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Show 11-3 "I don't think we do. For Uncle Paul. I'll ask Grandmother." I laid the ribbon carefully in the box, the heart face up. "So pretty." "I could do without it." Andrew turned abruptly to the sun. Suddenly he turned around again and nudged my hand with his bandages. "Hey, where did you say your uncle was killed? What battle?" "What does it matter? He's dead wherever it happened." He's as dead whether he plunged into the river in his car or was burned in a barn fire or was trampled by three angry bulls. But not as gallant. "Something to do with trees. Or forests." "Woods, Belleau Woods. Is that it?" "Yes, hmm, it might be. Want me to ask Father? I'll be back quicker than a train." "No, don't bother him now. Just wondered." Andrew turned away as if to close the subject. I stared at Andrew's back for a moment and then got up from the table and walked back along the path, leaving him alone. He didn't often pull away from me, turn his back on me, but when he did, I knew it was because he wanted to be alone, didn't want to talk. I wondered where he was at those times, whether he was thinking about the war or about before, when he lived at home, when he was in school. I wondered if his mother talked about him as much as Grandmother talked about Paul, if she took out his pictures and kissed them, as my grandmother did. Where had Paul died? Andrew wanted to know. I didn't know much. And Grandmother and Grandfather knew only a little too, what the letters had said and what his friend had come to tell us, in his clean bright uniform. The day Frederick MeFarland had come to see my grandparents was the first warm March day, a month before Father came home. It was Saturday and I was out |