Last Summer Boys(31)

Gathering my last ounce of strength, I get to my feet and cross the yard toward him. As I go, I see a mistiness curling along the base of our hill, rising off Apple Creek, blanketing the tree roots. Soon, those long white fingers will drift across our yard.

“Dad?”

“Hm.”

“What’s a man’s dignity?”

I did not even know the question was in me.

“Why do you ask?”

“Today on the road, when Sam was so sad about his mailbox, he said, ‘A man’s got his dignity.’ I was just wondering what it means, is all.”

Dad nods and his cigar trails lines of silver into the blue-black bowl above us. The first stars are coming out.

“Dignity is your value, Jack. It’s something you and every living person have just because you are.”

“Is that all?” I ask.

“Isn’t that enough?”

I’m quiet.

“That’s plenty,” Dad tells me. “In fact, it’s everything. The dignity of others is how we know some actions are good and others bad. It’s how you know it isn’t right to steal, or to kill without grave reckoning, or to lie.”

“You get all that from dignity?”

“You do.”

Dad looks down at me, and it seems he’s standing very tall.

“Crash Callahan is dragging more than Myrtle’s mailbox through the dust. It’s Sam’s understanding of his own self-worth.”

“Oh.”

Above us a shooting star traces its way across the night sky.

“Can you lose your dignity?” I ask after it disappears on the other side of the world.

Dad puffs a long time on the cigar before he answers.

“I don’t think so,” he says slowly. “You might forget you have it, but you can never lose it.” The end of the cigar glows brightly. “How’s that?”

“That’s good.” I yawn.

At the base of our hill, the mist has thickened.

“Are you going to make it all the way up those stairs?” Dad asks.

I nod my head, but Dad knows what I want, and I don’t complain when he lifts me up in his arms and carries me across the yard to the house.





Chapter 11


BOBBY





A river of black tar oozes under a fiery sky. On the far bank, boys in uniform line up and wait patiently beneath dark trees.

I am in the jungle again. My feet are rooted to the bank, like I’m ankle-deep in dried concrete.

A scream builds in my throat—and sticks there, like I’ve swallowed an egg whole.

The first boy comes into that open clearing and stands still as a statue. Waiting.

I lurch forward, and discover my feet do move. I take a slow, dragging step for the edge.

The shots begin upriver, angry fireflies flashing from a tangled mesh of vines and roots. A sudden metallic rattle.

That first boy falls stiff as a board, end over end, down into the dark river. He disappears without a splash.

“No!”

No sooner does the word tear from my lips than that awful machine-gun rattling begins again. Its murderous wail drowns me out, and a second boy slips below the surface.

Pete will be up soon. He’s in line right now, waiting his turn.

I leap. For a moment I hang between water and sky. The river is thick and warm as blood. I fight my way through it for the far bank, clawing to get my head above the surface so I can shout while I swim. When I do, I see the bank is much higher than the river. I’m going to have to climb.

A familiar shape strolls to the edge of that cliff. Tall with broad shoulders. Moppy head of hair. My brother.

“Pete! No!”

A mouthful of warm water gurgles my words.

But Pete hears me. He stops and bends slightly from the waist, looking down into the river, searching for me.

“Run!” I try to scream, just as that rattle begins again.





There is a single mosquito tapping against the inside of my bedroom window when I awake. I watch it strike the glass, buzz off angrily, circle about, and come around again, only to fly into the glass once more.

I draw a long, deep breath and let the air out into the feeble light. Dawn soon. Sights of the river and that fiery sky fade.

Inside, I’m still screaming.

Time’s running out. Pete’s eighteenth birthday is just a few weeks away. Frankie and me need to make him famous before then. Famous people don’t get drafted. Famous people don’t get sent off and killed.

I peel damp sheets away from me and kick them in a bunch down to the foot of my bed. Morning air is cool on my skin. I draw another deep breath.

Frankie. Frankie’s here. Frankie knows how to write. We’ve got him a typewriter. And he’s passed all of Pete’s tests, so he can come along on the search for that old fighter jet. Maybe we could even start the search today.

An itching on my wrist. A red bump. That mosquito bit me sometime in the night.

It’s still buzzing over by the window. Once, he dips down to the windowsill, and I think he’ll finally get out of our room. But he dips too low, and instead of flying out into the coming day, he buzzes around Frankie’s head.

Enough.

I look around for something to swat him with, but all I see is Will’s Saturday Evening Post magazine on the floor by the bunk, the one with Senator Kennedy’s boyish face on the cover. That’s no good.