Knuckleduster Read online

  “Yeah,” Thorp said, still struggling with the ham. It was really glued in there. “I got my profile on a few sites advertising that I’m a single guy with a big old farmstead all to myself and a steady income. But no bites. I guess young women like to sow their wild oats in the city before retiring out to the sticks with a jabber jaw like me.”

  Brody smiled. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all. Hell, you can have one of my cigars if you want. One good thing about Illinois, you can still smoke out here. I don’t know how you do it in Minnesota with their goddamn nonsmoker initiative.” Thorp still struggled with the ham, one hand gripping the roasting pan, the other wedging a spatula under it. He looked over his shoulder with sweat on his brow. “Can you even smoke on the sidewalks?”

  “You can, but if a cop passes you, you get dirty looks.” Brody passed on his friend’s cigars and smoked one of his own cigarettes instead. “They’re just itching for that law to get passed all the way, so they can club you over the head the second you light one up.”

  Thorp got the ham free with a clatter of metal on the stovetop. The ham nearly flew out of the pan. He cried, “Whoa!” as if saddled upon a disobedient horse. He put the steaming slab of—real!—meat on a ceramic platter and brought it over, still steaming, to the table. He opened the fridge and filled his arms with three different assortments of mustard, a salt grinder, a tub of margarine, and a stack of bread slices. “Beer?”

  “Yes, please. Say, you need a hand with all that?” Brody asked, starting to stand when he saw Thorp nearly take a tumble with all the things he had gathered up against his chest.

  “No, no, you’re a guest. I got this.” He put everything down on the table and sat.

  They ate roasted ham, and Brody tried all three of the different mustards Thorp had made by hand. They were quiet for the majority of the meal.

  When they finished, Brody picked up his bottle of beer and looked out the window behind Thorp. The Artificials were now toiling in the patch of land directly across the road. “You got any of those?” he asked.

  Thorp threw his arm over the back of his chair and twisted around to see what Brody meant. He caught a glimpse of the Artificials and turned back around. “No. And the owner of those goddamn things needs to learn how to set the property line on them better. I came out front last week and saw them picking apart my garden. Had to go to his house and tell him to shut them off because when I took two steps toward them—on my property, keep in mind—they all turned toward me with their hands out like they were challenging me to wrestle.” Thorp took a slurping pull off his bottled beer, which apparently he had also made himself. “If it weren’t for the pork chops and ham he brings this way, I might’ve just snapped on the guy. Should probably mosey on down there sometime tomorrow, see if he’s got any birds he’d be willing to part with.”

  “What all do you grow out here?” Brody asked.

  “Cranberries, mostly. Some carrots, too. Potatoes, strawberries, sunflowers. Just whatever I feel like doing that year. I grow most of it for myself, can what I know I won’t get to before it spoils.” Thorp reached over to the humidor on the counter and took out a thick cigar. “Here, I want to show you something.” He opened the heavily tinted sliding glass door that went out into the backyard.

  Once it was open, Brody stood next to Thorp and saw all that lay beyond. What at first glance he took to be metal sculptures were twisted wrecks of old military aircrafts positioned around the backyard like shaped hedges on display. A few of them he recognized from their own tour, certain models of the Darter troop mover and the Terrapin ATV. Big holes blasted out of them, jagged as shark bites in their metal flesh. Parts missing, the rudder of the Darter was entirely gone, in its place, a sooty amputated nub. Brody felt a pang of sympathy for his friend as they walked into the yard and Thorp showed off his collection.

  “You remember this one, don’t you?” Thorp asked, nodding at the Darter.

  Named after the Darter species of dragonfly, the vehicle resembled the insect in structure if slightly exaggerated in places. The bulbous head with the four jump seats—two pilots and two gunners. The abdomen could telescope out thirty feet to accommodate an entire unit of soldiers or contract like an accordion to make itself a smaller target when the soldiers had been dropped off. Four wings on the back made of lightweight titanium membrane doubled as solar panels when the mechanical beast was at rest. Two places for sentry turrets, the housing having been welded over with blank metal plates in the decommission process.

