“I’ll serve,” Folson says. He spins the paddle in his right hand a few times. “My friends call me Forrest…”
Miller slips the coffee-stained ball from his palm and beats Folson to the serve. “Think fast, Gump.”
“Oh, I see how it’s gonna be.”
They volley, the hollow toc-toc sending a wash of relaxation down Miller’s back. He thinks of home—Indiana—the pinging of the ball in his basement to while away winter boredom. Mostly, he played with his older sister, Miranda, the two juking while their mother shuffled around them with loads of laundry. There had been warmth, even then, though high winds pierced the empty nights and whipped snow into long, powdery banks. Home seemed an unquestioning embrace—one he now understands he took for granted.
Folson lets out a victorious shout. “One-zero, my serve,” he calls. Miller bats a soft one back over the net, forcing Folson to stretch across the table, just barely tapping the ball in return.
“So, we’ve had the turkey dinner,” Miller says, “and the pie…”
Folson smacks a direct shot across the line and scores a quick point.
“…and it’s not even really about all that,” Miller continues, “because the shit didn’t actually hit the fan until two days later.”
“Ha!” Folson paddles the ball hard and quickly, back across the net.
Miller catches it midair. “I can’t do this in here. Let’s walk.”
“‘My Mama always said you’ve got to put the past behind you, before you move on…’” Folson stutters through his best impression.
“Yeah, yeah, Gump. You comin’?”
They drop their paddles and head for the door. Folson tosses the spare ball into the corner on his way out. Miller hocks a sand-clogged loogie into the trashcan. Together, they find the main path and begin tracing the extended loop inside the perimeter of FOB Copperhead, which hasn’t been on blackout for over a year. Beneath the security lights and glinting concertina wire, Folson’s face still looks haggard, but his demeanor is oddly cheerful. Easing Folson’s mind is a task Miller readily welcomes, if for no other reason than the sheer obviousness of what’s needed—friendship, permission to be imperfect, a listening ear. These things Miller can give. These things don’t cost him anything. Not sleep, not rank, and certainly not a soldier’s life, and so there is only the sound of their boots plodding along the far end of the FOB, Folson quietly breathing as Miller opens up.
In North Carolina last Thanksgiving, Miller suggested having another child. He imagined Tenley would let her thin lips burst into a smile. That tears might well, and he would know she had been waiting for him to say it. “Let’s try. Let’s do this together,” he’d planned to say. “I’ll do it right this time. I’ll be ready.”
Maybe Tenley would even beat him to it; maybe the cold air blowing between them since the stillbirth of their second child had less to do with him and more with Tenley, the self-sufficiency she’d been forced to master in his absence.
He took Tenley to Micaville Park at a bend in the South Toe River where the 6,000-foot Black Mountain range abandoned itself to a narrow valley. The park had become their family spot before Miller redeployed, before the stillbirth. Water sang against the rocky riverbanks at the edge of the park, moving slickly and slowly in its long line toward the ocean. Shimmering flakes of mica dotted the river bottom, capturing sunlight. Even the soil in western North Carolina crumbled in Miller’s hands, beautiful but unsettling. He carried a piece into the shower once, just to see how each flake peeled back, glowing and fragile in the wetness.
In the muted light of that overcast afternoon, he and Tenley watched Cissy slip down the slide and giggle. Cissy had her mother’s hair, pale wisps so blond they appeared white against a certain angle of daylight. On that day, they looked plain, a papery, golden color reminding him of sunrise over the Miller Family Ranch. They cheered as Cissy slid to the bottom of the slide, stepped down, then repeated the dance. It calmed Miller to stand in this open, airy park so rarely found amidst tight Appalachian hollers. Tenley looked at him and smiled lightly. It wasn’t the smile he had fallen in love with. A handful of years into marriage and he had given up that fool’s gold. No couple stayed like newlyweds forever. Hard enough to imagine newlywed anymore. Miller wasn’t even home long enough to try.
Cissy squealed with laughter and raised her pudgy arms as she whooshed down the slide. Miller marveled at the simplicity of it, how readily joy came bursting forth. He put his arms around his wife and smelled her citrus shampoo and cinnamon bark perfume. Nothing about her seemed to give. He moved closer, but she felt iron-plated, as if any assurance this short time before redeployment might afford didn’t matter anyway. There was so much he wanted to say, even more he’d promised he wouldn’t hold back, but she would never understand what it’s like to have someone die on your watch.
“I love you,” was all he could muster.
For a moment, it almost seemed to be enough. But when Tenley pulled away, Miller forced himself to look her in the eyes. It was then he saw that her tightness stemmed from decisions she had come to in his absence. He recognized something fierce and bolstered there, and it occurred to him that she’d been fighting too, slow and steady on the homefront. He had waited to tell her about going to FOB Copperhead in person because the bonus and promotion would set them ahead for the future, for their family. But he didn’t tell her it was also a chance to prove himself capable again, the ghost of Mercer biting at his every thought. Studying her in the park, he knew waiting had been a mistake.
“Baby, let’s go sit down,” he said. “We can watch Cissy from our spot.”
He tried to guide Tenley to the park bench, but she insisted on walking a half step ahead of him, refusing to be held. He looked at her petite shape, the way the smooth curve below her ribs widened at her pelvis. The way her legs held her upright so infallibly. The war had done that to him, making him keenly aware of how entwined flesh and bone really are—likewise, how readily they betray one another. But the war also gave the mundane back, offering the simplest pleasures in Technicolor: drip coffee on an automatic timer, the feel of bare feet across a carpeted living room. The park view expanded outward from where they sat, the horizon circling back as if it started and ended at Tenley. It may have been cliché, but Miller felt it—his world rose and set by that woman—her dimpled cheeks, her tiny earlobes, her Southern drawl that came so softly and sweetly it made him woozy. She was the first woman he ever felt understood that his quiet way came carefully calculated. Others misjudged it for defiance or passivity. But she always held a vision of his highest potential at the forefront. He could feel it just as surely as he felt the mountains around them, holding everything together in this rural Appalachian bowl where Miller had moved his life to prove his love and come around to opportunities just like this.
“Baby, I’ve got to go back,” he said.
“Me too. And I’m sure Cissy’s getting hungry by now,” she brushed a flyaway hair off her forehead.
“No, Ten. I mean to Afghanistan.”
She looked at him, eyes so beautifully blue he felt ashamed. How much more would he take from her? They wanted the same things: stability, family. Getting there, though, seemed another matter.
“I can’t…Nathan,” she pressed her fingertips into her closed eyelids. It was a strange gesture, as though she intended to claw something out of herself. When she pulled her hands away, she had to blink several times before looking back at her husband. “You can’t be serious, Nathan,” she shook her head.
“I am, baby, but listen.”
“When have I ever not listened?” she asked. It wasn’t the kind of question she wanted him to answer. Miller heard that much in her tone. “What I want to know is what’s so great about it? What do they give you that we can’t?”
“Tenley,