Rear Echelon

Thirty days of leave and nowhere to go. That was my situation.

My name is Wesley Holden. I'm forty-three years old, a sergeant first class, and as of two months ago I'm also a single man again. Lois took the dog. She left me the couch, which I guess was generous of her.

I took leave because my first sergeant basically shoved the paperwork at me. "You look like a haunted house, Holden," he said. "Go sit somewhere and rot for a month."

So here I was. Dunston, Nevada. Population of about a thousand sad people and one million flies. A mile from the Hawthorne gate. The Sandstone Arms apartments, which is a fancy name for tan boxes with shared balconies.

***

Midnight. I was on my balcony with a beer, watching the desert sit there doing nothing.

The walls in this place are thin. Real thin. Like drywall made of suggestions. So when my neighbor came home, I heard the whole routine. Door. Keys jingling. Boots hitting the floor.

Then crying.

Not loud crying. The quiet kind, the kind you do into a towel so nobody hears. Except I heard. Because these walls are a joke.

I sat there holding my beer like an idiot. I didn't know her. Still don't, really. She'd moved in about a week before me and we'd never said one word. She smoked out there sometimes at three in the morning. I'd hear the lighter click and that was our whole relationship.

But that night she was crying, and it went on for a while, and it affected me. Because I'd been doing the exact same thing into a pillow for two months. I just had the decency to do it where the walls were thicker.

"Hey," I almost said through the wall. Like a weirdo. I didn't say it. I finished my beer and went to bed.

***

Three days later Noel showed up at my door.

Noel Gavin. Forty-six. We did two deployments together back when we both still had knees that worked. Now he's a desk jockey at the base and he has made it his personal mission to make sure I don't drink myself into a mailbox.

"You look like hell," he said, pushing past me.

"Thanks, man. Come on in."

"I'm not coming in. We're going to the commissary. Your fridge has mustard and a lime in it. I checked."

"You checked my fridge?"

"Left the door open while you were in the shitter. Wesley. Mustard and a lime. That's not food, that's a crime scene."

So we went. That's the thing about Noel. You don't argue with him, you just get in the truck.

The commissary at ten in the morning is all retirees and wives with carts the size of Buicks. Noel took over like he was planning an invasion. Cereal. Eggs. Actual vegetables. I trailed behind him holding things.

Then I saw her.

At register three, in the commissary smock, ringing up an old man's cat food. My neighbor. The three a.m. smoker. The crier.

She was prettier than I'd figured from the balcony. Dark hair pulled back. Tired eyes. The kind of tired you don't fix with a nap.

I froze in the cereal aisle like a dumbass, holding a box of Cheerios.

She saw me. I know she saw me, because her eyes flicked over, held for maybe half a second, and then went right back to the cat food. Nothing. No nod. No hey. Nothing.

"Frankie!" Noel called out, cheerful as a golden retriever. "You still working nights?"

"Every night, Noel," she said. Flat voice. Scanning items.

"You know my buddy Wesley? He just took the place next to you."

"Has he," she said. Not a question. She didn't look at me.

"He just took the place next to you a month ago," Noel kept going, because Noel doesn't read a room, he renovates it. "Just got out of a relationship, so if you hear--"

"Noel," I said.

"Just saying, man, sympathy from the neighbors, it's a community--"

"I gotta get these eggs," I said, and walked off to the dairy case like a man with a purpose, which was eggs.

When we checked out, Noel steered us to her register on purpose. I know he did. He had a smirk on him.

"Find everything okay?" she asked us. Script. Robot voice. She didn't even look up from the scanner.

"Yeah," I said. "You?"

"That'll be forty-two thirteen."

Fair enough.

***

In the truck Noel lit into me before I even got my seatbelt on.

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

"That whole thing. You went stiff as a fence post."

"She doesn't want to know me, Noel. She made that real clear."

"She rang me up for six years, Wes. She's not cold, she's just..." He waved a hand around, hunting for the word. "She's careful. Her ex was a nightmare. You'd know the type."

"Was he one of ours?"

"Was and is. Comes around sometimes. So yeah, she sees a big sad sergeant take the unit next door and she's gonna keep her head down. Can't blame her."

I could not, in fact, blame her. Lois had trained me pretty good on the subject of not getting attached to people who were going to leave.

"Anyway," Noel said. "She works nights at the diner sometimes too. The one off the main drag. Not that I'm telling you that."

"You're absolutely telling me that."

"I'm saying it exists. As a building. With pie."

This is the thing about the Sandstone Arms. The balconies are maybe eight feet apart. You could hand somebody a cup of sugar across the gap without standing up.

It was a Thursday, about a week after the commissary thing, when her dog happened.

I didn't even know she had a dog. Turns out she did. A stubby little brown mutt with a face like a retired boxer. He came off her balcony, through the gap, down off my steps, and into my apartment through the sliding door I'd left open because the AC unit sounds like a helicopter.

I was in the kitchen. I heard the door scrape and turned around and there was this dog sitting in my living room looking at me like I owed him money.

"Well hey," I said. "Come on in."

He did. He walked a full perimeter, sniffed the couch, sniffed the mustard-and-lime fridge situation, and then sat down in front of me like we had an appointment.

I crouched down. His collar tag said FRANKIE and a phone number. No last name. Of course not.

"You're Frankie's, huh. Yeah. She seems like the type to name a dog after herself. No offense, buddy."

The dog wagged. Everyone in this town was easier to talk to than my actual neighbor.

The sliding door on her side was closed. So I knocked. On her door, I mean, out in the hall. Took a minute. Then it opened about four inches and there she was in work clothes, holding a cigarette unlit, looking like somebody had died.

