Full Measure

Chapter twenty-nine

By late morning Patrick and the rest of the Norris clan were in the grove filling sandbags. The special NOAA forecast was calling for a two-part storm — a large Alaskan front heading down from the northwest, aimed to collide with an unusually strong late-season hurricane coming up from Baja. The meeting point looked to be offshore San Diego. Too early to tell, said the TV forecasters, but it could be substantial. They promised to track this thing by the hour.

Patrick was always amused how San Diego citizens treated rain as an insult, while the farmers treated it as a birthright. But the forecasts aside, Archie had had a dream two nights ago about a deluge hitting his groves and sweeping them all the way down the San Luis Rey River Valley to the sea. Thus, preventive sandbagging and lots of it.

The morning was damp and the reeking ash and earth clotted their boots and weighed them down. Patrick labored and brooded about Iris and what he had done and failed to do. He willed his phone to ring but it did not. The dogs dug up a gopher hole, dirt and ash and straw flying between their back legs, faces caked with dirt.

“Sorry,” said Ted, dropping his shovel into the bed of his truck. “I can’t work anymore. The stabs.”

“I told you to have them checked again,” said his father.

“Hurts.”

“Of course it does, son. You don’t have to be out here right now.”

“Rest the wounds, Ted,” said Caroline. “Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Yeah, almost for sure, Mom. I’m sorry I can’t do more work.” Ted slowly rounded his truck and climbed in. He looked forlorn. Patrick watched the truck roll over the rise and disappear.

Caroline came over for more sandbags. “I’ve been worried about him,” she said.

“Let’s stand by him,” said Patrick.

“We always have,” said Archie.

“He needs us,” said Caroline.

By afternoon they had begun building sandbag walls along the contours of the slopes. Next they would fortify the downhill roadsides, and finally, build up both sides of the gorge that drained the groves when enough rain fell. It was backbreaking work, worse than stacking the Hesco blocks for security at Inkerman. The blocks over which the sniper still hit Pendejo, Patrick thought. He saw that it would take at least two more days to pile the sandbags high enough to do real good.

He had trouble paying full attention. He figured Iris was getting into San Diego just about now. He tried to put himself in her shoes and guess how she’d feel when she walked into her house. Dazzled by the improvement, or even more pissed off at what he’d done?

He looked up to see Lew Boardman on a distant hill, watching them. Boardman held his palms up and out, wondering what all their labor could be about. Patrick slung the bags with a vengeance. The hardest part was dropping forty pound bags accurately enough to not have to stoop and wrestle them around by hand. His father was strong and apparently tireless in his faith that this much-needed rain would come. Archie kept looking skeptically north and south, as if to daring it not to.

Hours later darkness closed in. On the drive home Patrick looked out at the dark skeletons of the trees but in his mind’s eye he pictured Iris stepping into her refurbished home, her face in a wondrous smile that told him everything he needed to know. The image was very much like the memory of her face that he’d carried overseas, but now it was more detailed and more real, and far more valuable. But what if she didn’t like what she found at home? What if she had been traumatized by his violence? What if she’d experienced violence before, making his unforgettable and unforgivable? Certainly she had been humiliated in front of her friends. What if she was ashamed of him and of her own misjudgment of him? What if she just disliked the floor? Or Free Spirits? What if Taibo’s china cabinet wasn’t masterful in her eyes at all? And the giclée of the Kenton farm? Why should she treasure something that had come out of a copier? How could she possibly be drawn to an electric shiatsu massage pad? Why did he feel like a fool?

Patrick set out for the bunkhouse with the dogs panting alongside him. Ted was at his usual place in the big darkened space, at the picnic table, face thrust into the computer monitor. He didn’t turn when Patrick came in but he dropped a hand onto Jack’s thick Labrador head when the dog came up.

“You okay, Ted?”

Ted finally swiveled around and looked at Patrick. “My feet are killing me, and so are my back, my hands, and my knife holes. I checked them today and they weren’t leaking. But they’re still swelled up.”

“Well, you tried to help. You showed good courage and conviction, Ted.”

“You sound like Dad now except that you might mean it. He doesn’t ever mean it.”

“I meant what I said.”

Yellow Spike, heavier and a bully, barreled in between Jack and Ted, trying to hog the affection. Ted pet each dog’s head. Patrick went to the terrariums and watched the critters watch him. He remembered when they were boys how flustered Ted would get when some of his animals got away. It seemed to happen a lot, mostly to the snakes and scorpions. Only later did Caroline confess to carrying the cages outside when the boys were at school, and releasing the animals that scared her, shooing them into the groves with a broom. Ted had thrown a memorable tantrum at that. Now a small frog eyed Patrick then sprung to the opposite glass wall and stuck perfectly, still eyeing him.

“Have you been back to Pride Auto Repair?”

“No, sir, Pat. I told you I wouldn’t.”

“Have you posted any more online cartoons or insults to Evelyn Anders?”

“No! But I actually apologized to her a couple of days ago. Face to face.”

“Oh, no, Ted.”

