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Gloria watches as Diego goes to Romy. He stood there, frozen to the spot just outside the bathroom, and she’d been sure he’d do what he always does. Walk out of the bar without a word to either of them, or turn around and go back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind himself. God knows he’s done so more times than Gloria can count.
She or Jesse, that’s usually who he walks away from, on unsteady legs, the soles of his shoes sticking to the High Noon Saloon’s grimy floor. Out into the dusty night, or the glaring sunlight, whenever her incessant nagging, Jesse’s concerned questions, become too much to bear. All three of them know that it’s well-meant, and justified, and that the worse his health is getting the more painful this sense of helplessness is, too.
They talk about doctors, new cutting edge treatments. Traditional healers, herbal remedies. Anything they can think of, anything at all. And Diego listens to it all without comment. Until he just can’t listen anymore, and then he walks away.
Now he walks right into Romy’s arms. Clearly, Gloria thinks, that little French girl knows some secret the rest of them don’t.
Or maybe he’s just realized he can’t do this alone any longer.
There is no hiding it now, from anyone. The coughing fits are so frequent, and anyone who knows him a little can see how much it hurts, how his chest hitches with every inhalation, every hard-fought-for breath. There is no hiding the blood that’s coating his hands afterwards, like so much sticky cherry syrup.
Gloria has watched it all, from a distance, many, many times over. Has watched him light a smoke with trembling fingers as soon as the cough will allow it, when the breaths at last become breaths again, are no longer the desperate struggles of a drowning man.
Those damn cigarettes. Gloria hates them. Surely they make it worse, drag by labored drag. But smoking also seems to help. Calms him down when nothing else can.
When Diego gets to that stage, hands no longer shaking, smoke flowing from slightly parted lips, Gloria pours him a whiskey, and he knocks it back, wincing as the spirit burns its way down his shredded throat.
He won’t need that drink today. Romy came for him, and maybe that’s good. A finger of whiskey doesn’t cut it anymore. Maybe not even a whole bottle could touch this now.
“He’s not doing too good,” Gloria said when Romy came in, looking for Diego. She felt that bitterness in her throat that comes with a barely suppressed giggle of hysteria. Not too good, maybe that had been the truth a year ago. Now it’s not even a polite understatement.
Until recently Diego hadn’t looked ill, not for a day since he’d come back from Iraq five years ago. You wouldn’t have known anything was wrong unless you happened to hear him cough. But now that’s no longer true, either. When he came in today and sat in his usual spot at the bar Gloria had seen it right away.
That pallor to his face, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. A high color on his cheekbones from the fever that had already reached his eyes.
For the first time ever Gloria hesitated before pouring his drink. He could hold his drink, Diego could. Even when he staggers outside to cough every half hour his liquor never disagrees with him. Just like the cigarettes it calms him down. Lets him forget for a while what’s going on inside his body.
Some nights Jesse has put him up in the loft in Mickey’s room, when he’s looked a little on the wobbly side, and Diego’s always handed his keys to them for safekeeping without a fuss. Stayed gladly, in fact, sitting up with Gloria while she closed the register, swept the floors and locked up. Then he would give her a peck to the cheek and take himself to bed.
When he came in today Gloria had thought she might offer him the loft again, drunk or not. He’d looked so lost and sad, he might appreciate not being alone.
“Don’t look at me like that, Glor,” he’d said as he sat down. “Just gimme a Beck’s.”
She’d been relieved and worried at the same time. No need to refuse him the whiskey, then. But if he only wanted a beer he had to be feeling pretty bad. Gloria brought him the bottle, then returned to her chores. He hadn’t looked like he wanted to talk.
He didn’t even finish that one beer. Even from the other end of the bar she heard it, that wheezy sound on his breath, just before a coughing fit. And this one wouldn’t let up. Gloria half turned to him, even though she knows he hates the fussing. Maybe he should have a whiskey after all.
But before she could plug up the courage to approach him he slid off the stool, nearly overbalancing, and rushed for the bathroom.
With the bar deserted and silent, Gloria could clearly hear the painful, violent hacking. It stopped for a short while but then started up again. She would’ve dearly liked to offer him support, but she knew it would be pointless.
That one time he’d gone home with her, right after he’d come back from Iraq, he’d locked himself in her bathroom with a fit not much less severe than this one. It had been the middle of the night and his sudden rush from her bed startled her awake. That night, eventually, Gloria hadn’t been able to take it any longer. She crept up to the bathroom door and knocked, softly. There was a silence, mid-cough. Then, in a choked voice thick with pain, “Leave me t’fuck alone, Glor.”
She had, and they’d never talked about it. He’d never gone home with her again.
Now Gloria watches two retreating backs slowly make their way out of the bar. Romy has her arm around Diego’s middle, and he is leaning into her, his gait slow and listing. Gloria has a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She didn’t think much of that little foreign girl when she first rolled into town. But Diego trusts her, and he lets her help. And it’s clear that he doesn’t have the strength to fend for himself any longer.
