The Heart You Carry Home Read Online Free Page A

looked like a man awaiting execution. Reno pulled a pen from his pocket and took the cap off with his teeth. Then he grabbed Ben’s arm.
    â€œGet off me!” Ben opened his eyes and leaned away, but Reno held tight.
    â€œIf I don’t write down the instructions, you’ll forget.” He yanked Ben’s arm straight. “You’re gonna head due southeast,” he said and scribbled. “Your destination is a town called Sparta.” Reno wrote this too. “Get yourself to the auto garage. You can’t miss it. Introduce yourself to Miles.” Reno wrote
Miles
on Ben’s arm. Then he stuck his face right in front of Ben’s, so close that Ben could see the stubble points on the older man’s cheeks. “Miles’ll tell you what’s next. Do you follow?”
    â€œNo,” Ben moaned. But then, looking into Reno’s uncompromising eyes, he realized one thing very clearly. Panic set in. He leaped to his feet, then stumbled from dizziness. “You can’t just leave me here.”
    Reno felt a tug of pity, but he let it go. Until a couple of months ago, Ben had been on active duty in the U.S. Army. He had two sturdy legs and there was surely GPS on his phone.
No such thing as GPS during
my
service,
Reno thought, taking a moment to muse over what navigational gizmos and gadgets the military must be giving soldiers these days. Not that any of it mattered. War was confusing as fuck.
Different time,
he thought,
same situation.
    â€œOnce you get to Sparta, you’ll get your wheels back. Then, if you straighten yourself out, you can come get Becca. Sound like a deal?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œGood.” Reno got back in the car.
    Ben stumbled toward the passenger-side door but tripped and fell. “Asshole!” he shouted as he heard the car’s locks engage. He watched Reno turn onto the road and speed away. “Fuck!” he shouted at the car. “Fuck!”
    To say that Reno was unmoved by the image of Ben screaming furiously at him as he drove off would not be accurate. Twenty miles later, he could still hear the boy shouting and see his wide, furious eyes. Reno did not like to hear men scream. He did not like to see men’s eyes popping from their sockets. But this action was necessary. Reno wasn’t doing this for Ben, really, or even for Becca. He was doing it for King. And there was a chance—the smallest, slimmest chance—that if the kids got their shit together, they could protect King from the madness ahead.
    Â 
December 13, 1972
Dear Willy,
Durga has been talking to me. Ever since I got back Stateside, she’s been whispering directions. She let me know that keeping the heart in my hometown was pointless, that my home wasn’t my home any longer, and that my parents were relations only in name. Durga showed me that I’d been reborn. I had new organs—a new heart. So I bought a motorcycle (Durga wasn’t vehicle-specific; she simply said,
Get going, Proudfoot!
), and I set out. My mother stood at the end of our block crying as I drove away. I felt bad about that, but what could I do? I haven’t been back since.
I bummed around in the upper Midwest, college towns, pretending to be a student. You once told me that the ancient Greeks knew everything there was to know about war. So I went to lectures on Homer and Hellenic warrior culture. I even took language courses so I could read the work in the original, though I didn’t get far. In a way, I was trying to finish what you’d started—to go down the path you’d been on until the U.S. government diverted you, brought you to us. To me.
After a few years of this, Durga grew restless, so I trekked over to Washington State and found a job on a dairy farm. I shoveled cow shit. I can’t say I liked it much, but I learned humility. I learned to care for creatures who could not care for themselves. I learned to balance the life of the mind with