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  “That boy, he shouldn’t have told those things,” Ma says. “He had no right telling such things!”

  That’s what the government says too when them people in Janesville start writing tons of letters to Washington, harping at the government for not telling them what was happening to our boys over there. The government said Red Lawson shouldn’t be telling them things. I hear Dad through the vent tell Ma that Red, he had to go to that Pentagon place, and they showed him some papers they drawed up, accusing him of telling secrets while there was a war going on. They told Red to shut his big mouth or he’s gonna get locked up in prison for being a traitor. Now, Dad says, that guy, Red, he don’t dare leave his house no more on accounta people keep asking him more about what happened over there and he can’t say nothing.

  “It’s a goddamn pity what they’re doing to that boy,” Dad says. “The truth is the truth, and, goddammit, Washington didn’t have any business keeping the truth from us in the first place, and they sure as hell don’t have any business telling that boy what he can or can’t say.”

  Next morning, when Dad and I go check up on the Skelly, Ed Fryer is there, standing by the counter, talking to Delbert. Dad gives me a Coca-Cola and tells me to go outside so he can talk to Floyd’s dad. I know he is gonna talk about that Red Lawson, so I don’t go over past the gas pumps and sit on the grass to wait, where Dad points for me to go. I go around the door and I stand there real quiet, while Lucky runs off to sniff things.

  Dad waits a spell after Mr. Fryer says, “What’s wrong, Hank?” Then Dad tells him all about Red Lawson and about what Red said at that meeting in Janesville. “It wasn’t good news, Ed. After the boys surrendered, the Japs forced our boys to march through that jungle heat from Mariveles, Bataan, to San Fernando, a good fifty, sixty miles or more. They were sick and starving. Lawson said the boys that tried to get a drink when they came to a watering hole were shot or decapitated with bayonets. He said those miles were littered with empty canteens and hacked-up bodies. Lawson called it the Death March.”

  Mr. Fryer sighs hard, then cusses slow, “Jesus Christ.”

  “At the end of the march, they loaded them into boxcars. Red said there wasn’t hardly any air to breathe in those cars. The sick ones, they puked and shit all over themselves, and the dead, they couldn’t drop until the rest of the boys got off the train, because there wasn’t any room for them to drop.” My guts churn when I hear Dad say this stuff. I wanna run off far enough so I can’t hear a thing, but it’s like my feet is planted right there on the concrete, and I can’t move.

  “Red Lawson’s been threatened by the government. If he says any more about what happened over there, Washington will crucify that boy.

  “I hated to have to tell you this stuff, Ed, but Floyd’s there, and you deserve to know what’s happened to him. Oh, and Ed, just so you know. Our boys didn’t surrender. Wainwright surrendered them.”

  Dad and Mr. Fryer and Mr. Larson, they keep talking, but I don’t keep listening. I pry my feet loose from the concrete and I go where Dad told me to go and I find a patch of grass to sit on, ’cause my legs feel too wobbly to stand. I feel real scared for Jimmy and Floyd, and I feel sad too. Lucky, he comes over to me and he lays down, plunking his chin right on my leg.

  Dad comes out of the Skelly, his thumbs in his belt loops, his head down. He looks sad and he looks pissed too. I think Dad feels about the government now the way I felt when I found out I’d been lied to about him being Jimmy’s dad. It kinda hurts your feelings and mixes up your head when you find out that somebody you thought always telled you the truth didn’t.

  Chapter 20

  The Germans mighta gived up, but them Japs, they ain’t ready to give up. Not until after we drop the biggest bombs ever made on their heads. We drop the first one smack-dab on a place called Hiroshima. Ma, she whacks her hand right over her heart when she hears, and she tells me that that bomb, it falled where there was women and children, and old people too. A few days later we drop another one on a place called Nagasaki. When I hear about them bombs, I’m glad, I guess, ’cause like Dad says, it’ll probably make them yellow-bellies give up, but part of me is not glad. I’m hoping them kids had air drills and got practiced up good like I did so they was under a desk or a table when them bombs hit. The thought of big-ass bombs falling on the heads of little kids makes my stomach all skittery, even if they is yellow-bellies. I get to thinking about them old people, and I feel bad for them too, ’cause old people can’t run real fast.