*
He lies very still, heart hammering like mad in his chest. When he’d jerked awake a few minutes ago Romy had stirred by his side, and mumbled a little, but hadn’t woken up.
Slowly Diego’s heartbeat returns to normal, but his breath still hitches and rattles in his chest. It’s always like that now, he’s almost used to it. Not so used yet to the pain, though, that recently comes with every inhalation.
This night is the first time in years that he’s revisited that rubble field in his dreams. It was just as he remembers it, dry and dusty, air flimmering in the heat. And he could taste it in his dream, that tang of cement on the air. Of despair and tears and death. In his dream he was digging again, even though the cries for help had died a long time ago.
They spent four days in that bombed out Red Cross hospital, searching for survivors. The first day they found three, one the next. None after that. At the time he had despaired as the cries of the wounded and trapped died away one by one. Later he wondered if those who didn’t make it hadn’t been the lucky ones.
After the first day he was the only one left of his battalion who was still helping the Fallujah people dig in the rubble. As Captain he hadn’t had much trouble to get his request to stay behind approved by his field commander. Diego couldn’t ignore the cries for help, had found himself unable to leave the site while there was still hope to dig out anyone alive.
When they finally conceded defeat four days after the insurgents’ bombs had destroyed the hospital Diego was exhausted, just like all the other men who had worked so feverishly to get to the people trapped in the collapsed building. He slept the rest of that day and all of the following night in the shelter some locals had set up. Only later did he realize that they’d all been coughing pretty much from the moment they had started digging. At the time Diego put it down to stone dust and the dryness of the air. It had been the dust all right, but not in a way any of them could’ve ever imagined.
The next day Diego returned to his unit, and that night the vomiting and diarrhea started. For days he was laid up with what he thought to be the worst case of intestinal flu he had ever suffered. He was so weak that a few times he hardly made it to the latrines in time. And when he wasn’t stuck on the john he’d been asleep non-stop. And he was so thirsty, which was no wonder; everything went right through him.
After three days of this his men got so worried they shipped him off to the nearest field hospital. Had anyone suggested then that he would never see his unit again Diego would’ve laughed in their face. The Marine Corps didn’t send you home for a bad case of the stomach flu.
Finally, after many bags of IV fluid and countless capsules of Imodium Diego started to recover, and the only thing permanently damaged seemed to be his dignity.
But he couldn’t shake the exhaustion - and the nasty, painful cough. He was hell bent on returning to his men, but when he as good as fainted walking from his sick bed to the bus back to Fallujah he had to concede defeat. The doctors at the field hospital scratched their heads over his symptoms for two weeks. They wouldn’t release him.
Then the rumors started. Military field hospitals, Diego realized, are a breeding ground for gossip as much as for drug-resistant germs.
The whispers were of dirty bombs, of depleted Uranium, found in several bombed-out places around Fallujah and other Iraqi cities. The official party line was then, and remains to this day, that the danger of these deposits was vastly overstated by the left-leaning media, but in Diego’s mind something akin to fear began to stir. He used some of his accumulated telecommunication credits to search what passed for the world wide web on the military network in those days for symptoms of radiation poisoning – and its long-term effects. What he found had confused him, but been too vague to really scare him.
Not much in the way of detail – where had the dirty bombs come from, who were their intended targets, and how had that Red Cross hospital in Fallujah gotten in the way of that kind of attack – ever reached the grapevine, or the media outlets much later. And Diego quickly became distracted, for suddenly things had moved at lightning speed for him. They didn’t even call it an honorable discharge. Instead he suddenly became part of the first wave of decommissioning. Their argument was that by the time he was fully recovered it would be time to pack up shop, anyway.
Oh, they made sure Diego got the best treatment available once he was stateside again. He was packed off to a rehabilitation facility in the Rocky Mountains, which was as beautiful as it was secretive. Here Diego learned that he was only one of many casualties of this war the government would rather keep a secret.
At the facility Diego regained most of his health. For a while he was almost able to kid himself that he might after all make a full recovery, and that he would, in time, continue with his career in the Marines.
But that hope was finally dashed just before he finished his six-month stint in the Rockies. One day the chief medical officer came into Diego’s private room. “Captain Sheen, I will talk frankly with you.”
Diego knew that this could only be bad news. The weird thing was, he felt physically absolutely fine. By then, in the mountain air, even the occasional coughing fits were so minor they hardly deserved mentioning. But something wasn’t right, and in quiet moments Diego could feel it, like a lead weight deep inside his bones.
“Your latest chest scan and blood works have shown growths,” the doctor continued. Diego had had a chest x-ray or some other scan on an almost weekly basis for six months, and not once had anyone made a fuss about them. “The tests confirm that the anomalies we have been watching for the last six months have indeed turned cancerous.”
