Chapter One Fractured

Collin

“And then, this guy, this guy right here , he walks right up to her, and I swear to God, he says…”

“Those can’t be real.”

“No, you didn’t!”

“He did! I swear on my mother! He just saunters up to this woman and drops that on her, and she freaking smiled !”

“Got her number. Went out that night. Turns out… they were real.”

“Red, you are the craziest son of a bitch I’ve ever met. Collin. Hey! Collin! You have too much, or are we boring you, or what?”

I had been staring into the middle distance, probably with my eyes completely glazed over, as I listened to my old buddies rabble on. I turned to Micah, who was looking at me expectantly, and chuckled lightly and shook my drink.

“I’m good,” I said. “Just thinking about something.”

“Was it the chick with the big ol’ biddies?” Red asked, holding his hands out about three feet from his chest.

This brought a round of laughter from the boys. Red Eads, the real jokester of the group, and the one with the least amount of self-awareness when it comes to inappropriate behavior in literally any situation, continued to mimic the buxom woman as the other two laughed. It was kind of sad. It was like they hadn’t stopped being nineteen.

Maybe that was why I liked being around them. It reminded me of when I was nineteen too. Back before it happened.

“Well, if you aren’t drunk, then you get to be the one to stand up and grab another beer. Because I am fairly certain I will smash my face on the table if I try to move,” Micah said.

Micah had a drinking problem. None of us wanted to talk about it, but we all knew it. I’d brought it up gently before, and suggested that our monthly get-togethers might center around some other activity than sitting by a lake and getting plastered, but was met with resistance. These were men who shared one singular fact about each other, and wanted to know as little as possible about any other facts. Unless it involved seedy stories of women, drugs, or a combination thereof.

“I got it,” Dwayne Ramirez, the largest and therefore the hardest to get drunk, said. “I need to take a leak anyway.”

“Me too,” I said. “Preference on the beer?”

“Cold,” Micah said.

“As frigid as my wife,” Red said, to a guffaw from Micah.

Ahh yes. Wife bad. Such a great joke.

Dwayne headed toward the treeline while I headed to the truck, which was parked with it’s bed facing the lake and the giant cooler on the open hatch. It was a nice day, and a good one for enjoying the weather with friends. And these knuckleheads were as close as it came to friends for me. Other than my brothers, I guessed, but they didn’t know me like these guys did. As far as they were concerned, my military career was brutally brief, and ended with an honorable discharge.

They didn’t know the particulars.

Micah, Red and Dwayne on the other hand, they knew. We all dealt with it differently, but we all knew . That’s what kept us together more than anything else.

I grabbed a few beers out of the cooler and a soda for myself. I was done drinking. Come to think of it, I was almost always done drinking after one or two. I didn’t like the feeling of being drunk. Of being out of control. I liked the warmth of the alcohol, I liked how it seemed to make everyone seem more interesting, but that was about it. Anything past tipsy was uncomfortable and … frightening.

It was a weird way of thinking about it. I was a grown man, neck deep in my late thirties, and as far as anyone was concerned, a rough and tumble cowboy. Perhaps a more bookish one than my brothers, especially Jesse or Logan for heaven’s sake, but still. I wasn’t a stranger to a tough day’s work under the sun and with animals that needed to be broken to be useful. Honestly, I’d rather be doing that than talking to people ninety-nine percent of the time.

Dwayne was coming back and reached out to take the drinks from me.

“I’m heading back. You go take a wizz.”

“Thanks, Dwayne.”

“No problem. You good, man?”

I eyed Dwayne, easily the most level-headed of the three others, and noted that he seemed stone-cold sober. Come to think of it, he had only had one beer this entire time.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good. I’m fine. You?”

“Lot on my mind,” he said, then looked back at the other two, who were distracted with their continuing adventures of large-chested women and their dubiously true stories of conquest. He stepped closer and turned back to me. “You hear about the movie?”

“Movie?”

“Yeah. The one Acey is having made about his life. About the… you know. Fallujah.”

“No,” I said. “I had no idea. Just him?”

