OCR Text |
Show 20 think," said Red. "What do you have to think about? Your son's been shot. He's in the hospital." Red pumped the bowling ball, slowly, like a dumbell. He watched the veins in his forearm rise like blue tubes in his skin. His neighbor and good friend just shot his kid. That was something to think about, and he couldn't help it, he felt sorry for Funster. "What the hell was he doing in Funster's yard?" said Red. Moments like this Helen thought Red had just spent too many years shooting Japs, too much time with other men bent on killing. She knew Red was a rough-neck when she met him, that he kxaxxp had a short temper, that he beat people up, but he'd also been kind, sensitive x and kind. She ixxg thought she could change him. But the war got to him first, just like it got to xxx her brother Jon and made him xx so crazy he couldn't work, couldn't think, couldn't pass his bars. What did it matter he commanded ten ships. He could take his Legion of Merit and La Croix de Guerre and hang them over his hospital bed in the mental ward, because that's all the good fckx they'd do him. The war left her with loneliness and brought back sickness and madness. She felt no freer, no braver, no better. She had a husband who hated his only son for being an image of himself. "Red," said Helen. "What does it matter how it xxxxxxx happened. We can deal with that later. Jarvis is in the hospital." Red didn't say x anything. "I'm getting Neda," said Helen, but when she came back down stairs with Neda, Red hadn't moved, he stood in the middle of the living room with his head down and eyes closed and bowling ball raised 'straight up over his head to the ceiling ik like the Sta^tue of Liberty, Willie Willie couldn't say 'v' and he had a hell of a time with *th'. HgXXXKKX>ig^WtXKXXiXXXXiKiXXiKKiXXXXiXXXXixiXXXXXXXXKX«KXXXXKKXX He preferred the letter 'f. He thought about death a lot, and we became friends from the moment we discovered we'd both been shot in the same place on the same leg, except Big^Funster shot me and Willie shot himself. I never really held it against Funster for shooting me and Willie never held it against himself. "Didn't really mean to do it." **-*?* Willie told me. "Though I was " ink in about deaf at |