  War, it’s like a bonfire you make from yard crud you clean up in the spring. First, that heap just smolders. Then all of a sudden it sparks and them flames just shoot up, roaring and spitting, all cherry-red. That fire, it burns hot for a long time and it don’t stop lickety-split even if you throw a couple a buckets of water on it. It just fizzles, them flames shrinking back to where they come from until there ain’t nothing left but a smoking heap. That’s how the war ends.

  When we hear them say on the radio that the war is “officially” over, we all go nuts. People empty right outta their houses and the stores, and they dance around in the street and hug each other and laugh like it’s a party. Then there ain’t nothing left to do but wait for them soldiers to come home.

  It takes weeks before we get a letter. When that letter comes, it’s from Jimmy. He says he’s in a vet hospital, and at first I think that means he’s in a hospital being looked after by animal doctors. But Ma says that vet don’t mean an animal doctor in army talk. She says it’s a hospital for soldiers. Jimmy’s been in a couple of them vet hospitals now, he says in his letter, but soon he’ll be home. After Ma reads that letter to me, she tucks it back in the envelope and runs her fingers over the postmark. “September twenty-second, 1945,” she says. Then her eyes tear up and she says, “He’s been gone so long.”

  Mary comes into the store and she’s got a letter from Floyd, so we know he’s coming home too. Mary, she is worried, though. She says Floyd didn’t sound good in his letter. He telled her that he ain’t the same and she probably won’t want to look at him no more. Ma, she don’t tell Mary the things Dad telled her. She just tells Mary that he’ll be all right.

  Ma writes back to Jimmy, and she tells him what I ask her to tell him. She tells him I’m real glad he’s coming home, and that I’m working at the Ten Pin Bowling Alley. She tells him, too, that I picked milkweed for the war so nobody would get drowned. When she’s done writing that stuff, she sits there and taps the tip of her pen on the V-mailer. “Jimmy said he wrote to Molly and she hasn’t answered. I don’t know what to tell him about Molly.” Ma lets out a sigh that’s big enough to stretch from here to Ripley.

  Ma, she calls Molly’s mother then. She tells her that Jimmy is coming home and that Jimmy mailed Molly about it, but that she knows Molly is still in Chicago being a hatcheck girl, so could she please see that that letter gets forwarded to her. Well, Ma stops talking for a bit then, while she’s listening to Molly’s ma, then she says, “Excuse me?” and her eyes get all big and fat, like they is being stretched big as plates by what she’s hearing. Then Ma, she gets madder than a wet hen, and she starts harping at Mrs. Franks something fierce. “What kind of a girl did you raise, anyway, Judith? She promised herself to my Jimmy!” Ma, she slams that phone down so hard it makes a ringing noise, then she rants and raves and cries ’cause Molly, she is planning to marry a guy who’s almost a doctor now. They is getting married next month, and Mrs. Franks ain’t gonna say nothing to Molly about Jimmy coming home. Even an idiot can figure out that a girl can’t marry two guys, so I know that this means Jimmy is shit out of luck. Ma’s so pissed off at the Franks that when she hears that Mr. Franks had a stroke, she don’t even care one smidgen.

  I can’t think about nothing but Jimmy coming home. My mind, it goes wandering, thinking up every time I spent with Jimmy. I’m so busy thinking about Jimmy that I can’t think about that ball rolling down the alley, and I know that by the time Jimmy gets home my legs is gonna be so whac
ked up that they’re gonna have as many spots on ’em as them leopard cats in the National Geographic magazine.

  Eva Leigh and the girls on the bowling teams that Ruby Leigh and her put together, they see that I ain’t thinking straight, so before they crank that ball back, they shout, “Here it comes, Earwig!” but usually I forget by the time that ball reaches the pins. The girls, they is real sorry that I’m getting whacked so much, but they is real happy for me that Jimmy’s coming home.

  Eva Leigh, she still ain’t much of a bowler, but she’s better than she was when I first got hired. Mary bowls on her team too, and she laughs and shouts loud every time she, or one of the gals on her team, gets a strike. Ruby Leigh, she ain’t a captain ’cause no one wanted to be on her team. She ain’t a captain and she ain’t on nobody’s team either. I guess them ladies was afraid it would lower them to bowl with her. I tell Ruby Leigh that them ladies is nothing but a damn buncha fools for not wanting to be on her team, ’cause she’s the best goddamn girl bowler I ever see’d.

