Linger by M. E. Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

learn them at your daddy’s knee, or in school. You learn them from someone who’s got what it takes. You take what he’s got. You don’t tell him he doesn’t have it, and you don’t tell him what’s wrong with what he has. You listen and learn!”
    “Okay,” I said, “but …”
    “Okay, Mr. D.,” he said.
    “Okay, Mr. D., but what can they do to us?”
    “LISTEN AND LEARN, Bobby! They, be they from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia—and these are the ones moving in on us—be they from Ecuador or El Salvador, on and on: They are encroaching upon us. Do you know what that word means?”
    “Moving in,” I said.
    “Intruding is a better word,” he said, “intruding upon someone’s territory, rights, or time … or all three.”
    “Just like the Japs have zapped us,” I said.
    He said, “Mañana we’ll be beholden to little greaseball men in sombreros who look like dirty thumbs with hats on!”

17
    M Y NIGHT OFF. WE ate at Linger, guests of Mr. D.
    Mrs. D. was at Berryville Presbyterian Church fixing boxes for the troops, filling them with paperbacks, cans of Spam, M&M’s, cigarettes, socks, long underwear, et cetera.
    We ate in The Grill so we could watch TV and Dan Rather, who was Mr. D.’s favorite news commentator.
    I could hear “The White Cliffs of Dover” coming from The Regency Room where Mr. Raleigh was entertaining some of the regulars who always turn out on Tuesdays for the corned beef and cabbage Linger features.
    “What you tell me about Jules is very disturbing, Wanda,” said Mr. D., “yet a man has a right to his opinions. But if he pulled any of that peace stuff up here, I’d deck him.”
    I was chomping on my corned beef, trying to picture Mr. D. decking Jules Raleigh. I’d never seen him raise his hand to anyone, much less a cripple. He didn’t even raise his voice.
    “I wish he wasn’t teaching kids,” said my mother.
    “We don’t pay any attention to him,” I said. I was trying to defend him in my own way, but I suppose I was making it worse.
    “Even my own little girl thinks our troops shouldn’t be over there, which makes me sad,” said Mr. Dunlinger. “But she says she’s not the only one at Faith Academy to feel that way, including some of the priests.”
    “That’s hard to believe,” said my father.
    “We had those priests, the Berrigans, during Vietnam, remember?” Dunlinger said. “They ransacked the Selective Service office and burned all the 1-A classification records.”
    “This is no Vietnam,” said my mother.
    I remember in class Mr. Raleigh said the government had learned from Vietnam that all the killing people watched nightly on TV turned them against the war. He said if there’s a war in the Gulf, the government will control the media. You’ll see a lot of fireworks but you won’t see people getting killed.
    Mr. Dunlinger said to me, “At least you don’t have to worry, Gary. This will be all ancient history by the time you’re eighteen. You’ll go right off to college.”
    One subject we carefully avoided around Mr. D. was Bobby. Okay if he brought it up, but we didn’t. Among ourselves we also didn’t bring up Mañana Meow now. All we cared about was Bobby getting back safely. Anything that had gone down before he was shipped to the Gulf was peanuts compared to what he was up against.
    But ever since our dinner with Uncle Chad I kept trying to imagine what could have made Bobby use that cat thing against Mañana, what could have made him care that Linger was losing a little business, if it was?
    Was my father right? Had Dunlinger had so much power over Bobby that he’d go to any length to impress him? … Was it because Bobby needed someone like Dunlinger to look up to, since our father was such a milksop?
    After all, I’d had Bobby for a hero … until last Christmas dinner with Uncle Chad. Then I had my doubts about Bobby, for the first time.
    And I kept remembering the kid in the red shirt smoking the cigarette, and