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Show 26-6 hospital, his face empty, his hands still, silent, waiting, sick. I stood a moment longer and then walked back to the table and sat down beside him. "Ok, Andrew, I guess you can go. But only if you come back. And only if I can come see you." I reached out and patted his bandaged hand. "When are you going?" "Not till the middle of November. Several other guys are going too and one of them has just had surgery. So we'll wait around for him to feel good enough." He suddenly turned on the bench and opened the checkers game again. "What do you think? Do we have time for another game?" As we began to play, everything had changed. I knew that now I would start counting down the days we had together, finding this and that thing that we were doing for the last time, just as I did before every birthday. This is the last dinner I'll eat when I'm ten, or this is the last walk I'll walk to school when I'm eleven. Only now, each last thing would be surrounded with pain so sharp that for a moment I couldn't breath for fear the pain would make me cry. Was this the last time Andrew and I would play checkers together on a rainy afternoon? And then I won the game which made me mad. Either Andrew was feeling the same pain which I didn't want or he let me win which he had never done before. When I yelled at him, he grinned and told me he had let me win to cheer me up. It did, so that by the time Father came to take me home, I could say good-bye without crying like a tiny child. I didn't say anything to Father on the way home but at dinner I told my parents about the celebration for the memorial. "Well, Katherine?" Father said. "This puts us in a spot, doesn't it?" "Yes, it does. Annie, I don't want you to take part." I didn't say anything. I didn't really care. |
