The Traiteur's Ring (6 page)

They walked in silence, and Reed figured maybe  his friend needed that more than idle bullshit chatter.

Real friends know when to shut the hell up.

He watched Ben absently twirl a ring on the middle finger of his right hand and realized he had never seen Ben wear jewelry before. The ring was a deep purple and looked to be made of polished stone.

“Christy give you that to help you remember she’s back home so you don’t fuck up?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” Ben asked. His voice sounded a little annoyed at being brought back again from wherever he kept going.

“The ring, dude,” Reed said and gestured towards his friend’s right hand. “Never noticed it before. Christy give it to you?”

There was a weird, long pause, and Ben opened his mouth, shut it again, and turned to his friend with a blank look.

“Yeah,” he said finally and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Christy gave it to me before we left.” Then, he gave a half-assed smile and looked down at the ground, his mind flying back off to wherever it had been.

Reed felt sudden concern that something might really be wrong with Ben. He had never seen him like this in the several years they had been friends and roommates. SEALs didn’t think much about post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and they talked about it even less, but he wondered if maybe it looked like this. He started to ask Ben if he was alright and, then, thought better of it and instead walked beside him in silence.

The chow hall was pretty crowded as usual for this time of day. Their compound held only a small number of people: Army Rangers, a Delta detachment, the pilots from the 160th for the helos, and two platoons of SEALs, as well as intel and support staff. It was a few hundred people – small for the task they had been given to root out and destroy the growing Al Qaeda network in this part of Eastern Africa. The chow hall was smaller still, though, and had only a single line to a row of metal serving dishes over small heating elements. Past the line stood a station of water and sodas and a few bowls of fruit and salad. Not much, but way better than MREs.

Ben and Reed went through the line without talking, except to return greetings from several folks who passed by on their way to the long rows of folding tables. Reed felt himself growing more uncomfortable with Ben’s uncustomary silence and by the time they stopped by to grab drinks and fruit, he found himself unable to bear it. He led them to the end of a long table.  The other end was filled with Rangers, talking in the hushed voices of Special Forces warriors.

“So,” he started and took a huge bite of some kind of meat over some kind of rice. “Pretty crazy, huh?”

He watched Ben take his own half-hearted bite and nod.

“Yeah, crazy,” he agreed.

“Dude, what was the deal with that old man?”

“Whaddya mean?” Ben answered and looked more than a little uncomfortable.

Reed watched his best friend closely as he spoke, searching for signs.

“I mean, he was a strange dude is all,” he said. He took another bite of his food. “Were you there when he got smoked?”

Ben put down his bite and sighed. He looked a little more like himself, and Reed thought he might open up a little.

“Yeah,” he said. “I got there just before. He was taking care of the little girl when I got there, and I tried to help him.” He stopped and looked at Reed as if summing him up – making a decision maybe. He smiled a small, sad little smile and, then, dropped his food to his plate. “I don’t know, bro,” he said. “I don’t know what it is about him that is so haunting. Did you…” he paused and his brow furrowed like he didn’t know how to say it. “Did you, kind of feel like – I don’t know – like he was trying to communicate with you somehow?”

“What, you mean like when we met him in the morning?” Reed tried hard to understand what Ben was talking about.

“Yeah,” Ben’s eyes studied him closely, and Reed tried to take the question seriously but felt unsure of what Ben was really asking him.

“I couldn’t understand half of what the ‘terp said,” he replied with a chuckle, trying to lighten his best friend’s heavy mood, “much less the gibberish the old man was using.”

Ben sighed. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. Not the answer he seemed to be looking for.

“Look, bro,” Reed said and leaned in to talk softly. “What’s up? What’s got ya?”

“I don’t know,” Ben answered, but Reed knew he did. “Been here too long I guess. Jesus, that was horrible – that massacre. And, then, the old man, just – I don’t know. And, the little girl. I mean, what will happen to her now?”

That’s it. It’s the little girl.

