Blue
I shift around in the chair, sweating.
Where the fuck is Groves?
I’m sitting right under a vent, and the heat’s turned up too high. It’s not that cold outside.
Groves had mentioned, when he was in the disarming small-talk phase at the beginning of the day’s interrogation, that a major winter storm is expected to roar down the plains all the way from Canada in the next few days.
“We might even end up with a white Christmas,” he’d remarked, conversationally.
I’d forgotten it was almost Christmas. Thinking about Christmas makes me think of my mother. Keegan must have told her the whole, awful story by now, and Mama’s probably furious at me.
Ashamed of me.
But at least now maybe she understands why I’ve been so aloof since I got out of the service, why I’ve recoiled whenever she touched me, why just being in the same room with her absolutely tears my heart out.
My mother is the one I most did not want to know the truth. But by now, I’m sure she knows, even though it wasn’t me who had the guts to tell her.
Buried truth, it always grows
Building steam until it blows
Choking, blinding, white and hot
All the good gets turned to rot.
“Buried Truth.” Another Bryson song that has begun to haunt me. It’s as if the lyrics were written for me. About me.
I’ve just closed my eyes and let my head fall onto my arms on the table when I hear the door open.
I sit up straight, expecting Groves, then automatically shoot to my feet and raise my hand in a salute.
Even if I hadn’t seen the two stars on his Army combat uniform, I’d have recognized Major General Gregory Chisholm. Commanding general at Fort Sill and the youngest major general in the army, he’s said to be a rising star, on his way to becoming a legend in his own time.
Chisholm orders me to sit down, then strides over and places his fists on the table, leaning toward me. His icy blue eyes drill into mine. There’s an obvious, hard edge to the man that reminds me of my dad.
His piercing stare is intimidating; after a few moments, I drop my gaze.
It’s not standard procedure for the commanding general of the base to drop in on interrogations. Something else is going on.
He pulls out the opposite chair and sits carefully, back straight, hands clasped on the table.
“Specialist Daniels, do you have any idea how much wasted time and aggravation you have already cost me?”
“No, sir, I do not.” But I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell me.
“I’ve been fielding calls about you all morning,” he says, ticking them off on his fingers, lip curled in distaste. “Virginia Cooke, of all people. And a United States senator. I even got a call from the goddamn Pentagon, Specialist. The Pentagon!”
He pauses so I can show an appropriate level of contrition.
“And then,” he goes on, “just now, on my way over here, I get a text from my office that some fancy pants lawyer is on his way to take you out of here.”
I swallow, hard. Holy shit.
Chisholm leans even closer to me, his face red. “Just who in the hell are you, Daniels? Why do all these big wigs care what happens to you? And what the fuck am I supposed to do with you?”
Chisholm is still firing questions at me a few minutes later when a tall guy, probably in his forties and wearing an expensive suit, barges into the interrogation room.
“Major General,” he says crisply, “my client will not be answering any more questions.”
Chisholm flinches, standing up so fast he knocks over his chair. “You’re the fancy pants lawyer?” he snarls with a harsh laugh. “Holy fucking Christ, I should have known.”
He throws a contemptuous glance at me. “After all the calls I’ve gotten about this kid, I guess I should have known his lawyer would be Hellfire Holmlund.”
He shakes his head and laughs again. “I can’t fucking believe I’ve got to deal with you again, Dan.”
The lawyer—my lawyer, apparently—gives Chisholm a viper’s smile. “Yeah, that sucks for you, Greg.”
Then he extends his hand to me. I’m still sitting there with my mouth hanging open. “I’m Dan Holmlund, Blue. I’ve been retained to get you out of this mess.”
The general snorts and puts his fists on the table, leaning toward us.
“I don’t think even you are good enough to do that, Hellfire. Not this time.” His voice drips acid, and a drop of spit from his mouth lands on my arm.
It actually burns. It feels like it’s starting to eat its way through my skin.
“This case is going to go the distance, Dan,” Chisholm goes on. “Specialist Daniel has a lot to answer for, and he’s sure as hell going to answer for it, hot-shot civilian lawyer or not.”
My new attorney scoffs, and they start circling each other, almost like boxers in a prize fight.
In spite of his height—the guy must be at least six foot four—Holmlund moves with lethal confidence, with the deliberate steps of a highly trained soldier. I’m sure he was in the military before, even if he’s a civilian now.
