CHAPTER 6 - MARCHING ORDERS

            I'll never forget the day or the way that Joey announced his enlistment in the Marine Corps. I was 11, and we were sitting on the porch at dusk. He was playing his guitar and we were singing together as we often did. My father came outside and just out of habit, I suppose, started his customary lecture about how Joey ought to put down that guitar and think about doing something with his life.

            Joey's reply was calm and very quiet, so quiet that I wasn't sure at first whether I'd heard him correctly. "I am gonna do something with my life," he explained with just a trace of smug satisfaction. He met my father's expectant gaze with an icy stare. "I've joined the Marines. I have to report for boot camp at the end of next month. After basic training in San Diego, I'll be shippin' out to Vietnam."

            The color drained from my father's face. He didn't say a word; he just turned and walked back into the house. I sat there staring at Joey in disbelief. "No," I whispered at last. "You can't go. I don't want you to go." I don't think I ever truly understood what anguish was until I heard Joey say that he was leaving me.

            Joey reached for me, but I pulled away from his grasp. Springing up from the step, I ran off into the deepening twilight. "Maggie, wait!" I heard him call after me. I heard the note of despair in his voice. But I couldn't answer. I had to get away. I had to be alone.

            I ended up hiding behind the storage shed in the backyard where I could weep in peace, echoing sobs dredged from the depths of a broken heart. I felt abandoned and desolate. That was the moment I first understood how little our puny desires affect reality. I didn't want Joey to leave, didn't know how I could live without him, and it didn't make any difference at all. He was still going to leave, and I would be left all alone.

            To Joey's credit, he gave me some time to be alone and assimilate the news. About a half-hour later, he found me. I hadn't seen him look so hurt since Gramma and Grampa died. Leaning against the back of the shed, he slid down the corrugated steel wall until he was sitting beside me and propped his arms on his knees. "You're gonna get chiggers sittin' in the grass," he observed.

            Red-eyed and sniffling, I wouldn't look at him. "Don't care." I pulled absently at a tuft of grass and tossed it angrily away. I wasn't actually mad at Joey. Irrationally, I was mad at everyone except him.

            He leaned his head back and looked up at the stars; his handsome young face wore an expression of infinite sadness. "You gonna ever forgive me or ya just gonna hate me forever?"

            For him to imagine that he was in any way the object of my anger jolted me from my self-pitying funk. "I could never hate you!" I cried in alarm. I was hurt that he could even think such a thing. I started to cry again as I laid my head against his shoulder. He lifted his arm and gathered me into his protecting embrace as I began sobbing in earnest.

            "Shhh, Squirt, it's gonna be okay." He held me and rocked me gently back and forth.

            "I love you!" I declared adamantly. "But I just don't want you to go!"

            "I know, Sweetheart. To tell you the truth, you're the only person I'm really gonna miss."

            "Then don't go!" I protested with the obvious logic of an 11-year-old.

            "You know it's not that simple."

            "Why?" I persisted.

            "Gotta go do my duty for God and Country," he explained. "Stop the spread of communism and make the world safe for democracy."

            "Yeah, I guess so," I admitting grudgingly. I suppose Joey's reasons for enlisting surely sound naïve and simplistic to modern ears. But this was 1969, during the Cold War, when communism was still a clear and present danger. Only a few years before in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the USA and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war while the rest of the world had held its collective breath.

            Joey pulled up his T-shirt and wiped my tear-stained face with the hem. "Would you write to me?"

            I nodded vigorously. "Uh-huh. Every day if you want me to."

            There was a distant look in his eyes as he gently stroked my hair. Joey had no illusions about the glory of war or his own immortality. Even then, I think he recognized the possibility that he might not come back. A lot of others hadn't. Perhaps he had a premonition of his own death. "And say a prayer for me too?" He asked solemnly.

            I threw my arms around his neck in a fierce hug. "Every night!" I promised vehemently as I tried to keep my imagination from straying too near the horrifying thought of losing him.

            He hugged me back with equal ferocity. "That's m'girl."

            We sat for a while in silence, his arms around me and my head on his shoulder. Sitting on his lap, wrapped in his arms, I felt completely safe and totally loved. At last he heaved a sigh and said, "We'd better go in. Good ol' Brother Dick'll be lookin' for us."

            The darkness concealed my secret smile at his uncomplimentary nickname for my father. Joey always called him Rick or Ricky to his face. "Yeah, I guess you're right." I stood up first, brushing at the grass and dirt still clinging to the seat of my shorts.

            Joey held out his hand to me. "Help your old uncle up, wouldja, Squirt? I think my butt's asleep."

            I laughed as I took both his hands in mind and braced the toes of my sneakers against his. Tugging with all my strength, I threw my weight backwards and helped hoist him to his feet, almost landing on my own butt in the process.

            We walked back to the house in comfortable silence, his arm around my shoulders and mine around his waist, walking together through the summer night. For an instant, time paused in its relentless forward progress allowing that single moment to linger in my memory like a treasured photograph preserved forever behind a pane of glass.

            Later that night, I heard voices coming from behind the closed door of Joey's room, which was across the hall from mine. He and my father were having it out. "I just don't understand why you would go and do such a thing," my father declared in a booming voice that insinuated his younger brother had disappointed him in some way.

            "Aside from the practical reason of having money for a college education when I get out, how about the plain old idea of serving your country?" Joey retorted. "Don't little things like duty and honor count for anything? I woulda thought you'd've been proud."

            I didn't want to hear any more. I couldn't bear to listen to yet another one of my father's self-righteous lectures, in which he was right and everyone else was wrong, so I closed my bedroom door, and climbed into bed, covering my ears with the pillow to shut out their discussion.

            The days and weeks that followed were silent and chilly. Shannon men can be exceedingly stubborn, and neither my uncle nor my father was willing to be the first to extend the olive branch. They gradually arrived at an uneasy détente, and things more or less got back to normal. My father and Joey were once again civil if not exactly cordial toward each other.