Full Measure

Chapter thirty-two

Patrick got to Warrior Stadium early Friday evening to help Iris with the concert. He had not seen her since the dinner party and they had talked just once on the phone in the last six days. She had sounded calm but distant. Kenton was Kenton. Best friend Carrie was getting married. Family was good, friends fine. So far as the Cruzela Storm show on Friday went, she could use some help and get him a seat. But nothing about herself or what had happened. Was she furious? How furious? Or, by some miracle, was she pleased by his work? She gave no hint nor clue. Patrick wanted to do as he was trained — to take the fight to the enemy — but how exactly do you do that to a woman you’re in love with?

None of his old clothes fit because he’d lost so much weight in Sangin, so on Thursday his mother had taken him shopping in Escondido. Away from home and alone with him, Caroline was light and forthcoming and she bought a new scarf and took Patrick to lunch in the swanky café at Nordstrom. She said she enjoyed shopping much more than filling sandbags, but not to tell Archie. Patrick noted that she drew looks from men of different ages and she seemed both aware and impervious.

As they roamed the crowded mall she took his arm and told him a story about herself at eighteen, one week out of high school, the same week that Patrick had joined up. “My father was vicious when he was drinking, which was always. He disliked women. They were sexual things or nothing at all. He treated my mother like a child, and in some ways she was. Their fights were violent. My older brothers were his life and future, and I understood this, on paper anyway. I was invisible. In a way it was a relief. But I tried extra hard to please him. I was class valedictorian. I played varsity volleyball. I learned Spanish and French and I learned to dance and sing and ride a horse. I tried to be beautiful. I kept my, um... honor. The Sunday after graduation he took me to brunch. Santa Monica, upscale place. He told me he was proud to have done his part with me. He said I wouldn’t amount to much but if I could marry right I’d be okay. And if I married right a portion of his fortune would follow me. He leaned in close and whispered something in my ear.”

Caroline leaned over and whispered in Patrick’s ear: “He said, ‛Caroline, remember, there’s a hot little fuckdoll in every profitable marriage. Practice up and learn how. If you don’t believe me ask your mother.’ Well, Pat, he and Mom had given me a new red BMW convertible for my Stanford career up north. Two hours later, and with my best worldly possessions, I was speeding due south from L.A. to San Diego, which I knew to be party central. I said nothing. His comment at lunch wasn’t the only reason I left. It was the least of them by some measures. Just the last straw. Well, once in San Diego I searched hard, and it only took me a few days to find the worst boyfriend any virgin valedictorian could wish for. Just like Dad, but meaner. Not only alcohol, but drugs, too. A little physical, that boy. Let’s just say I happily morphed into my opposite and within a year I was a very serious wreck. But I was putting the screws to Daddy all right! I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t stumbled into a biker bar in Oceanside one day and been spotted by your father. I truly don’t. Archie was my blessing and my miracle, staggeringly undeserved. And that, Patrick, is how you got your mom. That is why I’m so careful in what I do. Why I control everything, from the way I knot my scarf, to what I read, to how I hold the book. What I say and how I say it. From the way I set a water glass in the sink to the way I rinse it. It’s not composure or serenity, certainly not vanity. No. Control is my vaccine against becoming that way again, the way I was before Archie. Which I know I am... prone to.”

Patrick was speechless past the shoe store, the cell phone kiosk, the luggage store, and the food court. He felt like hiding behind a Hesco block and smoking cigarettes.

“Did I embarrass you, Pat?”

“No. Some. I’ve never seen you blush, Mom.”

“I don’t exactly tell that story every day.”

“Um, did your dad know you did all that?”

“I tortured him with it.”

“That’s a story, Mom.”

“I’m glad Archie opened it up with you. Regarding Ted. I love you, Patrick. And I hope you love me. That was the whole point.”

At a young person’s store with suggestive posters and throbbing music she bought Patrick a new outfit that was expensive but looked cool, he thought. He showed his ID and handed the clerk the money himself in order to get the 10 percent military discount. The new sport coat fit well and the shirt was cotton but smooth as silk. Hundred and fifty dollar jeans!

“If you don’t melt Iris’s little wooden heart in that outfit, you’re going to have to find greener pastures, Pat.”

“We’re just friends, Mom.”

“Ho-ho. Don’t tell her that.”

Later at the mall hair salon — Messina had told him not to go to barber shops unless he wanted to look like an ex-jarhead forever — Patrick was pleased to find that his hair had grown just long enough to be styled. And to mostly cover the patch where his stitches had been after the beach brawl with the MPs. He looked at himself in the salon mirror as the stylist made tiny snips, itemizing his recent bad behaviors. He wondered if the world might be better off with him back on patrol where he knew what he was doing. A structured setting. It sounded good in many ways.

