Linger by M. E. Kerr Read Free Book Online

L.
    One was a group picture. Bobby was standing between two other guys, a good-looking dark-haired fellow and a tall blond. The three of them were in boots and camouflage uniforms, and Bobby was the only one with a big smile.
    He’d written across the top Augustin “Movie Star” Sanchez, Bobby (Roberto) Peel, and Donald “Sugar” Sweet send greetings from The Gulf. December 1990.
    The other photo was just Bobby.
    He had on a white T-shirt with two bayonets crossed over the letters “U.S.” in red, white and blue, and beneath that in enormous brown letters
    ARMY
    He had on the usual camouflage pants, and boots, but on his head he was wearing one of those things that look like dish towels. He was pounding his chest, big grin on his face.
    On this one he’d written Luv, Bobby.
    About a week ago we’d gotten the same ones in a letter from him, only the one of him alone said Your hero! On the back it said, I traded hats with a dude on a camel. This kind of headgears called a kaffiyeh.
    I suppose I should have been glad she didn’t treasure Bobby’s photos, but I hated it. All I could think of was him over there in a strange land he could easily die in, writing Lynn Dunlinger, who didn’t even want a picture of him.
    It wasn’t her fault—I knew that, too.
    On my way up to Lingering Shadows, I tore them into tiny pieces and tossed them in a trash bin. I didn’t want my brother ever to know.

14
    — F ROM THE JOURNAL OF Private Robert Peel
    Saudi Arabia
    Sugar makes up new words to an old song from South Pacific.
    We got sunlight, we got sand,
    We got moonlight, we got stars,
    We got mail from home for kicks,
    And we’re up to here in dicks,
    We got Movie Star and Bobby,
    And we never get afraid,
    But what can’t we get?
    We can’t get laid!
    Later we turn on Desert Shield Radio, and a Phil Collins song is interrupted: “We repeat : Congress gave President Bush authority to drive Iraqi troops from Kuwait.”
    Outside the tent some guys are cheering.

15
    T HERE WAS A SNOWSTORM and it was bitter cold, so Mom picked me up after school. She’d come from Linger, where she was working now instead of at home, because she said it felt so good to be there.
    “You feel safe there,” she told me.
    “ You feel safe there. I feel like a gofer there.” But I was grumbling pointlessly, because I liked it there too. When anything big happened, people gravitated toward the place, whether it was a World Series win, a scandal, or the threat of war.
    Mom had on fur earmuffs, and I hoped they’d keep out the noise ahead of us, on the sidewalk in front of The Berryville Trust.
    “Mr. D. found a tape of patriotic music, and it plays through the system all day. Sometimes I wipe the tears away,” she said.
    Then we saw the signs that went with the shouts.
NO BODIES FOR BARRELS!
    SANCTIONS … NOT SLAUGHTER!
    HOW DID ALL OUR OIL GET UNDER
    THEIR SAND?
    ALL FOR OIL
    There was the big ex-Marine from Scott Contractors, carrying a placard that said, MESS WITH THE BEST, DIE WITH THE REST, but he was the only one there with that sentiment.
    I knew most of the people. They were what Mr. D. called “the NOW crowd,” mostly women. You’d see them out demonstrating for abortion, various environmental concerns, AIDS support … or they’d be against some judge who was nominated for the Supreme Court, or the nuclear plant they wanted to build across the line in New Jersey, or hunting in The Pine Barrens, or gun ownership.
    There was a local librarian; a woman who ran an amateur theater company; Osborne de la Marin the Fourth and his mother; my dentist’s wife; Mrs. Wheat pushing her quadriplegic Vietnam War veteran son; Pauline Wheat, the daughter; Sloan Scott, who I’d always had my eye on; and of course, he was there.
    Mom said, “Jules is a fool! If I never knew it before, I know it now.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Pulling over.”
    “Mom, don’t start.”
    “I didn’t. They did!”
    She was parked before I knew it, and