Full Measure: A Novel (29 page)

*   *   *

Patrick was back before sunrise to move furniture out of the way for the flooring specialists. No sooner was this finished then the man called to say he wouldn’t be able to get to Patrick’s floor until mid next week.

“It has to be done before Saturday.”

“Not by me it doesn’t. Get someone else,” he said, and hung up. Patrick left messages at three other places but two hours later not one had called back.

When Salimony and Messina showed up Patrick drove fast to Joe’s Hardware, where he chose the most expensive wood finish in stock, a rich dark color like Iris’s, marked “Walnut.” He bought liquid stripper, a heavy belt sander and five grades of paper, wire brushes, big sponges, paint trays, brushes, paint thinner, and a jumbo package of red shop rags. Another two hundred and sixty bucks flew from his pocket, leaving less than eight hundred dollars from
Fatta the Lan.’

By eight fifteen he was sanding off the old finish in the living room, hoping to finish by the time the painting crew got done with the dining room. The painting boss morosely examined the drywall patches and added another hundred to the job to finish them off professionally, unless Patrick preferred for them to show. Taibo’s table saw screamed from the garage. Salimony and Messina attacked the living-room floor with coarse sandpaper. Patrick leaned into the hot screaming belt sander, still believing they could pull this off. They were United States Marines.

*   *   *

By Thursday the walls and foot rails had been painted, the chair had been returned, the mirror rebuilt, the china cabinet was ready for its glass, the aerial Cash farm giclée was hanging in its new frame, and
Free Spirits
had a place in the newly beautified dining room. The kitchen cabinets brimmed with new dishes, glasses, and goblets. The Italian vase looked good in the living room.

But the refinished hardwood floors were not right. The three men stood in the foyer studying the still-tacky floor. Very clear in Patrick’s memory was the burnished warmth that had once come from the wood—like it had candles underneath. But now the wood was brown and flat and invariable. “Looks like we drowned it in cheap paint,” said Patrick.

Messina looked down on it, nodding. “Or in shit.”

“And look where it meets the hallway,” said Salimony. “You can really see the difference.”

“Maybe it will look better when it dries,” said Patrick.

“Yeah, like dry shit,” said Messina.

Taibo came to the French doors of the patio, open for ventilation, and looked in. “You need to match the old finish, you idiots,” he called across to them. “The old finish had more red in it. So, Patrick, go back to Joe’s and buy red mahogany stain, and cherrywood stain, too. And get more of the walnut, and ten gallons of stripper and some more trays. I’ll help you get the color right.”

“That sucks,” said Messina. “Just these two rooms took two whole days.”

Patrick looked at his watch. “She said she’s getting in at seventeen hundred Saturday.”

“Back when she was still talking to you,” said Messina.

Patrick gave him a hard look. “We’ve got twenty-four hours to get this off, mix up the right color, and slap it on.”

“She won’t ever say another word to you if we don’t get these floors right again,” said Messina. “And that Natalie, isn’t she sweet as a honey sandwich? She probably won’t say another word to me, neither. So, let’s get some, Dark Horses.”

*   *   *

Twenty-three hours later, at five o’clock Friday, the four Marines stood in the foyer watching the wood dry. They were half-stoned from breathing fumes close-up for an entire day. Their backs and knees were sore and their hands were stained and scalded by the finish that found its way into the rubber gloves. But Patrick could see the old warmth back in the wood. It was radiant.

They sat exhausted and tipsy in the backyard, drinking tequila and beer left over from the party and eating Jack in the Box food that Patrick had fetched. The sky to the north was the brittle white of a storm foretold, but the sunset was a red-and-orange wonder far out beyond Pendleton. They lined up at the wall to watch. “Sangin’s sunsets were just as good but here we won’t get killed,” said Patrick.

“Not by woolies, anyway,” said Messina, lighting another cigarette.

“I saw Pendleton for the first time when I was eighteen years old,” said Salimony. “It was exactly eight years since I wrote President Bush that letter after nine-eleven. Right to the day—September twelfth. And when I first saw Pendleton, after growing up in Indiana, I thought, hot damn, I want to stay in California and live here when I get out. And now that’s what I’m doing. So this is my dream come true. According to this new study California is the most poorly managed and fucked-up state in the whole union. But it seems fine to me. Just look at it.”

“You been sniffing too many fumes, Sal,” said Messina.

“They don’t affect my dream.” He passed the big bottle to Taibo, who drank and passed it to Patrick.

