Full Measure

Chapter twenty-eight

Monday morning Patrick stood on the front porch of Iris’s wounded bungalow. She was one day gone but he knocked anyway. She had not returned his calls. But he had seen where she hid her extra house key and now he guiltily fished it from under a flower pot and let himself in. He closed the door behind him, feeling like a stalker.

Inside, the casualties were worse than he’d thought, though he wasn’t surprised that five jarheads and four women could cause this much destruction in a few short minutes. The dining room was the worst, especially the once-beautiful china cabinet that now stood upright again, but with its glass gone and shelves dashed loose and the frame badly cracked. Its shattered treasures had been swept into a hillock in the middle of the gouged and lacerated hardwood floor. The women, with gallows humor, had set a decorative stainless steel crucifix atop the mound. The dining-room walls were scraped and dinged. The dining-room chair Patrick had used on Grier lay on its side, two back rails broken clean in half.

He heard the tapping on the front door. When he opened it Salimony and Messina and another man trailed in with the stealthy lightness of men on patrol. They followed him into the dining room. Salimony looked at Patrick solemnly, then touched the pile of ceramic and crystal shards with the toe of his running shoe. “Wow.”

Messina, stitches above his eye and mouth, stared swollen-lipped at the aerial photograph of Iris’s family’s farm, which looked as if it had come through a bombing, the glass radiating fissures from a ragged central hole, the photo torn, the frame propped against the wall.

“Can you fix the cabinet?” asked Patrick.

Private First Class Albert Taibo, an alleged master woodworker from Los Mochis, Mexico, and medic to Patrick’s Three-Five platoon, touched the splintered frame of the cabinet with his fingertip. He walked around the cabinet, twice. Albert was a stocky blue-eyed blond who looked more Irish than Mexican. “How long would I have?” he asked.

“Five days,” said Patrick. “It all has to be done before she gets back on Saturday. Everything.”

“Whew,” said Taibo. “She’ll be able to tell the cabinet’s been worked on.”

“How will it look?”

“It will look good. But Patrick, this is going to cost some money. Just the materials will run you a grand. If I charged my usual that would be another thousand but I’ll do it for free.”

“In five days.”

“That’s only if I can get the birdseye maple and good oak. Which means I should get to the builders’ supply like right now.”

“You need to fix the floor, too,” said Patrick. “All these scrapes and cuts. It has to look like it did before. And also that chair I broke on Grier’s head.”

“You gotta hire floor and furniture guys to do that, Pat. I can’t work that fast. And, sorry, but I’ll need the materials money up front. I’ve got almost nothing.”

Patrick pulled the wad of tip money from his pocket and handed it to Taibo. “That’s five hundred fifty-four bucks. Buy what you need to get started. I’ll have the rest by the end of the day.”

“Gonna rob a bank?” asked Messina. He took out his wallet and gave Taibo a twenty.

“Maybe just sell his truck,” said Salimony, handing Patrick all twelve dollars from his wallet.

Patrick got the Fallbrook phone book from the kitchen counter and took it outside. The backyard looked idyllic compared to inside, nothing smashed or broken, the picnic benches still arranged for the six-across sunset photo taken by Natalie. In his memory Patrick returned to that wonderful sunlit moment just a few hours ago, and to Iris, and his heart sank with the weight of what he’d done. The sunlight was far different, now the sky had a flinty look to it, the kind of distant icy whiteness that his father had told him meant a storm.

He called the glass store and the art framers and the flooring people and painters, and set up times for them to come out, promising cash for priority scheduling. He called and got a price on a comparable big-screen TV at a big-box store in Oceanside: another $589 plus $179 for the DVD player. Back inside he wrote down a list of broken things, guessing that some would be pricey to replace and some impossible. Next he called Kevin Pangborn down in La Jolla and explained his situation.

At noon he was traveling south on Interstate 15, bound for La Jolla, with Fatta the Lan’ trailered securely behind his truck. He looked back at her in the rearview. The way she bounced along jauntily, as if she were heading out to the water, made him angry at himself. How did he get so fucking dumb? Then he was just sad.

