Full Measure: A Novel Read Free

their sentences.
    “God, Pat, it’s so good…”
    “I’m really…”
    “I just can’t believe you’re … look at…”
    Patrick climbed the steps to the veranda, where his father hugged him heartily. Patrick noted a new lightness in him, though he wondered if it might be his own strength from patrolling with eighty pounds of gear and a twenty-pound machine gun almost every day for a year. Archibald smelled of the same shave cream he’d used for all of Patrick’s remembered life. “It is damned good to see you, son.”
    “You look great, Dad.”
    Ted limped by them with Patrick’s duffel and went into the house. Patrick followed, his father and mother close on either side, all three squeezing through the door awkwardly, each person trying to lead the mission.
    “Civilian chain of command is always a little inefficient,” said Archibald. He’d been Navy, service being a Norris tradition since the Spanish-American War.
    “I’ll get used to it again,” said Patrick.
    A few neighbors had gathered, and some of the church people. Patrick appreciated their smiles and hugs and handshakes but felt the discomfort he caused in them, their ignorant but heart-swelled gratitude. There was a table set up with food and soft drinks and more yellow ribbons and he wished he was back at FOB Inkerman eating an MRE, smoking with his battle buddies, just being necessary. Or maybe fishing out on Glorietta Bay.
    “You’ll want to see the damage immediately,” his father said. “I’ll make you an authentic drink. I take it you’ll be staying with us?”
    “Just a night or two, Dad.”
    “Oh, Pat, ” said Caroline.
    “I need my own space, Mom.”
    “I wish your brother aspired to that,” said Archie. “Rather than living in the bunkhouse the rest of his life.”
    “Don’t start in with all that now, Archie,” said Caroline.
    Ted came down the hallway and into the sharp glance of his father. “I’m working on getting my own place, Dad.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    Patrick glanced at the awkward and uncertain friends and neighbors, then let his eyes wander the high-ceilinged great room. Nice to see the familiar white walls hung with his mother’s treasured paintings, the mullioned windows, the tile floor and stately area carpets woven in Afghanistan decades before he had gone and seen so much death there. The great room of his life. How could any of it seem so new? Sunlight came through the shutters and made crisp white slats on the walls. From the wet bar, beneath the oil portrait of his father and uncle gazing down as if they had foreseen all of this and more, Archibald studied his older son again. Patrick watched him. Then Archie returned with two large tumblers filled with ice and amber liquid and topped with lemon twists.
    “To the groves, then. Caroline, Ted, friends and neighbors—I need a few minutes alone with Pat.”
    *   *   *
    Patrick and his father walked a dirt road side by side through the scorched trees. Norris Brothers Growers was a second-generation concern begun by Patrick’s grandfather and great-uncle in 1953. As a child Patrick had learned that growing avocados was a risky business due to the vagaries of drought, water, wind, consumer demand, tree disease—from borers to lethal root rot—and competition from Mexico and Chile. He also knew that a third-generation Norris handoff would have to take place if the ranch was to remain in the family. But Patrick had not fallen in love with farming. His dispassion had cost him some portion of his father’s respect, which remained lost now. Ted’s early interest in growing had gone unremarked by his father.
    This was the best avocado country on earth, Archibald had always maintained. The hills stood almost eight hundred feet above sea level, picking off the river breezes and the rain clouds that watered the fruit. Much of it was steep terrain, the decomposed granite soil draining beautifully. Now the air was pale and rank. Norris’s