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Algorithms suck. Mac had explained how they work to Jack but he still thought that they were more than a little shady.
“They keep track of your searches and what websites you’ve visited then calculate what other things you might want to see,” Mac had told him after Jack had spent ten minutes in a diatribe about the ‘you might also like’ suggestions on his phone’s browser, specifically the adverts for hair loss products.
“And then I’m supposed to look at those sites and buy their stuff?” Jack had asked.
“Basically, yes.”
Jack had scowled down at the phone in his hand. “So the internet’s watching me?”
“No,” Mac had said, then after a second of deliberation he’d slowly added, “But, yeah, sort of.”
“And the internet thinks I’m going bald?”
The hum that had squeezed out of Mac had been a high pitched stab at holding in a snort. “Well, it must have estimated how old you are and, you know, hair loss is common in men your age,” he’d said.
“Common in men my....!” Jack had spluttered. He’d held his phone up in front of his face. “Listen here, Skynet!” he’d barked into the glass screen, “my hair’s just fine, it’s dandy, I don’t need any lotions or potions to keep it stuck on my head, get it!?”
“Wow,” Mac had said, a smirk leaking around the edges of his deadpan expression, “you really showed the internet whose boss there.”
“Hush now, Vidal Sasson,” Jack had grumbled, still fixing his phone with a no nonsense scowl, “just wait till you get old enough that robots think you’re going thin on top.”
Mac’s straight face had been admirably held in place. “It must be tough,” he’d said.
“It’s rude,” Jack had said, “and snarky, and it feels like a portkey of doom.”
“A portent of doom?”
“Exactly!” Jack had nodded fiercely, “whenever I go online it’s like doom’s being portented all over the place.”
If the lines of code staking out Jack’s phone had been doing their jobs right they would have shown him light hearted animal videos, how to answer high school math homework questions and ideas for arty things to do on a date. Those were the things he’d been Googling. And he would have welcomed that. Everyone loves a funny cat, things had changed a lot since Jack had wrangled with equations in high school and the Bob Ross evening he’d taken Diane to had been a delight. Painting mountains and happy little trees had relaxed him in a new and satisfying way and had helped him understand why Diane enjoyed her art so much. He’d learned that creating something wasn’t just about an end product it was about the process of making it, it was colours moving under your hands in layers and growing shapes and something that hadn’t before existing because of you. He’d had fun. Diane had too and that’s what he’d wanted. So he would have been fine with seeing posts about arty, crafty, painty sessions where he could spend more time waving a brush around.
What he didn’t want to see was a news story about a dead soldier.
It was summertime and the living in the stable was pretty easy. The weather was light and bright and Mac was enjoying his freedom from school with a surprised looking but heartfelt pleasure. He was off somewhere with Bozer, Riley and Katie while Jack was at the stable cleaning out and feeding the horses. Pitchforks and brushes had dominated Jack’s morning as he’d moved soiled hay and replaced it with fresh, the whole time getting eyeballed by horses irked that he was disturbing their morning snooze or nudged by others demanding attention, and sweat had started to bead on his tiring shoulders. He put down the broom he was holding and stretched until his back clicked, he needed a break.
“Coffee time,” Jack told Archie. Archie flicked his tail as if though the old horse wished Jack well he didn’t really care what he did because he was going to have his post oats nap.
Jack went in search of a mug of hot caffeine, pulling his phone from his pocket on the way into the office. Mac might get so busy with his friends he’d forget to eat so Jack thought he’d best send him a text reminding him to get lunch, and while he was messaging people he’d say howdy to Diane too. He might actually send her a text saying ‘howdy’ because she thought it was cute when he did that. Jack tapped his phone with the pattern that unlocked it and he must have left his browser open because there at the top of the screen was an article from the local paper’s website announcing the death of a soldier. The top few lines of the article said that he’d grown up in the next town, gone to the high school that Mac’s had just played football with and had joined the Army straight after graduation. There was a photo of the young man, the headline said he’d been twenty years old, stood at attention in his dress uniform with his youth shining out of the picture in spite of his formal clothes and tense jawed pose. Twenty years old. He’d been barely out of his teens. Still a baby really. Not much older than Mac. Unformed and untested. And now he would never have the chance to become the person he could have been.
