Page 62 of Fortress
Not much to celebrate, for one thing. The Fourth had never been much of a holiday for him and Leon. A good excuse to get drunk, steal a kiss from the hottest guy or girl around, and light off some fireworks. Sometimes the season had its advantages for hunting (no one asked questions about things exploding, and when else could you legally buy low-grade explosives hassle-free?), but neither of them ever got choked up about the day itself.
He'd known since kindergarten that the ASC was a bunch of power-inflated dicks, though he hadn't used those exact words at the tender age of five and a half in Mrs. Montgomery's class. In Leon and Jake Hawthorne's world, cops, Congress, lawyers, CPS, IRS, FBI, fucking road construction, and the goddamn military complex were all on the same shit list. But only recentlyhad Jake reached the age and distance to wonder what the fuck the country had to celebrate.
He'd spent a year united with the kid he'd waited all his life to be with, and it had been tougher—hell, it had been more fucking excruciating than he could've imagined. He'd learned to see the world through Toby's eyes and to understand why so many things scared him. Over the past year, Jake had added plenty of things to the Hawthorne shit list (assholes who cracked jokes about dropping the soap, just to name one), and he wasn't fooling himself by thinking the list was done. He knew he'd only seen the tip of the iceberg. There was so much Toby wouldn't tell him, and a fuckton that Jake was afraid to ask about because he wasn't sure that, when the time came, he'd be able to handle it.
Then there was shit that had happened right in front of him but he didn't know how to explain.
He didn't like thinking about Louisiana. His memories were black as night and colored by fear, helplessness, and an anger that he'd rather not look at too closely. Toby had been supremely badass, but Jake remembered how Toby had tried to reassure him that he had hated that blindness, too.
Toby had known that same terror and powerlessness, and not from a hunt.
And Jake couldn't forget his first sight of Toby after the blindness had lifted: his face stony, his hands steady on the gun pointed directly at the back of the head of a shivering kid tied up like a hog.
The blankness there on Toby's face unnerved him. He'd seen hints of it on other hunts, but never that closed-off fury. Jake had always thought that Toby was hottest when he went up against monsters twice his size, exhibiting a fearlessness that no one could ever take from him.
But there was a difference between reckless courage and the ice-cold rage he had seen that day.
That was only a peek at the horrifying damage inflicted on Toby by an agency that was, by all civilian accounts, America's savior. Congress wrote the ASC a blank check year after year, and that money lined the pockets of the men who had given Toby his scars, his nightmares, that haunted look in his eyes too often. They were the reason Toby flinched from him sometimes, couldn't go to supermarkets on a bad day, and always hated to be noticed.
The second night after they'd arrived, Jake and Roger were drinking on the back porch at dusk while Toby washed the dishes. Jake had tried to help, but Toby had told him to relax, go hang with Roger, and “Stop getting in the way!” in a tone that Jake thought meant Toby wanted some space to himself as well. The night was closing in, and the mosquitos were out. Not enough to drive him and Roger back inside, but the pesky fuckers skated across his arms, and he found himself slapping at them absently.
“You're real quiet,” Roger said, after a long while of nothing but crickets and distant fireworks in the night. “Not that I'm complaining, mind you, it's hard to get peace around here with you two underfoot, but you also look like you're straining your noggin about something.” When Jake gave him a look, Roger shrugged. “I don't want you to hurt yourself, is all.”
Jake huffed a laugh. “You ever wonder why the hell we're celebrating?”
“Yep.”
Jake blinked at him. “Yep?”
“That's what I said. I figure anyone who carries a gun and has a touchy relationship with the powers-that-be starts thinking that, this time of year. Independence Day.Ha.” Roger snorted and took a long draw from his bottle.
“It's just, what's this fucking holiday about? Independence? A bunch of our ancestors saying fuck you to a bunch of otherancestors, just so they can go on to fuck with people? Where does the government get off expecting me to be happy, to bleed red-white-and-blue, after what they did to Toby, what they allow in the name ofsecurityand whatever the fuck else? Why should I be happy lighting up fucking sparklers when I want to burn that goddamn—” Jake cut himself off and took another swallow.
Roger rocked a little in his chair. “Independence Day is a funny thing for crazy bastards like us. Because government does good things, much as I hate to admit it. They build schools and bridges and roads—”
“Fucking road construction,” Jake muttered.
“—and libraries and Social Security,” Roger continued. “But that's not equal, and one man walking down the road can be perfectly safe and another can fear for his life anytime a cop shows up. It ain't fair and it ain't liberating, and it sure as hell ain't free.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Roger took a pull on his drink. “The right to shut up and sit down, maybe.”
“How do you get past it?” Jake asked. “Or do you just—?” He gestured, not knowing what he meant.
Roger caught Jake's eye and pointed into the darkness. “What do you see?”
Jake looked. In the distance were the faintest flashes of light, multi-colored flowers made out of fire. “The fireworks in town?”
“Yeah. And who do you suppose is lighting them off? Normal people, the kind we've never really known except in passing. Folks who are grateful for the roads, the schools, and a paid vacation day. Well, they bitch about them, but they know they can count on them. Folks who want an excuse to light something on fire as much as we do, and who enjoy a good burger on the grill. Families, friends, neighbors, celebrating an ideal together,even if the reality ain't what we'd like it to be. Now, what do you hear back there?” He gestured back to the house.
Toby was finishing up the dishes. The light flowed out from Roger's sturdy home, bathing them on the porch, and Jake could hear him humming (sounded like Queen, or maybe David Bowie) as he washed and dried. Roger's old rocking chair squeaked.
“You trying to tell me something about family?” Jake felt his stomach drop. It was true, Roger was the closest he had to family (real family, because no damn Dixon could count), and Toby was his everything, but it tasted wrong tonight. Nothing sat well, and even the beer in his hand tasted off, the distant fireworks more threat than comfort.
“There's gonna be bad days,” Roger said, matter of fact. “Days you don't know why you're out there protecting anyone. Days you don't know what you're fighting for. But it helps remembering what's important. And it helps knowing that it eases up after a while. Hey, you want another beer?” He pushed up from his chair. “That helps too, sometimes.”
“I don't want to get drunk, Roger.”
Roger put his hand on Jake's shoulder. “Then don't. But if you're down, don't think of this as anything but what it is: a visit with people who care about you. Let the rest go. I'll send Tobias out, if he's not done.”
Toby appeared at the screen door. “No, I'm done. Were you . . . coming in?”
