Tales from the Crossroad, Volume 1 Read online

  As far as Antonio could recall, they’d never talked about war, or enemies, or killing, or getting killed.

  That night he dreamed the enemy had broken into the house. Charlie was gone, and his mother was asleep and wouldn’t wake up. The enemy came up the stairs to Antonio’s room. Antonio watched the doorway, cold and afraid, waiting for the enemy to come running through and stab him with the bayonet at the end of his rifle.

  But then the enemy was behind him, by the bed.

  Shock made him convulse. He turned, taking in the breath for a scream. The scream would wake him, would chase the enemy away. But the scream never left him.

  The enemy was a little boy, and Charlie was next to him. A different kind of fear, a sharper cold, rushed through Antonio. The little boy didn’t have a gun. Antonio kept looking at Charlie for protection, but the dog just sat and panted, tongue lolling, as if he’d just come back from a long run.

  And then the little boy asked, “Why did your father kill my Dad?”

  His mother offered to replace the game system and missing items from his room, but he didn’t want to play games when soldiers, fathers, as well as mothers, were dying. He took to sleeping on the floor once his mother had tucked him in, thinking it wasn’t fair that he should have a bed when fathers and mothers were sleeping in bunks or cots, or on hard, rocky earth, with only their guns for company. It seemed to him these were the kinds of things a NOK should be doing, though he wasn’t sure.

  A lot of people who’d shown up at the funeral technically fell into the category of NOK, like his thieving cousins and crazy uncle. But there was more than blood between an only boy and his father. There had to be. He had a lot to learn about being a NOK, but nobody to teach him. The little boy in his dream, the enemy NOK, never came back to share his secrets.

  Growing up, people had always said he had his father’s eyes, so he spent time staring into a mirror at his reflection, into his eyes, and through them, for what had been, what was now, and the things that hadn’t happened yet. He hoped he’d catch a glimpse of what his father had seen in his last moments, as if he really did carry a dead man’s eyes in his skull. He wanted to see if that dead boy was still hanging around close by, to apologize, and to ask for some advice. Secretly, Antonio was also curious about the future, and if he’d ever be what his father had been, or do what his father had done. But all he saw was a gangly boy, face half-hidden by an unstylish mop of hair, far too small for his age, too slight to contain all that was going on inside.

  His mother looked at him with a strange expression when he asked if she was planning to reenlist to get the enemy that had taken Dad away. When she said no, he was relieved. He was already a NOK, but if she went back in service and the enemy killed her instead and he became an orphan on top of a NOK, that seemed somehow worse than just being a NOK. Maybe he’d become something like the enemy boy in his dreams, visiting other children and asking questions that couldn’t be answered.

  Antonio wasn’t sure what he felt about his mother killing anyone else’s mother or father, either, even if they were the enemy.

  Like wolves on the scent of wounded prey, the school bullies came after him. They were the sons of locals who grew up together, and for reasons Antonio couldn’t understand they didn’t like people connected to the military, whose presence helped keep the town alive. They knocked books out of his hand at school, and hit him in the back of the head in class, and chased him going home. They asked what kind of name Antonio was, and if he was supposed to be black, white, or a mutt. They whispered to him that his Dad was a baby killer and a mommy murderer, and he got what he deserved for going to a foreign country instead of staying home and minding his own business. They made fun of his clothes, his hair, his body when he was in gym class, the way he walked and talked.

  He did what his father had taught him to do over the years, but nothing worked, anymore. He tried being invisible, but the bullies always found him. Standing his ground and being tough made it easy for them to beat him up. He stuck close to the other military children, but the odds were still against them and it was harder to run while also trying to protect other kids. His mother came to the school, but that made things worse. Charlie growled from behind the fence, and sometimes tried to jump over if the bullies chased him all the way to the gate, but that was the best the dog could do. A few times, Antonio had let Charlie out to go after them, but they ran into traffic and Charlie was almost killed, and Antonio didn’t let him out, anymore.

  They were the enemy.

  Antonio looked inside himself at all the things he would do to them if he could, and understood he was their enemy, too. And when he realized he was someone’s enemy, just like his Dad had been, he knew that deadly, seething feeling was part of being a NOK.

  Mom said they’d move away as soon as the benefits came and arrangements were made with family. Months dragged by, snow came, burying the streets and houses in layers that hardened into ice, like ash and mud had solidified into rock, and the move never came. His mother often stared through Antonio, as if he was already dead. She was out sick from her job and did nothing around the house. She was a different kind of NOK from Antonio. He didn’t know what to do to help her.

  Feeling like a ghost at home, Antonio began walking through streets in the cold and the dark. He told his mother he was visiting friends, and she didn’t object, or ask who they were, or how to reach him. He never took Charlie, who barked madly when he left and didn’t seem to stop until Antonio was back in the house.

