The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian Read Free Book Online Page A

he was married. She took a small matchbook-sized packet with a wet wipe inside it, tore it open, and reached toward him across the counter. So close to him that he could smell the floral odor of the powder or antiperspirant that she had used under her arms, she unfolded the wipe and ran it along his cheek at the edge of his immaculately trimmed mustache. She concentrated on his face, and her lips were within inches of his.
    Then she pulled away. I thought I saw a smudge there, she said, or just maybe something of interest. But I guess I was mistaken.
    His brother came up beside them and clapped him on the shoulder. I got nothing to be ashamed of, he said to Terry. That buck is just fine.
    Terry turned to him and nodded. He realized his legs were a little bit shaky.
    HIS COUSINS AND his brother were listening to the Celtics on the portable radio and playing cards, but Terry was annoyed by the static and had decided to leave the game. The cabin still smelled of fried meat, and Terry was grateful because the earthy smell of the venison was considerably better in his opinion than the earthy smell of the three other men.
    A part of him was relieved that Laura hadn't let him bring Alfred along. She said it was because the boy would have had to miss two days of school, and that was, probably, a factor. But he knew there was more to it than that. She lived in fear that something awful would happen to the child when he was out of her sight, and she wanted him nowhere near four men with a small arsenal in the woods. Still, he, too, was glad that the child wasn't with him: Deer camp was always a gamier place than he remembered, and though he always tried to recapture the joy he'd felt here as a boy, it just hadn't been the same since his father had passed away.
    There was little light in the corner of the room he had staked out with the newspaper, but he wasn't doing much more than scanning the headlines and daydreaming. He'd spread the paper out on the massive picnic table that for two generations had been the table on which they'd butchered the animals and eaten their dinners. They usually ate by a kerosene lamp someone would place in the middle, or by candles in the two glass-enclosed hurricane lamps. They'd always played hearts or pinochle on the folding card table they set up near the woodstove, some years squeezing seven or eight men and boys around it.
    He'd thought of Phoebe off and on since he and Russell had left the store, and the smell--was it roses?--that he'd taken in when she leaned toward him. He didn't feel guilty, reminding himself that thoughts weren't actions. Isn't that what the radio shrinks he sometimes listened to always said? Nope, thoughts were definitely not actions, and he knew as well as anyone that you certainly didn't arrest anyone for a thought.
    Still, a part of him wasn't proud of himself. He loved Laura, they'd been married for almost fifteen years.
    Yet he also felt that once again there was a distance between them, once more she was shutting him out. As soon as the boy had come into their lives, she'd fallen back inside herself--or, to be precise, away from him. It was not unlike the way she had been right after the girls died. But then at least he had understood what she was experiencing. He had known as well as she had the way the frustration and the anger could cause the adrenaline to rush through you in waves, make you frantic for a time, and then leave you only exhausted, despairing, and sad. He knew firsthand what it was like to sit in a cruiser on the side of Route 7 with your radar shut off, and wail so loudly that you half-expected some entitled son of a bitch in a sleek SUV to hear you and stop.
    But this was different. Now that they had Alfred, Terry felt completely irrelevant. He'd never been able to help her before, that was clear, but at least he hadn't felt irrelevant.
    He wished he understood the boy better, he wished the boy enjoyed the same kinds of things he did. But it just wasn't