The General and the Horse-Lord (10 page)

“I’ll meet you outside.”

They walked to the president’s office and said hello to Cecilia, who greeted them with some reserve on her face. John took this as a sign, and this was confirmed when Simon didn’t stand up to greet them when they walked in. “Gentlemen! Thank you for coming at such short notice. Have you met Gregor Korbel? He’s counsel for the university.”

Gregor was a mild-looking man, and Gabriel greeted him like an old acquaintance, asked after his wife.

“Good, good. I’ll have her call Martha, we’ll get together for dinner.”

“Sounds great.” Gabriel smiled, then took John’s briefcase and sat at the conference table. He pulled out a file folder that contained one page. John stood behind a chair, waiting for Simon to get down to it.

“General, please have a seat. I’ve showed your report and evidence to counsel, as well as to a couple of select members of the board of supervisors to get their opinions. It seems as if this issue is not as cut and dried to other people as it is for you. One solution that was offered by Board members would be that we could offer alcohol education and treatment to the boys involved, in the hopes they would not keep getting into these uncomfortable situations. Also, it appears these incidents all occurred off campus, which significantly….”

John turned to Gabriel, and Gabriel took the paper out of the folder and passed it across to the president. John stood up. “President Wainright, I appreciate you hearing my concerns about this matter. My resignation is effective immediately. The department head will find all notes relevant to my classes on my desk. The students have assignments through next week they can complete independently, so you will have time to find a replacement.”

“General Mitchel! Surely this isn’t necessary! I understand you’re taking a stand on this matter to support your adopted nephew, but to resign over this….”

Gabriel stood, and when John nodded, he opened the office door. “Gregor, good to see you. President Wainright, thank you for seeing us.”

They walked across campus to John’s office, where Gabriel had left his truck. Gabriel put John’s briefcase behind the seat. “About what we expected. First salvo across the bow.”

John flexed his hand. “I’m getting too old to punch people in the mouth. My hand hurts like a bitch. So what’s happening at Ho Ho’s?”

“I’m not sure. How was Kim this weekend?”

“Still in a snit.”

“He said Juan was coming to help with the pot stickers after class, so that will make two of them in snits. I can’t wait.”

“Should be fun.”

Kim and Juan were at the prep table behind the smudged glass serving counter, dealing with a mountain of celery and green onions. Gabriel and John leaned over the counter to get a look at Juan’s new haircut, a very sharp, very short high and tight, with the front left long enough for a wavy blond streak. He pretended not to see them for a few moments, the color creeping up the back of his neck, but Kim was incapable of not showing off. “Oh, my God! Horse-Lord, he’s so handsome! He’s going to be a model. He’s going to be in a band. He’ll be so famous he won’t even know us. He’ll be on a yacht in the Mediterranean with Madonna and Donatella Versace and all we’ll be able to do is wave good-bye from the shore when he sails off to fame and fortune.”

John wasn’t sure what all that nonsense meant, but he was happy it got them through a few awkward moments.

“You two, go sit at the table. We’ve made your soup and tea.” He leaned over, whispered something to Juan, and the boy burst out laughing. His neck was bright red now.

Gabriel took John’s arm and they went to a clean table. “Whatever he just said, I have a feeling it was about us! Always happy to bring a little comic relief, if I can’t do anything else. Think he’ll be bringing us soup at Ho Ho’s when we’re eighty-five and can’t remember our way home?”

“Count on it, my friend.”

Their tea was brought by one of the old women from the pot-sticker fight. She seemed gentle today, gentle and sad. “Thank you for letting Kim do his art project in the restaurant,” John said. “He’s very excited.”

“It will be very good, very good,” she said, adjusting the fold of a tiny napkin. John could see her arms were riddled with old scars, burn scars, like most cooks had, and some ancient linear scars on the underside of her forearms, old defense wounds. The injuries a person got when they raised their arms to cover their face when someone was hitting them. She patted him on the shoulder with a tiny hand, and Juan carried two soup bowls to the table and put them down. He avoided looking at either of them, and Kim was next with a covered tureen.

John looked at him when he put the bowl down. “So are we going to hear the details about this art project?”

