But that other fucking guy had seemed to come out of nowhere. All of a sudden he was standing there, watching the whole thing. It would definitely not be a good thing if the guy shot off his mouth later about seeing two marines and a dead policeman.
And that fucking Hayes, asking him what happened. Hayes wasn’t stupid. He was trying to play it coy, maybe setting the stage to shift all the blame to Beech if the shit ever hit the fan.
Beech developed a splitting headache.
After a few days in Detroit and Indianapolis, the tour returned to Chicago. Beech wanted to rip his fingernails out with his teeth. He hadn’t had a drink since their last night in Chicago. He took Hayes out to bars every night but kept himself in check so he could watch the Indian. He managed to make sure the captain or the colonel saw Hayes in all his glory, returning to the hotels after his nights on the town.
At the Palmer Hotel in Chicago, Colonel Fordney told Beech to bring Hayes into his office. The colonel shoved a United Airlines ticket to Hawai’i into Beech’s hands. “He’s going back to Easy Company. The Fifth Division is training to invade Japan. Hayes is going with them. Make sure he gets on the plane without disgracing the Corps. Dismissed.”
Later, as Beech was getting the Indian seated on the plane, he said, “I’m real sorry it turned out this way, Ira. You’re a good man. Keep your chin up.” He clapped him on the shoulder.
The Pima marine looked at Beech. “What did you do with the gun?”
Beech cupped his hand behind his ear. “Can’t hear you.”
The Indian raised his voice. “The gun. What did you do with it?”
Beech shrugged and waved his hand, indicating there was too much noise for him to make out what his friend was saying. “Have a safe trip,” he called.
The Indian didn’t say anything.
Beech jogged back inside the terminal where he could watch the plane, with Hayes inside, take off.
The war bond tour was raising money, that was true, but it was also a fact that the United States government was broke. That meant a lack of weapons, ammunition, tanks, food — a shortage of everything. With diminishing supplies, there was a hell of a good chance Hayes wouldn’t make it back from combat alive.
He scanned the morning editions of the Chicago papers. There were follow-up stories on the dead policeman and civilian, but all they amounted to were that there were no witnesses and no leads. The only item of note was that the policeman’s gun was missing, but there were no clues and no theories yet.
Beech rubbed his hands together. Now he could relax, have a drink, and get ready to move on to St. Louis and Tulsa with the bond tour.
Quilt like a night sky
by Kimberly Roppolo
Alberta, Canada
Going home was the last thing he wanted to do.
In the darkness, Boon Lone Rider walked past Farm Four, a mix of gravel and crusty snow crunching beneath his heavily worn runners. He wished it were summer. He remembered shoes from the past, smaller pairs of canvass ones with rubber soles, dust coating them thinly as it rose in tiny clouds, his child feet dragging patterns like snakes in the road. He thought about stopping at a cousin’s place in Little Chicago, but it had been a long time since he had been back here, and not only was Boon unsure of circumstances — the things that had transpired since his last visit, the details of life, always changing, who was cool with what and with whom, who had been caught with whose woman in the backseat of a pow wow van, what shotguns and odd handguns had drifted across the border into whose hands, whether his cousin was even alive — he also knew he needed to do this.
He thought about visiting his mom and his grandma, but he’d have to go by the cemetery soon enough, he figured. He thought about visiting his dad, but that would necessitate finding him, and Boon wasn’t sure he was willing to spend the last thing he had, his time. And he wasn’t sure if he even had the effort in him to do it. Boon thought about his grandpa and what a good man he had been. He thought about Regina. He guessed she was a woman now, but the girl was the one he held in his mind. He didn’t want to wonder how many kids she had now, who was brushing her skin softly as she slept, caught up in the velvety wonder of it all, who was gently lifting her dark hair away from her face and neck to kiss her tenderly...
With a twitch like he’d seen in horses, Boon shoved his scarred hands deeper into his jeans pockets. He needed more than a hoodie out here in this cold, but at least tonight, the spirits were dancing. He hadn’t seen that in a long time. Boon looked up, his breath rising white into the blackness of night. He scanned the sky for the Lost Boys. This evening, their names suited them a bit too well.
Boon looked up the road. A few houses still had lights blooming softly into the blackness outside the windows. A few more miles west and he would be there.
Boon had been fighting as long as he could remember. The first time he hit someone back, it had been his father. Four years old, Boon’s smooth fists pummeled out, surprising even himself, mad tears streaming down his face. The old man should have never come back around, Boon thought. Boon and his mother had been just fine at Grandma’s. Grandpa had come in later that morning from an all-night smoke, found Boon curled up in the old quilt in his chair in the corner, taken him into his arms, gently reminded him of the pipe in the house, told him that fighting back would do nothing to take away the black eye from his mother’s face, smudged him off, prayed for him. That’s when Boon began walking, walking these very roads when the hurt or the anger got too much, when it had to come out of him somehow. Grandpa was right. Even if the pipe hadn’t been there, the world of men and the wars they fought belonged outside of women’s houses.
Faces he had hit flashed through his mind. Boon didn’t always start the fights, and he didn’t always finish them. There had been plenty of times he had been left lying somewhere, alone and beaten. Some fights he regretted. The guy who had said one thing too much about his sister when Boon was sixteen and drunk. Fair warning, Boon thought, but at sixteen, he hadn’t realized one punch could break someone’s face. Sometimes he clenched back the fistfuls of rage and pain, clenched them back, hugged them to himself, plunged them through his own chest, and hit the person he was really aiming at, but usually it wasn’t too hard to find another Indian as mad at the world and himself as he was. Boon ran his tongue over his top front teeth, tasting the scars they had left there. The guy had been right about Boon’s sister after all, though Boon still missed her terribly.
He saw the outline in the dark. A click or so back from the gravel road, snow drifted in deep piles at the base, further rounding the silhouette softened by time and wind. A frozen tear fell down from the Morning Star, plunged into the snow, blending with the rest of the grinding whiteness, but Boon didn’t notice. Fine as sand, snow sifted into his runners as he walked up where the old path ran beneath it. There was still wood in the woodpile, but Boon ignored it, hopped up on the porch, turned the knob, and worked the door, stuck in its frame, until he could just squeeze in. His eyes adjusted as he made out the old chair, still there, with the blue, tatted quilt, purple yarn dotting it like stars, holding the whole thing together. He pulled the gun from the small of his back. Boon walked over, gently lifting it, folding down the edge, letting it fall around his shoulders, sinking at last into the chair, laying the gun in his lap.
Going home was the last thing he wanted to do.