All Rivers Flow to the Sea (7 page)

“Onward,” he says. “I’ll be back at three. That’s twenty-seven fifteen-minute blocks from now.”

I watch William T.’s truck disappear down the hill. Fifteen minutes. Then there I am, standing up at the front of the class holding my late pass.

Everyone’s staring.

I hold it in, hold it all in. Fifteen minutes. I can feel all the eyes, glancing at me and trying to glance away, the eyes that see I’m not looking at them and therefore it’s safe, safe to look at me, to take me in — what I’m wearing, how my hair is brushed or not, the way I stand up there at the desk waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for Mr. Trehorn to take my late pass so that I can walk on back to the back.

Where Tom Miller waits.

Look up, Mr. Trehorn. Look up, Mr. Trehorn. Take the pass. Take the pass, Mr. Trehorn.

He’s a busy man, Mr. Trehorn. He’s extremely busy, making small black marks in his grade book. Mark, mark, mark. Busy, busy, busy.

Tom Miller gets up. He walks up to the front, where Mr. Trehorn’s head is bent over his small black marks. Tom takes the slip of paper from my hand. Drops it on the desk.

“Knock, knock,” he says to the bent head of Mr. Trehorn.

He waits for me to go first. I go first. Down the row I go. All the eyes. The eyes. The eyes. I can feel them. Rose Latham, whose sister was in the accident. Fifteen minutes. Tom Miller follows behind me. Fifteen minutes.

Now there are only two wars left: Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Tracy Benova had tried to fill me in on what I had missed.

“World War II got the most attention,” she said. “Korea was more of a blip. Korea seems to be the war when they stopped being so proud of wars.”

I sit next to Tom Miller in the back of Mr. Trehorn’s classroom. I didn’t used to be a back-of-the-classroom student. But it’s not so bad, being in the back, the backs of everyone’s heads spread out before me, Mr. Trehorn standing up at the board, turning to write something down, turning back to explain what he’s written down. Notebooks open. Pens scratching. Legs stretched in the aisle. The windows open and the sound of the birds outside, and the custodian mowing the far edge of the school grounds, next to the trees that line the edge of the soccer field.

Once in a while someone’s head swivels to the back, to sneak a peek at me. Rose Latham with the brain-dead sister. Rose Latham who used to sit in the front row. Rose Latham the slut. Next to me Tom Miller doodles in his notebook.

Warren Graves turns around and looks at me. I meet his gaze.
Think you can hurt me, Warren? You have no idea.
Warren turns back around.

“Tet,” Mr. Trehorn says. “Mekong. My Lai. Are these terms familiar to you?”

Heads nod.

“Why? Tell me what you know.”

Hands raise. Mr. Trehorn stands at the board rolling the marker between his palms. A clicking sound each time it strikes his wedding ring.

“My grandfather said we could have won it, but they didn’t let us win it.”

“My uncle from Cleveland was a conscientious objector, and they put him in jail for two years.”

“My mother worked at the base then; that was before she quit. But she says she still remembers the planes flying out, all night long some nights.”

Assignment. Copy it down.

What was the main reason the United States military decided to become a presence in Vietnam?

What was the military history of the United States in Southeast Asia that preceded the Vietnam War?

Why did the Tet Offensive come as such a shock?

Joe Miller once told Ivy that Tom Miller’s father, Chase, hadn’t wanted to go to Vietnam. That his draft number was called but that he wanted to go to Canada instead. But Spooner was all for the war. Spooner used to work at Griffiss Air Base even. Spooner was ashamed of his son. Wanting to avoid his patriotic duty.

Next to me Tom Miller is silent. Doodling away.

Fifteen minutes.

The un-bell unleashes itself from the loudspeaker.

My locker, still broken. I didn’t get a new lock for it. Why bother? Nothing of value in it, unless you count outgrown sneakers and crumpled doodled-on notebook paper. A sweatshirt still hanging in there from before Ivy and I had the accident, when it was still winter, still cold. And the broken-spined book of wars.

The buses leave one after another, grinding out of the driveway, blue exhaust fading into the blue May sky, heading down Thompson Road into Sterns, or up Thompson Road into the foothills. Where’s William T.? I’ve waited my twenty-seven fifteen-minute blocks, counted each one out, and he promised that after twenty-seven of them he would be here to pick me up. Down on the curb I sit and bend over my backpack, filled with the books I don’t want to read.

“Rose.”

Tom Miller’s voice. I nod into my backpack.
I’m here, Tom Miller, and I hear you,
but it’s too much effort to think of opening my eyes or lifting my head. I made it through all those fifteen minutes and now I’m tired. So tired.

“You waiting for William T.?”

I nod into my backpack again.

“He taking you down to see Ivy?”

Nod.

“Isn’t he supposed to be here by now? William T.’s never late.”

Nod.

“Rose. Lift your head up from that goddamned backpack and talk to me.”

Shake.

His palm presses the back of my neck, a warm solid weight.

“You want me to take you down to Utica instead?”

Shake.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” I say. “William T.’ll be here.”

“I know he’ll be here. I’m just offering to take you down now, is all.”

He strokes my hair.

“I could take you,” he says. “I haven’t seen her since the night it happened, you know.”

I squinch my eyes tighter shut in the darkness of the backpack.

“Neither has Joe,” I say.

I didn’t know I was going to say that. My voice keeps coming out and saying things on its own. Tom’s hand keeps stroking my hair. The May sun beats down. It’s dark with my eyes shut tight and my face buried in my backpack and my arms imprisoning my knees.

“Not once,” I say. “Not even one single time has Joe Miller been to see Ivy.”

“I know,” Tom says. “I know he hasn’t.”

“First my mother, and now Joe,” I say. “What the hell is wrong with them? Don’t they care about her? Don’t they
love
her?”

