Free Shooting the Moon by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Cindy’s house and tell her what I was learning about Vietnam. She was halfway interested in some of the things, not at all interested in others. Mostly she wanted to know if TJ had sent me more pictures of the moon. There was one in every roll,and I’d always make Cindy a print. By early August she had a collection of them taped to her wall.
    â€œDoes Mark write you letters?” I asked one afternoon, sitting on Cindy’s bed, Brutus nestled in my lap. “Does he tell you anything about what it’s like to be over there?”
    â€œHe writes a big letter that’s for everyone in my family,” Cindy told me. “He tells us about different things he sees, like the animals and the different kind of flowers.”
    â€œDo you, you know, ever worry about him?” I hugged Brutus close to me.
    â€œWhy would I worry about Mark? He’s an Army soldier. Fighting in wars is his job.”
    I nodded. Fighting was a soldier’s job. Everybody knew that.
    It was just, somewhere down there in the pit of my stomach, I was starting to think that I didn’t like fighting as much as I thought I did. I was starting to feel like I wished I hadn’t told TJ to go.

ten
    By mid-August Private Hollister and I were neck and neck in our race to see who would be the gin rummy champ of Fort Hood, Texas. And we weren’t the only ones paying attention to the competition. All the rec center regulars checked in at least once a week to see who was in the lead. They’d pull Private Hollister’s notebook right out of his top desk drawer and run their fingers down the rows of numbers, adding it all up. Most of them were rooting for me, because I was so much younger and a girl, I guess.
    The closer it got to Labor Day, the more often we’d draw a crowd when we sat down to play. EvenSgt. Byrd would come out of the darkroom from time to time to watch. “Play ’em as they lay, my young friend, hit him where it hurts, don’t let the crumbheads get you down,” he’d say, or something else so Sgt. Byrd-like I’d know it was him with my eyes closed.
    â€œSo when’s your last day, anyway?” Private Hollister asked me one morning while we were trying to get some actual work done. I was underneath a pool table picking up beer can tabs and cigarette butts. Apparently there’d been quite a crowd the night before, soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, whose units were being sent to Vietnam.
    â€œFriday before Labor Day, I guess,” I called up to him from the floor. I picked up another cigarette butt and popped it into a paper bag. “I wonder if any of those guys ever heard of that useful invention known as an ashtray,” I said, crawling out from under the pool table and rattling the bag at Private Hollister. “It comes in handy, I’ve heard.”
    â€œAh, you know how it is when a guy’s being sent off to war.” Private Hollister leaned against the mophe was using to clean up spilled beer off the floor. “He gets a little wild. Mostly they’re just scared, I guess, and covering it up by drinking and yelling.”
    â€œI guess. Still, now my hands stink and I think I’m about to come down with asthma.”
    â€œYou don’t come down with asthma. Asthma’s just something you’ve got. It’s a condition. I had it when I was a kid.”
    I stood up and walked over to the trash can. “Why do you want to know when my last day of work is, anyway?”
    Private Hollister grinned. “I’m working up a strategy, and I need to know how many days I got to beat you fair and square. Your last day of work’s gonna be our official last day of playing gin, the way I see things.”
    â€œIf I win, it is. But if I lose, I’ll be coming by after school.”
    â€œDoubt I’ll be here much longer after Labor Day. I’ll go back to my unit around then.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, your