Rescue Me

socks.” The nurse moved the footrests and he set his long, bony feet covered in the red plaid socks with the nonskid soles she’d bought him in Laredo. The nurse helped him rise from the chair. “Son of a bitch!” He sucked in a breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “Goddamn!”
    When she’d been younger, the tone of his voice would have sent her from the room. Instead, she moved to the side of his bed. “What can I do for you, Daddy? Anything you need from the house? Mail? Invoices? Reports?”
    “Dickie Briscoe is on his way,” he answered, referring to the ranch manager. “Snooks is coming with him.
    She was dismissed. “Isn’t there something I can do for you?”
    His blue eyes cut into hers. “Get me out of here. I wanna go home.”
    He needed too much care to go home just yet. Too much for her to return to Arizona, too. “I can’t.”
    “Then there is nothing you can do for me.” He looked behind her and smiled. “Snooks, it’s about goddamn time.”
    Sadie turned and looked at her father’s foreman. She’d known him all her life, and like her father, he was a real cowboy. Work shirt with pearl snaps, Wranglers, and boots covered in cow shit and dust. He was hard and grizzled from the Texas wind and sun and a pack-a-day habit.
    “Hey, Snooks.” Sadie opened her arms as she moved toward him.
    “There’s my girl.” He was the father of six boys, in his mid to late sixties, and like Clive, was showing his age. But unlike Clive, Snooks had a belly and a sense of humor.
    “You look as handsome as ever,” she lied. Even on a good day, Snooks had never been handsome, mostly because he was allergic to ragweed and dust. As a result, his eyes glowed an eerie red. “How’re your boys?”
    “Good. I got eight grandkids.”
    “Good Lord!” She really was the last person in Lovett over the age of twenty-five who was childless. Her and Sarah Louise Baynard-Conseco, but that was only because Mr. Conseco was a guest of San Quentin.
    “And I don’t have a single one,” grumbled Clive from behind Sadie.
    Was that why her father was crabby all the time? Because she hadn’t spanked out six grandchildren? What had been his excuse when she’d been twelve? “You’ve never mentioned grandkids before.”
    “Didn’t think I had to.”
    “Well, I’ll let you two catch up,” she said, and made her escape.
    She spent the afternoon tending to exciting details like having her car serviced. She was lucky enough to find a hair salon that looked halfway decent, and she made an appointment to come back and have her roots touched up. She returned to the hospital to check in on Clive, then drove home. She ate dinner with the ranch hands and filled them in on her father’s progress.
    She watched television in bed. Mindless reality shows with people whose lives sucked worse than hers. So she didn’t have to think of the reality of her own sucky life.
    T he whir of a ceiling fan stirred the cool night air across Vince’s bare chest. Slow, even breaths filled his lungs. Within the guest room of Luraleen’s seventies ranch-style house, he slept in the frilly twin bed, but behind his closed eyes, Vince was back in Iraq. Back in the huge cavity of the C–130 Hercules, stowing the last of the team’s essential gear. Dressed in light combat gear, desert khakis, and Oakley assault boots, he stowed his tired body in a thick mesh hammock. Several hours before he’d been ordered to join Team Five at the U.S. air base in Bahrain, he’d been knocking in doors and rounding up terrorist leaders in Baghdad. The more they rounded up, the more seemed to pop up in their place. Al Qaeda, Taliban, Sunni, Shiite, or a half dozen other insurgent groups filled with hate and fanaticism and hell-bent on killing American soldiers, no matter how many innocent civilians got in the way.
    “Haven, you ugly son of a bitch. What are you doing up there? Jerkin’ off?”
    Vince recognized that voice and cracked open his eyes. He turned his head toward the bald SEAL cramming his body into a mesh seat across from him. “Sorry to disappoint you, you dirty hooker, but I already took care of my business.”
    Wilson shook his head. “Yeah, I heard about that ammo dump business this morning.”
    Vince winced. He’d been sent out with three other SEALs to secure an insurgent ammo dump and blow it the fuck up. There hadn’t been time to wait for an explosive ordnance disposal tech, and the dump was small, or so they’d thought.