got you doing?”
Everything in Calvin tightened. There were people he didn’t have to tell a thing to, one of the medical team had told him, but those people generally didn’t include family. Families who cared, who worried—family he intended to stay a part of in the future—deserved to know what was going on.
“Right now it’s a lot of getting settled. Paperwork to fill out, people to meet, names to remember.” From all the talking he’d done this week, Calvin’s voice sounded rusty. Once upon a time he’d been as outgoing and chatty as Justin. That was just one of the things he’d lost over the past three years. He would try to regain it because him being quiet was as unnatural as J’Myel being dead.
He flinched, and his right hand slowly knotted into a fist again. He slid it between him and the door so his dad couldn’t see.
Justice glanced at him, then injected a deliberately careless tone to his voice. “Your mama’s been fixing up care packages for your apartment. She’s got lasagna, chicken enchiladas, meat loaf, pot roast, and biscuits, bread, and cookies, all ready to pop into the oven. She’s also packed up sheets, quilts, afghans, and everything else. I reminded her that your last command is shipping your stuff here so you should have it any day, but she reminded me that ‘any day’ isn’t ‘today.’”
“The apartment came with furniture, some dishes, and linens.” About the only thing he needed was clothing. Besides the jeans and shirt he wore now, everything else he’d brought was Army-issued. But he forced himself to go on. “It’ll be nice to have some stuff to make the place more like home.”
“Tell your mama that, and you’ll make her day. Remember how she wanted to send your favorite quilt to basic training with you?”
The beginning of a smile curved the corners of Calvin’s mouth. “Even though we told her no, she had to hear it from the recruiter.”
“We were lucky she didn’t try to send herself with you. She was so worried about you boys that she hardly slept for a week. I kept telling her you were having a great time, and when you finally wrote and told her the same thing, she finally got back to normal.”
They’d turned off Main Street and now were entering the Flats. There was no official sign, no legal designation, but everyone who lived there or around there knew the borders: Cimarron Street to the south, Maple Avenue to the east, the Burlington Northern tracks to the north, and the pasture where Harley Davis kept his meanest bull to the west.
The neighborhood kids used to stand along that pasture fence and brag about how long they could stay on the bull’s back if given the chance, but anytime the 2,000-pound animal showed interest in them, they had set speed records backing away from the fence.
Calvin wanted to close his eyes, tilt his head back, and breathe deeply a few times before they reached his parents’ house, but he couldn’t. Hyperarousal, they called it: gaze constantly moving, focus constantly shifting, making sure there was no danger here, there, or over there. It was a lifesaver in the desert. Back home, it just made him someone to be wary of.
When they turned onto his street, he deliberately shifted his gaze to the left, not looking at a single house on the right side of the street. Not looking at a white house in particular, one with a porch that filled most of the small yard, with bushes growing all along it. The azaleas and forsythias were a wild mess the better part of the year, Golda Ford used to say, but, oh, when they’re all in bloom, they’re so worth it.
When his own house appeared ahead, he exhaled deeply. It looked exactly the way it had the day he’d left. The lawn was close-cropped, and the mailbox at the end of the driveway stood perfectly straight. The house had had a recent coat of white paint, the porch floor and ceiling pale gray, the shutters dark blue. The wooden rockers’ deep red color had been
Everything in Calvin tightened. There were people he didn’t have to tell a thing to, one of the medical team had told him, but those people generally didn’t include family. Families who cared, who worried—family he intended to stay a part of in the future—deserved to know what was going on.
“Right now it’s a lot of getting settled. Paperwork to fill out, people to meet, names to remember.” From all the talking he’d done this week, Calvin’s voice sounded rusty. Once upon a time he’d been as outgoing and chatty as Justin. That was just one of the things he’d lost over the past three years. He would try to regain it because him being quiet was as unnatural as J’Myel being dead.
He flinched, and his right hand slowly knotted into a fist again. He slid it between him and the door so his dad couldn’t see.
Justice glanced at him, then injected a deliberately careless tone to his voice. “Your mama’s been fixing up care packages for your apartment. She’s got lasagna, chicken enchiladas, meat loaf, pot roast, and biscuits, bread, and cookies, all ready to pop into the oven. She’s also packed up sheets, quilts, afghans, and everything else. I reminded her that your last command is shipping your stuff here so you should have it any day, but she reminded me that ‘any day’ isn’t ‘today.’”
“The apartment came with furniture, some dishes, and linens.” About the only thing he needed was clothing. Besides the jeans and shirt he wore now, everything else he’d brought was Army-issued. But he forced himself to go on. “It’ll be nice to have some stuff to make the place more like home.”
“Tell your mama that, and you’ll make her day. Remember how she wanted to send your favorite quilt to basic training with you?”
The beginning of a smile curved the corners of Calvin’s mouth. “Even though we told her no, she had to hear it from the recruiter.”
“We were lucky she didn’t try to send herself with you. She was so worried about you boys that she hardly slept for a week. I kept telling her you were having a great time, and when you finally wrote and told her the same thing, she finally got back to normal.”
They’d turned off Main Street and now were entering the Flats. There was no official sign, no legal designation, but everyone who lived there or around there knew the borders: Cimarron Street to the south, Maple Avenue to the east, the Burlington Northern tracks to the north, and the pasture where Harley Davis kept his meanest bull to the west.
The neighborhood kids used to stand along that pasture fence and brag about how long they could stay on the bull’s back if given the chance, but anytime the 2,000-pound animal showed interest in them, they had set speed records backing away from the fence.
Calvin wanted to close his eyes, tilt his head back, and breathe deeply a few times before they reached his parents’ house, but he couldn’t. Hyperarousal, they called it: gaze constantly moving, focus constantly shifting, making sure there was no danger here, there, or over there. It was a lifesaver in the desert. Back home, it just made him someone to be wary of.
When they turned onto his street, he deliberately shifted his gaze to the left, not looking at a single house on the right side of the street. Not looking at a white house in particular, one with a porch that filled most of the small yard, with bushes growing all along it. The azaleas and forsythias were a wild mess the better part of the year, Golda Ford used to say, but, oh, when they’re all in bloom, they’re so worth it.
When his own house appeared ahead, he exhaled deeply. It looked exactly the way it had the day he’d left. The lawn was close-cropped, and the mailbox at the end of the driveway stood perfectly straight. The house had had a recent coat of white paint, the porch floor and ceiling pale gray, the shutters dark blue. The wooden rockers’ deep red color had been
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