Scar Tissue(27)

"You told me you'd never met him. But he said, ‘Cooper, what is this?'"

He shrugged. "Vance must have told him."

"It sounded like he knew you."

"He didn't."

Your hands tighten on the steering wheel. You wait. You know Cooper. Silence he can't take.

Finally, he laughs. "Ah, shit, okay, you got me." He turned to you. "I did know him. But the rest of what I said, it was true. And Nickie, thank you. I mean it. I always knew I could count on you."

You nodded. It was true. He had always known that. You ride in silence for another couple of moments, then pull off at a lonely gas station. "I'm thirsty."

"Get me something, would you?"

In the minimart you snag a couple of Gatorades and a pack of beef jerky and a can of lighter fluid. The woman behind the counter is old as death. When she counts out your change, the motion of her lips fractures her cheeks like sunbaked mud. In the Bronco, Cooper has his feet on the dash. As you put the truck into drive, he opens the jerky, says, "You got a destination in mind, or we just cruising? Because the chicks, man, they're the other direction."

The highway is nearly empty, cars strung out like beads on a necklace. You open the Gatorade and take a long pull. After a few minutes, you take the exit for US-93, a two-lane straight into the cracked brown American desert.

"Seriously, Nick, where we headed?"

"What were you doing when I came in?"

"What?" His eyebrows scrunch. "Came in where?"

"In Mosul. The apartment. When I came in, you were bending over the guy's body. What were you doing?"

He cocks his head. "I was checking for a pulse."

"I've thought about that a lot since I got back. The way you were bent over him. It was strange." You set your drink in the cup holder. "You weren't looking for a pulse, were you? You were going through his pockets."

"That's crazy."

You say nothing, just look at him sideways, put it all in your eyes. For a moment, he keeps it up, the façade, the Cooper Show. Then he says, "Huh," and the mask falls away. "When did you know?"

"I guess I knew then. In Mosul. I just wanted to believe you."

Cooper nods. "See, I knew I could count on you."

"What I want to know is why."

He sighs. "I had a sideline going with the guy, weed, meth, but he got unreliable. Always talking about Allah, you know." He shrugged. "And today, well, I really did owe Vance ten grand."

"That why you shot him? He was the one in the suit, right?"

"You don't miss a trick, Nickie."

"Why bring me into it?"

"I couldn't be sure how many guys he'd have."

"No. Why me?"

"What do you want me to say?" He shrugs. "Because you buy the whole lie. You win the Golden Gloves and to celebrate, what do you do? Get drunk and nail your girlfriend? Not you. You join the Army."

"You used me."

"You let yourself be used."

"I could go to the cops."

"They'd arrest you too. But you know what?" He shakes his head. "That doesn't matter. You didn't do that in Iraq, and you won't here. That's why I came to you. Because you're predictable, Nickie. You never change."

The moment stretches. You remember your trainer saying all you had to do was believe. Remember the feeling of being part of a team, a soldier, and what it got you, a diagnosis of PTSD and a rented room in a city you hate and a raw and formless anger that seems some days more real than any version of you that you once thought might be the real thing.

And then you raise the pistol you took from the parking deck and put it to Cooper's head and show him he's wrong.





#





Your knuckles hurt and your lips are chapped. There's a line from an old Leonard Cohen song running through your head, something about praying for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away. Sometimes you're thinking of Cooper. Sometimes you're not thinking at all.

When the sun slips below the horizon, you get up off the boulder you've been sitting on all day. A quiet corner of searing nowhere at the end of an abandoned two-track, brown rocks and brown dirt and white sky and you.

The Bronco's passenger window is still open.

You reach in your pocket and pull out the can of lighter fluid and pop the top and lean in the window to spray it all over your friend and the front seat and the floorboards, the smell rising fast. You squeeze until nothing else comes. You think you might be crying, but you're not sure.

The butane catches with a soft whoomp and a trail of blue-yellow flame leaps around the inside of the truck you once loved. The upholstery catches quickly, and Cooper's clothing. Within a minute, greasy black smoke pours out the windows, and a fierce crackling rises.