Diego didn’t say anything. He wanted to ask a million questions, chief among them how it could have been that nobody had mentioned those anomalies to him before. But he was too stunned to speak. Only gradually did he get the full picture over the next few days: that the cancer was stage 3 already, that, yes, it could be operated on, but that he had to be prepared for the eventuality that more of the anomalies, which were in fact thousands of tiny encapsulated dust deposits, could, and most likely would, turn cancerous, too, and that there was no way to remove them all without destroying most of his lung tissue.
The doctors made the careful prognosis that, if he complied with all treatments, he would have eight to ten years left.
Still stunned, and now also desperate, Diego agreed to the first operation. He didn’t tell anyone about the diagnosis - not his battalion, not his family or friends at home.
That first operation remains the only treatment he ever agreed to. When he came around from the anesthetic he immediately wished he’d died on the table. He couldn’t breathe, each inhalation felt like drowning, and was so excruciatingly painful that he screamed until he passed out again.
It took him three more months to recover sufficiently to finally leave the hospital. He hasn’t set a foot in a medical facility since.
After being discharged Diego traveled to Long Beach, where an old comrade from his Oceanside training days was happy to put him up for the first phase of his recovery. Sam lived with his wife and two daughters in a cozy little house by the beach, and Diego had thought of him because Sam knew neither his family or childhood friends nor anyone from his time in Iraq. Diego spent a month lying on Sam’s veranda and looking at the ocean. It was a peaceful time, and when he left he felt ready to face his future – and his past.
Even though he hadn’t lived there in so long the urge to go home to Rowlands and reconnect with his family and his old life had grown stronger with every day that passed so peacefully in Long Beach. While Diego had still been in the Rockies his brother Joe wrote that he and Billie were going to have a baby, and that thought had given Diego unexpected pleasure in all his pain and misery.
At Sam’s he’d overcome that initial phase of numbness and worked through some of the helpless rage which overwhelmed him on occasion while sitting on his friend’s veranda. Sam, who only got the barest bones about his condition, was the perfect friend to Diego. He would sit with him, drink beer and let him cry without comment or interrogation. At home, Diego knew, he wouldn’t have that luxury.
Oh, he would tell them all the facts they needed to know once he was established again in Rowlands, and he fully planned to do right by his family and friends, spend time with them while he still could. But they would make a fuss, so the more together, the more independent he was when he returned, the better.
Diego had always been methodical in planning his life, and he wouldn’t abandon that now. He wouldn’t be idle, and he was determined to enjoy the time he had left.
But he would approach this last remaining stretch of time on his terms, and he wouldn’t let anyone come too close.
Now, in the first rosy-dusty light of morning, Diego looks over at Romy where she sleeps peacefully by his side, and he begins to wonder whether maybe he was too hasty in making up those rules.
Maybe, just maybe, he could let her get a little closer. It would be nice to have someone really care about him one last time. And he’s no longer so sure that he can walk this last walk alone, even if he still wanted to.
*
“I could just do nothing, y’know. Sit in your bar all day and buy everyone rounds. I’d never run out of cash…”
Jesse says nothing for a moment. He’s good at that, waiting for his time to speak. They’ve been out here a good twenty minutes already, and all he’s done so far is wait. Wait for Diego to stop coughing, fight himself back to breathing once again. Wait for his friend to tell him what’s on his mind that day.
Now Diego is very quiet, staring into the distance, and Jesse knows he’s done for now. Done coughing, done talking. It’s his turn.
“You won’t, though.”
“No.”
Jesse watches Diego light his smoke with shaking fingers and take the first drag. They all hate that Diego won’t give it up. But Gloria is right, it does calm him down. And he’ll need a lot of calming down soon, Jesse is sure. Whatever number the Uranium has done on Diego’s lungs, it’s getting worse.
“I talked to park administration,” Jesse says. “It’s true, old Herb Snyder is retiring at the end of the month.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If you want it that job’s yours. Sally at head office, she likes me. Told me on the quiet that they can’t recruit for it. They’ve been trying for months. Guess noone’s crazy enough to move to our ass end of nowhere to look after a bit of desert.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Sure thing. And I drove by Snyder’s on the way back, too. He’s moving to Cali, to be with his daughter. His house comes with the job. You gotta take his pet iguana too, though. He says that beast’s gotta stay in the desert or it’ll die.”
Diego gives a little laugh that ends in a choked-off cough. “Iguana, huh? Sure, why not.”
He coughs again, this time for real. Jesse waits. It sounds rattly and painful but it’s mercifully short.
“You still going to Vegas tomorrow?”
“Course. Been every weekend since I came back. No law says park ranger can’t have some fun.”
“Gloria doesn’t like it.”
