Ken's War (11 page)

“Thirty-three consecutive scoreless innings,”
Holm said again. He poked Ken’s shoulder, trying to coax out an
appreciative reaction to this sports statistic.

“Must’ve been boring,” Ken said.

Holm punched in the dashboard cigarette
lighter. He held the glowing lighter to his cigarette.

“Major Holm?”

“I’m a lieutenant colonel, Carrot Top.”

“Yeah. Sorry. You don’t have to pretend to be
my dad. I have a dad.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t stick up
for you like he does.”

“Whatta ya mean?” Holm had his dad confused
with another man.

“Your dad busted his hand when he left-hooked
his CO.”

“Why?”

“Why ask ‘why’?”

“Why did dad deck his commanding
officer?”

“Don’t you Padersons communicate? He decked
his CO for suggesting you deserved a broken arm, picking a fight
with his kid. That’s why.”

If one’s inner world could undergo
earthquakes like those he’d experienced in Japan, Holm’s statements
abruptly, irrevocably rearranged Ken’s tectonic plates.

“Your dad is your dad, and that’s that,” Holm
said.

“Yes, sir.” He turned away from Holm and
pretended to be sleeping while Holm sang out messages emblazoned on
billboards to the tune of whatever melody happened to be playing on
the radio.

Ken smiled secretly. His father had punched
David Marshall’s dad, on Ken’s account, no less.
That
explained the sudden transfer to Japan.

Since he’d arrived four days ago, he’d
overcome his jetlag, but was still disconcerted at the sight of
mom’s puffy face, thick ankles and waist, and her dang blasted
cigarette smoking, Other new things drove him nuts, too.

She crushed a lip-stick stained butt in an
ashtray. “Ken, honey. Don’t look at me that way. I told you, I’m
sorry this was a surprise and whatnot. I’d written all about it to
your dad. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you about...” She waved
her hand inclusively at the artificial Christmas tree with gifts
under it, at the mantle with photos of two girls with high
foreheads and of a pudgy-faced infant, and at the bay window with a
view of the Aberdeen Proving Ground water tower.

He’d been prepared to dislike Holm and to
tolerate the new baby, but adding two girls into the mix strained
his capacity to stop himself from grabbing a baseball bat and
smashing up their stupid fake Christmas tree. His dad should have
told him about the new family Tricia assembled, then maybe Ken
could have saved his West Point story for a better time.

His mom lit another Kool. Between hungry
inhales she said, “Cheer up. Today’s Christmas and some of those
presents under the tree are for you.”

A clattering arose on the back porch. She
pushed herself off the sofa and waddled to the back door. A river
of cheerful voices cascaded into the house. Holm and his
daughters—Becky, aged 14, Alice, aged 9, and Ken’s so called
half-brother, seven-month-old Carl Gary Holm—were back from
visiting Santa Claus at the assembly hall.

“Are Mammaw and Pap-pap here yet?” That was
Becky using baby words.

“No, honey,” he heard his mom say.
Honey
? The sweet word punched his sternum. She’d called that
kid honey, and it wasn’t even her kid. She’d spent the endearment
like a penny in an empty gumball machine.

“Good grief. Is Ken still here?” That was
Alice. Her teeth were fenced in with braces.

“He’s in the living room, I think.”

He galloped toward the stairs.

“Hey, Ken,” Alice said, “Wanna play Old
Maid?”

“Nah.”

“Go Fish? Concentration?”

Sissy games.
“Nah.”

His mother laid the baby in the crib. Baby
Carl, lying on his back, looked around and started flailing his
arms and bawling. His head was downy with light orange hairs.

“When I look at his face,” Ken’s mom shouted
to be heard over the baby’s crying, “I see you all over again. You
had the same cranky expression and the same peach fuzz.” She lifted
Carl out of the crib and cradled his head against her breasts.

“I did not,” Ken said.

“If I had one of your baby pictures, you’d
see.”

“Nuh-uh,” he said. “My pictures are black and
white.” And why the hell didn’t she have one of his baby or school
pictures on the mantle?

She frowned and then laughed. “Play cards
with the girls until their grandparents come.” She covered the
baby’s ear with her hand and hollered, “Gary, will you baste the
turkey?” Holm said he was a master baster and followed Tricia to
the kitchen.