"Your dog came into my apartment," I said.

Her face did something complicated. "Smoke?"

"Little brown guy. Boxer face. He walked in like he owned it, sat down, and watched me. Didn't steal anything. Better manners than most people I know."

She exhaled through her nose. Almost a laugh. Almost.

"He got off the balcony again?"

"There's a gap, apparently. Big enough for a determined little guy."

She stared at me for a second. I mean really stared, like she was checking my math. Then she said, "Hold on," and shut the door, and came back with shoes, and followed me to my place.

The dog trotted over to her and she picked him up. He was not small, so that was a whole operation, and she grunted and I almost offered to help and then didn't because I figured my funeral.

"Sorry," she said. "Thanks. For not, like, calling animal control or whatever."

"Animal control," I said. "For a dog that sat politely in my living room. I'm not a monster."

"You'd be surprised what people do out here."

"I would not be surprised, actually. I've been here a few weeks."

That got the almost-laugh again. Closer that time. She shifted the dog to her hip.

"He doesn't usually leave," she said. Then, quieter, like it slipped out: "He's the only one who stays, so."

And then she went pale, like she'd said too much, which she had, and we both knew it.

"Well," she said. "Thanks again. Wesley, right? Noel's friend."

"That's me."

"Okay." She turned and left. The dog looked back over her shoulder at me. Traitor dog, giving me that look.

She never said hello on the balcony after that either. But a couple nights later I heard the lighter click at three a.m., and I heard her say, through the wall, not loud, to nobody, to the night:

"Goodnight, Wesley."

And I lay there in the dark with the AC rattling like a helicopter, grinning like an idiot. Thirty days of leave. Nowhere to go.

Maybe that was about to change.

The fuse blew on a Thursday.

Actually, I think it was a Thursday. Could've been a Wednesday. Doesn't matter. What matters is I was microwaving a burrito at eleven at night and the whole building went dark. Both apartments. My half and her half, all one circuit, apparently, because whoever wired the Sandstone Arms in 1974 was either drunk or in a hurry or both.

I stood in my kitchen in the dark holding a warm burrito like an idiot.

"Well," I said, to nobody.

Then I heard her sliding door open. Then I heard mine scrape. She came through my living room like she owned the place, holding a flashlight.

"Oh," she said. "You have power. Wait. No you don't!"

"No I don't!"

"Breaker box is in the hall closet. It's always the same one. Top left, the little one." She clicked the flashlight on and pointed it at her own face by accident, which, honestly, was the most I'd ever seen of her at one time. "Maintenance never fixes it. I've reported it six times."

"Six times."

"Don't do the repeat thing. Everyone does the repeat thing."

"Sorry." I put the burrito down. "So top left."

"Top left." She held the flashlight while I went and flipped it. It flipped right back. Flipped again. Right back again. "Yeah, that happens," she said. "It's dead for a while. Whole night, sometimes. Morning crew fixes it."

"So we're dark."

"We're dark."

I turned around and she was standing in my living room with the flashlight, in shorts and a big flannel shirt, and the dog was sitting next to her like he'd been invited. Which he hadn't. "He came in again," she said. "He likes you. I don't know why."

"Thanks."

"That wasn't a compliment. He also likes the garbage truck."

Fair enough. She went out to the balcony and lit a cigarette, and I did something I hadn't done in thirteen years with Lois or two months without her, which was follow a woman outside.

"You smoke?" she asked.

"I did. Before."

"Before what?"

"Before the Army made it inconvenient."

She held the pack out. I took one. She lit it for me with the flashlight sitting on the rail, aimed at nothing, throwing light at the parking lot. It was one of those Dunston nights where the wind was hot. The depot hummed way off. Somewhere a truck downshifted on the main drag.

"Burrito?" she said.

"What?"

"You were making food. I heard the microwave. You want to split the burrito, since your kitchen's dead?"

I looked at her. "You want half my gas station burrito."

"I want half your gas station burrito."

So we sat on my balcony furniture, which was one plastic chair, and split it, and passed the flashlight back and forth when one of us needed to see the cigarette. The dog laid across both our feet like a drawbridge. Nobody said anything for a while. It was, honestly, the best conversation I'd had in two months.

"You work nights," I said finally. "Commissary. Noel said."

"Noel talks a lot."

"He does."

"Bagging, stocking, whatever they need. Some nights I do the diner instead. It's not a career, it's a paycheck." She ashed over the rail. "What's your thing? Noel said you're on leave. Which, no offense, everybody on this base is on leave or deploying or just left. It's like weather here."

"No offense taken. It is weather!" I turned the cigarette. "Eighteen years in. Logistics. Which means I move other people's boxes for a living and I'm apparently very good at it and apparently it doesn't matter, because Lois left anyway."

I didn't plan to say that last part. It just came out with the smoke.

"Lois," she said.

"My wife. Ex-wife. As of March."

"Oh!" A pause. "I'm sorry."

"You want to know the dumb part? She didn't leave for anybody. She just did the math. Thirteen years, and I was going to be gone another ten, and she decided she'd rather be lonely in a house than lonely in a marriage. That's almost reasonable. That's what kills me."

Frankie was quiet a second. "Mine left for somebody. A woman from his church group, would you believe. Twice a week, three years. And I stayed because of the dog, actually, before the dog. Before the dog it was a house." She laughed, one short sound. "I keep a list of reasons I stayed. It gets shorter every year."

"Church group," I said.

"I know."

"Twice a week."

"I know, right?"

The flashlight rolled off the rail and hit the floor and lit up the whole underside of the