Blue Stars by Emily Gray Tedrowe Read Free Book Online

herself in a blanket in her reading chair. She dug in her briefcase for the Simone Weil, willing to take Serena’s test, willing to dare herself into facing it. If not now, at 4:00 a.m., then when?
    The act of reading literature didn’t fail her, as it hadn’t ever, in life. Drawn in by Weil’s fierce intelligence and bold insight, Ellen understood how Homer’s ancient war poem must have given impetus and urgency to the French intellectual’s essay, published just as world war approached again. Weil announced that The Iliad ’s true subject is force, and the way force, throughout the poem, turns men into things. Human beings become torn flesh, corpses, garbage: “Dearer to the vultures than to their wives.” Logical and inexorable, Weil wrote of the blind qualities of force—first the Greeks advance, and then the Trojans, and back and forth until specific meaning slips away from the conflict. Whoever tries to wield force will inevitably be brought down by it. This is the very nature of war, its “geometrical rigor.”
    Ellen read the following lines, then made herself reread them.
    “For other men death appears as a limit set in the future; for the soldier death is the future, the future his profession assigns him. Yet the idea of man’s having death for a future is abhorrent to nature. Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death’s face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn reintroduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence.”
    No sun yet, but a thin gray light began to contrast the black shapes of trees and the houses across the street. Ellen stood stiffly and turned off the reading lamp. She put Serena’s book away; she wouldn’t need it again.
    “Hungry, Mais?” The dog raised her head. “Yeah, me too. Just give me one more minute up here, okay?”
    Back at her computer, Ellen bought a round-trip air ticket to Savannah/Hilton Head International. Professor Silverman had never missed a graduation ceremony in her life, and she wasn’t about to start now.

 
    4
    Fort Hamilton’s farewell party was being held in a local church basement. Banners were hung from rafters: ALWAYS IN OUR HEARTS, ALWAYS IN OUR PRAYERS and SERVICE IN THE NATION’S HONOR. Everywhere were black-and-gold army stars, Reserve insignia, and posters of men and women in uniform.
    “For once we get our own digs,” Eddie said. “I lose my appetite when I have to stare too long at the jarhead paraphernalia.” Fort Hamilton served army, Marine, and navy units, so the intraunit slagging was frequent.
    “Screw the jarheads,” Otis said, testing the waters. Lacey watched to see if he would get reprimanded, but on this day her uniformed husband grinned and made a you-got-it noise.
    “But the navy’s okay, right?” Otis went on. “Jon Weible’s dad is in it. So is Ross’s, and—”
    “The navy is just fine,” Eddie said. “Don’t let anyone tell you different: they do an absolutely fantastic job”—the other two waited for the punch line—“of getting us real soldiers to where we do the fighting.”
    Otis whooped, and Lacey didn’t shush him. The three of them were united in high spirits this afternoon. Eddie was packed and ready; he would ship out day after tomorrow. He looked so fine, she thought, in the dress blues they had carefully pressed and laid out for him. Lacey had never thought she’d be so familiar with an iron, but she now owned four different kinds of spray starch. She caught Eddie patting down the sides of his mustache, a nervous habit—he’d spent forty minutes this morning trimming it in the bathroom.
    Early on, she used to tease him about it: how’d he get away with a mustache, given those tight-ass commanders? Until one day he actually showed her a