“When I drink,” said Patrick, “I think of Sangin. And when I think of Sangin I think of you guys, and Boss and Zane and Myers. I think of Zane more than I should. I’ve got two cool dogs at home but I don’t love them the same way as I loved Zane. Once in a while I feel bad for loving a dog more than I loved most of the men. But it never was about love, not even crawling out through fire to tourniquet Prebble’s leg. I didn’t feel any love for Prebbs about that, but I did it.”

“You did a damned good job of it, too,” said former medic Taibo. “It saved Prebble’s life. Love is what you do, not how you feel about what you do. And you wouldn’t have run through fire to save a dog.”

After a long moment during which the sunset lost small gradients of light, Patrick said, “Before your time, Albert, before our first medic Adams went down, we were on a patrol and Zane dropped to the ground fifty meters from us. I could see he was on to something. Somebody whispered, ‘Oh, the heat’s got him.’ But I knew from the way he was looking at this twisted-up little tree that he was on a bomb. And he wouldn’t come off it. Crittendon couldn’t yell after him and call every skinny from miles around right to us. Then a sniper opened up. At Zane, not us. To this day I don’t understand why he did that, shoot at the dog, apart from pure meanness. So Crittendon yelled his head off trying to get Zane up but it did no good. The sniper kept missing—probably some village kid making extra money. Like having a paper route. We put the fifty all over him and I went and got Zane myself. God knows how many IEDs I walked over but the fifty kept the sniper down. I got to Zane and picked him up and carried him back. And I stayed away from that tree. When the Apaches came and sent the sniper to paradise, our bomb guys followed my footsteps back to the tree, and what did they find but a goddamned saw-blade IED dug in underneath it. So, actually, yeah, I
did
save a dog.”

“So you were like a dog medic,” said Salimony. “There ain’t nothing wrong with saving a dog.”

Patrick took another swig of the golden liquid. “If I could name one thing that the war stole from me that I miss most, it would be loving my own dogs.”

“Maybe you’ll learn how again,” said Salimony. “So, here’s to Zane and Myers and Pendejo and Adams and all the others who left it out there. Man or dog.” They touched their beer bottles and watched the rump of the sun settle behind the hills.

Patrick and Messina looked in on the newly finished living-room floor, found it acceptable, bumped fists. To keep from walking on it they went around the house to the front door. They came in and followed the hallway down, and in the closet of the spare bedroom found blankets and two rolled-up sleeping bags.

They drank and talked late and lay faceup to see the stars through the patio lattice. Every word went back to Sangin, and every space between the words. Twice they traipsed around to the garage and turned on the lights to see Iris Cash’s heirloom china cabinet, made newly resplendent by Taibo. Each time, Patrick circled it again and again, hawkishly looking for the tells of rebuilding, but he could see none.

Later back on the patio they drank and talked more. “This would be heaven for me, to live in this house in this place,” said Salimony. His restless leg bounced up and down beneath his blanket. “I don’t mean with Iris, Pat, don’t think that. I’m not saying with
her
. I’m just saying this is where I’d like to start over.”

“Patrick’s saying with
her,
don’t worry about that,” said Messina. “And I get Natalie, so cross her off your list too, Sal.”

“She’s twice as tall as you,” said Salimony.

“You wanna fucking fight?”

“No. I’m in a good mood.”

“If Iris ever talks to me again it’s thanks to you guys,” said Patrick.

“But we’re the ones who broke her place all up in the first place,” said Salimony.

Patrick thought about that for a long moment. “Naw. It was those dumbass jarheads from Pendleton.” They laughed. “Men? I love you all but we gotta get past this shit. Past Sangin. Past all of it. Into the future.”

“I’m going to end up some place just like this.”

“I’m going to end up some place like Natalie.”

“I’m getting a job with county paramedics,” said Taibo. “Soon as I get my certs.”

“How many blown-up men you treat in Sangin?” asked Patrick. “Dodging IEDs and getting shot at?”

“Can’t even count.”

“And that isn’t good enough for the county?”

“Nope.”

It was cold for them on the concrete in their clothes and blankets and lightweight sleeping bags, but not as cold as Sangin, not even close. Patrick dreamed of a gleaming white ocean liner leaving the dock, honking and steaming like in the movies, with Iris and Ted and everyone in his platoon, living and dead, waving goodbye to him. So he just climbed into
Fatta the Lan’
and keyed the engine alive to catch up with them but real life barged into his dream and reminded him that the boat was no longer his.
Fatta the Lan’
vanished, Patrick tread in the cold water, and the ocean liner kept on going.

