Ranger
THIS TIME THE elevator ride down was frigid. There was no tucking her under my chin to soothe her.
“What was she thinking? She just decided things weren’t going right so the only way to fix it is faking some kind of…” She flailed her arms. “Incident? Episode? If she wasn’t already in a hospital, I’d kill her myself. Old battleax.”
To any other person, it would sound like she was bitter and angry, but I knew better. She was putting up her shield against what she couldn’t control.
“Come here.” I told her, knowing full well it would take more than one sentence to get her to fold.
“What? No. I’m so pissed. Anyway, you think I’m just going to fall into your arms like a hopeless flower just because my grandmother said so. Please.”
I watched the numbers on the elevator. I had exactly three floors to get her to let go.
“No. I expect you to come over here and let me hold you because you and I both know she’s right. You love me and I love you. Always have.”
She shot me a good dose of stink eye. “Could’ve fooled me.”
One more floor.
“No, actually I couldn’t. I tried like hell to, but I failed. We really need to talk but with you like this you’re not going to listen to anything I have to say.”
“Fine.” The elevator door opened and she let out a breath filled with worry and anxiety.
“There’s a good Italian place across the street. Let’s eat and I’ve got a story to tell you.”
She laughed. “I hate stories.”
“You’re going to love this one.”
We walked across the street and sat at a table for two. She waved her hand back and forth over the candle in the middle of the table.
“Tell me this story. It had better be good.”
I exhaled loudly. “I’m not. That’s the coward’s way. I need to just spill my guts here.”
“It will look like the spaghetti.”
She was nervous. She said silly things when she was nervous.
“When I was in Afghanistan, I started to get these weird letters every now and then. At first, they weren’t signed, but then later the person revealed who they were. It was Jacob.”
She cringed at the sound of his name.
“What did they say?”
I started to tell her but we were interrupted by the waitress. Hero didn’t even bother with an entree, instead, she ordered a double plate of cannoli.
“Don’t say a word. It’s a double dessert kind of day.”
“I’m not saying a word.”
She looked around the room and then met my eyes again.
“When did you start getting these letters?”
“About five months after I left boot camp.”
That seemed to pique her interest.
“Anyway, they told me things were changing. That I should be careful who I could trust. They started out as generalized messages. Then, they started to get a little more personal. The letters would ask if I knew where my girlfriend was. They would ask me if I thought you would wait for me.”
Hero was getting upset, but she held it together.
“Is that when you stopped writing me?”
“Just let me finish. I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
She was growing impatient but the dessert came right on time.
“I don’t know if it was because I was so far away from you or because I missed you so much. Maybe it was just the reality of where I was and whether or not I would ever come home, but I started to believe the things in the letters. They detailed the relationship or fictionalized a relationship between you and my brother. I was told the two of you had grown close and were about to get married. Then, he had moved onto the farm. I quit reading them after that.”
She motioned for me to continue.
“I wrote you a letter for every one you wrote me, Hero. I never wanted to believe what he was saying and I still don’t know quite why I did. Maybe I thought what we had was too good to be true. Maybe it seemed too perfect. I don’t know. And there’s no excuse. There’s nothing in the world I can say that will make what I did okay. I’ve wasted what could have been a decade with you. We could’ve been married. We could’ve had…”
“Don’t.” The tears were running down her face and into the fluff left on her plate.
“I can’t help it, Hero. I’ve wasted so much time, sweetheart. I have messed all this up.”
She scooted back from the table and got a hold of herself by wiping the tears from her face and smiling at me like it would be all right.
What I had done to her – to us – would never be all right.
“Look, I’ve got something for you. It’s in the truck and then I’ll leave you with it for the night. I don’t even know what to say anymore. You won’t even look at me.”
She followed me to the truck and I handed her my old backpack holding the shoeboxes with my letters I’d found at Jacob’s house.
Maybe she would read them and realize.
Maybe she would know.
I left her there at the elevator with my backpack in her hand. Even if it ended that night, it would be worth it to set the record straight. At least I tried to make things right.
There was another person I needed to make peace with.
It took me about a half hour to get to the farm from the hospital. I wasn’t stopped by anyone at the gate this time. They’d actually left it wide open when we were in a hurry to get Grammy to the hospital. After locking the gate behind me, I grabbed a flashlight from the door of the truck and went to the pond. Hero’s pond. My pond. Their pond. Our pond. It was all the same place now. The only thing that had changed was now I didn’t have anger. I was grateful for that pond. It had given Hero and me a place to love each other. It had given my brother a place to die peacefully and one day maybe it would give her a place to remember me.
That’s probably all she would have left after the pieces fell. A memory of me.
The moon made a lit path that skittered along the surface of the water. It was mucky during the day but at night it looked like a blanket of navy.
“Hey, little brother. It’s about time I got out here and talked to you.”
I slumped against the tree and for a moment enjoyed the peace it afforded me. I wondered if Garrison had felt that peace too. I wanted to believe it. That he was either in some kind of near-death euphoria or the medicine kept him at a distance from it.
Either way, I hoped he was happy to die next to the girl I loved.
The tears fell as the lightning bugs buzzed, showing off to the night. She could have all the money. I didn’t even want it anymore. She deserved to have everything Garrison had to give and more. She deserved a life.
She deserved the life we had once planned together.
“I’m sorry for everything, Garrison. I’m sorry for not writing you more. I’m sorry for not being here when you needed us the most. I’m sorry for not being the kind of brother you thought you could rely on to die with or to take care of you. I’m sorry for being a jerk. I’m sorry for never teaching you how to fix my truck. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
I pulled my jean jacket around me a little tighter as the wind turned colder and my breaths became clouds in front of my face.
“I’m so sorry, Garrison,” I whispered it one more time.
After that, the night wind lulled me to sleep, under that faithful tree.