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Nights are very quiet in El Paso.
As he assembles Christopher’s sandwich for lunch tomorrow, Eddie listens to the crickets through the open windows. It’s not that their old neighborhood in L.A. was especially noisy in comparison. Even the nearby freeway was more of a steady, reassuring hum than an annoyance. But here in El Paso, a hush seems to settle over everything once the sun goes down. Eddie never noticed that when he was growing up.
This evening in particular seems to wrap him in a sense of peace. Chris is where right he belongs, asleep down the hall in the twin bed that was hauled 800 miles for him. Eddie’s back to making his school lunches, just the way he used to: baloney sandwich, apple, a little baggie of something crunchy, juice box. The crickets are singing away the heat of the spring day, and this rundown mess-of-a-house is starting to feel like theirs.
And, finally, Eddie feels like he can breathe again.
His phone rings. Eddie licks a bit of mustard off his thumb before pulling the phone out of his back pocket. Buck’s picture grins at him from the screen.
“Hey, Buck!”
“Eddie.”
His name cracks out of Buck’s mouth like a dry branch snapping. Eddie’s hand instinctively tightens around the phone. Something’s wrong.
“What is it? What happened?”
Buck makes a choked sound, and now Eddie really starts to panic.
“Shit. Buck, where are you? Are you hurt?”
“I’m not hurt. I’m— I’m in the firehouse.”
“What’s going on? Talk to me,” Eddie demands.
He realizes that he’s raising his voice and heads out the back door. He’s ten paces away from the house before Buck speaks again, another broken-sounding name.
“Bobby.”
Eddie shudders as a wash of cold dread runs down his back. “What about Bobby? Is he hurt?”
“Eddie, he’s… He’s gone.”
For one hopeful moment, Eddie pretends he didn’t hear those last two words. They came out in a whisper, and so he should be able to bat them away as he would a wisp of smoke. But then they start to echo in his head—loud, undeniable.
He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone.
“What?” Eddie manages to say. “No.”
“Yes,” Buck answers, his voice low and ragged.
Breathe, Eddie orders himself. Breathe. He crouches down in the dusty yard. Have the crickets gone silent, or is the blood rushing too loudly in his ears to hear them? On the other end of the line, Buck has gone silent as well. The seconds stretch out like a slowing heartbeat.
With difficulty, Eddie forces out a question. “How?”
“A fire at a research lab. It’s— It’s a really long story, Eddie. I don’t think I can… tell it all right now.” Buck practically pants out the words, as if he’s winded from the effort of forming them. “Hen and Chim are in the hospital, but they’ll recover.”
“Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Athena…” Eddie knows all too well what she must be going through right now.
“May and Harry are with her. They’re taking care of her.”
Eddie stumbles to the back steps, where he can sit down properly instead of landing in the dirt. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there with his team when they needed him. And now Bobby’s…
Everything around him seems to crumble to dust. This shitty house with its ugly, bare backyard that still smells like the dogs that lived here once, long after Eddie cleaned up all their shit. He thinks of his perfect little stucco house in L.A., nestled among beds of flowers and grasses that Chris asked him to plant after a science unit on gardening with native plants, and he’s suddenly overcome with homesickness. As if it could somehow transport him back, Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and visualizes each room, just as they used to be. Home.
He needs to get there.
“Eddie?” Buck says at last, tentatively.
“I’m coming. I’ll be on the first flight I can get to L.A., okay?”
“Okay. Good.” Buck sounds relieved.
A plane ticket—that’s a place to start. Focus on practicalities. Ask his parents to take Chris for a few days. Find his black suit and dress shoes in whichever closet he put them in when he unpacked. This helps, reminds him to swim, not sink.
Eddie then registers the lack of background noise on Buck’s end. Dispatch will have taken the 118 offline, of course. Is Buck the last one to leave? How long has he been sitting in the darkened firehouse, working himself up to make this call?
“Are you alright to get yourself home?” Eddie asks. “You should call a rideshare if you don’t feel up to driving.”
“No, I don’t need— Tommy’s here. He can drive me.”
Oh. Eddie’s not sure he likes that, even if Tommy’s just there as a friend. He wants to ask Buck if he called Tommy, or if Tommy heard what happened and came on his own. No, nevermind. Eddie decides that it’s not important at the moment. Maddie will be at the hospital— Karen too—and Buck needs someone with him. Tommy will have to do.
“Is he right there?” Eddie asks Buck.
“Yeah.”
“Put him on the phone.”
“What? Why?”
“Just put him on,” Eddie repeats.
There’s a long pause, and then Tommy’s voice comes through the phone. “Eddie?”
“Look after him, okay?” Eddie tries to say it firmly, but the last word wobbles a little. “Look after him, but don’t you dare take advantage.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Tommy says somberly.
“You better not or I’ll kick your ass, Kinard. You know I can do it. And for fuck’s sake, don’t walk off and disappear on him again. It really messes him up when people do that to him, you know.”
There’s another long pause, and Eddie isn’t sure if Tommy is processing that statement or merely handing the phone back to Buck. But then he says, quietly, “I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Thank you,” Eddie says. “Oh, and can you ask Buck to borrow an air mattress for me? I am not going to sleep on that stupid fucking couch of his.”
Tommy huffs a weak laugh. “Will do.”
“Eddie.” It’s Buck again, with a touch of reprimand in his tone. “Don’t be hard on him. He helped Athena and me. We couldn’t have saved Chim’s life without him.”
“Sorry,” Eddie sighs. He rubs his forehead, pushing the skin hard enough to hurt and finding a modicum of comfort in that pain. “Go get some sleep. And then call me tomorrow, alright?”
“I will. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.” Buck makes a sound somewhere between a cough and a sob. “Oh, god, Eddie. I know you must have a million questions, but I just can’t relive it yet…”
“I know. I understand.” Eddie swallows hard. He’s sinking again, the icy shock of it gripping his chest, his throat. “I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon.”
They end the call. Eddie lets his phone slip out of his numb fingers onto the step beside him and curls forward over his knees.
Not Bobby. Not Bobby.
Christopher’s half-made lunch is still on the kitchen counter. Was the shoe polish packed in the box with the bedroom things or the kitchen things?
Bobby’s voice calling out orders as they jumped out of the engine. His ringing laugh as they sat around the firehouse table, eating the meals he lovingly made for them all.
Buy a plane ticket. But check his bank account balance first. Call his dad. Break the news to Christopher.
Bobby’s steady hand on Eddie’s shoulder, his gentle advice.
Eddie wraps his arms around his shins. The crickets have stopped singing again.
Breathe.
Just breathe.