  In the neighborhood, which felt like a foreign city under occupation – alien, dislocated, the threat of bully-soldiers lurking in the shadows – Antonio still felt like a ghost haunting an empty place. But being outside, all alone in places that looked like sets from his video games, he began feeling more like his father’s ghost. And the farther he ventured, reaching ruined, abandoned buildings that might have been bombed and which were thinly populated by figures made bulbous by their layers of clothing, and faintly threatening in the flickering light of fires around which they huddled, the more Antonio grew comfortable with the idea that being his father’s ghost was not a bad thing. It was, in fact, part of being a NOK.

  There were nights when he felt so light he might float away on a frigid blast of wind. When it snowed, he liked to find a cozy spot, curl up, and let the snow cover him until he couldn’t see, anymore. He asked himself if he wanted to freeze to death, because his mother never did. He couldn’t answer. But he never felt so cold, or numb, that he thought he’d die. Winter wasn’t the enemy. It wasn’t trying to kill him.

  Another soldier died and left a daughter and a son. The son was somewhere else with his mother. The soldier had divorced his first wife, married again, had a daughter who went to Antonio’s school. He talked to her, and they visited each other’s houses, and their mothers became friendly. Mom thought it was good for him to show interest in girls. She cleaned up his room, bought him a new game system, paid attention to the way he dressed and took care of himself. He stopped wandering the streets at night, thinking he had found someone just like himself.

  Mom became interested in what was happening around her, again, and made special dinners and cookies when the girl came over, and spent time talking to them both about how she and Antonio's father met, going on to describe their life in and around the military and the places they'd lived. Videos and pictures of Antonio's childhood were brought out. Soon enough, she left them alone to be on the phone with old friends. Then going out with them and hiring a sitter. Even taking trips and leaving Antonio with his new found friend's family overnight.

  Charlie quickly adopted the girl, and sat with her more often than with Antonio when they were all together.

  They played video games together, though none that involved killing, and they went to movies on Saturday afternoons. She liked M&M's and chips. He was partial to popcorn and Kit Kats. She was smarter in math, and he was a better reader, so they helped each other with homework. He wanted to prot
ect her, and be sheltered by her, but she had no enemies and could do nothing against his. They spoke about their missing fathers a few times, but they both admitted talking about the dead didn't make them feel good, so they stopped. They got along in a quiet, nameless way, sensitive to their own and each others' wounds. Antonio didn't want to see her bleed, and he was sure she didn't want to see him explode, but sometimes, in the silence that was as faithful a companion to them as Charlie, he became restless. Frustrated. Something was missing. She wasn't giving him what he needed to feel right, and he thought she was also disappointed in him.

  Once, in desperation, Antonio brought up the idea that being a next-of-kin was a separate thing from being a person, almost like a new species, or a mutant, like in the movies and comic books. They'd both been irradiated by death and developed strange new powers that hadn't quite manifested yet and which they couldn't understand, and all they needed was a special school and others of their kind to learn all they needed to feel safe and alive once more. He cried from the ache in his heart as he talked, but when he wiped his eyes he found the girl staring at him with her mouth open. She told him she didn't understand what he was talking about, and stayed away for a few days.

  They drifted back to keeping each other company. Sometimes when watching a really good movie, or engrossed in the intricacies of a complex game, he'd forget she was there, and he thought she was often the same way with him.

  In the girl's house, the mother hardly paid any attention to Antonio, as if he were a stray her daughter had dragged home and insisted on adopting as a pet.

  Antonio liked the girl well enough, but she was always just that for him: a girl. On occasion, after they'd spent the entire day with each other, he'd get a feeling that his father was about to walk in on them, and he'd prepare himself to introduce them to each other. But, of course, his father never appeared. In a way, he was glad Dad never had to meet her.

  The girl and her mother moved away during the summer. Apparently, there were fewer complications in their options for escape. Antonio and the girl exchanged a few emails, but never sustained an illusion that they would get back together. Or that they had even been together, at all.

  In the end, Antonio was relieved. He was more comfortable alone than with someone he thought he had to please, and who could not fill his own empty places. At least, he thought, he'd learned something more about being a NOK.

  In the Fall, he began classes in a new school. He got into fights with the old bullies, and new ones, and was referred to counseling with his mother. Mom confessed she was feeling depressed, lonely, angry. None of these feelings had anything to do with Antonio. He talked about the same things because it made the counselor and Mom feel better about him, but mostly what he thought about was being a NOK. He kept what he'd learned since his father died – that there didn't seem to be any other NOKs like him, and that there was no one around to help him find out what he was supposed to be, as a NOK – to himself.

  They were advised to spend more time together, to be more honest with each other about their feelings about the loss they'd suffered, to talk more about what was going on in their lives. They were both told they needed to get back to living their lives. He was encouraged to make friends in school. Antonio agreed, holding back his only question: when were they going to move, again? Besides, Charlie was his friend.

  Mom took him out more often to visit family, or on simple outings. They went to dinner, movies, concerts and plays. They watched sunsets and planes taking off and landing at the airport. She even learned to play video games, and allowed the sound effects back on.

