Chuck Logan - After the Rain

“One-sixties” were people who adapted to the unadaptable and continued to function. Lots of people in SOG were logging two and three tours in the war zone.

People like Broker.

Broker scowled. “I’d watch the way you’re throwing terms around, considering you guys haven’t been in a war that lasted more than a month for the last twenty-five years.”

Holly sighed. “Okay. Go on. You’ve earned the right to sound off, I guess.”

“Guess is right! They call it undercover work for a reason. Cover being the operative word. A commodity there ain’t a lot of around here. Like, say, back in the city a lot of people buy dope, so it’s easy to slip a UC into the revolving door. Penetrating a tight organization is more problematic and takes a long time to build up street credentials. You can’t just fall off the turnip truck and do it over the weekend.” Broker was grim.

Holly nodded. “Sure. That’s the conventional wisdom. And if we come up empty we’ll go to the locals, the state, the feds. But then we lose the element of surprise. When those Washington goons gear up their egos and intramural politics it’s like a herd of touchy elephants getting organized.”

Jane’s face tightened up. “That’s why we’re here, not the people who are hung up on procedure and protocol, like the FBI.”

Holly was less sanguine. He held up a hand to calm Jane and said, “We know this is a serious reach. We talked it over and decided we gotta give it a try,” Holly said.

Then, in a spooky divot of speech, Holly and Jane both turned and looked at Kit and said, at exactly the same time, “Too much is at stake…”

Kit was perplexed. The three grown-ups in the room had abruptly stopped talking, and remained silent for almost half a minute.

Jane broke the silence, and her first words came out naked and vulnerable. It took her a full sentence to get back to the disciplined meter of her language: “And we figured having Kit on the scene would provide a touch of realism-plus make you show up. Now it’s up to her.” Jane rushed past the unprotected moment by furiously packing her go-bag.

Slam-bam. Efficient. Hu-ah.

“Aw,” Kit whined a little as Jane packed her fancy laptop.

“Sorry, honey. No more computer games. This has to go with me.” She picked a hefty book off the bureau and handed it to Broker.

“ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? ” Broker read the title slowly, wondering out loud.

“You got some catching up to do, muggle,” Jane said. Then she knelt and hugged Kit. “Okay, Little Bit. Uncle Holly and Auntie Jane have to go. And so do you and your dad. We talked about this with your mom, remember?”

Kit nodded and chewed the inside of her lower lip. Broker didn’t especially like the way she was handling it. The way she nodded, stoic, and said, “We’ll all get together on the other side.”

Seven was too young to have a game face.

Holly’s knees creaked when he kneeled down and said goodbye to Kit. When he got up, his pale ghost-eyes cut Broker fast. “We’ll be close, but not in the town.”

“How close?” Broker asked.

Again, the fast, cool eyes. Impatient with being challenged by a civilian, Holly said firmly, “We got it in hand, okay? Now, I advise you two to get out of here, pronto.”

Yeah, bullshit you got it in hand, Broker thought. But he nodded as Holly and Jane went into motion, lugging their go-bags out the door.

Special ops. The manner of their leaving made a New York minute seem like overtime.

Broker sat on the bed and held his daughter in his lap. Sensing his anxiety, she made an effort to reassure him. He listened, amazed as she flipped roles with him:

“In Italy, when the dads went away, the kids and the moms just sit and wait. Like now.”

Broker noticed she was chewing at the corner of her thumbnail as she spoke. He moved her fingers away from her mouth and saw that several fingers were worried almost raw.

Kit went on. “When a dad doesn’t come back, the mom gets a flag. And, um, the chaplain comes and talks.”

“Chaplain?”

Kit furrowed her brow. “You know. They talk about God. How when something bad happens, it’s his will.”

Broker cocked his head at his daughter as a thought occurred. “Did you and Mom ever go to church over there?”

Kit shook her head. “Nah. Mom told me you said if God was really there, he wouldn’t live inside a house. He’d live outside.”

“Your mom said that, huh?”

Kit nodded. Then she sniffed-chlorine from the pool, or allergies maybe. Not tears. She rubbed her nose with her forearm. Scrunched her forehead, thinking. “Sometimes I go outside and look up.”

“We never talked a whole lot about God, did we?” Broker said.

“Mom says we did but I was little so she’d remind me.”

“So what’d you come up with?”

“I don’t know. Some kids believe in Santa Claus and some kids believe in Jesus. In America, you get to believe what you want. That’s Mom’s job.”

“What?”

“You know, keeping it so people can believe what they want.”

Broker stared at his child.

After a moment, she said, “So now we gotta go home and wait?”

Broker continued to stare. He pictured them traveling back to Minnesota, to the house on the point overlooking Lake Superior. Saw himself pacing. Making breakfast, lunch, dinner. Waiting for Nina to walk down the road to Broker’s Beach.

Or the chaplain with a flag.

When Broker didn’t answer right away, Kit chose her next words carefully, “I can’t stay, can I?”

“No. You’re going back to Grandma and Grandpa tomorrow.”

“Are we gonna drive?”

“You’re going to fly. They’ve got an airport here, I drove past it. I’m going to call Grandma and arrange for a plane.”

She considered this for several seconds. Broker could almost hear the thoughts churning behind her broad forehead. She kept the tears out of her eyes but not entirely out of her voice.

“Dad, are we gonna leave Mom here all alone?”

“No.”

He swabbed some of the Bag Balm on Kit’s chewed fingers and ordered her to keep them out of her mouth. Then he called his mother. Two hours of phone tag followed, with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny for accompaniment on the TV. Finally they arranged to have a reliable local pilot, Doc Harris, fly in with Lyle Torgeson, a Cook County deputy, and pick up Kit at the Langdon airstrip. Torgeson’s wife, Lottie, ran a preschool back home that Kit had attended three years ago. Kit would be comfortable traveling with Uncle Lyle. The Torgesons were extended family. They just had to nail down the time. As he waited for the call with an ETA for tomorrow, he took Kit on a walk around the corner from the motel and down the main street.

After window-shopping, they went into a store and bought a locally sewn quilt. Kit picked it out, calling the tight pattern of grays, maroons, and blues “Grandma’s colors.”

Irene Broker, who dabbled in astrology and melancholia, was Norwegian.

They went back on the street. Looking up, Broker saw that the clouds matched the brooding colors of the quilt. The barometric pressure throbbed in his wounded hand like mercury, marking heavy time.

They had an early supper at a restaurant next to City Hall. Kit had macaroni and cheese. In elliptical snatches, mixed in with a forced game of “I Spy,” she told him about going to first grade at the military school on the Aviano Air Base. Then about Ria, her tutor in Lucca.

Lucca was a town out of a history book, located in Tuscany, between Pisa and Florence. “It’s got a big wall around it. You could walk or ride your bike,” Kit said.

Broker nodded along with her conversation, chewing his rib-eye (hold the potato, double veggies). After hot fudge sundaes-strictly a no no for the Atkins Aware-Kit said she wanted to swing. She explained that Jane had taken her to a playground near the swimming pool, so they took the quilt back to their room and then walked toward the city park.