  Jimmy is probably gonna be home by Thanksgiving. That’s what his next letter says. Soon as Ma gets that letter, she starts in making plans. “We should have a welcome-home party for Jimmy,” she says. “We could rent the town hall and ask Tommy and the band to play. We could include Floyd as a guest of honor, and—” But Dad, he lifts up his hand and he tells Ma that maybe Jimmy and Floyd won’t be up for a party just yet, so she’d best wait. So Ma, she starts to cleaning the house instead.

  I don’t know why she thinks them closets gotta be clean for Jimmy, ’cause Jimmy, he don’t give a shit about clean closets or clean anything else, but Ma she does it anyway. She cleans the closets and floors, all spiffy, scrubbing and waxing and polishing ’til Dad says the whole place stinks so strong of lemons it makes him feel pukey. When Ma’s done with that, she starts to scrubbing walls and washing and pressing the curtains, even though she already done them jobs in the spring. She about drives me buggy with her harping at me to take off my shoes, and don’t touch the walls like that when you are wiggling on your shoes, and don’t set that cup down on the clean end table without a coaster, and don’t spatter Pepsodent on the bathroom mirror, and, worse of all, don’t let Lucky make a mess shedding all over. I ain’t got a inkling on how I’m suppose to keep Lucky from shedding, but I guess it’s something I’m suppose to figure out, ’cause she keeps on saying it.

  Ma bakes too. There still ain’t sugar to bake with, so she can’t make a buncha cookies and cakes. Instead, she bakes bread and rolls and raisin pies, and she slaps my fingers and Dad’s if we even try swiping one roll while they’s still warm and smelling good. “Stop that! I’m freezing those for Jimmy!” she says, and I whisper to Dad that we is gonna starve to death, and Jimmy, his ass is gonna grow to three ax handles wide if he eats all that food by hisself. Dad laughs and Ma says, “What are you two snickering about?” but we don’t tell her.

  I can’t hardly sleep the night before Jimmy is coming home. I look at my comic books, but afterward I can’t sleep. I jiggle Lucky’s tail and scratch his belly, but when I’m done, I still can’t sleep. Dad, he can’t sleep either, ’cause I hear him down in the kitchen rooting around in the Frigidaire. I lean over the vent and ask him if I can come down by him. He says I can.

  Dad makes us sandwiches from leftover chicken and raw onions. He pours us each a glass of milk.

  “Son,” he says. “Tomorrow when we pick up Jimmy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I want you to be prepared. Jimmy isn’t gonna look the same. He probably won’t act the same either. A lot of years have passed, Earl, and a lot of things have happened to him.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “Jimmy’s been through hard times. It isn’t easy for a man to be in war, son. They see and are forced to do things no man should have to see and do. And being in that camp was pretty rough on Jimmy. I just want you to be prepared.”

  “But he’ll still be Jimmy,” I say. And Dad says yes, he’ll still be Jimmy.

  When we take off for the bus station, big fluffy snowflakes are falling, melting right on the windshield ’til Dad swipes ’em away with the wiper blades. It’s funny the way it seems like it was a hundred years ago that we was heading to the bus depot to see Jimmy and Floyd off to the National Guard—yet it seems like yesterday at the same time. I’ve been waiting five years for Jimmy to come home, and now that he is, I’m feeling skittery.

  Ma looks into the backseat. “Earl, why are you wearing your Ten Pin shirt?” she asks as she reaches back and slaps at my hair.

  “It’s my uniform shirt, Ma. Jimmy and Floyd, they’s gonna be wearing their uniform shirts.”

  “That’s right,” Dad says.

  “Oh, look. Mary’s right behind us,” Ma says, and she waves to her. I turn around and wave too.

  Mary is driving Floyd’s car and it’s making all kinds of racket. Dad says he’s gonna tell Mary to bring that Ford by the shop and he’s gonna fix it up for her, for free. Dad, he’s gonna go back to work at the garage soon ’cause the war is over and that plant is going back to making Oldsmobiles again. There is gonna be plenty of GIs coming home who will be glad to take over his spot, he says, and the Wings’ jobs too. Dad says them ladies are madder than wet hens, being told now that leaving their kids to go to work wasn’t a good thing to do, after they was told it was. Dad says the husbands coming home got another think coming if they think their wives are gonna go home to cook and clean and make babies, without putting up a big fuss.

