as if waiting for me to catch up.
“So the rock is from . . . a church? Why does that matter?”
“We shouldn’t have even been over there. That’s the damn point.” He hits the steering wheel and falls back into the driver’s seat. He sits there breathing hard, not saying anything as I watch him.
“Dad won’t like that attitude,” I joke, but only for a second. His eyes are so serious, so vacant I’m not sure how else to respond.
“It’s not a political thing,” he says simply. “You know where I was?”
“The Middle East?”
He shakes his head. “The cradle of civilization. That’s where the Garden of Eden was. That’s where the devil came into the world, man.”
We never went to church, not like a lot of people in this town. Maybe on Christmas or when my mom’s extra-fundamentalist relatives would show up for a weekend. They’d drag us, wearing the only ties in the house, to whatever church they felt was anointed, and we’d sit through the sermon, through the healing, and then usually through a second, even longer testimony. But Jake has never talked about God once in his life, at least as I can remember it. And here he is carrying on about Eden and the devil, and I’m not sure what any of it means.
“So, the devil—” I say. He pulls the backpack out from behind the seat and goes to open the door. I stop him.
“Jake, c’mon, man. What are we doing here?”
He shakes the bag and says, “We have to get rid of this.”
“And what’s that going to do? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Jake’s eyes flash, and for a moment I think he might hit me again. I scoot back in my seat, but that’s not it. When he pulls the rock out of the bag, he looks almost sick. He sits it on his lap, and we both stare at it.
“I fucked up when I took this,” he says. “That’s when everything went to complete and utter shit. Two weeks later the entire squad got attacked. The war was already over, man. And we get attacked?” He shakes his head, like he just walked into a cobweb. “I can’t even get myself dressed in the goddamn morning, Thomas. I wake up, and everything feels too hard. Too much to even try.”
I sit there, not sure what I’m supposed to say. How I can help him at this point? It’s a rock, nothing more. But no matter how many times I tell him that, I don’t think it will matter.
“You saved people’s lives,” I say.
He shakes his head, rubs his eyes. Before I can say anything else, he looks over at me and says, “I can’t take a chance keeping this—especially if you end up over there, too. We need to balance the scorecard. We need to make things right because . . .”
He fades away, spinning. Gone. Normally when this happens, I walk away. But not only do I want him to finish the sentence, I’m not going. And if I tell him, maybe that will be the answer. Maybe that’s been the answer all along.
He looks at me, eyes glassy. “If you went over there and got fucked up because I did something stupid, I’d never forgive myself. I need to fix this. You’re my brother, man.”
He looks up at me, like sharing this with me would somehow cause me to break away from him. I don’t think twice.
“I’m not going to the army. I’m leaving.”
He doesn’t immediately respond, and I don’t know how to say it any clearer, so I just shrug. When I do, he cuffs me in the back of the head and pushes me hard against the passenger side door. “What the fuck do you mean you’re not going?”
“Look at you,” I say. “How can I go? How do you expect me to go over there when you’re—”
I don’t think I can say it. But then he yells again: “Say it.”
“You’re all fucked up,” I finally say. “And I don’t want to come back like that. I don’t think I can do it. If going over there did this to you, I’ll never be able to handle it.”
Jake sits back, the anger fading momentarily. He looks at the backpack in his lap and then, without warning, punches the steering wheel. I’m pretty sure he’s broken his hand when he brings it back, but he doesn’t react. Only stares at me.
“You committed,” he says. “They’ll throw you in