Backwoods (13 page)

Beth was always the ace of Q words,
he
remembered, smiling now at the thought. They’d always kept a
dictionary at the table when they’d play, because invariably Beth
had come up with new Q-but-no-U words that neither he nor his
mother had ever heard of. He’d pulled one that night with his mom:
qadi,
a type of judge in Islam. It had seemed rather fitting
at the time.

Stretching out on his bed with his head and
shoulders propped up on pillows, he balanced the scrapbook against
his lap and thumbed through the pages, reading through the articles
again. His gaze lingered on a full-color shot, the cover of an
issue of
Discover
magazine that showed Moore standing in
among a trio of men, all dressed in white lab coats looking
somberly at the camera.
Playing God,
the tagline read.
The world’s leading geneticists race solve the mystery of
life.

He had told Dani about what had happened the
night before after she’d returned to the barracks, how he’d noticed
Alice outside and had followed her to the lab building.

“You mean, you went inside the house of
pain?” Dani had asked, wide-eyed. “What’s it like? What did you
see?”

“Not much. Just a lot of signs warning about
biohazards.” He’d told her about Lucy the Siamang and the curious
little playroom where Alice had brought her to play Candyland. He
had also mentioned the scrapbook.

“Dr. Moore won a Nobel Prize?” She’d gawked
at him. “You’re kidding! What’s he doing here, working for the
Army?”

Andrew had been admittedly curious about that
himself.

Because he’d been able to tell from Dani’s
face, the way her brows had lifted in tandem, that her curiosity
had been piqued, he’d said, “The book’s still up in my room, if you
want to look at it.”

That was when she’d talked him into helping
her squad fix dinner. “You can show it to me after that, what do
you say?” she’d suggested.

Someone knocked at his door, and Andrew
jerked in guilty surprise, slapping the scrapbook closed and
shoving it off his lap. “Who is it?” he called, flipping the corner
of the bedspread over to cover the book, then rearranging a pillow
over top to further camouflage.

“Corporal O’Malley,” came the reply.

“Hey,” Andrew said, puzzled as he opened the
door.

“Hey.” O’Malley gave him a friendly nod, then
held something out—the shirt he’d given to Alice earlier. “Dr.
Montgomery asked me to bring this to you. Said it’d probably be
best if Dr. Moore didn’t find it in the apartment.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Andrew took the shirt from
the corporal, then carried back to the bed, using the opportunity
to drop it on top of the pillow covering the stolen scrapbook.

“I hear you won last night,” O’Malley said.
“The pool tournament. Good job.”

“Thanks. But I have a feeling Dani could’ve
handled those guys just fine on her own.”

O’Malley leaned against the doorframe, a
comfortable posture, folding his arms across his chest. “The way I
hear tell of it, you pretty much ran the table.”

Andrew shrugged. “I got off a couple of lucky
shots, that’s all.”

Even though O’Malley smiled as he spoke and
his words were affable enough, something in his demeanor was cool,
the same sort of tension palpable as it had been when he’d asked
Andrew if he’d found something funny about serving his country.
Then, as now, his eyes fixed on Andrew and stayed there, pinning
him. “The way I hear tell of it, sounds like you and Dani hit it
off pretty good last night.”

Andrew fumbled for a moment, then said,
“She’s, uh, a good player.”

“I meant after the game,” O’Malley said
mildly. “Today, too, out in the garage.”

He’s been trying to get in her pants since
the day he got here,
Matt LaFollette had said about O’Malley.
Langley said he was the only guy he’d ever seen who was
pussy-whipped without getting any pussy.

“She’s a nice girl,” Andrew said.

“Yeah, she is.” Unfolding his arms, O’Malley
stepped away from the door, walking slowly, idly toward Andrew.
“The thing is, Santoro’s a really nice girl. She’s the
only
girl here besides Dr. Montgomery. I try to look out for her around
here on account of that. You know, like she’s my sister.”

“Sister.” Andrew nodded once. “Right.”

O’Malley smiled, patently condescending. “You
seem like a smart enough guy, Just-Andrew. You can see where I’m
going with this, can’t you?”

Andrew met O’Malley’s gaze evenly. “I think
so.”

