Cannonball by Joseph McElroy Read Free Book Online Page A

herself while attending college far away “somewheres” if they would let her go), I’m struck by her thought that Dad was looking to get out of the Reserve “if we weren’t careful,” for Corona’s long-legged wife narrowly avoiding a bike collision with a parked car’s door opening had asked last night if it was true he had managed to swing it already, a friend of her husband’s told her. And my sister told me she had asked of Bea, “In return for what ?” Yet what stayed with me wasn’t Dad finessing the Reserve, if it was even true, but the seeming slowness of the dive (caught by sheer luck in my snapshot on the back of which one day I found a few printed words of my sister’s), and so I recalled for months my sister’s I thought unanswered retort bicycling behind Bea, “In return for WHAT?”
    That palace dive answers her nine thousand miles and counting months and months later though what had I for answer wrecked at the brink of a now wartime palace pool, too slow to get the micro out for a still, though v-c recorded from the hip? For a spy without knowing it, of what wretched use am I it comes to me like my body itself during the later Hearings? And he this once upon a time huge figure yet not quite of fun, a gigantic kid you could trifle with not at all at your peril, unless privately in your heart and his; a promise at the edge of my neighborhoods so unforgettable I couldn’t always hang with it, like my sister’s word for his entry, “farewell” (then “frequent farewell,” this being my sister)—he was an untouchable diver I only later far away at my own paid picture-taking understood—too late?—and had been a sort of friend before even the cannonball beginning. For what else could I make of the word Cheeky (her name) said to me at the moment of the breaker going by the old woman in blue jeans and the Australian hat, who perhaps a year and a half before had taken the snapshot of Umo on the gangway in Vera Cruz with his enlarged hand out in welcome or arrest?
    How long had they all known me even two weeks before Thanksgiving when I all but ran into Umo, how could I not have seen him stepping down out of the Heartmobile?—and it was as if we knew each other pretty well even then. It was my birthday, I’d bought one of The Inventor’s special envelopes and, recalling the potency of an earlier one, I’d been quite absorbed in whether or not to open it and I’d wound up downtown across from the Coaster train station. But now Umo must stop at the recruiters table, flag-deco clipboard, pamphlets of the future spread out where music stampeded blindly somewhere under the table and the two Marines speechless behind grim smiling teeth; Umo asking if this would get him citizenship. You could take him for seventeen. An unusual person maybe. Was it experience? He would need to lose some pounds, said the corporal, not really answering Umo’s question. “Shed some weight,” said the sergeant. Umo pointed under the table at the pint-size speaker. “That’s what they gonna listen to over there.” Later I grasped the quality Umo gave to his speech when he opened his mouth—or it could feel like it was coming true anyhow and I was on home ground but it made me mad. “Over there?” said the sergeant, alarmed. “Rock,” said the corporal “It’s not going to be ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’” I said. “Not on a daily basis,” said the sergeant frowning, smiling, pushing a piece of paper toward me. “Help ’em shoot straight,” said the corporal. “He’s with you guys, though,” I said. “All the way,” the corporal said. “A peacemaker,” I said. “Hey, He was a Marine,” said corporal.
    I asked him what would happen and he said it wasn’t up to him but we were always ready. “ Who’s a