Linger (13 page)

“He said he realized it was all a mistake, and he said he was totally to blame. I said I want some of that blame, if the big sin was we fell in love.” She shook her head. “Then he just about killed me. He said he was just lonely. He said it wasn’t even close to love. He said I was infatuated like a schoolgirl, and he was bored and lonely.”

“Maybe he was making that all up.”

“His eyes were ice cold.”

“Yeah.”

“It was hideous, too, because he didn’t have on his built-up shoe. He had to hobble around. He was embarrassed, I think. He looked so … crippled.”

“He is.”

“He never seemed that way…. You’re the only one I can talk to. I could have talked in front of Sloan, too, but I’m glad you came out with me.”

“I have to be home in time for Bobby’s arrival.”

“I heard he was coming tonight. All of Linger’s excited.”

“So am I. I haven’t seen him in ten months.”

“Isn’t it funny, Gary? Jules and I lasted about as long as that war did.”

“Yeah.”

“It was like we had our own Desert Storm.”

We didn’t say anything for a while.

We drove around.

There was a line of kids at McDonald’s. They were interviewing for the summer night shift.

School would be out in a few weeks.

Lynn said, “I don’t believe him when he says he was just bored! How could he say that?”

“Maybe he’s afraid your father will bring him up on charges, Lynn.”

“My father
would,
too, but we were
alone,
Gary. He could have said I love you but we can’t be together.”

“Would you have accepted that?”

“No.”

Then she went over it all again, how she’d rung the bell, how he’d said he supposed she could come in, the cold blue of his eyes, how he’d said he’d been bored, the bare foot, how shriveled and white it was. She’d never seen the bad foot.

Then she was quiet, and then she went over it all again.

I wondered if any girl would ever feel that way about me, because I doubted Sloan ever would, even if I turned around, went back to her house, and told her it was finished, I needed sex, good-bye.

I think she’d have said you suck, anyway, Gary … or something close to that.

I wondered if I’d ever get into anything deeper someday, and I remembered when I’d stand up in Lingering Shadows and spray Red around and wish for a dark, lethal love.

Lynn thanked me for putting up with her, and she said she was going to be a counselor that summer at that camp where they spoke only French. She was going to leave for there in a few days.

We pulled in front of my house, and I got out, wished her luck, and started up the walk.

My eye caught something to my left, coming down the street, limping along, and I thought, My God, it’s him: Jules Raleigh.

But he was on a cane, and as he got closer, under the streetlight, I could see the wire of the hearing aid going down his shirt, and I could see the side of his neck that was bright red and swollen, with a scar that spread to his ear, pulling it closed.

He said my name, and he said something about his plane landing early, and he said he’d gone out for some ice cream.

“What flavor?” I said.

Because we were the cool, cool Peel brothers, the ones who didn’t dance, or blubber the way I was doing when I grabbed him.

O
N MY BIRTHDAY, JULY
2, I got my driver’s permit. On the Fourth, Dad let me take his Dodge Dart to drive Bobby up to Linger after the parade.

The day began with the church bells pealing, and then the First Presbyterian carillon played songs like “Faith of Our Fathers” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Before the parade everyone was invited to a thanksgiving service at Temple Emmanuel.

The mayor had asked citizens to hold off on fireworks until that evening, but we could hear firecrackers popping in the distance as we came out of the temple.

Bobby refused to ride around on a float, and they put him up front in a Chevrolet convertible the town supervisor was driving.

The school bands followed it, and clubs like Rotary, Elks, Lions, American Legion, and Veterans of Foreign Wars marched next, with their banners and floats.

Sloan’s father was marching in his old Army greens with some other Vietnam vets, shouting as a cadence:

We’re standing tall,

We’re looking good,

We ought to be in Hollywood.

One—two—three—four.

The “Hollywood” made me think of Bobby’s pal Movie Star, the only missing piece in a perfect celebration. Bobby said we couldn’t expect someone in his shape to make the trip on a crowded weekend.

He said he’d see Sanchez on his way back through New York. Bobby had one more stint in a rehab hospital to endure before he got his discharge.

