Chapter 30
Lukas
Dear Mags,
They gave us word that we only have a few weeks left out here, so I’ll be shipping back to the States soon. Maybe even get a small break to make it back home for Christmas.
I’m excited to get back to base, maybe get back on my old routine and try to feel normal again.
Not gonna lie, it’ll be weird, though. I’m used to this sort of life now.
Used to living in kind of like a survival mode.
It’ll feel weird to be back in Copper Ridge surrounded by my family.
I’ll bet Harper will seem so grown up now.
Aphone is tossed in the dirt next to me. When I look up, Brutus is standing over me with his bulky shadow blocking out what’s left of the setting sun.
“Ready to get out of here, Iowa?”
He reaches into his front pocket, pulling out a squished pack of cigarettes. He pops one into his mouth, and then he pats his hands across his chest, his thigh, searching for a lighter. Before he can find one, I pull mine from my side pocket and toss it over to him.
“I guess so,” I tell him, watching as he lights up a flat cigarette.
He nods, inhaling a deep drag before holding it a second, then pushing it out into the evening air. “You guess? Young guy like you should be excited to be done with this shit. Soon you’ll be back home, go visit the girl or something, get a real job.”
Two years ago, I was excited for that. It’s what kept me going, what motivated me to wake up each morning, but somewhere along the way, it lost its appeal.
It’s not that I don’t want to go home. I definitely don’t want to stay out here.
But there needs to be a middle ground somewhere.
A limbo that we could spend some time in—something that’s not quite the military but still offers a break before we’re thrown right back into civilian life.
“What about you?” I defer, hoping he won’t notice I can’t answer.
I expect him to ramble on about how military life is his only goal.
Hell, if they let him, he’d probably sign on for another tour without even taking a real break.
Yet, he’s unusually quiet. Quiet enough that I fold up the letter I was writing to Mags and set it to the side. “Having a change of heart?”
He squats down, taking a seat on the broken rock next to mine. Bringing the cigarette to his lips, he sucks another deep drag as he thinks. “I don’t know what my plan is anymore. This is my third tour, my longest … it’s been the hardest.”
I hadn’t asked Brutus much about his other tours.
The selfish part of me didn’t want to hear stories because I didn’t want to know what it could be like.
I thought anticipating the bad shit would give me more anxiety.
But I’m wondering now if the shit with Collins dying and losing those men is something he’s already experienced, something he’s already had to recover from once before.
I’ve been living inside my own mind to the point where I haven’t stopped to ask and see how those around me are doing.
For all I know, he’s reliving one of his worst nightmares.
“How are you handling it all?”
He turns to look at me, the hand that’s holding the cigarette resting on his knee. The tip burns red, then turns gray, the ash crumbling to the ground the more he stares. “Handling just about as good as you,” he finally says.
“So, you’re dying inside,” I joke, and he chuckles at that.
“Basically.”
“Do you still plan to re-sign?” His contract is up at the same time as mine, I think. To my surprise, he shrugs a shoulder.
“Don’t know what else I can do.” He tosses the cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out with the tip of his boot. “Don’t be like me, Hart,” he says, and his sudden change of tone has me furrowing my brow.
Brutus doesn’t have serious talks. He takes everything in stride. He’s the one we could count on for a laugh when we are at our lowest, for some self-depreciating joke about how many teeth he’s lost, about how he’s never had a real girlfriend. He seemingly liked to make us laugh at his own expense.
“If you have something good in your life, hold on to it so fucking tightly. Not everyone has someone waiting at home that loves them, you know? You got your family, your parents and brothers and sister, a job on the farm, if you want it, and your girl. That’s a lot to be thankful for.”
I swallow the thick lump in my throat. My family will love me unconditionally, that I know.
I’ve barely spoken to them over this last year, opting to send the occasional letter so they don’t have the chance to ask me the tough questions.
It’s the same game I’ve played with Magnolia since our last argument.
I want to say that she will love me unconditionally, too.
And on some level, I think she will. But she also has the opportunity to walk away if she chooses.
If the person I’ve become isn’t someone she can stand to be around anymore.
“I’m sure you have people who are excited to see you after this.”