Dwayne shook his head.

“No,” he said. “They want all of us. Apparently, he has this whole story about the thing. They want us all to sign off and approve the script or whatever.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I won’t be doing that.”

“Hah, that’s what I thought,” Dwayne said, grinning. “I told them, but they said you’d do it.”

“Yeah, no,” I said, smiling. “Not my thing.”

I left, heading to the treeline to find a place to empty my bladder as well and couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. Not of what happened, but of the gall for one of us to sell the story. We all knew what happened, and not one of us ever wanted to talk about it. So why now? What bullshit had Acey fed to a movie producer to get a movie made? Especially about him. He was barely involved.

At least when it really went to shit.

I zipped back up and reached into my back pocket for the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer I always had on me now. The pandemic had instilled that in a lot of people, but it just made it normal for a habit I already had. I wore it on a keychain most of the time.

The pandemic was alright for me. I stayed on the ranch with a built in excuse not to go anywhere. When I did have to leave, I got to wear a mask, stay six feet away from people, not touch anyone and shop in peace. Even the people who were against masks left me alone. I didn’t care what they thought of the whole thing, I just wanted to be left alone.

It had put a hold on these meetings too, I thought. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

I returned to the dock where everyone sat in a variety of camping chairs. Dwayne handed me my soda and I saw that he had returned the beer I got him for a soda of his own. Root beer, actually. Funny, that.

“Hey, Collin,” Red said. “Did Dwayne ask you about the movie?”

“Jesus, Red,” Dwayne muttered.

“What?” Red said. “I just wanna know.”

“Yes,” I said. “He did.”

Red was silent for a moment, looking between Dwayne and me with an expectant expression. I was getting tired of those.

“Well?” Micah said.

“Oh, no thank you,” I said.

“Hah. Told you,” Micah said.

“Shh, shh,” Red slurred. “Hang on. Just give me a second. Hold on. Hey, Collin. Why?”

“Why?”

“Yeah, why?” Red said. “We all signed off on it.”

“All of you?” I asked.

Dwayne looked down at his root beer guiltily.

“At the same time,” Micah said. “We were on a zoom call with Acey. They got us all documents in an email. Easy peasy.”

“Yeah,” Red said. “Cut of the net profit, and we got a fat check upfront too. Sweet deal man. Not that you need it.”

There was a chuckling between Red and Micah there, which I understood. It was known to very few people how I had invested my money. Both of them had caught wind of it early on, when I tried to help them out with investment advice. When the advice I gave them, that they didn’t follow, turned out to be incredibly lucrative, they clamored for more. Or a handout. They knew I was at least not hurting.

They didn’t know how little hurt my checkbook ever felt.

No one did.

“Movie won’t be right unless you’re part of it,” Micah said. “I mean, come on. You know.”

“I do,” I said. “But that’s just not something I’m willing to do. I know you understand.”

“I mean, yeah,” Micah said, clearly confronting his own internal argument. “But, I mean, it’s for us. You know? And Acey. This could make all of us really wealthy.”

“You sure about that?” I asked. “You know most Hollywood pictures never make a net profit, right? That’s a whole trick in the industry. Nothing ever makes money so it can be written off on taxes by the studios. Even those big, dumb comic book action movies. Look it up. Billons in the box office, almost no net profits, and sometimes, a deficit.”

“That sounds made up,” Red said, a man who was never afraid to call bullshit on something that didn’t pass the smell test, but would never, in a million years, actually do any research to back his internal truth meter up.

“He’s just doing his thing again,” Micah said. “Quiet, funny old Collin. Everybody loves Collin. But nobody fucking knows Collin. Who are you, man? Aren’t you rich as hell? Why does it matter? Let Acey make his movie and if we get rich, great. If not, I mean, come on. People are going to be clamoring for you. You’re a her-“

“No,” I said, firmly. “Not that word. You know how I feel about that word.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “And you know why.”

“Collin,” Dwayne began.

“No, fellas, you know what, I think I’m done. I’ll see you boys next month.”

“Yeah, alright,” Red said.

