Читать книгу A Question of Manhood - Robin Reardon - Страница 9

The whole time Chris was home, we all kept pumping him for stories. Sometimes he really didn’t want to talk, and Mom would shoo us away. Other times he talked, and he did his best to walk a line between satisfying Dad’s thirst for guts and glory and Mom’s reluctance to think of her favorite child in danger. He was always good at that—keeping everybody satisfied. So he tried to let us know what his day-to-day life was like and tried not to paint too grim a picture.

Over Thursday dinner he told us about this one mission his squad got sent on, where they had to be lookouts for some other guys sweeping for mines. The VC are always coming into areas where the mines have just been found, and replanting them.

There were a couple of guys, not Chris’s squad, walking down this dirt road, swinging metal detectors around and watching for spots that looked like they’d just been dug. Behind them there was an armored dump truck, loaded with dirt, that was retrofitted to drive backward, and the driver was way up high above the truck in a special little cab. This truck followed the two minesweeping guys a couple hundred feet behind, and some guys in Chris’s squad were way out in front of the minesweepers, and some stayed well behind the truck, and they were all watching for snipers. The idea was that if the minesweepers missed anything and the truck ran over it, the truck would set it off. The dirt was to keep the truck from getting blown far, and the driver was supposed to get thrown to safety from the cab.

Chris said the trouble with this plan was that the driver was so far above ground that unless he landed in water, he was probably gonna get hurt pretty bad. So, as Chris put it, it took a special kind of guy to drive the thing. Chris walked behind the truck one day and in front for two days, and they never saw any snipers. But he said the driver was always stoned. I guess you’d kind of have to be.

Mom didn’t like that story, because it worried her that someone Chris might have to depend on was high. In more ways than one! So the only stories he could really tell her were about life in base camp or when they were away on a mission but weren’t fighting, and even then he could talk about only the most benign stuff. Nothing about what they did to get beer, or koon sa, and sure as hell nothing about girls.

But when she wasn’t around, or if us guys were hanging out in the backyard trying to pretend it wasn’t cold, Dad wouldn’t let him get away without at least some of the gory details. He’d ask, “How many men did you lose in that encounter?” or “How bad were that man’s wounds? Did he make it?” And always Dad wanted to know, “Did you hold?”

Did they hold the ground. Was Chris King of the Mountain. And how many friends did he lose.

One story was about when they were on their way someplace—I forget where—in this big truck. They were driving along this road that was typical, all dirt and not very wide, going through an area of rice paddies with farmers working in them. The farmers had tools and baskets and sometimes hats that they would set on the ridges between the paddies when they weren’t using them. But then about a mile farther Chris said they noticed that the tools and baskets were there, but no farmers. Chris said no one ever left things like that; tools were too scarce. So the farmers had to have left because something was very wrong.

As it turned out, the VC had mortared the area to frighten people who lived in a nearby village. Chris’s group didn’t figure this out, though, until they got to the village, where they noticed mortar holes in the ground, and there was one old man there who hadn’t fled. He told them the attack had happened about half an hour ago.

Chris said his friend Mason would sometimes point out how the spookiest part of being in a situation like that was that no one really knew what to do. The guy driving the truck didn’t know any more about what might be wrong than the guys he was driving, didn’t know what it might mean to them, or what to do about it. They had no guidance, so all they could do was look to the ranking officer and pray like hell that he had a good head on his shoulders.

My favorite stories were the ones where Chris and one or more of the other guys took care of each other. Made sure everyone was okay, that they all got out of whatever they were in. Chris told a few of these stories, and they usually included his friend Mason.

There was this one story he told Dad and me on Sunday afternoon. Mom was home putting dinner together, and the three of us drove off to this fishing spot on Parson’s Lake, where we’d go in the summer. It was too cold to sit outside, so we stayed in the car. Dad cracked his window so he could smoke his pipe, and I was in the backseat straining to watch Chris’s face while he talked. I couldn’t see much more than a silhouette, there was so much light coming through the windshield from across the water. His voice was flat, and from what I could see of his face he wasn’t allowing much expression to show there, either. He was looking almost but not quite at Dad, his gaze falling someplace off to the side of the car.

