The Hummingbird (21 page)

Soga and Yoriko exchanged words. “Which is your proudest tree?”

“Most folks get excited about myrtlewood,” Donny said, “ ’cause we grow them great around here. But I say there’s only one king tree in this part of the country.” He pointed to the furthest row in his place. “The redwood.”

Soga smiled his widest grin. He murmured a reply, gazing at Donny’s face while Yoriko translated. “My father requests if he may purchase a redwood tree.”

Donny shrugged. “Long as he uses good American dollars.”

She spoke again. “After purchase, my father invites you to join him.”

“In what?” Donny put his hands on his hips. “This some kind of joke?”

“My father wishes you to help him plant this proud king tree at the shrine for the people who were killed by his bomb.”

IN THE PHOTO,
taken that afternoon and published in the
Pilot
the following day, an all-male group stands arrayed beside the monument. The exception, Yoriko, remains behind her father, face turned as if she would prefer to be invisible. Soga, because the digging caused him to perspire, persuaded Piper Abbott not to photograph him in his shirtsleeves. He has just put his suit coat back on. He holds a shovel, its blade resting in the soil. He is shaking hands with the mayor, the tree beside them as slender as a fawn.

The other shovel lies on the ground at the feet of Donny, who stands on the photo’s periphery, fully an arm’s length away from the nearest person. His position indicates either a photographer too shy to instruct him to join the line, or a man unwilling to move one inch nearer to the events at hand. His face is as pinched as if he has just eaten a lime. His arms are crossed, hands fisted, eyes narrowed. The body language is unambiguously articulate: Donny Baker III is furious.

CHAPTER 14

SPACKLE, TAPE, AND PAINT—
those we had in the garage already. But on the way home from the Professor’s, I drove to a construction supply store for drywall. I had not enjoyed eating breakfast in a kitchen with two circular holes in the wall, and I was not looking forward to dinner there either.

There was a line, all builders and carpenters collecting material for the next day’s work. I stood waiting, acutely aware of my yellow skirt, while men in work boots ordered plywood or pipe, shingles or nails.

“How you doing today, ma’am?” The guy had sidled up without my noticing: tall, lanky, tan as leather with bright green eyes. He wore a red t-shirt like all the store’s employees and a name tag that said “Andy.”

“Hi,” I said. “Hello, I mean.”

He tongued a matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Help you find something?”

“Drywall. But just a small piece, for a wall repair.”

“Hate it when that happens, don’t you?” Andy ambled off. “Lean your chair back too far, or carry a ladder without paying attention, and suddenly you need a quarter sheet and not an inch more.”

“Yes,” I said, following him. “Or swing your tennis racket in the kitchen.”

“Right,” he turned to grin at me. “That’ll do ya.”

What a ridiculous moment. Why did I lie to him? Something about his rolling gait, his long-limbed ease. It was the opposite of Michael. Plus he looked about twenty-five years old. What would he know of post-traumatic husbands?

“We might have something in scrap.” He led me past a display of ceiling fans, through corridors of windows and doors, until we reached the rear of the building. I stayed a few steps back, watching the tape measure sway in his tool belt, spotting the gap on one side between his t-shirt and loose jeans, a glimpse of skinny flesh.

“Hey now.” Andy pulled up short. “This here looks promising.”

A broken drywall board leaned against the wall, four feet by eight, with a bend about two thirds of the way down. “Let’s see how we do.” He squatted, running the tape measure out each way. “You got a clean twenty-six inch piece on this end, and maybe forty, forty-one going the other way. Either of those do it for ya?”

I leaned toward him. I mean, what was the harm? He turned, and his face was inches from mine. He smelled like sunburn. I smiled. “The smaller part would be perfect.”

“Lucky day.” Andy pulled out a box cutter and sliced away. Straightening, he held the shorter segment out like a platter. “Always glad to make something useful out of something broken.”

“You’re so right,” I said. As I took the segment we made eye contact, and he smiled, in no rush to break away. It was a little thrill, I admit it. A sensation I hadn’t experienced since before Michael’s third deployment. Not that I needed the flirting of a stranger to make my days worthwhile. Only that this Andy made me feel like a desirable female again. And I liked it. “What do I owe you?”

“On the house,” he said. “It would have gone in tomorrow’s trash anyhow.”

“Well, thank you. I owe you one.”

