War Stories

By Sally Drumm

War Stories, a collection of short stories written by veterans, touches upon every aspect of military life from hard combat to losing a comrade, to making love after being blown up by a mortar to honoring the war dead to remembering the Indian Wars, WWII, lost loves, and surrender to a medical system that never understands its military patients and yet is designed to serve only them. This anthology, featuring new and previously published fiction, is loaded with the imaginative powers of veterans from every era of war since the Korean War. With selections from 27 authors complemented with art by veteran Robert Wilson, this collection is packed not only with stories that bleed off the page and into your mind, but also with a new understanding of military life for those who have never experienced it. Edited by MilSpeak Foundation (501c3) director Sally Drumm and The New Short Fiction Series director Sally Shore. MilSpeak Foundation promotes creative work by military people. The New Short Fiction Series is Los Angeles' longest running Spoken Word series and is supported by a Pasadena Arts Council EMERGE grant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MilSpeak Books
• Release date: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301339969

Sally Drumm

SALLY DRUMM served on active duty in the United States Marine Corps from 1978 through 1998. Sally developed and leads Milspeak Creative Writing Seminars (MCWS), a free program for military people who want to write about their lives. She is the acquisitions editor for Milspeak Books and editor of Milspeak Memo, an online literary magazine dedicated to freedom of speech and sharing military life in the words of those who live it.Sally’s writing has been published in Gargoyle, The Gettysburg Review, Lowcountry Weekly, Mythic Passages, ArtNews and other venues. Jick’s Journey, a play written in collaboration with Dennis Adams and John Blair, was performed at the University of South Carolina Beaufort Performing Arts Center during March 2007. During May 2007, Mythic Passages, journal of Mythic Imagination Institute, published Jick’s Journey. “Letting Go” (published in The Gettysburg Review ) earned honorable mention in Best American Essays 2005. Scars On My Heart: Military Life in the Words of Those Who Live It, a play composed of 14 vignettes excerpted from the MilSpeak anthology, was performed at Beaufort Performing Arts Center during July 2009 in celebration of the anthology’s publication.

Book preview

Bridge – Robert D. Wilson

OURSELVES, NOT WAR

Sean Brendan-Brown

The Pine Lake (neither pines nor lakes within twenty miles) Veterans Administration Medical Center’s (VAMC) Mental Health Center’s (MHC) first floor hall reeked of Pine-Sol and the crematorium odor of rancid brisket grease; corned beef & cabbage had been offered for supper and its scent (Compost, said TestTube. Farts, said RoboVoice, though he could no longer smell, the debridement of his pharynx and larynx having partially collapsed the bony structures of his face, giving him a reptilian appearance) burdened the air. Following outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating bacteria), and Hepatitis C (HCV), HQ ordered all throughways bleached twice daily, causing the MHC’s (the oldest pile in the complex) linoleum tiles to curl at the edges like antique barn shingles. In many spaces mismatched squares had been epoxied back, the overflow permanently hardened into snottish clots.

TestTube (Enlisted: Korea, 51-53; Nam 65-68: MOH, Silver, Bronze Stars, Purple Heart) and RoboVoice (Officer: Nam 68-70; 71-72: Navy Cross, Silver, Bronze Stars w/oak leaf clusters, Purple Heart) always met After Dinner— the time between six and seven-thirty when, statistically, the least amount of people die in hospitals. The elevators to 9W, Psychiatric Stay, had been secured; the two friends from open wards, orthopedic and oncology (Bones-5W, Cancer-7E) grumbled about not being able to ping pong and warstory with the vets committed there. Harmless babies anyway, shot up with so much shit, RoboVoice said. Haldol, Cogentin, Hydroxyzine, Risperidone, Nefazodone, Aripiprazole, Divalproex, and Stellazine: it’s not us they’d kill if they could anyway.

TestTube snorted. Maybe. Don’t care for the Desert Stormers, all that whining about the sand niggers they bulldozed— what the hell they think they went for, hummus and falafel? The bellydancing? The new rules are for the convenience of the staff is all. Ping Pong helps me sleep, praise God. RoboVoice snapped his fingers. I lose my mind just shoot me. Pow! TestTube stopped, stared at his blue foam slippers.