“We were away from base on a mission. It was night, and we’d made camp. There was jungle on one side of us and rice paddies on the other, and just as we were getting ready to turn in we heard the shrill sound of incoming. A whistle, then boom. And the boom was really close. But we couldn’t tell where it was coming from. So all we could do was wait. And then there was another. It landed just past the edge of our camp. This time we could tell it came from the direction of the rice paddies, so we grabbed what we could and headed for the jungle.

“We hadn’t come this way, we’d come up the road, so we had no idea how bad this section of jungle would be. Booby traps, mines, that kind of thing. It’s hard enough to watch for trip wires even in the daylight. And from the sounds around us, I could tell some of our guys were setting off traps. There’s booms and screams and shouts, the place is a hellhole. We figured out later, those who survived, that the VC must have set the place up and then fired on us to scare us into this patch. They never came across the rice paddies. They didn’t come anywhere near the trap.

“But we didn’t know this yet. So I’m crawling, feeling with my hands. Mason is with me, but he has this thing about snakes and won’t crawl unless he’s ordered to. So he’s sort of bent over, following next to me. Both of us are trying to use the light from mortars and rockets to watch ahead, make sure we aren’t touching anything we shouldn’t. And suddenly I see something right ahead of me, something I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t been crawling, that tells me there’s been activity right there. I freeze.

“Just then, someone not twenty feet from us trips a wire. There’s a flash, and a scream, and he’s down and silent. Mason sort of jumps, and I grab his ankle, but his other foot goes right into the area ahead, where I know there’s something waiting. I just grit my teeth and hang on.

“He falls, but somehow he falls toward me and lands right next to me, but he’s sliding away at the same time. It’s a pit, and I know there’ll be a punji stick at the bottom, probably covered with shit to make sure whoever lands on it gets thoroughly infected. ‘Grab my clothes!’ I yell at him. He hangs on, and I’m pulling back with everything I’ve got. We scramble, clawing at the ground, and by the time I’ve pulled him up next to me the shelling has stopped.

“We’ll never know whether it was necessary to run for cover, ’cause we never found out how many VC were there. Too many guys had been killed or wounded to return an attack, so the radio guy called for a dustoff, which means Hueys would come in to take out the wounded. Mason and I found our way to the edge of the jungle with the other guys who made it, ready to provide some cover from the VC across the paddies if we needed to. We took cover by the side of the road while a couple of Hueys landed behind us. One of them was just lifting off when we heard this grinding, scraping noise. Mason and I wheeled around, not knowing what the hell might be happening, and we saw the rotor blades had come off one of the Hueys; the Jesus nut had let go.”

This was too much for Dad. He didn’t often interrupt Chris, but he asked, “What the hell’s a Jesus nut?”

“It holds the whole rotor mechanism to the top of the helicopter. If it comes off when you’re in flight, only Jesus can help you. But the copter had just started to lift off, so the guys inside weren’t hurt badly—except for the ones they were supposed to be carrying off, of course. Anyway, the blades had been moving, so they had some momentum, and when they went sliding off they were still going around. The blade piece rose into the air a little, drifted sideways and came down like a twirly toy. Then it hit this guy and took his head right off.”

We were all silent for several seconds. Then Chris said, “Thank God it was dark.” I knew what he meant; he wouldn’t have wanted to see that too clearly.

Chris turned in the seat so he was facing out the other way. I couldn’t see his face now. We sat there, maybe a minute, and then Chris got out of the car. As soon as his door slammed I started to open mine.

“Paul.” Dad’s voice was sharp. “Let your brother have a minute.”

Sometimes after one of these stories I’d go someplace by myself. Maybe my room, or if I didn’t want to be found, into a corner of the basement near the furnace, where it was warm enough to hang out for a while. In my mind I’d go over some of the scenes Chris had painted.

Chris had gotten an air rifle one Christmas, I think when he was ten, and although I never got one of my own he gave me his when he got tired of it. I found it and took it into the furnace corner, trying to imagine what it would be like to stalk through jungle, watching for trip wires and disturbed brush, anything that might give away the location of a mine or a booby trap or a pit with a punji stick in it. The air rifle became a machine gun.

