Chuck Logan - Homefront

Broker had come home alive and trusted the method. It took him ten minutes to cover the two hundred yards to the end of Griffin’s land. He came to the yellow No Hunting sign posted on the property line where the connecting trail T-boned into the broader ski trail.

He stopped dead still, his alertness total and jagged, like a snapped tuning fork. Faint but definite, he heard a tinkle on the wind. Broker stood unmoving. There it was again.

He experienced a flush of almost preadolescent excitement. He could picture the smile on Kit’s face. When Daddy found the kitty.

Okay. Don’t blow it. Gotta spot her.

Slowly, straining his eyes in the haze of moonlight, he scrutinized the surrounding trees, stopping at the center of the T formed by the trail intersection.

This slender vertical shadow.

Out of place. Stark against the snow. A dark lump at the top.

Now impulse rushed to the surface, but he reined in the dark intuition that propelled him forward. It was Broker’s nature to go quiet now, to keep his anger cold and controlled, to save it up. He stepped from the cover of the trees.

So this is how it is.

He removed his glove and reached out his right hand. Old Bun leaking stuffing. Impaled on one of Kit’s ski poles, the handle driven deep into the snow.

Tenderly he patted the stuffed animal, then froze again when the movement caused Ditech’s collar, carefully buckled around the bunny’s neck, to jingle.

His experience dictated that he back off a space, take inventory. He was a little awed at the bile that rose in his throat. He’d stalked and collared men for the state of Minnesota. And he’d killed enemy soldiers in combat-that was a certain type of work.

He’d descended to the bottom of the adrenaline fear tank and made all the stations coming up. Never felt quite like this…

Klumpe. Coming at my kid.

So this was hatred. Nothing clean about it. Just visceral dirty rage. A hunk of rotten meat stuck in his throat.

At my kid.

Training and experience fell away. Fucker had been in the house, had taken Kit’s stuffed animal from her bed. He backtracked through the day. When we were on the ski trail. Could have been in the house when Nina was asleep. When I left the cat in the garage. He could have been there, hiding. Snatched her, went over the deck rail…

Ambush alert now, he half crouched, shotgun at port arms, and listened carefully.

Slowly he rotated his head and scanned the surrounding darkness. Listened again. Nothing but the soft wind rubbing the dry branches together, the heave and murmur of the pines. After another ten minutes of listening, he decided he was out here all alone. He removed a tinfoil pouch of cigars from his pocket, selected one of the rough wraps, took out his lighter, and lit the cigar. Then he squatted, Vietnamese peasant fashion, by the side of the trail, smoked, and thought about it as it began to snow again.

Jimmy Klumpe’s face, this morning in the cab of the garbage truck, on the sidewalk in front of the school yesterday morning-his nutty wife yelling from the truck. Striking back against him and Kit. Had to be.

Broker shifted his weight, drew on the cigar, and studied the pole stuck carefully in the snow. At the exact intersection of two trails.

Like a signal. A warning. Back off.

Because my kid hit their kid…

He flicked the coal from the cigar, shredded the rolled leaves, and tossed them aside. The snow sailed down like forgetfulness, blurring the edges of the tracks in the woods, filling them in. He took one more look at the vertical ski pole. Leave it undisturbed for now. Make sure Kit didn’t come here. He turned and started back to the house. Had to think this through. Maybe call Griffin. Bring him out to see this.

But not tonight.

Broker came around the garage and saw Nina sitting on the back steps before she saw him. He quickly rerouted around the garage, went in the front door, entered the kitchen, went into the living room, and tucked the shotgun in the couch cushions, out of sight. Then he retraced his steps back around the garage and approached her. It was a giant step, her coming outside at night. She was layered in fleece, boots, and a parka. Smoking. Holding a cup of coffee. She had removed the tangled braids from her hair.

“I saw your light in the woods. Any luck?” she asked.

He shook his head. “If the cat isn’t back by morning, then it doesn’t look good.” He nodded up toward the bedroom. “How’s she doing?”

“Whatever else we did, we didn’t make a neurotic kid. Nothing gets between her and her sleep.” Nina shifted, making room for him on the deck cushion she was sitting on. He sat next to her. She produced a steaming thermal cup from her lap and passed it.

The fresh hot coffee would keep him up. He only took a sip. He needed to sleep. See it fresh in the morning. He handed the cup back. Instinctively, they scooted closer together to keep warm. They watched the snow stream down. Every dizzy snowflake could have been a thought unsaid between them, building into a slow storm of unspoken words. She took out her American Spirits, cupped her hand, and thumbed her lighter. She inhaled, exhaled. He put his arm around her.

The snow came faster, no longer serene. Like confusion.

Finally Broker asked, “Where is it?”

Nina looked up to him with calm eyes. “In the woods. It stays mainly in the woods now.”

They’d evolved a code to simplify the overwrought discussion; back in December, they’d talked it to death, and all the talk had just worn them out. So they settled on it . The depression. Winston Churchill’s black dog.

Progress. Two months ago, when he’d asked where it was, she’d answer, walking on live grenades, “In the house.”

He tightened his arm around her shoulders, and stared into the woods where’d he’d just been. Once she’d had strong shoulders and they would be strong again. But right now they didn’t need the extra weight.

Broker pulled his eyes away from everything that could be pacing back and forth in the woods tonight and said, “C’mon, let’s go inside.”

She cocked her head, and he saw a flicker of her old smile; tough, smart, wry. “Nah, I’ll sit awhile, finish my smoke.”

His forehead bunched in concern, but also a ray of hope. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Take off.”

He rose to his feet. “You’ll stay right here on the porch, right?”

Nina shrugged, then turned back to her meditation on the woods. Going into the kitchen and shutting the door behind him, Broker glanced back, at her hunched hooded figure sitting alone on the deck.

First time in three months she’d stayed outside the house alone at night.

Nina Pryce tried to stare down the snow. It kept coming at her eyes, like pinwheeling hooks of panic. Pulling at her. Only a fragile connection with the solidity of the deck under her butt kept her from launching weightless into the swirling night.

One step removed from the snare of deep space…

She dragged on the Spirit, exhaled, and wished she’d taken a bullet on her last assignment, with Delta Team Northern Route. She’d come back from a bullet before. Instead she’d dropped her guard for a moment and had lost two buddies, the use of her right arm…

And her mind.

Now, after eight months of unrestricted sick leave, she faced the dark woods without illusions.

When she was a little girl, she had sat on her grandfather’s lap and listened while he tried to explain living through the Great Depression. How he had once stood in an unemployment line in Chicago, rubbing his last two dirty copper pennies together in his pocket.

I hear you, Grandpa.