Now he walked across the parking lot toward the stadium entrance, saw the little band of protesters near the gate with their signs: WALK THE WALKS WE HAVE! NO GIFTS FOR ILLEGALS! SUPPORT POLICE — NOT JAYWALKERS! There were some ELECT WALT ROOD signs, too, though Patrick didn’t see the candidate. The people and their energy unnerved him and he was tempted to turn around and go home or to a quiet bar. He wondered if the loud concert music would set him off. He thought how Ted always said that things just got into him against his own will, and now Patrick saw how that might happen. Things are big, he thought. They have power. You can’t turn everything off. The guns of Pendleton started pounding away to the west, Patrick flinched but steeled himself, and his control held.

He went around to a side entrance and squeezed through the loosely chained gate, then ambled on to the Warrior Stadium turf that he’d last played on just four years ago. Wide receiver, decent hands. The turf was the same vivid green and the yard lines straight and white. He stopped midfield near the fifty and remembered catching a pass right here in the homecoming game, to no avail in their narrow loss. He looked at the scoreboard with the Warrior in the headdress, and the snack bar and press box painted barn red with white trim. He’d always liked the bright stadium lights. It was easy to wander back into that past. It seemed so small now, but safe and pleasant, like a small nest he’d jumped from. Could it be only four years? But down by the goal line everything was different — he saw the elaborate scaffolding and stage, and the big amplifiers, the drums and congas, the keyboards and the colorful guitars in their stands, all twinkling in the stage lights.

He found Iris talking with a group of volunteers setting up VIP chairs near the stage. She had on a blue silk blazer over a navy blouse, and jeans and knee-high boots, and the sight of her made his heart ache and his mind wobble. He stood there in his new clothes, feet together and back straight, waiting. The evening was cool and breezy and the sky was a heavy, fretful gray. Finally she turned. She studied him, curiously, as if she’d never seen him before, or perhaps had known him once and forgotten almost everything about him. A strange look. He felt skinned. She approached and Patrick smiled, but inwardly he wasn’t sure whether to meet the threat, hold his ground, or retreat. Please nothing bad. He’d never been this unsure of what to do, not even in the chaos of combat. She came up close and he saw the emotion in her eyes but couldn’t identify it. Just could not. “We can help set up these chairs,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. We can talk later. I love the horses. Let’s get this done.”

Patrick worked with the energy of the hopeful. Natalie and Mary Ann joined them but neither of them offered him more than a wave. Natalie took pictures of Iris and Mary Ann working for the Village View. It was dark by the time they finished. A few minutes later the crowd was filing in. Iris gave him his ticket and pointed out their seats, a third of the way back and in the middle. She excused herself to follow Natalie toward Cruzela Storm’s trailer for a brief interview and photo shoot. Evelyn Anders fell in behind them. Iris turned and looked at Patrick, and again her expression was inscrutable to him — his twenty-two years of worldly experience no match, he sensed, for millennia of female evolution resulting in Iris Cash. He waved lamely.

Evelyn followed Iris and Natalie, squeezing past two bodyguards, into Cruzela Storm’s trailer. It was roomy. Cruzela sat on a love seat with an acoustic guitar propped on the cushion beside her. In her daring stage clothes Cruzela no longer looked awkward and uncomfortable, but strong-limbed, sexual, and dangerous. She made Evelyn feel neither young nor particularly attractive anymore, but these were not bad feelings. It was good to see a woman who was all of that and more. Cruzela’s hair was a shiny copper mane, her face heavily made-up, her lips black. She rose and shook their hands formally, half a head taller than tall Natalie. “Help yourself to the food and drink.”

Evelyn backed away and stood near the food, unsure of whether to offer herself a seat in the presence of a star. Iris sat down across from Cruzela and started in with her questions. Natalie began shooting. One of the bodyguards, well muscled and his black hair in a ponytail, carried a chair over to Evelyn with one hand, and it seemed to weigh no more to him than a glass of wine. Boy, could she use one of those. She disliked public speaking, but half an hour from now she’d be up there in front of two thousand plus people, trying to thank them for doing the right thing. They sure weren’t here to listen to her.

“Glass of wine?” asked the bodyguard.

“Oh, please, yes.”

“You look like a red wine woman.”

“You’ve read my mind twice in ten seconds.”