Chris had told us that a machine gun isn’t a rifle. You don’t really take aim with it, and when you fire it’s a burst of five rounds at once in the general direction of where you think your target is. There’s this arc of light when you shoot, because every fifth round has magnesium on it, and it burns real bright so you can see where the rounds are going, even in daylight. The thing is, you want to pelt the area with as many bullets as possible.

In country, Chris said you often couldn’t really see the enemy, you just sort of knew where they probably were. And they weren’t likely to sit still while you fired at them. So this technique of raining bullets over a whole area, creating a sort of death zone where nothing could survive, was supposed to have more effect.

But Chris said you’d never know it was effective from the number of VC they kept seeing. It was like when you shot one, several more sprang up out of the ground. So one evening I sat there, pointing the old gun across to the other side of the basement, and I imagined what it would be like to fire hundreds of bullets in a few minutes at an enemy that kept growing in number. And every time I fired, there were more and more enemies swarming toward me.

I didn’t last very long. I started shaking, dropped the gun, and backed farther into the corner.

I guessed Chris must have lost quite a few friends by now, trying to hold this ground.

Mom made an executive decision about Chris’s time with us. Maybe she couldn’t stop him leaving when he was supposed to, but she could move Thanksgiving if she wanted to. He’d arrived home on Wednesday, and he had to leave on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. So Monday night was Thanksgiving in our house.

Mom declared that I was staying home from school, and she tried to get Dad to close the store, but he wouldn’t. He said too many people were contemplating giving pets at Christmas, and lots of them started shopping early for all the stuff that went with the animals, or buying books to figure out what pet they wanted to buy.

It was fun, actually. Mom let Chris and me do some of the cooking. I cut up the stuffing bread and the onions and things that go into stuffing, while Chris made the pie. He’d always been good at pies, and Mom could never figure it out. “I didn’t teach him much,” she’d say. “If I had, my crust would be as flaky as his!”

It felt a little like old times. I always liked this best, when it was just the three of us. When I was younger, I used to imagine that Chris was my dad, and he and Mom were married. They always got along so well, you know? Laughing and making silly jokes. Chris always laughed at Mom’s jokes, and she made more of them when Dad wasn’t there.

I hope this doesn’t sound like my folks didn’t get along. They were fine, for the most part. It’s just that when Dad wasn’t around and Chris was, Mom was almost like a girl. She was fun and silly and giggly, and Chris was somewhere between her best friend and her boyfriend. And when they teased me, which was their way of including me since I couldn’t always keep up with their joking, it felt good.

So we put dinner together, the three of us. We took our time, since Dad had said he wouldn’t be home any earlier than a usual work night. But he surprised us and showed up at three-thirty. He’d asked his assistant manager, Carol Burns, to come in on her day off so he could spend more time with Chris.

“Where’s this turkey dinner you promised me?” he bellowed, and he pretended he’d told us to expect him early when he knew he hadn’t, and he strutted around despite his limp, acting like he was annoyed and making silly faces. Mom put him to work polishing glasses and setting the table. He refused to iron the tablecloth, so Chris did that. Then Mom shooed us all into the living room while she finished things up.

“How about another one of your war stories, son?” he asked Chris, handing him a beer. I was thinking we’d probably heard enough of those, but obviously Dad wanted more.

Chris sat on the floor, his back to the sofa, and took a swallow. “You know, I have to go back there tomorrow. I’d rather not think about it. I’d much rather hear one of your stories. Something crazy somebody bought for their dog or their cat.”

Dad sat back and looked thoughtful for a minute, and then he nodded, taking a mouthful of beer. “Okay, okay. Here’s a silly one. You know how we have those books about how to raise everything from bearded dragons to pythons? Well, this one woman brought in her parrot and headed right for the books. Beautiful bird; bright green mostly—I think it was a Yellow-collared Macaw—nodding its head up and down and looking all around like it was taking everything in. She had it on her shoulder, and it was tethered to this leash she was holding, and you know our policy about having your pets on a leash being okay. So in she comes. She’s saying, ‘Einstein, don’t you remember being here last time? That nice young girl gave you a treat, remember?’ I think she was talking about last summer, when Martha was working. You remember her, Paul?”

I nodded; I’d worked in the store for the first time last summer, and I sure remembered Martha. She was about to head off to college in the fall. Long dark hair, deep brown eyes, and a body that wouldn’t quit.

