“Sounds good to me,” Tom stood and wiped off the back of his pants. Floyd stayed where he was. Leo didn’t know what to do next.

“Okay then, enough said. Let’s get back to work, lads. Thank you for your attention.” Chick walked fast up the slope and around the barn. Floyd followed him but went slower, lighting up an L&M as he went.

“Chick missed his calling as a minister, that’s all,” Tom said. “Don’t worry about that red talk, he’ll trip over The New Testament one of these days.”

But Leo did worry about that talk. For the rest of the afternoon as he worked alongside Floyd sweeping the basement, then hauling the black joist boards that Chick and Tom sheared off with power saws they’d plugged into the gas-powered generator, as he carried alone all the new lumber into the barn while the others marked with pencils where the brand new floor joists would be nailed, Leo had to know: what about Chick Donovan’s daughter? Leo’s first real girlfriend, the only one to ever stick her tongue in his mouth while she held herself against an erection she couldn’t possibly not be knowing about-was she one too? Didn’t she know that’s who the Americans were fighting over in Asia? Didn’t she read how these Viet Cong went around stabbing bayonets into our soldiers after they were dead just to make sure they were? And around four, when Chick dropped him off at the bridge and Leo crossed it and walked through town towards Saunders Hill Road, he knew he had to talk to somebody, somebody who wouldn’t tell anyone else.

GP wasn’t the one to spill it to. One weeknight in May, Leo had been over at his house watching the five o’clock news on the couch with Gerry. Mr. Poitras was in his recliner. On the TV the newscamera showed pictures of American soldiers climbing out of a helicopter and running through blowing grass with their packs and machine guns and helmets. Gerry backhanded Leo’s knee and smiled at him. Leo smiled back and watched more news.

Truth is, he didn’t know what to think. Not then and not now. It’s not that he wasn’t going to do his fair share, nothing like that. And it wasn’t that he was really scared of going, either, though when he let himself think about what could happen-about getting shot at, or bayoneted after he was shot, or else to have hot shards from an exploded hand grenade flying at his stomach or chest or head or (the worst) his penis and balls-then he felt for a second like he had to go to the toilet. But there was another picture in his head too, more good than bad, a picture of Leo Suther coming home to Heywood from the war in a spiffy uniform with three rows of silver and gold medals pinned over his heart. His face would be tanned, his hair military-short, almost shaved. His arm would be in a clean white sling, from a single bullet wound he suffered on his last day when he saved a dozen American GI’s pinned down in a foxhole by three of the enemy. They were in a machine gun nest and he was the one behind them, making his way through a mine field on his belly, then finally getting there to pull his .45 and shoot each Cong once in the chest, the deed done just like that, a far-off sniper putting one in his arm just as his rescued comrades rushed to his aid.