“Good.” O’Malley nodded once. “I wanted to
make sure we’re on the same page, you and me, so we don’t have to
have this conversation again. I don’t like to repeat myself. And
you got a nice face.” He chuckled, patting Andrew’s cheek. “I’d
sure hate to mess it up.”

With a frown, Andrew knocked his hand away.
“Fuck you, O’Malley.”

O’Malley laughed again, then turned, walking
out the door. “See you around, Just-Andrew.”

****

At dinnertime, Andrew headed down to the mess
hall with every good intention of backing out of his promise to
help Dani’s squad. O’Malley’s thinly veiled threat still weighed
over his head, the veritable Sword of Damacles. More than this,
though, his own mental remonstrations echoed in his mind, and he
knew it would ultimately be in his own best interest to give Dani
Santoro as wide a berth as possible for the rest of his stay. As
much as he disliked the idea.

Dani, however, had other plans.

“Forget it,” she said, presenting him with a
large plastic bag filled with green peppers, enough that he had to
cradle it with both hands to carry it. “I spent three hours this
afternoon trying to clean the silt out of your radiator and flush
your fuel lines. You owe me.”

“You worked on my Jeep?” he asked, surprised
and absurdly touched.

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she
replied. “Come on over here. We’ll get started on the peppers while
the others work on the meat and sauce.”

As they crossed the kitchen, she paused at
different cabinets or steel tables where soldiers gathered, hard at
work. At each one, she’d introduce Andrew to her squad members.

“This is Boston,” she said, pointing to a
young man busy lining large aluminum foil baking sheets with
pre-cooked corn tortillas. He nodded once in greeting to Andrew,
sparing him a glance before resuming his layering. “Over there is
Hartford, and that’s Maggitti, Reigler and Spaulding.”

“Hey,” one of the privates, Reigler, said to
Andrew, lifting his hand in a quick wave without letting go of the
metal spatula he used to stir ground beef sizzling on the flat-top
griddle.

“How’s it going, man?” said another, PFC
Barron, who stood over an industrial-depth sink basin draining
enormous cans of stewed tomatoes.

Dani set her bag of peppers at an empty
workstation. She motioned to Andrew and he positioned himself
opposite her, watching as she slid an enormous wooden cutting board
between them. “Barron, there, he’s from your neck of the woods, I
think. Didn’t you say you were from Alaska?”

“Anchorage,” Barron told her, with a curious
glance at Andrew.

“Fairbanks area,” Andrew said.

Barron grinned. “Ten bucks says the Seawolves
take the Nanooks this year by at least three.”

Andrew laughed. “You’re on, man.” Because
Dani looked at him, visibly puzzled, he said, “Hockey. There’s a
big rivalry between the college teams in Anchorage and
Fairbanks.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “Me, I watch the
Rangers.”

He tried to hold the pepper the way she did,
with her fingertips curled slightly under, to best avoid whacking
the tips off inadvertently. She moved her knife easily in a fluid,
up and down, hinged motion he tried unsuccessfully to mimic.

“You’re pretty good at this,” he noted.

“Yeah? I’ve had lots of practice.” With a
demonstrative wave of her knife, indicating the other soldiers, she
said, “Someone’s got to show these guys how to cook.”

“O’Malley said you’re the only woman
stationed here. Besides Dr. Montgomery, I mean. That doesn’t bother
you?”

“No.” Dani laughed. “Not really. I’m pretty
much used to it. You don’t see a lot of women in my line of work.
I’m the youngest of four sisters. So these guys here…” Again, she
motioned with her knife. “The ones in my regular Guard unit,
they’re all like the brothers I never had.” With a pointed look at
Reigler, most readily in earshot, she added with a grin, “Some of
them, the ones I never wanted.”

“Yeah, that’s what O’Malley told me earlier,
too,” Andrew said. “That you’re like a sister, I mean.”

“Really?” Her brow arched. “Sounds like you
and Thomas had quite the conversation.”

Andrew laughed dryly. “You could say that,
yeah.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Andrew didn’t expect the warm welcome he’d
received from Dani’s squad mates would be extended that night in
the mess hall, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was.
O’Malley, however, was conspicuously absent.

“I wonder where he is,” Dani murmured with a
puzzled frown.

“Yeah,” Barron, said. “It’s not like O’Malley
to miss a meal.”