She pulled her tablet from her purse and brought up her speech notes. She read through them, half tuned to the interview, half aware of the flashes of Natalie’s camera. “When I heard about Georgie Hernandez half my heart broke and the other half just got pissed off,” said Cruzela. Evelyn heard the crowd outside burst into applause but had no idea why. She couldn’t believe there were protesters out there. Now, she told herself, when you get up there, just let them know the basics, then get off stage. The basics were: welcome, sold out, will raise more than fifty grand, which will pay for Fallbrook’s share of lighted crosswalks and then some. Also, remember to thank bigger sponsors: the Village View, Major Market, Pro-Tire, Martial Arts Concepts, Rotary, American Legion Post 365, Democratic Club, Soroptimists, Kiwanis, Fallbrook Wood Carvers, Gem and Mineral Society, AAUW, the synagogue, the many churches, and the many charitable groups. She knew that the people she didn’t thank by name tonight would complain to her, but that is public service now, isn’t it?

She took a drink of the wine and listened to Cruzela talking about growing up in Barrio Logan. She watched Natalie shooting her pictures, trying to be unintrusive. She studied Cruzela Storm and wondered what it would be like to have a talent. As she spoke to Iris, Cruzela’s emotions seemed to crash right through the heavy makeup and on to her face. She doesn’t have only talent, but heart, too, thought Evelyn. For a moment she felt good, knowing that she had helped her people help themselves, and that everyone had come together here to do a good thing that needed doing. Well done, Mayor Anders, she thought, and drank a toast to herself and thought a brief prayer for Georgie.

By the time she climbed the backstage stairs and began her journey toward the ferocious lights before her, Evelyn’s stomach was in knots and her legs had gone heavy and cold.

“They’re gonna love you, Mayor!” Cruzela called from behind her.

She had no idea of what walking into a stadium of applause would be like. She’d never bothered to imagine it. But it hit her with the force of a blow and she stopped for one moment before continuing. By the time she reached her mark, her citizens were clapping and yelling her name and some stood, then more rose, until all were on their feet. Their voices hit her as one voice, and their clapping as two thousand votes of confidence. Maybe all that approval would last until the election! She waved her tablet at them with one hand, and brought the mic to her mouth with the other.

Fans had left their seats and clustered up close to the stage right below her, mostly young girls with bouquets for Cruzela, but there were some boys and adults, too, and the sheriff deputies on either side of them watched, unconcerned.

“God bless you, Fallbrook!” she called out and the volume rose as if someone had turned a knob. “I’m your biggest fan!”

Smiling and still waving her tablet, Evelyn opened her mouth to speak again. At the same moment she recognized Ted Norris, wrapped in a heavy winter coat, working his way toward her.

Ted plodded through the rowdy crowd. Evelyn Anders stood up there in the lights with the gleaming musical instruments, her tablet held high. Her ten thousand commandments, he thought, what I shalt and shalt not do. She wore a black dress and a short white jacket. She recognized him, and he heard the falter of her voice as she began her speech. She cleared her throat and started again. He’d smoked the last of his crystal in the parking lot, drank half the pint of bourbon and slid the flat dark bottle into a coat pocket. The stadium and stage lights sent bright fissures across his mind’s eye, like lightning crackling down on a city. My world, he thought, my moment.

He glanced at the deputies standing with their backs to the stage, surveilling the crowd. He noted that they were very young and unarmed — not deputies at all, in fact — but so-called Explorers, earning their credits for academy. The Glock waited beneath his shirt and coat, firm against his belly.

He turned and looked at his brother and Iris, seated maybe a third of the way back. Even with the mayor up there chirping away, they were talking intently. Patrick had an earnest, optimistic posture. From this distance Iris looked stern. And they seemed separate from what was going on around them, like they were the only two people at the show, thought Ted, or on the whole planet.

Evelyn blathered, “Georgie... tragedy... lighted crosswalks... fifty thousand dollars...”

He shuffled around a group of teenaged girls, their scents finding him. He stopped just short of another gaggle of girls. They looked at him with an incomprehension he understood because to him they seemed no more knowable than penguins or aliens. The stage was ten feet away, and maybe waist-high. Evelyn reigned above them all, bathed in light. “And Joe’s Hardware, and all of the churches and Beth Israel have been so generous, also...” Surrounded by the giddy children, Ted ran his hand up under his coat and shirttail to the handle of the Glock — so solid, so unchanging, so there. Evelyn yapped on. She was beautiful. He remembered her voice on the other side of the bathroom door the night she’d babysat him, just making sure you’re okay in there, Teddy, and it was the same voice he heard now. Now, seventeen years later, that same woman looked down on him, trying to hide her fear. What a gift that fear was. “Fallbrook, you’ve done a wonderful thing... give yourselves a round of applause before Cruzela comes on...” Evelyn loomed there, searching his face with a frozen smile. He looked up the long rifled tunnel of his vision at her, drawing breath deeply, trying to get enough in so he could exhale slowly, like Kerry had told him.

