Heroes Read Online Free Page B

firemen now that the war is over.
    Big Boy, who weighed about three hundred pounds before entering the service and is now sleek and hard with no soft edges, says firemen offer the best career because you don’t have to march or walk as a fireman. “With my luck, as a cop I’d end up walking a beat. And I’m not walking anymore—the infantry spoiled my feet …”
    “I could never climb a ladder,” says Armand Telliere, speaking to nobody in particular as he lines up a shot at the pool table. “Besides, they say cops will be riding in cars on patrol from now on. Walking or riding, no more piecework at the shop for me …”
    “College for me,” Joe LaFontaine announces, holding up his beer and studying the way light strikes the glass. “The GI Bill. The government’s willing to pay, so I’m going …”
    “You didn’t even graduate from high school,” Arthur Rivier says but in a joking way, laughing. Others join in the laughter, creating a camaraderie in a bar, a fellowship that I wish I could be a part of.
    “I can make up the studies,” Joe LaFontaine replies. “They’re going all out for veterans.” He takes a swift gulp of the beer. “I’m going to college,” heproclaims, raising his voice so that everyone can hear. “I’m going to be a teacher.”
    “Sister Martha must be turning over in her grave,” Armand Telliere says.
    “That would be a trick,” Arthur says. “I saw her just last week. Still knocking guys around in the eighth grade. No bigger than a peanut and she still knocks them around.”
    “The way she knocked you.” Big Boy laughs.
    And everybody joins in the laughter, and someone calls for another round and the jukebox plays “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time,” such sweet voices in the air.
    Arthur turns to me. “You don’t talk much, do you?” he says.
    I want to ask about Larry LaSalle, if anyone knows when and if he’s coming back, but I don’t want to call more attention to myself. The scarf and bandage are enough to cause curiosity.
    “That’s all right,” he says, “you earned the right not to talk.”
    What if I told him that I was little Francis Cassavant who shagged balls behind the bases when the Frenchtown Tigers played their crosstown rivals, the West Side Knights, for the Monument championship? That I am not the hero he thinks I am, not like the other veterans here in the St. Jude Club.
    As the big argument resumes about cops andfiremen, I slip out of the bar unnoticed, into the March dampness of Third Street. I make my way through the throng of shoppers and the schoolkids leaving St. Jude’s school, my identity protected by the scarf and the bandage. My head is light from the beer because I haven’t eaten since my breakfast, when I forced myself to drink the coffee and eat the oatmeal.
    I am on my way, of course, to the Wreck Center.

 
    T he Wreck Center is boarded up and abandoned now, the words FRENCHTOWN REC. CENTER faded and barely visible above the front door. The door’s red paint has turned a faint sickly pink. My caves begin to run and my scarf is damp and, after a moment, I realize that it’s not the moisture from my caves that has dampened my scarf.
    It’s a bad-luck place, people had said.
    A place of doom, others added.
    In the old days it had been known as Grenier’s Hall, and the children of Frenchtown, myself among them, often heard its tragic story.
    Not a tragic story at the beginning, however. The hall had been a place of happy events—gala dances and fancy balls to mark occasions like New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. It became a traditional place for wedding receptions, the bridal party marching the length of Third Street to the hall after the wedding mass at St. Jude’s.
    Until the wedding of Marie-Blanche Touraine.
    Marie-Blanche married a handsome Irisher by the name of Dennis O’Brien from the plains of North Monument after breaking off her engagement to Hervey Rochelle, the shipping room foreman at