Read Out There: a novel for Free Online

him, filling the house with veggie burgers and chips and ice cream. She baked a double batch of biscochitos , Jefferson’s favorite, even though it was not Christmas. She prepared black bean and zucchini tamales, and she bought a new aluminum patio set with four chairs and an umbrella for the back stoop—so they could watch the sun set in comfort, she said. And in a plastic pot by the front door, she planted an overflowing mass of purple petunias—a symbol, Jefferson thought, of all the worries of which she could not speak.

9
    Day by day the part of his brain that knew he had nothing to fear became smaller. He was alert in a way he’d never been, his eyes detecting motion to his far left and his far right, his nose sure it caught a whiff of burning flesh and ammonia. Deep within him, his soul cowered at the frightening proximity of life—Esco’s simple cooking, Nigel’s perpetual tinkering, the familiar sounds of the neighborhood—it all seemed to accentuate his heavy burden. When the sun shone, he could feel its malignant rays inciting cancer in the cells of his skin; when the tyrannical late-spring wind blew cold, he felt small, vulnerable, a paper kite caught in a dust devil.
    The part of him that knew how to hide and how to please took over. This made many things simpler, but by the second week, he had an appointment with a doctor at the VA in Albuquerque. He didn’t think he was unstable, and he didn’t think he had an issue with whatever everyone seemed to be worried about, but he did wonder about his future. At what point would he need to move on from his current status as ex-soldier to whatever role he would establish for himself in the next phase of life? Part-time student? But hadn’t he missed all boats headed out for college? Grandmother’s assistant? Although he wanted to be there for Esco whenever she needed his help, did unloading boxes and sitting behind the counter selling gum and soda really qualify as a plan? Nigel’s assistant? Could he stand the grease and the music—and anyway, did Nigel need any help? Neurosurgeon? Probably not. Tree trimmer?
    It wasn’t that he hoped for answers. He was smart enough to know there were no answers—at least not yet—to most of the questions jangling in his head. But the idea of a woman whose sole job it was to sit and listen to him talk—that such a woman existed!—was enough to convince him to skip his morning bull session in Nigel’s shed and make the one-and-a-half-hour train trip to Albuquerque. He imagined a plush couch facing floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Rio Grande Botanic Garden, the only place in Albuquerque, aside from the zoo, he remembered visiting as a child, and though Jefferson knew the doctor’s office would not literally be adjacent to the gardens, he nonetheless imagined that green manicured view. That Albuquerque was always greener and warmer than Santa Fe was a known fact.
    He knew that the doctor was a woman because of her e-mail:
     
    Looking forward to meeting with you next week, Jefferson.
    May 1, at 11:00 a.m. Let me know if you have any questions before we get together.
     
    Dr. Emily Wesleyan
    Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center, Building One, 2nd floor
    1501 San Pedro Dr. SE | Albuquerque, NM   87108
     
    He tried to imagine how the doctor would look and smell and sound. In the end he settled for the most minor of assumptions, what must at a minimum be true of any person who’d agreed to counsel ex-soldiers: that she would be kind.
    The Rail Runner wove its way south along the highway through misshapen rocks, breaking out into a fine view of the high Cochiti plateaus and, of course, the Jemez. It was a landscape for the movies, a landscape to be populated with celluloid cowboys and Indians. From the downtown train station he rode the bus up Coal Avenue and over on University and way up Gibson, through a part of Albuquerque he’d never seen before, landing finally at the VA. Building 1 was just there on his