My brother was even getting along with Mr. Dunlinger. He said one thing the war had taught him was to let go of excess baggage. If you don’t need it, don’t carry it around.

After the parade, Mom and Dad joined the throng walking from center town up to Linger. Bobby and I were in one of the few cars heading up Highland Hill. People seemed to want to soak up the sun and exercise en masse. Berryville looked like a town invaded by a marathon, only everyone was walking instead of running.

In the distance Linger was shining like some great castle festooned with flags. The Berryville High Marching Band was assembled on the porch, piping everyone into the buffet in Bobby’s honor.

Bobby was in one of his good moods that day. Sometimes he was angry and depressed, but not that day. He even wore his uniform, when he’d said he wouldn’t, originally. I think he did it for Mom and Dad, and for Linger, too. Everyone wanted to get in the spirit of things: welcoming home the war hero and all. How could they do it if the hero was in civvies?

Dunlinger had a special table for the press. They’d come from all over Philadelphia. Some with TV cameras, some ready for live remotes. There was a representative from
People
magazine there, too, plus an ABC unit from New York and a representative from
The Phil Donahue Show
looking things over.

Berryville had never seen anything like it.

In the car my brother said, “I hope I didn’t keep Lynn from enjoying this. I hope she didn’t make an early departure because of me.”

“She’s at camp.”

“She’s still going to camp?”

“She’s a counselor now.”

We hadn’t talked about her at all. The first night he was home, he told all of us he didn’t want to.

Now he said, “She was a great fantasy. When I was a kid I couldn’t even look closely at her. I never knew what she had on. I couldn’t face her, I thought she was so fantastic.”

“Me too, but I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Who didn’t?”

“Do you still?”

He laughed. “I fell a little in love with my own version of her. I never really knew her. By the time your letter caught up with me, about her with someone else—was it Jules Raleigh?”

“Yeah.”

“By the time I got it, I was in Denver. I was glad I’d made the whole thing up and didn’t have to come back to someone real. I could never be like Movie Star. I could never trust a girl enough to let her stay now that I’m this wrecked: a cripple, a deafie, shrapnel lodged in me like lice in a stray dog’s fur.”

“Don’t make it worse than it is,” I said.

“He wrote me, you know. Mr. Raleigh wrote me.”

“I didn’t know that. When you were in the Gulf?”

“No, later. I was in the hospital. He was already kicked out of here.”

“He wrote you from Vermont?”

“Yeah. He said he’d heard about the big celebration at Linger, and he was sorry to miss it.”

“No one there knows the truth.”

“Linger’s not about truth…. He said something I liked. He said experience is a hard teacher, because you get the test first and the lesson afterward.”

“He dumped her, you know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I don’t think he had a choice with Mr. D. on his case.”

“Probably not.”

I wasn’t going to tell him about Mom bringing the boil to a head with the Camel cigarette story. She didn’t want me to say anything about it. She was really ashamed of her part in all of it now. She’d finally seen the truth.

But I did tell Bobby that Lynn had returned all his letters to me, and her mother had given me an unopened one that had arrived from the Gulf after Lynn left. Lynn had asked her to.

We were driving very slowly up Highland Hill so we wouldn’t run over one of Berryville’s own. Everyone who noticed us was waving and calling out Bobby’s name, calling out “Welcome home!”

“My letters to her are so dull,” said Bobby. “Maybe I could publish them in a book called
War Is Exciting but Are Those Who Fight It
?”

“How about
Letters I’d Have Never Answered Except for the War
?” I shouted so he’d hear me. He had a lot of trouble hearing.

They weren’t very funny jokes, but we were both laughing hard. I think we were glad things almost seemed the same with us; the war hadn’t changed that.

It was good to see Bobby slap his knee laughing.

Sometimes the expression on his face was so dark, I wished there was a way he could put some of it into words, and that it’d help him to have me listen.

But when he was like that, I knew enough to leave him alone.

I can tell you something about yellow ribbons. I hope I never see another one. They were like an invasion of canaries flapping on every tree limb as we drove into Linger.

I knew who’d have to take them down, too.