  The back door ramp of the fuselage abdomen was open, and Brody bent down to look inside. The cramped interior was smaller than he remembered. The lap bars were all up, the dangling belt buckles swinging in the wind. Inside, it smelled like disinfectant, mud, gunpowder. He stood up, tried to stifle a sigh. This wasn’t what he had in mind by visiting an old friend. He felt phantom pains peck at his back and chest—that terrible punch one felt when taking fire, even through body armor. The clatter and heat of a rifle vibrating with discharge in his arms, kicking against his shoulder. Incalculable carnage.

  “Got this one after the war. They were selling them online for a song. Got this one, which is mostly intact, and this other one here for even less because, as you can see, it’s in a lot rougher shape. Kind of a hobby of mine.”

  “Impressive,” Brody said, knowing Thorp had been searching for his approval.

  Thorp pointed with his beer toward the hill at the far side of the property. They strolled that way under the shadow of willows. They went past the barn. Through the open doors, Brody glimpsed a couple of horses standing in their stalls.

  At the end of the hill, overlooking Thorp’s fields, Brody gazed at the rows of rich brown soil, recently tilled. The land divided up into different sections for different crops. The sunflower heads on their long necks bumped against one another in the breeze. Beyond the first collection of fields was the cranberry bog. It appeared to be just a pond, but there was a smattering of crimson beads off to one side, floating berries held collected by bolted together two-by-four planks meant as a corral. Even from that distance, Brody could see the carrots on the inverted glass planters lining the far side of the property, their color reminding him of the whites of his own eyes. And against his best efforts, he remembered how most of his visit would be seen in black-and-white polygons and pixels. He studied the beautiful scene of crops before him and tried to commit as much of the color and idyllic display of agriculture to memory as he could.

  They stood for a while in silence, looking at the land. It soon became obvious to Brody that Thorp was slowly edging into a reflective mood. Brody was accommodating, even though he didn’t want to talk at length about the military. He took a sip from his beer and washed it over his teeth and let it settle, crackling in a pool on his tongue. He waited for the inevitable conversation to begin.

  “It’s a shame what they put us through out there. It really is.”

  “Yeah,” Brody said, kicking at invisible rocks at his feet.

  “We shouldn’t have seen the things we did. Especially at our age. Man, we were really young. Over there, doing that shit, taking orders from guys who probably had no idea what the hell they were doing themselves.” He paused, contemplative. “Bunch of bullshit.” He seemed to be having the conversation entirely on his own. Brody kept quiet and nodded when appropriate.

  After Thorp had nattered about the service to exhaustion and grew quiet, Brody felt like he was being rude and decided to contribute a small amount. He said, “Glad that’s all behind us.”

  Thorp didn’t respond, didn’t nod, didn’t do anything for a moment. Then he turned and looked into Brody’s face, squinting at the gleam of the setting sun.

  Brody didn’t think he was going to like what came next. Inevitably, this was when Thorp would say something he’d had on his chest for a very long time, really open up, and they’d undoubtedly end up crying or really getting into an hours long conversation about everything they experienced. Truly
, Brody wanted neither. He wanted some time out of the city, maybe go fishing and hunting as the initial call had promised, but he didn’t want to revisit ghosts that he had no trouble finding on his own.

  Thorp chewed his lip. They stared at one another for a few beats of silence, the crickets beginning to play their music in the surrounding wilderness. Brody waited for Thorp to unravel completely. He tried to steel himself for it as best he could.

  Thorp said, “My sister’s joined up.”

  6

  “Nectar?” Brody said.

  She was ten years younger than Thorp and just a sprite, almost elf-like in her appearance. She was topped with a head of golden-laced strawberry blonde hair and sparkling green eyes that made anyone looking at her take heed. Brody had met her only once and had forgotten all about her until this moment in Thorp’s backyard overlooking the cranberry bog.

