Ash Wednesday by Chet Williamson, Neil Jackson Read Free Book Online

greeting, stopped talking, and went back to watching cars.
    Brad watched too for a while, then turned to face the old man. "Eddie?"
    " Mmm ?"
    "Next time you see Rorrie . . . say hi for me, will you?"
    Eddie Karl smiled, nodded, and spat. This time he made the street, and his smile broadened. "Not that old yet," he said.
    ~*~
    Rorrie Weidman's body came back in October, when Brad was away at State. The burial was held on a Wednesday, so there would have been no way for Brad to have attended, even if he'd known. As it was, he didn't find out until two weeks later, from an out-of-date Messenger his mother sent him, and he gave it little thought. A dull, nearly forgotten regret had replaced the sorrow and disbelief he'd first felt, and his mind was primarily concerned with (a) keeping Bonnie while at the same time building up his relationship with Louisa Brewer, who'd let him fuck her on their first date inside a walk-in closet in a friend's apartment, (b) battling to keep his grades from slipping even further, and (c) whether or not to cut down on some of his campus activities. The leaders of the antiwar group he'd joined as a freshman were still strident and even more demanding than before, requiring his presence at a rally, a sit-in, a demonstration, on evenings before tests for which he should have been rabidly studying.
    Finally, the draft lottery solved his problems once and for all.
    There must have been a hundred of them packed into the small lounge, each jockeying for a view of the screen on which their fates would be decided. Brad sat toward the back of the room with his roommate, not caring that the screen was blocked by assorted long-haired and short-cropped heads. When it was time, he could hear the numbers, hear the dates. He didn't really want to see as well.
    "Okay! Shut up! They're doin ' it!" came a voice from up front, and a flat silence fell over the room like a sheet. The first date was read in a clear treble from the tinny speaker that had been turned to maximum volume. Everyone looked around, at friends, at strangers, but no one spoke, laughed, moaned. The Angel had flown past without swinging the sickle.
    The second date rattled out, and, amazingly, no one reacted. Free again.
    At the reading of the third date, a neatly bearded boy near the front twisted his head as though he'd received a blow and gave a deep throaty grunt. He stood up, his face red, shrugging off the hands, unused to touching, that sought to comfort him, and stalked out of the lounge. First blood had been drawn.
    Strangely enough, everyone suddenly seemed more at ease. Their birth dates might be called, but at least they would not be the first, and Brad thought it was like death in a way, and whispered to his roommate, "It's like we're all gonna die sooner or later, but who wants to go first, y'know ?"
    His roommate chuckled, then held a finger to his lips. The next date was already being read. Brad heard only the tail end: ". . . ary 14."
    "What?" he said in alarm.
    "February 14, now shut up," came a voice, and murmurs of agreement followed.
    After the fifth date was called, his roommate looked at him with a question in his eyes. Brad nodded. "Number four," he whispered. "Got me." He sat there silently as the rest of the 366 dates were drawn. Then the room emptied of students, all of them talking, some in a fast-paced tone of relief, others in a quiet monotone. Still others instructed friends how to fail the physical: "Drink some ink"; "Put sugar in the piss jar"; "Say you're a fag ." One boy was crying silently. No one made fun of him. The last words Brad heard before he walked out alone into the night were, "Shit, they even got Jesus ."
    Sitting on a bench in the grove just like the bench he and Rorrie Weidman used to sit on, he thought about Rorrie long and hard. Desert, he'd told Rorrie, get the hell out if you can't take it. He wondered if he could give himself the same advice. He knew in his heart he couldn't make it, even if a