Chapter Seven
SAWYER
The hum of the lawn mower engine buzzed loud in my ears, and I adjusted my cap to keep the sun from beating down on my neck. Pete had assigned me to mow his front lawn for the morning. I got the feeling he didn’t trust me with some of the farm work, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, rather something to keep my mind off the world and everything in it. I rode the lawn mower around until I’d covered every inch of grass and checked back over my shoulder to make sure I’d done an even job.
“Sawyer! Hey, Sawyer!” Pete shouted at me from up by his house, waving.
I cut the engine, worried I’d done something wrong. When I came up the hill, though, I could see Pete was grinning. “What?”
“Thought you could use a break,” Pete said. “I finished doing my work, so I figured you’d finished yours.”
“Just about.” I could still go up the sides of the hill; I’d only done the front lawn, but then, that was all that was assigned to me.
“Looks good, man. You did a clean job. You want a beer?”
I shook my head and sat down on the porch.
We stayed quiet for a few minutes, and I contemplated getting back on the mower and finishing up the sides of the lawn anyway. It might bother me that I hadn’t done it otherwise. Before I could get up, though, Pete was talking, as he was prone to do.
“You thinking about the psychiatrist stuff?” Pete asked.
I raised an eyebrow at him. “I know you talked to my mom about it. I told you, I’d think about it for her sake.”
“Thinking about it?” Pete sat back in his chair. “Last I heard, you were set on goin’ to put her at ease.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m just not sure it’ll really help anyway. It might just confirm that something’s wrong. If I go, she’ll think something actually did happen.”
“Well, I think something did,” Pete interjected.
He was right, of course. Something had happened. I didn’t know how to talk about it, didn’t know how to feel about it, and would have preferred to stay quiet until I died. I didn’t see why that was such a bad thing. I didn’t understand this mentality of opening up and blabbering about feelings. None of it helped anyone. It certainly wouldn’t help the people affected.
“In any case, I believe you gave me your word that you’d go,” Pete said.
I turned to look at him. “I did no such thing.”
“As I recall, you told me you’d go for your mother’s sake. That sounds like your word to me.” Pete spat off to the side, and I wondered if he’d taken up dip while I was gone.
“You’re not going to hold me to that,” I said. “Honestly, Pete, I’d rather drop the whole thing. Let it be done and over with. Nothing good can come of prying into what I’ve already gotten over.”
“Unless you haven’t gotten over it, and you need help wrestlin’ it back into whatever hole you stuffed it down,” Pete countered.
He had a bit of a point there. I could shove it away, lock and key, and then leave it there. But the fact was, what happened was still at the forefront of my mind. I hadn’t successfully shoved it down yet.
“Third parties are always good for that sort of thing,” Pete said. It reminded me of the time he’d nearly run for governor of our home city outside Austin on account of that he didn’t like the big businesses coming in. He’d run for a week as a third-party candidate before going broke and forgetting the whole thing.
“You’re really going to be on my ass about this, aren’t you?” I shook my head and squinted up at the sun. It was well past noon, which meant I could get maybe an hour of work in before I needed to get back home.
“Yep.”
I didn’t want to be on the other end of Pete’s firm opposition. “Shit. Fine, I’ll go. You got my word—for real, this time, not by some bullshit.” I shook my head.
On the way home, I considered what exactly I’d do about a therapist. Getting one tied me to Austin, for sure, and I’d wanted to have options. I wanted to be able to branch out, leave town if I needed to, but I supposed therapists were available pretty much anywhere with a city.
When I got home, I darted off to the shower to get the smell of sweat and bug spray off my person. I pulled on a pair of pants and a t-shirt just as Mom rang the bell for dinner. I always got a kick out of that bell. We didn’t live on a farm or any big piece of property that might make that bell necessary, but she liked to ring it all the same.
I took my time walking back through the house. I’d been darting to and from my room so often that I’d taken a little time to appreciate where I was. The fireplace was just where I’d left it, the couches still aligned the same way, facing the smallish TV in the corner. Our family was never big on television, save for some sporting events. One of our neighbors had a big screen, and we’d crowd around at his house for the Super Bowl.
Just like my room, the house was untouched. I passed by one of my middle school photos hanging in the hallway, and I stared at it for a second. Same dark hair, same bright eyes. Adults had been off-put by my eyes when I was a child, either commenting that they were the loveliest blue or the most frightening color. On a child, two big light-blue eyes were unnerving.
“Sawyer? Are you coming to dinner?”