More things I didn’t know I was going to say. Tom’s hand keeps stroking.

“It’s tearing Joe up,” he said. “He can’t talk about it.”

William T.’s pickup is coming down Thompson Road. His pickup has an unmistakable this-is-William-T.’s-pickup sound. Half a mile away it can be heard. I keep my head in my backpack. Tom’s hand disappears.

“Younger!”

The engine dies and William T.’s door opens with its William-T.’s-truck-door sound. He and Tom talk over my head.

“She all right?”

“She’s okay.”

I feel William T. kneeling next to me. His hand on my shoulder, so different from Tom’s palm on my hair.

“Younger,” he says. “Younger.”

Open your eyes, Rose. Lift your head from the backpack.
Ouch. The May sky is too bright. The little new leaves on the trees are too green. William T.’s eyes are bright and swimmy. Tears.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Younger. The truck’s out of oil and I stopped at Agway to buy a quart but they were closed and then I saw I was late so I came on down anyway and here I am. Late. And the goddamned engine’s about to seize up for all I know.”

Tears slide out of his eyes down his rough cheeks.

“Gray’s is open,” Tom says. “Should be, anyway.”

William T.’s hand on my shoulder is heavy.

“You want to head down to Utica, Younger? We could stop at Gray’s first. But we don’t have to. Go to Utica, that is. Not if you’re not up to it.”

If we don’t head down to Utica, who will visit Ivy? I look at William T.

“Angel can take care of her for an afternoon,” he whispers. He can read my thoughts. “Elder’ll be all right until tomorrow.”

I’m tired. So tired. But no. Ivy is waiting. We are already late.
I’m sorry, Ivy. Sorry for being late. William T.’s truck is out of oil.

“Let’s go,” I say.

“Okay,” William T. says. “To Utica we go, then, with a stop at Gray’s for an oil change first. The truck’s nine thousand miles overdue.”

William T. nods at Tom, and Tom starts walking backward in the direction of the school parking lot. He flips his hand up in a wave to William T. and then turns around and jogs away. Into William T.’s truck I climb. Tired. Straight past my house we drive, and straight up William T.’s hill, and then a left onto Fuller Road, and all the way to Remsen we don’t say a word. Once in a while William T. reaches over and puts his hand on my shoulder, then takes it off to steer around a curve. Lots of curves, here in the Adirondacks.

Joe Miller stands behind the counter at Gray’s, sorting through scrawled-on pieces of paper all stamped Gray’s Automotive, Remsen, New York.

“I used to change the goddamned oil myself, Joe,” William T. says. “Now I say the hell with it.”

He fishes a quarter out of his pocket and slaps it into my hand.

“Now I let you Millers do it for me. Splurge in my old age.”

Into the restroom he goes. Joe stands behind the counter, sorting. One spike for the white scraps of paper, one spike for the yellow, the trash basket for the rest. His hair hangs down to his shoulders, and he swipes it back with a greasy hand. Dark hair, wavy. Not sun-streaked yet, the way it gets when the summer sun beats down upon his head.

Would I give up my hair, to get my sister back? Of course. My skull would tan in the summer and be egg-white in the winter. I would wear hats three seasons out of the year. I would give up all my hair. No hair anywhere. Eyebrows, eyelashes, all gone.

A sacrifice, but enough of one?

Of course not.

Joe’s fingers are busy. He’s almost through with one big stack. Soon he will be on to the next.

“What would you give up to have Ivy back the way she was?” I say.

He looks at me with a who-the-hell-do-you-think-I-am look. He shakes his head, and he goes back to his sorting.

“Nothing?”

“Stop it.”

“If it were possible, I mean. If you could.”

Sort. Spike. Toss. Sort. Sort. Spike. Toss.

“It’s not possible,” he says.

“But if it were. Imagine if it were. What would you be willing to give up?”

“Jesus Christ, Rose. Anything.”

That’s his answer. Anything. He doesn’t stop to think. He doesn’t go through the machinations, as William T. would have said, the machinations of analysis. The endless process. The series of what-if’s and but-if’s, the if-this-then-not-that’s.

“So you would give up anything, then?”

His fingers stop flickering through the scraps of paper. He leans over the counter toward me.

“There is nothing I would not give up.”

“You can’t walk everywhere for the rest of your life, Younger,” William T. says. “There are times when a car is a necessity.”

He sits in his blue chair. I’m in my green chair with the chrome handles, one hand on Ivy’s leg through the white sheet and the white blanket.

“The Pompeians didn’t have cars,” I say.

“My point exactly. Had the Pompeians had cars, they could’ve gotten the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. Outstripped that lava. Made it to an olive grove, taken shelter in the shade.”

“I don’t want to drive, William T.”

“I know you don’t, Younger. Nevertheless.”

He holds out a New York State Department of Motor Vehicles driver’s manual.

“Study up on the rules of the road,” he says. “So that someday, if you decide that you might after all give it a try, you’ll be prepared.”

The car that Ivy and I were in was a station wagon. Now it’s a lump of crushed metal that used to be a station wagon. In my imagination, our crushed car was perfectly square, the kind of square that appears in third-grade math books. One inch on every side. What is the perimeter of this square?

If you were me as a third grader, you did what the teacher told you to do and counted all the sides:

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4

If you were Ivy as a third grader, you took one look and said, “Four.”

Ivy didn’t bother with the process. The process was what the math books wanted you to bother with, but Ivy didn’t care. Instead of learning multiplication the way the book wanted you to — which was to understand the concept, and they had all kinds of ways to help you understand the concept — Ivy just sat down and memorized the times table. She made herself flash cards, the ones table through the twelves table, and sat there for a week. Every afternoon after school, every morning after breakfast, every night after dinner, until she had them down. Done.

I open the manual at random.