Another Kind of Eden (Holland Family Saga 3)

“I don’t know.”

“You should go to the VA, Aaron.”

My eyes were fully open now. Cotton was sitting on the side of my bunk.

“I wasn’t in the army,” I said. I sat up and pressed the heels of my hands against my temples. “I just have to clean out my head. I’ve had nightmares all my life. Don’t pay attention to me.”

“I took this from under your pillow,” he said. “You were trying to get your hand on it.”

He flipped open the cylinder of the .38 snub nose and dumped the rounds from the chambers and tilted them out of his palm onto the nightstand. “In a war, we all do things we’re ashamed of,” he said. “You don’t have the copyright on that.”

I went into the latrine and fell on my knees in front of a commode and retched for almost five minutes.

* * *

THE DAWN WAS gray and misty, the pastures wet and lime green, the hills barely visible. I got up before anyone else and walked down to the dining hall. Through the window, I could see Chen Jen, our Chinese cook, stirring pancake batter in a big bowl. I walked past the dining hall and down to the small wood bridge over the creek and through the cottonwoods into the fog.

I heard elk glunking, then I saw their antlers and the steam rising from their backs and the brightness in their eyes. Maybe they had been bugling. It was that time of year. Perhaps their bugling was the origin of my dream, I told myself. Maybe I was not the driven man who feared his nocturnal thoughts or who, in the middle of the day, could step sideways through an invisible door just the other side of his fingertips and not come back for hours.

I kept walking toward the elk, then realized I was not alone. A figure shrouded with fog was standing stock-still ten yards from me. “Spud?” I said.

“It’s me,” he replied. He was wearing bib overalls and rubber boots and his fedora. He had a tree branch in his hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“There were some hunters up there on the hill. That’s Lowry property.”

“The season’s not open.”

“They start nosing around early.”

“You talked with the hunters?”

“You might call it that.”

“You got in their face?”

“I told them to get their sorry asses down the road before I went upside somebody’s head.”

I tried to see through the fog. An elk bugled, then I heard the clatter of their racks and the huffing sounds of combat and the thud of hooves and a sickening screech, as though one of them had been hooked in the eye. “Hunting doesn’t set well with you?” I said.

“Shooting animals for sport is cruel. I hate those sons of bitches.”

“What time did you get up?”

“About the time you were yelling in your sleep.” He sailed the branch like a boomerang into the fog.

“You didn’t take one of the vehicles into town and get your ashes hauled, did you?” I said.

“What, you think I’m in rut, like those elks out there?”

“I was just kidding,” I lied. “Want to get some grub?”

We walked back to the dining hall, the grass streaking our trousers, the sun like a frail pink rose behind the mountains. The only other trail of broken grass in the field was the one I had made earlier.

* * *

WHETHER JO ANNE wanted me to or not, after ten that morning I called the hamburger joint to see if I could save her job. I was surprised to learn that she had not been fired. The owner told her the situation was not her fault and that he was proud of her. I was even more surprised that afternoon when Mr. Lowry came out to the barn where six of us were putting on a new roof. “You got a call, Aaron,” he said. “You can get it in the dining hall.”