Page 84 of Baker

He grinned. “I’m like an aeronautical engineer.”

I scrunched my nose. “What does that mean?”

“I’m got some damned good theories, but I’ve got minimal success based on hands-on experience.”

“Have you got time to talk?”

He pushed himself away from the desk and flopped his forearms against the chair’s armrests. “Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?”

After thinking about his response, I laughed. “You make me smile.”

“You make me smile, too, Kid. Except for today. Let’s see if we can change that. Get to talkin.’”

I looked away. After taking some time to devise a way to say what I needed to, I shifted my eyes to Mort. “I’ve really only been in one relationship, and the guy had certain character traits. He hurt me bad in the end. Really bad. I said when it was over that I’d never put myself in that position again. I found out last weekend that Baker has those exact same traits. Now, I’m scared of what might happen.”

He let out a laugh. “You’re worried about what might happen?”

I nodded. “Uh huh.”

He slapped his hands against the sides of his belly. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at me, but there was a day when this belly of mine didn’t exist. I looked about like that Baker fella. Thin and muscular. Didn’t have a lick of common sense, either. The year was nineteen and sixty-eight, and the place was Khe Sanh, Vietnam. The North Vietnamese Army had just launched the Tet Offensive. I was seventeen at the time, and I tell ya.” His eyes drifted toward the window. “I saw more death in two months than any one man should have to see in a lifetime.”

He cleared his throat and continued. “I went to take a shit, and it happened just like that. Before I got my pants pulled up, explosions were going off, enemy fire was whizzing by my head, and people were dead or screaming for the good lord to take ‘em all around me. Brady Wiltshire and Sergeant Tom were by a fuel tank with some of the rest of my platoon, and they were shot to pieces. Every one of ‘em was alive, but they weren’t going to be for long if they didn’t get some medical attention. It was darker than the inside of an elephant’s ass, and the enemy was crawling around our base camp like ants on a candy bar. Their only hope was me, and I was a scared seventeen-year-old kid.”

He gazed blankly at the wall beyond me for a moment before he continued. “There was eleven of ‘em at that fuel tank. Somehow I gathered up enough courage to crawl over there and get one of ‘em. Then, I got another. Gettin’ ‘em was pretty exciting shit, so I got another. About the time I was getting the fifth or sixth, I got shot in the leg. Before I got the last one, I got shot again. That one still hurts.” He rubbed his left thigh and then looked at me. “But guess what?”

I swallowed heavily. “You uhhm. You got them all?”

He grinned a shallow grin. “Sure did. Guess what else?”

“What?”

“I never would have got one of ‘em out of there if I’d have been worried about what might have happened. Each one of those men lived to see another day because of what did happen. We can’t let what might happen keep us from doing what our heart tells us is right. Remember that, Kid.”

My eyes welled with tears. I wasn’t sure if it was because of what Mort went through, or because of what I so desperately wanted. I swallowed heavily and gave a mental nod. “Okay.”

“What’s your heart tell ya?” he asked. “Not your gut. And not your fear talkin’, either. What’s your heart tell ya?”

It was an easy answer. My heart wanted Baker. “My heart wants him.”

He stood. “Anything else fucked up?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Nope.”

He looked at his watch. “Take the rest of the day off.”

“Are you sure?”

He gave me a look. “Wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.”

“Okay.” I pushed my chair away from my desk. “Thank you.”

When he walked toward the door, his gate was prideful, and free of the limp he normally walked with. As he reached for the door handle, he glanced over his shoulder.

“If we spend time worrying about the what if’s and might be’s in life, we’ll never know what could have been.”