When a laugh of relief bursts involuntarily out of my chest, I realize how tense I must have been. The muscles in my neck and shoulders start to relax. Meanwhile, both Dodsons scowl. But Chris is alive and — “Wait. You said behind the lines? He got transferred?”

Mr. Dodson’s scowl deepens. “It’s called reassignment. When you enlist, those recruiters, they want to know what jobs you’ve had. In case you’re already trained to do something they need. The only job Chris’s ever had was at that junk-mail place. So he wrote down that he had experience with the mail. He got reassigned to the military postal service. My soldier son is a mail clerk.”

Mr. Dodson doesn’t seem pleased about that. It’s hard to understand how any father could want his son to be on the front lines.

“He sounded very happy,” says Mrs. Dodson, glancing at her husband. Mr. Dodson gives her a hard look in return.

The front door bangs, and a guy wearing high-tops, basketball shorts, and a jersey takes the stairs two steps at a time without even looking at us. It must be Chris’s brother, the one he had to share a room with until he went to Nam.

“I’m glad he’s okay.” I take a long, cool sip. It’s real tea, not a mix.

“So, uh, what can we do for you, uh . . . ?” Mr. Dodson asks.

“Lucas. Nothing . . . I was . . . just getting worried.”

“That’s why you came all the way over here? To find out if Chris is okay?” Mr. Dodson sits back in the chair and presses his fingertips together thoughtfully. “No offense or nothing, but you ain’t got a phone?”

“Eddie,” Mrs. Dodson says sharply. Then to me: “It’s very nice of you to be concerned. I remember Chris telling me about you. He likes you very much.”

I’m not sure a hush falling over a room has ever been more palpable. Mr. Dodson glowers. Things may be getting awkward. Mrs. Dodson goes back to the kitchen, leaving her husband and me alone.

Mr. Dodson takes a long silent sip of tea, then hunches forward and runs a fingertip over the condensation on the glass. Finally, he looks up at me. “Your father serve, Lucas?”

“He commanded an LST in the Pacific during World War Two.”

“What about his father?”

“We don’t know much about his father.”

“Your mother’s father?”

“Also in the navy. But between the wars. He was a ship’s cook.”

“So, what do they think about you bein’ against this war?”

No need to ask him how he knows this. In his mind I probably look like a poster boy for the antiwar movement. “My mother’s father’s passed away. My father’s against the war and against me fighting in it.”

“And why’s that?”