“Anyway, as you know, when one of the millet packets breaks open, we hold the stuff aside for the parakeets we sell. But Martha must have given Einstein some. So Einstein is back, bringing that lady with him.” Dad chuckled at his own joke. “She marched right over to the books, looked through them for a minute, and then picked one up and opened it. She held it up to the bird. ‘What do you think, Einstein? Is this the one you wanted?’ He steps back and forth on her shoulder a few times, side to side, you know? Which she took for no!” He laughed and looked at Chris.

I looked at Chris, too. He seemed for all the world to be paying attention to Dad. Any casual observer would have been fooled. And I think Dad was fooled. But I wasn’t. Dad went on.

“So she says, ‘Okay, then, is this it?’ And she picks another one up, and his head bobs up and down. And she says, ‘Oh, good! We’ve found it.’ And she marches right up to the checkout counter with it!” He was laughing too hard to take a swallow from the bottle he’d raised toward his face, and he slapped his thigh. I was still watching Chris, who was doing his best to smile. Dad took a swig at last and then said, “And do you know, that book wasn’t about birds at all? It was about spiders!”

Now, personally, I thought this was the funniest part of the whole story, but Dad sank back into his recliner, satisfied. He sighed, shook his head, and drank some more beer.

After a bit Chris asked for another story, and Dad rambled on about a few things. I could tell he really wanted to hear more war stories, and I could also tell Chris was struggling with something. Maybe trying not to think about the war, like he’d said. It was a relief when Mom finally announced the turkey was ready to be carved, and Dad heaved himself up and went in to do his husbandly duty. I watched Chris until he realized I was looking at him.

“You okay, kid?” he asked.

“I was gonna ask you that.”

He looked away, lifted his bottle and drank, and he didn’t say anything else until we were called to the table.

Dinner was weird. That’s the best word for it. Right from the start, when Mom made us all say grace. We hadn’t done that since I was twelve, maybe? I was all ready to dig in, fork stabbed into a thick slice of white meat.

Her voice sounded almost eerie. “Let us bow our heads in a prayer of Thanksgiving.”

From the blank look on everyone else’s face, I was guessing she took all of us by surprise. But we bowed our heads, and she went on.

“Merciful Lord, thank you so much for allowing Chris to be home with us, even for a few days. Please watch over him and protect him as he leaves us again, even as he fights to protect the freedom we all enjoy. Thank you for this family and all the comforts you have given us. Thank you for the bounty of this meal and for your love. Amen.”

We all mumbled something that sounded enough like “amen” to satisfy Mom, I guess, ’cause she was beaming this smile all around the table when I looked up. I’m sure her intentions were great, but I couldn’t help feeling a little spooked. It didn’t stop me from eating, but I think we all felt—I dunno, maybe constrained after that little display of religious fervor. I could tell Dad was holding himself back from what he wanted, which was to talk about the war. Chris, of course, had come to the table already in a weird mood, and maybe I had too, because of him. Mom obviously could tell something was wrong with Chris, but she didn’t know what—or what to do about it. I was just trying to keep my head down. It felt like shooting of some kind was gonna happen sooner or later, at some point and for some reason I couldn’t predict because I didn’t know what was going on. But nothing happened.

Chris helped Mom clear the table, Dad went in the other room and turned on the TV, and I gathered the tablecloth and linen napkins together. I was on my way to the laundry room, all this cloth crumpled into my arms, when I saw Chris and Mom, alone together in the kitchen, get into this fierce hug. It was at that point that I decided the weirdness at the table must have been because Chris was leaving tomorrow, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant he had to go back to hell, and we had to stay here and worry about him. The reprieve of having him home had almost made things worse.

When I got back from the laundry room, Mom was alone in the kitchen, and no one was in with Dad. I debated: TV with Dad or cleanup duty with Mom? Wherever Chris was, I figured he’d probably come back to the kitchen. So that’s where I went.

“Can I help?”

Mom didn’t look at me right away; I think she was blinking tears out of her eyes. She turned a smile on me that was trying too hard to be a smile. “Sure, Paul. Why don’t you help separate the things that go into the dishwasher from the things that don’t? Watch out for those turkey skewers; they’re vicious.”