Kim waved his hands around like he was fanning the flames. “Don’t worry about that now! Just have your soup and tea. And then we’ll talk.” Of course he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re going to love this, I swear! My best idea all year.”

The soup was excellent again, a smoky cream of mushroom, and the boys waited behind the counter, working on the evening prep, while they ate. When John pushed his empty bowl away, accepted the cup of tea Gabriel poured, he looked at their backs, wondered what they were up to. Juan came to clear the table and brought them two fortune cookies. “Dad, Mom said to call her when you were done eating.”

John opened his cookie, read the fortune out loud. “‘And where the offence is, let the great axe fall.’ Hamlet.” He frowned at the slip of paper. Hamlet? He looked at Gabriel “What does yours say?”

Gabriel broke open the cookie, read the paper out loud. “‘Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.’ Paul Gauguin. Huh. Weird. Are these literary quotes fortune cookies?”

“You don’t think Kim…?” He looked behind him at the kitchen. “No. No way.”

Gabriel stood, took the phone out of his pocket, and waved Juan over to the table. “Is everything okay at home? Your sister?”

Juan stood like a baby tree, sighed, and stared down at the floor. “I don’t know, Dad. Everybody’s mad all the time. Martie’s acting like a baby. We don’t like that you’re gone.”

“I miss you guys a lot.”

Juan studied his face for a moment, and when he’d stepped outside to call Martha, Juan sat down in his seat. He looked across the table at John. “Mom said you knew my dad even before she did.”

“I met your dad in 1983. We were in Beirut, just after the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks. Then in 1986 we met again. We were on our way to Africa. There was a war on back then.”

Juan was nodding. “I saw that movie,
Black Hawk Down
.”

“What did you think about it?”

“It was kind of scary, since my dad used to fly helicopters. I kept thinking about if that had been him.”

“He’s never been shot down. He saved my life more than once in a helicopter, though. I think anyone but him at the controls, and we both would have…. Anyway, did he ever tell you about the time the missile nearly hit us?”

Juan shook his head.

“We were in Africa again. Not Somalia, but close, and I had a meeting with a tribal leader who was thinking about letting us build a dam on a little river across his land. Your dad took us into the mountains, stood by for security, and took us back after the meeting. This was just after you were born, because he had a little picture of you on the instrument panel, you and your mom. The first SAM nearly hit us. You know what a SAM is?”

“Surface-to-air missile?”

“That’s right. Those are not very accurate when fired from somebody’s shoulder, from a jury-rigged handheld launcher, and they leave a big smoke signature. So we could see where he was, and where he was firing from. Your dad, he flew that chopper like it was smoke, a widening spiral up in the air,” John used his finger to show Juan the pattern, like a little funnel cloud. “His squadron called themselves the Horse-Lords of Rohan, after the great horse tribes of Middle Earth.
The Lord of the Rings
,” he explained to Juan’s blank face. “His chopper was painted like a great silver-white warhorse with a long, black mane. He was so mad somebody tried to shoot him down. His teeth were clenched shut. Then he was yelling from the cockpit, ‘Are you kidding me? I’ve got a new baby boy at home I’ve never even seen. No way are you shooting me down before I get to hold my son!’ I knew right then nothing was as important to him as you.”

“Is that really true?”

“Ask him. Whenever I had to go into hostile territory, to try and work deals for new roads or new bridges with the tribes that owned the land, I always wanted your dad to be my pilot. I knew he would get us home safely.”

“That’s what you did? You built roads and bridges?”

“Mostly. Later on my job was tactics and strategy. And leadership. Sometimes the very best strategy is to make friends of your enemies. That doesn’t always work, though.” He thought briefly about Brian Walker, bleeding on his office floor, standing over him with a clenched fist. He flexed his fingers under the table. “Are you thinking about the army?”

“Not really. The Marines seem pretty cool.”

John closed his eyes briefly, tried not to picture Gabriel’s face if he heard this.

“Have you killed a lot of people?” Juan asked.

“How many is a lot?”

Juan shrugged. “More than twenty? Kim’s thinking about becoming a Buddhist, though, so he says even killing an ant would do harm that shakes the universe down to its soul.”

