Hometown by Marsha Qualey Read Free Book Online Page A

jerked to the set as a dark picture from the local access station filled the screen. Where there had been a war, now little girls danced in recital.
    “Crosby,” whispered Paul.
    “Oh, honey,” Connie said. “For almost forty years I’ve called you Gumbo.”
    “Jeff and Maud call him Crosby,” Border said. “And how about that Scotch?”
    “Not when they’re talking to me,” said Connie, ignoring the rest. “Forty years. Why you got that name when…when…I can’t even remember.”
    “I’ll fix the drinks,” said Border. “How do I do it?”
    Paul shifted again, thigh on remote, and the war resumed.
    “Whatever,” Border’s father said. “I guess I don’t care.”
    Connie leaned over and kissed his head. She straightened. “Can’t believe how much gray hair you boys have.” The gray-haired boy, not her own, stood and they hugged.
    “Time will tell about this war, I guess,” he said.
    “Hope for the best.”
    “Crosby,” Paul whispered again. “What a great name.” He tapped rapidly on the keyboard.
    Border went into the kitchen and helped Connie fix cocoa.
    Protest —
    The next day a demonstration began during fifth period, but Border didn’t know anything was happening because at that moment he was in the nurse’s office, sitting in his briefs and staring at a poster on infant nutrition while the nurse, Mrs. Neelon, swabbed ointment on his left thigh. Fifteen minutes earlier, in the middle of science lab, Michaela Engle had spilled acid.
    “Oops,” she’d said as she stumbled and the clear liquid sloshed out of the vial onto Border’s thigh, where it sizzled and smoked and burned holes through the denim.
    He watched the burning, speechless, his eyes getting wider when the acid reached flesh.
    “Geez and crackers!” he groaned at last.
    “Sorry,” said Michaela. “At least those are old jeans.”
    “True,” Border said stiffly. “But it’s a new leg.”
    *
    “Maybe I should just go home,” he said to the nurse.
    “Can’t do that,” she answered cheerfully. “I had Joyce wash the acid off those pants and now they’re in the dryer.”
    “You have a dryer in school?”
    “You bet. A washer, too. We’re always cleaning up kids. Vomit, mostly. This is the first time we’ve done acid.” She straightened, turned away, froze. “Oh my goodness, look at that! What’s going on? Joyce, come here!” Her aide ran from the outer office and the two women looked out the window while Border sat in his underwear.
    “Whatever are they doing?” Joyce said.
    “Border, come look.”
    “Uh, Mrs. Neelon…”
    She gave him a paper sheet. Border wrapped it around his waist and joined them at the window.
    Two stories down and across the street a group of students had gathered on the lawn of a house. A stream of kids flowed out of the high school, straight below the nurse’s office. A few held hand-lettered signs, and Border saw three girls unroll a long banner: NO GUNS FOR OIL, it said, and was decorated with peace signs and flowers. He frowned. Bad artwork.
    “Shameful,” Joyce said, and the nurse agreed.
    “Though,” she responded, “they have the right to their opinion.”
    “Not in wartime,” Joyce said crisply. “That’s the same as treason. They should be suspended. Walking out and doing this!”
    “Did you hear the president last night?”
    “He was wonderful!”
    They exited to the outer office and Border stood watching alone. Maybe thirty kids out in the cold. Shouting, chanting, smoking, kicking at chunks of snow. A car pulled up and parked. Men got out. Cops?
    VET FOR PEACE, their poster said; everybody cheered and high-fived, slapping palms reddened from cold.
    One girl lounged against a tree trunk and flashed “V” with her fingers whenever a car drove by. The girl sort of looked like Dana, dressed like Dana. Border shivered. His thighs, bare under the sheet, popped goose pimples. He hoped his sister, wherever she was, was wearing more than paper.
    The