The B.H.S. Marching Band was playing “Dixie” for no reason I could think of, and about a half dozen tail-wagging town dogs were running through the beds of petunias that had come up red, white, and blue.

“Drive up to the back entrance,” said Bobby. “It’ll be easier.”

He was right. There was no way he could walk through the crowd without people stopping him, or reaching out to touch him, or snapping his photograph.

I saw this beautiful, blond-haired girl in a red dress out by the back steps, and my heart did a flip.

“Did you see her?” I said to Bobby.

“I thought you had a girl,” said Bobby, grinning.

“But did you
see
her?”

“I didn’t take a good look.”

“Now I know why the heart will wander.”

“Speaking of wandering hearts,” said Bobby, “isn’t that Betty Chayka over there?”

“She always asked for you,” I said. “Did I write you that?”

We were pulling into a parking place reserved for Bobby when we heard Dunlinger’s voice calling his name.

“Himself,” I said.

“Yeah, what’s with him? He’s running toward us like his pants are on fire.”

The minute I cut the motor, he was around on Bobby’s side, opening the door.

“What’s the matter, Mr. D.?”

“You’ve got to come directly to my office, Bobby.”

“What’s the matter?” Bobby asked again.

“Just come!” he said.

“Me too?” I said.

“No, Gary. I only want Bobby.”

He was hovering over Bobby, as though breathing down his neck would make him move faster.

Bobby was going along on his cane, slowly, his cap tucked into the epaulet on his uniform. He was letting his hair grow long in back. He said he was going for a ponytail when he got mustered out, probably in September.

I watched them go, Dunlinger’s hands moving in the air, as they always did when he was upset about something.

I wandered back up toward the rear steps, and I saw the girl in the red dress again.

I’d never seen her around Berryville, never seen anyone who was even close.

I wondered if she’d come down from Philly for the occasion, and I used that as an excuse to talk to her.

“No,” she said, “I’m here with my boy friend…. Wasn’t that Robert Peel?”

“He’s my brother,” I said.

“He’s why we’re here.”

“He’s why everybody’s here today.”

“No. I mean, he’s why my boyfriend came from New York. He’s inside now—in the owner’s office? Have you heard of Gus Sanchez?”

T
HE BAND WAS PLAYING
“Hey, Jude.” He came out the back door with Bobby as Amy and I were standing in the sun, watching Gulf, the Dunlingers’ new Persian kitten, chase one of the big dogs on her spidery legs.

I held the door for them. Sanchez was first.

Somehow it was worse that it was the face. I remember that I sucked in my breath when I first saw him, and my breath came back in a phony-sounding cough. My heart felt as though it would come through my shirt.

One eye had a black patch. There was not much left of his nose, and part of one lip and his chin were gone. He was in dress uniform, on two canes. Behind him my brother, on his cane, was trying to direct him down the stairs. Amy stepped in to help.

“Here we go,” she said; something like here we go. I saw Bobby’s face next, saw him seething, heard him snarl at me, “Gary, get the car!”

“Shall I take him home?”

I was talking about Sanchez as though he wasn’t there, and Bobby didn’t bother with introductions.

He said, “You’re going to take all of us back to the house!”

Then he told Sanchez to wait at the bottom of the steps, he’d be back, and he said the same thing to Amy: wait, be right back.

She called after him, “Don’t
you
want to stay?”

Bobby didn’t answer. We were walking side by side back toward the Dodge.

“What happened?” I said.

“I’ve got to get out of here!”

“What did Dunlinger say?”

“He said there’s a friend of yours in my office. I think under the circumstances you’d better send him away, Bobby.”

“He said
that
?”

“He said he’s going to make everyone nervous and depressed, Bobby. I’m as sympathetic as the next man, he said, but you’re asking too much of people with this fine young man if you put him on display. And it isn’t fair to
him,
either, Bobby, he said, it’ll humiliate him.”

“Did Sanchez hear this?”

“No. And he didn’t hear the part about the seating arrangements being already fixed for the speakers’ table, and anyway, how could we expect people to enjoy their lunch, looking at, quote, that poor fella—his face isn’t even human anymore, unquote.”