As bad as punji sticks?

Chris was gone a long time. At one point I peeked out to see if he’d gone into the living room too quietly for me to hear, but Dad was alone in front of the boob tube, watching some cop show. Finally I couldn’t stand it. “Where’s Chris?”

Mom took a deep breath. “He’s in your father’s den, dear. He said he had to make a phone call.”

I scowled. “Who would he call?”

“Whom, Paul. Whom would he call. I’m sure I don’t know. Maybe a girlfriend?” She kind of giggled; it sounded weird.

I blinked, feeling stupid. “Does he have a girlfriend?”

She stopped midway between counter and sink, her hands cupping bits of turkey she’d just wiped up. “I guess I don’t know of anyone special.” Her smile wobbled. “But you know he wouldn’t be likely to tell his mother!” She tried a laugh, but it wasn’t very convincing.

We finished our cleanup, the machine tethered to the faucet and churning away, and I had gone with Mom into the living room, pretending to watch Dad’s show but really just waiting for Chris to make an appearance—his last one before tomorrow, the day he’d leave us again. It became more and more obvious that he wasn’t with us, but nobody seemed like they dared say anything about it. Shit. His last night, and he can’t spend it with us? But then if he’s gonna be all morose, like he was at dinner, do I want him out here?

Yes, damn it; I did. I got up. I walked really quietly down the dark hall toward Dad’s den. The door was closed and there was just a little light coming from underneath. Standing there, ears straining, I tried to figure out if Chris was talking or listening or not on the phone at all. Every so often I could hear this odd sound, almost like a sharp intake of breath, and then silence. And then there’d be a kind of strangled noise. And then silence. I lifted my hand maybe three times, wanting so much to knock or turn the handle, anything to get that door out from between us, but something held me back. Finally I tiptoed away and went back to the waiting room. I mean, living room.

I don’t know what we were watching, because my eyes weren’t focused on the screen and my ears were tuned to any noises behind me that weren’t made by the dishwasher. It was an eternity, and in fact it was nearly ten o’clock, before Chris finally came in. He sat next to Mom on the couch, put his arm behind her shoulders, and leaned his head toward her. Nobody said anything. My throat started to get tight, and my eyes were burning. It was a minute before I recognized the signs for what they were and I focused on not crying. I wanted to look at Chris, to burn his features into my mind, but I didn’t dare.

He went to bed before I did. He was gonna have to leave, as he put it, at oh-dawn-thirty tomorrow morning so he could get his transport back without being AWOL. I went upstairs maybe half an hour after him, brushed my teeth, and almost opened his door. It was all the way closed, and I wanted in. I wanted to see him, to hear him say nothing was wrong, to have him tell me he’d be back in no time at all. And I stood there maybe ten seconds before I admitted that I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t some eight-year-old kid needing to have his tears brushed away by big brother. I went to my room.

I lay there for a while, listening to the sounds of my folks getting into bed themselves, before I snapped off the light and turned onto my side. But I wasn’t ready to fall asleep, so I turned onto my back again. Hands behind my head, I thought about jerking off, but I couldn’t even work up the energy for that. It was like everything in me was focused on the room on the other side of this wall. Just beyond this very wall, the one behind my head, was Chris’s bed, with Chris in it, the same Chris who might go over there and die before I ever saw him again.

Then I decided I was being morbid, and ridiculous. I nearly laughed; hell, maybe he was jerking off. This actually cheered me up a little, and I shifted my position so my head was closer to the wall. Again I almost laughed, because I could hear something. He was definitely doing something in there. I got onto my knees and pressed my ear to the wall.

He was crying. It sounded muffled, like he was sobbing into his pillow, but he was definitely crying. Gut-wrenching sobs. I pulled away and stared at the wall I couldn’t really see in the dark. What the fuck? Chris? The brave soldier, the guy who pulls his buddies out of punji pits, is in there sobbing like a baby?

But no; it wasn’t like a baby. There was way too much pain in it for that. He wasn’t crying for his bottle. It sounded like he was crying for his life.

