Early Warning

After a couple of weeks, he said how could this go on, but of course it had to, he was only joking. He began to embrace her very tightly, as if they were about to part, but they did not part. Each lovemaking after that was more frantic. He never said, “I love you,” but he did say, “You’re adorable,” “I’ve never met anyone like you,” “I can’t stay away from you,” “I had no idea just looking at you,” “You’re killing me.” Claire floated along, every desire satisfied before she imagined it. Week six, he told Paul he was leaving in a month — going into practice with his younger brother in Kansas City. Dr. William Sadler specialized in podiatry, had served his internship at the University of Texas. Paul sat his partner down and told him frankly that ENT and podiatry made no sense together, and that starting from nothing in a place they didn’t know was insane — what in the world was he thinking? A week after that, he was gone from his house, from the office, from Hy-Vee, his telephone disconnected, his front step piled with newspapers and grocery-store flyers. She knew this because she drove by no matter where she was intending to go. She even parked and went into the house — the door was unlocked. A week later, a “For Sale” sign appeared on the lawn, and then she kept her eye out for the listing—“Two bedroom bungalow, single story, 1½ baths, very good condition, $36,000.”

He didn’t have to write or call. There was no mystery: he had informed her of every shift in his state of mind, every new level of anxiety, every conviction that he had committed an impossible betrayal that could not go on. Claire was not unhappy; he was so present in her mind that he hardly seemed gone at all. Another two weeks passed; she was not pregnant. And so that was that.

—

RICHIE FIGURED they were looking for him by now. He had maybe one day, and so he was going to make the best of it by joining the army. Once you were in the army, they couldn’t get you back. He was seventeen. He had been to military school for years now. Whatever that thing was about parental consent, well, he would deal with that if they realized the letter he’d given them was a forgery.

And he looked eighteen. Michael was still bigger than he was, but not much: six three, 170 versus six three and a half, 175. If he caught Michael unawares, he could still knock him down, but he hadn’t done that in a year. Now they mostly ignored each other. Michael liked the Kinks; Richie liked Black Sabbath. That was all a person needed to know. Anyway, now he was in Boston, and here was the bus that was taking him to where he would go through the physical and the tests, whatever they were. He was the first to get on, and he walked to the back and sat down.

It was a nice July day, sunny but damp, a Boston day, not like that armpit in the Midwest where they sweated all day and night. It was a week since he’d walked out of the job that his dad got him, painting at a “Country Club,” though it didn’t look very exclusive to Richie. They painted green some days, and they painted white other days, and the painters talked about whorehouses and tattoos. Now Richie stared out the window at guys in uniforms telling the recruits to move it, get going. Finally, the sergeant followed the last guy onto the bus, and the door started to close. One of the draftees jumped out of his seat and said, “We need to vote on that.”

The sergeant said, “Sit down!”

The kid didn’t sit down. In fact, Richie saw, the kid was older than the sergeant. He said, “America is still a democracy. This bus will move when the people have decided it will move. Men!” He turned toward the guys in the seats. “Everyone who wants the door to close, say aye!”

Richie shouted, “Aye!” There were maybe five or six ayes.

“No?”

“Noo!” the whole bus erupted.

The kid said, “I think we need to debate this! Parliamentary procedures apply!”

The sergeant said, “Sit down.”

The kid went right up to him and put his arm around the sergeant’s waist and pushed into him slightly. He maybe outweighed the sergeant by twenty pounds. He said in a calm voice, “Let’s have a debate, all right?” He kept his arm around the sergeant, kept pushing into him, until the sergeant backed toward the driver and shrugged. The debate about closing the door, and then about driving away, lasted twenty minutes. Richie participated. He made the case against blocking traffic.

When the sergeant sat down, the kid sat down right beside him. It was clear who was the boss. When the bus pulled up at the facility, the door opened, and an older man got on, also a sergeant, but a lifer. The bus went dead quiet. This sergeant handed out cards and pencils — they had to write down their names, birth dates, and some other information. When everyone just sat there, the sergeant pretended to get mad and said, “Move it!”

The kid stood up.

“Sit down!” shouted the sergeant.

The kid said, “It is moved by the sergeant here that I sit down. Second the motion?”

A hand went up.

“What the—”

“All in favor?”