A chill swamped Jack staining the brightly coloured lightness his day’s simple pleasures had given him a stony grey, and the hand that was holding his phone sagged to his side.
He didn’t click on the article, he knew what it would say. There’d been gunfire, an ambush maybe, a mistake, or incorrect intel, panic and fear and a bad situation had gotten much, much worse.
Twenty years old.
A storm of sudden violence that ended in a coffin with an American flag lying over the top.
Jack knew that sight, the box and the neatly placed flag, he pictured it perfectly in his mind and the image took him out at the knees. He staggered and sunk down onto the office couch. Another flag draped coffin, another life snuffed out far too soon, more broken, grieving hearts.
The tremor that had knocked Jack off balance ricocheted through his body. Shock wasn’t all that was making him tremble, or the effects of unwanted, unneeded adrenaline. So was fury. Blind, towering fury raged through him at the injustice of it all, the futility. He hung his head and saw his hands shaking. He closed his eyes but there was a picture of death still waited behind them. There had been too many. Too many lives taken, lives that he’d taken, that he hadn’t saved, that had ended right in front of him with shocking brutality. Too much horror and loss and grief and now there was more and the kid had only been a handful of years older than Mac. He’d have a family that loved him the way Jack loved Mac, that would miss him the way Jack would if he ever lost Mac.
Jack’s mind’s eye switched from a wooden casket in an airplane’s cargo hold to a blur of battlefields and bursts of gunfire. He saw himself duck behind a low bullet hole riddled wall, saw the young, dumb kid from his unit drop at his feet. He saw himself press his weight down against the holes in the kid’s uniform with hands that grew redder and redder and then he saw himself in the stable office with Mac in his arms. Mac bleeding after running from an attack, Mac as still as the young soldier Jack had tried to save. The enemy hadn’t carried a weapon that day before but he’d been Jack’s foe as much as the insurgents who’d targeted his convoy. Jack hadn’t seen James coming either. He hadn’t joined the dots of the intel he’d been given and recognised what was going to happen. He’d failed Mac just like he’d failed the kid he’d had to watch get zipped into a body bag.
All that pain and death needed to stop. It wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t make it stop.
Jack’s friends had died and he couldn’t always say what for. His dad had died despite being the last person Jack believed would ever do so. Mac’s mom had died and her death had taken his father too. And now there was another loss, this kid. This fresh faced boy who would never celebrate another birthday or see another Christmas and Jack couldn’t bear it.
Air rattled into his straining lungs, coughed weakly out again. He tried to pull his focus away from his out of control thoughts and onto his breathing. He could feel himself falling and he couldn’t let himself sink into that spiral of rage and shame. Nothing good was at the bottom of that pit. There was nothing good to be found there for him or for Mac or for the other people he loved, Diane, Riley, his mom, even the Godforsaken, thick-headed, stubborn donkeys that lived in his stable. He sucked a breath in through his nose as deeply as he could then concentrated on letting it out in a slow, measured huff. He did that again. And again. Then he risked splitting his focus down to his feet, feeling them steady on the sturdy ground below him and confirming his connection to here and now and everything he had.
On his next breath Jack’s phone buzzed. It had stayed clasped in his grip and he glanced down to see a notification of a message from Mac lighting up it’s screen.
Jack licked his dry lips to moisten them then thumbed his phone open to look at his text.
“Just in case you were wondering I haven’t forgotten about lunch,” the message read. “We’re having tuna sandwiches. Riley said she had a craving for sushi and since there’s nowhere to get any in town Bozer said he could make some. Apparently a rolled up tuna sandwich is practically the same as sushi. Riley doesn’t look sure but you know how pointless it is to try to divert Bozer when he’s excited about an idea. Since you’re going to ask we’re having potato chips and cookies too. I hope that helps you relax. See you later."
