Brock Clarke - Exley

“Those were all pictures of women,” Mother said. Her voice was like an alarm clock. When she spoke, a couple of people shook their heads, like they’d just been woken up. “The pictures were all taken within the last three years. Some of the women were soldiers who were wounded or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the women were civilians who were wounded or killed by their husbands or boyfriends or sons who were soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. And some of the women were soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who were wounded or killed by their husbands or boyfriends or sons who were also soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they were wounded or killed back home.”

Mother paused for a second. She looked calmly around the room.

“Does it matter how it happened?” Mother finally asked. “Does it matter whether the women were wounded or killed in combat or at home?”

This was a rhetorical question. Anyone who had ever heard one would have recognized it. The answer was yes.

“No,” Exley’s voice said. I tracked it and found him standing toward the front of the room, off to the left. Everyone’s head swiveled. He was standing with his hands in his pockets. He had big eyes. I wasn’t sure if he was looking at Mother or at the wall where the pictures had been.

“No?” Mother said. She looked blankly in Exley’s direction, which was a little bit of a relief. Mother clearly didn’t recognize him. “No ? No, there is no difference between a woman volunteering to serve in a war in which she knows she might be wounded or killed, and a woman getting wounded or killed by her boyfriend?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Exley said. “What’s the difference? No matter what or where, what happened to them is. ” Exley stopped and closed his eyes. It was like he was looking for something in his head.

“Wrong?” Mother said.

Exley opened his eyes. “Cha damn right they’re wrong,” he said.

“Are you saying it’s wrong for a woman to join the army?”

I could see Exley think about this. His eyes went to his shoes. He looked like he needed help, which was too bad. Because I couldn’t help him, just like I couldn’t help my dad when he was arguing with Mother. Because my dad was always trying to tell Mother, in so many words, You think me being like Exley is a bad thing, but it’s not. Exley is not a bad guy and neither am I. And I’m going to prove that by showing you that M. doesn’t think I’m a bad guy and so you shouldn’t, either . Just like how Exley was trying to tell Mother, I know you think I’m a bad guy, but I’m not. I know you think, since I thought about hurting women in my book, that makes me the same as the guys who actually did hurt the women in the pictures you showed us. But I’m not the same, and I’m going to prove that by saying what I think you want to hear tonight in front of all these people . When my dad looked at me during these arguments, I could never figure out whether he wanted me to say that all men weren’t as bad as Mother seemed to think they were, or that he wasn’t as bad as all other men. What he never seemed to understand was that Mother wasn’t talking about all other men: she was talking about him. And what Exley didn’t seem to understand was that she wasn’t talking about him: she was talking about the women who’d been hurt by all these other guys. Anyway, I couldn’t ever help my dad, and I couldn’t help Exley, either.

“C’mon, friend,” Exley finally said. “All I’m sayin’. ”

“I know what you’re saying, friend ,” Mother said. Now it was Exley who was embarrassing me. Stop talking like that , I wanted to tell him. “You’re saying, friend , that no matter how a woman gets hurt, no matter who hurts her, it’s wrong. That she’s a victim. Right?”

Exley nodded and smiled, like he thought Mother was really agreeing with him, and then he looked at me. I don’t know why: maybe he wanted me to be happy for him because he thought Mother was agreeing with him. She wasn’t, and she wasn’t looking at him anymore, either. Her eyes had followed his, all the way to me.

“Miller,” Mother said as she looked at me, then at Exley, then back to me again. “My son, Miller, is here,” Mother announced, and gestured toward me. Everyone turned and smiled in my direction, because everyone likes it when a Mother takes her son to work. Except Mother hadn’t. “Miller doesn’t know this, but I had a long phone conversation with one of his teachers this afternoon. According to Mrs. T., Miller has something of an attendance problem. It was kind of him to drop by tonight. But he really has to be going now.” And here she looked at Exley — not blankly like before, but like she was this close to recognizing him. “And he should take his friend with him.”

EXLEY AND I crept out of the YWCA and onto the Public Square. It was cold. There was snow on the ground, up to the middle of my shins. The sky was blue black and the stars were out and the Public Square was empty: no one was sleeping on the benches or peeing on the monument. It was nice. Exley didn’t say anything at first. He just started walking, for about five minutes, and then he stopped. We were in the same neighborhood as Dr. Pahnee’s house and office. I looked up and saw what must have been Exley’s house, but from the way we were standing on the sidewalk, I guessed he wasn’t going to invite me in. I could see his face in the streetlight: there was a look on it that was part pissed off, part apologetic, part dreamy.

“Sorry,” he finally said.

“You should be,” I said.

“Whacha gonna say to your mom when she gets home?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s real smart,” Exley said.

“Cha think?” I said.

“Smarter than you,” Exley said.

“Smarter than you, too,” I said. Exley nodded, then looked over at me sadly, like he needed me to give him something. Except I didn’t have anything to give him, not even the bottle of Popov, which we’d left back at the house.

“I was on her side, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “It was like she wasn’t even listening to me.”

“Do you know why?” I said. I was mad at him. I was always mad at my dad, too, after he’d lost his fights with Mother. Later, I would be mad at her. But right after the fight, I was always mad at him, maybe for losing it. “It’s the way you talk.”

“What about it?”

“It’s like only half of you is talking,” I said. I went through the list of things he said, all the “cha’s” and “friend’s.” And then I talked about all the stuff he wasn’t saying. All the complicated stuff. “One kind of stuff is no good without the other,” I told him. I thought Exley would get mad, but he didn’t. He looked sad, defeated. He nodded, and kept nodding, even when I’d stopped talking. Exley looked older than he had earlier. And I thought that maybe this was what it means to get old: to have someone much younger remind you of how you weren’t the same person you used to be. Time catches up with all of us , I thought. This, of course, was exactly the kind of thought a kid might have on the eve of his tenth birthday.

“Hey, tomorrow is my birthday,” I said to Exley. “I’m going to be ten.” This seemed to cheer Exley up a little. At least he stopped nodding and smiled at me. “Cha ask for anything special?” he asked. He winced after he said that. I wondered if it was because he heard himself say “cha” again.

“Just two things,” I said. I was thinking, of course, of finding Exley and him saving my dad. “And I got one of them already.”

It was a cheese-ball thing to say, and once I said it I thought Exley might make me regret it. But he didn’t. He nodded again and then pulled A Fan’s Notes out of his jacket pocket. “You really like this thing?” he asked, and looked at me with his big, needy eyes again. This time, I could give him what he needed.