  One day she took him and Charlie to another city, a full day's into night's ride away. He was excused from school and had to carry an overnight bag. He played video games while Charlie looked out the window for the whole ride, apparently fascinated by the world and all its lost flocks. They slept in a motel that had a kennel for dogs. Mom took him around to several neighborhoods in the new city and they looked at houses and schools. They watched Charlie play in a dog run. She asked Antonio if he'd like to live there. He said sure. The only part that mattered for him was that there was no military camp nearby, which meant they might stay a while.

  On their way to a college campus where Mom said she had a job interview, they passed a store front military recruitment office. A figure stood inside, looking out, and as they drove by Antonio pressed his face against the car window because he thought Dad was there, finally, in his dress uniform with the ribbons, waving at him, urging him to stop by the office and say hello. Antonio almost screamed at Mom to stop, but his voice wouldn't come out of his throat, and the volcano wouldn't erupt, and the fire refused to light the sky and the lava burned in his gut but wouldn't flow out and the ash and rock would not rain down on everything and everyone.

  Charlie whined, and nuzzled Antonio's neck.

  The car kept moving, and as the viewing angle changed he saw that the soldier in the window was only a stand-up cardboard figure, not his father, or a ghost, or even a reflection. Antonio held Charlie in his arms for the rest of the ride.

  They met a man outside the campus where Mom had an interview. He shook hands with and spoke cheerily to Antonio, then wished Mom good luck and kissed her on the lips. Charlie barked, but the man laughed and rubbed Charlie's head and the dog understood and licked his hand. They left the man behind and found a parking spot, and since it was cool they left Charlie inside with windows opened a crack. Charlie didn't understand, and let them know about his confusion.

  Before his mother went inside an office for the interview, Antonio asked Mom if she was in love with the man who'd kissed her. She said she didn't know. Antonio nodded his head. She was still a NOK, even if she wasn't quite his kind of NOK. He had that much in common with her.

  But it didn't seem like she was going to be a NOK for much longer.

  After the interview, Antonio led the way back to their car. The man who'd met Mom outside was standing by their car, smiling. Charlie, who they'd left in the car, jumped in the back seat and barked excitedly at their return.

  A woman came up to the man. Younger than Mom. Prettier. But unhappy. She looked like she'd never been happy in her life. At least Antonio could say his Mom and Dad had been happy, before he died.

  The man and woman exchanged words. She slapped him. He hit her back.

  Mom grabbed Antonio's shoulder.

  The woman took something out of her bag.

  A balloon popped, somewhere.

  A puff of smoke rose between the man and the woman, as if one of them secretly held a cigarette in their hands, the way kids did when they didn't want adults to see them smoking.

  Two more balloons popped.

  The man fell. People walking by a little further off glanced in their direction.

  Mom screamed.

  Antonio turned around to look at his mother. The scream cut through him. She had a powerful voice, much stronger than he'd ever suspected, and she was a NOK like him with something she'd been keeping locked inside, and she was showing him how to use that voice and let out that thing and truly be a NOK.

  And the voice burst out of her and through him, like a hot shot of molten rock, and his knees buckled and her hand tightened on his shoulder as balloons popped again and Mom jerked and Charlie barked from the car and spots appeared on Mom's jacket and her forehead and she fell, forward, over Antonio, forcing him down to the ground with her eye wide open and staring, first at Antonio, then right through him, her gaze piercing like her scream, as if she'd seen something coming up on her fast and was surprised, and Antonio called out for Dad because maybe he'd come back after all.

  He tried to push his mother off of him and looked for his father but all he saw was the young woman with something in her hand pointed at Mom, at him, clicking, and in the next instant he saw it was a gun and she was pulling the trigger and trying to kill him but the gun was out of shells.

  She was the enemy.

  She was the soldier who came to
their house to tell his mother that his father was dead, and the one who killed his father because his father had been the enemy.

  She was the poison cloud and the stone, the fire and the ash inside of him, released. She was the destroyer who buried cities and entombed their inhabitants and made them all hollows in the earth.

  She was death.

  Antonio tried to scream, the way his mother had, letting everything inside him go. He made a sound, but it wasn't the answer to what the enemy had done. Charlie barked as if possessed by demons, and threw himself against the car window.

  Someone tackled the woman. She fell, still pulling the empty weapon's trigger. Voices flew up like bird songs at sun rise, desperate and angry and afraid. Sirens wailed. Someone took his mother away. He was helped up, examined, questioned, put in the back of a car with a young man who reassured him everything was going to be all right. Someone let Charlie in, and Antonio hugged him like he was never going to let the dog go, and he cried. Charlie cried, too.

  And with his face half-buried in Charlie's coat, Antonio watched the car with the woman who had murdered Mom drive off, and for a moment he thought they were driving off with death, and if death was under arrest no one else would ever die and they'd all live and maybe even the dead might come back. He could almost see Dad coming up the path to the house, Mom right beside him, opening the door to their house, the both of them holding out their hands for Antonio to take. Charlie barked, as if he could really feel the dead coming back to life.