Page 49 of The Burning
“Little Manny, can you help me get your brother in the car? Grab that bag,” she said as he agreed. “Manny!” she called to her husband. “I’m taking the kids home.”
“What! No, stay.Babyyyy. . .” He held his arms up, reaching for her.
She hesitated for a second, but ended up giving in to him, smiling at her idiot husband. He was her idiot. And mine. He was a good dude at the end of the day.
She put Vivi down and walked over to him.
“I’m tired. Martin’s bringing you home. Stay, babe. Not too late.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. His hands rounded her ass, and she licked his lips. They were always like this, all over each other in public. I looked away as Karina popped into my head, her hands running over my cropped hair, her teeth tugging at my earlobe as she climbed on top of me. Even just kissing her was more intimate than sex. I rolled my shoulders, trying to get her out of my damn head.
“Oh, I’ll hurry home,” Mendoza said, biting his lip. “Can y’all believe that’s my wife?” Mendoza roared, clapping his hands as Gloria strode away.
Little Manny rolled his eyes. He looked so much like his dad it was crazy. His broad nose, the shade of his skin, the wide shape of his jaw.
“They’re gross,” I told him.
He agreed with me; even without a smile, I could tell by the way his mouth twitched that he wanted to laugh.
He was a stubborn little shit sometimes. Just like his old man.
Mendoza kept his eyes on his wife as she said goodbye to everyone else and kissed the back of his daughter’s head. As they walked by, he fist-bumped the boys. He was so gentle with Vivi, but tough with the boys. It was how he was raised, the same way that I was, even with a single mother. Boys had to be tough, girls were delicate. Treat them accordingly. I knew firsthand how toxic the idea of what masculinity and being a “man” was. It had the power to eat a man alive and had been destroying families since the beginning of time, especially in my community growing up. So many single mothers who were struggling but no one ever seemed to say “absent fathers.” It was all “single-mother households” instead of absent father.
I sat quietly, waving goodbye to the kids and Gloria, drinking a Sprite from the can, and listening to the conversation the circle of guys were having. Most were single soldiers, and those handful who were married had worn out the patience of their wives, many of whom had left already.
“I mean, we’re going to go to war with Iran. It’s going to happen in the next couple years, especially under this administration,” one of them said.
I took them all in, what they were wearing, how drunk they appeared judging by body language and speech. Fischer’s voice was in the background debating with Elodie; he was only a little buzzed. He had spent the whole hour since I arrived with Elodie, which I much preferred to him getting wasted with the rest of the group. I listened to their conversation even as my main focus was on the group of privates. My brain was trained to clock every detail of my surroundings, whether I meant to or not. Whether I wanted to or not.
“Don’t talk about your boss like that,” one of them said. He seemed the youngest, and looked eerily similar to the cartoon character Ferb. Red hair, sort of triangle nose. A straight-up cartoon character.
“He wasn’t the boss I enlisted under. I don’t want anything to do with his bullshit propaganda and fearmongering,” another said. He was lanky, sort of square-nosed. The Phineas to his companion’s Ferb.
“Fearmongering? He’s opening our eyes up to all the shit the government does! And he’s giving more jobs and protecting what this country is supposed to be.”
Ahh, good old talk about the president. It was always a sore spot for soldiers and their families. Legally, we weren’t even allowed to talk about the president publicly because of our contracts with the Army, but it usually didn’t stop people from actually doing it.
“Fearmongering? Come on—that’s a liberal-ass stance to take. Even for you,” Ferb said.
“First of all, I’m not a liberal. I’m usually a conservative, until this election. But this dude is a straight-up child and so fucking embarrassing. Throwing temper tantrums on Twitter all damn day like he doesn’t have anything better to do. He’s wack, and you’re wack for defending him. Didn’t your grandpa serve in World War II?”
The short one nodded.
“Imagine how he would feel if he was still alive. Seeing all these neo-Nazis marching the streets and being encouraged by the president? Not just any president, but someone who isproudof how he escaped serving in the military? Not only that, but he also disrespected John McCain, a prisoner of war. What would he say? Huh?” The soldier’s eyes were shining with the kind of gleam only passion or whiskey could give. He had both running through his veins.
“Fuck off with this talk. We are supposed to be brothers here, why are worried about some lazy piece of shit in office when they aren’t worried about us? Only worry about each other,” Mendoza said, waving his drink around the circle of men, butting in before I could decide if I wanted to or not.
Mendoza approached them. One was looking down at his phone, barely paying attention to what was happening around him. This baby shower could break out into a brawl, and he would barely notice—it seemed like it was about to. The other two were looking at the Ferb kid.
“He wouldn’t be happy,” the tall one continued. “He would be wonderingwhat the fuckhe risked his life for if we were going to go right back to this. People in the streets doing literal Nazi salutes while claiming freedom?”
Mendoza interrupted again before the other guy responded, “So do something about it instead of being the government’s puppet. You bitching about it doesn’t change it. You wanna change shit? Go fucking actually do something about it instead of sitting around bitching about some shit that we can’t control. We’re on their payroll, the blood is on our hands.”
I stood up from the table and walked over to the group. It was getting too heated for the amount of alcohol everyone had had, not to mention this was supposed to have been an event celebrating Elodie, yet Fischer was the only one actually talking to her.
“We can change it by voting, and not putting up with this shit,” the taller guy said.
Fischer and Elodie had fallen silent and were watching the guys’ heated exchange. Elodie’s hand was on her stomach in a protective sort of way.
“Not putting up with it?How you going to manage that, huh? You are the government’sproperty. There’s no choice whether to put up with something or not. You do what you’re told. Just like the rest of us,” said another private who looked like he was fresh out of basic.