Andy smirked, moving that matchstick again. “You come back anytime.”

As I placed the drywall on the passenger seat, I enjoyed a little daydream, the first of its kind in a long, long time. In my imagination, Andy asked me oh so casually out to the back lot behind the sheds, all weeds and privacy and shade, or to some empty office upstairs in the store. Maybe it was a weak moment. Maybe my marriage was in greater trouble than I had allowed myself to realize. But in the fantasy, I said yes.

Then I started the car and steered for home. And I admit it: Instead of feeling guilt, everything was lightness and the windows were open. I turned the radio up loud.

“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

Michael came into the kitchen with sweat rings under his arms. His face was red too, whether from exertion or emotion I did not know.

I was kneeling by the wall, the pair of holes from his barbell punch now cut to a single neat square, repair tools on the floor, a spackle scraper in my hand. “I’m patching things up from yesterday.”

He put his hands on his hips. “I should be doing that.”

“I’m happy to.”

Michael shook his head. “You should have left it for me to fix.”

“I don’t mind, lover.”

He barked: “Stop calling me that.”

“Why?” I stammered. “Why wouldn’t I call you lover, Michael?”

“Because it’s a fucking lie.” He began pacing by the kitchen table. “And you know it. I haven’t been your lover in almost a year.”

Ouch. It was as if he had drained me dry. And I did not pause to fill myself with kindness. “What am I supposed to call you then? Milk?”

He spun on his heel. “Who told you about Milk?”

“Joel did.”

“Fucking Joel.”

“You need to understand something, Michael,” I said, looking down at the scraper. How I wished I was not on my knees just then. “There is a ceiling, you know. A limit to what I can withstand.”

“Are you kidding?” Michael sneered. “I knew that before our wheels touched down on U.S. soil.” He paced again. “Hell, I knew it when I was still in Iraq, watching wives ditch my buddies by the week. We all knew. It’s not like on TV, one video after another of joyous family reunions at some football game, or sitting in Santa’s lap, and surprise, Daddy’s home. For every one of those, there are five hundred like us.”

“Well, I only realized it this afternoon. And I am not ditching anyone. I am just admitting that there is a limit.”

“That’s what you say now.”

“Why are you so hard on me, Michael?”

“Cause life is hard on
me
. Times ten. Got a nice call at the shop today. Another guy from my unit ended himself. Troy, from Ashland.”

“Oh honey, I am so sorry.”

“Running the car in his garage,” Michael scoffed. “Total lack of originality.”

It was troubling to consider that my husband had developed a hierarchy for methods of suicide, apparently with points for creativity. Before I could say anything, though, he had yanked open the screen door.

“Why are you always leaving?” I asked him. “Where are you going?”

“Same as ever: Back on patrol.”

The air pump eased the door closed behind him. The kitchen was painfully quiet. I looked at my repair job, all of the prep done, and decided to pack up the tools. I would leave the hole there for now. It was closer to the truth.

TO WIPE BARCLAY REED’S FACE AFTER SHAVING,
I used the softest terrycloth hand towel in the house. He poked his jaw forward to give me better access. When I returned from throwing the towel in the laundry, I evaluated the man watching television from a wheelchair.

He had lost ground during the night. His skin had taken on the waxy appearance of a body not getting enough nourishment. His skull seemed to stick out from his neck. The Professor was in rapid decline. If there had been a family, this is the day I would have told them to gather distant relatives and begin making farewells, because it would not be long.

“You’re staring,” he said.

“Making sure I didn’t miss any spots.”

“Is that so, Nurse Birch? Or are you trying to see through my poker face and decide whether or not you believe my book?”

“Does it always come back to that? To belief?”

“To a historian, no other question matters. To a discredited scholar, all the more. Where do you stand today?”

“Honestly?”

“That is the only way I wish you ever to speak to me.”

I picked up the black binder and flipped through the pages. “Well, I’m skeptical. No offense, Professor, but this guy is acting like some kind of Gandhi. The world would not forget such a person. Everyone in Oregon, at least, would know his story. There’d be a Soga High School, or Soga Park, or Soga Boulevard. Right?”

“One would hope.” He picked at the tuft of hair on his forehead. “Or, conversely, the lack of such places would evidence the need for a book such as
The Sword.
”

I heard the front door open and close. Melissa must have arrived early for her shift.