*   *   *

He woke with first light, stood and kicked Salimony awake. Minutes later he and his friends were standing side by side, looking through the open French doors and into Iris’s living room. Patrick reached in and hit the lights. Even in the man-made incandescence, Iris’s hardwood floors were magnificent. Patrick let his gaze wander the rich planks, saw the warm illumination that came from within. He laughed quietly: mission accomplished. Salimony, Messina, and Taibo laughed, too.

Later, in stocking feet, they reinstalled the china cabinet in the dining room. To Patrick’s eye it looked perfect. Brushing a fingertip over the birdseye maple and nodding, even Taibo seemed to approve his own work. They picked up after themselves then shuffled—shoes and plastic trash bags in hand—across the dining room to the living room to the foyer and out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

By late morning Patrick and the rest of the Norris clan were in the grove filling sandbags. The special NOAA forecast was calling for a two-part storm—a large Alaskan front heading down from the northwest, aimed to collide with an unusually strong late-season hurricane coming up from Baja. The meeting point looked to be offshore San Diego. Too early to tell, said the TV forecasters, but it could be substantial. They promised to track this thing by the hour.

Patrick was always amused how San Diego citizens treated rain as an insult, while the farmers treated it as a birthright. But the forecasts aside, Archie had had a dream two nights ago about a deluge hitting his groves and sweeping them all the way down the San Luis Rey River Valley to the sea. Thus, preventive sandbagging and lots of it.

The morning was damp and the reeking ash and earth clotted their boots and weighed them down. Patrick labored and brooded about Iris and what he had done and failed to do. He willed his phone to ring but it did not. The dogs dug up a gopher hole, dirt and ash and straw flying between their back legs, faces caked with dirt.

“Sorry,” said Ted, dropping his shovel into the bed of his truck. “I can’t work anymore. The stabs.”

“I told you to have them checked again,” said his father.

“Hurts.”

“Of course it does, son. You don’t have to be out here right now.”

“Rest the wounds, Ted,” said Caroline. “Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Yeah, almost for sure, Mom. I’m sorry I can’t do more work.” Ted slowly rounded his truck and climbed in. He looked forlorn. Patrick watched the truck roll over the rise and disappear.

Caroline came over for more sandbags. “I’ve been worried about him,” she said.

“Let’s stand by him,” said Patrick.

“We always have,” said Archie.

“He needs us,” said Caroline.

By afternoon they had begun building sandbag walls along the contours of the slopes. Next they would fortify the downhill roadsides, and finally, build up both sides of the gorge that drained the groves when enough rain fell. It was backbreaking work, worse than stacking the Hesco blocks for security at Inkerman. The blocks over which the sniper still hit Pendejo, Patrick thought. He saw that it would take at least two more days to pile the sandbags high enough to do real good.

He had trouble paying full attention. He figured Iris was getting into San Diego just about now. He tried to put himself in her shoes and guess how she’d feel when she walked into her house. Dazzled by the improvement, or even more pissed off at what he’d done?

He looked up to see Lew Boardman on a distant hill, watching them. Boardman held his palms up and out, wondering what all their labor could be about. Patrick slung the bags with a vengeance. The hardest part was dropping forty pound bags accurately enough to not have to stoop and wrestle them around by hand. His father was strong and apparently tireless in his faith that this much-needed rain would come. Archie kept looking skeptically north and south, as if to daring it not to.

Hours later darkness closed in. On the drive home Patrick looked out at the dark skeletons of the trees but in his mind’s eye he pictured Iris stepping into her refurbished home, her face in a wondrous smile that told him everything he needed to know. The image was very much like the memory of her face that he’d carried overseas, but now it was more detailed and more real, and far more valuable. But what if she didn’t like what she found at home? What if she had been traumatized by his violence? What if she’d experienced violence before, making his unforgettable and unforgivable? Certainly she had been humiliated in front of her friends. What if she was ashamed of him and of her own misjudgment of him? What if she just disliked the floor? Or
Free Spirits?
What if Taibo’s china cabinet wasn’t masterful in her eyes at all? And the giclée of the Kenton farm? Why should she treasure something that had come out of a copier? How could she possibly be drawn to an electric shiatsu massage pad? Why did he feel like a fool?