Sorry. I keep forgetting. RoboVoice wasn’t sorry for anything but didn’t want to listen to the fogy’s Confession or endure another sign of the cross ritual. RoboVoice, atheist, didn’t get crossing or genuflection; when someone mentioned Jesus Christ as Personal Savior he responded any asshole believes a man can return from the dead never was no combat Marine, that’s for goddamn sure.

TestTube dropped to his left knee, licked right index finger and traced a spit crucifix on the floor. Not your fault. He stood and crossed himself: forehead father, son heart, right shoulder holy, left shoulder ghost. Jesus Christ shed his blood for me and all worthless sinners. I still see it plain as day. I walked in on them; every detail burnt into my eyes and brain and just held there tick-tock: sweat dripping from her breasts, he sucking her left nipple, her left shoulder smeared white with Noxzema; she’d burnt terribly that Sunday on the houseboat though I warned her to keep her top on. He touched her everywhere, lifted the sweat from her with his thumbs and sucked it the way you take salt before tequila. His own sweat spun onto the sheets, like shaking turpentine off a paintbrush; I still see it all. Good blue percale sheets, we bought them at Sears. He had a hairy back. That surprised me. Angela used to joke how repulsive she thought hairy men, like baboons, but there she was working him, bucking up into him, smack-smack-mushy-mish I could hear their private areas colliding and she groaning god almighty David fuck me David. I’m not angry anymore— Christ cleansed me so when I think of Angela now I think of beauty, a thrush in the morning after rain when the only illumination is distant sheet lightning: that was from one of her poems. I never read them when she was alive I read them now. She saw me before he could. He never saw me. I’m boring you ain’t I?

You never bore me, RoboVoice lied, but in fact this current version of The Confession delighted him; he began to tell TestTube that describing his dead wife’s sweaty breasts, colliding private parts, creamed shoulder, bucking and yelling fuck really livened up the story. Instead he said, You had every right to shoot them.

No. So long ago, I’m not the same man.

The courts thought so, too. Forgive and forget. RoboVoice lowered his Servox electrolarynx, a device resembling a pager, from the side of his neck.

TestTube was called so because the VAMC’s Agent Orange Registry physicians and technicians had performed every known test and procedure, and several they invented in situ yet his guts festered: right kidney, left lung, twenty inches of colon and a cubic foot of malignant skin from his chest, neck and back had been removed. In 1980 he’d been paroled from Leakesville, a Mississippi state prison, his fifth year of slow death of a ten-year sentence, and now the cancer was in his bones. He nodded. I’ve forgiven them because I’m forgiven in turn. You run things through your mind a million times a million different angles and still something dark behind pulls your strings; your thoughts aren’t your own. I don’t mean that crap we discuss in group about ourselves in war; I mean Hell. You think about Hell, don’t you?

I think I’ve made it clear to you I think religious fanatics are deluded assholes hiding from life, and that love is the rarest goddamn element on earth and when some asshole says he loves me or Jesus loves me I want to break his face.

TestTube stopped, not realizing he was being teased. I’m an asshole too? He blinked, tiny points of light sparkling through the drug-dulled hazel. RoboVoice began to say yes you dweeby cheese-smelling codger. Instead he said, I take it from you, the Jesus bullshit, because you got the Medal of Honor, because you did three tours in two wars, because you volunteered for Nam, because you rotated home and executed two people for adultery but still have the balls to lecture me about love and redemption. That’s why I take it from you. His flat mechanical monotone echoed through the hallway. Laryngeal carcinoma (thirty years of filterless Camels); the laryngectomy left him voiceless, a stoma buttholed (his description) the florid skirt of his throat. Come on, I’ll buy you a Coke, said RoboVoice.

Diet, of course, TestTube agreed. And Cheetos.

In the fluorescent stillness of the hall seven-thirty became eight; the last visitor, a young black woman dressed in the nurse’s whites of another hospital, kissed Jarak, a VA security sergeant. Jarak, a side of beef draped in blue polyester, leaned over the Formica counter. Ah baby I love you drive safe now see ya soon. Yamba, behave now, listen to mama.

TestTube and RoboVoice watched the attractive RN exit the automatic glass doors, an open Winchell’s box held low until the boy with her chose a maple bar. Damn Jarak you got a fine ole lady, RoboVoice said, and Jarak laughed. How you boys tonight?