“No worries. It went really good. We’re good. Everything’s good. Except... I need to ask you a question.”

Patrick saw the dark hard cast of Ted’s face, a haunted look that had visited him, off and on, ever since Patrick could remember.

Ted climbed off the bench and stood. Patrick came over and saw the game now paused on the monitor — a first-person shooter in what looked like Afghanistan. The shooter brandished an M240, as had Patrick in real life. “Uh, Pat, I saw you drive off with Fatta the Lan’. Now you’re back and she’s still gone. What happened to her? Did you take her out without me?”

“I sold her to pay off some debts.”

“Sold her? Debts?”

“Just stupid stuff I did.”

“But you don’t do stupid things.”

“I manage my share.”

Ted looked at his brother. “Fatta the Lan’? We were going to sail out for the territory. We were going to fish and make money and get big tips from the clients. And go drinking back on the waterfront. And eat, too. Then work our way down to Mexico where the water’s always warm and there’s lots of fish, and the women are friendly and beautiful. And then back up the California coast until it got too cold. Remember?”

Patrick considered his brother’s troubled face brushed by the monitor lights. Tears welled in Ted’s eyes but didn’t spill over. “I’ll get another boat, Ted. I’ve still got five hundred bucks left.”

“But, Pat... what’s five hundred going to get us?”

“I’ll need to make more. We’ll get something decent. And I still have to take the captain’s test and log more hours, and do the CPR course and fill out all the state forms and get the insurance. There’s tons of paperwork. And a Web site. It’s all time-consuming. And expensive, if you’re a little guy.”

Ted shrugged and looked back at the game for a moment. “All right. I’ll do something important without you, Pat. You’re not my keeper. Mostly I just feel bad for you losing your boat.”

“I’m going to get another boat, Ted. We’ll fish. You can help me guide now and then.”

“Not every time though, because sometimes you’ll have three anglers and the boat’ll be too full. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be a part-time first mate.”

“Yes, you will.”

Ted sighed. “Okay. That’s something to look forward to. Now, I’m going to go soak my feet in the bathtub. Those sandbags are the heaviest things on Earth. Maybe that’s because they’re filled with earth. I’ll find a way to get over you selling the boat, Pat.”

Patrick was early for his Domino’s shift but the evening was already busy. He helped Firooz and Simone answer the phone and take Internet orders and make pizza. Patrick checked his phone again — no call or text — and again felt the tug of his heart.

“Did you hear?” Simone asked. Patrick looked up from the bag of frozen Buffalo wings he was pouring onto the baking tray. “Police arrested the manager of the GasPro for setting the fire. I saw the arrest. I was getting gas and suddenly they were bringing him out of the store. He had his uniform on and he was handcuffed.”

“The Iranian?” said Patrick, thinking, the skinny? He’d been seeing the man at the GasPro station since before he’d enlisted. It seemed like every time Patrick filled up, the big man was working. He was a big solid guy who looked you in the eye.

“There were six men. I notice things when I’m afraid. These men wore armor and helmets. They carried machine guns. Their clothing had the big letters — HSI, ATF, and FBI. They brought him from the store and put him in a white van. So, when I came back here I turned on TV and listened to the radio and got on the Internet. There was nothing. Like it didn’t happen. Just like in Iran. I called the Fallbrook sheriffs but they would not say anything about an arrest. Then, one hour ago, the radio said that the arsonist had been arrested. Ibrahim, the gas station manager — they say he set the fire. Look!”

Channel 10 came on and there he was, Ibrahim Sadal, looking wild-eyed and angry. Six heavily armed federal agents swiftly moved him out of the mini-mart and into the van.

“From Baghdad,” said Firooz. “He was an oil engineer under Saddam then he escaped to America. This is what he claimed. It is a terrible thing that he set the fire.”

“But what if he did not?” asked Simone.

“Then this thing is terrible, too,” said Firooz.

“In Iran I saw arrests like this,” said Simone. “And I never saw the arrested person again. And there was never an explanation or news of it. Only rumors.”

“Only rumors.” Firooz nodded.

Patrick carried the two four-packs of pizzas to his truck and set the red insulated packs on the passenger seat. Firooz followed with two more and a rectangular carrier for side orders. Simone lugged the soft-sided cooler of drinks. She set them in the truck and slammed the door and Patrick flinched but he saw they did not notice. He attached the Domino’s sign and hopped in.

His tips on ninety-six dollars’ worth of food amounted to eight dollars and change. After the last delivery he argued with himself out loud, while unerringly tracing his path back downtown and straight for Iris’s street. When he was close he pulled over and removed the Domino’s sign from the roof of his truck. He drove past and saw lights on inside. The garage door was closed. Down the street he U-turned and drove by again, then gunned his truck back to work. In the Domino’s parking lot he finally caved in and called her but she didn’t pick up. He left a brief message: Welcome home, hope it went well, I missed you, you don’t have to keep any of that stuff if you don’t want. He punched off and headed back into the pizza place with Taibo’s words ringing in his mind: love is what you do.