And it’s obvious there is bad blood between him and the general. Chisholm clearly hates Holmlund. He’ll probably make sure I’m sent to Leavenworth just to piss him off.
The sparring between them goes on for a while as they debate whether I can continue to be questioned and if I’ll be released into Holmlund’s custody or remain locked up at the base.
I know there’s no bail system in the military, and that it’s up to the commander whether I’ll be confined before court-martial, or even whether there will be a court-martial at all.
The stuff they’re talking about is all boilerplate legalese. But underneath the words lies something thick and ugly, a pile of unspoken shit I’ve managed to step in.
These two are clearly fighting their own private war, and I have just become the latest battlefield.
I shake my head, like that will clear up my confusion. The problem is I don’t really know what I want. I don’t know if I even want a civilian lawyer.
Keegan has obviously gotten her well-connected grandma involved. I should be grateful for the help. I am grateful. Part of me is, anyway. The other part wants to just crawl into a hole somewhere.
It’s clear, though, that Holmlund is accustomed to getting his way, and that he has no intention of leaving the base without me.
Finally, the general throws up his hands in disgust.
“Fine,” Chisholm says, skewering me with a look that makes me flush with shame. “Just take him. Why should the American taxpayers have to feed and house him until his court-martial? He’s your responsibility now, Dan. And it’s your ass on the line if he runs away.”
“He won’t. Let’s go, Blue.” Holmlund puts a hand under my arm, and I stand and follow him like an obedient child, feeling numb.
But then, just before we reach the door, the general flings a couple of sentences at me that send my stomach plummeting to the floor.
“This afternoon,” he says, “I’ll be informing the families of Specialist Cunningham, Specialist Monti, and Staff Sergeant Hudson.” His cold tone cuts through me. “They have a right to know the truth about how their sons died. Why they died. And who was responsible.”
I stand there, one hand clutching the door frame, vaguely aware of the scorching look Holmlund gives the general. I don’t even hear what my lawyer says in response.
I’m focused on the pictures of the families flashing through my mind: Cunny’s mom—red-headed just like him —giving me a warm, maternal hug the day we shipped out;
Hud’s dad wrapping his son in a final embrace; Monti’s kid sister, all pimples and braces and feigned indifference until the last moment, when she’d clung to him and cried like she knew she would never see him again.
It takes me a moment to realize I’m gasping, and that Holmlund and Chisholm are both staring at me, one probably struggling to hide his disgust and the other not bothering to hide anything.
I push the door back and walk blindly down the hall, passing a sparsely decorated artificial Christmas tree tucked into a corner.
Before I know it, I am processed out of the base and sitting dazedly in Holmlund’s BMW, watching the winter-brown plains visible from the interstate slide past.
Ahead, I see the sign for the Apache Cemetery, where the great warrior Geronimo was buried after he died—still a prisoner at Fort Sill—in 1909.
The sign reminds me of the day Bill took me to visit Geronimo’s grave. I was about eight years old and already tense enough around my father to flinch when he put his hand on my shoulder.
He had told me the story of Geronimo, how he’d held out against the American government longer than any other warrior. I think my old man somehow saw himself and Geronimo as kindred spirits, spitting in the face of fate to the very end.
Bill had a lot of delusions like that.
We head north, and Holmlund keeps up a running commentary, telling me he’s optimistic about my case, that it might be possible to avoid a court-martial altogether, that he’d talked to my mother on the phone just before he walked into the base.
“Why did Chisholm call you Hellfire Holmlund?” I cut him off in mid-sentence. I don’t want to talk about my mother.
A corner of his mouth quirks up, and he shrugs. “Aw, it’s just the way I work a courtroom,” he says with a half-hearted attempt at self-deprecation.
He still has that gladiator gleam in his eye from the encounter with the general, and I can tell he is proud of his nickname.
“People say it’s the way those old-time preachers delivered sermons, all hellfire and brimstone. I know how to get a jury riled up. I know how to get them hanging on my every word. And I know how to close the deal.”
Well, aren’t you special.
I stare out the window and let a few more minutes go by before I ask where we are going, even though I think I already know the answer.
“The Cooke Ranch,” Holmlund says, sounding surprised. “I assumed you knew that.”
He smiles, and I notice a long, jagged scar—white and shiny in the daylight—that starts below one corner of his mouth and snakes down below his chin.
“You’ve got friends in high places, Blue,” Holmlund adds. “It’s going to make this a very interesting case.”
~~~
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