Free Linger by M. E. Kerr

again. We keep the engines at idle to be ready to move out fast.
    By seven we hear the medevac helicopters swarming through the sky to lift the wounded out of the mud.
    Low overcast and cold rain, and outside everywhere dead bodies are strewn, and parts of bodies, and there is twisted steel, wreckage, looks like a junkyard as the fog lifts.
    The radio is filled with reports of Iraqi soldiers surrendering by the thousands. Marine and Arab forces hitting hard at Iraq’s 3rd Armored Division outside Kuwait…. War may be over!
    Sugar sings with Garth Brooks on his Walkman, “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places.” Movie Star says he’s writing Amy to marry him as soon as he gets home.
    We’re laughing it up some now, coming back down now.
    In my helmet I’ve got the picture of Lynn by the toboggan.
    I heat up MRE pork in barbecue sauce on the grill at back of the tank.
    Like last night was just some nightmare.

23
    B OBBY, I WROTE HIM, I’m surprised you even think about Lynn D., since…
    Bobby, I tried again, the other night at the movies I saw your pen pal with some guy and …
    I was in Mr. Raleigh’s class when I tried to write something to Bobby but couldn’t.
    Mr. Raleigh held a debate about whether or not Sinead O’Connor was right to skip the Grammy Awards in protest of the Gulf War. Does an entertainer have a right to bring politics into things? What about her statement that nothing can harm you when you speak the truth?
    Ollie Burns said, “Yeah, but what is the truth? How the hell does a baldie rock star know what it is?”
    “Do we ?” Mr. Raleigh asked us. “Or is the information we’re getting one-sided? We see videos of smart bombs hitting military targets, but none of stupid bombs hitting civilian buildings. Are we getting the truth from Baghdad?”
    We booed him, except for Osborne de la Marin the Fourth, Kathy Wheat, and my date from the other night, Sloan Scott, who I found out was a liberal. She didn’t believe in the death penalty, not even for sickos like Hannibal the Cannibal from Silence of the Lambs !
    She let me kiss her good night at the door, but there was something strange going on, since she heaved this big sigh as though she’d thought she was kissing Christian Slater, then opened her eyes to see it was only Gary Peel.
    I liked her looks and a certain sure way she had. I’d made up my mind, too, to get a life, so I asked her if she wanted to celebrate Dave’s birthday Wednesday and she said she’d see.
    When I got home from school, Mom was watching CNN, at the same time having a conversation with my father.
    “You might as well hear this too, Gary,” she said.
    “Hear what?”
    “Don’t ask me how I know, but Lynn Dunlinger is in love with Bobby.”
    “How do you know?” my father said.
    “Don’t ask me that. I told you not to.”
    My dad said to Mom, “I know how you knew. You’re up in Lingering Shadows working on those curtains and you’ve been snooping. I want to tell you something about what else not to do when you’re up there.”
    “I don’t snoop! I was looking for a scissors and I opened a drawer and there it was: this poem. I blushed reading it, I can tell you. It was all about waiting for the day they wouldn’t have to be apart, and she could—I’m quoting now—she could be his loving lingering lover totally, or something to that effect. Her spelling’s bad.”
    My father tried again. “I want to tell you something about what else not to do besides read her love poems when you’re up there, Wanda … Mr. Dunlinger says you smoke up there.”
    “One. I smoked one cigarette.”
    “He says he was up there last night and he found a butt in a saucer of coffee.”
    “The rug men were up there, the upholsterer—it could have been anyone.”
    “It was a Camel. He knows it’s your brand, Wanda.”
    “Other people smoke Camels. Jules Raleigh smokes them.”
    “Jules has no reason to be up there.”
    I stayed out of it.
    “Just be warned,” my father