Full Measure

Chapter three

Archie retired early, tumbler in hand, leading his shadow down the long hallway past the sconces and the family photographs. Patrick sat with his mother, who laid out the dismal ranch finances. In the living room the windows were all open and the acrid smell of a burned world was made heavier by the damp ocean breeze that came almost nightly up the river valleys on either side of Fallbrook.

“I can’t distract him from himself any longer,” she said. “It’s been like this every night for a year. He’s obsessed with the idea of loss, which of course creates loss. And he enjoys his gift of prophecy. Complaining. Drinking. He acts as if God sent drought, the frost, and the fire to ruin him. Personally.”

Caroline was a tall, trim woman with a regal posture and a head of striking black hair. She usually wore expensive jeans, boots, crisp white shirts, and silk scarves with subtle patterns loosely knotted around her fine neck. Her face and nails were always done. Patrick had never seen her leave the ranch anything less than put together. Even at home she would rarely let herself be seen in work clothes or thoughtless combinations of casual wear, or any garment associated with exercise or sleep. Patrick found her less vain than simply dutiful about presenting the woman who she had chosen to be. Sometimes he wondered what she had given up for this.

“But that may change now,” she said. “You’ve brought him hope. God bless you for that.” She sipped a glass of red wine and the dimmed overhead lights caught her hair and cast sad-clown shadows under her eyes. “Was it bad in Afghanistan? Your e-mails and calls were cheerful enough, though few and far between.”

Patrick nodded contritely. “When I got there and saw it, I thought, ‘Well, there’s a good chance you’re not going home.’ So I tried to put some distance between me and everyone I might not see again. Does that make sense?”

“Terrible, terrible sense.”

“It’s good to be home but hard to talk. I have to get used to not being alert all the time. You get hooked on that. I get startled easy. I haven’t slept well. I get this feeling that snipers are lining up on me. I’ve got a temper now.”

“I see it in your face.”

“I didn’t have it over there. I was too busy trying to not get killed.”

“I think I understand. Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“Pat, I’m glad you’re going to help us rebuild this ranch. But I want you to know that if you walked out of here tomorrow to seek your fortune in a larger world, I would support you. And your father would get over it, sooner or later. You are young. Personally, I find your dream of guiding fishing excursions at sea to be, well... attainable and romantic.”

“I wouldn’t get shot at or have to kill anyone. But I think I need to be here now to help with the groves. I can get my old pizza gig and save the money.”

She looked at him for a long beat. “If I had money I would help you with the boat.”

“I have some money, Mom.”

“It’s humiliating, not being able to help your own children. None of the calamities that have fallen on your father hurt him as much as that.”

“None of it’s his fault.”

“That’s irrelevant to him. He’s blamed himself for Ted since the day he was born.”

“Ted’s a grown man now.”

“We train our men to accept responsibility for everything, don’t we? Even things you can’t control.”

“I see some truth in that.”

“Hold tight to your dreams.”

Patrick poured a bourbon and took a flashlight and walked down the dirt road toward the outbuildings. The dogs trotted out ahead, noses down. The barnyard spread flat before him in damp moonlight and the sycamores towered into the sky. He saw the big barn, the metal storage buildings, and the long bunkhouse. He walked past the barn and into the grove to see how close the flames had come. In the flashlight beam he saw that Ted’s impressive brush clearing had kept the fire from jumping from the grove to the buildings.

Ted had moved into the bunkhouse when he was eighteen, having announced that it was time for him to be out on his own. Patrick had helped him. They’d taken apart and stored the old bunks, then filled up the big open room with things of interest to Ted — small animal cages, movies on tape and DVD and a big-screen TV to watch them on, a computer and peripherals.

Now Ted sat at a wooden picnic table in the center of the large room, playing a computer fantasy game. Patrick approached and looked over Ted’s shoulder at the monitor, where a massive upright humanoid with a bull’s head and horns loped through pleasant woodlands eviscerating wild dogs. Ted paid his brother no attention. Patrick knew that Ted enjoyed being watched as he played, and that his brother’s unacknowledgment was not rude but, oddly, somehow inclusive.

“Level eighty-one,” Ted said after a while. His hands tapped the keyboard on his lap and the humanoid trotted and the wild dogs flew apart.

“What’s the object of this game?”

“To create the best character you can. It’s all about character.”

“Why’s he killing dogs?”

Ted turned. “Those are wolves, not dogs. Big difference. Dad seemed happier when you came back from your fire-damage tour. Bigger, somehow. Did you say you’d stay and help?”

“I did, yes.”

Patrick watched his brother in profile, his hands brisk on the keyboard, the big taurine creature gliding through the countryside. After a while Patrick went to the shelves of cages that lined two walls. This part of the bunkhouse was half-dark and most of the cage lights were off but he could see tarantulas stepping lightly and snakes both still and gliding, and the skinks and swifts peering out from cracks. Alligator lizards prowled. There were Pacific tree frogs and baby pond turtles no larger than golf balls. Patrick saw mantids and scorpions and black widows and pine sawyers. Ted only kept what was native and, as he said, “unlovable.” The high handsome oak shelves were built years ago by his father, who had encouraged Ted’s husbandry of creeping things and — strangely, Patrick had always thought — almost nothing else.

Ted talked without turning. “Pat, you did good for our country overseas, no matter what you think. And I want to do something, too.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet. Something really big. And then, I think I’ll leave. There’s more to the world than Fallbrook. You should come with me. I’d like it if you came. Maybe if you get that boat we can take it and just head out like, for the territory.”

“I think I’ll be here a while. And you know what? The big thing you can do is help put this farm back together.”

“Dad thinks I’m stupid.”

“He gets his mind wrongly fixed at times.”

“Just like I do.”

“I already talked to him about this. It’s up to us now, Ted. We’ve got to repair what we can repair, and when spring comes, hope enough trees make it. Otherwise we sell the whole place at a big loss and clear out.”

Ted’s creature hooked a wolf and threw it high and it hit the ground a broken, snarling thing. “Got him, Pat!” Ted swung around, his expression grave. “Dad really said that? He wants me to work?”

“He really said it.”

“There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than help this family. Nothing. I’ll give my notice to Friendly Village Taxi tomorrow after work. Cleo will have to understand. It may take her a day or two to find someone else, but I’m needed here. Right here now.”

“Yes. You are.”

Ted smiled. “Tell me about the war.”

“Later.”

“I fully understand. You need some time first.”

Back in the house Patrick refilled his glass with ice and bourbon and lay in his old bed, the same one he’d slept in as a high schooler. As he waited for sleep to find him, the present stepped aside and his memory barreled in with an explosion of light, then Myers and Zane, and then a split second later the unforgettable sound of a bomb finding flesh. The roar startled him back to the now, where he smelled the smoke of many things native and distant that had burned. Much later, as sleep tiptoed toward him again, Patrick saw in his mind a white with black trim Triton 240 LTS Pro Series fishing boat with the outboard four-stroke Mercury, a twenty-five gallon bait well, plenty of deck storage, stainless-steel hardware and grab rails, nonskid casting decks and gunwales. She was strong and capable. She streaked across the water with Patrick at the helm and she was his.