kill anyone.”
It staggered me not so much what he said but the lazy way he said it. By now I was agitated enough for both of us but I tried keeping my voice calm.
“Look, Andy. This G-man was pretty reasonable. You can go back he said, no questions asked. You can get on a plane and join up with your unit and all will be forgiven.”
He shrugged. “I’m not really in the mood.”
“You trained with these boys, they’re counting on you. Didn’t you train with them?”
“Tigerland. I did Tigerland with them.”
“You don’t want to put that experience to work, all that teamwork?”
It didn’t sound like me talking it sounded like the FBI bastard talking through me but what else could I do? He didn’t answer right away seemed to think about it but then ended up saying exactly the same thing.
“Don’t really feel like it.”
I tried again this time desperately.
“Your father served in the Pacific. Your grandfather built destroyers. They answered their country’s call.”
Andy smiled.
Something occurred to me. “It wasn’t any peace marchers talking to you messing up your head was it?”
“You mean draft dodgers?” He turned his finger up. “We hate them.”
“But you believe in peace?”
He struggled with that for a minute or two.
“Nah, not particularly. It’s just that I’m not in the mood.”
I’m not sure how long I tried reasoning with him but it was dark by the time I quit. I tried scaring him about what would happen if he didn’t go tried convincing him he owed it to his buddies brought out every argument I could think of and we always circled back to the same point.
“No,” I said putting up my hand. “I know what you’re going to say. But don’t you think your mood could change?”
Instead of answering he went over to the TV squatted found the knob turned it on.
That left me with only one thing to say.
“It’s just macaroni and cheese tonight, is that okay?”
“Thanks, Mom. You bet. You’re the greatest.”
I walked around the house before bed convinced there was a G-man lurking behind every bush. To calm myself down I tried remembering how Andy was as a little boy but that was difficult because the peculiar thing about Andy is that memories don’t stick to him. I have a thousand memories of Danny all I have to do is close my eyes and they flood back. With Andy it’s harder they seem to burrow shyly into the past and you really have to tug to bring them out.
But one finally came. He was five or six. Danny’s father had taken him off on a hunting trip so it was just Andy and me in the house. He had a terrible accident only boys can have zipping his jeans up on the loose skin of his penis so he cried and cried and cried. I got things straightened away but then much later when I was sewing I heard his voice calling soft and despairingly from his room.
“Mommy? Am I going to die?”
That was my Andy memory and it broke the logjam so in the course of the night I found dozens of others I thought were lost. When I finally did fall asleep something happened that had nothing to do with thinking. I went to bed fretting and woke up absolutely convinced what I had to do.
Hide him. I had to hide him. I lost my first son and there’s nothing worse a mother can say and my instincts were shriveled up for a long time after that but the pressure over Andy was good for them they had healed during the night or started to heal. I needed to trust how I felt needed to make sure the bastards wouldn’t get him and if they did it would be over my dead body and so sure was I of this so certain that it didn’t seem like an exaggeration but the literal truth.
OVER MY DEAD BODY I told myself. It was amazing how calm this made me feel.
Something else was working on me. I’d messed up the marriage business and been a failure with Danny and never accomplished very much outside work but here life was offering me one more test and I couldn’t fail again.
“So,” I said when he came downstairs for breakfast. “Still don’t feel like killing anybody?”
He stirred his eggs around with his fork. “Not really in the mood.”
“Then finish eating and follow me.”
His bedroom has a closet under the eaves which runs all the way along