Barbara McMahon - Lies That Bind

“WHAT I CAN’T FIGURE is what you’re doing in this backwater town. If you had to leave New Orleans, why not choose a city that at least offered some diversions? What do you do here for fun—watch trees grow?” Jack Palmer leaned back in the rocking chair—rocking chair, for God’s sake—on Sam Witt’s front porch. Maybe when he was eighty he’d want a rocker, but not now. He looked at his friend in bafflement. What had happened to change the man so much? Sam used to have a fire in his belly that only constant work could assuage. Now he was content to sit on a blasted porch in a bucolic town as unlike New Orleans as Jack had ever seen.

Sam smiled. “The town grows on you.”

Jack sighed loudly. “Maybe. I won’t be here long enough to find out. I came to see you, hoping for some action. If I wanted to sit around and do nothing, I could have stayed with my parents.”

“Why didn’t you?” Sam asked. He took a long drink of his beer and studied his friend.

“Too much coddling,” Jack growled. He had hated every moment his mother had fussed over him. Sure he’d been injured by a land mine, but injured wasn’t dead. And he was mobile. What more could they expect when he’d been covering Iraq?

“Probably scared them to death when they got word you’d been blown up,” Sam said reasonably.

Jack wasn’t in the mood for reasonable. He was antsy.

“I was injured, not blown up.”

“The guy with you died,” Sam reminded him.

He hardly needed reminding. Not a day went by that Jack didn’t think about Pete and fate and that blasted mine. Why had he been spared and not his cameraman?

“Anyway,” Jack continued, “until I’m one-hundred percent again, I’m grounded. No reporting.”

“Relax, Jack. You’ll heal at your own pace. Once you’re fit, you can head back into the line of fire.”

“In the meantime, I’m supposed to do what?”

“Did you visit your sister?”

“Yes. Alice said to tell you hi if I saw you. And her brood was wild. If she and Ed don’t rein in some of that energy, they’re going to have a pack of hellions by the time the kids are teenagers.”

“So, can’t stay at your mother’s, can’t stay at your sister’s. I’m next best, right?”

“I thought you were still in New Orleans.”

“I told you after Patty died that I was leaving. I should have done it before her death. She hated my job. She wouldn’t have minded it so much here in Maraville. It’s a quiet, slow-paced town.”

“She’d have been bored to tears,” Jack said, looking across the lawn at the street. He hadn’t seen a car drive by in twenty minutes. “And you’re happy here?” he asked with some skepticism.

“Content, I’d say.” Sam took another swallow of beer.

For a split second, Jack envied him the cold beer. Still on medication, he wasn’t drinking. He’d tried to kick the pills a week ago, but the knife-sharp pain in his foot and ankle had kept him up all night long. He’d cut back, but sometimes the meds were the only thing that helped.

He hated being dependent on drugs of any kind. Or on the hospitality of friends, no matter how far back they went. And he and Sam went back to early childhood. They’d started elementary school together in Baton Rouge. They’d enrolled in college together, and enlisted into the military as a team. Then their paths had separated. Sam had married Patty and become a New Orleans cop.

Jack majored in journalism in college, and used his military experience as a springboard to reporting news in foreign countries. Lately, all he seemed to see was death and destruction. He rubbed his hand across his eyes. He continued to see it in his dreams at night. But if he didn’t keep going, he might take time to rethink things. Who knew where that would lead? Look at Sam. From a detective in New Orleans to a sheriff in a backwater town in Mississippi.

Losing his wife must have been hard. Jack had liked Patty a lot. How had Sam stood it?

“Contentment?” Jack said, just to prod his old friend. “You sound like you’re ancient. What happened to the fire you had for righting wrong?”

“Hey, I can right wrongs here as well as in New Orleans,” Sam replied easily. “I know my neighbors. I’ve made some good friends over the last couple of years. And I don’t see the drug dealers or killers like I used to in the city. It’s realigned my thinking about mankind.”

“Don’t you get bored?”

Sam shrugged. “Not as much as I thought I would.”

“So what am I supposed to do while I’m here?” Jack knew he was whining, and didn’t like it. The thought of moving elsewhere didn’t help. Who else would put up with him while he convalesced?

“I’d suggest we go dancing, but with your bum leg, I don’t think that would work.” Sam laughed at Jack’s dour expression.

“I don’t go dancing even when my leg isn’t banged up,” he groused.

“I know. Tomorrow you can ride shotgun with me, see the town, meet some folks. Maybe you’ll find something to do. If not, you’re on your own. I’m not your keeper.”

Not like his mother or sister, Jack thought, who fussed over him every moment he was awake. They hadn’t wanted him to do anything more than sit in front of a television all day to rest his leg. That had driven him nuts. He wasn’t an invalid, just temporarily sidelined.

Maybe he was still a little nuts. He couldn’t settle down for a minute. He was restless sitting on the porch. Sam, on the other hand, seemed content to linger in the twilight and talk with an old friend.

Was he destined to seek that adrenaline rush all his life? Jack wondered. If he didn’t find some diversion soon, he’d head back to New Orleans.

To what? A motel room and television? He didn’t even have an apartment to call his own. Since he traveled all the time, it made no sense to have one. Mail was sent to his folks’ house, where they held it until he made one of his infrequent visits, or to the office in Atlanta to be forwarded to his latest posting. Any bills were paid through his bank.

He looked at the porch, at the yard. Not a lot to see in the gray of evening. “You buy this place?” he asked.

“Yep,” Sam said.

“So you’re staying.”

“I’ve been here a couple of years. Like what I have. I’m staying.”

Two years in one place. A house. Jack looked at his friend, feeling the gap widen. They’d been close as boys, even as young men, talking big, living for adventure. But their paths had diverged, and now Sam seemed to belong to another world, unlike the one Jack was familiar with.

Or was he the one who lived in another dimension? Risking life and limb daily to get the story. Seeing the hot spots in the world. Making a difference. God, he couldn’t wait to get back.

He stretched out his left leg, wincing at the pain that shot through it. His foot had all but been blown off. Only the skill of the surgeons at the military hospital in Germany had saved it. Whether he would ever regain full function was still questionable. He could walk, though, using a cane. That was what mattered now. He’d work on the mobility once the cast came off. With any luck, he’d be back on the front lines in only a few months—if he survived this interval in Maraville, Mississippi.

“Okay, I’ll give it a shot,” Jack said, knowing he didn’t have any choice.

They were silent for a while. Then Jack looked at Sam. “Been dating lately?” Patty had been dead for more than three years. He was curious as to whether Sam was moving on.

Sam shook his head. “You?”

Jack shrugged. “The front lines of a war aren’t exactly conducive to meeting women. Any prospects in Maraville?”

Sam laughed softly. “Not unless you like them really young. Anyone our age is already married, or has long left for brighter lights.”