“So what’s the point of this section, then? The pilot has already given up his sword. Why plant a tree?”

“He has begun to empathize with his adversary. He is engaged in a dialogue that reveals his former opponent’s inner thoughts, and thereby gives him the tools to persuade that enemy to join him in peace.”

“Isn’t it usually the victor who determines everything when a war ends? Isn’t that who shapes the peace?”

“You are confused, Nurse Birch.” Barclay Reed closed his eyes, keeping them that way long enough that I thought he might have fallen asleep. Then he blinked back into our conversation. “Formal policies between nations bear little connection to the actual attitudes of their people. Soga is three decades past the days he released four bombs, during a conflict in which all sides dropped bombs by the tens of thousands. The Japanese surrender ended the fighting, but it did not give him peace within himself.”

I heard Melissa in the kitchen, fussing at something, which meant that my shift was over. But it barely registered. “So why plant a tree?”

“Only through genuine empathy with the former enemy can soldiers of both sides become humans again.” He waved a TV remote at me. “Consider your husband. Is he at peace?”

“Hardly,” I said, feeling uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. But my mouth opened, and I revealed all kinds of private things. “Michael didn’t go to make war on anyone. His mission was reconstruction. Maintaining equipment and vehicles for building water systems, schools, roads. The insurgents? Their mission was chaos. All they wanted was to see the place burn. I mean, who shoots at guardsmen who are trying to build a sewer system?”

“It may be extremely difficult to find rapport with enemies whose primary goal was disorder.”

“And who are still at it today, busy as ever. So it’s not like he can buy a plane ticket to Baghdad, quick make some Iraqi friends, buy them a beer, and it’s all over.”

The Professor stewed for a minute. “Perhaps,” he said, then paused.

“Perhaps what?” I asked. “I’m listening. I am really listening right now.”

He turned to me with the strangest expression, as if our conversation had been abstract until that moment, and now he realized that my husband was an actual person, with actual pain from an actual war.

“Perhaps there is some way he may yet empathize with his adversary.”

“Professor, I just explained. How can he possibly do that with insurgents?”

He looked me over again. It was like a mirror, how his stern gaze caused me to consider. “Perhaps they are not his adversary anymore.”

“Who else could it possibly be?”

The Professor switched on his television, foreign news filling the screen, the volume too loud for my taste. I could not press him at a moment like that, but I sure wanted to. He had cut the conversation off in the middle, and I realized that a person refusing to speak is every bit as frustrating as one refusing to listen.

Damn this job sometimes. I put the binder on the desk and left the room to brief Melissa on his pain and anti-nausea meds, as well as the night ahead.

When I came out of the bedroom, I found a woman standing by the gong with her back to me, hands on her hips. Dressed all in black, her short hair teased into a dark spiky thatch, it was definitely not Melissa. She was staring out at the glimmering lake, tapping one foot as though the view bored her.

I drew up short. “Hello?”

The woman took her time turning. She had an Asian appearance and was working her jaw as though something was stuck to her lower lip. It made her look more than a little scary. If Melissa was ill or had to cancel, I could not believe the agency would send this person to fill in. “Excuse me, who are you?”

“I’m D,” she said.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“D Reed, dammit.” She crossed her arms. “His daughter. Now who the hell are you?”

THE NEXT HOUR WAS
what the Professor would call an inquisition. Every decision questioned, every plan challenged. D was not the first family member in my experience to confuse medical intervention with love—sometimes they are opposites—or to equate the badgering of caregivers with providing care herself. Yet every time I suggested she go say hello to her father, her response was to fire a new barrage of questions.

When she started asking about pain-medicine dosages, I explained that health care privacy laws did not permit me to answer.

“How convenient,” she glowered, storming away into the living room.

Melissa arrived and I briefed her in the entryway. She had an unpleasant night ahead of her. On my way down the driveway I switched on my phone, intending to call the agency and let them know that—surprise—our patient record was incorrect. Barclay Reed did indeed have surviving family, which could raise all sorts of questions. Also, I wanted to warn them about D’s attitude, and the likelihood that she would have complaints.

Before I could dial, my phone pinged with half a dozen voice mails. Three were from Michael’s number, three from a number I didn’t know. Please, not the police again. They had made it clear they would not give him another chance. Before I had listened to the first message, my phone rang.