I threw myself onto my stomach and covered my head with a pillow. I didn’t want to hear this. I couldn’t stand the thought of him in there, crying like that. My mind reached back over the last week, going through his stories, trying to come up with something he’d said, or something he’d left unsaid, that might account for this. He hadn’t overtold anything, hadn’t made himself out to be this big hero, and nothing he’d described made him sound like a coward. He’d done some heroic things, he’d done some crazy things. He’d helped his friends, they’d helped him. He’d almost made some of it sound like fun, or at least like it made for stories that would be good in years to come. It sounded like he’d made some friends who would be his friends until he died.

Until he died. Is that it? Is he afraid of dying?

Would I be? Would I lie in there sobbing the night before I had to go back to a place that was hot and muggy and full of bugs and bullets and bombs and beer and koon sa? Would I go back to a place where I didn’t know whether the Vietnamese girl I’d just met wanted to cut my throat? Or, really, when what I knew was that she did? Chris didn’t talk like that, he didn’t tell stories where the worst part was like some dark secret that could kill you, but I’d heard them, and I knew they were true.

Why hadn’t he told stories like that?

Thinking back again, none of it had that fog of not-knowing about it. None of it except maybe that comment from Mason, about when something unexpected happens and you just don’t know what to do. Sometimes in Chris’s stories he wasn’t sure where the enemy was, but he always knew who they were. There were no shades of gray. He didn’t talk to us about killing villagers, or wondering who was a spy. But I heard about that stuff, on TV and in newspapers. Why was it just occurring to me now that Chris never talked about that part of it? Maybe we were all just so glad to see him that we took whatever he gave us and accepted it, face value. Like we believed what he wanted us to believe.

And here was the proof. I was willing to bet anything that if I went into my folks’ room and told them their precious first-born was in his bed crying his eyes out, they’d tell me I was full of shit and to shut the hell up! Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but essentially it was right; they wouldn’t believe it. Or, they would refuse to believe it.

But it was real. I could hear it, or I imagined I could, right through my pillow. It was not the Chris that Chris wanted us to see, but it was real. I turned so that my feet were near the wall, my head toward the foot of the bed. I pulled my covers around until I’d made enough of a nest that I thought maybe I could sleep that way, not hear what was happening in Chris’s room, not have to know what I didn’t want to know. What he didn’t want me to know.

But it was no good. Before I knew my feet had hit the floor, they had carried me into the hall and stopped in front of Chris’s door. Should I knock or just go in? Should I give him a chance to get himself together or ambush him in his disgrace?

Was it disgrace?

What else could it be? I mean, my God! If I ever acted like this, and Dad heard me? Man, I don’t even want to think what he’d say, how he’d make me feel. But Chris gets away with it? After making us believe what a brave grunt he is?

I didn’t want to be angry with him. Really I didn’t. This was his last night at home before going back to a place nobody in their right mind wanted to be, and I wanted to be nice to him. But I wanted him to be nice to me, too, and he was just holed up in there disgracing himself. Getting away with something I would catch hell for, just because nobody would believe it of Chris.

I opened the door and stepped in.

Then I shut it behind me quickly, afraid the sounds would get out. In my heart of hearts, I really didn’t want to expose Chris, to do anything that would tarnish his image. I loved his image. Hell, I worshipped his image, and that’s partly why I was angry. He was destroying it.

He didn’t even know I was there. The light from the backyard spotlight Dad insists on leaving on all night was just enough to let me see that Chris was huddled under the covers, and just as I had imagined, his head was under a pillow. His arms were clamped down on either side; it’s a wonder he could breathe. I stood there as long as I could tolerate it, listening to something ugly and painful working its way up through his body until it came out in the vicinity of his face, and then I called his name.

“Chris?” It was softer than I’d expected, and he didn’t hear me. I tried again.

I heard a gasp. His body jerked, and he lifted onto his elbows. He made another gasping noise. It was like he couldn’t speak.

Now that I’m here, what am I gonna do about it? What can I say? What do I want him to say? I almost turned to leave.

He was breathing oddly, like you do when you’ve been crying so hard you can’t breathe normally, but he managed to say, “Paul?”

“What is it?” It was all I could think of.

He worked his way into a sitting position and ran the fingers of one hand into his hair. I reached over to flick the bedside lamp on. He rasped, “No! No. Don’t.”

