“I’ll tell ’em!” Horace Barton boomed out. “Nothing to be ashamed of.” He turned expansively to the group, ignoring the warning Monique pressed on his arm and Bucky’s embarrassed look. “When my son was born, he was very sickly. Colicky. Cried all the time. Threw up a lot. Couldn’t keep food down. That went on for a while until I told him, ‘Buck up, boy! Buck up!’ That was before he could talk. When he finally did, he’d heard ‘Buck up!’ so often that when he was asked his name, he’d say ‘Bucky’! And that’s how he got the handle he goes by.” Horace beamed his pride around the table for his hand in making his son the man he was today.

“Did,” Bucky corrected his father. “I go by Sam now, Dad.”

“Because he’s no longer that sickly kid, I can assure you,” Penny purred knowingly and snuggled closer, warming his ear with her breath.

Bucky subtly wiggled his shoulders as a hint to Penny to undrape herself from his arm. It was warm in the private room of the restaurant, and her perfume and the waft of the blown-out candles were stifling. He was mad at her anyway for smuggling in a case of champagne and beer and bribing the waitress to keep quiet about it. Oklahoma was a dry state with strict laws against the sale and imbibing of alcohol in public. He felt suffocated from the heavy food and beer in his belly, the cigarette smoke, and the revelry that had begun to have a desperate edge to it, as if his friends’ loud jests and tipsy laughter could drown out the voices of gloom and uncertainty hanging over their futures. Tomorrow when their heads cleared, the voices would resound louder than ever. He supposed it would be impolite to have the waitress box the cake to take home, but he didn’t think he could endure the long ritual of having it cut and served and eaten at the tail end of his party. He’d had enough of his birthday celebration. He wanted to get his mother out of here. He wanted to go home.

This birthday bash had been his father’s idea and thrown at his insistence. “It’ll do your mother good to get her mind off her worry over you and the war news in France. Besides, this is the last one you’ll have before you’re drafted, and you know that I like to show off what I can do for my family,” he’d argued. But Bucky suspected a big part of his father’s reason for the party was his own fear that this birthday might be his son’s last.

The girlfriend of one of his fraternity brothers leaned forward and slurred, “So, Bucky, wha…branch of the service are you…gonna sign up for if your draft number isn’t called this next go-round?”