Cementville by Paulette Livers

hasn’t moved from its spot on Tallahassee Street in nearly six weeks. There’s probably crabgrass growing through the radiator by now.” She doesn’t dream for a minute her mother has already reserved a ticket on the Greyhound for her.
    â€œWake up and listen to me, Maria Louise.” Her mother is using her I-don’t-mean-maybe voice. “It isn’t just Donnie. This thing is going to crush that poor town. A bunch of the boys from his unit are gone.”
    She does sit up then, asks her mother to repeat what she just said.
    â€œSeven boys from right there in town. Fire Support Base Blacksnake was overrun. The bodies are to arrive home sometime early Saturday. Funerals throughout the week. We won’t know when Donnie’s is until Monday. I feel sure it’ll be published in the Picayune .”
    MaLou had run with these guys every summer. Some she considered friends. Some of them she had even kept in touch with. She knew who had gotten married and which one had surprised them all by becoming a dad last fall. FSB Blacksnake was their last known location, a hillside supply base people said was at best foolishly located, at worst a death trap. There is a name she is afraid to say. But, “Boyd?” she says, holding her breath. Defenseless was the word he had used to describe the base in his last letter. Wide open to the enemy.
    Across the phone line comes the whispery shuffling of newspaper. MaLou can hear her mother’s lips softly going over the words as she reads to herself.
    â€œRead it out loud, Mother.”
    â€œ. . . 138th Field Artillery unit, which was attached to Battery C in support of the 101st Airborne division stationed at Phu Bai—is that how you say it? Phu Bai?—took heavy casualties as North Vietnamese overran—oh, MaLou, don’t make me do this.”
    â€œThe names, Mom.”
    â€œLet’s see. Brandon Lee Miller, Mitchell Kidwell—oh, there’s Donnie—Donald Raphael Goins III, Malcolm T. Spalding, BoydFarber Jr.—isn’t that the boy who was sweet on you in high school?—Charles Gordon, and Richard Welch. That’s it. Seven.”
    MaLou breathes, clears her throat, and tries to sort out from the jumble in her head what to say. This is exactly what was not supposed to happen.
    â€œI don’t care how you do it, but you are getting your patootie to the bus station at four thirty tomorrow morning. I’m down in my back again,” her mother tells her. “You’re the only person we have to represent our side of the family. Your Aunt Martha is going to need you.”
    N OW HERE M ARIA L OUISE G OINS sits, fifteen minutes into the five-hour bus ride from Cincinnati to Cementville, snugged up-close and personal next to a man she definitely wishes she had never laid eyes on. She knew the second he boarded the bus that he was going to do it, fold himself into the seat next to hers. She pretends to read the paperback she brought for the trip as he slips out of a thin jacket. Exactly what it is the stranger smells of takes a while to discern. Ritz crackers soaked in turpentine? Oil-based house paint and waterless hand cleaner? No, it’s the greasy dirt floor of Uncle Rafe’s garage. Specifically, it is the deep pit dug in the center of his shop, where her uncle slides daily on a little wheeled trolley under the belly of whatever wreck he’s disassembling. MaLou is almost certain she can smell on the man in the seat next to her the exact concoction of yellow clay dust mingling with the fluorescent green antifreeze leaking from a crack in Uncle Rafe’s plastic dishpan. The stranger seems to occupy less space in the seat than she does. She had her eyes fixed on her book when he sat down, so she can’t be sure how tall he is. She looks out of the side of her face at the length of hip joint to knee and decides maybe he is taller than she thought, that’s a long thighbone there, and