This Given Sky Read Online Free

like you did that one time. Don’t worry, but call, please call.
    Then she wrote: Thel
    Hid the letter in her purse.
    Snuck back into winter’s bed and lay there in warm wool darkness. Listened to Steve sleep. Listened to him dream.
    In the morning light, Thel kissed Steve good-bye, took the letter to the post office and mailed it to Jake the fastest way the Air Force had created, then drove to the co-op where her promotion meant she had an office with a glass front and door she could close, so no matter what the women sitting at desks “on the floor” thought they saw, no way could they hear her speak.
    If any of them wondered why she now started working with that door closed, they chose not to ask. You cut people slack because if you don’t, you’re tied tight to their troubles.
    One day. Two days. Three.
    Snow fell and drifted away.
    Four days. Five.
    Wednesday, January 16, 1991.
    Even though the clock on the office wall said it was quitting time, Thel sat at her desk behind the closed door, staring past columns typed on a piece of paper about rates vs. usage linked to service costs, trying to imagine how to structure the report’s next draft to make more sense, to . . .
    BAM-BAM vibrated her glass door. Her boss wore his usual Wednesday yellow shirt and tan blazer, but she’d never seen that look on his face as he said: “Did you hear we’re finally at war?”
    Thel’s heart bombarded her chest.
    “Bombing and shelling,” he said. “It’s all on TV.”
    She heard herself say Oh .
    “I thought you should know—Steve, too. We got Jake over there.”
    “Yes.”
    “Gordon Proudfoot’s youngest is there with the Corps,” said her boss, who’d come of age after Vietnam and served with the Marines because that was the right thing to do. “I don’t know about the Curtis boy, he’s Army.”
    He shook his head. “Right by the Holy Lands.”
    “Not about that,” whispered Thel.
    “It’s always about that,” said her boss. “Even if it’s about oil.”
    He nodded at the world outside her office. “Martha’s got the TV on in the conference room.”
    “I don’t want to watch.”
    “I know what you mean.” He cleared his throat. “I know you’re not . . . but in about five minutes we’re going to join in prayer.”
    Thel whispered: “I’ll do that in here.”
    He nodded, left her alone behind glass.
    Screaming silence filled her car when she left work and drove home where, through the windshield, she saw Steve standing at the curb, waiting for her. They took her car, drove through their dinner-hour hometown. Thel saw windows flickering with TV colors, knew what everyone was watching. They parked in front of Jake’s parents’ house, went in to be with the suddenly old couple, where they all talked about how Jake was going to come home safe and sound.
    Grew up around them, but I don’t know his parents , thought Thel as they all sat in the living room colored by the TV’s flowing terror. Jake’s dad worked an office job for a trucking company and his mom had some job up at the county courthouse: identity by paycheck, by offspring, by luck. Would it have helped if I knew who you people really are? she thought as they all smiled and nodded their heads to hammer together a certainty where everything would be just fine.
    War and TV merged over the next six days. Flickers haunted her office’s glass wall. War TV played in the Tap Room where Steve worked, and whether she was home alone or with him as they packed their lives for the big move, the TV demanded to be turned on.
    Tuesday morning—9:17—her office phone rang.
    “Hello?” she said. Like the word meant nothing .
    “It’s Jake! Jesus, Thel, are you OK?” She heard jets roar in the background of Jake’s voice. “Steve, is he hurt? Your letter scared . . . .”
    “We’re fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”
    “Good, because I’m who’s supposed to be in danger, not you.”
    “Is that who you are?”
    Jake said: “What’s