“It means I can’t be tamed, Jamie-boy.” Caleb slapped the severed braid against his thigh. When he spoke again, he was more serious. “It’s better this way—no one to say goodbye to.”
Caleb had written Jamie to say he was enlisting, and Jamie had come from Oregon to see him off. The paperwork was already signed; Caleb would leave when they told him to. Soon. The recruiters had been very interested in his experience as a hunting guide, he said. He’d told them he was twenty-six, not thirty.
Jamie still didn’t know what he would do.
Marian had visited him in early April on her way to New York. He’d told her about seeing Sarah Fahey in Seattle. “She said she wished she could fight. Easy enough to say.”
“It is frustrating not to be allowed to really do anything,” Marian said.
“Yes, I know. I do know that. She also said we all must be brave. I’m not interested in bravery for its own sake, but this war…” He trailed off.
“Yes,” Marian said. “I know.”
“What should I do?” He looked at her fearfully.
“What I’d like is for you to live in peace and be safe. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what you do. You going to war won’t tip the balance. Can’t you get a job painting recruitment posters or something?”
“That seems like a cop-out, convincing other people to go and die.”
“I doubt you’d personally convince anyone, no matter how good an artist you are.”
“You take risks. You’re brave.”
“It’s not the same,” she’d said. “I really want a chance to fly those planes. Not that I don’t want to pitch in—I do—but I’m not doing it purely on principle. There’s something I want in it, whereas you just want to live harmlessly, and the war means abandoning that. Anyway, the ATA might not even take me.”
“They’ll take you,” Jamie had said.
* * *
—
After the haircut, when he and Caleb were deep into a bottle, Jamie said, “What would happen if I couldn’t do it?”
“Do what?” Caleb was lying on his back on the cot in his cabin, one arm under his head. Jamie sat in the rocking chair. The windows were open to the warm night.
“Fight.”
“You’d probably die. But you’ll die anyway, someday.”
“Come on.”
“You might not know until you’re in the thick of it.”
“Then it’ll be too late.”
“I think probably most guys can’t really fight. They’re just there. Adding numbers. You could get a job where you don’t have to shoot at anyone, you know. There are lots of other jobs.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. Marian thinks I should make propaganda.”
“You could be a cook or something like that.”
Besides Berit’s scissors, Caleb had claimed Wallace’s ancient gramophone after the house was sold, and he heaved up and went to it. Choosing a record, he set it in place, cranked the machine, dropped the needle.
Debussy. After the first few notes, Jamie remembered being a child peering through the banister while, below, Wallace and friends argued about art. “Do they let you choose?”
Caleb sat on the cot, cross-legged, and lit a cigarette. “Probably not. Have you ever killed anything? A bird, even?”
“Spiders and flies. Fish.”
“What if tomorrow we went after elk? I’d take you. The rut’s just starting. It’s interesting out there.”
In hopes that Caleb would not see how abhorrent he found the idea, Jamie studied the bottom of his cup, sluiced the whiskey around. “It seems wasteful to kill something just to prove to myself that I can.”
“All these city hunters I take out there, that’s what they’re doing. But the truth is, there are too many elk and deer now that the wolves and grizzlies are mostly gone—”
“Thanks to you,” Jamie put in.
“—and they starve.”
“I’m not sure it’s a good test,” Jamie said. “If you don’t kill the elk, it’s not as though the elk will kill you.”
Caleb drained his cup and set it aside. “It’s easier to kill an elk than a man, Jamie. But you don’t have to do either.”
“Right, I could just embrace being a coward.”
Caleb met his eye. “You’re not a coward.”
Jamie wanted to ask Caleb whether he’d killed Barclay Macqueen. But what difference did it make? And there were people Jamie had wanted to kill: that boy who’d been torturing the dog, Mr. Fahey, Barclay. He had it in him, the urge. “All right. Let’s go tomorrow.”