Diego regards him with tired, slightly bloodshot eyes. “Why? She worried I’ll catch something?” He snorts humorlessly, which brings on more coughing. He gets up gingerly from the overturned crate he’s sitting on and walks a few steps until he can lean against the wall of the High Noon. Oftentimes now standing up seems the only way he can get any air at all when the cough’s bad like tonight.
Jesse waits it out, takes a swig of beer and looks thoughtfully at the broad back before him. Diego is nearly bent double now, shoulders shaking. Jesse wishes there was something he could do for his friend. Finally the hacking subsides. Diego spits and clears his throat, sucks in air in great gulps. He stays very still against the wall.
“You could’ve had her, y’know.” Jesse’s voice is quiet.
Diego turns around but doesn’t look at him. Instead he squints at the far-off hills, the sun setting slowly behind them. The low light gives his face an eerie, otherworldly glow, and Jesse finds he can’t look at his friend for long. It hurts, like looking into a campfire when it’s just starting to draw properly.
“Nah, man. I ain’t right for her. She worries herself sick as is. You and her, you’re good together. And you’re good for Mickey, too.” He looks down at his hands, worrying at the filter of his dying cigarette. “Vegas ladies is all I need.”
Better let it drop, Jesse knows. There’s no talking Diego out of something once he’s made up his mind. “What you gonna do with the money, then?”
“Trust fund, for Joe’s little ones. Second one’s on the way already.”
Jesse gives a huff of surprise. “Is that so? He’s not letting the grass grow, now he’s found his missus, eh?”
For a moment he’s sure he sees tears welling up in Diego’s eyes, but then his friend turns away. Maybe he imagined it.
“Hey, you wanna doss here tonight? Gloria’s made chilli, she’d love for you to rave about her cooking. And you look beat, man. You getting any sleep over there at Joe’s? Baby keeping y’all awake?”
“Nah, ‘s not Austin. Just bad dreams…”
Diego doesn’t elaborate, and Jesse knows he won’t get any details out of him. There’s a legacy from Diego’s time in Iraq other than the cough, but he’s never told any of them about it, so far as Jesse knows. None of the vets ever do.
There’s a tense set to Diego’s shoulders now. Leave me be, that pose says. He rubs at his eyes and Jesse is very quiet. If he speaks now, most likely Diego will bolt, and Jesse doesn’t want him to. He wants to take him back inside, feed him Chilli and watch Gloria make a fuss over putting him up for the night. It’s good for Diego, spending time with his friends, and it’s good for them to have him around. Mickey likes him, too, and is always on his best behavior when Diego stays the night. Most of the time you’d hardly know Diego is there, he’s so quiet, but for some reason, having him around is good for them. Jesse can’t put it into words.
Then Diego snaps out of it, that far-away place he goes to, where the war never ended, and straightens up, already making for the front door of the High Noon. “Let’s go eat some Chilli.”
“And drink some more beer,” Jesse adds, getting up from the old barrel he likes to sit on.
“Yeah.” Diego grins around at him, but then his eyes are serious again. “Thanks, man. For the heads up on the job, and, y’know…”
“Any time,” Jesse growls with a smile, patting his friend on the back, more carefully than he ever has. “Any time...”
*
Joe watches the dust cloud Diego’s truck has scared up and wonders why it always ends like this. Some dumbfuck fight over shit neither of them remembers five minutes later, and his big brother stalks off, hardly a muttered word, never mind a curse. Diego doesn’t yell, not at him, anyway.
Joe wishes he’d scream and shout, sometimes.
Oh they’ve fought, all right. Over their combined lifetimes Diego’s knocked him on his ass a good few dozen times. Not since he came back from that goddamn war, though. Iraq has changed his brother, that’s for goddamn sure.
Joe’s musings are interrupted by Billie coming back outside. He watches his wife as she grabs another armful of bottles and walks back up the steps. Nah, more like waddles up, is the truth. Joe follows her progress with his eyes. Maybe that French chick’s right, maybe it’s time for Billie to take it a bit easier. Joe loves Billie especially when she’s big like this. He’s fascinated with that new life in her belly, and proud that he put it there.
If only he could give his family something more than this shithole existence. The urge to load them all into his banged-up Dodge and get the hell outta here is strong more days than not. Why don’t he just do it, he wonders to himself, not for the first time. Diego would give him the money, too.
Joe doesn’t have the specifics, but he knows his brother got a nice pay-off from those fuckers what ruined his life. Sent him home in pieces, and gave him enough dough to keep him quiet.
That thought always gets Joe in a right state, and he shifts around on the ratty sun lounger now, feeling the rage build up again. He rants plenty at Diego about it. Yells at his big brother until his throat’s raw and he’s dizzy with the exertion. The last time that happened, a couple months ago right here in the yard, Joe had worked up such a fury he’d good as started bawling with the injustice of it all.