That your kid? Good lookin kid, said TestTube, and Jarak nodded uh-huh. He let them into the staff lounge to buy snacks then secured all entrances except the white batwings separating ambulance bay from Primary Care. Jarak hung his size 42 glossy leather belt, loaded with flashlight, Leatherman Wave, radio, pepper-spray, and bit the first of three Arby’s Big Montanas. Horsy Sauce dripped down his chin, his neck muscles bulged, keys jangled; he finished the sandwich in three bites, washing the entrée down with 2 creams, 3 sugars coffee.

The boys moved out of sight; elevators whirred, telephones rang, from a distant corridor came an industrial mop-bucket’s thumpa-squee! RoboVoice and TestTube finished their nightly round by stopping to pester MopMan. Hey hey, Bobbie. TestTube offered his hand, high-five.

Robert balanced the mop handle against the wall, mouth agape as he formed Huh. Hi, and gently smacked the cadaverous palm. MopMan, my man! RoboVoice’s esophageal voice brayed; he was Pine Lake’s sole laryngectomy patient (of seven) who could speak well esophageally: by swallowing air into his esophagus and flexing his sternocleidomastoid muscles six reasonably ungarbled words could be ejected. But he spit doing it, fingers crammed under the hole, a wolf-whistle. Robert didn’t think it looked or sounded very nice, preferring the electronic speech. Whu? he asked, not understanding the continued spew of grunts. RoboVoice pressed the pseudo-larynx and repeated, How’d your date go with Michelle?

Robert’s mouth gaped wider. His brain flashed she’s fabulous; we drank two of a half-case of '92 Madison cabernet, watching the slack tide at Kalaloch rise to a killer surf, lights from Quinalt Island obscured in fog, the stink of dog fennel mixed with brine smelling, weirdly, like watermelon and gasoline, then Michelle said her grandma took quince jelly for cancer and defiance for everything else, a cool brand of homeopathy, she said, then we kissed. They waited.

Fuh. Fine. She. Muh. Movie. We. Guh. Good time.

RoboVoice snapped his fingers. I knew you two would hit it off. Didn’t I tell you they were perfect?

So you did, TestTube agreed. Bobbie and Michelle. Nice ring to it.

MopMan and BookWorm, RoboVoice laughed. Even better ring.

Michelle Frost worked as librarian for Volunteer Services, third floor (Freebies-3W), stocking the rolling carrels and waiting room racks with paperbacks, magazines and newspapers noon to three Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Michelle’s husband Frank, a pilot, died; she married at 17, widowed at 22. The government listed him MIA 1971; in 1974 a new Major (she could tell because she’d dealt with so many Field Grade officers— old Majors sported patinaed bronze oak leaves just as Lite Colonels decaying-in-grade let their silver oaks blacken knowing they’d never make Fullbird) with a raw shaved face and Jim Beam-Colgate breath told her Frank ejected over Cambodia and died two months later of dysentery and untreated fractures in a bamboo cage in Cham. He didn’t have to tell her a goddamned thing, he said, but had known and liked Frank so just sign the papers and get a check for life. She signed his briefcase of papers, then the Major with Brasso’d oak leaves asked for a drink, and when she brought him Frank’s dusty Bushmills he tried to kiss her. That’s what she remembered about losing her husband: the coppery stink of ink, an eggy breath toothpasted & boozy; the shine of brass and rustle of paper, the misdirected lust.

Michelle moved the library from floor to floor in three-tiered gray metal carts. She was in charge of exactly one thousand two hundred sixty-two books and periodicals, of which at any time approximately one hundred thirty were shelved in alphabetical order on an individual cart: first tier nonfiction, second tier romance, bottom tier westerns. The job infrequently presented some challenge, such as where to shelve classics, the G or W of an encyclopedia set, or textbooks; most often, she carried these special books home. RoboVoice, being a college graduate (BS Geology, Missouri U 66) helped Michelle sort through the cartons of newly donated books and when she’d asked, teasing, where he’d place Past And Present, Demian, and Shibumi, he’d mulled it over then stuck Carlyle in nonfiction, Hesse in romance, Trevanian in westerns.

RoboVoice fancied Michelle himself but that was impossible and he had enough dignity to not even try, turning his passion instead to brotherly matchmaker, but when much-younger Robert (Enlisted Reserve: Desert Shield/Desert Storm 90-91: Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Medical Retirement, VA 70% Service-Connected Disability) and much-older Michelle continued to ignore each other he’d become so insufferable that finally a date was made.

