On the first day of eighth grade, Nicky sat in the fourth row, close to the window. He could feel the warm afternoon air, which reminded him of summer. He wore new dress shoes, new gray slacks, a white shirt fresh from the cellophane package, and last year’s green clip-on tie. The tight collar, the stiff shoes, the scratchy pants reminded him that summer was gone, done, over.
Nicky consoled himself with this fact: “In the third semester of this very school year, Roy will be home.” He opened his new notebook and flipped about three-quarters through, drew an X in ink on a page, and thought, “I will be taking notes on this page when Roy comes home. Or at least doodling on this page when Roy comes home.”
After lunch, Mr. Sullivan passed out American history textbooks. They were brand new, hot from the presses, shiny, sleek smelling, crackly in the binding when opened. Nicky turned directly to the back pages to see how up-to-date this edition was. His previous American history text did not include the outcome of the Korean War. This edition went clear through to Kennedy. There was a portrait of the president and a news photo of Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy bathed in bright sunlight, riding in the blue Lincoln Continental in which he was assassinated.
“By the time we are reading this in class, Roy will be home,” Nicky thought.
Nicky sought out the single paragraph that recounted Kennedy’s death. He felt odd, reading in a history book about events he clearly remembered.
“No mention of Dad’s involvement in the shooting,” Nicky thought. He shook his head, embarrassed by the memory. “How could I have been so stupid?” He smiled at his private joke, and at how foolish he was when he was a kid.
“I’ll never be that stupid again,” Nicky noted.
Nicky flipped back to the section on World War II. He loved reading about World War II. That war was over. We won. The troops were home, showered with gratitude, love, confetti, drinks on the house, and rousing documentaries such as Victory at Sea.
“Mr. Martini, what are you doing there?” It was Mr. Sullivan, another new teacher, addressing him from the front of the class.
“Nothing.”
“You mean, ‘Nothing, SIR.’ You must be doing something.”
“I was reading. Sir.”
“Did I instruct the class to read?”
“No.”
“You mean, ‘No, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes? I instructed the class to read?”
“No. I mean, no sir.”
“Then do not read. Understood?”
The class tittered, and the fun was out of Nicky’s game of flipping ahead and dreaming of spring.
When he got home from this first day of school, Nicky found Mom at the kitchen table, peeling apples. Four pie plates layered with floury crust were lined up on the countertop. Water bubbled furiously in a large pot. A pile of eggplants, stacked like cord-wood, awaited peeling. A lineup of tomato cans, super-jumbosized, awaited opening.
“What’s wrong?” Nicky said. “Why are you cooking like that?”
“Like what?” Mom said. “Nothing’s wrong. Don’t be such a worrywart.”
She dropped a peeled apple into the bowl and selected another apple.
“There’s a letter from your brother over there if you want to see it.”
“What’s wrong with Roy?”
“Nothing is wrong,” Mom said. “Calm yourself.” She let a ribbon of apple peel fall onto the nest of apple peels on the table. “Roy is fine. But your father is going to be beside himself when he reads it. Sometimes I don’t know about Roy. What’s the matter with that kid?”
Nicky dropped his book bag and plucked Roy’s letter from the counter. The letter was written in tiny lettering on the front and back of a flimsy slice of tissue paper.
Dear Gang,
I guess I don’t know how to say this so I just will. Last night I saw combat action. I am all right but it was quite a scare.
I guess I will start at the beginning. I was getting sick and tired of working day and night as an office clerk while others are out there in the bush risking their butts. I felt like a goof off.
One of the fellows in maintenance even volunteered to go out into the bush but his commo said no way. At least he pulls guard duty every two weeks and that is a bit more dangerous because you are out on the perimeter, on guard and so on. I don’t even do that because my commo says our office is so fouled up it will take a year to get it back in order and so he made a deal and he doesn’t let any of us do guard work because he needs us in the office 14 hours a day. I asked him once twice and three times to please let me do guard duty and he said no and then the fourth time he finally said, “Okay, Martini, if you are so anxious to get your buttocks blown up go ahead but just for one night.”
They drove us out to our bunkers in the afternoon. The bunkers are sandbagged with little slits to look out of. There’s also a cot. Boy did it stink. There are three men to a bunker and two are awake while one sleeps. It was a quiet night while I was on watch except for a few flares and the helicopters going by and our artillery going off every hour or so. I was asleep at 2:30 AM when there was a big WHOOSH and a loud explosion that shook the bunker. I fell out of the cot. That was my only wound, a scraped knee. (Do not worry, Mom, I washed it and put a band-aid on it. Ha ha.) The VC were firing 140MM rockets at us and at the base camp. They fired 14 rockets and we sat in the bunker sweating it out and I prayed a lot. Nobody knew if the bunker would take a direct hit and survive and to tell you the truth none of us wanted to find out. It was over in a few minutes but I was shaking the rest of the night.
Now here is the awful strange thing about war. Only one rocket landed in camp but it landed between my barracks hut and the bunker we use for shelter and it caught one of the guys from my barracks and killed him. He was Joey Carlisto, a nice kid from St. Louis. Remember I told you we were playing stickball here? Joey was our second baseman. I often walked with him from the mess hall. I might have been with him that night running for the shelter. He liked the Cardinals. We are all pretty sad and it was real creepy to look at his stuff and his bunk until an officer came and packed up all his things to ship home.