Jack’s next breath shattered and it’s sharp pieces fell from his lips as a chuff of laughter and a broken sob. A rush of tears flowed down his cheeks and dripped the salt water release of emotion into his lap.
Mac was okay. He was busy with the pointlessly vital things teenagers do in the summer. He was hanging out, eating junk, driving without intending to get anywhere and maybe even sneaking a canoodle or two with Katie because what was the point of being a kid in the summertime if you can’t share a kiss with the pretty girl you’re dating? He wasn’t the kid who’d fled his father’s violence and collapsed into Jack’s arms anymore. Or he was but while that kid was still inside him he’d grown into someone with sturdier roots, a healthier body and a heart that was even bigger and fuller than it had been when he and Jack had first met.
Mac was okay. And Jack had helped that happen. The shaking in Jack’s hands stilled a little. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist and tapped a reply to Mac’s text into his phone.
"Sushi Bozer style? Sounds like a fishy fiesta. And what makes you think I was going to say anything to you about lunch?”
“You love asking me about what I’m going to eat/have eaten/will eat. It’s your favourite thing to do,” Mac replied.
“My favourite thing to do? I think you’re exaggerating there son, it’s not a good look on you.”
“Talking about what I’ve eaten is absolutely one of your top five favourite things,” Mac typed back. “It’s like you need to know or you can’t rest.”
“I just need to know that you’re okay,” Jack replied. “And food is a big part of what keeps you healthy, hearty and other good things that start with an H.”
“Hale?” Mac replied.
“Hale works,” Jack wrote, “but I was thinking happy, I just need you to be happy.”
Mac replied with a smiling emoji and “I am.”
“That’s all I need.” Jack wrote back. “Enjoy your sandwich, Nemo.”
Jack let his phone screen fade to black and left his son to enjoy his lunch in peace. The kid still needed to focus on his meals. Jack did need Mac to be happy, but that wasn’t all he needed. He needed him to know how special he was and how much he was loved, he needed him to feel safe and to know how much being his dad had brought to Jack’s life. He needed Mac to be his son, his own precious son, every day for the rest of their lives and he needed Mac to want him as his dad. Some might call that need to be needed co-dependent, that was a word the therapist he’d seen after he’d got home from the Army had floated past him. He’d told her how detached he’d been feeling, like a ghost, drifting along without a solid presence to touch with or be touched. He’d had no reason to get up in the morning, no one to guard or be guarded by, no one to tap his shoulder before he entered a room and no one to do a coms check with. There was no one to complain to, or about. There was no one to pick him up if he fell and no one to offer a hand to. As he’d said that he’d heard how it sounded so the ‘co-dependent’ comment hadn’t surprised him when it had come up. Jack needed someone to care for, he needed to pour out his love to feel it, without that he was empty and rudderless. It wasn’t necessarily the healthiest of ways to be but there were worse ones. For a long time Jack had thought that having his horses was enough, that caring for them and teaching others to care for them had met that need but then Mac had stumbled into his life and Jack had loved him completely, forever and no matter what long before he knew he did. Mac was amazing, young and pure and brilliant, and Jack had gotten lucky enough that he loved Jack too. They needed each other but not in a way that would ever leave the other vulnerable or wanting. Never like that. Maybe they were two lost halves of a heart that had found each other or maybe they each gave the other the strength to make themselves whole.
And having Mac in his life meant Jack had someone to think about to help him get up off the couch.
“Right, Dalton,” Jack said out loud to himself, “up and at ‘em.”
He gritted his teeth and ordered himself to his feet. Standing, he wavered at attention for a beat then marched to the stable bathroom and splashed himself with handfuls of cold water. His dripping face stared back at him in the mirror, pale, red eyed and shaken but not altogether lost. “Now,” he told himself, “let’s just take this one step at a time.”
One step at a time. One job at a time. If he did that then he would make it through the rest of the day.
“Let’s break it down, Jacky boy,” he told his reflection. “Simple tasks, one at a time.”