The matching Pangborn boys clambered screaming over the boat while the father, young and potbellied, strolled around her twice, looking for damage. “I can’t go the full eleven. I can only give you five.”

Patrick’s heart fell down and out of him and landed half a mile away in the cold Pacific. “Five thousand dollars? You made me a fair deal at eleven. Now I’m offering the same fair deal back to you.”

“But I can’t take her.”

“Why can’t you take her?”

“It would be against my principles as a man, and my training in finance. I no longer want the boat. But I’ll give you five thousand dollars for it.”

“I need the eleven thousand, right now.”

“I understand that.”

Patrick weighed the satisfaction of kicking Pangborn’s flabby ass against his own responsibility to Iris. At the moment, the ass-kicking was winning out. Pangborn gave him an uneasy look. The boys tried to push each other off the captain’s chair and claim ownership of the wheel. Pangborn snapped at them and they stopped fighting and focused their sullen stares on Patrick. “I expect you to pay what I paid you for the same boat.”

“What lesson are my boys going learn from that?”

“How to do the right thing.”

“They’ll see me as weak.”

“Get back Fatta the Lan’, Dad!”

“Yeah, Dad... we want our boat!”

Patrick turned his back on the boys and the craft and looked down on the pink mansions and the heaving Pacific. He tried to think of anything but his anger. He thought of Iris far away. He thought of Zane panting in the shade of the Hesco blocks, eagerly awaiting his next patrol. He saw that the La Jolla sky was an unusual gray down low, graduating higher up to storm white. Good distractions all, but he still thought the only answer here was to beat Pangborn senseless.

“I have to be frugal and firm,” said Pangborn. “In the church I’m known for my generosity.”

“I need the money for something very important.”

“I’m sure you do. Okay. Six thousand. Best and final.”

“You’re a hypocrite and a coward, Mr. Pangborn.”

The boys looked at their father. “I’ll go write the check. My bank is down there in town.”

Patrick got back to Iris’s house that afternoon with a new flat screen and DVR and all the right cables; dishes and place settings for ten that looked somewhat like the broken ones; good quality wineglasses, tumblers, and margarita glasses; three crystal vases that, based on the shards Patrick showed to a suspicious clerk, resembled the casualties; two tablecloths not unlike the one drenched by wine and tequila. He had also bought things that were not replacements but he thought Iris might like: a costly hallway runner; a stone vase made in Italy; an electric massage pad with “shiatsu” rollers. Thirty-three hundred and change, gone just like that.

While Salimony and Messina brought the boxes in and started setting up the TV and DVR, Patrick paid the painter half of his twelve hundred dollars up front. Work would start tomorrow. Patrick also paid the glass-and-mirror man two hundred against his estimate of four hundred to replace the mirror glass and repair the frame — work to be completed no later than Thursday. The flooring guy called to say he couldn’t get there today as promised but would be there first thing Tuesday.

Out on Industrial Way he arranged with a furniture maker to repair the oak chair for an estimated two hundred dollars, work guaranteed by Friday. On Main, the art framer said he could build a new frame for the aerial farm photo — two hundred fifty dollars was a cash only price — but the picture itself was beyond his skills to repair. He suggested a printmaker in town who might be able to do something with it.

The printmaker had a gallery that sold original California watercolors and posterlike copies of them. The walls were hung with them and good light streamed through the windows and seemed to project the paintings onto the white walls. Patrick’s eyes wandered to the paintings as the young man examined the farm photo. He told Patrick he could glue the clean cuts from the back but the punctures had destroyed some paper, and this would require small patches and hand-painting. The repaired photograph would still be bent and the reconstruction work would be visible, but he could make a computer-generated giclée that would be nearly perfect. He would personally see to the color corrections. Patrick could have the repaired original and the swanky new copy of it by the end of the workday tomorrow. Patrick gave him one hundred and fifty dollars, half of the job. “Is that one for sale?”

