“The moonshine, you mean?”
“Yeah, the moonshine was part of it. But there were two different batches of the moonshine, mainly. One, you drank for fun. Well, you remember. You seen us drink it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, we called it moonshine, but it wasn’t really moonshine the way most other people make it. It was something else, from a recipe that’d been in your family before they moved to North Carolina. The other batch of that stuff was kind of like that, at its base, you know, but mainly different in that it was stronger and had different effects when you drank it. And, well, let’s just say you could use it for more important reasons other than just drinking it for fun. We’d been close to getting the formula right for a long time. But before we could market it, we had to have the right patents to protect ourselves.”
“Rally—”
“Some of that stuff, the ingredients for the second batch, I mean, was illegal, Eddie. A lot of it we’d already used up—and we ain’t nearly been doing it as much as we used to—but, when I found the old man, well, there was still some of the illegal stuff that I needed to get rid of. I woulda dragged the old man upstairs and put him in the den so the sheriff wouldn’t have found it, but I’m too weak now, Eddie. And they found the stuff in his system. I mean, I got rid of what I could—Christ, Eddie, eighty fucking years old and I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I can’t breathe good no more and my back don’t work and I’m—”
“Rally, calm—”
“—worried it’s only a matter of time before they trace it back to me. I thought it best to leave everything else, all the equipment and books and stuff, so they could see he cooked it up and done it to himself—”
“Rally, calm down. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Look, Eddie,” the old man said, exhausted, “I really don’t want to talk about this on the phone—especially you working for the government. When you coming home?”
“I’m scheduled to process out in a week.”
“You can’t get here no earlier?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Eddie, I’m only telling you about all this so you won’t be shocked when you get home. I thought the old man would’ve told you himself by now.”
“I understand,” Edmund said. “You just keep him on ice until I get back to you.”
He hung up feeling irritated and confused, but at the same time curiously empty. He supposed he had loved his grandfather, but he never told him so. If he did love him, it was a love colored with fear. Where the fear came from, Edmund was never sure. Claude Lambert never laid a hand on him; was never violent, never even raised his voice at him—not even when he got kicked off the baseball team.
Indeed, looking back, it suddenly occurred to Edmund that after his fight with the catcher Claude Lambert never touched him at all; never hugged him or tousled his hair like he used to when he was a boy. It was almost as if his grandfather was afraid of him, too. True, sometimes when his grandfather had spent too much time in the cellar, he would squish Edmund’s cheeks together and stick his finger in his mouth and feel around his teeth. Edmund asked him why once, and all his grandfather would say was that he was checking to see if he was healthy. But for some reason Edmund didn’t believe him.
And perhaps that was it, Edmund thought. Maybe the fear of his grandfather came from the knowledge that he would never really know the man who had become his guardian. Of course, there were plenty of things about Edmund that Claude Lambert didn’t know, either. And often Edmund wondered if that was where the searching came from—a quest for the thing that would finally close the distance between them.
But now that his grandfather was gone that could never happen; now that Rally had told him the truth about what was going on in the cellar, Edmund didn’t know quite how to feel about the whole thing.
Only that the searching was still there.
Chapter 51
“I’ve arranged for you to fly home, Lambert,” said Edmund’s commanding officer. “We can have you manifested on the next bird to Kuwait.”
“No thank you, sir,” said Edmund. “I’d like to finish up my time here. I’ve squared it so we can delay the funeral. It’s only a week, and my men need me.”
This was true. The 187th was scheduled for a raid on an insurgent stronghold that evening in the southern part of Tal Afar. The intel had come in that morning, and Edmund had organized the mission himself—needed to move fast before the enemy changed position again.
But his men were angry with him; thought the whole thing poorly timed. Edmund couldn’t blame them. With less than a week of their tour remaining, no one from the 187th wanted to be the last to bite it. There was no question as far as Edmund Lambert was concerned. He knew what he had to do.
“Are you sure your head’s on straight for this?” asked his commanding officer. “You’ve got a lot of men depending on you tonight, Lambert.”
“Yes, sir,” Edmund replied. “My grandfather and I weren’t very close.”
Later that night, Edmund and his unit set out in a convoy of unarmored Humvees that were to bring him and his men along a main road to the outskirts of the city, about a quarter mile from their target. The remainder of the distance would be covered on foot.
Everything had been going according to plan until the convoy passed through an intersection about a hundred yards from the drop-off point.
Edmund watched in horror as the Humvee at the head of the convoy was hit dead-on in a hissing streak of white. Then came the explosion, and Edmund knew the gunner was dead. Two men scrambled from the disabled vehicle. One of them was on fire.
Another explosion—screams of “RPG!” and “Medic!”— and all at once Edmund and his men were under attack from small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Time seemed to rush forward in leaps—the poppity-pop-pop of returning fire; the metallic thunder of Edmund’s gunner above his head shooting wildly. Then the pump of boots on the hard-pack street—screams of “Down there, down there!” and Edmund found himself crouched behind the corner of a building, the green of his night-vision goggles illuminating his surroundings.
More gunfire, and Edmund peered down the side street as a Humvee rolled past him, the gunner firing at the fleeing insurgents. It was a trap. Edmund and his men had seen this before. Edmund radioed for the Humvee to hold its position. It did, and kept firing down the street as an IED exploded up ahead.
Then they were running—Edmund and three of his men on the main road—rounding the corner of the next block; the back and forth of orders, the salute report, the request for rerouting and reinforcements on the radio.
They were in the southern neighborhoods—close to the city’s small wooded park, beyond which were pockets of farmland and then the desert. Intercept them before they get to the park, Edmund thought; take up position and mow them down before they lose them in the trees and then on to who knows where.
Edmund waved his men ahead in three-to-five-second rushes, covering each other as they cleared and passed the narrow alleyways between the houses. Edmund was at the end of the line, was about to take up his next position when his NVGs picked up something strange approaching in the alleyway. Instinctively, he stepped forward and raised his weapon—but when his mind finally registered what he was seeing, Sergeant Edmund Lambert froze.