Gonna take her out again, Bobbie? TestTube asked.

Muh. Maybe. Yuh. Yes.

That’s the spirit. RoboVoice winked, his lizard’s mug so frighteningly close that Robert backed away. How bout a Coke? We’ll bring you a Coke. Want some Fritos and Coke?

Nuh. Juh. Jarak. Duh. Don’t. Buh. Bother him. He hefted his dented green Stanley Thermos, half full of coffee. Uh. I’m. Fuh. Fine. Every time he moved, he sold or gave or threw away everything; he kept the Thermos because he’d enjoyed working the derrick in Flatonia, Texas. Lassoing the pipe with his good hand, punching it into place in the rack with his stumped one— Damnedest thing I ever seen his driller bragged. Robert at peace, a new start at last he thought, just him and God, then the blowout: he’d shined the cable down to earth from his monkeyboard as the fireball killed everyone else on the platform. No complaints until ranchers slung coyote corpses over barbwire: coyotes murdered by set-guns firing cyanide pellets when the trap baits were bitten into. Cowardly ambush: he’d said so in a bar in Vernon, hammering the someone who jumped him, who threatened to kill him later but wouldn’t press charges. Then he’d spoke up for coyotes in a Wichita Falls dive and hurt three more men. After posting Robert’s bail the driller said, You’re a good man, Bobby, one of the best I ever hired, but crazy as a shithouse rat. Then the blowout and dead, these first real friends – even his army buddies weren’t true friends, he was an outsider, a loner, allergic to whores, they all said, christ he likes gospel, turn that shit down – at thirty he finally had real friends, all dead.

Bobbie shook his mop. A shiny penny, green TicTac and boomerang-shaped roach leg appeared in the fallout.

Now you got a woman, you better think about your future, RoboVoice needled. They should promote you, you been here three years. I’ll talk to Jack and see about getting you down to Physical Plant, okay?

TestTube, caught staring at the pink mass of Bobbie’s right hand, grinned and winked. Robert nodded. His brain flashed I need solitude, empty cool spaces, quiet. I’d go crazy with your imbecile friend Jack spitting mint snuff-drool into a Styrofoam cup: his Adult Pleasure Palace porno cards, his farts, fart jokes, racism, misogyny, misanthropy, homophobia. He opened his mouth wide, tongue purple and momentarily useless.

They waited.

Yuh. You. Fuh. Find. Bluh. Bliss.

RoboVoice and TestTube laughed, puzzled. All right, MopMan. Be cool. They moved on, TestTube mimicking Robert’s stuttered F: I thought he was going to tell you to fuh-fuck off; would serve you right. He wiggled his big toe through a tear in the blue foam slipper and RoboVoice prodded the protruding toe with his own foot, hoping to cause pain. Replace those damn slippers. Just ask they’ll toss you a new pack. The floor’s got God knows what germs.

TestTube stared at his toes. The only dirt concerns me is the dirt eternal. Christ blessed a prostitute for wiping his feet, the point being that dirt inside is far worse than dirt outside. RoboVoice began to ask whether or not Jesus enjoyed having his feet rubbed with whore’s hair, and how often he had it done, but the meanness became fatigue. I’d sell my soul to smell chocolate or beef stew or fresh mown grass. The friends bid each other good night and stood at separate elevators, as they always did, to return to their wards. Jarak once asked them why they didn’t ride together, RoboVoice getting off at 5 then TestTube at 7, but the vets smiled as if he didn’t get it.

RoboVoice’s elevator dropped first. Ben, he said. Night, Allen, TestTube replied, entering his elevator immediately after; Robert pushed his cart ahead and watched the two men disappear. His brain flashed truth comes tricky down from mountaintops; carbon cools the interstellar medium, altering its subsequent chemical evolution — that is man, that is all he is, the cooling of carbon. He stopped, drank from the green Thermos, switched the cassette in his Walkman from Tchaikovsky’s Dumka to Beethoven’s Pathétique. Mass-produced classical music was a good thing, though eventually the tapes crackled and hissed from constant play and were replaced with offerings from the $3.99 bin at Music Mart. MopMan entered the men’s toilet, slipped on elbow-length yellow rubber gloves; the fingers of the right-hand glove were tied into a knot. He slopped Pine-Sol diluted with water over the floor and urinals, mopped the powerful milk into the main drain then Windexed the mirrors and stainless steel fixtures. Robert peeled the gloves, sighing as sweat evaporated from his hands. He turned into his reflection in a mirror, smoothed his mustache, scowled at the keloid looping from his temple down-cheek to cross his throat. He pulled thick blond hair down his scar then wet his fingers and straight-backed it the way his father had: a man’s hair don’t hang in his face, boy.

