splitting up a marriage wasn’t as simple as a piece of paperwork.
“You need to make some time for me,” he told her.
She balanced her chin on her small fist, studied him through those blue Tennessee eyes. Every bit of her was something he would have loved to eat whole. When she was alone with him like this, he couldn’t help but imagine her as a fairytale damsel and him the wolf.
“You have a way of talking to me that makes me think it’s half love and half hate,” she said.
“I suspect that’s sort of how you like it.”
By her smile, he felt confident he was right.
“You go on in there and talk to the boys. Once you’re done you come back here and we’ll see what there is to see.”
By the time he got his coffee and went back to where the others had already circled up their chairs, he was just about the last one to get in. Only guy he saw missing was Turner Whist.
“Where’s Turner?”
The other men shrugged, said he’d been out of touch for the last couple of weeks as far as they knew. Turner was one of the newest members of the group. An Army Spec who had been riding in the loader’s position of an M1A2 while they were patrolling some outer suburbs of Baghdad less than a week after it had been taken in the first blitz. They’d cleared block after block and were about to head in to the assembly area when they spotted combatants on the rooftops. What appeared to be an RPG team moving in to take a shot from the corner of a near building. His tank commander had pointed the turret hard left and was about to engage with the target, but he had missed the second team getting a fix on the bottlenecked tank from the opposite building. There was the hiss and slight pop as the RPG struck the top of the turret, a munition that failed to detonate. But when Turner had turned to see if his tank commander was all right he saw that the grenade head had bounced and docked the man’s head clean from his shoulders. He did all he knew to do, slammed his hatch shut and pulled the headless body inside while screaming at the driver to reverse.
“Hell, I guess somebody better check on him,” Buckner said. “It’s not too far out of the way for me.”
“No,” Kyle said. “He’s a grown man. If we don’t hear anything between now and the planting day, I’ll go bug him just a little. Now, let’s all figure out a time when we can get these trees put in the ground.”
SHE WAS was helping a patron check out a stack of books on the Civil War when they got done with the meeting. He lingered for a while with some books under his arm, poked through the magazines until she was done and the other woman had come on for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t need to be told to hang around outside after that.
He cranked the engine when she came out and got in her Nissan, followed her the few miles out to their regular meeting place along the road back to Dennis Cove and pulled up beside her under the shadow of the big oak at the edge of a turnaround. He wished he’d thought to bring a bottle opener so he could have opened the wine, but all he had that could be gotten into was a lukewarm six-pack of beer. He tugged out a couple of bottles from the paper sack and cracked them each open with the hard edge of his house keys by the time she had come around and slid into the passenger’s seat.
“Well,” she said, took one of the beers. “Is this as romantic as you’d hoped?”
He kissed her, arm hooked around her strong shoulders and back.
“Look at you, getting mean with me.”
“Is that what this is? Funny way of acting mean, you ask me.”
They didn’t talk for a while after that. Just tried to swim down into each other. Afterward, they sat looking at the woods, drawing breath until it seemed like it belonged in their throats. They talked of things which held little consequence for a while, worked their way by degrees toward what was always the matter between them.
“I’m guessing you still haven’t said anything to him,” Kyle said.
“No, not yet I haven’t.”
“You wouldn’t be privy to a time line on that subject, by chance?”
Kyle knew the situation well enough to explain all the minute concerns and causes, but that didn’t keep him from wanting to hear it said that she was serious, that she would leave her husband and make an effort toward something permanent with him. He knew too that it was all a case of rehearsal and idle desire on his part. She would have to do certain things on her own, and though he was dissatisfied with standing on the boundaries of her life, there was nothing else he could imagine her allowing.
“I can just go home now if that’s what you’d rather me do,” she told him.
He took a sip of his beer and told her that was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Okay then. Quit your ugliness.”
He caught himself before an edge worked its way into his words.
“You feel like stretching your legs?” he asked. “There’s a pretty little creek up this way.”
They got out and locked the doors, went up past a lodge and hostel that serviced hikers on the Appalachian Trail and crossed over through a small campsite with a dirt path that hugged the high bank of the creek. A mockingbird flushed and screamed at them. Kyle flapped his arm and told him to go to hell. About a quarter of a mile on they found a big boulder that projected out over a calm clear pool where they could sit and see if anything stirred beneath them. Laura removed her shoes and dangled bare feet that reflected back up at them from the bottom.
“Look, I get it, okay?” she said. “Nobody said breaking up a marriage was meant for the faint of heart.”
“I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to.”
“Is that what you think I’m saying?”
“I don’t know. No. I guess not.”
She took his face in her hands, made him look at her.
“You’ve got to trust me, you know? I haven’t come this far with you for nothing. I love you, Kyle. I’m getting there as fast as I can.”
He told her that he understood, took her close to him, and pressed her against his side as though fitting a broken piece back to its whole. He glanced down. The water beneath them was cradled in ancient stone.
4
HARRISON FOUND Gavin’s driver Jonathan out around back running a damp rag over the windshield of the white van. Every inch of the vehicle gleamed from its evenly laid coat of detailer’s wax, even the stark black German cross emblazoned on the rear quarter panel.
“You wouldn’t mind running me on an errand, would you?”
Jonathan’s face wrinkled.
“What kind of errand?”
“Gavin wants me to pick up another vehicle so I can start some revenue generation.”
“That his word or yours?”
“It’s
