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  This book is dedicated to the memory and honor of Sergeant Seth Garceau (1982–2005) of Alpha Company, 224th Engineer Battalion, in Davenport, Iowa …

  to all those who never made it home …

  and to all the children everywhere who have suffered because of our long wars.

  May all of you always be remembered.

  May all of us find our way toward peace.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  My father had been dead seven years the day his first letter arrived. But before I received the message that would change my life so much, tenth grade started out like any other.

  At lunchtime, I sat down next to Ethan Jones. “Hey, Mike.” He flicked a chicken nugget with his finger. “Can you believe they feed us this crap? There’s no actual food in this food.”

  I picked up a nugget and took a bite, but chomped down on one of those tiny hard pieces and spat the gristle into a napkin. “I think they’re supposed to be educational. Life is like a high school chicken nugget.” I smiled. “It can be pretty good, but you have to learn how to deal with the tough bits.”

  Ethan laughed. “Dude, that’s so gross. True, but gross. Do you think …” His words dropped off as his attention focused behind me. I turned to see Coach Carter marching up to our table.

  “Hey, Coach,” Ethan said.

  Carter put his hands on his hips and nodded to him. “Mr. Jones.” He fixed his gaze on me. “Wilson! Did you give any more thought to what we talked about this morning?”

  The guy was persistent. “I thought about it, Coach.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I …” It was hard to talk around him. “I have to work a lot. Plus, my mom doesn’t think … you know … that I really should.”

  “Yeah, but I bet if you asked her really nicely, she’d say yes,” Ethan said. “Mike’s real good, Coach.”

  “I know that,” said Carter. To me, he added, “I saw you play in junior high. You have some real talent, and we need you. Your biceps are about to split the sleeves of your T-shirt. You’ve been working at Derek Harris’s farm, right?” I nodded. “Mr. Wilson, you have the rest of your life to work. You only have three more years to play football. Don’t miss out on the best years of your life.”

  I did want to play football. It was just complicated for me. “I don’t know, Coach.”

  “Look, I don’t chase everybody down like this. The rest of the guys have been busting their butts for over a week in camp and two-a-day practices. I can get you caught up if you start this week. But Friday’s the first game. If you’re not on the team before then, you never will be. Think it over.” He turned and marched away across the cafetorium, his fists held out from his sides and his arms cocked back a little like always.

  “Wow,” Ethan said. “I thought he was on his way over here to chew us out about something. You never can tell when the Volcano is going to erupt. But he’s right, dude. You need to get back on the team. You were so good back in seventh grade. What did the junior high coach call you? ‘Hands’ Wilson or something?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Well, are you going to —”

  “Did you not just hear me talking to Coach?”

  “I know, but can you at least ask your mom again? You’ve been kind of a hermit or something these last couple years. All you do is go to school, work on the farm, and do homework. Playing football might help you fit in more. I don’t know, maybe you could even score a date to the homecoming dance.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Hey, speaking of the dance. I have good news about your quest.”

  “The quest?” Ethan leaned forward. “What did you hear?”

  “The quest” was Ethan’s name for his unending efforts to regain the affection of Raelyn Latham, his freshman-year homecoming date. To hear him tell it, his night at the dance with her had been more romantic than Cinderella, the royal wedding, and Romeo and Juliet combined. But the guy never made his move, never asked Raelyn out again, and Chris Moore moved in as her boyfriend in the meantime.

  “Well, it could be nothing. You know how Hailey and the rest of the gossip girls aren’t always so accurate,” I said. “But in first period geometry …”

  “Dude, what?”

  “Well, they were saying Chris cheated on Raelyn, and the two of them are breaking up.”

  Ethan swore. “He never did treat her right.”

  I ate another spongy nugget. “Yeah, because you’re so hoping they have a nice, happy relationship.” He sat back in his chair, trying to look casual as he sneaked glances at Raelyn across the cafetorium. She was one of those pretty pale girls with white-blond hair who seemed perpetually sunburned all summer. “Anyway, as soon as you’re sure she and Moore have broken up, you should ask her to homecoming,” I said. “Get your second chance.”

  “Homecoming is weeks away,” Ethan said.

  “The quest is the quest,” I reminded him. “Don’t give them time to make up.”

  “How could they make up after he did that to her? I’d never cheat on her.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” I said. “Not even while she’s going out with someone else.”

  Ethan didn’t get the joke. He never looked so happy as when he had some reason to hope that things might be improving between him and Raelyn. “Thanks for telling me this. I hope you’re right.”

  We ate in silence for a while. “Hey, the Hawkeyes play this weekend,” I said. “Should be on ESPN. Want to get together and watch it?”

  Ethan looked down at the table. “Yeah, well, see, my dad is actually taking me to the game.”

  “It’s in Chicago,” I said.

