May

At the beginning of May, Mrs. Sidman told us during Morning Announcements that this would be "Atomic Bomb Awareness Month."

You might think that this would have caught our attention. But it didn't. Every May brings Atomic Bomb Awareness Month to Camillo Junior High, right after the greening grass and the yellowing forsythia. It's so predictable that it's hard to work up enthusiasm.

But Mrs. Sidman had clearly determined that this year—maybe because it was her first year as principal—she would give us the Big M.

"Since we are living so very close to New York City," she said, "Camillo Junior High School is certainly a likely target for an atomic bomb if the Soviet Union should ever choose to attack. It behooves us to be prepared. We will begin a series of atomic bomb drills this afternoon. When the sirens blow, I expect everyone to follow our government's drill procedures precisely."

"Behooves?" said Danny.

"Becomes necessary, Mr. Hupfer," said Mrs. Baker, "as in 'It behooves us to raise our hands before we ask a question.' Now, can anyone tell me what the adjectival form would be?"

Teachers. They can't help it.

I don't think that any of us really believed that Leonid Brezhnev was sitting in the deep, dark rooms of the Kremlin, plotting to drop an atomic bomb on Camillo Junior High. But even so, there was an eerie feeling when the sirens began to wail just before the end of the day, and Mrs. Baker stood up from her desk and clapped her hands at us. (I'm pretty sure she was trying not to roll her eyes.) She told us to scrunch under our desks. No talking! She told us to put our hands over our heads. Absolute silence! And she told us to breathe quietly and evenly. Really. As if we had forgotten how. When we were finally settled—and all this took a while since Meryl Lee wouldn't sit on the floor until she'd spread some clean poster board first—Mrs. Baker opened the classroom door, pulled the shades down on all the windows, turned the lights off, and then patrolled up and down the aisles.

I bet she was rolling her eyes then.

It doesn't take very long when you are scrunched under your desk with your hands over your head breathing quietly and evenly to feel three things:

1. That your spine is not meant to bend like this.
2. That if you don't stretch your legs out soon, they are going to spasm and you'll lose all feeling and probably not be able to walk for a very long time.
3. That you are going to throw up any minute, because you can see the wads of Bazooka bubblegum that Danny Hupfer has been sticking under his desk all year, which now look like little wasp nests hanging down.

But we followed our government's drill procedures precisely and stayed under our desks for eighteen minutes, until the wind would have whisked away the first waves of airborne radioactive particles, and the blast of burning air would have passed overhead, and the mushroom cloud would no longer be expanding, and every living thing would have been incinerated except for us because we were scrunched under our gummy desks with our hands over our heads, breathing quietly and evenly.

We got up when Mrs. Sidman peered into our classroom and told us that we had done quite well and that we were beginning to be prepared.

I guess that was sort of comforting—and I bet it made Leonid Brezhnev tremble in his boots—especially if he really did have it in for Camillo Junior High.

Actually, there seemed to be a lot of people who needed comfort these days—especially the eighth-grade varsity runners, who were taking the Salisbury Park race way too personally. I mean, our whole team came in before anyone else on any of the other Long Island teams. Mr. Quatrini had given us two practices off to celebrate. We got our team picture in the Home Town Chronicle, holding the trophy. What more do you want?

Apparently, a whole lot.

Let me tell you, you don't want to open your gym locker and find that someone has squirted shaving cream into it. And you don't want to find that the shoelaces on your sneakers are missing, or tied up in knots that take about a day and a half to get out, or that your shorts are hanging from the rafters in the gym ceiling, or that they're sopping wet—and not from water in the sink.

I think something must happen to you when you get into eighth grade. Like the Doug Swieteck's Brother Gene switches on and you become a jerk.

Which may have been Hamlet, Prince of Denmark's problem, who, besides having a name that makes him sound like a breakfast special at Sunnyside Morning Restaurant—something between a ham slice and a three-egg omelet—didn't have the smarts to figure out that when someone takes the trouble to come back from beyond the grave to tell you that he's been murdered, it's probably behooveful to pay attention—which is the adjectival form.

Anyway, I stayed way behind the eighth-grade pack in practice these days. They didn't spit anymore, but I figured that if I tried to pass them, they would probably leave my bloody body on the side of the road.

But the eighth-grade varsity runners weren't anything compared with my father, who really needed some comfort because of what the Home Town Chronicle reported on May 3.

Here is the headline:

Local Architect Firm to Renovate Yankee Stadium

I guess I don't have to tell you that the Local Architect Firm was not Hoodhood and Associates. It was Kowalski and Associates. The story had words like these: "multi-million-dollar job," "three-year commitment," "highest visibility of any local firm," and "Kowalski a sure bet for Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1968"—all of which made the job for the new junior high school seem pretty tame by comparison.