“Really. What do you think about becoming a Buddhist?”

“That would mean, like, giving up chicken tenders. Forever. That’s burgers and pepperoni and sausage on pizza. I don’t know if cheese would count. I mean, cows aren’t harmed when they make cheese, right?”

“Not that I know of, but there may be a unique Buddhist perspective on cheese. We’ll check with Kim.”

Gabriel came back in, joined them, and put his hand on Juan’s shoulder. “I need to take you home, buddy. Mom says we have a parent-teacher conference tonight. A special parent-teacher conference with the math teacher.”

Juan winced and scooted back his chair, pulling the apron over his head “Okay, Dad.”

“Anything you need to tell me before I go in? Always helps to have full disclosure before the teacher gets her say.”

“Um….”

John stood up. “Gabriel, I’ll get a ride home with Kim. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“I’ll see if I can come up with some options for the next step. And we need to talk to Kim, see what he thinks. I think we need to hear how he would proceed with this before we do anything else.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll see what he has to say. Juan, I’ll see you next time. I like your haircut. Very USMC.”

“Bye, General Mitchel.”

Gabriel looked up, then shook his head like his hearing was going bad. “USMC?”

G
ABRIEL
slept somewhere else. John stared up at the ceiling, noticed the cobwebs in the corner of the bedroom about 0200, and got the broom out of the pantry to deal with them. While he was up there, he ran a damp paper towel over the upper edge of the window frames and the doors. Maybe Martha had asked him to reconsider, to spend the night and try to make things work. Gabriel was emotionally fragile right now. He could be manipulated into almost anything by thinking the kids needed him at home. And of course he still cared for Martha. She was a fine person, strong and resolute in a way that had always appealed to Gabriel.

Twenty-five years, and John had never before had any expectations. He’d never waited for someone who wasn’t coming. He put the work first, had always assumed he would be alone, and so he was never disappointed. When Gabriel had been able to join him for dinner, share a steak and a couple of hours of his company, it was like an especially beautiful sky on a sunny day. Now the possibility existed for something more. Gabriel had started whispers of longing deep in his chest―
why can’t we have this
―while he was running his strong hands over John’s skin. John had started wanting something he’d never allowed himself to want before, and here he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering where Gabriel was spending the night.

Kim knocked on his closed bedroom door, then stuck his head inside. “I didn’t see the Horse-Lord’s truck outside. You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. It’s not like I haven’t been sleeping alone every night for my entire adulthood.” He sounded cranky and tired as a toddler.

Kim crawled into bed, pushed the pillow under his head. “So you really miss him, huh? Seems like things are changing between you two.”

“I don’t know. Neither one of us really knows….” John sighed, put his arms behind his head. “It doesn’t seem to me that human relationships ever get easier, no matter your age and experience. So don’t count on that, okay?”

“Okay.” Kim curled up, stared at the side of John’s head until he rolled over and looked at him.

“Yes?”

“I want to talk about what happened at Effex.”

“Okay. So talk.”

“It appears, though I find it hard to believe, that you made a sign with an obscene gay joke. And Brian was hurt. He’s walking around on crutches, giving everyone, especially me, dirty looks.”

“Why are you still in his class? I can’t believe you don’t have another option.”

“Uncle John, he was hurt.”

“So what? So were you. And I suspect your hurts are going to run deeper than his. Kim, he doesn’t understand anything except power. You do get that about him, right?”

Kim nodded. “But why does that have to be our response? Doesn’t that just put us on his level?”

John shook his head. “The warrior-philosopher brings a number of weapons to the negotiation. We’re still negotiating. And Gabriel made the sign. I’m sure any joke was unintentional.”

Kim rolled his eyes. “Why exactly are you doing this negotiating for me like I’m still a kid? Why can’t I handle this?”

“I am the king. You’re the knight sitting at my round table. That’s the nature of our relationship when it comes to war or other conflict resolution in this family.”

“If you’d said I was the samurai, and you were the shogun, I was going to get up and leave this bed.”

“If you have classes tomorrow, maybe you better get to sleep. You smell like beer and cigarette smoke and cherry lip gloss.”