I want it all to be over—the war; the shooting and the killing; the mobs, the riots, the fires. But I know it won’t be over. Not anytime soon. And most of all, I know there’s nothing—not a single blessed thing—I can do about any of it.
Day burns on above me, and when I lie down in my bed later that night, after a dinner where both Will’s and Frankie’s chairs sit empty, I feel the sun’s cold-fire kisses along the back of my neck and all down my arms and legs, burning me still.
I bust into tears when I wake up and see Will lying in his own bed. I run over and climb in and give him a big hug, bawling my eyes out the whole time. Will doesn’t shove me off right away. But he don’t hug me back.
He don’t have to hug me. He just has to be home.
Chapter 13
BONNIE AND CLYDE
Sadness drops like a curtain down around our stone house in the days after Kennedy’s funeral and the news of Uncle Leone. Frankie keeps to our room most of the first day, but he shows for breakfast the next, appearing his normal self though maybe his eyes are redder around the edges.
Will comes to breakfast, but he don’t eat. He barely sleeps, though he lies in bed most of the day. Sometimes he reads—a dusty book of Greek poetry. Or that Saturday Evening Post with Bobby Kennedy’s picture on the cover. Slowly I realize that Frankie is mending but Will ain’t. He may be back, but he ain’t better.
Afternoon of the third day, Will grabs that Post magazine and that blue-and-white Kennedy campaign pin off his bookshelf and carries them down to the barn. He clangs around inside until he finds a shovel, then he marches out into the meadow and buries both the magazine and the pin. Then it’s straight back up to the bedroom.
Pete and me watch from the porch. “What’d he do that for?” I ask.
“He’s saying goodbye,” Pete replies. “It’s something you do when people die. It helps with the sadness.”
“Oh,” I say. “How long you figure before Will’s done being sad?”
Pete shrugs. “A while.”
I don’t like that. I don’t want Will to be so sad. But there’s something else bothering me. Will won’t go anywhere or do anything. That includes looking for that fighter jet. Our expedition has to wait until Will feels better. That means Frankie’s story has to wait too.
“Can’t we do anything to make him feel better faster?” I ask.
Pete shakes his head. “Some things you can’t rush, Jack. This is going to take a whole lot of time.”
We ain’t got a whole lot of time. Pete turns eighteen in less than a month.
If I’m going to save Pete, I must first save Will. And to do that, I’ve got to find a way of helping him to feel better.
Dad beats me to it.
Normally Dad likes to work at whatever is ailing him until it’s fixed, the way you sand down a piece of wood so nobody gets any splinters or caulk a window to keep the winter wind from coming in. But Will’s sadness ain’t a piece of lumber or a cracked windowsill. His hero is dead. And there’s no work Dad can do that will change that.
Dad knows it. So he comes up with something different.
He crushes out the stub of his cigar and comes through the screen door to where we’re gathered in the living room.
“Everybody get your shoes on,” he says. “We are going to the movies.”
The drive-in movie theater is just outside New Shiloh.
Rows upon rows of cars are parked side by side, their dark and cooling headlights pointing toward the giant glowing screen. The night smells like roasted peanuts and popcorn.
The concession stand at the lot’s far end is an island of boards and glass and yellow light in the summer dark. It draws us boys like moths through the crowd of teenagers who sit on the hoods of old Chevys, barefoot in blue jeans and tie-dye T-shirts, eating, drinking, talking, waiting for the movie to start. Some of them smoke smelly cigarettes, and I pinch my nose as we go past.
From the big speakers at the end of the field, scratchy music begins.
“Fellas, the movie’s starting,” I tell my brothers.
“You can go back and watch with Ma and Dad,” Pete says. He keeps moving through the sea of automobiles.
Every kid in the valley is here tonight, but there’s only one he and Will care to see. I don’t care about finding Anna May Fenton. Pretty or not, she’s only a girl. This is a real, live movie—and we are about to miss it. The feature tonight is Bonnie and Clyde.
The crowd is thinning by the time we get our popcorn. Most kids have already got their hot dogs or popcorn and are returning to their cars. But Pete and Will are still searching the crowd for her.