Page 89 of His Best Friend's Baby

Beside Jesse, JoBeth gasped. Or maybe it was Jesse. He stood, too numb to be sure.

Caleb was a grisly sight, to be sure.

Knotted and twisted red scar tissue licked up Caleb’s neck and grazed his right cheek. He was thin, like any man coming home from the hospital would be. He leaned heavily against a cane and his opposite hand was a thick flipper of surgical gauze.

“Jesse Filmore?” the horrific vision asked.

“Yeah,” Jesse nodded. JoBeth couldn’t run out the door fast enough. As she left, Caleb bowed slightly like a macabre puppet tipping an imaginary hat.

“You need a woman with a bit more stomach than that one.” Caleb pivoted and grinned at him. The devil was in Caleb’s eyes. Jesse would never forget finding him, tortured, starved and left to die in that Iraqi prison. Jesse had expected to retrieve a shell of a man, but Caleb had turned to him and muttered through cracked, black lips, “You better be John-damn-Wayne with the cavalry.”

“A little scar tissue and she was about to puke on me.” Caleb smirked.

“I thought—”

“I was dead? In a coma? Yes to both, but I’m tougher than I look.” His eyes lost their shine. His wit seemingly deserting him. He gestured into the house with his wounded hand. “Can I come in?”

“Yes, yes.” Jesse leaped out of the way. “You want some water?”

“Do you have a beer? Oh, sweet beer.” He moaned in dramatic ecstasy.

“Sadly, no.” For once Jesse wished he were the kind of man who did keep beer around the house.

“It’s just as well.”

“The pain meds?” Jesse couldn’t help a sympathetic smile.

“I’m all for drug-enhanced good times but the meds with beer give me terrible dreams—”

Jesse nodded. “I know.”

“I wouldn’t say no to that water.” He gestured to the open door behind him. “Never thought I’d end up in a desert again.”

Jesse went into the kitchen for the water. By the time he got back to the living room, Caleb was already sprawled across the couch with his shoe off.

“Sorry.” He pointed at his foot with the cane. “But the swelling hasn’t gone down and those shoes are killing me.”

“What are you doing here?” Jesse asked. He lowered himself into his father’s old chair, his eyes never leaving Caleb. He felt as though he stood in the presence of a miracle. Some heaven-sent, foul-mouthed apparition. “I mean, weren’t you just in a coma?”

He’d been too chickenshit to keep checking up on Caleb. Too scared to see the body count from the accident go up by one more.

“Miracles of modern medicine, Jesse.” Caleb drank from the bottle of water, his good cheer contradicting the fine trembling in his hand.

Jesse looked away in empathy. He’d hated the way doctors and nurses stared at him the whole time he was hospitalized, rushing to clean his small spills, to mop his face and the front of his gown as if he were a child, or worse, an old man.

“You’re not an easy man to find,” Caleb said. “Luckily, your niece was ready to sell your secrets.”

“Amanda?”

“I’d watch out for her.” Caleb smiled, the scar tissue tightening, gleaming in the late morning sunshine. “She’s gonna set the world on fire.”

Jesse could only blink. Oddly enough all he felt was admiration for his niece, no resentment at all.

“So, what are you doing here? I mean it’s great. I’m glad you’re okay, but do you need something?”

Caleb stared at him for a long time and then, finally laughed, a boisterous, loud guffaw completely at odds with the shocking state of his body.

“You saved my life, Jesse Filmore. I would not be alive at this moment if you hadn’t pulled me from that prison and then pulled me from that helicopter. Did you honestly think I wasn’t going to track you down and offer my pitifully small thanks?”

Jesse stood. “You didn’t have to. I was just—”

“So help me, man, if you say you were just doing your job I’ll hit you with my cane. You saved my life. My mother is ready to canonize you.”

“I don’t need your thanks.” He meant it. He didn’t really want it. He looked at Caleb’s injuries and wondered how the man could sit in this house and not blame Jesse for some of what had happened to him.

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