Ken's War Read online

Paderson tilted his plate toward him and scraped the remaining morsels of fish and fake-o potatoes into a pile that he shoveled into his mouth. “You’re too young. Anymore of those potatoes over there?” He tipped his head toward the pan on the burner.

  “Yeah.” Ken took four steps, enough to get him to the pan. He slid the remainder of the fake potatoes onto his dad’s plate. Dare he anticipate eating meals without having to listen to forks scraping the shine off dinner plates? “I know I’m too young right now to go to West Point, but I gotta prepare.”

  The sound of chewing.

  “What do you think, Dad?”

  “Salt.”

  Ken pushed the saltshaker toward his dad and watched him shake crystals into his palm to measure the flow rate, dump that onto his food and sprinkle more on. He paused, set his fork down and opened his mouth wide, inserted a finger in his mouth to dislodge a food particle stuck between two teeth. “Do we have any toothpicks?”

  Ken handed his father a little ceramic vase full of toothpicks, each one with a decoratively lathed tip as if the toothpick maker had thought he was crafting spindles for a tiny railing, a whimsical thought that amused Ken.

  His father’s jaw and mouth contorted grotesquely to accommodate the toothpick and part of his hand, giving full view of silver fillings in his bottom molars. Finally, he closed his mouth, examined the invisible object he’d mined and, gratified with what he saw, he looked up. He said, “Fishbone,” as if this one word were the answer to an important question.

  The words spilled out: “West Point doesn’t accept students who graduate from my correspondence school. I have to get a diploma from a real high school. In America.”

  His father, cautiously chewing a bite of fish, swallowed and pursed his lips. “That so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Says who?”

  Ken had hoped that that particular question wouldn’t come up, nonetheless he’d prepared for it. “I called Colonel Topker and asked him and he called the West Point admissions officer. That’s how I know.” The last bit sounded a bit sassy, so he tried to dilute it by adding, “I didn’t ask Topker to call West Point. I only wanted his opinion since he’s a graduate and all, but he went ahead and called them.” The chances of his dad checking his story with Topker were one in a million.

  “You phoned a light colonel? And he talked to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Paderson made a sucking noise with the side of his mouth. He was considering something. The pros and cons of his son returning to the States, perhaps.

  “So...?” Ken prompted him.

  “So. The potatoes. Did Wizard track them down too?”

  “I did.”

  “You did? How did you finagle that?”

  “Where there’s a will there’s a way. So can I go to West Point?”

  “So. Your mother. Have you worked out the logistics with her?”

  Getting his mom’s cooperation was the weak part of his strategy. “I didn’t want to make a transoceanic telephone call to talk to her unless you said OK to my idea. Can you clear it with her?”

  Paderson guffawed. “I don’t have to clear it with her. I’ll call her and tell her tomorrow morning when it’s evening in the States. It’s six a.m. on the East Coast now. She’s asleep.” He regarded Ken as if detecting a subtle change in his son that had occurred overnight—a change in posture or demeanor, something? In all likelihood, his dad was probably trying to ferret out if Ken had swallowed the refraction of the truth his dad had shot off with macho bravado. Paderson would have to “clear it with her.” And they both knew it.

  No sooner had his dad shut the door behind him than Ken, glad to be alive, did a victory jig in the small kitchen, thrusting his arms in the air and drumming the table with a fork and knife. “A direct hit! A direct hit!”

  “What’s the ruckus?” His dad’s head appeared from behind the partially opened door.

  “Go! West Point! Go!”

  “Go, West Point!” he father echoed.

  Ken stabbed air with the fork.

  “That was good grub, cadet.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  When the door closed for the second time, it shut down his jubilant mood. He’d achieved his mission too easily. He’d expected to have to work on his dad for a couple of weeks, wearing him down, ding-donging until Paderson, exasperated, surrendered.

  Wizard had, on one occasion at the ofuro, instructed him on the natural laws of the universe, a phenomenon he termed yin and yang. “All things and events,” he’d intoned, “have opposite states, not merely opposite states, but complementary. There is no stability. The sun and the moon complement each other. What if we had sun twenty-four hours a day?”

