an unnatural beat before answering him.
“Sure. In the fridge.”
Ross is trying to act cool, but at thirty-one years old, it’s harder to deceive Mom than it used to be.
And isn’t he going to have to tell her? Isn’t he planning on saying yes?
For a hundred thousand dollars each, aren’t all the Danes planning on saying yes?
“Thanks, Ma,” Ross says, pulling a plate of chicken from the fridge and placing it on the kitchen table. Mom is wearing a blue bathrobe, her hair as curly as her son’s. She’s leaning against the doorframe. Studying him.
Ross sits down at the table and looks at the chicken and suddenly feels ill. As if the sound from the control room was made of chicken, too.
“Take your jacket off,” Mom says.
His jacket. Ross hasn’t taken it off. Why not? He knows why not. Because there’s something to hide in one of the pockets. A piece of paper explaining why he should fly to an African desert and put his life on the line. For America.
Again.
“What is it, Ross?” She doesn’t mince words. She doesn’t wait on things long.
Ross shakes his head.
“Nothing, Ma. Just … nothing.”
He jams some chicken in his mouth and for a second he thinks he’s going to vomit it right back up. The initial taste is stunning to his system. He looks to the plate again, half expecting to see gray meat there; something bloated, something bad.
“Nothing,” Mom repeats. And the way she says it, Ross has no choice but to look at her.
So he does. And the two hold each other’s gaze for a full thirty seconds before Ruth shakes her head.
“The army,” she says.
“Yes.”
“What do they want?”
Ross reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the folded paper. He holds it for her to take. Ruth looks at it like it’s a spider, like something she isn’t sure she wants to put her fingers on. But she crosses the small kitchen and takes it from her son. She slides out the second chair at the table, sits, unfolds the paper, and places her glasses on the bridge of her nose.
Ross, feeling better for having eaten after all, eats the rest of the chicken as Mom reads. When she’s done, she doesn’t turn the paper over, doesn’t crumple it up, doesn’t toss it away.
“Don’t do it,” she says. Flat. Three syllables.
“I’m going to, Ma.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
Ross feels a rush. He’s decided to do it after all.
Ruth places her elbows on the table and leans closer to him.
“Mystery,” she says, “is bad enough on its own. But mystery with the army?” She shakes her head. “Means they’re hiding something.”
“They don’t know where it is. Somebody’s hiding it from them.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dismissive. But even now, with Mom saying no, Ross feels the swell of yes.
It all comes down to a single word, doesn’t it, Ross? he thinks. A single word that propels you and your bandmates, your best friends. One word that got you guys in the army in the first place, got you into a band, gets you into trouble three or four times a week. One word that weighs more than one hundred thousand dollars apiece.
“Adventure,” Mom says, shaking her head. “You can screw your adventure.”
Ross nods. Of course, she’s right. And yet … that is the word. Always has been.
Philip calls it the Path.
“They need us,” Ross says.
“Who’s they?”
“America.”
Mom scoffs and slams both hands down on the table. Hard enough to rattle the chicken bones on Ross’s plate.
“America doesn’t need you, son. America needs a psychiatrist.”
“We know sound. We can find it for them.”
“And then? Then what? You just point to it and … presto … you’re back home?”
Ross hasn’t thought this far ahead. It scares him, briefly, that he hasn’t thought this far ahead.
“Well … yeah. Something like that.”
Mom shakes her head again.
“That’s not even mystery, Ross. That’s ignorance. Don’t go.”
“Ma.”
“I don’t like it. Don’t go.”
“Ma.”
Ross is smiling. Peacefully. Any red rush has left his cheeks and he looks the part of the grown man he is.
Adventure.
The Danes.
And the popularity and esteem he and his friends have received from being both veterans and musicians. How can they say no when they get so much out of saying yes?
“Did you read what happened to the other two platoons?” Mom asks.
Ross nods.
“Of course I did.”
“Did you?”
“I did. They all came back home safely.”
“No,” Mom says. She slides the paper in front of her son and points to the part she’s talking about. “Read.”
“Ma, I read it.”
“Read again.”
Ross sighs and looks down. He feels a pang of fear, embarrassment, like he’s about to see a whole new paragraph that states clearly the first two platoons were sentenced to death by hanging.
But that’s not what Mom is pointing at.
“All members of the previous platoons returned home safely. Empty-handed and flummoxed, but safe.”
“That’s it,” Mom says.
“They couldn’t find it,” Ross says.
Mom