Diego let him get it all out, on that occasion, and on all the previous ones. Lying on this selfsame faded sun bed, swigging beer, smoking, and saying not a goddamn thing. When Joe finally flopped down in his wire chair, exhausted, Diego gave him a long look and waited a couple minutes more, just to make sure he was really done.
“What’s the point, brother? Won’t change nothing, going after their fat asses.”
By that point Joe had been done all right. He returned Diego’s look, and his rage drained away, replaced by a feeling of utter helplessness. Joe hates that feeling. It reminds him of all his failures, and this big one he can do nothing whatsoever about seems just a culmination of his fucked-up life. He can’t save his brother. Diego is dying, and that’s a fact. That day, a few months back, Joe had realized that even if Diego had wanted to fight he doesn’t have the strength left for a trial. Or the time.
And his brother has accepted that, so Joe better do the same.
Billie is back now, picking up the toys that always litter the dusty yard. Joe feels some guilt for not helping her, but as always the feeling doesn’t get past a vague embarrassment at being a lazy fuck. Maybe if he could get them all away from here he’d be a better father and husband, too.
That had been the plan, to give his kids a childhood better than the one he and Diego had shared.
When they’d been young enough to dream impossible dreams both Sheen brothers had forever talked about getting out – and they’d nearly made it, too. Back in their own childhood version of the shitty trailer home they’d made plans that seemed just about possible, for a minute or so.
“You gotta stay in school, brother,” Diego said more than once, his face set. “You got enough brains, you might just make the cut for the State College scholarship. I’ll support you, but you gotta stick with them books.”
The last time they talked about it had been the day before Diego left for basic training in Oceanside. He’d meant it, he would support Joe. That was why he’d signed up, so he could send money home regularly.
Diego’s own dreams of being a police officer died the day their father took the shotgun from the back of the shed, walked into the desert a mile or so, and blew his brains out.
To get into the police academy a high school diploma was a must, and after that pain-filled, awful day school hadn’t played a big part in Diego’s daily struggle to help their mom support the family.
They’d gotten by, just about. Their mother found a second job, waiting tables at the motel’s diner in town after her shifts at McGinty’s cattle ranch, where she scrubbed cattle pens all day. That was where Diego found a job as well, first helping out with odds and ends on weekends, then, as soon as he’d turned 18, dropping all pretense, and high school, too.
But that law enforcement dream of his had never died, had only grown stronger with each day of back breaking work with the bulls. When the Marines came to their little speck of a town looking for recruits Diego signed up at once.
And it suited him. After basic training in Oceanside he got stationed around the country as he rose through the ranks. Joe wasn’t exactly jealous, but every time Diego came home he felt a bit more left behind, a bit more insignificant before his brother’s glorious prospects. Diego had done what they’d both dreamt of. He’d gotten out.
Joe stuck with his promises. He studied hard, and he helped their mom at home. Diego sent most of his paycheck every month, so they got by all right.
But then their mom got sick. At first it was just a cough, not unlike the one Diego came back with from Iraq. Another reason for Joe to hate that fucking hacking.
By the time mom admitted something wasn’t right and gone to the doctor the lung cancer was stage 4. She lived another six months. She never gave up smoking, and Joe didn’t ask her to. It had been her crutch after dad blew his brains out, just like it was Diego’s crutch now. But Joe hasn’t touched a smoke since the day of her diagnosis.
The day after the funeral Joe caught the bus to Vegas and signed up at the Army’s recruitment office. He was two months away from high school graduation
Diego never forgave him for that. He didn’t come home for their mother’s funeral. He’d only just gotten his first assignment abroad and Joe insisted he shouldn’t bother. What would be the point? She was dead, she wouldn’t know one way or the other. And so what if he had his own motives for not wanting Diego to come home?
The brothers hadn’t seen each other again until it was all over. Joe had been back a week when Diego showed up at the downtown motel where Joe was dossing until something better came up.
“How you even know what happened?” Joe asked his brother.
Diego tossed him a beer from the six-pack he’d brought out to the empty pool where Joe spent most of his days. “Took five minutes to come over the grapevine. Sergeant Sheen’s little brother got a dishonorable discharge for a bar brawl. What happened, man?”
Joe hung his head. He’d known Diego would be disappointed, but it was worse than that. He’d been sure this time his brother would yell at him. But he didn’t. He just looked at him, eyes full of sadness.
“You’re an idiot, Joe. You could’ve made it out, you got the brains. Why you throw college away like that? And then not even follow through…”
They’d never talked about it again, Joe making a mess of his life. They hadn’t really talked about anything else, either. Diego only stayed in Nevada three days, then he went back to Iwakuni airbase in Japan. The brothers hadn’t seen each other for twelve years after that.
Life had been all right, mostly, for Joe. He doesn’t think about it much, that he almost made it out. He had work, most of the time, with the cattle ranch, and he settled into this life. Now and then, when people talked about Diego and his rise through the ranks Joe felt that diffuse sense of jealousy again, but he just pushed it down. It served no purpose.
