Amerika by Brauna E. Pouns, Donald Wrye Read Free Book Online Page B

talking about.
    As the meeting broke up, the men headed for the doorway amid a humming chorus of gripes, groans, and unresolved complaints. Peter Bradford, having heard enough 'of his neighbors’ sorrows for one morning, hoped to slip away without being buttonholed. But as he was halfway down the corridor, Ward Milford motioned him over. The deputy sheriff looked dramatically pale and tenser than he had seemed at breakfast that same morning.
    “What is it, Ward?” asked Peter, with ill-concealed impatience.
    “New Exile list just came in.”
    “Can’t it wait? I really need to get out of here.” “No, Peter. It can’t wait. Read it.” He thrust the computer printout into Peter’s hands and scrutinized his expression as the county administrator scanned the list of unfamiliar names. For a moment he had the distracted look of a busy man whose time is being wasted. Then he winced.
    “Devin.”
    “Yes. My brother Devin’s coming home.”
    Peter paused and his gaze seemed to look back twenty, thirty years. “Your brother; my friend. You’d think we’d be a little glad. Know what I mean?”
    “You get used to things the way they are,” said Ward. Not too many bumps. “Everything in its place.” “And some people’s place is to be gone.”
    “We’ll get used to him not gone just like we got used to him gone.”
    “Maybe not so easily,” said Peter. “I love your brother, and he’s trouble.”
    “I iove my brother, too. And I hate myself for half wishing that he wasn’t coming back.”
    Peter Bradford walked out into the daylight alone. His mind reeled and the sudden glare stung his eyes. He wrestled with his conflicting emotions about Devin M i l ford’s imminent return. He’d worked so hard to establish order, to keep the peace, to maintain some semblance of normalcy among his neighbors. Yet he knew all that he’d achieved was fragile. He knew the unrest and the anger that remained, just waiting to be set off. He trembled to acknowledge that maybe he himself yearned secretly for the explosion. It was the kind of daydream he could not allow himself.
    Suddenly, Peter was seized by an urgent longing to talk to and be comforted by his wife. Walking quickly across the town square, seeing nothing along the way, he hurried to the state-owned grocery store where he knew Amanda would be shopping. Amanda, as the wife of the county administrator, didn’t need to stand in line with the others as they waited for their scanty rations of flour, vegetables, and sometimes meat. She chose to. The thought of special treatment was repellent to her.
    “Peter,” she said cheerfully as he moved toward her, “what brings you—”
    “I need to talk to you,” he said. “Come across to the park with me.”
    Startled by his urgency, Amanda Bradford hesitated. She glanced over her shoulder and thought of asking the woman in back of her to hold her place in line. But no, even that might be perceived as special privilege, might create resentment. She silently abandoned the queue and followed her husband.
    Peter Bradford sat down on the edge of a battered bench, oblivious to the cold. His wife sat beside him. She reached for both his hands and tried to read his agitated face. “It’s Devin . .
    Amanda’s first thought was that Devin Milford was dead. Her breath caught.
    “He’s,coming home.”
    “Thank God.” Amanda caught the fleeting wounded look on her husband’s face, but it was already too late to explain. “When did he get out of the hospital?” “He wasn’t in the hospital, Amanda. He was in a prison camp.”
    “All this time?”
    Peter nodded.
    “Those bastards.”
    Peter moved toward her, then thought better of it, staying where he was, a little hurt, perhaps half angry. “Yeah. Well, I thought you’d like to know.”
    “Oh, Peter,” she said. “Don’t. I hate what happened to Devin, and I’m glad he’s going to be all right— whatever that means—but we’ve been married twenty years, for