One: Vicki was talking to him.
And two: people were unstacking chairs and setting them up in two rows that faced a wooden podium.
The meeting was starting.
His gaze darted between the men who’d begun to shuffle into the building: most of them older, a few of them his age, one or two even younger. Tidy hair, and straight backs…save for those with noticeable limps; but even those boys held themselves with pride.
He could have picked a military man out of a lineup from ten yards away, and here were a whole pack of them. Talking quietly with one another, some of them laughing. He smelled fresh coffee, and a few of the wives were laying out the bake sale leftovers on a low folding table against the wall.
“I…” he started, and couldn’t get any other words out. He was petrified, suddenly. He couldn’t sit down and put his back to the door like that. Couldn’t be vulnerable. Couldn’t…
But Red was looking up at him with so much hope.
Jake stepped through the front door, Spence at his side. He stood on the Weston’s tile at the entrance and looked toward Rooster; nodded.
“You don’t have to,” Red said.
But he thought maybe he did. Maybe heoughtto.
“If it’s okay,” Vicki said, casually, “the girls and I are gonna borrow Ruby for just a bit and go get some supper. You can walk up with the rest of the guys for milkshakes after.”
He took a series of deep breaths, hands curling and relaxing. Looked at Red, helpless. “I have to keep you safe.”
Vicki overheard him. “Honey, it’ll be safe as houses. We’ll be just up the street at Morton’s Diner. Okay? And there’ll be a whole bunch of us. We won’t let anything happen to Miss Ruby.”
And so far, ithadbeen safe here, hadn’t it? No funny looks, no men in black. Jake and Jack had both stressed that they knew he and Red were running, and that they understood, and that they wanted to help.
He took one last deep breath and let it out slow. “Okay.” It was maybe the hardest thing he’d ever said, but he pushed it out. “Okay, I’ll see you after.”
Red beamed at him. Stood up on her toes and kissed his cheek. And that made it all worthwhile, no matter how painful the next hour would prove.
~*~
“Hi, I’m Brian.”
“Hi, Brian,” the group said as one.
Rooster laced his fingers together between his knees and squeezed tight. He moved his mouth – “Hi, Brian” – but no sound left his lips. His lungs were too tight.
“Um,” Brian said, and licked his lips, gaze falling to the podium…where his hands gripped tight, his knuckles white from the strain. Rooster wasn’t the only one with nerves, he guessed. “I’ve been having the nightmares again.”
Nightmares much like Rooster’s own: reliving the explosion, knowing it was coming, unable to stop it. Watching his friends, his brothers, die over and over. Brian talked about them in halting, painful sentences, gripping the podium tight, sweat shining at his temples. He left out the bloody parts, but Rooster filled them in with his own. It didn’t matter which war it was, or in what part of the world they’d seen battle: every man and woman in the room had witnessed the same thing. Humans blown to pieces. Humans bleeding, screaming, dying.
Brian finished to a smattering of quiet applause and shuffled back to his chair. He sat like a man who’d just run a marathon, curled-up and shaking, exhausted.
Rooster felt himself pitching forward, mirroring his posture, nerves strung tight. He couldn’t go up there. Hecouldn’t.
A noble, iron-haired man who Rooster pegged as a leatherneck on sight took the mic next, his gaze oddly kind in his stern face. When he spoke, it was with the quiet command of an officer. “What Brian’s just described is something that I think we can all related to.”
Nods all around.
“Our traumatic experiences have a way of sneaking up on us. At the time, in the middle of combat, we compartmentalize. It’s a normal human response: we can’t deal with the panic and the guilt at the time, so we stow it away, and we get on with our missions. But later, once we’re home, and we know we’re safe, the memories come back sometimes. We lose sleep. We flinch when someone drops a plate in a restaurant. When a child screams.”
More nods.
“We have trouble trusting others, sometimes,” the man said, and his gaze came straight to Rooster. “I see some new faces here tonight,” the man continued, nodding at Rooster. “Some nervous faces. I hope you’ll feel welcome here. You’re among friends.”
Rooster looked down at his linked hands, the jagged pink-white scar across the back of the left one. A bit of rebar had gone through his palm, in one side and out the other; the nerves still lit up with pain when he made a fist, dulled though it was beneath Red’s magic.