Now what? But he hadn’t asked me to leave. So I felt my way across to where I knew his desk was, and I lifted the chair and walked it over near the bed. I sat down.

“What the hell’s wrong?” I tried again, in a whisper. He ran a hand over his face and groped for the tissue box, blowing his nose as quietly as possible. I added, “I mean, besides the fact that you have to go back. Is that it?” I don’t know what I was hoping. In the silence I thought, did I want that to be “it”? What would it mean, if that were it? And did I want to know what else it could be?

Finally he whispered, “No.”

But then nothing. I felt a need to fill the gap. “So it’s not that you’re thinking the odds are stacking up against you? It isn’t that the longer you’re over there, the more likely something is to happen?” It was what I’d been thinking.

I could barely see him shaking his head. He snuffled a few times and then said, “No. That’s not the way it works. It’s not like the real world, the world where real people live. We aren’t normal human beings over there. We live in the jungle, we go into the villages, and we kill people. Normal human beings don’t do that. Normal human beings die over there. They’re the ones in body bags.” He snuffled almost violently.

“So you’re not human anymore? Is that it?” I sounded sarcastic to my own ears. It wasn’t what I wanted, but what the hell was he getting at?

“I thought I wasn’t. I thought I was gonna make it.” He took a deep breath, and it shook his whole body. “So, I guess you’re partly right. Because I’m scared, Paul. I’ve been scared ever since I signed up, but tonight I’m scared shitless. I have nothing”—and his voice tightened so much it trailed away for a few seconds before he went on—“nothing to keep me alive anymore.”

I shook my head at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

His whisper was angry, sharp. “I’m saying it’s over! I’ve got nothing! There’s nothing to hold on to anymore! And when that happens to you, you either lose your mind or your life or both. I’ve seen it happen, over and over.”

“What’s over? Nothing’s changed, has it? The place is still there, the war’s still going on, your squad is still…” I stopped when I heard him gasp again, like he was trying not to sob. “What? Will you tell me what you’re talking about?”

He took a minute to recover. “You don’t want to know.”

I stood up, hovering over him. “Will you knock it off? You’re in here sobbing like a baby, and now you’re telling me you have nothing to live for, and I don’t want to know?” I felt like suddenly our roles were reversed. He was the kid brother, and I was the one who had the right to make him account for himself. He covered his face with his hands, and I waited. I stood there, half bending over him, my eyes boring holes into his head so that maybe I could see what the fuck was going on in there.

But he didn’t speak. I realized that probably he couldn’t; the way he was breathing made it seem like if he spoke, he’d scream. So I sat down again.

What’s changed? If something really has changed, wouldn’t it have to be sudden? Recent? I said, “Who were you talking to? In the den? Who’d you call?”

He started breathing in and out really quickly, like he was hyperventilating. God, there was something really, really wrong. This was so not Chris. I was getting worried now. I got up and sat beside him on the bed, and when I put my hand on his shoulder he trembled, shuddering all through.

He said, “He’s gone. He’s gone, and I’m alone.”

“Who? Who’s gone?”

It was like he could barely say the name. “Mason.”

“Mason, the guy in your squad?”

Chris pulled away from me and reached for more tissues. He grabbed a handful of them and held them over his face. He took several deep breaths and then said, “I loved him.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant—loved, past tense. “He’s dead?”

Chris nodded. “It was his parents I called. He had asked me to, while I was stateside, and I put it off until tonight. And when I called them, they said”—and he had to get his breath under control again—“he’d been killed. While I’ve been home. He’s gone.”

Shit. Well, this would put the fear of God into a guy. But—Chris’s reaction was still confusing me. All I could think of to say was, “That sucks.”

We sat there for nearly a minute, me desperate to think of something helpful to say, him still trying to get himself in hand and not doing very well. Then, again, he said, “I loved him.”

“You said that. I get it.”

“I don’t think you do.”

Now I was getting angry again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Paul, I loved him. I mean, I really loved him. And he loved me. We—I’m…gay.”

