Shooting the Moon by Frances O'Roark Dowell Read Free Book Online Page B

him, feeling excited about the work I’d done. “I mean, it’s a picture of somebody who’s actually been hit by the enemy. It’s the real war.”
    â€œIt’s real, all right.” Private Hollister looked awkward, like he didn’t quite know what to say to me. “I mean, it’s definitely a real war. Don’t knowif I want to look at pictures of the people who are getting killed over there, though. I’ve seen enough of that on TV, I guess. Heard enough about it on a day-to-day basis over the last few years.”
    â€œDid you ever know anyone who got killed there?”
    Private Hollister was quiet for a minute. I wondered if he was going through a list of buddies, trying to remember if everybody was still accounted for. He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, well, my brother Barney did. Right at the beginning, back in ’65. Hardly anybody knew there was a war then, not like the way it is now, with protesters and hippies and everything.”
    â€œYour brother
died?”
For some reason, I found this answer nearly unacceptable. Private Hollister wasn’t the sort of person who had a dead brother. He wasn’t the least bit tragic. “Did you cry?”
    He laughed and looked up in the air, like he didn’t know how to answer that question and was hoping the ceiling might have some advice for him.
    â€œI don’t know why I asked that,” I said quickly. “It’s just if TJ died in Vietnam, I’d cry, but I’m a girl.”
    â€œMy mom cried,” Private Hollister said, sounding more comfortable all of a sudden, like the topic of girls crying was a lot easier one for him to handle. “Man, she cried a whole river. The doctor finally had to give her some pills.”
    â€œMy mom has these pills the doctor gave her for bad headaches. She takes one, she sleeps for twenty-four hours straight.”
    â€œHuh,” Private Hollister said, like I’d just told him something very interesting and worthwhile.
    Right about then we ran out of conversation.
    I put the picture down on Private Hollister’s desk, picked it up again. “Well, I guess I’ll go clean up in the back. I’ll do some more printing tomorrow. After work, that is. Don’t forget, I’m here to work.”
    â€œYou’re here to play cards is more like it.” Private Hollister grinned.
    â€œThat, too,” I agreed. Then I walked back to the darkroom to clean up the mess I’d made. I pinned the picture of the soldier back up on the line and leaned over to pick up some scraps of cut negatives off the floor. As I tossed them into the trash can, a shiver zipped down my arms to the tips ofmy fingers, the way it did whenever I was lying in bed in the dark and got convinced there was a ghost watching me from the corner of the room. But when I looked around the darkroom, all I saw was the picture of the soldier on the stretcher, his face peering down at me from the clothesline.
    Later, when I looked at that picture again, I stared for a long time at the soldier, imagining what I would do differently if I decided to print it again. I wished I could see the soldier’s face. I thought about the fact that he might have been somebody’s brother. Somebody who was waiting for him to come home.
    I knew that was one picture I wasn’t going to show to my mother.

eight
    In the weeks before TJ left to join the Army, things around our house got loud and very quiet at the same time. The loudness came from TJ yelling, “Hey, have you seen the lock to my footlocker?” from upstairs when everybody else was downstairs, or from me yelling across the hall, “Hey, TJ, I’m going to the PX, you want me to get anything on your list?” It also came from my mother, who, despite a certain talent for keeping a stiff upper lip during trying times, kept having minor emotional outbursts, like when she was doing dishes by herself in the