The Crossing

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The girl’s eyes narrowed, then relaxed. “Yeah,” she said.

“Tell me,” Tommy said, almost breathless. “Tell me how it was.”

“It’s a war,” the girl replied. “How could it ever be anything other than terrible?” Her eyes lowered and she was no longer looking at us. She was looking inward, remembering, perhaps. Tommy and I both wanted to know what she saw. There is always a foolish curiosity about war. So many writers and filmmakers have tried to tell us about it, so many veterans, poems, songs. The oldest stories are stories of war. But still, all of us who have never been there wonder how much of the stories is true.

“Really?” Tommy asked, a bit of awe in his voice. “And you made it back okay. You really came back okay.” He turned to me and pointed at the girl with the hard eyes. “You see? I told you. I told you!” Then he laughed and took my hand out of his pocket, making me let go of the weapon. “It’s all going to be okay,” Tommy said, but whether he was speaking of now or of the future was difficult to say.

“Did I mention that I got drafted?” Tommy blurted out.

“You don’t have to go,” one of the other teenagers said. Then, “Just say, ‘No Thank You.’” Their eyes cut from Tommy to me and back to Tommy, pleading.

Tommy dismissed them with his hand. “I’m going to go and come back and be okay.”

“Good for you,” the girl with the hard eyes said.

“You’ll see,” Tommy replied, and he turned to me as he said the words. Then he turned and looked back over his shoulder, as if he was able to see Gannon in the distance, still locked in that car on the side of the road. “But for now,” Tommy said, “my sister and I need to get going.”