Ben was the “take in the stray” type – always had been. He had always known his buddy to be more sensitive than most. He was a helluva shooter, a born sniper, and a perfect SEAL.  The other side of his personality, though, always seemed so stark in contrast. This time it just showed itself on the job was all.

“Look, bro,” Reed said. “I know how much it sucks, but we saved her life, dude. I wish we could have saved them all, but shit, man – sometimes it just is what it is, you know?”

Ben nodded, and his eyes looked wet.

“We’re the good guys, man. We’ll make sure the survivors are taken care of, but what else can we do? You and Christy,” he paused and looked at Ben carefully, “you guys are great. She is way too fuckin’ good for you, but she loves you, man. Maybe you’re just kind of feeling that settle down thing? Maybe just wondering about making it real and having your own kids, you know?”

His friend smiled at him, but his eyes looked a little far away.

“That could be it,” he said.

Reed scooped up another big spoonful of meat and rice – pretty tasty, actually.

“Yeah,” Reed said, relieved to have sorted it out. “Let’s eat and work out, and then it’ll be time to call her.”

Talking to his girl will fix this.

“Okay,” Ben dug into his own plate. “I gotta stop by the clinic and check on the little girl first, okay?”

“Sure,” Reed answered, losing a few grains of brown rice down his chin. “I’ll go with you, alright?”

Ben nodded.

At least he didn’t say “my” girl that time.

Chapter 6

The comfort of having a mattress under Ben’s back, no matter how thin, outweighed much of the heaviness in his heart. Reed had been right, he realized as he stretched luxuriously out in his rack separated from his teammates by a series of camouflaged poncho liners hanging from the low ceiling. Talking to Christy had washed away so much of the weirdness for him that he now had trouble distinguishing between what actually happened and what was just crazy Cajun imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time that his bayou childhood and genetic predisposition for weirdness made him see ghosts where none existed.

The downside of his longer than usual call home was the deep longing he now felt to be there. His team was away more time than they spent back at the beach – with training evolutions and operational assignments – and he had never minded that. He loved coming home to Christy, but he loved his brothers in the teams just as much, and the balance had always worked.

Something changed for me in that village.

The something expressed itself as a new and overwhelming desire to be home and alone on a beach somewhere with Christy. Ben had thought about marriage before. He’d been with Christy for well over four years, and he had never once strayed like some of his team mates seemed to do. But he had never seen the need to change an already perfect situation. Christy had never once pushed for it, seeming to understand their situation perhaps even better than he did. But for the last couple of years, they had always talked about the future as if it would always be there for them together.

“Maybe it’s time,” he mumbled under his breath and rolled onto his side. His eyes grew heavy, and he let them close. But he kept his mind focused solidly on images of Christy and their life together. He allowed a brief picture of the little girl, sound asleep and wrapped in clean, warm blankets in the clinic. He ignored the other, darker images that peeked in from his mind’s peripheral vision and built himself a nice dream about being with Christy – alone, naked, and sweaty on a nice island resort somewhere.

He traveled more than he slept.

At first, his travels took him right where he wanted, and he made love slowly and gently to Christy, her soft moaning breath in his ear.

But, then, he traveled to new places, and he traveled with a companion.

The awake part of his mind thought about the Christmas Ghosts who traveled with Ebenezer in the book his Gammy loved to read him every winter. This seemed very much like that, though the old man, his split-open head glistening and wet and his smile full of brown teeth, looked nothing like the ghosts of Christmas past, present, or future.

And, there was no snow where they went.

Ben followed the old man, whose skin seemed tighter and his muscles firmer than he remembered, through a thick grove of trees. The brush wrapping around their legs was obscured by a ground fog that reminded Ben more of white smoke billowing from a witch’s cauldron. The fog swirled, rising and falling, much like that.

He heard the old man’s voice in his head.

We’re almost there.

Where?

Home. Home as it used to be and must be again.

