My dream is the same every time. Those boys in the jungle line up and wait to get shot. Pete somewhere among them, and I can’t do a thing to save him. So many other boys’ brothers have gone to Vietnam. Signed up or drafted. It ain’t fair of me to want to keep mine here all safe and sound, but I don’t care.
I climb down from my bed and creep past my sleeping cousin to the windowsill. The moon spills its milky light over our yard and Dad’s truck in the drive. Valley beyond is all wrapped up in mist.
I kneel down and pray.
My knees are numb by the time the words come:
God, help me save my brother. Help me save my family.
I repeat it over and over and over. My own river of words to fight that dark, deadly river in my dream.
When I lift my head from the window, the moon is smaller, higher in the sky. My feet have fallen asleep under me. I climb back into bed on tiny, stabbing needles. I am on my way out of the world again when Frankie turns in his sleep. From his mattress, he gives a long, slow sigh.
I know it then. It’s the last thought through my mind before I switch off the burning hot bulb in my brain: Frankie is the answer to my prayer. After all my talking to him, God’s said something back.
Chapter 4
NEW SHILOH
Sunday morning our family piles into the Ford and Dad drives us into town for church.
New Shiloh Lutheran sits at the town’s edge, white wooden boards blazing in morning sun under a steeple that tilts like a scarecrow’s hat toward the ocean of corn that surrounds it. Wind moves among the stalks as we pull up, making waves that lap the walls of the church like water against the hull of a ship. And it reminds me how Pastor Fenton said one time the church was a ship: seas could swell and rise against it, but it could never sink, and neither would you so long as you kept inside it.
We pass under the steeple’s shadow, through the double doors, and into a creaky wooden pew. All around us, people fan themselves with paper song sheets so that the whole church seems full of giant white butterflies furiously flapping their wings.
Pastor Fenton reads a bit from the Bible and I try hard to listen close, but my button-down shirt clings to me like a second skin. Ma’s eyes flash John Thomas, stop your fidgeting or else, and that settles me long enough to catch some of Pastor Fenton’s sermon on redemption. With a voice that’s surprisingly powerful for how small a man he is, he tells us nobody is beyond God’s love, no matter what they’ve done, and thinking otherwise is a dangerous kind of pride.
After the last song, my brothers and me bolt for the doors before Ma’s church-lady friends can find us and make a fuss. Dad is already walking down Main Street with a few of the other men, making for Mr. Hudspeth’s barbershop. I’m about to run after him when Pete grabs hold of my collar.
“You ain’t leaving him like that,” he says, pointing me back to our pew, and I see what he means: Ma’s church ladies have got hold of Frankie.
I do like Pete wants and go back to rescue my cousin. Their talk as I come up is about Aunt Effie, who most of them grew up with—and the fires in the city. One of them asks how Uncle Leone is faring, being a police officer and in the line of danger and all. Frankie answers that he doesn’t know how his dad is doing, and I can tell he’s worried.
The talk changes once the ladies see me, and I give my fair share of the “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am” answers to all the same questions I got asked last week and the week before. Didn’t I think Pastor Fenton’s sermon was wonderful? And was I thinking of being a pastor myself someday?
Ma’s dream. She’s given up on Pete and Will, but she ain’t given up on me yet and neither have her friends.
By the time I pry Frankie away, Dad is gone. Pete and Will are talking with some of the other kids out front, and the girls, and one girl in particular.
Anna May Fenton’s blonde hair is held up with a purple headband that matches her skirt and the socks that come up to her calves on her long, creamy white legs. She laughs at something, and it seems the cornfields behind her laugh too, flashing smiles of gold and green that ripple out for miles.
Frankie slows down when he sees her. “Who’s that?”
“That’s just Anna May. Pastor Fenton’s daughter.” I hesitate a bit, then decide to say it: “Will’s sweet on her.”
Next to Anna May, Will stands with both hands in his pockets, head down, like he’s seeing his shoes for the first time. Pete is telling a story.
“Will and Anna May are in the same class,” I tell Frankie. “He don’t see her much over the summer because she lives in town.”