Heartwood by Belva Plain Read Free Book Online Page A

books.”
    “You’re not going to study tonight, it’s too late,” he said.
    “No, but first thing in the morning.”
    “Stay here now. And you can leave early. I’ll set the clock radio.”
    She still didn’t want to stay with him, but she couldn’t think of any good excuse not to. “All right.” She sat on the edge of the bed and began taking off her shoes.
    Robby continued clearing up. His back was turned to her. “Wasn’t that something? About Larry and Nancy?”
    She drew in a deep breath. “I think it’s wrong,” she said.
    He turned to her. “That’s a little judgmental, isn’t it?”
    “I just don’t think it’s right to have a baby for any reason except that you want one.”
    “Perhaps they do.”
    “He doesn’t have a job. They don’t have a place to live. They aren’t even married …”
    “Wow. You really are being judgmental—we both know people who slipped up and she got pregnant before they were married … and you never said a word.”
    “Yes. Because it was an accident.”
    “That makes it okay?”
    “It’s better than a cold-blooded decision.”
    “How do you know it was cold-blooded? What if Nancy and Larry were planning to have children someday anyway, what if they just hurried it up a little bit?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “What I know is, Larry’s draft number was 77. If it weren’t for this baby he’d be fighting a war he hates. He might have gotten killed. For nothing.”
    “I know that.”
    “Nancy loved him enough to save him. What’s wrong about that?”
    She wanted to say that Larry shouldn’t have let Nancy do it for him even if she had begged him to. But then she looked at Robby. His face was pale; he knew what she was thinking and he probably agreed with her. But she also knew that at that moment, if she said she’d have his Daddy Deferment, he’d jump at the chance. She watched him look down at his hands, which were clenched into fists, and she could tell he was ashamed of himself. A part of Robby would always want to be Ivanhoe, and that part wanted to go to jail for his principles, or cross the border into Canada and live as an exile. Those were the honorable choices—that was what he’d said.
    But everyone had heard horror stories about what happened to conscientious objectors in prison, and giving up your American citizenship was a huge price to pay for someone else’s mistake. Because that’s what it was—this war that no one could explain, no one could end, and no smart person thought America could still win. It was a horrible, bloody mistake made by men who were too old to fight and too proud to admit they were wrong. How could anyone expect a boy like Robby to be strong and selfless when he knew his own country was willing to get him killed so that those evil old men wouldn’t have to look bad? How could anyone be honorable when every week there were more pictures in
Life
magazine of dead soldiers and Vietnamese children being burned in their rice paddies? When you thought about all of that, having a baby to get out of the draft didn’t seem that terrible.
    Laura reached out to take Robby’s fists in her hands. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “This shouldn’t be happening to you.”
    There were tears in his eyes. “I just don’t want to die,” he whispered.
    “And I don’t want you to.”
    And so, in spite of everything she believed, the seed of an idea was planted in her.
    –—
    Robby never actually asked Laura to have a baby to keep him out of the draft, and she never said she would. But over the next few weeks whenever she saw Robby smile, or heard him laugh, or watched him study, biting his lower lip and puckering his forehead in concentration, Laura knew that seed was growing in her. And when at night he lay next to her in his narrow bed and together they began the sweet journey that melded them into one, she knew that she was like Nancy and so many other girls in that terrible winter of 1970. She could