Hello Robert. Michelle touched him and he jumped, stripped off the headphones. I brought some cookies. I couldn’t sleep and I’m sick of TV. You like oatmeal raisin?

He nodded. He pointed. Uh. The. Muh. Mirror. I. Duh. Don’t.

Why shouldn’t you look at yourself? I like your face. She took a bite then placed the remainder of cookie – sweet, gritty, slightly greasy – into his mouth. He ate, watching her thin-lipped mouth move as she ate. She talked so easily, with so clear a voice; they all did, even RoboVoice: cancer took his voicebox yet his thoughts exit the Servox lucid and sane: there are curses, Robert thought, superstitions based on coincidence, and then there is the disability of guilt. He swallowed, thanked Michelle— the cookie was strong cinnamon and he liked the taste.

I love looking at you, and thinking about you, she said. When I’m alone, I play a game with the mirror; every morning after my shower I put my contacts in and makeup on and say Michelle Frost, this is the best you can do today, be satisfied because if you’re not you’ll screw up everything and everyone’s gonna absorb your unhappiness so pretend, if you have to. Sometimes, Robert, I draw the face I want on the mirror; sounds crazy but sometimes I lipstick the perfect red mouth I want right on the glass then grease-pencil the perfect almond-shaped eyes then I turn away and wear that face into the world. She fed him another cookie. He refused a third but held her hand then she brushed crumbs from his lips and kissed him. Know what else I do, sometimes? No actually a lot, lately a lot, Robert. He shook his head.

I pray, said Michelle. "Not exactly to God, or in the church way, hands clasped, words rising to heaven—

I pray to the world. Is that crazy? I stand at night on the porch and pray that there is some force on earth that can make men someday learn to love. She kissed him again and he put his arms around her. His brain flashed ourselves, not war, is the problem: we start ourselves and all good or evil follows. Robert opened his mouth, Michelle waited. He sprayed words like bullets, not trying to control the stutter; he didn’t know if she understood. Sweat poured down his neck; Michelle seemed pleased by his response— she pressed her lips to the back of his right hand, onto the scar which zigzagged down his forearm to dead-end in the stump where the denuded little finger protruded. "We need each other, don’t we, Robert? I miss Frank. I’ve been so alone so long, so angry he wasn’t coming back and why he wasn’t coming back—

—dead in a ratty mud hole. I wanted to die too, with my husband in the stink and flames, cursing back the angry babble of enemy: die with him, my body more memorable than confusion and pain. Nothing ever changes, Robert, until we love again. Let me show you.

Michelle pushed the cart of brooms, mops, rags, disinfectant and polishes aside and positioned Robert before a mirror. She licked her finger, reached around his lean frame and traced his reflection in the mirror, the moisture of her fingertip barely perceptible. My magic pen, she laughed as she drew. As did God in Eden, I fashion the man I want from spittle and clay. Robert bit his lips, his tongue pushed, strained— a dead and stupidly inert prosthesis. You’re with me, now, Michelle said. I love you. I don’t care how you speak. I pray I don’t grow old alone, that I can be of use to someone else, that love and caring still matters. I remember every detail of our date, when I tripped you caught me, how warm and strong you were, how your sweater smelled of soap and after-shave. I wanted my sheets to smell of you. I don’t care how you talk. I want you.

She stroked his chest, encouraged by the greatness in his brow. He trembled. She waited. He opened his mouth, lips stretched white, then gave up, gave in. She waited. He drew breath, shuddered. She pressed her fingers into the bony sternum guarding his heart, coaxing up sound. He closed his mouth and eyes and tried again. Luh. Love. I love. I love you! Robert opened his eyes and Michelle, crying, seemed very old yet very beautiful: both broken people with satchel-charge memories, he knew, but also two human beings awaking after a maddening hiatus; a night so pure the love of God seemed real, flowing from the battered painting of Jerome, the saint with kindly eyes. They slow danced, neither leading, Robert counting one-two, three-four: words softer, less guttural, stutter slight, little hesitation, and that was enough for one day; his brain flashed a fool I’ve been, thinking all is flux, big talk, lotsa pray, fall down dead.

