He did not like the look on people's faces when they saw the wheelchair and the empty pant leg. But that afternoon he came. He rolled up to the back door at half past two. His hands were cold on the wheels. He wore his Marine Corps jacket.
The one with the lance corporal stripes. The one he had worn home from Walter Reed 8 years ago. He had come because Delia had been white as a sheet that morning when she left. And because when his sister looked like that, Ezra knew something was wrong. And a brother does not sit in a house when something is wrong with his sister.
Even if the brother had one leg and shaky hands and could not always remember what day it was. He knocked on the back door. Roz opened it. "Ezra?" "Miss Roz."
"Come in. Come in out of the cold." She held the door. He rolled in. The kitchen was warm and smelled like bacon.
Roz pointed him toward the front. "Your sister's out there. Take a booth. I'll send her over." He rolled through the kitchen and out into the dining room.
Three old men at the counter turned to look. He knew them. They nodded. He nodded back. Good men.
Farmers. And in the booth by the window facing him was a stranger. A big man, gray beard, flannel shirt, eyes like a lake. Their eyes met across the room. And Wade Caldwell's hand froze on his coffee cup.
Ezra rolled to a booth two down from Wade. He did not know why the man was staring at him. He did not like it. He did not like being stared at. He set his break.
He folded his hands on the table. He waited for his sister. Wade Caldwell was not staring exactly. He was seeing. He was seeing February of 1991.
He was seeing a red-haired boy laughing at a joke in a briefing room in Saudi Arabia. He was seeing the same boy coughing blood into the sand at Medina Ridge. He was seeing the way that boy's jaw had set when he said, "Sergeant, tell my sister." And now in Iowa in a diner on Highway 20, that boy's face was sitting two booths down. It was not Danny Callaway.
Ezra was darker haired. The jaw was different. The eyes were different. But the shape of him, the set of his shoulders, the way he held his chin up even though everything about him said he was tired. Wade closed his Bible slow.
He stood up. He walked over to Ezra's booth. "Son?" Ezra looked up. "Mind if I sit a minute?"
Ezra said nothing. He was sizing the man up. Wade could see the Marine in him doing that. Threat assessment, range, exits. "I'm a friend."
Wade said, "or I'd like to be. I saw the jacket." Ezra looked down at his own chest, the eagle, globe, and anchor on his pocket, then back up. "You a Marine?" Ezra asked.
"I was." "When?" "81 to 92, Gunny." Ezra's eyes changed just a little. "Gulf, Diane, first one."
"Where?" "Everywhere. Medina Ridge mostly at the end." Ezra nodded slow. "Kandahar."
He said 2011. "I know." Ezra looked at him sharp. "How do you know?" Wade did not answer.
He slid into the booth across from Ezra. "May I" "You already did." Wade almost smiled. "Yeah, I did." They sat for a moment without talking.
Delia came out of the kitchen with a tray. She saw her brother. She saw Wade across from him. Her step faltered. Roz caught her elbow.
"Let him sit, child." "Roz." "Let him sit. Two Marines at a table, you don't get in the middle of that." Delia looked at the booth.
Ezra was looking at his hands. Wade was looking out the window. Neither one of them was saying anything, but they were sitting together. And something about the way they were sitting together made Delia's eyes water. She went back to the kitchen.
Wade spoke first. "Son." "What happened to your leg?" Ezra was quiet a long time. "I don't remember it."
"How much don't you remember?" "They tell me I was on a patrol. They tell me there was an IED. They tell me I pulled three guys out before I passed out from blood loss. They tell me one of them's a doctor now, has kids."
"You remember any of that?" "No, sir." "Nothing." "I remember going out that morning. I remember the sun coming up.
I remember one of the guys laughing about something. And then I remember waking up in Germany with no leg." Wade nodded. "Son, that's a gift." "A gift?"
"God gave you the gift of not remembering. Some of us, we remember everything. Every face. Every sound. Every smell.
I had a boy in my platoon, a kid named Callaway. 22. Iowa boy like you. I held his head while he died." Ezra's eyes flickered up.
"I remember the color of his eyes." Wade said. "I remember what he had for breakfast with him that morning. I remember the smell of the sand when the blood soaked in. I remember the exact words he said before he was gone."