  Ma, she can’t hardly sit still in her seat, she’s so happy about Jimmy coming home. “Eileen, don’t expect too much at first,” Dad reminds her. “Jimmy’s been through a lot, and judging from what that Lawson boy said, he’s probably been good and goddamn sick.”

  Ma says, “Oh, we don’t even know if those things he said are true, Hank. You heard Mrs. Banks herself say that her daughter in Janesville says there’s talk that that Red Lawson is just goofy in the head and that he made up those things. She said he stays locked up in the house like he’s got a guilty conscience for telling fibs. Hank, if those things he said were true, don’t you think the government would have told us? And don’t you think he’d be able to face people?”

  Dad sighs. “I was there, Eileen. I saw that boy tremble down to his boots when he talked. I looked right in his eyes. He wasn’t lying.”

  Ma, she stops listening to Dad. She tugs on the rearview mirror and licks her fingers and dabs at a curl looped on her forehead. She pulls out her lipstick and draws herself some fresh red lips, then takes a tissue from her purse and presses her mouth on that folded tissue, making a picture of red kissing lips.

  When we get to the station, it’s real busy ’cause some other GIs are coming home, and other folks are taking the bus to visit family for Thanksgiving. That whole bus station is filled with echoes ’cause them ceilings are high. When people stomp the new snow off their boots, it sounds like thumping drums.

  There’s a bus unloading. “Do you see them? Do you see them?” Ma and Mary, who are lots littler than me, ask. I tell ’em I don’t see ’em.

  “Jimmy!” Ma shouts after a bit, and Mary, she clamps her hands over her mouth and starts to bawling. Dad puts his arm around her and gives her a little shake, then Mary, she breaks free from Dad and tags after Ma, who is running through a crowd of old ladies in scarves and mas tugging along little kids in their Sunday-best clothes.

  Ma and Mary, they find two soldiers, white and skimpy as ghosts, faces bony as skulls, and they start hugging and kissing on ’em like they think they is Jimmy and Floyd. The one with the dark hair, most of his arm is gone, the sleeve of his army jacket folded and tucked up and tied with twine.

  Dad joins Ma and Mary, and he’s slapping the backs of them ghosty guys, but me, I just stand back a ways and pick at my pants, ’cause they is kissing and hugging on guys that ain’t even Jimmy and Floyd.

  I move farther away. I look at the ticket man behind the barred window. I look a
t the wet muddy tracks smudged all over the floor. I look at a lady digging in her purse. I look everywhere but at them two.

  “Earl?” It’s Dad. “Earl, come say hi to Jimmy and Floyd. They’re waiting.”

  I shake my head. “That ain’t Jimmy and Floyd.”

  Ma, she hurries over to me and she grabs and pinches my wrist. “What’s the matter with you, Earl? Go greet your brother. He’s waiting.” She runs back to where they is all standing, gawking over at me.

  Dad leans closer to me. “I know he doesn’t look the same, Earl, but that’s your brother.” Dad puts his hand on the middle of my back and he pushes me toward them soldiers.

  When I get closer, the one, he is standing there grinning at me. His kid-skinny arm is around Ma’s shoulder. That ain’t Jimmy. Jimmy’s got hair like yellow waves. This soldier, he’s got baldy hair, dull as old straw. Jimmy got muscles like Captain Midnight, but this soldier, his uniform is hanging on him like they is hanging from a clothesline. There are tears in his eyes, eyes that are sunken back in his head and ringed like a raccoon’s. “Earwig!” the guy says, and he spreads his stick arms and comes at me.

  I stand stiffety-straight while he jerks me into a hug. When his arms come around me, though, that’s when I know it is Jimmy. This guy’s outsides, they don’t look like Jimmy’s outsides, but when he hugs me, his insides tell mine that it is him. I get so sad and happy at the same time that I start to bawling. Jimmy, he bawls right with me.

  I’m careful not to thump his back, ’cause I’m scared I might break him. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you, buddy,” Jimmy says. I want to tell him that I’m glad to see him too, but I can’t find no words. Not even one goddamn little word.

  “Hey, Earwig,” the other soldier says. I don’t wanna know that that’s Floyd with the snapped-off arm, but it is Floyd. I can tell ’cause he sounds like Floyd. And when he gives me a hug with that one arm, he feels like Floyd. I hug Floyd real careful-like, ’cause he feels all little and bony in my arms like he might break too.