Do not worry, Mom, because you have as much chance to get hit by a rocket here as getting hit by lightning. Joey Carlisto was just unlucky. That’s the way we look at it. Also, there will be no more guard duty for me. My commo said it will take two years to clear up the backed-up paperwork in the office and I am his best typist. So I will type away the rest of my tour, and now at least I know I have done my part even if it was just one night.
Love to all. Be home in 27 weeks.
—Roy
PS—How is Checkers?
Nicky placed the paper to his face, hoping for a whiff of Roy’s aftershave.
“Don’t rub that on your face. Who knows where it’s been,” Mom said. She waved the apple peeler. “So what do you think of that letter? What’s with that kid? Your father specifically told him not to volunteer for dangerous duty. You knew that, right? Remember that letter you mailed for me? That was in the letter.”
“He went out and did it anyhow,” Mom said. She let the apple peeler fall onto the table. She took a deep, shuddering, tear-choking sigh. She clasped her hands over her eyes.
“Just thank God he’s all right,” Mom said from behind her hands. “I keep thinking of that Joey boy’s mother. I won’t relax until my baby comes home.”
“I’m going out to sit on the steps for a while,” Nicky said.
“Take a jacket. It’ll get chilly. Be careful. Watch out for Mr. Feeley. Please Nicky, I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.”
Nicky rapped on the door to 2-C. He heard footsteps inside the apartment, saw a shadow under the door. But the door did not open.
“Lester, I can hear you,” Nicky said testily. He was not in the mood for Lester’s shenanigans.
“Present,” Lester said from behind the door.
“So open up.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just got out of the shower.”
Nicky didn’t say anything.
“I’m not wearing any clothes.”
Nicky didn’t want to know that.
“Whatever. I’ll be down on the front steps. Don’t forget your pants.”
Nicky reclined on the front steps and watched the sun set behind the aspirin factory. Mom was right about the chill, as usual. Nicky pulled on his old red baseball jacket. He had not worn the jacket since way back in the spring. He noticed it was short in the sleeves.
“I’m growing?” he wondered.
Lester arrived. Nicky saw that his hair was not wet, and his fingernails were dirty. He did not look like a boy fresh from the shower.
Nicky told him the story of Roy’s letter. He confessed about the letter from Dad, the one he threw down the sewer. As he spoke, Nicky was surprised he was telling anyone about the dirty, horrible deed.
Lester adjusted the glasses on his nose. He squinted and worked his jaw, as if chewing on something.
“This is the way I see it,” Lester announced suddenly. “Because you threw your daddy’s letter down the sewer, your brother volunteered for guard duty and might have been killed because of it.”
“Yes,” Nicky admitted woozily, eyes stinging.
Lester continued, “But because you threw your daddy’s letter down the sewer, Roy volunteered for guard duty. And his life was probably saved because of it. Roy might have been caught between the barracks and the shelter by the rocket, just like his friend. If he had not volunteered for guard duty, which put him in the bunker that night instead. See?”
Nicky nodded. It was a blessing to have a best friend. Nicky was especially grateful to have a regular Encyclopedia Brown for a best friend.
Nicky said, “I guess nothing is simple these days.” He planned to read ahead tonight in his history notebook, in the section on World War II. The section on World War II would be simple.
The boys stood and walked up the steps and into the courtyard of Eggplant Alley. There were orange lights behind some of the windows. Dishes clattered. Faucets rushed. Televisions blathered. Mr. Storch’s xylophone rang out. The sounds surrounded the boys and gathered them in as they walked deeper into the horseshoe, toward Building B.
“Wasn’t that pretty gutsy of Roy to do guard duty?” Nicky said.
“You bet. Say, anybody who is over there has plenty of guts. My daddy says there are a million ways to get killed in a war. He knew a fellow in Korea who was killed by a can of tomatoes thrown out of a passing airplane.”
Nicky made a mental note to write to Roy, to warn against tomatoes and airplanes.
“Feel better?” Lester said.
“Plenty.”
Nicky had an urge to buy a nice gift for this Lester, a present for nothing in particular, a present just because.
Lester shuddered in the brisk air and said, “Fall is coming. Then winter. Then the spring.”
The spring. Nicky felt light-headed, dizzy, sick to his stomach. He thought about the spring, when Lester’s father would come home from the war. He imagined Lester’s father taking one look at Eggplant Alley and packing up his wife and kid and fleeing north, back to Hick-city. Nicky wondered what he would do without Lester. He shivered at the possibility of another good-bye in the spring. Not again, not another one.
“In the spring,” Nicky said. “Know what? In the spring, we really oughta give stickball another shot. This time let’s make it work. We can do it, if we really try. If there’s a will, there’s a way. Whatever it takes. Let’s make a pact.”
“Very interesting,” Lester said. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Promise?”
“Surely. It’s a promise.”
Nicky pulled open the door to Building B. He took a last sniff of courtyard air. He thought the air smelled of liver and onions, but also of autumn, of change, of promise.