Full Measure

Chapter twelve

With an iron headache and occasionally blurred vision, Patrick worked a full day on the groves. His father and brother offered him the easier tasks, but Patrick worked even harder than usual. It was the Marine thing to do. He was black and dripping sweat after an hour and his scalp burned along the stitches. He guzzled water to help his brain fire right. The three men finished off the irrigation repair and half of the remaining trunk painting. But there was a heavy quiet among them as they rode back to the house in Archie’s work truck, because Escondido Farm Credit Bank had refused to loan on the replacement trees.

Patrick skipped cocktails with his family, cleaned up and was waiting for Iris Cash in the Village View lobby at sunset. He walked her to his truck. Her face with the sunlight on it was lovely. His head ached all the way down to his toenails. He told Iris he dinged himself roughhousing with buddies the night before. “I apologize for ditching you yesterday.”

“That memorial was one of the most emotional moments of my life,” said Iris. “And you were the only person there I knew, and I’ve known you for less than a week. It was just really, really... I’m not sure what it was, Patrick. I can’t describe it. I’m writing a series about it for the paper. Trying to find words.”

“I never expected anything like that. Even when I enlisted for infantry I never thought it would include such a thing. A ceremony for the mangled and dead and all their families.”

Iris considered a long moment before speaking. “You must be terribly proud and terribly sad.”

“Those words are good, Iris. And really, I’m sorry about leaving you there with my family and just running off.”

“I’ve been reading about soldiers coming home.”

“I’m a Marine, not a soldier.”

“I didn’t know there was a distinction. But I do know from my reading that after deployment, Marines really need their friends.”

“I know I need to move on, get out of Afghanistan.”

They came to the truck and Patrick held open the door for her. She put her soft fingers on his freshly shaven cheek and turned his head to one side for a better look at the wound. “Roughhousing with buddies? You’ve got stitches, Pat!”

“It was purely foolish.”

He handed her up to the cab and watched her as she swung in. They set out for La Jolla. Patrick could smell Iris’s scent and he felt like he was gliding down I-15 on it. Iris talked of the Marines of the Three-Five she’d seen at Pendleton, and how she’d like to talk to every one of them and put it all in a book. She said it would be fiction and Patrick wondered why you’d make things up about a war that was actual. You couldn’t make it any truer than it was. Iris said she talked to some of the Gold Star families and absolutely refused to cry, even if they did, because she felt superfluous and trivial in their presence.

She told him the Village View was going to run her story on the discovery of the arson evidence front page, and Fallbrook Fire might even give them a photo of it to accompany the article. The point of the whole thing was to get people involved, maybe find a witness, or someone who had overheard someone saying suspicious things.

She said this DHS arson specialist, Knechtl, was a very intense man who wouldn’t say much about his investigation. He wore a dark suit and had a pale complexion and a big forehead and a small mustache. He looked more like an undertaker than a special agent of the DHS, in her opinion. Knechtl said that he’d questioned several persons of interest but he wouldn’t say who, or where they lived, or if there were any leads. He addressed the whole Village View staff, then asked each of them to list three local people they thought might set a fire like this. He passed one sheet of blank white paper and one pencil to each person in the room, then asked them to meditate for one full minute before answering. About one minute into the silence Iris had peeked and caught Knechtl checking his wristwatch. She’d left her sheet blank, as had her editor, who was sitting on one side of her, and the art director, sitting on the other. She did note two people writing away, voluminously, it looked, arms around their papers for privacy.

Iris looked intently out the truck windows, often turning back to study something they’d just passed. She was alert and curious. Just a glimpse of her did something good to Patrick’s heart. She talked about the latest developments in the Cruzela Storm benefit concert for the lighted Fallbrook crosswalks. She thought it was weird that some people were trying to make their town better while at least one other person was trying to burn it to the ground. Fire Chief Bruck had told her that no terrorist organization had stepped forward to claim responsibility for the Fallbrook fire. He doubted that Al-Qaeda was behind it. He went on to say that 80 percent of arsonists lived within five miles of where they started their fires, which put this guy in Fallbrook, Bonsall, Rainbow, or De Luz.

“He said guy, because there are very few female arsonists,” said Iris.

“You ladies have too much good sense to do that.”

She looked at him dubiously. They made La Jolla in an hour. Patrick looked up at the LDS temple aglow in the night, and the golden trumpeter fixed to the top of the east spire and he wondered if Mormons were anything like Presbyterians. They take care of their own, he thought. He followed his GPS toward the address, which turned out to be a mansion that stood in a neighborhood of mansions staggered high upslope above the city.

Patrick looked down at the ocean below and the lights of La Jolla flickering. He used the intercom and the gate slid open quietly. He came up the drive and spotted the Mako, trailered and displayed beautifully as a jewel in the driveway lights. He felt a quiver of excitement and he braked carefully and pulled up in front of the house. The front lawn was an emerald expanse and sprinklers hissed upon it. Patrick got out and smelled the ocean and thought it went well with the smell of Iris.

He walked slowly around the craft, port to starboard. It was a foam-construction skiff, seventeen feet long, with room for two clients and one captain. It was old but looked well cared for. There were dents and scratches in the decks and gunwales but Patrick saw no patches or dark spots or other signs of waterlogged foam beneath. The cleats and latches looked new. The engine was a Mercury, to which Patrick was partial. Her CF tags were soon to expire but her name, Fatta the Lan’, was clear in black cursive and recently redone. He felt dizzy with hope. He chanced a glance at Iris, who was looking at him.