“The horses? That’s Free Spirits by Millard Sheets. Steals your eye, doesn’t it? It’s a lithograph, which makes it affordable and collectible at the same time. Signed and numbered by the artist.”

“How much?”

“It’s eight hundred dollars.” Patrick attempted an unimpressed nod. “We can change the frame if you’d like — there’s no charge for that.”

Patrick walked over for a closer look. There were two horses, one light and one dark, both graceful and spirited. They were running or playing. There was power in them, and a spark of the wild. The animals were engaged with each other and paid not Patrick nor anyone else one bit of attention. They were not meant to be perfectly realistic, which took some getting used to. But the horses said something to him — the dark and the light. He wondered if this was an artist’s trick. They reminded him of some of the other works of art in Iris’s home. But did he truly like the horses or mainly think Iris would like them? Well, mainly he wanted Iris to like them. Was this a bad thing?

“Just back from overseas?”

“Afghanistan.”

“We have a military discount of twenty percent. So it would be six hundred and forty dollars. And I’ll pay your tax.”

“Thank you. I’ll take it.”

“If you don’t like it after a few weeks, bring it back and I’ll refund your money.”

“She’ll like it.”

“A gift?” The young man shook his head and smiled slightly. “She’ll love it.”

It was almost dark by the time Patrick and his two friends got the electronics working, the wall dents patched and the debris taken to the dump. Taibo had set up his table saw and sanders in the garage and some of the newly cut shelves and splines were already stained and drying. Patrick smelled the varnish and thought they just might pull this off.

He marched into Domino’s Pizza just in time for his six o’clock shift. He wolfed a small pizza while attaching the Domino’s light to the top of his truck, then donned the blue, red, and black uniform shirt.

“You look tired,” said Simone. She handed him a large can of iced tea from the cooler. “We have three deliveries ready to go when you are.”

By nine he was back at Iris’s with two large leftover pizzas and twenty-one skinny Monday dollars in tips. Salimony was asleep on the living-room floor, the still-bagged Sunday paper for a pillow. Messina was almost done putting away the new dishes and cookware. Taibo still labored in the garage, the cabinet frame glued, doweled, clamped, and drying. Banda played softly from his boom box.

Patrick was back before sunrise to move furniture out of the way for the flooring specialists. No sooner was this finished then the man called to say he wouldn’t be able to get to Patrick’s floor until mid next week.

“It has to be done before Saturday.”

“Not by me it doesn’t. Get someone else,” he said, and hung up. Patrick left messages at three other places but two hours later not one had called back.

When Salimony and Messina showed up Patrick drove fast to Joe’s Hardware, where he chose the most expensive wood finish in stock, a rich dark color like Iris’s, marked “Walnut.” He bought liquid stripper, a heavy belt sander and five grades of paper, wire brushes, big sponges, paint trays, brushes, paint thinner, and a jumbo package of red shop rags. Another two hundred and sixty bucks flew from his pocket, leaving less than eight hundred dollars from Fatta the Lan.’

By eight fifteen he was sanding off the old finish in the living room, hoping to finish by the time the painting crew got done with the dining room. The painting boss morosely examined the drywall patches and added another hundred to the job to finish them off professionally, unless Patrick preferred for them to show. Taibo’s table saw screamed from the garage. Salimony and Messina attacked the living-room floor with coarse sandpaper. Patrick leaned into the hot screaming belt sander, still believing they could pull this off. They were United States Marines.

By Thursday the walls and foot rails had been painted, the chair had been returned, the mirror rebuilt, the china cabinet was ready for its glass, the aerial Cash farm giclée was hanging in its new frame, and Free Spirits had a place in the newly beautified dining room. The kitchen cabinets brimmed with new dishes, glasses, and goblets. The Italian vase looked good in the living room.

