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Show CHAPTER ONE The winter my father left for the war, I was ten years old. Both my parents had been careful that I understood why he was going and where. He would not be near the fighting, would not be in danger, would be in a hospital in New York. At first I did not understand why he was more needed in New York than he was here at hpme. People were still sick here and needed doctors. Then I began to see the pictures in the newspapers, the pen drawings of men standing at the aide stations, with bandaged arms, the men lying on the beds in the hospitals in France. I knew why father was gone. I knew, too, why the others, the young men like my uncle Paul, had gone. Around the dinner table, at church, in school, we followed the maps and discussed the battles, learned the names of the generals, the kings and queens, the czar and the kaiser. My uncle was fighting because of these names. Because he and all the others of his age were gone, our lives were different. My grandparents house looked different with only one boy there instead of two. The church choir lost its entire tenor section and the grange hall stopped holding Saturday night dances. And the young men were all anyone thought about. How is your father, where is your uncle these days, do you get many letters? Once they were gone, we had to fill the hole they left in our lives with thoughts about them, so they would not leave us completely. I was not neglected or unloved. I could be held and kissed. I was home. My uncle John, who was too young for the draft, was home too. But several times I saw my grandmother look at the picture of Paul on the mantle next to the steeple clock, and then look quickly around the room to find John. She worried |