I blinked myself back to the present and started down the hallway. I could see my father sitting at the kitchen table, just like he had been the day before, and prepared myself for another awkward exchange. I didn’t want to subject myself to this, but it seemed I had no choice, and we’d need to talk sooner or later.
Instead of talk, though, Dad stood up with his meal and walked away. He went to the backyard to eat, touching his hand to his Bluetooth as though any of us believed he had a phone call to make. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the nerve he had. I’d done nothing to him. Nothing, at least, that I hadn’t remedied.
“Oh, don’t let him bother you, dear,” Mom said. She brought me a plate of food, and I thanked her, managed a smile. She deserved better. She always had.
When we sat to eat, she made the conversation. “Did you go to work with Pete today?”
“Yeah, a little. He just made me mow the lawn.”
“Well, you could mow the lawn here!”
I looked up from my plate. “Does it need mowing? I’ll do it tomorrow morning.”
Mom laughed and took a sip of her water. “Oh, I’m joking. Your dad hired a lawn crew to come by on the weekends. We don’t have to worry about it anymore. Terribly expensive, though.”
“You let me know if you need me to do it,” I said.
She nodded. We fell quiet again, eating, and I thought that would be the last of the conversation. She had one more thing to bring up, though.
“Did you talk to Pete about anything?” she asked.
Something in her tone brought back memories of her asking me if I was in trouble in class. It was the tone she took when she knew something, but she was asking to see if I would tell the truth. I wondered if she’d talked to Pete since I left his house; I doubted it, but at the very least, she’d have gotten some kind of promise out of Pete to talk to me about it.
“Yeah, we talked about therapists,” I said.
That was the right answer. Mom’s eyebrows went up, and she smiled. “Oh, I’ve heard that they’re absolutely wonderful for some people.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. She wasn’t being particularly subtle, and she had to know that Pete would have told me about their conversation.
Sure enough, she sighed. “Shoot. I suppose you know I talked to Pete. I just… I just think it would be good for you, Sawyer. I can’t expect you to tell me or Pete or your father everything about what happened, you know?”
“I know,” I assured her. And it was true that I wouldn’t tell her or Pete or Dad anything. Least of all her or Pete—I might tell my father, just to get back at him. The stories I had weren’t just gripping tales; they were deeply fucked-up and disturbing. I didn’t want to burden my family with the content, nor did I want them to carry the guilt that came with knowing I’d been through that. I’d seen other people from my SEAL team have families fall apart over guilt like that.
“So what did you and Pete decide, then?” she asked.
“I think it’s worth a shot,” I said. I didn’t, really. There was no sense in trying to quell what had happened to me by constantly bringing it up and talking about it with some stranger. Still, it was worth a shot to keep my mother at ease.
“Oh, Sawyer, that’s wonderful!” Mom beamed, and I instantly felt reassured about my decision. I wouldn’t have wanted to see her face fall the same amount that it lit up.
“I hope so,” I offered. I was never much for boundless enthusiasm.
Mom, however, certainly was. “I’m going to set up your appointment on Monday with Dr. Rodgers. Dr. Rodgers is a very successful psychiatrist, you’re going to love it, and that’ll be this Monday at… let me write down the address.” She got up to go find a pen and paper on the kitchen counter.
I hadn’t heard of a Dr. Rodgers, but then I’d been gone for six years. I was starting to regret my decision just based on my mother’s enthusiasm; something told me she’d already made the appointment and had been hoping I’d keep it, which further entrenched me into the emotional guilt of the situation. She came back to the table and scribbled an address on a piece of paper.
I was in it, now. I helped her clean the dishes and talked about other things. Mostly, we discussed the new grocery store being built down the street. While she prattled on about it, I thought about whether it was too late to back out of this therapist deal. It made my gut churn to think of sitting on a couch feeling sorry for myself for an hour a week for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully this doctor wouldn’t push pills my way. That, at least, would be a relief. It was the problem I’d had overseas, and I had no intention of taking any medication. Some soldiers got horrible night terrors or panic attacks that needed medication; I’d been lucky enough to avoid those since I’d come home.
Once I’d helped Mom with the dishes, I went to my room. There was no sense in waiting for Dad. He’d either wait outside all night to avoid me or come inside and ignore me, and both of those things pissed me off. Just as well to go to my room if I was going to sulk.
Tired from the work I’d done at Pete’s, I hopped into bed and reached over to turn off the light on my nightstand. As I did so, I saw a familiar framed picture. It showed a much younger Sawyer standing with an only slightly younger Eugene, both grinning, holding up fish. Sawyer was sitting up on Eugene’s knee.
I pulled the photograph down onto its face and flipped the light off.