Brother and Sister by Edwin West Read Free Book Online Page A

ads are right. Enjoy life -- every golden minute of it. Drink booze -- every golden drop of it.” He suited the action to the words by chugalugging a glass of the foamy brew.
     
    It was Saturday afternoon, three days after the funeral. Paul had stayed at home with Angie until today, but gradually the oppressive emptiness of the house had gotten to him. This afternoon he’d called Danny McCann, a high school buddy of his, back in circulation now after being given an undesirable discharge from the Army six months ago.
     
    They had met here, in Joe King’s Happi-Tyme Tavern, at two o’clock. Danny had arrived first, had gone to work immediately, and now, a little past five, he had a healthy glow on. Danny McCann had always been a ne’er-do-well, had always cheerfully admitted it, had never suffered pangs of guilt or shame or inferiority at being tossed out of school or fired from jobs or found undesirable by the Army. “I found the Army undesirable, too,” was his standard comment.
     
    “I’d like to enjoy life,” Paul told him in answer to his remark. “I really would. But all I’ve got is a thirty-day leave, and five days of that are gone already.”
     
    “I tell you the way it is, Paul,” said Danny. He was a short, chubby, round-faced type. Though only twenty- one, his rather bulbous nose was beginning to show the redness that would flower into alcoholic scarlet before he was forty. “I’ll tell you the way it is,” he repeated. “In the Army, I was what they call a guardhouse lawyer. That’s exactly what I was. I took the UCMJ and I read it the way other guys read Confidential. I read that thing backwards and forwards, and if there was an angle around, I knew about it. And do you know what? There’s an angle around for you.”
     
    Paul looked at him with renewed interest. “There is? Such as what?”
     
    “Such as the thing they call the hardship discharge,” Danny told him.
     
    “Don’t be silly. What hardship?”
     
    “Don’t tell me ‘don’t be silly’ -- I know what I’m talking about. How old are you?”
     
    “Twenty-one.”
     
    “Okay then, you’re legally an adult, right?”
     
    Paul grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Legally,” he said. “I guess so.”
     
    “Right,” said Danny. “And Angie, how old is she? Sixteen?”
     
    “No. Seventeen.”
     
    “Just as good. Legally, she’s a child, right? What they call a minor.”
     
    “Yeah,” said Paul. “I suppose so. If you say so.”
     
    “I say so. Now, there isn’t anybody else in the immediate family, is there? There’s just you two. I don’t mean uncles or aunts or anybody like that. I mean immediate family.”
     
    Paul nodded. “Just Angie and me.”
     
    “Right,” said Danny. “And Angie isn’t married or anything. You are Angie’s only adult in the immediate family.”
     
    “So what?”
     
    “So she needs your protection, that’s what. That’s one of the gizmoes in the hardship discharge. If you are the only remaining adult in the immediate family, and there are minors in the immediate family who need you near them for protection and support -- to be like a guardian -- then you can apply for a hardship discharge.”
     
    “Sure,” said Paul. “You can apply for the moon, too.”
     
    Danny shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Don’t take the chance -- don’t try it. Go on back to Germany when your leave’s up.”
     
    “Wait a second,” said Paul. “How does this work? How would I go about applying? I mean, if I wanted to.”
     
    “You go to the Red Cross,” Danny said. “And right now, you go to the bar. It’s your round.”
     
    ***
     
    On Monday, Paul went to the Red Cross, where he learned that Danny had been absolutely right. The man at the Red Cross started the forms rolling, and Paul got Father Mancenik, the pastor of the church, and Dr. Lynch, the Dane’s family doctor, to write the necessary substantiating letters. And then there was nothing to do but