A man came down the walk from the house. Patrick heard him before he saw him. He wore a white dress shirt tucked into dark slacks, suspenders, and dress shoes, and he was not much older than Patrick, who half expected the man’s father to come out next. Instead, two small blond boys, dressed in matching red polo shirts, hustled through the door and came down the walk. The man introduced himself as Kevin Pangborn and shook hands with Patrick and Iris. He had a small potbelly — not a couch-potato’s potbelly, Patrick thought, but the potbelly of a well-off man, a man who ate well and played some sport — and his brown hair was short and brushed back. He wore gold cuff links.

“Just back from overseas?” he asked.

“Ten days now.”

“Thank you for keeping this country safe and free. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” Patrick watched the boys watching him.

“You said you’re going to guide fly fishers in the bay?”

“That’s right.”

“Great.”

“What do you do for a living?” asked Iris. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“We raise capital and turn around ailing companies. I’ve done some fly-fishing. It’s not easy. Maybe I can hire you to guide me.”

“I’ll need a boat first,” said Patrick.

“No!” said one of the boys. “It’s ours!”

Pangborn turned to face them and the boys looked down into the Fatta the Lan’. “Well, Patrick, this Mako would be good for guiding fly fishers. Both casting decks are nonskid and that fore railing I had built will keep your clients from falling overboard. The Mercury’s only got twenty hours on it. The beam is wide so it’s a dry ride even when the chop is bad. The aerator for the bait tank is touchy. I’ve got the GPS and sonar inside the house, and they’re part of the deal. I paid sixteen-two, have the records and service receipts.”

“Why are you selling it?”

“I bought my dream boat, a Triton. And a slip down in San Diego. I don’t need this one anymore.”

The boys stood along the port side of the skiff, brushing their hands along the railing and looking back and forth from their father to the skiff. “Why can’t we keep her, Dad?” one of them said. He looked at Patrick sullenly.

“The boys love this thing,” said Pangborn. An awkward silence followed. “Look, my listing price is thirteen grand but you seem like nice people, so I’ll let her go for twelve-five. Trailer, electronics, cover, everything.”

“No!” the boys hollered in unison. Pangborn pointed to the house and the boys marched up the walkway, muttering and clomping their athletic shoes loudly on the concrete. Patrick saw a tall blond woman gather them in and close the big wooden door.

Patrick thought of the fire, and his father turned down for Farm Credit loans, and the terrible financial shape the Norris family was in. How long would it take him to turn a profit on these eleven thousand dollars? In his mind he formed the sentence “I’ve changed my mind,” but when he spoke it came out differently. “I have eleven thousand.”

“Ouch,” said Pangborn.

“And another thousand in a month.”

Pangborn rubbed his chin and studied Patrick. “You served our country.”

Patrick said nothing.

“I’ll take your eleven. That’s more than good enough.”

Patrick felt his spirits start to rise and he heard an old-fashioned dial tone come from Pangborn’s direction. Pangborn pulled a phone from his pocket and checked the caller. “Patrick? Iris? I’ve got to take this. One of the elders. Give me five minutes, will you?”

Patrick backed the trailer and Fatta the Lan’ into the Norris barn. In the sideview mirror he could see Iris standing by the door, framed in the barnyard lights. Her golden hair shone. Jack and Spike were on scene by now, tails banging away, Spike sticking his nose up under Iris’s sweater. She nudged him away with one knee and a smile. When the boat was in place Patrick cranked down the steel wheel and unhitched the trailer. Iris helped him muscle it over and down.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Right now you want to tear into that engine and see how it looks.”

He smiled and shrugged. “I could wait.”

“I’ll help. I’d rather do something than not.”

“Take a walk with me, then. I’ll show you what’s left of the Norris Brothers groves. Just enough moonlight.”

They walked the dirt road up the hillside to higher ground. In the moonlight the trees below stretched before them, thin and black. They stopped and Iris took his arm in both her hands. “That’s a hard sight to see.”

“We’re hoping half of the burned ones live.”

“Is that realistic?”

“The fire was really fast. That was the one good thing about it.”

She leaned her head against him. “It baffles me that someone set it. What kind of person does that?”

“The Al-Qaeda magazine had instructions for setting forest fires in this country.”

“You’d think they’d take credit.”

“Other than a terrorist, I don’t know who would do it. A person who’s really pissed off? Totally crazy?”

“They say angry, yes. And sexually underdeveloped.”

“Hard to imagine how setting a fire solves that.”

She nodded and Patrick felt the weight of her head against his shoulder. He freed his arm and put it around her and they stood for a long while, awkwardly, neither seeming willing to break off.

Later, in silence, he drove Iris to her car downtown. Someone hustled down the sidewalk in the dark, hunched in a loose white wrap that for a second could have been a tribal garment, and Patrick’s heart jumped and his ears rang and his thoughts went AWOL, straight back to Sangin with Myers and Zane. He wished Iris would say something. Anything. Words in the air keep the devil gone. Sometimes. He stole a glance at her and caught her looking out the window, as usual, alert to who-knew-what? He was suddenly very aware of the space between them — he guessed it to be about twenty-two inches — and of the fine trembling in that air, which carried the weight of possibility in it, along with the chance, always present in his mind, that sudden violence would take it away.