And then he met Billie, and got her pregnant right off the bat. He wasn’t sorry for a minute it happened like that. He’d not even known he wanted a family until he’d knocked her up, but he was over the moon. But it also awoke that yearning at the back of his mind for a better life. When the baby was born they could get away, start over. Go to California, maybe.
The reports from Iraq around that time were worrying, but Joe never equated those pictures on TV with his brother. Not until Diego showed up at their trailer home a week after Joe had brought Billie and Austin home from the hospital did he connect the dots. His brother had been there, in the middle of the bombs and machine gun fire in the streets of Fallujah, and he was lucky to be standing here in their shitty little kitchen and tell the tale.
Diego showed up that day with a six-pack and a wad of cash, and Joe took one look at his brother and knew that he and Billie weren’t going to uproot to California. They would stay right here, with his brother. With the instinct of a sibling he knew that Diego hadn’t come home because he fancied a change of scenery.
Something had happened to Joe’s big brother in Iraq, and home was the only place he could go after that. Little by little Joe got the story out of Diego, and what his brother couldn’t say Joe was able to guess. He didn’t tell Billie any of it. She didn’t need to know about dirty bombs that gave you cancer, and the horrors of a war fought via computer screens; more precise and more deadly than any war before. No, Billie didn’t need to know that. She was happy being pregnant and bringing up their family.
There’s not much Joe can do for Diego, and that hurts more than he would admit to anyone. But at least his big brother has had a bit of family life with him, Billie and the kids. This dusty speck of nothing might not be what they dreamt of when they were kids, but it’s a peaceful life. And that’s pretty much the best they can hope for now.
*
Diego is great with the kids. With her hands full of soapy dishes Billie watches him out of the little kitchen window. He’s chasing Austin around the yard, and the little boy is laughing and giggling so much he looks like he’s about to pee himself. Diego catches up with him, scoops him up in his arms and whirls him around, faster and faster like a spinning top. Austin is shrieking with delight.
But then it happens again, like it does all the time now. Diego puts the boy down quickly, wheezing already. He turns away, and one hand grabs the back of the ratty garden chair. Then he’s coughing, hard, nearly bent double. Billie frowns.
Austin looks on for a moment, then he hurries away to where his toy trucks are scattered in the dust. The little boy is used to Uncle Diego’s coughing, from when Diego slept on their couch for a month when he’d first come back from Iraq. Austin knows to just leave him be for a bit. But he keeps shooting Diego glances. The boy is noticing more and more, Billie knows.
She frowns again. Is Diego’s coughing getting worse? Should she tell Joe? But Diego wouldn’t like that, no. He doesn’t like them making a big fussz over him.
She didn’t tell Joe about the other thing, either. She doesn’t even know why, but it scared her, a little.
One day the week before Diego came around in the afternoon to drop off some of Joe’s tools. Joe was at work still, so Billie had offered Diego a beer. “Wanna wait? He won’t be long.”
“Sure, thanks. Just gonna take a leak…”
When the coughing started in the little bathroom at the back it sounded worse than anything Billie had ever heard. Austin, looking frightened, came sidling over. “Why is Uncle Diego always coughing like this?”
“It’s nothing, baby. He just gets a tickle in his throat sometimes, is all.”
“Maybe he wants some cough syrup? Mommy, give Uncle Diego my cough syrup when he comes out.”
“Will do, honey. Now run along and play with your trucks.”
Billie watched Austin run out of the door, then tidied up the kitchen, trying not to listen to the gasping, painful sounds coming from the back of the trailer.
When Diego finally came out of the bathroom Billie put on the biggest smile she could manage, but he didn’t really look at her. His eyes were on Cara in her high chair. “Shall I take her outside?”
“Sure. Thanks, Diego.”
He gathered up the little girl and went outside, not looking back. Billie went into the bathroom, she didn’t even know why. As expected there was nothing to see. But when she turned to go her eyes fell onto a red smudge on the sink, near the hot tap. She knew right away it was blood, and quickly washed it away.
She went back into the kitchen and gathered up the kids’ lunch dishes. Maybe she could clean up properly while Diego was watching the kids. Joe liked a clean house, and he didn’t get it very often, what with the trailer being such a dump to start with.
While the hot water ran into the sink Billie looked out of the window. Austin was running around at the far end of the yard, hollering and being a pest. But Billie’s eyes got stuck on Diego. He was lying on the tatty old sun bed, Cara on his chest. His hand was stroking the baby’s back, and she looked so peaceful. She wasn’t asleep - Billie could see her eyes were open - but she clearly enjoyed being held like this.
Diego’s back was to the house, and Billie couldn’t see anything at all of his face under the wide cowboy hat. But she saw that Diego’s shoulders were shaking. He didn’t make a sound.
With a pang Billie realized that he was crying.