Ben felt a chill and realized suddenly he wore only the black running shorts and brown T-shirt he had worn to bed. His bare feet were wet and cold.

Is this a dream or is it real?

It is both. Dreams are the reality that hides from us. But you knew that. Your Gammy taught you that. You are a Seer, and you know how to find what is hidden. I will help you remember that strength.

Ben felt a new chill not related to the cold and followed the old man who moved with remarkable speed through the jungle, his feet light. He seemed to move with the agility of the deer from back home – which brought a bad memory he was too late to stop.

Ben felt more than saw a flash image of his Gammy standing still in a clearing in the woods, her eyes closed and her arms outstretched. He remembered how the doe had come slowly to her, unafraid, as if called. He remembered how it nuzzled at her hand and how Gammy had opened her eyes and smiled at him for a moment. He had been amazed. They both looked so beautiful, and he wanted to be quiet so as not to disturb Gammy’s peaceful communion with nature. But, then, there had been a flash of steel in the early morning light, and blood had sprayed across her chest and arms as the deer fell dead at her feet, its throat cut in a wide deep arc. His Gammy still smiled at him as the blood dripped from her chin and the long, curved blade in her hand.

He fell behind and pushed the image from his head to catch up with the village elder who now stood still in front of a thick tangle of jungle vine that formed a wall before him. When Ben reached him, the old man looked back at him over his shoulder and flashed his brown-toothed smile from beneath the gaping and gore-filled wound in his head and face. Then, he flashed his own blade, a dull, worn machete. With a single, powerful slice, he cut away the wall of vines and moved into the open clearing beyond.

A pleasant smell of cooking meat (just like the venison he and Gammy had eaten later the night he had learned new things about her – something about that memory bothered him, too, but he had other fish to fry right now) floated to him on thin tendrils of smoke from the low fires on the far side of the village.  From the long, low houses of bamboo and thick broad leaves covered in mud, he saw brightly colored cloth which flapped from poles secured to the sides with thick ropes made of twisted vine. Other than the “caw, caw” of jungle birds and the soft breeze fluttering the flag-like cloth and leaves, the village remained quiet and still. No blood, no bodies, no massacre – but also no people.

Where are your people?

Our people are not here. This place is as things should be, not as they are. You will help our people come home. They are the keepers of the living jungle, and without them the living jungle cannot survive. Without you, they cannot survive.

Ben wanted to make the elder understand how he wished he could make this real again. But there was nothing left.

Your people are gone. I am so sorry, but they are gone. Only an old man and a few women and a baby are left. Everyone else is dead and gone.

The old man turned and faced him. His skin glowed with a bluish light, and the fireflies flickered in his open throat. His head wound had again miraculously healed, but the gaping wound from the AK-47 round now stared at Ben and spit black blood over the old man’s chest.

The spirits of the people live in the jungle, and the others remain from view. You must help our people. Help them so they will be more than this.

A horrible smell made Ben look past the old man. The village behind him now held bloated bodies, bellies swollen from gas produced by intestinal bacteria unchecked in death. Some of the bodies, mostly the children, had split open and spilled their contents into the dirt. Millions of insects buzzed around the corpses, feeding on the misfortune. Small animals and birds tore gently, unhurried at the bodies. A few feet away, a small animal, like a cat only bigger, shook its head violently from side to side until a long piece of grey flesh pulled free from a young girl’s face. Then, the cat darted off to the edge of the clearing, the ragged piece of bloody meat trailing behind it in the dirt.

Ben’s eyes filled with tears, and his stomach heaved.

Then, he sat up in his rack and realized the “caw, caw” of the jungle birds was actually his own, high-pitched sobs. He tried to slow his breathing and relax his death grip on the sleeping bag he slept on. He swung his legs out of his bunk and rested his face in his hands, elbows on knees. What the hell could he possibly do? It was over. They were dead. His team may certainly be to blame, but it was over.

It is what it is
, Reed’s voice reminded him.