The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,65

and lonesome journey.”

There it was the line I’d been expecting ever since he first stepped off the bus. “Buy yourself a magazine,” I said.

He smiled straightened back up waved his arm around in a big circle. “I can perish happy, having seen it here now. Yes sirree ma’am, I can perish happy.”

I’d been mostly scared until then but that changed to anger pretty fast. So Cobb was tough enough to relish fighting farm boys but not brave enough to get through the night without getting laid! That was so typical it was the way Perry had been and it always made me want to laugh and scream thinking of their egoism thinking of them thinking that three minutes inside you was enough to do away with loneliness like it was a fluid they could pump into somebody else. Okay your problem now woman. Wasn’t that what they were saying when they came? Cobb or Perry I could have screamed at them both. Loneliness? You have the nerve the arrogance the balls to use that word? I can tell you what loneliness is and I don’t need a stubby little cock to illustrate my point.

I found Andy in the kitchen puffing on a cigarette which wasn’t something he did very often. A Red Sox cap was pulled low over his forehead and when I came in he tried hiding his face.

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “Got bonked.”

His cheeks were scratched one eye looked black and blue and when I lifted the cap back I found a cut nearly deep enough for stitches. I fetched some bandages a bowl of water sat him down under the light went to work.

“You going to tell me more?”

He winced under the iodine.

“I heard you bring him upstairs into my bedroom and then the closet. All along I figured he’d be the one to come find me. Seemed better if he found me outside so I pulled back one of the ceiling panels, dropped down into the mudroom and ran out the back door.”

“You were hiding in the yard?”

“Kept going all the way to the woods. Pretty dark in there, pretty scary. Scratched myself on some branches then I tripped against a rock and got bonked. Finally decided to just sit down. What I thought about was how Danny used to take me back there and we’d balance along that old stone wall seeing who could get farthest without falling off. He always found things I didn’t know about like arrowheads and moose antlers and woodcock nests.”

I had the gauze all the way around his forehead now but I added on another wrap just to make sure.

“We sat on a stump and Danny told me, not bragging or anything, that he was smart and ambitious enough to be anything he wanted. He’d been thinking about it, too. The best thing in the world to be was a Hollywood producer. That’s why he watched so many Westerns, to learn how. Then he laughed at himself the way he always did. ‘I’ll probably work in a garage like Dad,’ he said. ‘But you know what? It’s damn well got to be my own garage.’”

“Is that why you’re not in the mood to shoot anybody? Because of what happened to Danny?”

I said that casually like it just occurred to me though I’d been wondering about that all along. He shrugged his Andy shrug seemed really considering the idea then slowly shook his head.

“Nah, it’s just that I don’t really feel like it.”

“Sergeant Cobb says you’re a good soldier.”

He sucked his stomach in sat up straighter perfectly imitated his voice.

“A fine soldier. Makes us all proud.”

“He’s a complicated man.”

“I’ll say. He warned us if we ever messed up or crossed him he’d hound us all the way to our grave. We called him Hound after that or Hell Hound. He’ll drink too much, then go into town and beat up civilians.”

“Civilians?”

“Chinks.”

He took a drag on the cigarette then did something that surprised me. He brought his hand up through the smoke and gently patted my arm.

“Listen Andy. Mary Belcher from work has a going away party tomorrow afternoon and I have to go or people will be suspicious. You know the drill now, what to do if anybody comes?”

“Sure. Tomorrow night’s the next Uncle episode. Ilya’s temporarily gone over to the Russians so Napoleon Solo is on his own.”

We both slept late in the morning and after that we picked berries until our hands were blue but at four it was time