Turning off the kitchen tap she quietly retreated to the living room. She didn’t return to the kitchen until she heard Joe’s truck pull up outside.
Now she remembers all of this as she watches Diego out of the kitchen window again. He straightens up, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. For now the coughing has stopped.
Billie goes over to the fridge, takes out a beer and pops the cap off. A cold drink will help him. Damn dust, she thinks as she carries the beer outside and down the steps, and knows very well that the dust has little to do with Diego’s cough.
“Here.” She holds the beer out to him.
Diego clears his throat, takes the bottle from her and gulps down half in one go. “Thanks… hey, I almost forgot.”
He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wad of cash. Billie squints at him uncertainly as he holds it out to her.
“What’s that?”
“It’s for your tooth. Take it. Should be enough to buy the kids some new clothes, too.”
Billie hesitates.
“Take it, go on.” He looks at her, his eyes almost pleading. “Just make sure you spend it on yourself, and them.”
He waves at the kids who for once are sitting together quietly, playing with Austin’s trucks. Billie takes the money. “Thanks. You shouldn’t, y’know…”
“Why not? You’re all the family I got.”
He looks at her and Billie doesn’t know whether it’s just the light fading or what, but there’s something odd in his eyes. Like he’s seen something that’s given him the heebees just now. Then it’s gone and he looks away again, out over the dusty yard, the shabby trailer house. “Sometimes I wish we could just pack up and get out of here, Billie.”
She follows his gaze, then looks down at the money in her hand. She thinks it must be at least a thousand bucks. “Joe used to say the same thing. Not now, though, not in an age…”
Diego clears his throat, and for a moment Billie thinks he’ll start coughing again. But then he just leans over and gives her a peck on the cheek. “Gotta run. Better finish my round, make sure there’s no dead Mexicans lying in a ditch somewhere.”
Billie shudders. “Don’t say them things in front of the kids.”
“All right, I won’t.” Diego is bending down now, placing a kiss first on Austin’s, then on Cara’s head. “Be good, you two.”
He straightens up, puts the half-drunk beer on the table and walks over to the gate. Then he calls over his shoulder, “Tell Joe I’ll see him tomorrow night at the bar.”
“Only if you promise not to let him drink away the whole week’s paycheck.”
“I’m buying, don’t worry,” Diego says and gives a bitter little laugh as he opens the pickup truck’s door. “I’m always buying the whole fucking town a drink. It’s party time, Billie, you should come, too.”
And then he’s starting the engine and driving away, and Billie stares through the dust after the truck. She can’t say why, but that last thing he said has given her goosebumps all up and down her arms.
*
Mickey has worked at Romy and Diego’s for about two months now. Romy came into the bar one day, and Gloria called for him. He’d been busy restacking the crates holding empty bottles in the back room. Mickey put the last crate down and went out front.
“You wanna earn a little bit of extra cash?” Gloria tousled his hair. “Romy could do with some help around the house.”
The pretty French woman smiled at him, and Mickey blushed. “It’s just some yard work, and making sure the house doesn’t fall down around us, now that I can’t climb on any ladders and Diego… well…” She paused briefly, then carried on, “Three afternoons a week, one hundred dollars sound ok?”
Mickey said yes right away. Work in the bar didn’t really pick up until early evening, and the extra cash would be great. He was saving up for his first scooter. Gloria was happy for him to have the extra cash, which Mickey thought was nice of her. She didn’t like the idea of him riding anything that only had two wheels, but she kept quiet about it. He appreciated that. Gloria wasn’t really his mum, even though he called her that sometimes. Not many people knew that she’d just sort of adopted him when he’d run away from his constantly drunk parents on the reservation. Gloria had been passing through at the time, and one day they’d just gotten into her car and driven away. It had been the best day of Mickey’s life.
He was excited to be spending time with Diego and Romy. Mickey had been fascinated by the ranger ever since Diego came home from the war. The idea of going to that far-away country to fight for freedom had seemed very exciting to Mickey when he’d been a kid.
But hanging out at Diego’s house taught Mickey quickly that war wasn’t cool at all. He had known Diego had gotten sick in Iraq, and he’d overheard Jesse and Diego talking about compensation and hospitals once. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time.
After his first week at the ranger’s house Mickey couldn’t stop thinking about it. He had sort of known Diego was getting sicker, but now he saw with his own eyes just how quickly that was happening.
On the first afternoon when Mickey went over to the ranger’s house he and Diego drove the patrol route. The ranger showed Mickey where he put the water gallons, and how to make sure they could be found without being too obvious.
“It’s so people don’t die of thirst out here,” he said and gave Mickey a searching look, as if to see what Mickey would make of that.
“Like people coming across the border illegally?”
“Them, too, yeah. But anyone who’s out here, really.”
Mickey had no problem with that whatsoever. “That’s real cool of you, y’know. But won’t you get in trouble?”