  “Yeah, we’re borrowing my grandpa’s RV and everything.”

  “Wow. That’s cool.” I’d give anything to be able to see the Hawks play live.

  “My dad had a couple extra tickets. Gabe and his dad are going with us.”

  “Oh.” I took a drink of my milk that had somehow already warmed up.

  “Sorry,” said Ethan. “But he had the two tickets, and he’s friends with Gabe’s dad. Plus Gabe and I are on the football team together and stuff.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” I said. “All that driving time. I have to work, and anyway, I started the first book in this cool new series last night, and I’ve already checked out the second one. Should be great.”

  Ethan frowned.

  “What?”

  “I feel like we’re leaving you out.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I probably couldn’t have gone even if you had a ticket for me.” I made myself smile. “I’m pretty busy with everything.”

  * * *

  When I stopped at home to drop off my books and change into work clothes, Mom was there, done with the Gas & Sip and getting ready to go to her night job at the nursing home. She was sitting at the dining room table with the usual clutter shoved to one sid
e, and a calculator and papers spread all over the space she’d made. It was bills day, and that could put her in a rotten mood.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said with all the cheer I could muster. “What’s up?”

  “Ugh, boring old bills.” She rubbed her eyes. “But never mind that. How was the big first day of sophomore year?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Pretty much same as last year.”

  “I got you something today when I was at work.”

  “The three wolf heads or the wizard fighting the dragon?” Mom and I always joked about these cheaply made but expensive ceramic sculpture things that they sold at the Gas & Sip, alongside the cigarette lighters and power adapters and windshield scrapers.

  “Close!” She laughed. “I bought you the two-foot eagle with the sword in its beak.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” I said. “No, really. You shouldn’t have.”

  Mom got up from the table and hugged me. “What, doesn’t every nearly sixteen-year-old boy want a giant eagle knickknack in his room?” She handed me a small paper sack. “Here you go, hon.”

  I pulled out a cold PowerSlam energy drink and a little pack of beef jerky. “My favorite. Thanks, Mom. I swear, if I could have just this to eat and drink for the rest of my life, I’d be happy.”

  “Yeah, I’m always looking out for your health.”

  She was in a good mood. Maybe this was my chance. “Hey, Coach Carter talked to me today.”

  “Who?”

  “The football coach.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Well, he wanted to know if I would go out for football this year.”

  Mom frowned. “It’s too late, isn’t it?”

  “He says I have until Friday to sign up,” I said.

  She started messing with her purse.

  After a long silence, I asked, “So, can I?”

  “Can you what?”

  I pulled out the parental permission form. “Will you sign this so I can play football?”

  “Oh, Michael, I don’t know. You’re doing so great with your schoolwork, and I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

  I used to have a ton of fun playing football in the backyard with my dad, and in fifth and sixth grade with the guys. But the best was the one and only year I’d been allowed to go out for the team. Our seventh-grade squad went four and one, and I was the second-leading scorer, two dinky points behind Clint Stewart. In my last game, I jumped up to grab this way-out-there pass, but landed wrong, spraining my ankle. The other team’s safety launched himself at me for the tackle, but we landed in the end zone, so I still managed to score the touchdown.

  Then Mom went crazy over seeing her “little boy” hurt. She had never been too happy about me playing football, and she blamed my sprain on the hit I’d taken, not on a simple, stupid accident. She then refused to sign the football permission slip for eighth grade and last year.

  “I’m not going to get hurt, Mom. It wasn’t even the —”

  “Just, just —” Mom held her hands up. “Can we not talk about this right now? I bring you …” She pointed to my PowerSlam and jerky. “Those things are expensive, and nothing’s ever good enough. I … I gotta go. Maybe next year, Mikey.” She kissed me on top of my head as she walked out the door, leaving me alone with the unsigned form.

  * * *

  People who say Iowa is flat never had to bike up the steep slope to the Harris farm. I pedaled hard, pumping my bike up the big hill. I’d built Scrappy using parts from half a dozen junked bikes. Some of the guys at school used to give me crap about her, but I didn’t care. With the money I’d saved on her and all that I’d earned at Derek’s, pretty soon I’d have a car, and one day that car would take me out of this tiny town.

  Derek Harris lived in a big box of a white farmhouse. It really belonged to his parents, but they’d retired to a condo in town a couple years ago, leaving him to run the farm. Beside the house was a huge gravel lot that connected up with the big metal machine shed, an old red barn with a silo, and the feedlot for the cattle.

  Music beckoned me toward the machine shed. Derek usually left the radio on KRRP, Riverside’s local classic rock station. His ancient Chevy pickup sat in the center of the building. It had a great old-style body and was painted this cool sky blue with just a little rust around the wheel wells and at the bottom of the doors. He called it the Falcon, after Han Solo’s old but reliable ship in Star Wars.

