He showed up at the back door with a six-pack of beer and a nod and he sat on my back steps next to the new lavender and I sat beside him. He didn't ask about Janet. He didn't bring up the post. We drank in silence the way two Marines always have, looking out at the yard and the fence and the last of the evening light. When he stood to leave, he looked up at the house.
"The house looks good, Mitchell," he said. I knew what he meant. It meant I'm still here. I sat on the steps a while after his truck pulled away and let that sentence settle. Some men say everything with one line about a house.
The last weeks were slow. I finished the crib and painted the walls and assembled a stroller from instructions that made no sense. I read two books about newborns and understood neither. Every night before sleep, I put my hand on Janet's stomach and felt him turn a small determined shifting under my palm. And I lay awake afterward thinking, "I don't know how to do this."
And then thinking, "I'm going to learn." The baby came in the ninth month on a quiet night with the windows open. Janet shook me awake at 2:00 in the morning. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me and I knew.
I drove us to the hospital through empty streets. 10 years and I had driven through mortar fire and a river of mud in the dark without shaking. That night I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white and I couldn't make my hands go loose. The labor was long. The doctor told us gently that it was a harder delivery because of Janet's age and that she'd be watching closely.
I stood beside the bed and held Janet's hand. I listened to the monitor, that steady electronic pulse, and I've never wanted anything to keep beating so badly in my life. And then there was a sound, a small, furious, healthy voice announcing itself to the room. A boy. The nurse laid him in my arms.
He weighed almost nothing. He was so small, I was afraid to breathe too hard. For 10 years, I held a rifle with hands that were the steadiest in my company. Now I was holding my son and my hands were trembling. Janet was watching me.
She was exhausted, her hair damp against her forehead and she reached out and rested her fingers lightly on my arm. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. We named him Sam after my grandfather. Simple, easy to say.
A name for a man who works with his hands and keeps his promises. We brought him home on a gray afternoon. I drove 10 miles an hour the whole way and Janet laughed at me and I didn't care. That first night, I couldn't sleep. I sat in the chair beside the crib and watched his chest rise and fall, listening the way I used to listen on watch.