“He needs to,” muttered another soldier,
Reigler, making the others around him laugh.

“The Major was looking for him earlier,” said
a third, Spaulding. “Maybe he’s in a briefing or something.”

After supper, Andrew offered to help with the
remaining dishes. “No, thanks,” Dani said, plucking his tray from
his hands before he could sputter in protest. “We’ll take it from
here.”

Back upstairs in his room, he lay down on his
belly atop his bed, watching a video he’d borrowed from the staff
library downstairs, the cringe-worthy
Universal Soldier
with
Jean-Claude Van Damme.

When Dani came to the door, she knocked
softly and he scrambled up. Without even asking who was there, he
opened the door, then smiled. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” she said. “Still want to let
me see that scrapbook?”

“Of course. Sure. Come on in.” He sidestepped
to give her room. “You want a beer?”

“You bought one of those six-packs from the
PX?” she asked, eyes widening. “They’re, what, fifteen bucks?”

“Twenty,” he replied, fishing one of the
still-cold bottles of Bud Light—the only variety the canteen
offered—from the pack beside his bed and twisting off the cap. “But
it’s okay. My wallet’s all dried out now. My money, too.”

Taking the bottle as he held it out to her,
she shook her head and laughed. “You’re crazy.”

Sitting down against the side of his bed, she
took a long swig. “Oh, man,” she said, closing her eyes and sighing
happily. “That’s good. I haven’t had a beer since I got here. I
haven’t wanted to pay that much for them.”

He leaned against the wall, but reached out
to tap his own bottle against hers in a toast when she offered. He
couldn’t help but notice yet again the conspicuous absence of a
wedding ring on her hand.

“Okay, let’s see it,” Dani said, and his
attention snapped from her finger to her face.

“What? Oh, the book. Okay. Sure.”

She scooted back on the bed to make room as
he sat down beside her, lugging the scrapbook out of its hiding
place in a dresser drawer and setting it between them. He showed
her some of the articles he’d gone through, giving her time to read
each.

“This place is a hospital?” Dani asked,
tapping the photo of Moore and Alice standing outside of
Gallatin.

“A state mental institution, I think it must
be,” Andrew replied. “She told me her mother had to get a court
order to have her committed there, and Dr. Moore had to petition
for another one to get her out.”

“How long was she there?” Clearly, the
haunting image of Alice cradled in her father’s arms, her eyes
vacuous, as if she was a life-sized doll, troubled Dani. A slight
cleft had formed between her brows and her lips had pursed, an
unhappy frown.

“Three years.”

“God,” Dani whispered. “How could someone do
that to their child?”

“I don’t know.” Andrew shook his head. “Alice
told me she used to be violent, hitting and kicking. She said she
was better now, but still, I can’t imagine. I mean, it’s a little
strange sometimes, the things she does. But she’s a nice kid.”

Closing the scrapbook, Dani pushed it away as
if it was something soiled. “I don’t understand. You said Alice
told you Dr. Moore was doing things to those chimpanzees to make
them smarter, their brains grow.”

“Siamangs,” he corrected.

“Whatever. I wish we could get into that lab
and snoop around some, try and find out what he’s up to out
there.”

As he swallowed the last of his beer, he
pivoted, tossing the bottle with a practiced ease into the waste
can in the far corner. “We can. I know the pass code. Alice gave it
to me.”

“You’re kidding,” she exclaimed, beaming.
“Let’s go, then.”

“Wait.” He caught her hand as she moved to
leap from the bed. “It’s still daylight out. There are soldiers all
over the place. We need to wait until it’s dark, when everyone’s
gone back to the barracks and Moore’s working in there alone.
Otherwise we’ll get caught.”

“Oh.” She nodded, and with a dejected sigh,
sat again. “Shit.”

“It’s not that bad,” he said with a laugh.
“I’ve got plenty of beer. And a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.”

She groaned.

“Or we could talk about your kids.”

At this, she smiled again. “Deal.”

****

Dani returned to her room long enough to grab
a small photo album. She and Andrew sat against the headboard of
his bed, their knees drawn to their chests, sipping beer while she
gave him the photographic grand tour.

“This is Eme in her Cinderella dress,” she
said, pointing.

“Did you make that?” he asked, leaning
forward to peer more closely.