The kitchen oven had been emitting
mouth-watering aromas all afternoon. Nothing else in the whole
world smelled better than roast turkey. Ken didn’t know what he’d
wish for this time when he and his mom split the wishbone—that
she’d tucked his baby pictures in a safe place away from those
girls’ sticky fingers, or that these people would soon leave her
behind the way he and his dad had.

He tried to teach the girls poker, but Becky
didn’t understand the difference between a full house and flush and
Alice didn’t understand anything. So. They played Go Fish.

“They eat raw fish in Japan,” Ken informed
the sisters.

“E-e-ew! You’re lying,” Becky said. “Nobody
eats raw fish.”

Alice’s eyes were wide. “Did you ever eat raw
fish?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re lying,” Becky said.

“The Japanese people strip naked and get in a
big bathtub together.”

“Good grief! Did you see their pee wees and
bosoms?” Alice wanted to know.

Becky slapped her sister and yelled, “Daddy,
Kenny’s telling lies!”

“Don’t lie, boy,” Holm said absently.

“Ken, quit teasing the girls,” his mom said.
“Go play with your soldiers.”

“They’re not toys. They’re models.” He
couldn’t believe she hadn’t thrown them away. “Where are they?”

“On the closed-in porch.”

“Yeah? Can I get 'em?”

“Be my guest,” she said.

He pulled hard on the door to the porch. It
was so cold, he could see his breath.

There they were. In two cloth bags. He
hoisted a bag of soldiers, one over each shoulder. Carefully, he
poured the men out of the bags. Hundreds of soldiers cartwheeled
onto the wood floor, making the same rattle as they had the summer
before, and the summer before that when he’d arranged them at his
grandparents’ house. The last summer he’d stayed with his
grandparents, sorting the soldiers, affixing their proper
accessories, and lining them up chronologically had consumed two
weeks.

Henry VIII's soldiers carrying bows and
muskets were going to march in the front rows. Behind them British
soldiers in tailcoats and three-corner hats would stand. He needed
to buy Napoleon and his troops, but he did have twenty French
soldiers, and a dozen fierce Indians from the French-American war.
Several rows would be dedicated to American Revolutionary War
soldiers, and several more to American Civil War soldiers. About a
quarter of the collection consisted of soldiers from the Great War,
and the rest were World War II soldiers and camp followers. World
War II soldiers were easy to come by in stores.

Lying on his belly, Ken picked up a
16
^th
century soldier. Pressing a long, thin musket into
the musketeer’s hand, he mustered his collection. He lined the men
up, making minor changes in their order of placement, filling in
gaps of chronology, extending a row here, moving a column there.
Because he used the cracks between the floorboards as markers, each
row of soldiers was dead straight.

He could feel it. The furniture drifting
away. The porch walls sliding out of sight. He could feel the
objects of his attention sucking him in like a thick ice cream soda
through a straw. Getting lost. Losing time. He escaped into the
straight lines, the order, the repetitive act of setting soldier
beside soldier. The assurance that no one could tell him he was
arranging them incorrectly, that no one could attack him, that no
one could come along and rearrange the order of this little world
was a tonic.

“My great uncle on my mother’s side fought
for the South in the Civil War, you know.”

He jumped a little. He hadn’t heard his
mother come in from the kitchen. She wore a yellow apron over her
sweater and slacks.

“Yeah, I know.” He’d heard about the man.
Uncle Ebert—a relative who'd stolen boots off dead and near-dead
Union soldiers, a man who'd run his bayonet through people who were
distant kin. “Am I related to him?”

“Once or twice removed, I guess. My brother
was given his gun. Don't know what he's done with it.”

“Sure wish I had it.”

“We have enough war stories in this family to
last for the next ten generations,” she said. “If you didn't remove
your play soldiers' little guns and doodads every time, it wouldn't
take as long to set them up again.”

Breaking concentration, Ken pulled his tongue
in. “I want to do it this way.”

She tramped upon the love seat to reach the
window blinds and pull them down. “It’s cold out here. Aren’t you
cold?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Suit yourself.”

“OK.”

Chapter
Nine

~ Merry Christmas ~

He heard the doorbell bong and the girls
clomping down the stairs into the living room.

“Oh, goodie gumdrops. Now we can open our
presents.” That was Becky.

Holm tromped through the living room and into
the kitchen. He hollered to Ken who was still on the porch, “Get in
here, Carrot Top.”

