nods from guys he didn’t even know. In the ten seconds it took Bradley to hop out of his truck and walk across Jared’s yard, the entire party’s eyes found him. He felt their attention like a shot of adrenaline. He’d been places since graduation. He must know things now; he might even be traumatized. And brave. Surely he was very, very brave.
“Bradley!” Jared took the porch steps in one leap and rammed his chest into his brother’s. “Man, you’re solid as a rock! Look at you!” He pounded Bradley’s arm a few times and jostled him.
“It’s good to see you! Thanks for this.” Bradley waved at the porch filled with partiers, plastic keg cups in their hands. A few friends he hadn’t seen since graduation waved back. Most folks, though, he didn’t even recognize.
Jared slung his arm over Bradley’s shoulders and walked him toward the porch. “Are you kidding? You’re all anybody talks about in Patmos these days. Hometown hero.”
“Really?” Bradley asked.
“I’ll bet you the crack of my ass you’ll be in the paper next week. Home on leave. Patmos’ very own.” They ambled up the porch steps, the crowd parting for them as they moved. “Great citizens of Patmos, Arkansas,” Jared bellowed. “Private Bradley Coates, a.k.a RAMBO.” A cheer shot up from the porch, a few dogs barking at the outburst. “Welcome home, little bro. We fuckin’ love you. Don’t we fuckin’ love him?” Another cheer.
The partiers chanted, “Speech, speech, speech, speech” and stomped their feet over shaky joists.
Bradley froze. Even as a star wrestler in high school he hadn’t been singled out, not like this. What could he possibly give a speech about? In the Army, nobody looked at him dead-on unless it was some head-tripper doling out put-downs just because Bradley hadn’t fired his M4 since Fort Jackson. Fobbits were all the same. Just a bunch of laborers, holing up inside the wire. Heck, Bradley could have spent the last ten months working for Jiffy Lube.
“I only have one thing to say,” he said and smiled in mock profundity. If his big brother had taught him anything, it was not to lose the moment, even if he had to fake it. “Where’s the beer?”
Another cheer roared from the crowd, twenty red cups thrust his direction. Bradley looked at the eager faces shining beneath the porch light, their teeth clacking as if to say, Take mine! No, take mine! He grabbed the closest beer and slugged it down, and the last gulp splashed onto his coat.
Toward midnight, Bradley felt his shoulders pressed too tightly into his coat, the plastic cup almost miniature in his palm. “You’re still growing!” his mother had written in those early care packages overflowing with Oreos and beef jerky. Bradley felt babied by this, though his mother guessed right. He was constantly hungry. Yes, from growing, but more from the long shifts and all that weightlifting he’d done to kill the boredom in between. It didn’t matter now. He was home on leave. He could have stuffed-crust pizza delivered to his doorstep at midnight if he wanted.
Music howled from somewhere inside the house. A small crowd huddled around a campfire out back. Bradley emptied his cup again and aimed for the keg, a little swagger in his stride. A petite brunette fussed with the pump, turning toward him as he approached.
“Sonya?” Bradley asked. He hadn’t meant to sound so surprised. She moved away his sophomore year.
“Bradley!” she said and gave him a hug. “Good timing. Can you figure this out?”
He took her cup and set it next to his along the railing. Sonya Winters had never given him a hug before. She’d barely been able to remember his name, always referring to him as “Jared’s little brother” or “the one on the wrestling team.” The keg was empty, but another waited. He tapped it and cleared the foam. While he worked, Sonya explained herself.
“My parents split, like two months after we left Patmos,” she said. “It sucks for my dad. I feel bad for him. But mom and me came back here. I’m at the community college now. I have to take pre-calc again. Can you believe it? Slit my throat.”
“Here.” Bradley handed Sonya her cup.
“Thanks,” she said. “You look good.”
“Huh?” He inspected himself for a moment: ratty Converse and extra long Levi’s, a white cotton tee sticking out the bottom of his Carhartt jacket. He still hadn’t been able to shake the thought that he looked underdressed. Civilian clothes felt useless compared to DCUs.
He looked at her. She seemed tired. “Well, cheers!” he said, finally.
“Cheers!” She smiled, and when Bradley tipped his cup to hers, she kissed him on the cheek.
He blushed, but turned away and walked into the house. Sonya Winters. She’d always been a flirt. Bradley remembered when Jared took her to prom, the way he bragged about her for weeks afterwards. “Tits like another planet,” he’d told Bradley, gesturing with cupped palms. “And she laughs when she comes, like she’s being tickled. Biggest fucking turn on.”
Girls like Sonya weren’t in Bradley’s league then, not that Jared hadn’t tried his best to set things up for his little brother. By the time Bradley got to high school, Jared’s reputation had carved a path for him whether he wanted it or not. It got him through the basics of small town sex with girls everybody knew but with nobody Bradley felt particularly nostalgic about. Where Jared had relationships, Bradley fumbled with dates and dances until sports became more manageable than girls. Where Jared had a shoe-in at the County Extension after earning his Associate’s, Bradley could hardly sit through Chem class, always fidgety in a chair. Yet both men were tirelessly loyal—to each other, to friends, even to two-block Patmos. The comparison with his brother, had Bradley made the connection, might have been something like two sides of the same coin. Bonded in material, no doubt, but depending on who you asked, one always appeared in the shadow of the other.
Tonight, Bradley felt bolstered by all the attention. The beer helped. The cool night air helped. The sound of friends, instead of generators, helped, too. He walked to the kitchen to fill his cup with water. He needed to pace himself if he wanted to remember how well all this was going. Before he turned from the sink, he felt a pair of eyes on his back.
“Big night, soldier.” It was a male voice, flat-toned—not local.
Bradley heard more feet shuffle into the room. Two men, judging by the sounds of their boots. That made three, total. He tried to ignore the way his stomach tightened, his knees locking into hyperextension. The stranger’s tone had a tinny familiarity to it, as though a squad of bloodied combat troops had just delivered their broken down Humvee and glared at him for looking so goddamn clean. More than once, he’d heard, “After you’re done baking muffins, see if you can’t get around to fixing our rig.” Bradley exhaled and turned around. He’d guessed right about the men in the kitchen—three of them standing there, a little stupid and slow-looking at the end of a long night. But he hadn’t guessed about the bag of crystal meth the stranger tossed onto the kitchen counter, or the tattoo that said INFIDEL poking out of his half-unbuttoned flannel. That’s what insurgents called American soldiers. That’s what almost every tip-of-the-spear troop he’d met on base in Tikrit had inked somewhere on their bodies.
“You’ve been there, too, huh?” Bradley asked. He leaned his back against the counter, a kitchen island with salsa and chips stood between them. He could eat all that and then some, maybe root around for cheese and make microwave nachos. But not now. Not with this soldier and his two buddies filling the kitchen, their stares unflinching.
“Hell
