mouth shut.
Chris spoke to me only when he had to. And that was another reason I almost wanted the other shoe to drop. Bad enough that this tension was going on and on, but Chris not talking to me? That was agony.
The third night, after dinner, I was sitting on my bed and trying to do some homework. The pages of my book kept swimming, and something wet fell onto my notes and blurred the ink. With kind of a shock I realized I was crying. Fourteen years old, and I was crying like some baby. I fell sideways onto my pillow and buried my face in it to muffle the sounds, and I cried. Don’t know how long I was at it before I felt a hand on my arm.
It was Chris. He sat on the edge of the bed, I sat up, and he held me while I dripped all over his shoulder. “I hate myself,” I stuttered. “I hate myself.”
“No you don’t, little brother. If you were bad enough to hate yourself, you wouldn’t know you felt this bad.”
I’m not really sure that made any sense, but it made me feel better. I snuffled and pulled away. Chris reached for a box of tissues and I blew my nose. Then he said, “You need to tell Anthony you’re sorry.”
“I can’t do that. He won’t even look at me.”
“Write him a note, then.”
“What about Marty?”
“What about him?” I was about to protest that it had been his idea, but that hadn’t got me anywhere so far. When I didn’t answer, Chris said, “Marty will do whatever it is Marty needs to do. It’s you I care about. And you need to do this. Not for Anthony. It might help Anthony, or it might not. Do it for you.”
I snuffled a few times. “I guess he didn’t rat. No one’s said anything.”
“I guess not.”
I never did tell Anthony I was sorry. After Christmas holiday that year, he didn’t come back. We heard he’d gone to another school, a private school with an advanced math curriculum. That seemed best, really; he got away from me and from Marty, and he would be with other kids like him. Maybe he’d even have to admit that he wasn’t the smartest kid in the world; small fish in a big pond now.
Thinking back on this whole incident, I’m amazed it didn’t occur to me that Chris’s reaction was probably worse than Dad’s would have been.
December ninth. That was the day the colonel, along with a lieutenant, showed up. Hats in hands, just like I’d pictured. It was a Saturday, so I was home. I’d taken to spending as much time as I could stand to at home, expecting this. But sometimes I’d just about go crazy waiting, and I’d have to get out, and the whole time I’d be gone I would wonder if they were at the house right now, that I’d get home to find Mom lying on her bed in hysterics and a doctor giving her a sedative, while Dad limped through the house punching things. I’d been noticing his limp a lot more these last couple of weeks. And I was angrier with him every day for putting us through this, for putting Chris through hell to make up for his own shortcomings, and almost certainly for getting Chris killed.
And now it had happened.
Dad wasn’t home; he was at the store, which he usually was on Saturdays. I was in Chris’s room, sitting on his bed, looking around at his things. The dumb things kids tend to collect had collected in spades in here. Chris was a bit of a pack rat, and even this stupid little fake mother-of-pearl handled jackknife he’d won at some fair when he was maybe nine was still in the drawer of the bedside table. I was in his room even though Mom had caught me in there several times since Thanksgiving and had told me to stay out. Damn it, I will not stay out. He’s my brother, after all, not just her son.
So I was sitting on his bed when the doorbell rang, and I jumped, which was what usually happened these days when that thing went off, or when the phone rang, anything that might tell us Chris was gone. So it rang, and I jumped and then sat still. Frozen, more like. It’s the mailman, and there’s a package he needs a signature for. Or it’s kids selling candy for some school project. My ears hurt, I was straining so hard to hear.
Mom was in the kitchen, and as I heard her footsteps I pictured her wiping her hands on her apron as she moved through the living room toward the front door. I heard the heavy wooden inside door open, knowing she could now see through the storm door to whoever might be there. I held my breath. And I heard my mom cry, “Oh! No! No!”
I took the stairs two at a time, and when I got to the door everyone was just standing there like they’d been waiting for me to make my entrance before the action could continue. Mom was staring at the two officers, hands to her face. They looked businesslike but contrite, as sympathetic as they could, I suppose. But they were messengers from hell.
I remember going all cold. Something clicked off, and something else clicked on. I took Mom gently by the shoulders and guided her away from the door so that I could open it and let the evil in. Still speechless, she kind of fell into the easy chair I led her to. I gestured toward the couch, and the two men sat while I fetched a box of tissues for Mom. Standing next to her chair, I held her hand while the colonel spoke.
“I’m very sorry to bring you this news, Mrs. Landon. Your son, Private First Class Christopher Landon, was killed two days ago while serving his country in Vietnam.”
What the fuck are they doing? Do they think we don’t know where he is? Mom gasped and then sobbed and covered her face completely.
He went on. “He died a hero. His squadron was ambushed, and everyone but Private Landon and four other men were killed very quickly. Those four men were wounded. Your son found cover for them. He got three of them under cover and was almost back with the fourth man when he was killed. All of the men he rescued survived, so we know how brave your son was. We know his story.”
You know nothing! You don’t know anything about him! I was blinking like crazy and breathing oddly, but I would not cry. I nodded at them so they would know they’d done what they needed to do and they could leave now. And that’s just what they did. They stood, and the lieutenant said, “Please accept our sincere condolences. We’ll be in touch again soon. And remember that there was much honor in his death.”
As if that would help. He’s dead! He’s gone, he’s fucking dead! I gritted my teeth.
The colonel saluted Mom, not that she noticed, and said, “We’ll see ourselves out.”
She was trying to say something, but she was crying so hard I almost couldn’t make it out. “I have to call your father.”
“Oh, Ma, no. Not over the phone.” I felt oddly calm, and somehow I knew that was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t have my full license yet, but this was no time to quibble over details like that. I said, “I’ll take your car and go to the store.”
“No! Don’t leave me alone.”
“Then come with me. We can’t tell him on the phone, Mom. That’s all there is to it.”
She did her best not to sob too much in the car, and I could tell the effort was costing her. She barely breathed all the way. Despite how calm I felt, my vision kept blurring, but I clenched my jaw and blinked a lot. It isn’t like I hadn’t known. It isn’t like Chris hadn’t told me this would happen.
When we got to the store Mom made me park away from the door, away from the other parked cars. “I can’t go in like this, Paul, and I don’t want anyone to see me in the car, either.”
So I parked where Mom could see the front of the store, facing that sunshine yellow sign that read LANDON’S PET SUPPLY. I trudged alone across the pavement, barely aware of how far I had to walk between the car and the store—it’s a big lot. Something in my mind was focusing hard on stupid details like avoiding icy puddles where I might slip, noticing all the wrinkly edges where the water had seeped between bits of pavement grit before it froze. I was in some kind of low gear, some survival mode I couldn’t remember having experienced before. I tried to come up with an opening sentence for telling Dad, but there was no right way to say what I had to say.
Dad