Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

57

He had lost track of the last few days as he had lost his sense of self since his third tour in Afghanistan. He thought he’d been solid until then, but it was impossible to hold on to things these days. Facts moved around on him like water bugs behind a kitchen wall. They were oily things for him, facts. Even when he had a grasp of one, it would slip away. He remembered people calling him a good soldier, a good man, and a good friend. He didn’t have friends anymore. His life was too scattered for that. There just didn’t seem to be enough of him left to spare for friendship. Sometimes late at night in the desert, he’d look up and see all the millions of stars and he’d think he still had a soul. They couldn’t take that from him. Not that, too.

He panicked for a second. Where is that ticket to Boston? He clutched at the back left pocket of his filthy jeans, relaxing only after he felt the paper in his fingers. The ticket was still there. He’d spent his last money on it and he meant to make it to Boston no matter what. He tried to remember if he had ever been to Boston, but that was another one of those things he had lost in Helmand Province. He figured he’d hitch from Boston to Paradise. He’d tried to buy a ticket from New York to Paradise, but the lady at the counter stared at him funny and kind of laughed. No tickets to Paradise.

“Like the song,” she’d said. “You know, ‘Two tickets to Paradise...’”

But he didn’t know. Maybe he did, once.

She said you can’t get there from here. He wondered what that meant. It kept going around and around in his head until he wanted to tear the words out of his brain. That’s when he ran outside, out of the bus terminal and into the New York City night.

It was good that he ran. All the headlights, neon lights, traffic lights, all the blaring horns, all the people pushing, the aroma of chestnuts burning on hot charcoals, all of it took the words out of his head and the panic out of him. It was like that. One minute his head was full to exploding and the next it was empty. One minute he was back in country. The next he wasn’t. He even managed a smile at a little brown girl who stared at him with happy eyes. The smile didn’t last. Nothing lasted. He caught a whiff of something heartbreaking and familiar, the scent of grilling lamb. It sent him running again, this time far away as fast as his wrecked legs would move him.

To calm himself as he ran, he tried to count how many buses he’d taken, how many rides he’d hitched just to get this far. A guy at the motel had let him catch a ride from Diablito to Tucson. From Tucson, he’d taken a bus to El Paso. He’d hitched a few rides from El Paso to San Antonio. Then there was that blackout period where he couldn’t remember anything, but somehow he’d woken up on a sewer grate in a little town in the Missouri Ozarks. He’d hitched from there to Saint Louis. In Saint Louis, he spent a day begging for money on the street and bought a bus ticket for New York City. He couldn’t recall why he hadn’t just bought a through ticket to Boston. But all that was in a jumble of yesterdays. By the time his legs hurt so much they wouldn’t move anymore, he found himself at a river. He sat down on a bench, gazing out at the lights across the way and letting their broken reflections on the black water hypnotize him. He felt his eyes close.

He was so very cold and felt something hard against his face. Then he felt something else: a hand on him, more than one hand. Hands were pulling at him. One reached into his back pocket and pulled at the bus ticket to Boston. The last thing he remembered was reaching his own hand back and grabbing hold of the wrist of the hand in his pocket. When he came back into his body he was on his back on the concrete. He had a man’s forearm clamped between his. His legs were draped across the man’s chest and the man was screaming in pain, writhing in pain. An arm bar. He released the man’s forearm, but the damage had been done. When he let go he could feel the broken bones. He jumped to his feet, alive with adrenaline, and assumed fighting position. There was no need. The fight was over. Three men, including the man with the broken arm, were on the ground near the bench. One was unconscious. The other one’s face was a mess of blood. He was holding his hand on his broken nose and choking for air.

Then he noticed the flashing lights. Heard the low, electronic whoop whoop of the siren, the screech of tires and brakes. More important, he heard the slide of a nine-millimeter as someone at his back racked a bullet into the chamber.

“On your knees, motherfucker. Hands above your head. On your knees now!”

He did as he was told. At least, he thought, I won’t be cold anymore tonight.