But the refinished hardwood floors were not right. The three men stood in the foyer studying the still-tacky floor. Very clear in Patrick’s memory was the burnished warmth that had once come from the wood — like it had candles underneath. But now the wood was brown and flat and invariable. “Looks like we drowned it in cheap paint,” said Patrick.

Messina looked down on it, nodding. “Or in shit.”

“And look where it meets the hallway,” said Salimony. “You can really see the difference.”

“Maybe it will look better when it dries,” said Patrick.

“Yeah, like dry shit,” said Messina.

Taibo came to the French doors of the patio, open for ventilation, and looked in. “You need to match the old finish, you idiots,” he called across to them. “The old finish had more red in it. So, Patrick, go back to Joe’s and buy red mahogany stain, and cherrywood stain, too. And get more of the walnut, and ten gallons of stripper and some more trays. I’ll help you get the color right.”

“That sucks,” said Messina. “Just these two rooms took two whole days.”

Patrick looked at his watch. “She said she’s getting in at seventeen hundred Saturday.”

“Back when she was still talking to you,” said Messina.

Patrick gave him a hard look. “We’ve got twenty-four hours to get this off, mix up the right color, and slap it on.”

“She won’t ever say another word to you if we don’t get these floors right again,” said Messina. “And that Natalie, isn’t she sweet as a honey sandwich? She probably won’t say another word to me, neither. So, let’s get some, Dark Horses.”

Twenty-three hours later, at five o’clock Friday, the four Marines stood in the foyer watching the wood dry. They were half-stoned from breathing fumes close-up for an entire day. Their backs and knees were sore and their hands were stained and scalded by the finish that found its way into the rubber gloves. But Patrick could see the old warmth back in the wood. It was radiant.

They sat exhausted and tipsy in the backyard, drinking tequila and beer left over from the party and eating Jack in the Box food that Patrick had fetched. The sky to the north was the brittle white of a storm foretold, but the sunset was a red-and-orange wonder far out beyond Pendleton. They lined up at the wall to watch. “Sangin’s sunsets were just as good but here we won’t get killed,” said Patrick.

“Not by woolies, anyway,” said Messina, lighting another cigarette.

“I saw Pendleton for the first time when I was eighteen years old,” said Salimony. “It was exactly eight years since I wrote President Bush that letter after nine-eleven. Right to the day — September twelfth. And when I first saw Pendleton, after growing up in Indiana, I thought, hot damn, I want to stay in California and live here when I get out. And now that’s what I’m doing. So this is my dream come true. According to this new study California is the most poorly managed and fucked-up state in the whole union. But it seems fine to me. Just look at it.”

“You been sniffing too many fumes, Sal,” said Messina.

“They don’t affect my dream.” He passed the big bottle to Taibo, who drank and passed it to Patrick.

“When I drink,” said Patrick, “I think of Sangin. And when I think of Sangin I think of you guys, and Boss and Zane and Myers. I think of Zane more than I should. I’ve got two cool dogs at home but I don’t love them the same way as I loved Zane. Once in a while I feel bad for loving a dog more than I loved most of the men. But it never was about love, not even crawling out through fire to tourniquet Prebble’s leg. I didn’t feel any love for Prebbs about that, but I did it.”

“You did a damned good job of it, too,” said former medic Taibo. “It saved Prebble’s life. Love is what you do, not how you feel about what you do. And you wouldn’t have run through fire to save a dog.”

After a long moment during which the sunset lost small gradients of light, Patrick said, “Before your time, Albert, before our first medic Adams went down, we were on a patrol and Zane dropped to the ground fifty meters from us. I could see he was on to something. Somebody whispered, ‘Oh, the heat’s got him.’ But I knew from the way he was looking at this twisted-up little tree that he was on a bomb. And he wouldn’t come off it. Crittendon couldn’t yell after him and call every skinny from miles around right to us. Then a sniper opened up. At Zane, not us. To this day I don’t understand why he did that, shoot at the dog, apart from pure meanness. So Crittendon yelled his head off trying to get Zane up but it did no good. The sniper kept missing — probably some village kid making extra money. Like having a paper route. We put the fifty all over him and I went and got Zane myself. God knows how many IEDs I walked over but the fifty kept the sniper down. I got to Zane and picked him up and carried him back. And I stayed away from that tree. When the Apaches came and sent the sniper to paradise, our bomb guys followed my footsteps back to the tree, and what did they find but a goddamned saw-blade IED dug in underneath it. So, actually, yeah, I did save a dog.”

