Ken's War by B. K. Fowler Read Free Book Online Page B

Famished.
Victorious.
     
    After beating up the CO’s kid back in the
states, he’d braced himself for the walloping his dad was going to
give him. A beating would have been fair punishment, considering,
but his parents were too distracted, ensnarled again in their
private battle into which he wasn’t enlisted. This time, though,
their fight didn’t have the same tone as the others.
    There were frequent telephone calls. Terse
conversations. Tight faces. Long sighs. This time sudden silence
cloaked the barracks bungalow when he opened the back door and
strolled into the kitchen. His mom’s makeup was smeary. His dad’s
forehead was ridged, his stubble sprouting upon his ashen skin. His
parents took their argument behind the closed bedroom door. Ken
tried to listen to what they were arguing about, but his mind
snarled, couldn’t receive the message that was undecipherable in
its finality and terror. His parents’ voices, venomous and bitter,
stoked his dread. No. It couldn’t be true. That’s why they weren’t
telling him anything. If it were true, they would tell him. They’d
have to tell him.
    He didn’t tell his mom and dad that his arm
hurt like hell.
    When he woke up the next day, his sheets were
all twisted and his arm still hurt like hell. His mother didn’t
scold him, in fact she didn’t say much to him as she drove him to
post infirmary to get a cast put on his left arm. That whack David
had given him with a board had snapped his ulna bone.
    Then a few days later, their little family of
three was sitting at the dining room table. Funny the details one
remembers: they were eating baked beans on new dishes. White
dishes.
    They’d told him almost a full month after
he’d returned home from his summer vacation at Grandma and Grandpap
Paderson’s farm, in time for the Labor Day parade and the start of
school. He’d ridden the train the entire way to Lancaster and back
by himself like a “young man.” He wasn’t even worried on the bus
trip back from the Harrisburg train station to the Molly Pitcher
hotel bus station. He avoided lavatories, though.
    He couldn’t remember how exactly the subject
came up. Just that he was expecting his dad to blow his top about
the fight with David Marshall. His mom looked at him funny, then.
He thought she was going to scold him for stabbing too many beans
on his fork when what she said was, “Look, Ken, honey, we didn’t
think you were old enough to be put through all that.”
    Through all what? He didn’t ask. He
concentrated on lifting the forkful of beans to his mouth.
    “Your grandparents have passed.” The captain
scraped baked beans into a neat pile at the rim of his plate. That
abrasive sound.
    Passed?
    “The doctor found cancer in your grandpap’s
stomach,” his mother said. “It took him fast. Grandma Beatrice died
a week later.” She refused to look at Ken. In a stern voice she
added, “Heart attack, she had a heart attack. Your grandmother died
of a broken heart. It happens to old people. One of ‘em can’t live
without the other. A crying shame that they got too dependent on
each other.”
    His eyes burned as he tried to adjust his
inner universe to accommodate the news his parents had withheld
from him until now. On the wall behind his dad, the framed jigsaw
puzzle picture of a mountain in the tropics blurred.
    “If you want to lay flowers at their
tombstones, I’ll drive you to the cemetery this Sunday,” his dad
said. He ladled baked beans onto his plate, ringing the spoon
against the bowl.
    Ken didn’t hear what his parents were saying
next. He was remembering what he’d been told back when it had
happened, when his grandparents had passed, had died. That baloney
his mother had told him about his dad going to an APICS seminar for
a full week was a lie, and Ken had fallen for it because APICS had
something to do with warehousing. His mom said she was meeting
Daddy at a hotel in Lancaster after his seminar. She said Ken was
old enough to