Diego shrugged. “Don’t matter much now, I’m done with being ranger. ‘sides, there’s more important things than keeping a job.”
Mickey wanted to ask why Diego thought he was done being a ranger, but he didn’t dare. He had a feeling he knew, anyway.
On their drive back to the house Diego started to cough, and it quickly got so bad he had to stop the truck. He got out with a choked-off curse and slammed the door behind himself, and Mickey sat in the cabin, worried. When Diego came back neither of them said a word. Diego’s eyes were bloodshot and streaming, and Mickey fretted silently for the rest of the drive that the cough would start again. It had sounded worse than anything he’d ever heard.
Diego didn’t cough again, but when they got to the house he went straight into the bedroom and didn’t come out again until Romy returned home. Mickey was in a very thoughtful mood that night, and even Gloria noticed and sent him to bed early.
They hadn’t gone driving again. At first Diego mostly sat on the veranda, and as the weeks went on he spent more and more time lying on the sofa. Then, one day he didn’t emerge from the bedroom at all, and after that Mickey hardly saw him.
Romy always left a list of chores tagged to the fridge door, and Mickey would work through that. When Romy came back, they’d often sit in the kitchen over a cup of coffee and talk. Mickey preferred the company of grown-ups, and he liked that Romy talked to him like he was an adult himself.
Mickey suspected Romy really paid him to come over so that Diego wouldn’t be alone. She still worked at the diner on the afternoons when Mickey came over. Mickey understood why she had to get away at least for a little bit now and then.
Diego never was any trouble at all. Mostly, he just slept. The bedroom door was always open a crack and Mickey would tiptoe past it often, listening. He hardly ever heard anything other than the occasional coughing fit. Once or twice, after the coughing had sounded especially bad, he thought he could hear Diego crying. Mickey didn’t think badly of Diego for that. If it had been him with a cough like that he’d be bawling his eyes out daily. But he didn’t dare go into the bedroom. He wouldn’t have known what to say.
Today Mickey hasn’t seen Diego at all. Very occasionally in the last two weeks Diego had come into the kitchen when he’d heard Mickey open the door, and they would have a cup of tea together. Today he hadn’t stirred at all when Mickey had peered through the crack in the bedroom door.
Mickey has been outside the last few hours, clearing out the drainpipe on the back roof. It’s dusty work, and he has just come into the kitchen for a drink of water, and to see if Diego needs anything. He never does, but Mickey likes to make sure.
He can hear him coughing in the bathroom. It sounds bad, and it goes on for a long time. Mickey stands by the sink with his glass of water, listening to the wheezy, gasping breaths. He has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Suddenly there is a thump, and a crash. Mickey puts the glass down and hurries towards the back of the house. He stops at the bathroom door and knocks. “Diego? You ok?”
There’s no answer. Mickey tries the door, and it opens just wide enough for him to peer inside. Then it’s blocked by Diego lying on the floor on his side, not moving.
Mickey runs for the phone.
Jesse arrives twenty minutes later. Mickey returned to Diego’s side as soon as he’d put the phone down. He’d squeezed around the door into the bathroom carefully. It’s scary being in there with the unconscious man. Diego’s hands and shirt are covered in blood, and there are blood spatters all over the sink.
Mickey sat down on the floor and put Diego’s head in his lap. Diego’s breathing sounds terrible, and Mickey isn’t sure he’ll ever wake up again.
But just when Jesse’s truck pulls up outside Diego starts to stir. Mickey talks to him then, even though his own throat feels closed off with fear. “That’s Jesse, Diego. I called him to help, I didn’t know what else to do.”
Diego tries to push himself to sitting. His eyes on Mickey aren’t really focusing, and Mickey doesn’t think he really knows where he is. They don’t make much progress and Diego is barely sitting up by the time Jesse pokes his head around the door.
“Hey, man,” Jesse says, forehead creased. “What happened?”
“Dunno…” Diego’s voice is raspy and slurred.
“Let’s get you back to bed, eh?”
Diego lets Jesse and Mickey help him up, and they slowly make their way into the bedroom. Diego leans on them heavily, and he feels very warm against Mickey. His breaths sound uneven and painful, and Mickey is getting more and more scared.
When they come to the bed Jesse helps Diego climb onto the mattress, then looks at Mickey. “Run into town and get Romy, boy.”
Mickey nods. He’s ashamed of it, but he’s glad to have a reason to get away. Diego’s pale face is smeared with blood, and looking at him makes Mickey want to burst into tears. As he turns to leave the bedroom he can hear Diego starting to sob.
He runs as fast as he can, and soon he’s flying down Main Street, heart hammering wildly in his chest. In the distance he can see Romy and Missy sitting outside the diner’s back door. Mickey feels real fear bubbling up now. This is not a story with a happy ending.
Before the day is over they will all be sad.