Free Waiting for the Galactic Bus by Parke Godwin

mean you gotta stay that way?
    We pulled detail after chow, humping ammo to the M-60. Not expecting trouble; didn’t even see that grenade come out of a window until it fucked us up good. Milt got most of it, but there was enough left over for a nice road map across my stomach. So Milt Kahane went home on the same hospital ship with me. I got a bed, he got a box in the hold.
    When Roy mouths off about Jews, I see Milt eating those goddamned peaches and smoking my cigarette, asking questions and not liking the answers he got. Me and Milt and that old black man with his trumpet, I guess we’re pacifists. Once you’re nearly blown away, you get real picky what you’ll die for. Roy really got off on the scars where my belly button used to be. I said they were religious medals, not that he’d understand. Roy never wasted anyone but he’d sure as shit like to. Going to declare war all over Char tonight.
    Wish I knew what the hell bothers me so much about that. Maybe — hell, no maybe about it. Char deserves better than what Roy’s turned into, but I’m not fool enough to say so. Already did my gig in somebody else’s war.
     
    “Not a bad sort.” Coyul watched Woody carry the fresh tray back to the table. “Eloquent in his way. The ones who’ve done the bleeding always have a great respect for peace. Attila, for example. Very keen on animal husbandry now. Goats, that sort of thing.”
    “They’ll be off to the White Rose soon,” Barion said. “Will you be ready to take it from there?”
    “Of course. I’ll make an appearance.”
    “Let the blandishment fit the time,” Barion advised. “Don’t think about them, think like them.”
    A crucial aspect, as Coyul knew. In a careless moment a few years back, he’d appeared in slacks and an Izod shirt to a cult of California Satanists. They threw wine bottles at him. Charity Stovall would be no less hag-ridden with stereotype. You couldn’t hurl new ideas head-on at old notions. It never paid.
     

    9   
    H hour minus one
    Charity liked riding in Roy’s car the way the three of them always did: holding hands with Roy in the front seat, old Woody in the back talking softly to himself through the muted trumpet. The old car was like a house and they were the family, the realest she ever knew. Roy in his old field jacket and that black T-shirt with the skull and KILL’EM ALL. LET GOD SORT’EM OUT on the front — which she really didn’t believe in that, it was just Roy’s sense of humor. Beer cans rattling around on the floor and over the tire iron. Big sponge-rubber dice hanging inside the windshield and the two tiny baby dolls banging suggestively against each other.
    So tonight they’d do it. That troubled her more than a little, but yes, she did love Roy. Especially tonight in the tabernacle, the way he made those folks dig down a little deeper for Jesus.
    I wonder if Jesus will call tonight a sin. I couldn’t do it unless I loved Roy and was going to marry him, which we’ll do it as soon as we can afford to, and live our lives in Jesus anyway, so maybe He won’t mind if we are a little ahead of time.
    “Night, Woody,” she said when they let him off at his house. She liked the way he leaned in through the window to kiss her on the cheek like family.
    “Take care of yourself, Char. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
    Wouldn’t you, Woody? What did you mean by that? I know you like me, but you don’t know about tonight because Roy certainly wouldn’t talk about it. Good night, dear Woody. When you see me tomorrow I’ll be a whole different person —
    “Quite,” promised Coyul from the back seat.
    — married in the sight of God, kind of, but I’ll always think of you as family.
    “Of course, the tasteful Mr. Stride has been bending Woody’s ear about it all week.” Coyul remarked.
    “He’s on the intelligence team for the Paladins,” Barion noted, “usually disseminating more than he gathers, but then you have to realize, as