JACK’S KITCHEN CONTAINED ONLY ONE POT AND ONE FRYINGpan. In his refrigerator he only ever kept a handful of things: eggs for breakfast, cream for his coffee, and a few slices of cold cuts for his sandwiches, along with a tin of wet dog food for Hendrix. He had learned to keep his needs to a minimum, allowing him to avoid the large A&P to spare himself the painful stares of young children and their mothers who hushed them into silence. At Kepler’s small store, he could go in quickly and purchase the few provisions he needed before any other customers noticed him. He knew exactly where the boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Ritz crackers were located, and the jars of Welch’s jelly and Wonder Bread. He felt lucky that Fred, who worked behind the deli counter, kept an eye out for him and often began slicing the roast beef and provolone cheese before he’d even reached the counter.
Food as others knew and enjoyed it was different for him. He ate to live, just to sustain himself, not for any kind of pleasure.
In Vietnam, they all tried to push their hunger away, the C-rations never proving adequate. Yet, despite their own famished bellies, the men often saved part of their food to give to the children who came begging for whatever the men were willing to share.
One afternoon, shortly after he returned from burying his mother, he found himself out traveling with a few battalion scouts in a transport truck. As the vehicle bumped over the rocky path, the men jostled against each other, their shoulders touching, rifles clutched to their chest. At one point, four small children came running out of the woods.One of them, Jack remembered, was a little girl wearing a white cotton dress, her long brown legs exposed as she ran expertly over the uneven terrain with the other three boys. “Candy! Candy! Cigarettes!” the children cried with their hands outstretched. They already knew the words for food they liked or the cigarettes they could barter with back at their village.
Jack had some C-rations on him, and Doc had a tropical bar, a kind of chocolate that Hershey’s had created to withstand the intense Southeast Asian heat. The scouts tossed the food and candy to the children. Flannery laughed and fumbled for a tin of lima beans he would never eat. Gomez threw a couple cigarettes. But the little girl in the white dress caught the most coveted prize, the chocolate bar. In that moment when her hands grasped the treasure wrapped in shiny silver foil, her face beamed in joy. It was so pure, so full of innocence, it made Jack reach down to his gear and see if he might have another one buried in a pocket somewhere, knowing it would have been worth it to see the same expression on another child’s face.
The girl couldn’t have been more than eight years old, but with the chocolate clutched in one hand, she ran unbridled and flew far ahead of the others. Her black hair whipping behind her and her thin legs coltish as they flew over the blades of grass and wildflowers.
Candy! Candy! Cigarettes!
Jack heard the boys’ peals for more handouts ringing in his ears as the little girl ran ahead on the dirt path along the road. Doc and he both looked out the side of the vehicle, admiring her speed as she bounded ahead of the others and ran to overtake the truck, her white dress billowing with every stride. But as the driver slowed down so as not to strike her, the girl’s foot hit a trip wire for a buried mine. There, right in front of all of them, a small but deadly explosion ignited. Instantly, the girl and her three friends were engulfed in a burst of fiery orange flames and ripped apart by shrapnel.
Sometimes when Jack flipped on his television and a commercial came across the screen for Hershey’s chocolate, he filled with nausea. That something so sweet, so innocent, could turn into such a brutal memory. The memory of the girl’s face was seared into his mind, her delight just before being eviscerated in front of him. How could one erase such a memory? Once, when he was cleaning up a classroom at Foxton Elementary, he came across a crumpled Hershey’s wrapper, and when he picked it up to throw it into the large waste bin on his trolley, he found himself sobbing like a baby. He shut the door and hid his face in his palms and wept.
He wasn’t sure if it was the Hershey’s wrapper or the index card on the little brown desk, the one that had the name written in neat black letters:Stanley.
CHAPTER 43
THE SUMMER HEAT INDEX WAS SOARING.KATIE HAD BEENworking at the pool club for three weeks when her mother came up with the great idea to invite B?o along to swim with Molly there for the day. The temperatures in Bellegrove had risen to close to ninety, and Grace thought the boy would enjoy an afternoon cooling off with another child his own age and she could spend some time with Anh poolside.
“You don’t mind, honey, do you?” she questioned Molly over breakfast as she flipped two more pancakes onto the girl’s plate.
“No, Mommy. I’d love to go swimming with him.” She took the bottle of maple syrup and poured it over the pancakes.
“Thank you, honey. And maybe you can introduce him to some of your friends. The more conversational English he hears, the easier it will become for him. And he’ll probably be at school with you next year, too.”
Katie glowered and pushed what remained of her soggy pancakes to the side. “Does he have to come to the club, Mom? Why don’t they just hang out here together and you can put the sprinkler on in the back?” Her voice was bristly, like worn rope. “I’m sure he’d like that better than the crowded pool.”
“Do you always have to be so mean, Katherine Rose?” Grace shook her head, disgusted with her daughter’s selfishness. “How does this have anything to do with you? I’ve asked Molly to spend time with B?o, not you.”
Katie slumped in her chair, her face distorted in a scowl. Why did her mother always need to be so saintly? Couldn’t she just concentrateon her own family and leave the rest of the world’s freaks outside their front door?
“I’m going to pick Anh and B?o up at noon.”
Katie smiled. She’d be on her lunch break then, and she made a mental note to be as far away from the pool as possible when her mother arrived with her embarrassing entourage.
As a result of Katie having her first job, Molly’s summer had been uneventful and a bit lonely. Unlike her sister, who always seemed to have a gaggle of friends around her, Molly often found herself struggling to find someone to sit with at the school cafeteria or hang out with during recess.
While her sister had inherited Grace’s blond hair and athletic build that instantly marked her for the popular crowd, Molly had been forced to wear thick glasses for her myopia, and her brown hair fell limp around her ears. The recent addition of braces on her teeth only intensified her awkwardness, and on top of it all, she wasn’t good in gym class. Every afternoon, she was the last one picked when they made up teams. So when her mother suggested inviting B?o to the pool club, she welcomed the idea. Though Molly only had a vague memory of the little boy in the Hulk T-shirt who she had briefly seen standing in their kitchen that afternoon a few months earlier, after her mother discovered him on the street.
Grace let her sit up front on the way to pick up B?o at Lady Queen of Martyrs. “I appreciate you doing this, sweetie,” she said, tapping Molly’s leg with her soft hand. “You’re such a good girl.”
Molly smiled. Her lips were cut raw on the inside from those sharp little bits of metal. She pulled some wax out of her bag and put it on one of the brackets.
“Do you think he can go on the diving board?”
The car drove through the winding driveway and finally pulled to a stop. Grace suddenly had a pit in her stomach. Did he even know how to swim?
The kiddie pool was awash with toddlers with neon inflatable floating devices on their arms, mothers holding their babies in swollen diapers, and Molly and B?o standing in water up to their ankles. Molly had chosen to wear her Wonder Woman bathing suit that day, her favorite purchase of the season because she thought it made her look like she was wearing the superhero’s red-blue-and-gold uniform. She was happy to see B?o’s face light up when she took off her terry cloth coverup.
At first, Molly thought she had misheard B?o when he made a fist and exclaimed, “Wonder Twins powers acti … v …”
“Activate?” Molly laughed. “You got the wrong superhero, B?o. But that’s very cool.”
His feet shifted from side to side making small ripples in the pool.