I didn’t know I stood up. All I knew was I wasn’t on the bed anymore. The three feet between us turned into thirty. My voice hoarse, I said, “You’re shittin’ me!” I wheeled away from him, paced across the room and back two, three times, I’m not sure. I was giving him time, time to take it back, time to say he was kidding, time to do anything that would undo what he’d just told me. I stopped in front of him, looked at the wall somewhere over his head, and asked, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

It wasn’t a question for him. It wasn’t a question he could answer. It was for me, but I couldn’t answer it, either. I don’t know where he was looking; I couldn’t look at him. He took a ragged breath and said, “You hate me.”

I backed up, nearly knocking the chair over. Do I hate him? Do I hate Chris, my hero, my big brother? Do I hate the guy who’s been the buffer between me and my dad’s disappointment that I’m not like Chris?

I walked toward the door. I wanted to get out, and I couldn’t leave. Finally I leaned against the frame with both hands. Wasn’t it just the other night I was lying in my room, wishing I could think of something bad Chris had done so I could be mad at him? Be careful what you wish for; isn’t that how the warning goes? Well, here it was. Wasn’t Chris asking me to hate him, really? Wasn’t he giving me reasons with both hands? On one, there was the fact that he was sobbing and moaning in fear, and on the other was the fact that he—I couldn’t even bring myself to think the word. But did I hate him? With something like fury, I realized I was about to cry. Me! I kept the tears at bay with words. I turned toward him.

“All my life, you’ve been the one. The good son. The shining boy. The one I was supposed to look up to. I’ve always come in second, always asking myself, ‘Why can’t I be more like Chris?’ Should I be like you now? Should I want boys?”

“Stop it!”

I didn’t want to stop it. I felt like I was on a roll, like I was about to say everything I’d wanted to say all my life, and finally he’d given me permission. Or at least an excuse. “I won’t stop it. You’re supposed to be the perfect son. And now I find out that not only are you a frightened sissy, but you’re a queer! This is what I’m supposed to look up to? You? My God!”

I had walked away from the door toward the window, and what light there was shone on his face. For some reason I still don’t understand, my knees buckled, and I fell onto the floor. And then I felt Chris’s arms around me. Half of me didn’t want him touching me. The other half, the half that won, reached my arms around him, too. But almost immediately, by some silent agreement, we let go. We sat cross-legged on the floor with him leaning his back against my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I can’t help it.”

“It’s okay,” I lied, wanting it to be true, knowing it wasn’t.

We sat for a while in silence, and then he said, “Paul? I need to ask you…I need…Please, Paul. Please. Don’t tell anyone.”

I knew what he meant. I nodded. “Do you think you ever will? Tell?”

“I won’t get a chance.”

“What? Why not?”

About twenty heartbeats went by. “I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit, Chris. Goddamn it, don’t talk like that. Just because Mason…” My voice trailed off. “Somebody else dying has nothing to do with whether you’re coming back. You’ve lost other friends, right? Maybe they didn’t mean the same to you, but lots of guys have died. That doesn’t mean you will. Lots of other guys come home.”

He didn’t answer. And I didn’t know what else to say. We sat there like that, maybe five more minutes. Then he said, “You’ve got school tomorrow.”

“Fuck school.”

“If you get a chance to do this, if the war’s still going on? Don’t join. Don’t go. Do anything you have to do, but don’t go over there.” He pulled away and turned toward me. “Do you hear? And don’t let Dad push you. Don’t let his own frustrated ambitions force you into something like this. Don’t try to live his life for him. Are you hearing me, Paul?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Did he do that?”

“Just don’t, okay? Don’t do it. If you have to go to Canada, you go to Canada.” His voice was getting louder, and I was afraid our folks would hear.

“Quiet!” I was already protecting his secret.

“This is important. Tell me you understand. Tell me you won’t let him do that to you. Tell me—”

“All right, all right! I won’t go.”

He was quieter now. “I mean it, Paul. Don’t let anything or anybody force you over there.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“And the other promise? Will you make that one, too?” I wanted to say what promise, but I knew. I must have waited too long, ’cause he said, “Will you?” I nodded. “Say it. Please.”

“I won’t tell Mom and Dad what you told me tonight.” It was the only way I could say it. And there was no way not to say it.

He took a breath, like he had something else to say, but then he kind of deflated. Buried in my own thoughts, I didn’t react. My brother was going away to die. My hero was already dead.