He chuckles at that, lips twitching on one side. “My ma died when I was young. My dad left the day I turned seventeen and was old enough to fend for myself. Heard through the grapevine he remarried but died shortly after they had a kid. Guess I have a half-brother I’ve never even met.”
I force my facial expressions to stay flat as Brutus goes on.
My grandma used to always remind us to be nice to the kids at school, because we never knew what they were going through.
Even as a teenager, when I fought Billy for what he did to Mags that day, she sat down and reminded me that Billy is a bully for a reason.
I didn’t get what she meant at the time, but as we got older and I learned more about how he grew up, I started to understand what she meant.
The same goes for Brutus. He’s rough around the edges, but plays it off like it’s fun.
He lets himself be the brunt of the joke.
But hearing he lost his mom young, and his dad ran off when he probably wasn’t truly ready to be on his own just shows that his toughness came at a cost. Looking at him now, at the emptiness behind his eyes, I can tell he’s just as scared and lonely as the rest of us.
“I barely graduated high school. I was never good at the reading part.” He holds out his hand, palm facing him like an open book. “I look at the page, and the words jump all around. Sometimes, I write them backwards and shit.”
“Dude, I had no idea. I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s alright. I don’t have any skills outside of being good with my hands.
I can survive with barely nothing because I never had nothing given to me.
The military made sense. It’s where I fit in.
But this tour was different…” he trails off, and I watch his every move.
The tight, pained expression on his face.
The slight flare of his nostrils as he fights through his words.
“This tour has me questioning what I want to do … but if I’m not a Marine, I don’t know what else I can be… ”
I try to think of what to say to him. I rack my brain for comforting words, or words in general that might be helpful. I wish Magnolia was here.
She’d know what to say to him. She’d probably reach out and squeeze his hand. She’s so good at love, at touch. She thrives on it.
And fuck, I’ve done nothing short of ignoring her these last few months. Pretending that I’m too busy to call, to write, all because I don’t want her to see the blood stains on my hands.
She’s lonely, hurt. Likely touch-starved.
And at some point, a woman can only take so much before she snaps.
Before my mind can wander down that dangerous path, I turn back to Brutus, raising a hand to briefly squeeze his shoulder.
“You have all of us as family now, man.” Collins was family.
Davis. All of them. We were a family because of what we went through together.
And while I’ll mourn them all by myself once I’m back home, I need to remember that not everyone is gone.
Brutus nods at that, his hand curling into a fist before he gently punches my knee. “Well, just wanted to say the phone is yours, if you want to call that girl. And hey, if I’m ever in Iowa, how about I look you up?”
He stands, stretching out his shoulder before turning toward the humvee.
“Hey,” I call out, causing him to pause. When he spins around, I push off from the rock and stand, quickly closing the gap between us. “If you decide that you want to try something besides the military, you can always come to Iowa. I’ll bet we could find you a job on the farm.”
My brother Grayson has been trying to get my dad to expand the farm for a while now.
There’s so much land that isn’t worked and isn’t really being used for what it’s worth because there aren’t enough bodies to work it.
My pops is getting old, as is my dad. Theo helps out when he isn’t at the fire station, but basically, it’s Grayson trying to hold it together.
He could use someone like Brutus. A man who doesn’t care if he’s sick, exhausted.
Won’t quit because of the weather. Won’t quit when his family abandons him.
So faithful it could be a flaw. That’s the type of guy I’d want on my side.
He reaches a hand out between us, and I offer him mine, shaking once. “Just might take you up on that someday.”
He turns to leave, and I move back toward the rock to grab the phone when he calls out to me, “Hey, Hart.”
“Yeah?”
He stares at me, and I can see his throat work in a slow swallow before he speaks. “You're trapping yourself.”
I twist my brows together, not sure what he's getting at.
“Up here.” He raises a hand, his pointer finger tapping at his temple. “You're trapping yourself up here. I saw it when we first met, and it's been worse since we lost the guys.”
My eyes sting, tears begging to fall, but I inhale sharply through my nose, reeling them back in like I always do, and he sees it.
“You gotta find a way out of there.” He taps his head again.
“You let yourself get lost up there, spend your free days wading through the dark shit, and that'll kill you.” He waves his hand around, gesturing to the dust and desert that surrounds us.
“Trap yourself up there and it'll kill you quicker than anything we'll ever fight out here.”