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

was a depth in the eyes that had not been there before, the sense of having looked over the edge of a great abyss and having teetered on its edge, and the knowledge that one could balance there for a very long time without falling. The mouth was different too. It seemed larger, the lips thick and full, almost sensuous if the line of the mouth had not been so straight and firm, as though a knife edged in coal dust had scored across the petals of a rose.
    "Was it . . ." His father paused. "Was it very bad? Over there?"
    The full mouth twisted up on the side away from the older man so that all he saw was a crooked frown. Then Brad chuckled, and there was true humor in the sound, but he said nothing.
    "I . . . uh . . . I remember the World War. In Italy," his father went on. "There were a lot of things then I wished I'd never seen. I was about your age too. War's a . . . a terrible thing."
    Brad, silent, kept smoking, smiling.
    "You see much action?" his father asked. Brad made a
    nearly imperceptible move that might have been a nod. "Well, I know . . . I know what you must have gone through. I—”
    “Uh-unh." The sound floated out on gray smoke. "What?"
    "You don't know." It was said without rancor, merely as a statement of fact, to set the record straight.
    "Well, uh"—his father laughed uncomfortably—"I think I do. I mean, I was in combat—"
    "No." Brad looked at his father and smiled strangely, so that just his two top front teeth showed, like a rabbit's. "You really don't know, Dad. And no horror stories could make me think you do." The smile faded. "There was a master sergeant. Fifty years old. And he fragged himself. Just took a grenade, and pulled the pin, and held it up to his head like he was talking on the telephone. He did it because of something he saw. Something I . . . saw too. And twenty-five years before he'd been one of the first inside when they liberated Dachau." He smiled again. "So don't tell me you know. You don't know."
    The storm door opened and Brad's mother came out onto the porch. She bent over Brad and kissed his hair. "It's so good to have you back, honey. What are you boys talking about?" She sat between them on the glider.
    "I was just noticing your tulips, Mom. They really came out early this year."
    "I'm just glad we had some flowers for your homecoming." She folded her hands in her lap. "Do they have many flowers in Vietnam?"
    Brad laughed. "Oh, yeah, Mom, big ones. Bright orange. And white." He put an arm around her and hugged her closely. "So big you'd swear they fill the whole sky. But they don't last long," he said, looking upward to where the stars were just beginning to appear, like far-off flares of some impossibly foreign war. "They die real fast." His voice was barely a whisper.
    No one said anything for a long time, and Brad seemed not to notice his mother's shoulders stiffen as she wondered in a dim, dull, unimaginative way if her son had really come home.
    ~*~
    The next day was a Saturday, and he picked up Bonnie in his father's car just before noon. She was out the door of her parents' home even before he'd pulled the emergency brake, and threw herself into his arms as he left the car. "Hey"—he laughed—“take it easy, okay?"
    "Oh, Brad, thank God you're home, you don't know how much I've missed you, I prayed every night that you'd . . .” And so it went until he stilled her mouth with a kiss. He felt relief at the sudden quiet rather than any passion she might have aroused in him. They went into the house then, and he said hello in a remote and disinterested way to her parents. Afterward they drove out to the park and shared the picnic lunch Bonnie had packed. It was warm for April, and Brad was in shirtsleeves, and Bonnie, in a loose open blouse with a halter underneath. Throughout the lunch she seemed in a state of perpetual excitement, and after they'd eaten, she nearly dragged him the half mile back to the small clearing in the woods, where she pulled him to her and