THE EXECUTOR

Thom Brucie

By the time we were seniors in high school, the Vietnam conflict had percolated itself into a sizable gathering, and Robbie and Kathleen got married. Robbie and I signed up on the buddy system, and we did basic and AIT together. Most everybody went in the service, except our friend Norval Smith. Norval was an okay guy, don’t get me wrong, but with a name like Norval, we just knew he’d end up a lawyer. So nobody cared when he went to Penn State while we went to Fort Dix.

Robbie and I finished AIT, and as permanent duty, I went to Da Nang, assigned to the First Cavalry; Robbie went to Georgia with Kathleen. Robbie got this pansy job baby-sitting a bunch of ROTC cadets. About every 90 days, for six weeks, he’d help teach them how to be artillery captains. What did he do between camps? Hung out on the beach. He’d write me letters, and he always wrote, Keep your ass down, GI, like it was our own personal joke or something. Loads of laughs, Robbie was.

I was base-camped near the DMZ in late March: monsoons, mosquitoes, salty food, and warm beer. Good grass, though, and plenty of it, but that didn’t compete with Robbie and his stateside beach duty. I wrote him a letter saying gung-ho stuff like Real men volunteer. I told him about this girl who took on the survivors of two platoons just after a firefight. She probably made enough money to feed her family for a year, but she couldn’t walk, and her mama-san came with the old village buffalo to carry her home.

I feel bad about that letter now because Robbie never read it. He was in the hospital at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Kathleen read it to him. That letter continues to embarrass me; the subject of prostitutes just didn’t sit well with Kathleen.

I learned the details of Robbie’s accident after I got home. Even now the irony of it seems peculiar.

As I said, it was near the end of March. Robbie had a new group of wimpy wonders at Fort Benning. Robbie’s Battalion CO, Lieutenant Colonel Mangino, was a typical lifer. The moment the lieutenant colonel found out there were VIP’s on base, he ran to the commander and suggested a big show, allowing the new ROTC cadets to shoot some artillery rounds for the VIP’s, two generals and a Congressman from Oklahoma. The base commander agreed.

It was set up for early evening because the smoke and the flash of the guns took on more of an ethereal hue in the twilight. No small detail went unattended by Lieutenant Colonel Mangino. It was a common exercise, and it should have gone without a hitch. Simple triangulation shot. Triangulation is how the gunners find a target. They know the location of the gun. That’s one point. A point-man goes off a couple hundred meters to establish the second point. Then, using that old high school geometry stuff, they formulate some kind of scalene triangle and shoot the longest line to the third point, the target.

The evening settled in with the spring energy of dogwood blooms and magnolia blossoms. Robbie radioed his coordinates to the rookie ROTC’s and waited for them to take a couple of shots at a tank 450 meters north and east. Unfortunately, the cadets were too new to be triangulating with a real Howitzer. Instead of coordinating the target tank, they targeted Robbie’s bunker and lobbed a 108 right into the sand bags. The impact flung Robbie about the distance of four duce-and-a-half’s laid bumper to bumper. It shattered most of his arteries and collapsed some veins, and it contributed a generous concussion that split the skull from just above his left eye to his ear. He didn’t win a medal, though. Even though it was wartime, he was believed to be in a safe zone.

It was the reverberations and not the blast, which did the damage, so Robbie’s body was intact when they reached him. Internally, he was shattered, and, I will say this, when the doctors realized the extent of his problems, they signed off immediately and flew him to Fort Sam.

Fort Sam’s a training hospital, so the Army wanted to perform some experiments on Robbie. New technologies, they said, and Kathleen gave them permission. They riveted a metal plate to his head where the skull had separated; they placed a small, nuclear-powered impulsor next to his heart to help it beat rhythmically; and they replaced the arteries around his heart with silicone tubing. To most everyone’s amazement, he survived.

Of course, there were intermittent problems. His human parts only worked when the pump and the tubes worked, and occasionally they stopped; without reason or explanation they’d suddenly start again. Robbie became an interesting living experiment.