“My name’s Ken,” he said to Holm’s back.

Holms turned around and roughly tousled Ken’s
hair. “Well, who licked your lollipop?”

“Nobody.”

Two old people carrying Christmas presents
stood in the living room. Alice and Becky clung to the old woman’s
wool coat.

“And you must be Tricia’s boy,” the
gray-haired lady said, her voice as rusty as an antique hinge.
“Welcome to the family.” She kissed his check wetly. Her breath
reeked of cigarettes and menthol throat lozenges. The old man
beside her blew his nose ferociously and then shook Ken’s hand. The
living room was heaving with these strangers, their photographs,
their germs, their happiness.

Within minutes, cross-conversations and
cigarette smoke strafed the air. The two girls began ripping curly
ribbons and gold foil paper off their presents, and squealed when
they discovered a Barbie doll, a stuffed Snoopy dog, and look-alike
crocheted vests with matching pocketbooks. Watching other people
open Christmas presents can be demoralizing.

“Sanny Claus brought this one for you.”
Mammaw jabbed him with the corner of a wrapped box.

He untied the ribbon, removed the wrapping
paper and folded it carefully to be reused next year. Despite
already knowing what was inside, he opened the box to make the old
woman happy. Army soldiers. World War II army soldiers. You could
buy World War II soldiers at any ol’ five ‘n’ dime store.

“Your mother said you’d appreciate them,”
Mammaw explained.

His mom prompted him. “What do you say,
Ken?”

“Thanks.” He didn’t know what to call the old
lady. “Thanks.”

“This one’s from Gary and me. And the girls.”
His mother handed him a present wrapped in wrinkled blue paper.

When he’d asked for a three-speed bike five
years ago, his mom had reminded him there was nothing wrong with
his old bike. The rule was you weren’t allowed to get a new toy
until the old one was worn out or you outgrew it. “What’s wrong
with the one you have?” she’d asked, not wanting his answer. Losing
or breaking didn’t count.

When the lake had sucked his swimming goggles
right off his face, no amount of begging got him new ones.
Everything he owned—his clothes, one broken-in Wilson baseball
mitt, a baseball, a deck of cards, a few thrice-read books, and one
lump of black lava—fit in his suitcase lying on the floor under his
cot in the upstairs hallway. Just about all his possessions were
worn out and outgrown. Basically, he lacked everything pictured in
the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog. No telling what she’d bought
him this year. Could be a chemistry set, boxing gloves, a dart
board. A car would be too much to even think about, he knew that
much.

He opened the present.

His mother grinned hard. “Go upstairs and try
them on.”

He came downstairs wearing the new
clothes.

Becky asked, “Where’s the flood?” She
spluttered behind her fingers, and whispered to Alice who screwed
up her face. Not only were the bottoms of the pants too high, the
shirt cuffs exposed a good three inches of his wrists.

“I’m glad to see I’m not the only person in
this family who’s grown,” his mom said. “We’ll exchange them. I
kept the receipts. Well. Let’s eat!”

The scraping of chair legs on the floor, and
squabbling about who was to sit beside whom, grated his nerves. The
Holm clan sat down to their Christmas dinner around the table that
used to, with no extra leaves inserted in the middle, fill the
Paderson’s old dining room in the white bungalow at the
barracks.

The chairs must be Holm’s,
he thought.
They were made of real wood, the kind of furniture his mom aspired
to own and show off to officers’ wives during afternoon teas. There
was one problem, though. They were one chair short. Ken stood
behind Becky, and thought about shoving her off her chair so she’d
feel as crummy as he was feeling.

“Bon
appetit
and Merry Christmas,” his
mom said cheerfully. “Do you think the stuffing is too salty, Gary?
Oh! Ken, honey. I didn’t see you standing there. Go upstairs and
bring down the chair from the master bedroom.”

The chair was a dainty brass affair with a
curlicue back that looked real pretty but dug into your spine.
Mammaw told her son to go fetch sofa cushions to pile on the seat
to raise Ken up a little. “There. Now he’s a big boy,” she said.
She lit a cigarette at the table, turned her head toward the
kitchen and blew a plume of stink. Ken’s mom did a good job of
hiding her disgust at the old woman’s bad table manners. If there
was one thing he could count on his mom for, it was to know what
habits were high-class manners and what habits were lowbrow.