Casualties by Elizabeth Marro Page A

next few days he chopped nearly two cords of wood. He believed at first that working his body to the point of exhaustion would help him sleep. He looked for opportunities to chop, dig, and haul just to feel the sweat stream down his skin and smell the night’s booze leach out his pores. He craved the emptiness that followed when he was too spent to think. For a little while he could sit still and let whatever surrounded him fill him up. Sometimes it was Big Ruth’s voice as she rocked next to him on the porch of the farmhouse, or the smell of oil and hot metal in his uncle’s shop, or the gentle sucking of the brook as it bubbled unhurriedly between his ankles. In those moments he sensed something like the sanctuary he’d dreamed about in the desert.
    The stillness fled with the daylight, though. Shadows fell across the mountain and sank into him. The night loomed and with it came the desire to escape even the people he’d traveled two days on a bus to find. Their attempts at conversation sounded like demands in a language he no longer spoke. As they went about their quiet evening routines, he found himself watching and realizing with every passing minute that he was the foreigner here.
    The worst was when his father’s second wife, Vonnie, broughtthe kids over to see him. Their size shocked him. In his mind, they were still toddlers, the only beings in his life who had ever looked up to him. Now his half brother, Justin, was eighteen and as tall as he was, his legs sticking out of a pair of long gym shorts, his soccer shirt flapping like a wind sock. Luanne, his sister, was a year younger but looked like an adult to him.
    â€œCool tattoos,” Justin said the first time they came by. Robbie, who’d taken his shirt off to mow the lawn, found it and pulled it back on. Luanne showed him the brownies she had brought, and he took one even though all he wanted was a beer. Vonnie gave him a hug and immediately began to talk about the early days when his dad was still alive and all of them were little. She worked hard to get the conversation going, like she was blowing on kindling, trying to coax a flame into a fire. It was just easier to sit there and listen, or pose with Justin and Luanne for pictures that they took with their phones and loaded onto Facebook while he watched. Justin grabbed a soccer ball out of their van and began to kick it, glancing at Robbie from time to time. “Lookin’ good,” Robbie told him, but he didn’t get up to kick it around with him. He was glad when they left.
    They came back for dinner two nights later, and he steeled himself with a six-pack of Bud. They almost made it through before Justin started asking the questions he’d probably wanted to ask from the minute he heard Robbie was back in Gershom.
    â€œYou were a machine gunner, right?”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œYou kill anybody?” Niblets of corn stuck to his lips. His eyes, Robbie noticed for the first time, were the same deep brown he saw when he looked at his own face in the mirror.
    â€œStop it, Justin,” Vonnie said. “Eat your corn and leave your brother alone.”
    Robbie looked down at his plate. The smell of the meat made him sick.
    â€œI bet you did.”
    â€œJustin—” Vonnie’s voice sharpened. Robbie wasn’t sure if she was trying to stop Justin from asking or him from telling. When he looked around the table, he saw his brother, his sister, Kevin, Big Ruth, and Vonnie all looking at him. He pushed his chair away from the table. “Gonna smoke,” he said. “I’ll help with the dishes later.”
    â€œThat’s okay, honey. We’ll do—”
    But he didn’t wait to hear any more. He heard the screen door slam behind him. Outside the sun settled on the rim of low mountains to the west. A mosquito bit him on the neck, but he didn’t slap it. He burned through one cigarette, then another. Then he headed for