  “The world would burn up,” Ken had replied.

  “What if the moon shone twenty-four hours?”

  “Everything would die.”

  “Correct. No condition is constant. Moon follows the sun. Despondency follows happiness, and so on into infinity.”

  If that was the case, Ken had tolerated a string of dark days. It was high time for his day in the sun.

  Wizard had arranged everything, from the plane ride from Kyushu to Okinawa, to the solicitous men and women flying from Okinawa to the U.S. who’d fed him Oreos and taught him how to play poker, to the grunt who’d met Ken at the airport and drove him right up to his doorstep at the barracks in Pennsylvania.

  When he’d arrived at the barracks bungalow, he’d intuited instantly that something was different, the way when a man shaves off his mustache, you know he’s changed, but you can’t pinpoint in what way.

  Then as he turned the key in the front door lock, he figured it out. The orange and yellow flowered curtains weren’t hanging in the windows. Without curtains, the house looked blind. Inside, his suitcase clunked hollowly on the floor, now showing round indents the living room furniture legs had impressed into the wood. The kitchen phone had been disconnected. The framed jigsaw puzzle hung askew on the dining room wall. He opened the basement door and hollered, “Mom? Mom? Mom?” and went down the steps, fearful that a strange voice would reply.

  He ran back outside and stood on the front stoop where he used to sit and watch ants march into a hole in the threshold. Major and Mrs. Garston’s porch light was burning next door, but his old grade school teacher was the last person he wanted to go to. She’d mollycoddle him like a baby and all. He knocked on the door across the street. The people were strangers to him. They’d never heard of a Captain Paderson or a Tricia Paderson.

  “Well, mercy me, it’s little Ken Paderson.” Mrs. Garston made him sit in her kitchen and drink a glass of skim milk while her husband called the post personnel bureau. In a couple of hours, Major Holm, his mom’s new husband, showed up. He picked Ken up and drove him down to Aberdeen, Maryland, where they lived now.

  During the ride, they passed an old fashioned diner advertising the day’s special (chicken-fried steak, lima beans and mashed potatoes), a camper van sales lot that sold ski equipment in the winter, a Dunkin’ Donuts shop, a toy store and a junkyard heaped with rusting, wrecked cars. The country was accessorized with stuff he’d forgotten.

  Holm caught him up on the old news, such as how the worst power failure in history put nine states and part of Canada in the dark for as long as 13 hours, and how 10,000 protesters against the Vietnam war marched down Fifth Avenue. And how Baltimore set a World Series record by pitching thirty-three consecutive scoreless innings. When you’re away from a place, you kinda forget that things still happened, that records were broken, that people got on with their lives.

  “Thirty-three consecutive scoreless innings,” Holm said again. He poked Ken’s shoulder, trying to coax out an appreciative reaction to this sports statistic.

  “Must’ve been boring,” Ken said.

  Holm punched in the dashboard cigarette lighter. He held the glowing lighter to his cigarette.

  “Major Holm?”

  “I’m a lieutenant colonel, Carrot Top.”


  “Yeah. Sorry. You don’t have to pretend to be my dad. I have a dad.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t stick up for you like he does.”

  “Whatta ya mean?” Holm had his dad confused with another man.

  “Your dad busted his hand when he left-hooked his CO.”

  “Why?”

  “Why ask ‘why’?”

  “Why did dad deck his commanding officer?”

  “Don’t you Padersons communicate? He decked his CO for suggesting you deserved a broken arm, picking a fight with his kid. That’s why.”

  If one’s inner world could undergo earthquakes like those he’d experienced in Japan, Holm’s statements abruptly, irrevocably rearranged Ken’s tectonic plates.

  “Your dad is your dad, and that’s that,” Holm said.

  “Yes, sir.” He turned away from Holm and pretended to be sleeping while Holm sang out messages emblazoned on billboards to the tune of whatever melody happened to be playing on the radio.

  Ken smiled secretly. His father had punched David Marshall’s dad, on Ken’s account, no less. That explained the sudden transfer to Japan.