They knew better than to argue with me when I decided to go. It always ended the same way. They argued, and yet, I went.

“See ya,” I said. “Dwayne, you good to drive these guys?”

“Saw it coming,” he said, shaking his soda can. “Later, Collin.”

“Later.”

I made my way back to my truck trying to breathe deeply. I didn’t want to be upset at them. I could see their point of view, even. To them, it wouldn’t matter. They hadn’t been the one to make the decisions I made. The decisions that I lived with.

To them, it was a story they could tell at a bar and get a free beer out of. A story they could sell for a shot at getting rich to a movie studio who would either not do anything with it, or cast some pretty boy to play them, all while they changed the story so it made cartoons out of everyone.

Halfway down the road, back to the ranch, and I had mostly let it go. I wasn’t mad. If I had been, I wasn’t anymore. Just disappointed. They knew how I felt, and yet they tried to pressure me anyway. It didn’t feel good.

Parking the truck beside Jessie’s, I went around to the side door to come in. We all usually did that if we had dirty boots. Mama had taught those of us who remembered her well. I missed her all the time. Probably as much as Luke did.

Jesse was in the kitchen when I walked in, which immediately alarmed me until I saw his fiancé at the stove. She was cooking chicken of some type. There were a couple pans on the stove and I eyed them, taking in the aroma of cumin and paprika right away.

“Tacos?” I said.

“Hello to you too,” Jesse said.

“Hey, Jess. Hi Charlotte.”

Charlotte turned, smiling widely and gave me a hug.

“Hey Collin,” she said. “Yes, I am making tacos. Your brother here made the tortillas by hand.”

“Oh god,” I said. “I can’t wait to see how those look.”

“They look good, actually,” Charlotte laughed.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said.

The laughter was good. It was light. It was jovial. It was who I was with my brothers and the growing number of women that were involved with us now. Charlotte was around any time Jesse was, and Amber practically lived her now. And with the combination of Charlotte and Amber came Tamara, who alternated having crushes on all of us at one point or another.

“Well, it’ll be ready in about ten minutes,” Charlotte said. “I’ve got a toppings bar on the dining room table.”

“I chopped the toppings,” Jesse said proudly.

“And you still have all your fingers?”

“Ha, ha,” he said, sarcastically.

“I’m going to go wash up,” I said. “Thank you for cooking dinner, Charlotte.”

“You’re welcome,” she said cheerfully.

I headed to my room, kicking off my boots and leaving them at the bottom of the stairs. Then I headed up to my room.

It had once been Mom and Dad’s room. Technically it was the master bedroom. For a long time none of us wanted to sleep there. But when I started using the office attached, it just made sense for me to move out of the tiny room downstairs. Mom would have wanted it that way. Dad would have hit one of us in the back of the head until one of us moved there on account of us being stupid not to.

Sometimes I wished Dad were still around to talk to about the nightmares. He had his own past, a hard one that he didn’t talk about much. But he knew something happened to me out there. He was the only one who figured it out. None of the other brothers did. Not even when they caught me having waking nightmares, wandering around the house and crouching behind couches. They chalked it up to the medications I took for the injury.

The injury that they believed as some freak thing that kept me on base for six weeks after the six weeks of deployment.

They didn’t know the nightmares were far worse. And how I had trained myself not to make noise when I had them, so I didn’t bother anyone else. That was big for me. A huge thing. I didn’t want anyone else bothered by me or my past. My nightmares were mine. My own personal hell to keep.

My night was pleasant. The girls were always a delight to have, save Tamara sometimes, who could be a bit much, and the tacos were good. Charlotte wasn’t a natural cook, but she was okay. I appreciated the effort.

But as I laid down and let myself drift to sleep, I could feel it coming. I was powerless to stop it, but I knew it was on the way. The feeling of impending pressure from all sides, like the room was shrinking. The sensation that I was getting warmer, like I was baking in the sun, even though the AC was on full blast and I had a box fan on, as much for the noise for me as it was to block out any noise I made in the middle of the night.

Still, it came.

The nightmare.

The same one. As always.