Kathleen went to Texas with him. She stayed by his bed six or seven hours every day, and read storybooks to him. After awhile, the nurses let her give Robbie his sponge baths. That’s when they discovered his dick still worked.

* * * *

It was not a surprise that Kathleen stayed by Robbie during this entire incident. Their particular love arrangement formed when we were children. Kathleen was one of those rare red-haired girls with a child’s face and a woman’s eyes. There is no short way to explain Kathleen. Most of the thoughts I have about her don’t have an anchor in time— she just always seemed a bit remarkable to me, and in a quiet sort of way, beautiful. Kathleen possessed Irish green eyes that she kept faithfully focused on Robbie. They were a pair, though, Kathleen as lithe and supple as a lynx, Robbie as short as a possum and just as tenacious.

When we were in sixth grade, Robbie and Norval and I stood in the shade under the maple tree in the corner of the school playground. The weather was pleasant, a bright sun and a few puffy clouds in a blue sky.

I found a way to make sure I’m not late for school any more, Robbie said.

Did you learn to fly over the trains? Norval asked him.

We all laughed at this because Robbie lived on the eastern side of the railroad tracks. Sometimes he got stranded by the 7:20 train. That morning train took so long to pass through town that Robbie would be eighteen or twenty-two minutes late for school, depending on whether he walked or ran from the tracks.

Kathleen walked out of the sunshine to join us in the shade. A red cotton ribbon held her hair in a ponytail, and she carried a small brown bag with her lunch in it.

How do you get by the trains? Kathleen asked Robbie.

We were eleven years old; not quite old enough to figure out girls, and not quite young enough to keep on ignoring them.

Robbie looked at the three of us; then he said to Kathleen, I roll under them.

About that time the bell rang; time to stand in line for class. As we stood there, Norval said, Prove it.

At lunch, Robbie said.

Kathleen whispered loud enough for all of us to hear, I’m coming. Sister Mary Gregory headed our way and there was no more time for discussion.

That’s how it started.

Back then, you know, there weren’t fences around schools, so taking off was easy. Of course not many people took off because eventually you had to face Sister Mary Gregory, and she held vastly more control over a child’s behavior than a fence ever could. But we took off and said the hell with Sister Mary G-man, sounding to ourselves like we had just crossed the threshold of adolescence instead of the school property line.

We ran to the rail crossing at Center Street. Every day, at noon, the old Erie and Lackawanna rumbled through town at maybe seven or eight miles an hour, its cars full of shiny Pennsylvania coal for the glass factory. At the crossing, we watched the train coming from the south. Robbie ran across the tracks.

Come over to this side, he called.

Why? Norval asked for all of us.

We’ll all roll under the train and get back to school before lunch is over.

Norval and Kathleen and I hesitated. The noon sun made the coal chips glisten, and the pounding of the steel wheels against the tracks began to get loud. The engineer pulled the air chain, and the steam whistle blew. Whooommmm . . . Whooommmm . . . A warning.

Kathleen moved first. She stepped over the rail, and I watched her feet along the tie, black with creosote and marred from random flying pieces of the granite bed. She jumped the rail on the other side with both feet at once and landed next to Robbie like a bull rider who jumps off and lands on his feet, knees bent. The train rushed closer. The whistle sounded again, and before the warning finished, the long, high-pitched lunch whistle at the factory sounded. The pounding of the locomotive against the rails added rumbles to the whistles like fingers of hammers on a steel drum. Finally, from fear as much as from pride, Norval and I jumped across the rails just as the lunch whistle stopped and the locomotive rumbled by and the engineer hollered at us for being unsafe and he hung his head out the window with his elbow on the ledge and told us, Stay back.

Robbie smiled. He was about the size of a schnauzer shorter than Norval and me, but he stood there like a leader. Way to go, he said. I admit I felt pretty cocky, thinking maybe Superman couldn’t have done what I just did.

The train’s rhythm was insistent. Bump. . .bum-bum. . .Bump. . .bum-bum. Every time a set of wheels passed us, we watched the ties pop up and down, and the big spikes tightened and slackened one quick rattle at a time. Bump. . .bum-bum. . .Bump. . .bum-bum.

Here’s how it’s done, Robbie said. "I get down close to the tracks. When the first wheel gets to my