Chapter Fourteen
Allie
The next morning was a Monday. First thing I did when I woke up was call Dave and let him know I would be taking the week off.
“What’s that?” he yelled. It sounded like he was caught in the middle of a windstorm; I heard a loud, high-pitched whistling and the screams of distant voices. “You’ll have to speak into the phone. I can barely you!”
“I said, I’m gonna have to take the week off!” I said, with more than a hint of impatience.
“But there’s no receptionist! If you leave, there will be no one left to man the office! Excuse me for one second.” In a lower voice, he said, “I told you, I’ve already given blood. No, I’m not interested!” Turning back to me, he added, “Who will run the clinic in your absence?”
“I ran the clinic alone for four and a half days last week,” I replied. “We had maybe one person come in while you were gone. I spent most of the week at the front desk reading Nicholas Nickleby on Project Gutenberg.”
“Well, do what you think is best,” said Dave. “But if we get back and there are three hundred old ladies waiting at the door for their heartworm medication, I’ll know who to blame.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I hung up.
At first, I had been hesitant to tell him I wouldn’t be coming in that week. But once I had made the call, it felt like a weight lifted off of me. Now I could focus my attention on the camping trip and on packing. While the cats crowded around curiously, I spent the next half-hour loading up my duffel bag with toiletries, toilet paper, cosmetics, enough clothes for three or four days in the wilderness, sunscreen, bug spray, and a large Crocodile Dundee-style hat with a rounded crown and medium brim.
Right as I was finishing, there came a light knock on the door. I opened it, half-expecting to see Curtis’ mom, but it was Curtis.
“Hey, we’re havin’ breakfast over at the house,” he said. “Dad’s down at the airport picking up Zach, and they ought to be here in a few minutes if you want to join us.”
When I had first heard that Curtis’ Navy SEAL brother was flying into town for the week, I had been nervous. One of my uncles had been a career army officer, and one morning when we were eating breakfast, he leaped up from the table, grabbed his rifle, threw open the door, and blasted a hole through a raccoon that had shown up on our front lawn. Since then, I had retained a vague notion that all military guys were like that. But Curtis and his mom put me at ease over breakfast.
“I always thought Zach was the sweetest of the boys,” said Mrs. Savery. “When he was a baby, he used to climb up onto my chest and lay there for hours and not wanna get up. And eventually I’d have to tell him, ‘Sweetheart, I have to get up. I have to cook supper.’ I was so surprised when he decided to join the Navy.”
“Well, he’s not a baby anymore, Mom,” said Curtis. “Though I still think he decided to join on an impulse, just to upstage me on the day of my engagement.” He narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
Mrs. Savery continued to tell stories about the boys during lunch when Zach, a reserved young man in a blue uniform with short black hair and tattoos spanning the length of his arms, arrived at the house. After giving me a perfunctory hug, Zach sat himself down at the head of the table and began quietly spooning fruit preserves onto his plate. His serenity was reassuring; he had more of Curtis’ Zen-like self-composure than Darren’s bluster.
“You excited about the trip?” Curtis leaned over and whispered. “We’ll be leaving right after lunch, if you’re ready. If not, we might just throw you in the back of the truck and go anyway.”
I nodded eagerly. “No need to do any throwing; I’m already packed and everything.”
Curtis blinked rapidly. “Look at you!” he said.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Mr. Savery was grilling Zach on what life was like in Afghanistan.
“You go into the mountains much?” he asked.
Zach shook his head as he cut up his pork steak into perfect cubes. “No, as a team medic I spend most of my time in bombed-out hospitals, treating injuries for high-priority patients. We tend to stay out of the mountains unless we’re trained climbers, and that’s not a skill set I have yet. Although I’m working on it,” he added in a quiet voice.
Mr. Savery nodded, looking impressed. “I would think climbing would be a very valuable skill for a Navy SEAL.”
“Oh, it is,” said Zach. “There are so many places that can’t be accessed unless you have some climbing ability. Not just the mountains, which are pretty much off limits to all but the most skilled climbers, but also ships, the roofs of buildings, you name it.”
“They ought to send you out there to fix that oil spill in the Gulf,” said Curtis. “You’d climb up on that oil rig and turn that thing right off.”
The rest of the family laughed, but Zach retained his air of perfect seriousness. “You’d need a whole team to get that mess cleaned up. I understand they’ve been going at it for about a week now.”
“Yeah, but it’s just getting worse,” said Mrs. Savery. “I don’t know what the deal is.”
“Well, government can’t do everything,” said Zach, “not when its resources are stretched all over the world like this. In the last couple decades, we’ve fought two major wars, a couple of minor ones, and if you think that’s not a strain on our power, you’re kiddin’ yourself. We can’t do this indefinitely.”
He and his dad went on talking about politics while I finished my grits and tried not to look too often at Curtis. Every now and then he’d catch me glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, and I’d return to my plate, blushing redder than the tangerines on Mrs. Savery’s plate.
“I can’t remember the last time the four of us were in the same room,” she said, beaming at both of her sons as lunch was winding down. “Now if only Marshall and Braxton and maybe Darren were here, my joy would be complete.”
“Darren I could take or leave,” said Zach with a slight roll of his eyes. “Marshall owes me money, so it’ll be good to see him again.”
“How much?” asked Curtis.
“About a thousand dollars.”
“Yow! Good luck ever getting that back.”
“Well, the thing about being in the Navy is,” said Zach, “you learn ways of getting things.”
“You were never one to be shy when you wanted something,” said Mrs. Savery. “I remember when you were four, you insisted on going to Babies R Us because you were tired of having brothers, you wanted a sister, and you thought that was the store where the babies came from. We tried to tell you that babies don’t come from a store, but you were adamant about it. ‘No, it’s Babies R Us. That’s where you got me and Curtis.’ You still didn’t believe us even when we took you to the store and there were no babies for sale.”
“Mama, you’ve told that story like, a hundred times,” said Curtis, looking disgruntled. “Nobody wants to hear it again.”
“I hadn’t heard it,” I said quietly.
“Anyway,” said Curtis, rising and tapping his hands lightly on the table, “we’d better get going before it gets too dark.”
“But it’s only noon!” said Mrs. Savery.
I walked out the back door through the yard and retrieved my duffel bag from the tiny house. River and Phoenix were both meowing to be fed, and I swore under my breath when I came in and saw them: I had nearly forgotten to ask Mrs. Savery if she would watch them. As I walked back across the yard toward the kitchen, I saw Zach and Curtis standing out by the gate, loading up the back of the pickup.
“Y’all know we’re only leaving for two or three days, right?” I asked. “You really gonna need all this?”
“Better to be prepared,” said Curtis, laying down a shotgun underneath a pile of daisy-scented blankets. My heart leaped into my throat when I saw it, and for a single dizzying moment, I wondered if I wasn’t making a mistake.
“Are you sure you need that thing?” I asked. “We’re not—we’re not planning on shooting anything, are we?”
Curtis shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Like I said, it’s better to be prepared.”