The Risen Read Online Free Page B

grenade in their trench. Three menin the squadron died and Grandfather lost half of two fingers, which, being on his right hand, ensured that he’d forever be a GP. None of the other soldiers spoke to that man in the days afterward, Grandfather claimed, even after he’d begged forgiveness and vowed it would never happen again. Ten days later during a counterattack, mustard gas canisters landed in their unit’s midst. The sleeping guard clamped on his mask, only to find the hose severed. He’d lost his sight and his lungs were cindered. It took a week for him to die. Which was as it should be, our grandfather told us, since it allowed the lesson to be thoroughly learned. Grandfather never said he’d cut the hose, but he did tell us that the other lesson war had taught him was how easy it was to kill a human being.
    As I too almost learned.
    She will probably walk with a slight limp the rest of her life, but all in all you should consider yourselves lucky. Another half inch and her femoral artery would have been cut. Then nothing could have saved her. We had been outside Sarah’s hospital room, the orthopedic surgeon, Kay, and me. Kay had gasped and raised a hand to her mouth. When I placed a hand lightly, tentatively, on her shoulder, Kay flinched at my touch. I looked into her eyes and what I’dseen there for months—anger, sadness, concern—was gone. She simply looked through me, and into a future where I didn’t exist.
    IT’S FIVE THIRTY when the phone finally rings. I’m three shots into the whiskey, quickening my search for the glow first felt on a Sunday at Panther Creek.
    â€œI know why you’ve been calling,” my brother says. “I read the paper too and all I have to say is forget about it. What happened no longer matters.”
    â€œYes, it does,” I answer. “You told me you put her on the bus to Charlotte.”
    â€œListen, Eugene, we’re not talking about this, with each other or with anyone else, ever.”
    â€œYou and I are, and now.”
    â€œIf you’ve got enough brain cells left to understand that I know what’s best, never,” Bill says, with a harshness I’ve heard directed at me only once before.
    â€œWe’re talking about this.”
    â€œAre you hearing me?” my brother says. “Just being on the phone is . . . Listen to me, hang up and keep your mouth shut and never mention her to me or anyone else, ever .”
    â€œI’m not doing that,” I answer.
    For a few moments there is only silence.
    â€œOkay, Eugene,” Bill sighs, “but not on the phone, in person.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œMy office.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œTomorrow morning. I’ve got surgery at eight, but I can meet you at eleven, unless I’m needed in the ER.”
    â€œI don’t want to wait that long.”
    â€œWell, you have to, and don’t call again, or e-mail, or talk to anyone about this, even if they bring it up. Just be here at eleven, and you damn well better be sober.”
    I hang up and pour another shot of whiskey in my glass tumbler. Night drifts into the neighborhood, veiling first the street and sidewalk, then my neighbor’s yard and house. The streetlight comes on, hesitates, flickers. So too memory: A summer night when Sarah was three, carrying her out of the house and onto the porch steps. Goodnight, moon, we both said, and Sarah, pointing at the fireflies, More moons, more moons. It was something I’d have written in a notebook a year or two earlier, but by then my weekends and evenings spent writing had ceased. I’d rationalize it wasn’t the drinking that keptme from writing; it was my choosing to be more to Kay and Sarah than a clacking typewriter behind a closed door. But that was just another lie.
    I check the kitchen clock again. As I refill the tumbler with ice and whiskey, I try to calculate the hours until I can talk to my brother,