While He Was Away by Karen Schreck Read Free Book Online Page B

“You know I don’t get much done without an assignment.”
    “I’ll assign you stuff then,” I say.
    “I’ll hold you to that.”
    “Hold me to anything.”
    Beau takes our picture holding each other. Then he takes David’s picture alone. David stands at attention. He looks strong. He is strong. Army strong. Hero strong. I take David’s picture with Beau. David leans his head on Beau’s shoulder, and Beau cups his hand over David’s head like something might fall on his skull and shatter it.
    David throws his arms around Beau then, like it’s just hit him, what’s happening.
    “This is just something I have to do, okay?” I hear David say. “Something for me. Something for our country.” He looks over Beau’s shoulder at me. “The right thing.”
    David steps away from Beau. He comes over to me. He cradles my face in his hands. He kisses me hard. Lets go. Turns away.
    He’s gone.
    I drag myself out of the humming, buzzing light. I follow Beau back to Bonnie in the truck. We make the long drive back to Killdeer, sudden rain battering the windows.
    David would call this a real Oklahoma summer storm. The wind nearly tips us over.
    •••
     
    Late that night, after the long ride home with Bonnie and Beau, after cold cereal for dinner and a couple of hours watching I don’t even remember what, I sit down at my desk and pick up the photograph of Justine. Just that simple act—picking up a photograph—and pain radiates through my right ring finger. The feeling makes me so jittery that my hands start to shake. Last fall, after David and I kissed for the first time and we were officially “a couple,” my hands shook like this. They shook like this when he first told me that he’d signed on to join the army. We were standing under the honey locust tree right outside my bedroom window.
    “I joined before you even moved here,” he told me, as the leaves rustled above. “Maybe if I’d known you, I wouldn’t have done it. But I believe it was the right decision.” Then he’d kissed my hands until they were steady again.
    My hands are anything but steady now. Justine’s photo tumbles to the desktop. And that’s when I see it, there on the back, penciled faintly in looping cursive: Justine Blue, 1945 .
    World War II ended in 1945. If Justine’s soldier took this picture, he must have gone over to fight right at what they hoped was the end. Like David is now.
    Justine must have waited and hoped like me.
    Linda is working late again, but I wouldn’t ask her about ancient family history—or any family history—even if she were home. And there’s nobody else to ask.
    There’s nobody but Justine Blue. Or Justine Weaver. Or Justine Whatever-Her-Name-Is-Now.
    I prop her photograph back against my clock. Then I search out seven Justine Blues online. She lives in Australia. No, she lives in Maine. She lives all over the world, or she has. She’s in a rock band. No, she’s a lawyer. She’s a kindergarten teacher, plumber, porn star, pastor.
    She is ?
    More likely, she was. I do quick calculations. If she was eighteen in 1945, she’d be eighty now, or thereabouts. She’d have to be retired. Or dead.
    Considering this, I carefully lift the gauze from my finger. It’s been almost twelve hours, and the tat looks worse now than when I had it done. I wonder what David’s look like. I imagine him flying high over wherever, peeking beneath his bandages too, maybe freaking out on the inside but definitely playing it cool on the outside.
    I can feel Justine watching me from the mirror in her photograph.
    She loved a soldier once.
    If nothing else, finding Justine could help pass some time until David comes home.

Five
     
    I wake up to my ringing cell. Squinting against bright morning light, I roll across my bed. My elbow knocks a full glass of water from the nightstand and then a framed photograph of David and me, taken the night we first realized each other existed, the night of the Teen Community Art