  Derek was down on the floor, welding the bottom beneath the passenger side of the cab. When he stopped for a moment, I cleared my throat.

  He took off his mask, stood up, switched off his welding machine, and leaned over the hood. “Oh, hey,” he said. “You’re here. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Same as always.”

  Derek frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I usually did a better job at faking like everything was fine.

  He rubbed his chin. “Something’s obviously got you down.”

  “It’s just …” I wasn’t the kind of guy who whined about his problems. But Derek was a stand-up guy. He was grown-up, but still cool. Today was a perfect example of what was wrong. Like just about every other day, I came home from school and then went straight to work. Later, I’d go home, knock out some homework, and then go to bed. “I feel like I want to do … something more.”

  “I’ve got plenty for you to do tonight,” Derek said.

  “I mean, yeah, I’m ready for whatever work you have. Thank you, by the way. I need it.” He started to say something, but I held up a hand. “But I finished with something like a hundred and five percent in English last year.”

  “That’s good. It’ll help you get into a nice college like you’re always talking about,” Derek said.

  “But I want something else too, you know?” I shrugged. “Not just work and school. I’ve wanted to play football since forever. Coach keeps asking me to join the team.”

  Derek laughed a little. “I thought you were just focusing on your reading and your studies, like you’d given up on football.”

  “I don’t think the two things have to be mutually exclusive.”

  “Well, if you’re reading and not paying attention on the football field, you’re going to get hurt.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. So why don’t you go out for the team?”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. He knew my problems with Mom on this issue.

  Derek pulled his gold chain out from under his shirt and ran his thumb over his small cross pendant. “She knows how good you were in junior high, how much you love the Hawkeyes and the Bears. Maybe if you tell her what you just told me, she’d —”

  “She never listens. Never wants to talk about anything that matters, anything that might mean change.” Mom had worked the same job, driven the same car, and even worn the same hairstyle nearly every day for as long as I could remember. “Anyway, now really isn’t a good time to talk to her about much of anything.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Tomorrow is D-Day, when my dad was killed in Afghanistan. August 28, 2005.”

  “Tomorrow’s the twenty-eighth already,” Derek said quietly. An old song by the Eagles played softly on the radio. “That’s tough, buddy. Hey, uh …” He looked at me. “You’ve used the chain saw before, right?”

  I nodded. Derek’s house had a wood-burning furnace, so without a chain saw I would have had to cut about a million branches with an ax.

  “Big old tree branch fell on the fence. You can start cutting it up. Just be careful not to slip in the wet grass when you’re running the saw.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  “And I think it’s time I paid you for last week.” He pulled a bunch of cash out of his wallet and handed it over.

  I counted the money. I suppose most kids were paid on a certain day of the week or month. Derek was never that organized, but he always paid fairly. More than fairly — he’d given me the money I had comi
ng, plus an extra two twenties and a ten. “Whoa. I think you miscounted.”

  “No, no.” Derek picked up his welding mask. “All that wood you split last time was way more than your hourly rate really comps for, so it’s like a tip. You know, fair is fair.”

  I held up the bills. “It’s an extra fifty. I can’t take this.”

  “You will take that if you want to keep working here.” He waved me toward the door. “Now go get that branch cut. I’ll be down with the truck in a little bit to haul the pieces back up here to the woodpile.”

  I checked the chain saw to make sure it was fueled, then pulled the heavy thing off the workbench. I’d seen the branch he was talking about from the road on my ride up, and it was a good hike away.

  The cutting, loading the wood into the truck, and stacking it on the woodpile took hours. We knocked off at about eight thirty and I rolled out on Scrappy, leaning forward on the handlebars, enjoying my flight down the huge hill.

  At the bottom, just as Old Highway 218 crossed the English River, it started to rain. It wasn’t the usual Iowa thunderstorm that starts with a few warning drops and then gradually builds up. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked across the sky, then I might as well have jumped into the river.

  Two miles later, I put Scrappy to bed in our leaning shed, then slogged through the muddy yard around front. I struggled to pull my soaked T-shirt off, tripping over the crooked board that I still had to replace on the porch. I wrung my shirt out, almost afraid the old thing would shred apart in my hands, and went inside.

  “What happened to you?” my sister, Mary, called from the couch in front of the TV.

  “I went swimming.”

  She stood up. “Um … there’s, like … a leaky thingy.”

  I sighed. “Mom at work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of leaky thingy?”

  “Like it’s coming down into my room.” She fidgeted with her fingers up in front of her chest. “Through the ceiling.”

  I let out a breath through my nose. “Great. Just —”

  “It’s dripping down all over this pink T-shirt I was going to wear tomorrow. Now there’s this brownish stain….” I shot her a look that said I really didn’t care about her fashion problems. She flopped back down on the couch. “Can you fix it?”