  He and Thorp had practically been kids themselves, fresh out of basic, new friends, with Brody tagging along out to middle-of-nowhere Illinois for a family picnic. Brody recalled Thorp calling Nectar over from the swing set, and once she had come over, not really sure what to do, Brody stuck out his hand for her to shake. She took it with reluctance and confusion. That’d been before the firebomb that rendered him blind and well before his decade of working as a pay-per-use vigilante. Back when he was just twenty-three, Thorp twenty-four, both men stepping into the combat boots as a way to jump-start rudderless lives.

  Now, ten years on, Brody and Thorp were in a similar rural backyard again, talking about a girl, someone he unfortunately had entirely misplaced in the clutter of stuff he wished he could forget.

  “Yeah. She’s all”—Thorp waved his hand around his head wildly—”confused and shit. I mean, the service is a good thing to get into when you’re young, but the way they treated us and how we came back and everyone was pissed at us and everything—when we’d just been doing what we were told. I can’t imagine how she’d take it, how she’d survive over there.”

  “It’s a different time now. It’s Cuba again. That whole mess’ll probably turn into something in a few weeks. We’re no longer in Egypt. People’s attitudes have changed. Toward the military, toward the uniform. I don’t think she’ll go through the same things we had to.”

  Thorp turned away. “I don’t want her involved in that.”

  “Remember how your folks questioned your decision to join? Remember how you told me you fought with your dad about it and how you signed up anyway? It’ll be the same thing with Nectar; I’m sure of it. The more you tell her she shouldn’t do it, the more she’ll want to.”

  “I thought if anyone you’d be on my side about this. Christ’s sake. Here we are, both of us fucked up from all that bullshit they put us through—you blind and me messed up in the head—and you’re talking like you’ve still got the fucking fatigues on.”

  “I’m just saying that your sister can make her own choices. You may not like them, but they’re hers to make. If it were up to me, sure, I wouldn’t want her to go, either, but there’s not a lot we can do about it, is there?”

  “Saint Brody,” Thorp scoffed. “All hail Saint Brody, patron saint of bullshit. Goddamn it. What is with you, anyway? You never could have a goddamn opinion on anything. Every time the CO would tell us to go someplace, you never questioned it. You just went right along. Now you’re—what? Roughing up wife beaters and drug dealers in Minneapolis? Jesus.”

  “You looked up my record?” Brody didn’t even think Thorp would own a screen, let alone go to the trouble of paying for a public records search and digging into police reports. He felt his neck and cheeks flush with warmth, anger causing his voice to waver. “I know they’re public files, but don’t you think it’s a bit nosey doing that, especially to a friend?”

  “Friend,” Thorp spat. “That’s a good one. I haven’t talked to you in how many years? And don’t play indignant with me. Your record’s out there for anyone to see. Who cares. You want to know my record? Since we’ve been discharged, I’ve gotten three DUIs and my license taken away. I was in a couple of bar fights, and I punched a cop about a year and a half ago and they still won’t put me away because I’m considered ‘troubled’ due to what fuckin’ happened to us over there. Do you know what it’s like to not even have to spend a night in the drunk tank because I’m considered fragile goods and how I’m—apparently—emotionally distressed? You call me a friend, asshole. You go ahead and call me that one more time, and I swear to God I’ll knock your teeth out.”

  “Hold it,” Brody said, wanting nothing more than to reel the conversation back. “I just want to know what the hell is going on. You’re clearly upset about Nectar signing up. Have you told her any of the stories? She may not even know how you feel.”

  “Oh, I’ve told her. I’ve told her all about it. She doesn’t listen. She has no idea what it’ll be like. I mean, she’s delicate, and she’s just a kid. She thinks she’ll be playing crossing guard for some Korean kids, but it’ll be gunfire and carpet bombing and the whole fucking thing. What if she doesn’t come back?”

  Brody continued Thorp’s train of thought. If Thorp thought of himself as fucked up in the head now, imagine what he’d be like if she died over there or came home paralyzed, breathing and eating out of tubes for the rest of her life. That news story he’d heard on the train about the ex-soldier gunning down all those people in the shopping mall came back again, and as before, Brody gave himself a mental slap on the wrist for thinking it.

