Brewster by Mark Slouka Page B

beggars under sacks, / knock-kneed, coughing like hags … ” I could hear my own voice. I felt embarrassed, nervous—I kept expecting to see him break off a piece of bun. “ Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning . / In all my dreams, before my helpless sight … ” Halfway through he stopped tapping. I finished up, hurrying through: “ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, / Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud / Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, / My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori.”
    I closed the book quickly. When I looked up I was surprised to see something in his face I hadn’t seen before. A kind of quiet. He was leaning forward, his head slightly to the side as though listening for something. He seemed confused, troubled. I thought it was a joke.
    “What’s it mean again—that last part?” he said.
    I told him.
    He was quiet for a few seconds. “So what happened to this guy—what’s his name?”
    “Owen.”
    “Yeah.”
    And I told him about the mustard gas, the shell shock, how he’d been hiding in a trench next to the bodies of his friends when the shell came, how he’d been evacuated, recovered in London—the whole thing.
    “Lemme see.” He waved the book over. I found the page, handed it over, watched him read it again. He handed it back. “That’s fucked up.” He turned to Frank. “That was fucked up, right?”
    Frank nodded. “That was good.”
    “Right?” He turned back to me. “So, what happened to the guy?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know, like, after the war or whatever.”
    “He died in the war.”
    “You just said he made it.”
    “Hey, Cap,” somebody yelled from the table behind him. He ignored them.
    “You just said he made it, that they got him and fixed him up and all.”
    “He did,” I said. “He went back.”
    “Whaddya mean he went back?”
    “He went back. Reenlisted.”
    “Hey, Cap,” the guy yelled again.
    “You mean like volunteered? After all this shit?”
    “Hey, Cappicciano.” It was the same guy. Some girls laughed at the table.
    “I mean, I don’t get that. Why the fuck would he do that?”
    “Maybe he did it for his country,” Frank said.
    Ray turned to look at him. “What’re you, stupid?”
    “I’m just—”
    “Didn’t you just hear him read all that Latin shit about how sweet it is to die for your country and all that crap?”
    “OK, fine.”
    “Jesus.”
    “I don’t know why—maybe he just had to go back,” I said.
    “What for? He knew how fucked up it was. And it fuckin’ killed him?” He shook his head. “Jesus.”
    “Maybe he couldn’t stay away. Maybe—”
    “Hey, Cappicciano! Jackie says you—”
    It happened so fast it was almost like I didn’t see it, didn’t see him scoop the burger from my tray, turn, and with one vicious, beautiful move explode it on the other’s chest like a mortar—it suddenly just was , a quick burst of meat and catsup like something opening and then the guy was being held back by two friends and people were screaming and the monitor was blowing his whistle and Ray, his coat flapping behind him, was already at the cafeteria doors, smashing them with a double crack against the walls like gunshots—gone.
    W E STARTED HANGING OUT together, mostly just the two of us. Frank brought Jesus with him and even though he kept him to himself it made things different. For some reason when Frank was around, even though we were friends, I’d always end up pretending to be tougher than I was, to know more than I did, like I wanted to separate myself from him, to make clear I wasn’t like him. When it was just me and Ray it was easier. After the first few weeks I stopped flinching, stopped worrying I’d say something stupid that would show him who