Free Amerika by Brauna E. Pouns, Donald Wrye Page B

prom,” Peter said. “Wanna neck?” Peter spun Amanda around expertly. She laughed, her tension melting away. “Glad you came?”
    “Sure, but what’s it all about?”
    “Coordination. Regional unity. All that good stuff.” “What was the call from Chicago about?”
    “Nothing, really.”
    “Chicago calls for nothing?”
    “Well, we’ve had a good production record, and I may get some award or something.”
    “My hero.”
    Kimberly concluded her medley with “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right out of My Hair.” “Let’s go outside,” Amanda said, taking Peter’s hand.
    He guided her onto a terrace that overlooked the Missouri River; mist rose lazily from the placid water.
    “Do you remember,” asked Amanda, “when we were first going out, you used to hold your breath during a kiss. I always expected you to suddenly turn blue and keel over.”
    “That’s what you were thinking about when we kissed?”
    “After we had been married a few years you learned to breathe.”
    He laughed and shook his head.
    “I remember the first time we made love—I had this terrible thought: what if he has to hold his breath? That’ll be ninety seconds maximum.”
    Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You did not.”
    “Absolutely. The important thing is you did not.” They hugged affectionately, listening to the songs that continued from inside, making the moment seem a suspension of time. Amanda turned in his arms and looked at the river.
    “Sometimes—it seems as though nothing has happened.”
    Peter nodded. “You know what I always wanted to do? Just get on that river—take it down through Kansas and Missouri, all the way to the Gulf. Devin and I—well, it was Devin’s idea. We were reading Huckleberry Finn. We must’ve been nine, or maybe eleven or twelve. Anyway, his old man called the state police. They found us about a half hour after we’d launched our raft—probably about fifteen minutes before we would’ve sunk.”
    Am anda smiled. “I’m game.”
    “We’d better get back in.”
    “No guts, huh?”
    “We’d have to carry too many travel permits,” he said, pulling them abruptly back to the present. “No room for your knapsack.”
    They had just returned to the noisy ballroom when a young man in a dark suit stopped them.
    “Mr. Peter Bradford?”
    “Yes.”
    “Colonel Denisov would like a word with you.”
    “Of course.” He shrugged to Amanda. “Save my place.”
    Ward Milford had feared it might go this way. The old man hadn’t had a good word to say about Devin in more than two years. For that matter, he hadn’t exactly been jumping up and down about Devin’s campaign platform back in 1992, all that fiery rhetoric that sounded to a conservative man-of-the-farm like revolutionary talk. But when Devin had disappeared . . . that was it. Traitor. He might as well have been a terrorist.
    “Well, that gives the bastard twenty-four and a half miles to stay away from here,” Will spat out when told Devin would be restricted to a twenty-five-mile radius. Ward argued, standing up for his brother, if only
    because there was no one else to do it. Certainly not Alethea, who left the table almost as soon as the subject came up and the volume of conversation, in turn, did likewise. And certainly not Ward’s wife Betty, who knew trying to sway Will Milford would be like convincing a river to flow upstream. Nonetheless, she fed Ward an occasionally supportive half smile during the argument and, ultimately, followed him through the swinging door when he opted for the quiet of the kitchen.
    He stood at the sink, calming himself, his face a portrait of frustration. Betty leaned against the refrigerator and waited until Ward first shook his head and then grinned, almost sheepishly.
    “Guess I should have known better, huh?”
    She smiled and moved to him, touching his arm. “He’ll have to get used to the idea. Just like with the squatters.”
    Ward grinned and gave a short, sardonic