Chuck Logan - Homefront

She studied him, and it wasn’t so much that the moment passed. More like she slowly folded it up and tucked it in her pocket. Except she was out of pockets right then. “You smell gas?” she asked as she carefully stepped over the snoring heap on the floor.

“Yeah. Stay away from the kitchen. Use the back door. Go out to the barn and feed the damn calves. Sounds like they’re starving.”

They didn’t take anything with them when they left and went over to the Nygards’ house, because when they usually showed up-because Irv and Mellie Bodine got themselves outrageously drunk-they never brought anything. But the last thing Morg did, after he made sure no windows were open, was close the door tight behind him.

And not turn off the gas.

It was like that gas was meant to be, and Morg wasn’t going to interfere with destiny. Uh-uh, not him. And the stove was working off a fresh tank, because he’d hooked it in two days ago.

No one was surprised when the sheriff went out the next morning and found the Bodines with their lungs soaked with propane and their blood testing off the chart with alcohol. The medical examiner and the sheriff agreed, it looked like the kind of stupid accident that would happen to a couple drunks; passed out, pilot light on the stove unlit. Irv falling down getting off the toilet, bruising his head on the sink, and breathing the slow creep of the rising gas. Hell of a sight, with his bibs down around his ankles. And nobody was surprised when Cassie and Morgun didn’t cry at the pine-box funeral.

The day after he buried his parents, he buried Morgun when he drove to Bemidji in his daddy’s truck, to a tattoo parlor there, and got the alligator tattoo on his left forearm.

They came through the door and immediately smelled the cigarette smoke. Kit rolled her eyes, made a resigned face, ran up the stairs, and slammed the door to her room. Broker took the long view and accepted it as the exhausted breath of insomnia that inhabited the house. Along with the TV blaring in the kitchen.

Part of the healing process.

He made a signal of shutting the front door forcefully behind him, telegraphing their arrival. Then, methodically, he removed his coat in the living room.

Give her some time…

Didn’t matter. She barely noticed him come into the kitchen; still in her robe and slippers, one of his old T-shirts she’d slept in. Hair askew, her face puffy with backed-up caffeine, nicotine, and fatigue; she slumped at the kitchen island, worrying at her cigarette with her thumb. She stared at the TV he’d installed in the corner above their one houseplant, a hardened snake plant that thrived on her erratic watering regimen of dumping cold coffee cups, many containing soggy cigarette butts.

The television screen flashed an image of military vehicles coated in that signature third-world red dust. Some breathless embedded reporter riding in a Bradley, yelling about taking small-arms fire…

Day two of the War in the Box.

“How’re the Crusades going?” Broker nodded toward the TV.

Nina slowly shook her head, and a spark of interest sputtered in her eyes. “Looks cool on the tube. Road race to Baghdad. But I got a feeling they shoulda listened to Shinseki, going in light like this. Those Army kids are going to wind up taking up the slack for the politicians again.”

Broker nodded. “Let’s hope the fix is in.” She saw the war as inevitable. He thought it was a mistake. They agreed on one point; during the run-up to the invasion they’d assumed that the Iraqi generals had been bought off, that they’d resist symbolically to preserve their honor, then turn over Saddam and his inner circle. So far that hadn’t happened. Any other plan was just too dumb, given Iraq’s history and ethnic composition.

“Nina,” he said softly, “give it a break.” Did she really miss it? Want it more than being with him and Kit? Did she feel left out, flawed because she’d been left behind? He found the remote among the unwashed breakfast dishes and thumbed off the TV. He faced her and said, “The thing at school-Kit got into a fight. This kid wouldn’t stop pushing her, so she punched him. One-day suspension. There’s a readmission conference tomorrow.”

Nina stared at him, and he could almost see his words methodically crawl over her face, searching for a way to get inside. Finally she focused and said, “Did she get hurt?”

Broker shook his head. “Skinned her knuckles. But the boy she hit wound up with a bloody nose.”

Slowly she nodded. Then she dropped her cigarette into the sink. “I’ll go up and talk to her.” The words had no force, seeping out like a last puff of smoke.

“Let’s wait, do it over supper. Maybe, ah, you should take a shower and try a nap,” Broker said gently.

Nina slowly raised her right arm and touched her fingers to her right temple in a smirk of a salute. She let the arm fall back to her side and walked from the kitchen.

Broker smiled. Two months ago she would be wincing with the effort when she hit the painful range of motion at shoulder level. Would be trembling by the time she got her hand up to her forehead. The ROM therapy had made slow but steady progress rebuilding the shoulder. She was healing. The shoulder faster than the rest of her. But healing.

He turned the exhaust fan on over the stove. Then he opened the patio door to the deck and the side windows and turned on the ceiling fan. To air the place out.

Next he emptied the dishwasher, put the plates, glasses, cups, and bowls away. Then he rinsed off the dishes in the sink and started loading the washer.

Kit came down the stairs and into the kitchen carrying her school backpack. “Mom’s taking a nap,” she said.

“How’s your hand?”

Kit looked at her raw knuckle. “Don’t think I need a Band-Aid anymore. Mom put some hydrogen peroxide on it.”

“Stung, didn’t it?”

“A little.” She held up her hand so he could see the white residue of disinfectant etched into her knuckle. Then she stared at him.

So he debated whether to address the unsaid question hanging over her. Should he do it now, or wait? Whatever he said would be tempered by the fact that he’d knocked the kid’s dad down. “We’ll talk about the fight at dinner,” he decided. “Put on your stuff. We’ll go outside so we don’t wake her. Maybe you could put some wax on the skis.”

Kit brightened when he said that, walked to the patio door, and studied the thermometer fastened to the deck rail. “Twenty-two degrees. Purple wax.”

“Sounds about right,” Broker said.

As Kit worked with the skis in the garage, he took a white package of venison round steak from the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw. Then he checked the pantry and the refrigerator to make sure he had all the ingredients he’d need. Satisfied, he put on his coat and went outside.

As he pulled on his cap and gloves, he checked the overcast sky and the surrounding woods. Griffin bought this parcel of land with frontage on the west shore of Glacier Lake twenty years ago, when it was cheap and the lake was almost totally uninhabited. Broker had spent part of a summer helping him put the kitchen addition on the gutted house. Not much older then than Nina was now, not long out of his own war.

Broker returned to his maul and chopping block, knocked apart a few armloads of kindling, took it into the kitchen, and stacked it in the wood box next to the Franklin stove. When he came back out, he saw Kit come out of the garage, lean the skis against the side of the building, and use a cork to smooth out the long stripes of wax she’d applied. His were the long skinny Nordic racers. Hers were shorter, combos for both Nordic and skating.