I told her what had happened. She listened and shook her head sympathetically and in the end she said, “We’ve got to get you out of those clothes and wash them before Mom gets back. And you need to take a bath.”
And Ariel who was an unjudging angel set about saving me.
• • •
That evening after dinner I got together a pickup game of softball with some of the other kids in the neighborhood. We played until the evening light turned soft blue and we couldn’t see to hit or to field anymore and suggestions were made of other games we could play that would prolong our easy camaraderie. But some had to go and so our gathering dissolved and we drifted away each of us to our own home. Jake and I walked together. With every step he slapped his ball glove against his thigh as if beating time with a drum.
“You still got all your fingers,” he said.
“What?”
“I figured you’d blow yourself to kingdom come.”
I knew what he was talking about. I thought of telling him the story of the exploded frog but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d been right in believing I had no business going with Gus and Doyle.
I said, “We had a good time. I set off some M-80s.”
“M-80s?” Even in the dark I could see that the huge pools of his eyes reflected both envy and censure.
When we reached the house my father was standing on the porch smoking his pipe. The ember in the bowl glowed brightly as he drew on the stem and I smelled the sweet drift of Cherry Blend. Gus was with him. They were talking quietly as friends do.
My father called to us as we came up the walk. “How’d the game go, boys?”
“Fine,” I said.
Gus said, “You win?”
“We played workup,” I replied in a cold tone. “Nobody won.”
“Hey, Frankie,” Gus said. “Could we talk? I told your dad about this afternoon.”
I looked at my father for any sign of reproof but in the shadow of approaching night with the warm light through the windows at his back he looked unconcerned. He said, “It would be a good idea.”
“All right,” I said.
Jake had paused on the steps and his eyes skipped back and forth between Gus and our father and me, and his own face was clouded with confusion.
Gus said, “Let’s take a walk.”
My father said, “How about a game of checkers, Jake?”
Gus left the porch and I turned from the house and side by side we walked into the twilight beneath the limbs of the elms and maples that arched the unlit and empty street.
We walked for a while before Gus said anything. “I’m sorry, Frankie. I shouldn’t have let that happen today.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. Doyle, he’s a certain kind of man. Not a bad man really but an unthinking man. Hell, so am I for that matter. The difference between us is that I have some responsibility for you and I let you down today. That won’t happen again, I promise.”
The crickets and the tree frogs had started to clip at the silence that came with the evening and above us through the breaks in the canopy of leaves the sky had begun to salt with stars. The houses set back from the street were charcoal gray shapes with windows like uninterested yellow eyes observing our passing.
I said, “What did Doyle mean, Gus, that Dad cracked during the war?”
Gus stopped and eyed the sky then tilted his head as if listening to the growing chorus that accompanied the approach of night. He said, “You ever talk to your dad about the war?”
“I try sometimes. I keep asking him if he killed any Germans. All he ever says is that he shot at a lot of them.”
“Frank, it’s not my place to talk to you about what your father experienced in the war. But I’ll tell you about the war in general. You talk to a man like Doyle and he’ll tell you a lot of bullshit. You watch John Wayne and Audie Murphy in the movie house and it probably seems easy killing men. The truth is that when you kill a man it doesn’t matter if he’s your enemy and if he’s trying to kill you. That moment of his death will eat at you for the rest of your life. It’ll dig into bone so deep inside you that not even the hand of God is going to be able to pull it out, I don’t care how much you pray. And you multiply that feeling by several years and too many doomed engagements and more horror, Frankie, than you can possibly imagine. And the utter senselessness and the total hopelessness become your enemy as much as any man pointing a rifle at you. And because they were officers, some men like your father were forced to be the architects of that senselessness, and what they asked of themselves and of the men they commanded was a burden no human being should have to shoulder. Frankie, your father someday may tell you about the war or he may not. But whatever you hear from Doyle or from anyone else will never be your father’s truth.”
“You’re not afraid of fireworks,” I said.
“I’ve got my own devils. And Doyle, he’s got his.”
We’d walked to the end of a street with a guardrail and thirty yards beyond it ran the river. In the pale thin light that was all that was left of the day the water had become blue-black and looked like a satin ribbon torn from a dress. Far off along the highway to Mankato car headlights flew across the face of the hills and blinked off and on as they were obscured occasionally by trees and barns and outbuildings and they reminded me of fireflies. I sat on the guardrail and looked back at the Flats where the lights of the homes held constant.
“I’ve got twenty-seven dollars saved, Gus. I was going to buy a bunch of fireworks. I don’t want fireworks anymore.”
Gus sat down beside me. “I’m guessing you’ll find something to spend it on, Frankie. Hell, if you can’t think of anything else, I could always use a loan.” He laughed and bumped my leg playfully with his own and then he stood. He glanced back at the river where bullfrogs sang a chorus so loud you could barely hear yourself think. “We’d best be getting home,” he said.
10
On Sunday morning Jake complained that he wasn’t feeling well and asked if he could stay home. For me skipping church was always a delightful daydream. The idea of missing out on three services and lounging around the house in my pajamas was enough to make me drool. If the request had come from me my mother would have suspected something but my brother didn’t fake things. She felt his head with the back of her hand then used a thermometer. He didn’t have a fever. She gently probed his neck feeling for swelling and found none. When she asked him what specifically were his symptoms he gave her a lackluster stare and said that he just felt really lousy. She talked it over with my father and they agreed that he should stay in bed. The plan was that we’d do the service in Cadbury and check on him when we came back for the worship in New Bremen.