command, the army tried to get me to leave. I begged them to keep me and told them I’d do whatever they assigned me to do. There had to be something I was qualified to do. I was an officer by that time, so I could teach, or I could go stateside and recruit. I knew I had seen the last of combat—and I was actually okay with that. A little bit of getting nearly burned to death solves that whole wanting to be a hero problem. I just didn’t want to be alone again, on my own and trying to figure out how to survive in the world. I didn’t know how to do it, and my anxiety was off the hook. I was twenty-three years old at the time and I’d never lived completely on my own without someone telling me what to do. I was ashamed of the fact, but I knew that I needed that.

Someone took pity on me and assigned me to logistics on the base in Germany for a while. Two months after that, they accepted my re-enlistment papers and assigned me to Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. I laughed when I got my papers. I’d been assigned to honor guard detail. I never felt there was too much about me that was honorable, but I wanted to stay in so badly that I wasn’t going to even try and turn it down.

Before I left Germany, I was able to finagle an address for Gonzo’s family out of the clerk. I wasn’t a talker, but I was his commander…and I’d given the command that had ultimately gotten him killed. They deserved at least a courtesy visit from me. I dressed in my dress blues, and on my way to Fort Hood, I had the transport take me to a little town in Georgia. Gonzo was from a really nice neighborhood, and I found out that he came from really nice parents, too. They listened to me talk about him; I shared what memories I had of him and told them how he made me laugh. I didn’t tell them how he drove me crazy, but his brother, who was just a teenager brought up how much he liked to talk. I sat there with that family for over two hours, and after we talked about Gonzo, they wanted to know about me. I told them what little there was to tell, and before I left, laden down with homemade Mexican food and hugs and kisses from them all, I was given their phone numbers and told in no uncertain terms to call them if I ever needed anything.

Visiting Gonzo’s family was a double-edged sword. It made me feel good to talk about him with people who loved him and remembered things about him besides the day he died. It also made me feel even lonelier to know there were families out there like that. It’s all I ever wanted, and what I imagined in my head didn’t even come close to being that good.

I got to Fort Hood at last, and one of the first things I found out about it was that more soldiers deployed from Fort Hood had died in the Middle East than from any other base in the U.S. The town was one big funeral after the other.

As I learned my new duties, my biggest hurdle was learning how to fold the flag. It wouldn’t have taken me quite as long, but at that time, I was also still learning how to use my hands. I stuck with it though, and after a while, I was a flag-folding S.O.B. We were also the ones who marched in all the parades and made public appearances, so I even got a little better at talking to people I didn’t know. I grew tired of the barracks, so I found a little place just off the base that was close enough to give me a sense of security. The first day I moved into my house I met a girl named Chloe. I was taking things out of the truck, and she walked right up to me and started talking. She told me she’d been visiting her friend next door, and then she proceeded to quiz me. She wanted to know if I was married and if I had kids and how long I’d been in the army and even what my rank was. I’d heard about women who sought out military men to marry, but Chloe was the first one I’d ever met face to face.

She told me she was thirty-two and she “used to be” an exotic dancer. She didn’t mention that day that she was gainfully unemployed, but I found out soon enough. Before I knew it, we were dating and then way too quickly after that she’d moved in. I’d gone into it thinking she would be there for me and I wouldn’t be lonely and maybe I’d get over my unhealthy obsession with Karli. But the opposite actually happened. She was only in the relationship for what I could give her, and knowing that made me feel lonelier. Feeling lonely made me think of Karli and how happy I’d been for those six months we exchanged letters. The more she’d told me about herself, the more I wanted to know. In Chloe’s case, the more I knew, the less I wished I did.