  Brody considered asking Thorp if he wanted him to speak to his sister about it, but he realized it had been the whole reason he’d been invited here in the first place. He had an inkling there was a motive behind the visit, but he never imagined it would be Nectar joining the military.

  He stared at Thorp, who had now fully melted down. He stood there, aged and balding, holding his bottle of homemade beer to his chest while his other hand gripped the bridge of his nose. His cheeks were red, and his shoulders rose in ragged pulls and fell in jerky sobs.

  Brody took a step forward. He placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “I can pay you. Whatever you want.” Thorp looked up, tears making his eyelashes glom together. “I got money. Like I said before, Hark Telecommunications. They’re paying me boatloads for these wires.” He gestured above his head, and Brody finally saw insulated wires as thick as wrists above them. “Whatever you want, just as long as you get her to change her mind.”

  “Has she gone to basic yet or is there still time?”

  “She has to go through the class work stuff first. At Fort Reagan. Remember? Will you please go and talk to her in Chicago?”

  At the mention of the nearby city, the one Brody dreaded having to revisit any sooner than he had to, 00:09:59 began blinking in the corner of his eye, impossible to ignore. As if by kismet, it helped cement his decision.

  “Yes,” he answered, forcing eye contact with Thorp, “I’ll go and talk to her.”

  Brody listened to the crickets outside the window. Occasionally, one of the horses in the barn whinnied and the sound would alarm him—he was not accustomed to sleeping in complete silence. He was surprised to discover that there was such a thing as it being too quiet. Added to it, he couldn’t sleep in any bed that wasn’t his own, and he now had Nectar Ashbury on his mind.

  He listened to the contact lens charger beep every few minutes, indicating that it was charging the battery, which he knew would be minimal. He didn’t want to go into Chicago with the sonar; he saw that as a formula for catastrophe. He’d be some blind guy asking everyone coming in and out of the base if they knew Nectar Ashbury. She could pass right in front of him, and he’d never know it was her because everyone would appear in black-and-white wire frame.

  Brody considered asking Thorp if he could have an advance. Just as a means to get another battery. But asking for money right off the bat didn’t look good so he decided against it.

  He’d wear the sonar on the trip to Chicago and put in the lenses
at a gas station bathroom once he got there, get as much legwork as possible done on the remaining battery, have the chat with the girl, and swap the lenses out for the sonar on the ride back that night. It wouldn’t take long, especially since he knew where the base was located and which building her classroom as a greenhorn would be.

  Brody wasn’t sure what he’d say to Nectar or how he’d even approach her. Certainly, she wouldn’t remember him. He’d have to remind her who he was, then slowly slide in the detail of why he was there. He hoped she’d be willing to go somewhere else to talk, because he knew from experience that anyone, veteran or not, who tried to talk a new recruit out of signing the final release would be met with nothing but hostility.

  He remembered attending that exact classroom compound himself, and when one parent came to try to talk some sense into their son or daughter, the promise of war on everyone’s mind, the instructors all but took the man by his coattails and threw him off base. A few of the students even shoved the man out through the front gate, calling him names. Communist, one. Bleeding-heart pacifist, another. Brody thought about this, getting ganged up on by a bunch of muscled young men he wouldn’t want to fight.

  Deep into the night, after Brody finally managed to doze off, he heard gunfire. He roused from sleep, alert, snatched the sonar from the headboard, and fixed it to his forehead. The framework of the bedroom spiraled out before him, then the hallway and the stairs. He listened intently, sitting halfway up in bed, then reached down to fetch the knuckleduster from the back pocket of his jeans on the floor. It wouldn’t be any match for whatever made that racket of a three-round burst, but it was better than going down there with nothing at all.

  Brody descended the stairs, cringing with each creak the steps elicited. At the bottom, he peered with the sonar into the living room. There was a shape of a human body splayed out on the couch. Judging by the shape of the skull, the heavy brow, and the long, wide chin, it was Thorp, sitting comfortably with a handheld device propped up on the coffee table by a stack of old Field & Stream issues. It was a newer, expensive unit: a Canon Gizumoshingu—literally: Gizmo Thing.