“So you were like a dog medic,” said Salimony. “There ain’t nothing wrong with saving a dog.”

Patrick took another swig of the golden liquid. “If I could name one thing that the war stole from me that I miss most, it would be loving my own dogs.”

“Maybe you’ll learn how again,” said Salimony. “So, here’s to Zane and Myers and Pendejo and Adams and all the others who left it out there. Man or dog.” They touched their beer bottles and watched the rump of the sun settle behind the hills.

Patrick and Messina looked in on the newly finished living-room floor, found it acceptable, bumped fists. To keep from walking on it they went around the house to the front door. They came in and followed the hallway down, and in the closet of the spare bedroom found blankets and two rolled-up sleeping bags.

They drank and talked late and lay faceup to see the stars through the patio lattice. Every word went back to Sangin, and every space between the words. Twice they traipsed around to the garage and turned on the lights to see Iris Cash’s heirloom china cabinet, made newly resplendent by Taibo. Each time, Patrick circled it again and again, hawkishly looking for the tells of rebuilding, but he could see none.

Later back on the patio they drank and talked more. “This would be heaven for me, to live in this house in this place,” said Salimony. His restless leg bounced up and down beneath his blanket. “I don’t mean with Iris, Pat, don’t think that. I’m not saying with her. I’m just saying this is where I’d like to start over.”

“Patrick’s saying with her, don’t worry about that,” said Messina. “And I get Natalie, so cross her off your list too, Sal.”

“She’s twice as tall as you,” said Salimony.

“You wanna fucking fight?”

“No. I’m in a good mood.”

“If Iris ever talks to me again it’s thanks to you guys,” said Patrick.

“But we’re the ones who broke her place all up in the first place,” said Salimony.

Patrick thought about that for a long moment. “Naw. It was those dumbass jarheads from Pendleton.” They laughed. “Men? I love you all but we gotta get past this shit. Past Sangin. Past all of it. Into the future.”

“I’m going to end up some place just like this.”

“I’m going to end up some place like Natalie.”

“I’m getting a job with county paramedics,” said Taibo. “Soon as I get my certs.”

“How many blown-up men you treat in Sangin?” asked Patrick. “Dodging IEDs and getting shot at?”

“Can’t even count.”

“And that isn’t good enough for the county?”

“Nope.”

It was cold for them on the concrete in their clothes and blankets and lightweight sleeping bags, but not as cold as Sangin, not even close. Patrick dreamed of a gleaming white ocean liner leaving the dock, honking and steaming like in the movies, with Iris and Ted and everyone in his platoon, living and dead, waving goodbye to him. So he just climbed into Fatta the Lan’ and keyed the engine alive to catch up with them but real life barged into his dream and reminded him that the boat was no longer his. Fatta the Lan’ vanished, Patrick tread in the cold water, and the ocean liner kept on going.

He woke with first light, stood and kicked Salimony awake. Minutes later he and his friends were standing side by side, looking through the open French doors and into Iris’s living room. Patrick reached in and hit the lights. Even in the man-made incandescence, Iris’s hardwood floors were magnificent. Patrick let his gaze wander the rich planks, saw the warm illumination that came from within. He laughed quietly: mission accomplished. Salimony, Messina, and Taibo laughed, too.

Later, in stocking feet, they reinstalled the china cabinet in the dining room. To Patrick’s eye it looked perfect. Brushing a fingertip over the birdseye maple and nodding, even Taibo seemed to approve his own work. They picked up after themselves then shuffled — shoes and plastic trash bags in hand — across the dining room to the living room to the foyer and out.