Part 97 (1/2)

She's too proud to wear a wig, but her hair's coming back in patchy now that she's stopped poisoning herself. She keeps her head shaved and it makes her look elegant, Egyptian.

I maintain it for her: a couple of times a month I settle the moist, warm, tender skin of her nape against the palm of my living hand, my thumb resting behind her ear, the vibrations of the electric razor carrying up my machine arm.

I used to do the same for some of the guys in my platoon.

She closes her eyes while I shave her, dreaming like a cat. Her lips move, shaping words; her fuzz clings to my sleeve. I could cut myself touching her cheekbones; there's a dead woman just under her skin.

I thumb the razor off. ”I didn't hear you, sweetie.”

When people are dying, it's easier to tell them you love them. You know they're not going to hold it over you later.

She nibbles her thumbnail, a nervous tic, and presses her skull into my hand. ”Maker.” And then she says my real name, her eyes still shut. ”Jenny. When I'm gone, you ought to marry him. Before he thinks to play it tough.”

By the time I get him to the displaced persons camp, the kid's attached to my hip like he grew there. The dressing on his scalp is white and bulbous; I made the duty nurse shave the whole thing, and not just the part she was st.i.tching, so at least both sides match, but he still looks like he's farming mushrooms up there. His name turns out to be Dwayne MacDonald; he's ten, not eleven, and he's got a fouler mouth than I do, which is saying something.

So yeah, all right, I like the kid. And the clerk at the resettlement office gets up my nose in about thirty seconds flat. ”Name?” she says, without looking up at either of us, and he doesn't answer, so I say it for him. She taps it into her interface and frowns. ”MacDonald's a pretty common last name. Parents? Street address?”

I look at him. He shrugs, shoulders squared, hands in his pockets. Cat's got his tongue. ”What if you can't find his family?”

”He'll stay at the camp until we can find a foster situation for him.” She still hasn't lifted her eyes from the interface. ”It might be a while. Especially if he won't talk. Where'd you find him?”

”Downtown.” Five more seconds, and I'm going to be as silent as the kid. I fold my arms and lean back on my heels.

”Look.” She pushes back from her desk, and I catch her eyes, contacts colored blue-violet with swimming golden sparks. Distracting as h.e.l.l. ”We get a couple dozen porch monkeys through here every week. Either you can help me out, or-”

The kid presses against my side, and it's a good thing he's in the way of my gun hand, because there's a rifle across my back and if I could reach it, she'd never have gotten to the second syllable in ”monkey.”

”Or I can try to find his parents myself. Thank you, miss.”

She a civilian, more's the pity. And they won't do a f.u.c.king thing about her, but I'm still going to file a complaint.

G.o.d, I hate these people.

I take the kid back to my billet. Halfway there, as we're trudging along side by side, I run into Brody. ”New boyfriend, Casey?”

I look at the kid. The kid looks at me. ”He's like a mascot, Sarge.”

”Like the camp cat, Casey? Not gonna happen.”

But Brody's okay on a lot of levels, laid back and easy-going with a full measure of sun- and laugh-lines. He likes to talk about his grandkids, though he can't be much more than fifty-five.

Yeah, so at eighteen, fifty-five is like the end of the world. The light from fifty-five takes a million years to reach eighteen. Brody sighs and hooks his thumb in his belt and says, ”Get some dinner in him. And some breakfast. Tomorrow, you get his a.s.s home, you understand?”

”Yes, Sarge,” I say. ”Thank you.”

”Don't get too used to it, Casey.”

One more shake of his head, a self-annoyed grunt, and he's gone.

We all want to die at home.

Geniveve gets close, but even her stubborn isn't quite enough to pull off that one. There's the hospital and then there's hospice care and Genie's way too young for this, and too sick, because she's stressed out and flares up. Don't ever tell me babies don't understand.

So G.o.d help Gabe, he's mostly with Genie, because somebody has to be and she wants her Papa. She wants her Maman too.

And Leah and me, we stay with Geniveve. I haven't really got a lot to say about it.

Except, Geniveve is so fragile by the end, a soap bubble. You know in movies where there's a Chern.o.byl event and then people die, crying from the pain in their joints, bruising in huge terrible flowers anyplace their bones press the inside of their skin?

That's leukemia. That's how leukemia kills you.

You know that thing where they say that G.o.d never gives you more than you can shoulder?

It's a vicious, obscene lie.

You know what happens. What with one thing and another, he stays a night, and then three nights, and then by four days in he stops being ”Casey's kid” and turns into the whole camp's mascot. They call him half a dozen stupid nicknames-mouche-noir, first, which turns into Mooch overnight. Moustique, which is ”mosquito” and also ”punk.” One of the guys starts singing the black-fly song at him-a-crawlin' in your whiskers, a-crawlin' in your hair, a-swimmin' in the soup and a-swimmin' in the tea-and pretty soon the whole camp is doing it, which drives him as nuts as the black flies would've.

Poor kid.

I ply him with hockey cards and cigarettes, and even get him half-interested in the games. We get them on satellite, and it's a camp-wide event when they're on. You really have to p.i.s.s somebody off to draw picket that night. They're the old-fas.h.i.+oned cards mostly, you know the ones with the limited memory and just a little chip screen, maybe 90 seconds of highlights? He's fascinated by a couple of the ”cla.s.sic” ones-Bill Barilko, that kind of stuff-players from the previous century in grainy black and white, images set to radio broadcast clips. There's more highlights on those, and he listens to them for hours, curled up in the corner with his elbows on his knees.

And then after a week of this, I get my leave. Thirty-six hours, back in Toronto, and a unit transfer.

Everybody knows what that means.

I guess I'm going to get my wish. I'm going overseas.

Between us, Hetu and me hack one of the hockey cards-they have an uplink so you can check these dedicated web pages with scores and biographies and stuff-so the kid can use it for email. I show him the trick; it's awkward, but hey, it's free, right? Last thing I do, before I shake his hand, is rip the unit patch off my shoulder and hand it to him.

I won't be needing it anymore.

He takes it, crumples it in his fist until I can't see it.

”You gonna be okay?”

Jerk of his chin.

”Really okay?”

And he gives me this stiff little nod. He's not going to cry. He's not even going to look like he wants to cry.

Brave little toaster. But I'm dumb enough to push it. ”I'll come back if you want me to. After. I'll come get you.” What am I gonna do with a kid? What is Carlos going to want with some American refugee kid with PTSD who cries in his sleep like a puppy? How the f.u.c.k old are we both going to be before I could come back?

f.u.c.k it. Sometimes you just have to pretend you're not lying.

But he stares right through me and says, ”You won't come back.” The finality of abandonment, of somebody who knows the score.

I don't argue. ”Write me?”

And he licks his lips and jerks his chin down once, like he was driving a nail. Sure thing, Casey.