Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

“Stop right there!” shouted one of the officers, and the other fired his pistol into the air, which caused most of the assembled veterans to dive to the ground and two of them to storm a row of metal barricades and tear away the yellow tape.

“Halt!” shouted the police, but they didn’t halt, so the mounted officers rode forward into the crowd, knocking down anyone who was in their way. Le Roy was in their way, and he fell to the ground just inches from a big black hoof with a cleated iron shoe. He turned his head slightly and forgot about the horse, but blood was trickling from his forehead into his eyes and spattering the back of his hand. What the fuck? Where the hell was he, anyway?

“Follow me!” shouted the Ranger, dragging Le Roy to his feet. “Run!”

Le Roy started running. He ran and ran and didn’t stop until his lungs were on the verge of collapse, and then he ran a little farther, even when the reason for running got lost somewhere far behind him. He had gotten soft and, he had to admit, a little flabby, but he hadn’t forgotten how to find escape routes and assess a crowd for potential threats. He hadn’t forgotten how to stick to the shadows and double back on his trail. He hadn’t forgotten to be suspicious of males with skin that was darker than Danny’s skin but not as dark as his own, of people in flowing clothing, of people wearing backpacks, of people in beat-up cars.

As he ran, a space in his brain opened up, and he remembered something he’d forgotten — E’Laine lacing up her jogging shoes and shouting, “Come on, track star. Catch me if you can!” It was a small thing, but it served to power one last burst of speed.

8.2 Joe Kelly

Kelly had expected something more dramatic than running away from the police. He’d expected a mission-accomplished sense of satisfaction or at least some outlet for the tension that was mounting in his brain and muscles and demanding some sort of release. He’d like to have sex with a girl. He’d like to have sex with a girl he didn’t know — not the kind of sex where they lit candles or talked before and after or fit it in around a practical activity like cooking dinner or gassing up the car and not the kind where he had to take her out to a nice restaurant and feign interest in her life goals. Kelly no longer had any life goals — if he had ever had them — and the idea that other people might want to talk to him about theirs made him want to smash his fist through a piece of glass. “I’ll see you back at the hotel,” he said, but the captain put a hand on his shoulder and said, “How about we all stay together?”

Kelly twisted his body out of reach and thought about slugging the captain in the face. “Who’s coming with me?” he asked. But Le Roy had run off somewhere and Danny would only slow him down.

“I think we’ve had enough excitement for one day,” said the captain, but Kelly said, “I’m just getting started,” and slammed his shoulder into the captain’s as he walked past him and felt the captain slam back. “Why isn’t Hernandez here?” he asked, but he knew where Hernandez was. Hernandez was home in Texas with his wife and kid.

Kelly started walking. He passed a lot of official-looking buildings and restaurants — nice enough, but the exact wrong kind of nice. He checked for telltale bulges in people’s clothing. He watched a nondescript car drive slowly up the block. He envisioned a beautiful girl, one who would take pity on him, but not the kind of pity where she felt sorry for him. Maybe “pity” wasn’t the right word for the attitude she would have. Empathy or respect would be better, or, best of all, she wouldn’t have any kind of attitude toward him, just some inscrutable need of her own, a need he didn’t want to hear about but that would sync her up with him in just the right way.

After a while he came to a strip of trees, and beyond the trees, a river, and there, standing on a bridge over the river, were two teenage boys. There was Harraday, aiming his rifle at them. There were the boys, stepping into thin air. Nah, he was just imagining it. No boys, no Harraday, just a bridge over a river, and on the bridge, a stream of shiny late-model cars.

The good news was that he found an area of seedy bars and restaurants on the other side of the bridge that were just the kind of nice he had in mind. He went into one of them and ordered a beer, but when he put his hand in his pocket, he drew out his cell phone and some loose change, but not his wallet. It was then he remembered knocking into Sinclair. The captain had picked his pocket. Jeezus, he thought. Christ.

He put the change on the table and counted it by separating the coins into little piles depending on denomination. Then he knocked them over and arranged them again, this time where each pile equaled twenty-five cents. “Shee-it,” he said out loud, just as a smoky voice said, “Don’t worry about it. The beer’s on me.”

It was and wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted the beer, but he didn’t want the charity. He wanted the smoky voice, but he didn’t want the intelligence behind the eyes. He wanted the female body, but he didn’t want the pity or the story the woman would be making up to explain the piles of coins to herself. He should be buying her a drink. He should have a wallet in his pocket and a nice car parked outside. But the deck was stacked against him. War or no war, he was never going to have those things. His father hadn’t had them and his father’s father hadn’t had them, so why should it be any different for him?

“Okay, thanks,” he said.

The woman smiled again. The bartender thunked the mugs on the table. Kelly could feel the anger clenching up inside him. His hands were shaking, so he took a quick slug of beer before hiding them in his lap. “Shit,” he said again, and then he gave the girl a friendly smile. When she smiled back, her face caught the light from the beer signs hanging above the bar and he noticed her eyes had a hint of yellow in them. “Why didn’t you warn me you were part tiger?” he said.

8.3 Le Roy Jones

When Le Roy finally stopped to rest, he was surrounded by unfamiliar buildings and the members of his impromptu unit were nowhere in sight. He ducked into an alley and hunkered down against a grimy wall. All he could see from there were the back doors to a row of commercial buildings and a clutch of rusting dumpsters, and when he put his hands over his eyes, he couldn’t even see that. Every now and then he would peek out at the changing color of the clouds as the sun shifted in the sky, and then the world would stop spinning and his heart rate would even out. A flock of birds startled and then went back to scavenging for garbage. He liked birds. He liked birds even more than he liked horses, and he liked horses quite a lot.

After watching the birds he started walking again, now and then picturing the map he had seen over the captain’s shoulder and adjusting his course accordingly until the only thing that separated him from 2221 Arlington Boulevard was a six-lane highway. Hernandez had taught him a trick for making time slow down. “Guaranteed,” Hernandez had said, so Le Roy decided to try it. But first he tried the rehab guy’s checklist trick. He visualized success and thought, I am an American soldier. I will not accept defeat. Then he crouched at the side of the road in starting position, watching for a gap in the traffic. “Okay, Hernandez,” he said aloud. “I hope the fuck you’re right.”

He pushed off with his right leg, aiming for the gap, dodging through it, breaking and dodging again before diving left-then-right, behind a shiny panel van. The trick almost didn’t work, but instead of hitting him, the car in the last lane swerved and almost hit the guardrail. It was quite a sight to see the look on the driver’s face as the car fishtailed and almost spun into oncoming traffic before straightening out again. “Hey!” shouted the driver from behind the glass. “Hey, you!”