He tightened his grip on the gun. It was warm and heavy and encouraging. The time was now. The crowd burst into applause for itself, and in the roar he commanded his hand to withdraw the weapon and shoot Evelyn Anders. This is for all of you, he thought, for you who hated and betrayed me. His command was clear and his heart was undivided. But the gun did not move. He commanded again. Nothing. He squeezed the grip tighter, finger outside the trigger guard as he’d been taught. Evelyn lowered the mic and tablet and bowed. As she leaned over she held the mic to her chest but the beginnings of her breasts were still visible, like in the cartoon he’d drawn of her. When she straightened she was looking right at him. He summoned all his will and courage. Her. Now. She turned and strode away and the crowd began chanting for Cruzela.

Ted watched her go. Her white coat was a good target, clean and bright in the lights. With every step she took, a voice inside said: You are nothing. He took his hand off the gun and jammed his fist into his coat pocket. As the applause and chanting grew louder he felt smaller and smaller. He listened to the sound of the world.

Invisible now, he turned and patiently worked his way through the cheering crowd. He took slow steps so as not to look in a hurry, though it was evident that not one soul in this stadium was aware of him. Well, his brother maybe. Maybe. Even the cops and Explorers barely looked at him as he walked down the wide aisle along the stands, toward the bathrooms and the exit. When he got to his truck in the parking lot he closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest and tried to unscrew himself from it all. Of course it didn’t work. But he understood that he could use some friends right now, friends like the Rogue Wolves, and maybe a cold beer and a little jolt of crystal and a game of pool. They’d have him back, wouldn’t they? At least for a while? At least so he could explain what he’d... not done?

The neon red, white, and blue of the Pride Auto Repair sign glowed clearly in the Fallbrook night. Cade’s Bel Air was parked in its usual place along with a light blue Volkswagen Beetle convertible that Ted didn’t recognize. He parked and went to the front door. The blinds were drawn and it was locked but music pulsed. Loud. Through a thin slice of space between the blinds and the window he looked in. Cade, shirtless, his back gleaming with sweat and his pants around his ankles, plunged into the backside of a woman wearing only high heels, her arms braced on the pool table, hair swaying. Cade pulled her hair like a rein and her face came around. Jasmine.

Ted covered his head with his elbows and bashed through the front door in an explosion of shards and slats and blind cords. Jasmine was already scrambling away as he found his balance on the slippery glass and pulled the Glock. Cade looked at the holstered pistol on the floor and Ted shot him twice in his naked ribs, and when Cade spun away screaming, Ted shot him twice more in the back. Cade’s gun spun loose as he crashed facedown on the pool table, blood lurching and arms spread and his anguished screams cutting through the music. Ted shot again but missed and the green felt jerked. He wasn’t seeing right and his ears were roaring. What had just happened? He didn’t know how he’d gotten here, or why he’d come. Instinctively, he strode after the woman into the repair bay and although it was only half-light in the big room he tracked her by her sobbing and the sound of her heels retreating from him on the concrete floor.

“Don’t, Ted. Don’t, please don’t.”

“I can barely hear you.”

“Let me get around you to the door, Ted. Remember me? I’m Jasmine.”

“I don’t remember you.”

“Please don’t kill me.”

“You should go.” He felt the gun, suddenly heavy in his hand, and looked down at it.

“Can I get by you?”

“Go.”

Her pale naked body shook by. He stood for a moment looking at the paisley couch and the reading lamp. They meant something to him, something from his past, but what? When he got back to the lobby the woman had already left through the ruined door. He could see her unlocking the Volkswagen, shaking her head and talking to herself, naked and clutching a handful of clothes to her chest, eyes wide and her face slack-jawed with terror. The wounded man had slid off the table and was now on the floor, curled in on himself, breathing fast. It looked like enough blood for two or three men.

Ted turned off the music and sat down on one of the bar stools. He set the gun on the counter and put his hands over his ears and watched the man on the floor. A moment later headlights came down Oak Street and raked across the still open door with the broken glass around its edges like shark teeth, its blinds snapped and dangling, and the pull cords swaying in the warm breeze.

When the man came through the door everything came back to Ted. A flash. An avalanche. Everything. “Oh, hi, Pat. I messed up pretty bad this time.”

Patrick stepped into Pride Auto. He registered Cade in the lake of blood, Ted and the gun on the counter next to him, the heavy smells of blood and gunpowder and solvent. “I saw a car leaving.”

“Jasmine, the escort. I let her go.”