Food. He’d been going to have a break so he should get himself some food and something to drink. He knew Mac was okay so he’d contact Diane to check in. He’d finish cleaning Archie’s stall. He’d call Bronte Feeds about his order. He’d put one foot in front of the other until he made it home.
Jack tisked and bopped Mac on the tip of his sun kissed nose.
“Sunscreen, Rudolph! You ever heard of sunscreen?”
“I used sunscreen, Jack,” Mac said, ducking out of his dad’s reach. He jogged out of the living room to look at himself in the hall mirror. “My nose isn’t that bad,” he called. “It’s just a little bit pink.”
“Pasty skin like yours needs extra care taking with it or you’ll end up looking like a boiled lobster,” Jack said to Mac as he came back through the living room door. “You should wear a hat when you go out in the sun. Do you have enough hats?” Jack did a mental sweep of Mac’s wardrobe. “We should get you some baseball caps or something. Just don’t wear them backwards.”
Mac pulled a face. “Why would I wear a baseball cap backwards?” he asked.
“Having your cap all skewwhiff was all the rage back in the day,” Jack told him.
“Why?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Jack said, “that’s fashion for you I suppose. Just you wait, give it twenty years and you’ll be goggling at pictures of yourself taken now wondering how you ever thought you looked cool.”
Mac looked down at his red t shirt and blue jeans. “If you say so,” he said, his voice flat with disbelief.
“Trust me.” Jack backed up the three steps it took him to reach the rocking chair and dropped down to sprawl on it, a weary, finally home groan rumbling from him like the wind moaning out of a mountain cave. “So, kiddo,” he asked, “tell me all about what you’ve been doing since I last saw you.”
Mac sat down beside his dad. “Well, me, Bozer, Katie and Riley met at Bozer’s house...”
Normal, teenage summertime stuff had filled Mac’s day. He chatted about friends, fun and freedom while Jack listened to stories of unfathomable inside jokes, important triviality and aimless contentment. He relished the sparkle of ordinary joy in his son’s eyes, encouraging Mac’s happiness to flow out, hope bright, into his cupped hands so he could draw it to him and drink it in to the parts of him that needed healing.
“So how were your tuna sandwiches?” Jack asked.
“Flat and sort of wet.” Mac pulled an uncertain face. “They were okay. I don’t think they were like sushi though.”
“Are you ready for dinner now?” Jack asked, “I promise I won’t roll it up.”
“I could eat,” Mac said.
“Just what I wanted to hear,” Jack told him.
They ate, shared dessert, watched three episodes of the TV show they’d been working through then talked about what they thought was going to happen in it next. When Jack went to bed he turned off his light thinking that the gentle evening should have been just the thing to mend the brokenness that was turning and cracking inside of him. Shouldn’t it?
The sun crept through the house room by room the next morning and Jack wasn’t sure that things had been fixed after all. Anxiety still battered against his ribs like the wings of a trapped bird, his feet still didn’t feel firm on his floor and his mind was still checking for suspicious activity, unfriendlies, trip wires and surprise attacks. Eyes open, Soldier!
The kitchen was a bubble of calm around Jack’s knotted nerves, a coffee scented place of morning hush with him a exposed live wire buzzing at it’s edge.
“Kiddo?” Mac was having breakfast, rumpled haired in rumpled pyjamas. He was fine. Quiet. Thinking. Not sad or worried. Just eating his cereal like he didn’t have a care in the world. “You got any plans for today?”
“Not really,” Mac said down to his breakfast. He didn’t have a care in the world. If he stayed that way, if Jack could keep him that way, then he would have held some of the badness back.
“You plannin’ on spending time with your buddies?” Jack asked.
“We haven’t arranged anything,” Mac said, he took another spoonful of cereal. “Why?”
“Well, I have a plan, or at least I have the beginnings of a plan, it’s sort of the start of an idea of a possible plan really,” Jack said. If Jack could keep Mac that way, keep him carefree and happy and healthy, then that was a mission completed. Mac deserved those things. Jack needed to give him those things. “There’s nothing happening at the stable today so I was thinking me and you could spend a little time together. There’s this ice cream place that I’ve had a hankering to visit we could go to, I think you’ll like it.”
