Chuck Logan - Homefront

“There he is, on the bench press,” J. T. said.

“Perfect,” Cantrell said.

Maybe a dozen people were scattered among the shiny equipment, four guys, the rest women.

“I love it,” Cantrell said, “the way they flex and sneak looks at themselves.”

Rodney had removed his jacket and lay on his back on the bench wearing a loose armless T-shirt with an “A.S.I.A. Security” logo on the chest. He was adjusting his grip on a bar that rested in the lift rack over his head. Two forty-five-pound plates were on each end of the bar, held in place by steel squeeze clips. He was just finishing up a few deep clarifying breaths, getting ready to lift the bar off the rack, when he looked up.

“Oh, bullshit,” Rodney said as his eyes scanned J. T. and then came to settle on Cantrell.

“Rodney? What’s this?” Cantrell said, bending down and pinching Rodney’s right biceps, where a band of subtle scarring and healing skin circled his arm. “Didn’t you used to have this barbed-wire tattoo?” He glanced over at J. T. “You know what? I think our boy is cleaning up his act.”

“I don’t have to say shit to you,” Rodney said. “You ain’t on the job anymore. I know my rights.” He focused his eyes upward, then powered the bar off the rack and slowly lifted it. Locked his elbows. Exhaled.

Cantrell shrugged, then reached over, deftly pressed the handles of the squeeze clamp, slid it off the bar. J. T. immediately did the same with the one on his side.

“Hey, don’t fuck around,” Rodney said.

Cantrell then reached over, grabbed a thirty-five-pound plate off a peg on a nearby machine, held it up. J. T. nodded, found a similar weight on his side. They quickly slapped the weights on either end of the bar behind the twin forty-fives.

Rodney grunted, his arms trembling slightly as he started to lower the bar back toward the rack. J. T. moved behind the bench and put his fingers lightly on the bar, nudged it away from the rack.

“Jesus,” Rodney muttered. Arms wobbling slightly, his elbows caving in, he shoved the bar back up to full extension.

“Sheryl Mott. Used to hang around with OMG, tell us about her,” Cantrell said.

Rodney grimaced. Dots of sweat squirted up across his broad forehead. Strips of muscle jumped under the flushed skin of his shoulders. “Fuck you,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

“Again,” Cantrell said. He quickly plucked two more thirty-fives from nearby pegs, raised his leg, straddled Rodney’s torso, and slapped the weights on the bar, one side, then the other. J. T. maintained the subtle stand-off pressure on the bar. Cantrell looked down at Rodney, who was now making this deep grinding tectonic noise in his chest. “Sheryl Mott,” he repeated.

“Guys,” Rodney gasped. “You ain’t been around. I am trying to go straight. Talk to Lymon at Wash Co. for Christ’s sake…” His bulging brown eyes blinked away the gush of sweat, darted at the nervous gallery starting to assemble around them. Then he whispered, “C’mon, cut me some slack. I’m trying to get a job here, personal trainer…” His arms were shaking now, deep tremors running down into his pecs.

“C’mon, Rodney,” Cantrell said impatiently. He was mashing the handles of the squeeze clip in one hand, reached up with other, selected the Pall Mall from behind his ear, and put it in is lips.

“You can’t smoke in here,” an indignant female voice said. Cantrell turned his head, saw a perfectly coiffed woman, maybe forty-five, cute little halter, Spandex shorts, bare midriff clean and smooth like it’d been run off a lathe. She glared at him through a sheet of meticulously applied makeup.

Cantrell took a Zippo from his pocket, popped it, lit the Pall Mall.

“Eekkk,” squeaked the woman, backpedaling like a mouse in Cinderella .

Cantrell turned back to Rodney, blew a stream of smoke in his face. “We’re waiting.”

“OMG’s bad folks, too bad for me,” Rodney panted. The pressure had traveled down his arms into his chest, up his red corded throat into his bulging eyes. Sweat streamed down his swollen arms as they struggled to hold off the inexorable weight pressing down.

Frustrated, Cantrell was now mashing the squeeze clip in his right hand. Inspired, he twisted, pressed the handles together, opening the spring circle, and thrust the clip into Rodney’s writhing crotch, probing the cod of bunched blue material for something to clamp down on.

“Okay, okay,” Rodney moaned. “What I hear…she’s the perfect chick. She loves to fuck and cook. Fuck bikers…and…cook…meth. Learned her business in some big lab in Washington state. All I know, honest.”

“See,” J. T. said, releasing the pressure on the bar. “That was easy.”

“Spot, SPOT! ” Rodney hollered in a desperate hoarse voice as the bar shivered, descending on his spasming arms.

Shouldering through the gaggle of wide-eyed people rushing to Rodney’s aid, Cantrell said, “Not to worry, it’s the new Afghan extreme lifting-”

“The near-death school,” J. T. said.

Cantrell pointed out an alternate route of egress through the gym. Trailing a contrail of his cigarette smoke amid the aghast aerobics class, they beat it down another flight of stairs and out an exit door on the first level, next to the pool.

An hour after he returned from his face-off with Gator Bodine, Griffin heard tires crunch through the windowpane in the puddles of his driveway. He walked out on his deck and saw the green Toyota Tundra pull up. Hello? Broker got out from the passenger side wearing cross trainers and an old blue sweat suit under his jacket. Nina lowered the driver’s-side window and leaned out. Kit waved from the backseat.

“Hey, Harry? You ever been to Dawn’s Salon on Main Street?” Nina said.

Broker held up his hands in mock despair. “I was getting used to her hair longer. Now she’s gonna cut it all off.”

Harry walked up to the truck and studied Nina’s face. “Going to the beauty parlor, huh?”

“Me too,” Kit said.

Nina nodded. “It’s time. Her cowlicks have turned into a briar patch the last two months.”

There was an ease in the talk Griffin hadn’t seen with these people since they appeared at the rental house in January. Nina said good-bye, put the truck in gear, and steered the Toyota back down the drive. Griffin walked Broker under the deck, into the lower level of his house. “When did she come out of it?” he asked.

“Yesterday, boom, just like that.”

“So?”

“If she stays steady, we’ll probably be heading back to the Cities in a week,” Broker said. “No sense hanging around. Kit needs to get back with her friends and activities.”

Their different styles collided awkwardly in the silent interval. Griffin was grinning, waiting for Broker to say more. But he’d known Broker for thirty years and had learned that the man kept his emotions carefully embedded between his mind and his muscles. More like the steady instincts of an elusive wild animal.

Broker had assessed a problem, laid out a plan, and soldiered through. His expression was not so much relief as a confirmation of the correctness of his decision.

“So,” Griffin said, “you ready to grab something heavy and pick it up?”

Broker looked at his old friend, unshaved, fairly vibrating with the caffeine shakes. Probably had one of his bad nights. But he did grin, this fond, indulgent exasperation. His thick eyebrows beetled as his eyes scanned the room where they stood. The walls were a gallery that marked the stations of Griffin’s errant life. Griffin had spiraled out of the Army and become an underground cartoonist. After he sobered up, he briefly became a newspaper artist.