  Since he’d arrived four days ago, he’d overcome his jetlag, but was still disconcerted at the sight of mom’s puffy face, thick ankles and waist, and her dang blasted cigarette smoking, Other new things drove him nuts, too.

  She crushed a lip-stick stained butt in an ashtray. “Ken, honey. Don’t look at me that way. I told you, I’m sorry this was a surprise and whatnot. I’d written all about it to your dad. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you about...” She waved her hand inclusively at the artificial Christmas tree with gifts under it, at the mantle with photos of two girls with high foreheads and of a pudgy-faced infant, and at the bay window with a view of the Aberdeen Proving Ground water tower.

  He’d been prepared to dislike Holm and to tolerate the new baby, but adding two girls into the mix strained his capacity to stop himself from grabbing a baseball bat and smashing up their stupid fake Christmas tree. His dad should have told him about the new family Tricia assembled, then maybe Ken could have saved his West Point story for a better time.

  His mom lit another Kool. Between hungry inhales she said, “Cheer up. Today’s Christmas and some of those presents under the tree are for you.”

  A clattering arose on the back porch. She pushed herself off the sofa and waddled to the back door. A river of cheerful voices cascaded into the house. Holm and his daughters—Becky, aged 14, Alice, aged 9, and Ken’s so called half-brother, seven-month-old Carl Gary Holm—were back from visiting Santa Claus at the assembly hall.

  “Are Mammaw and Pap-pap here yet?” That was Becky using baby words.

  “No, honey,” he heard his mom say. Honey? The sweet word punched his sternum. She’d called that kid honey, and it wasn’t even her kid. She’d spent the endearment like a penny in an empty gumball machine.

  “Good grief. Is Ken still here?” That was Alice. Her teeth were fenced in with braces.

  “He’s in the living room, I think.”

  He galloped toward the stairs.

  “Hey, Ken,” Alice said, “Wanna play Old Maid?”

  “Nah.”

  “Go Fish? Concentration?”

  Sissy games. “Nah.”

  His mother laid the baby in the crib. Baby Carl, lying on his back, looked around and started flailing his arms and bawling. His head was downy with light orange hairs.

  “When I look at his face,” Ken’s mom shouted to be heard over the baby’s crying, “I see you all over again. You had the same cranky expression and the same peach fuzz.” She lifted Carl out of the crib and cradled his head against her breasts.

  “I did not,” Ken said.

  “If I had one of your baby pictures, you’d see.”

  “Nuh-uh,” he said. “My pictures are black and white.” And why the hell didn’t she have one of his baby or school pictures on the mantle?

  She frowned and then laughed. “Play cards with the girls until their grandparents come.” She covered the baby’s ear with her hand and hollered, “Gary, will you baste the turkey?” Holm said he was a master baster and followed Tricia to the kitchen.

  The kitchen oven had been emitting mouth-watering aromas all afternoon. Nothing else in the whole world smelled better than roast turkey. Ken didn’t know what he’d wish for this time when he and his mom split the wishbone—that she’d tucked his baby pictures in a safe place away from those girls’ sticky fingers, or that these people would soon leave her behind the way he and his dad had.

  He tried to teach the girls poker, but Becky didn’t understand the difference between a full house and flush and Alice didn’t understand anything. So. They played Go Fish.

  “They eat raw fish in Japan,” Ken informed the sisters.

  “E-e-ew! You’re lying,” Becky said. “Nobody eats raw fish.”

  Alice’s eyes were wide. “Did you ever eat raw fish?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re lying,” Becky said.

  “The Japanese people strip naked and get in a big bathtub together.”

  “Good grief! Did you see their pee wees and bosoms?” Alice wanted to know.

  Becky slapped her sister and yelled, “Daddy, Kenny’s telling lies!”

  “Don’t lie, boy,” Holm said absently.

  “Ken, quit teasing the girls,” his mom said. “Go play with your soldiers.”

  “They’re not toys. They’re models.” He couldn’t believe she hadn’t thrown them away. “Where are they?”