Patrick called 911. While he spoke to the dispatcher he studied Ted, who slumped at the bar like a common drunk, dreamy and deranged. Patrick knelt over Cade Magnus and he saw the look of death in his eyes — a gaze locked open on the faraway. “You’ve got help coming, Cade. If you can hang in there they can help you. Hang in there. Can you do that?”

Cade coughed a mouthful of blood across the floor and whispered, “Christ...”

“I got mad when I saw him with Jasmine,” said Ted. “Doing that stuff to her. I thought you were my friend, Cade. I introduced you to her, you son of a bitch.”

Patrick put a hand on Magnus’s shoulder, felt the tremble. Taibo would have slammed a vial of morphine into him, eased his way onward. But there was nothing he could tourniquet or do with wounds like this. “If you can hang on just five minutes, Cade.” Magnus said nothing.

“What happened at the concert, Ted? What were you doing so close to the stage, then leaving so fast?”

“I was going to shoot the mayor but I couldn’t. My hand just wouldn’t move.”

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“Open Sights. Marked down. Shooting Evelyn was going to be my big important thing but it didn’t work out.” Patrick watched Ted pick up the gun and heave off the stool and come over. “I liked Jasmine.”

Patrick stood. “What are you going to do now?”

“I know what my big important thing is. Not Evelyn at all. Now I get it. It started a couple of days ago with this woman I know. She told me you have to tell the truth about what you’ve done. Even if it’s bad. She told the police what she’d done.”

“Well, isn’t that great?” said Patrick. Cade Magnus sighed once and shivered hugely and his throat rattled and caught. Patrick knelt and touched his bare bloody shoulder again and felt the buzz of life stop. “Look, Ted. What you did.” A shadow moved over Patrick. He turned his head to see Ted leaning down. Patrick stood and tried to swipe the gun from his brother’s hand but Ted was quick. He backpedaled and braced against the bar for balance, weapon still in hand.

“That isn’t all I did.” Patrick heard sirens and he saw his brother glance in their direction. “Ibrahim Sadal didn’t set the fire. I did. Later I put an accelerant and timer and the Al-Qaeda magazines in the supply closet at the gas station. Then I called Knechtl from a pay phone. I wanted to see it all burn, Pat. I needed to. I did my research and waited for the right weather. I wanted to burn this city down. Even the houses here and the people in those houses. Mayor Anders’s house for sure. And every avocado tree we owned. Most of all I wanted to burn Dad to ashes and watch the wind blow him away one puff at a time every day for the rest of my life. And every time a puff of him went up I would know. I couldn’t ever do much right, Pat. I tried. So I just went with wrong. Big wrong. Important wrong. Of course I messed it up. I was worried about Mom and the dogs and my creatures so I cut back the bushes around the house and barn. My fire never made it downtown. I don’t know why. I set plenty of others. This was the best by far. It’s all written down in a letter under my mattress. Everything. The letter is to Lucinda Smith but you can read it before you send it to her.”

The sirens wailed, closer. Patrick tried to make all of this useful, get it into workable condition, but could not. “Three people died in your fire.”

“Four now total.”

“God damn you, Ted.”

“I love you, Pat. You’re what I wanted to be.”

“Damn you again, then.”

“I’ve been damned my whole life. But now my big important thing is half accomplished. I’m almost done. I’ll be remembered for it. And it will make the world better. Sound good?”

“Okay, Ted. You make the world better now.”

“Do you know what I’m saying?”

Patrick studied his brother’s face for the clues he had missed. Missed for a lifetime. Again and again and again. Even now he didn’t see them. But he thought he understood what Ted meant about making the world better. “You have to mean it.”

“Oh, I mean it. But I want it to come from you. Here.” Ted held out the gun unsteadily. Patrick heard the sirens bearing down, out on Main Street now.

“I won’t do it, Ted.”

“I can’t do it alone.”

“It has to be from you.”

“But is it right?”

“It’s right, Ted. It will matter.”

“Really? It’s right?”

“I think it is.”

“You and me then? Pat?”

The sirens screamed and the cars barreled down Oak Street, their flashing lights cutting through the open door.

Patrick grabbed Ted’s wavering gun hand. He pressed his finger alongside his brother’s, through the trigger guard. The barrel of the weapon dug into Ted’s heart. For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes and Patrick saw the damage and confusion in someone whom life had mostly cursed. He knew there was some goodness among the darker things. He wrapped his free hand around Ted’s head and clutched him close. “I love you.”

“I’m not afraid anymore,” said Ted.

For a moment they were one, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, and hand to hand. Together they pulled. The explosion cracked through the lobby and out the open door into Fallbrook.