“Okay, that sounds good,” Mac said. He pushed his empty bowl away and looked at Jack expectantly.
“If we finish breakfast - I know nothing is doing with you until you’ve sunk at least two cups of coffee - get dressed in clothes that aren’t stripy PJs, give the horses a quick look see then leave we’ll be at the parlour in time for a very sweet lunch. I’m thinking of introducing you to their banana sundaes, they’re good and since there’s fruit in 'em you’ll get one of your five a day.”
“Lunch?” Mac asked. “Where is this ice cream place?”
Jack flapped a hand vaguely. “It’s a ways away.”
“How far away? Because,” Mac pointedly looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, “lunch, Jack?”
“Quality sundaes can be hard to find, son.” Jack made himself grin. “Making them isn’t just a case of chopping a banana in half, slapping some ice cream on it then throwing a handful of sprinkles at the dish, if it was everyone would be selling them. Culinary craftsmanship is worth taking trouble over and, a-a-and, well...” Jack ran out of the steam of forced enthusiasm, “well...” He sagged. Rule number two, he thought. He and Mac had agreed on that rule. Jack was particular about it. There’d been that whole nasty time after Mac had broken his arm that Jack had messed up by getting all insistent and unreasonable about it. It was only fair that he followed it too.
“Jack?” Mac asked, a frown putting two lines between his eyebrows. “Are you all right?”
“I haven’t seen enough of you, kid,” Jack said with careful honesty, “you know I get antsy when I can’t keep on checking that you’re okay.”
Mac blinked at Jack, silently urging him to go on.
“And I’ve been thinking.” Jack cleared his throat. “I’ve been having lots of thoughts really, and some of those thoughts have been pretty loud.” The picture of the young soldier flashed before Jack’s eyes like the after image of a blinding light. “So I figured a quiet day with my favourite person might help shush up a thing or two.”
Mac didn’t need to hear about the death of the young man only a few years older than himself. Jack didn’t want him to carry that knowledge and he couldn’t bear to allow the loss of a young life to share the same space as his son.
“So, you thought a drive and an ice cream might help quieten things down?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Jack said, “If you don’t want to that’s fine, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t tell me no.” Mac feeling unwilling or pressured was the opposite of what Jack wanted. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“I want to, it’s just,” Mac studied his dad again and Jack wondered what was happening behind the blue eyes watching him, “you seem...”
“I’m good, son,” Jack said automatically, he stepped forward and pulled Mac into a hug so that his son’s blond head was pressed against his chest. Rule number two, he reminded himself, “I could be a little better though perhaps.”
“Okay,” Mac said as confirmation. “Okay,” he said again in agreement. “Ice cream sundaes then.”
“Not just any ice cream sundaes,” Jack told him, “roast banana ice cream sundaes.”
“They sound good.”
“You’ll go ape for them,” Jack said. He smoothed down some of the wayward strands of bedhead resting against his heart. Mac’s hair was as soft as silk, as soft as comfort. As home. “Do you see what I did there?” he asked. “Go ape? Monkeys eat bananas? See?”
“I see, Jack.”
The wings inside Jack’s chest began to slow their frantic beat. Hopefully they’d soon settle, maybe they’d even soar, lifted by the warm updraft of his son’s smile.
“Of course you do, son.” Jack screwed his eyes shut against the emotion burning in them. He tightened his hold on Mac, keeping his voice and touch light. “I see you too, sometimes you’re the only thing I do see.”
Driving ninety five miles for ice cream was an unconventional way to show love but while they were doing it Mac and Jack would share space and stories. The radio would play. Miles would pass. So would time. The truck’s windows would be wide open and Jack and Mac could stretch their arms out like thrill seekers on a roller coaster to feel the rushing air fly through their fingers. Mac would be right beside Jack where he could make sure his boy was okay and while he cared for Mac Jack would care for himself too and, really, there was nothing better than that.