  “On the closed-in porch.”

  “Yeah? Can I get 'em?”

  “Be my guest,” she said.

  He pulled hard on the door to the porch. It was so cold, he could see his breath.

  There they were. In two cloth bags. He hoisted a bag of soldiers, one over each shoulder. Carefully, he poured the men out of the bags. Hundreds of soldiers cartwheeled onto the wood floor, making the same rattle as they had the summer before, and the summer before that when he’d arranged them at his grandparents’ house. The last summer he’d stayed with his grandparents, sorting the soldiers, affixing their proper accessories, and lining them up chronologically had consumed two weeks.

  Henry VIII's soldiers carrying bows and muskets were going to march in the front rows. Behind them British soldiers in tailcoats and three-corner hats would stand. He needed to buy Napoleon and his troops, but he did have twenty French soldiers, and a dozen fierce Indians from the French-American war. Several rows would be dedicated to American Revolutionary War soldiers, and several more to American Civil War soldiers. About a quarter of the collection consisted of soldiers from the Great War, and the rest were World War II soldiers and camp followers. World War II soldiers were easy to come by in stores.

  Lying on his belly, Ken picked up a 16th century soldier. Pressing a long, thin musket into the musketeer’s hand, he mustered his collection. He lined the men up, making minor changes in their order of placement, filling in gaps of chronology, extending a row here, moving a column there. Because he used the cracks between the floorboards as markers, each row of soldiers was dead straight.

  He could feel it. The furniture drifting away. The porch walls sliding out of sight. He could feel the objects of his attention sucking him in like a thick ice cream soda through a straw. Getting lost. Losing time. He escaped into the straight lines, the order, the repetitive act of setting soldier beside soldier. The assurance that no one could tell him he was arranging them incorrectly, that no one could attack him, that no one could come along and rearrange the order of this little world was a tonic.

  “My great uncle on my mother’s side fought for the South in the Civil War, you know.”

  He jumped a little. He hadn’t heard his mother come in from the kitchen. She wore a yellow apron over her sweater and slacks.

  “Yeah, I know.” He’d heard about the man. Uncle Ebert—a relative who'd stolen boots off dead and near-dead Union soldiers, a man who'd run
his bayonet through people who were distant kin. “Am I related to him?”

  “Once or twice removed, I guess. My brother was given his gun. Don't know what he's done with it.”

  “Sure wish I had it.”

  “We have enough war stories in this family to last for the next ten generations,” she said. “If you didn't remove your play soldiers' little guns and doodads every time, it wouldn't take as long to set them up again.”

  Breaking concentration, Ken pulled his tongue in. “I want to do it this way.”

  She tramped upon the love seat to reach the window blinds and pull them down. “It’s cold out here. Aren’t you cold?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “OK.”

  Chapter Nine

  ~ Merry Christmas ~

  He heard the doorbell bong and the girls clomping down the stairs into the living room.

  “Oh, goodie gumdrops. Now we can open our presents.” That was Becky.

  Holm tromped through the living room and into the kitchen. He hollered to Ken who was still on the porch, “Get in here, Carrot Top.”

  “My name’s Ken,” he said to Holm’s back.

  Holms turned around and roughly tousled Ken’s hair. “Well, who licked your lollipop?”

  “Nobody.”

  Two old people carrying Christmas presents stood in the living room. Alice and Becky clung to the old woman’s wool coat.

  “And you must be Tricia’s boy,” the gray-haired lady said, her voice as rusty as an antique hinge. “Welcome to the family.” She kissed his check wetly. Her breath reeked of cigarettes and menthol throat lozenges. The old man beside her blew his nose ferociously and then shook Ken’s hand. The living room was heaving with these strangers, their photographs, their germs, their happiness.

  Within minutes, cross-conversations and cigarette smoke strafed the air. The two girls began ripping curly ribbons and gold foil paper off their presents, and squealed when they discovered a Barbie doll, a stuffed Snoopy dog, and look-alike crocheted vests with matching pocketbooks. Watching other people open Christmas presents can be demoralizing.