Free Outer Banks by Russell Banks

together,” he reminded me. “Think how much that would have meant to them.”
    I wiped away my tears, blew my nose, thanked him for all his trouble, and walked slowly out of the hospital into the cool, palmy night, terrified.
    9.
    Now I was truly on my own—in spite of what Rex had said to Bif. He had known as well as I that a twelve-year-old boy can’t take care of a twenty-eight-year-old woman. He had said it mainly for Bif’s benefit, not mine—so the boy would feel the proper responsibility, regardless of whether or not he could act on it.
    At first, I had felt sorry for Bif, who was trying hard to live up to the terms of his charge, but then, as increasingly he began to order me around, I began to feel anger toward him. As long as my mother and father were still alive, I was able to get Bif to stop worrying over me simply by assuring him that Grandpa was taking care of us all while Daddy was away in Vietnam. But after the accident, even that assurance was no longer possible.
    Then, finally, one evening about six months after my parents’ death, all my anger flooded over. I served the boys asupper of turkey hash on toast, leftovers from the roast turkey of the night before, and Bif slammed his little fists down on the table and said loudly, “We never had to eat this crap when Dad was at home! What makes you think it’s any different now?”
    I slapped him across the mouth with my open hand as hard as I could, sending him spinning off his chair to the floor. After calling Judy over to baby-sit, I stomped out and caught the bus to Tampa.
    10.
    I arrived home again just before dawn (the doctor, Ben, insisted on driving me in his new Buick sedan), exhausted, slightly woozy from the gin-and-tonics, and in spite of the endless shame I felt, still raging. The combination of guilt and anger was almost too much to bear, and I was afraid I was going mad, though Ben assured me that I was not, that it was perfectly normal for the wife of a man away in the service to feel this way.
    I sent Judy home, and while I waited for the boys to get up for their breakfast, I sat down and tried to write a letter to Rex. I began the letter many times, tearing each new attempt to shreds just as I got to the place where I had to tell him I had let Ben make love to me. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t make that man’s life any more painful than it already was. I remembered his last letter to me, received the day before.
    Kay, honey, even though I’m 9000 miles away from you and the boys, my heart and mind are there with you, believe me. I still feel that I’m the king in that little kingdom. I feel like a government-in-exile or something, waiting for the signal from you, or from somebody, that it’s okay to return. (Hey, I’d better be careful or the military censors will think I’m talking politics, eh? Ha ha!)
    At last, I heard the boys happily slamming each other with pillows, and wearily I got up and started setting the table for breakfast.
    11.
    That very afternoon, I received the letter from Washington, D.C., the Department of Defense, informing me that Rex’s plane had been shot down by the enemy while on a mission over North Vietnam, and he had been taken prisoner. He was now a POW, and, as far as they knew, he was not injured.
    In that one brief moment, as I read the letter, I felt my life turn over and go back to zero and start anew, the opposite of drowning. I still loved Rex, of course, but deep inside, I said a prayer of thanks to the North Vietnamese gunners who had shot him down. I would never be able to explain that gratitude to anyone, I was sure, and I probably could not explain it even to myself, but I could not deny to myself that I felt it, no matter how hard I tried. And though I was not especially proud of the feeling, neither was I ashamed of it.
    I joined a group of POW wives from central Florida, and for a while went around with them, speaking