Suppers were very quiet for a few days. My father mostly concentrated on his lima beans, until my sister pointed out that a steady diet of lima beans had already killed lab rats, and was probably killing us.

"See?" said my father, looking up. "You can learn all sorts of useful and valuable information without going to Columbia University. And that's good, because no one is going to Columbia University these days, are they? And no one will, since they're going to shut down classes because their students think that life is all about standing on the streets and chanting slogans, instead of working hard and finally getting what they deserve."

"I am going to Columbia University as soon as I finish high school."

"You will be going to Columbia University when lima beans fly."

Which was the moment that my sister demonstrated that lima beans can fly, across the table, past my face (mostly), and onto the scale model of the new junior high school.

Toads, beetles, bats.

That was the last night my sister came down for supper. Every night afterward, she'd take her plate and eat in her room, alone with the Beatles and their yellow submarine.

Probably she didn't eat a single lima bean.

Still, my father did find some of the comfort that he wanted: The day after the Supper of the Flying Lima Beans, he came home with a brand-new Ford Mustang convertible. It was white, with a genuine red leather interior. It had an AM/FM radio. Really! It had a 390 big-block V8 engine and a stick-shift four-speed transmission that could take you up to 160 miles per hour if you wanted. The chrome glittering across the front grille gleamed so brightly that you had to take your eyes away from it when the sun struck just right. It made a sound like ... Power.

It was, all in all, the most beautiful, perfect car that God has ever allowed to be made on earth.

My father and mother went for a drive in it every evening, right after Walter Cronkite was finished. They backed out of the driveway slowly, my mother waving at us and laughing as if she was in high school and going on a date. My father would be concentrating on the road, since he didn't want his Ford Mustang to be near any other car that might come too close and spatter a pebble up at the chrome.

During the day, he left it parked in the driveway—probably because he thought it would look just right in front of the Perfect House, and probably so that Chit wouldn't park his yellow VW bug there. My father wanted to be sure that people didn't think he was driving a bug with pink and orange flower decals, which no one in the running for Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1968 would drive. At night, after it was too dark to see how wonderful the Ford Mustang looked in front of the Perfect House, he pulled the station wagon out from the garage, drove the Mustang in away from the nighttime dew, and parked the station wagon in the driveway. He did love the Mustang. He watched over it like his Reputation.

I dreamed of driving that car: The AM/FM radio on. The top down and the wind big and loud. Left hand curved around the wheel. Right hand playing on the shift. Seeing if it really could reach 160 miles an hour on a long straight stretch.

But I wonder if even the brand-new Ford Mustang convertible comforted my father any the night my sister left for California to find herself.

We didn't discover anything until the next morning. My father was already at work when my mother went to wake my sister up and found only a note on her bed.

By the time you read this, I will be somewhere on the highway heading toward the Rocky Mountains with Chit. I'll call when I can. Don't worry. And don't try to follow me.

***

That was all she wrote.

For supper, my mother set only three places. She did not cook lima beans. She did not say anything while my father swore up and down that my sister had made her own decision, that she would have to live with it, that he wouldn't send her a dime—not a dime—if she got into trouble, that she better not call him first because he was likely to tell her exactly what he thought of her. Didn't she realize that this didn't help his business reputation or his chances for the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1968, which that creep Kowalski was trying to steal from him? And why weren't there any lima beans for supper tonight?

That evening, my mother did not go for a drive in the Mustang with my father. He drove off alone, without even listening to Walter Cronkite.

And I did the dishes alone.

I wondered what it was like for my sister, cramped into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle with the folded and hairy Chit, heading toward the sunset, going off to find herself. I wondered what exactly she would find. And I wondered if it wouldn't be a whole lot better going off to find yourself in a brand-new Ford Mustang convertible with a 390 big-block engine.

Our house grew quiet and still. My father stopped watering the azalea bushes along the front walk, and they drooped and began to die. There was no music from upstairs. There were no more lima beans—which, let me tell you, didn't cause me much sorrow. But there was hardly any talk. And what words there were felt careful, since there was a whole lot that no one wanted to talk about.

Sort of like things between Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet. You can't say a lot if the whole time you're wondering if everyone else is really thinking about the thing you're not supposed to be thinking about, because you're afraid the thing you're not supposed to be thinking about is going to harrow you with fear and wonder. Or something like that.

As you can tell, Mrs. Baker had me reading The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark for May—which I think was punishment for taking off April. This was slow stuff, and even Romeo had it all over Hamlet. The ghost was okay, and the gravediggers, but when you write about characters who talk too much, the only way that you can show that they talk too much is to make them talk too much, and that just gets annoying. So anytime I saw a speech by Hamlet or Polonius or—well, just about anybody—I skipped over it pretty quickly, and I don't think I missed a thing.

I shared this insight into reading Shakespeare with Meryl Lee—who, by the way, was not going to move, who now knew who Mickey Mantle was, and who had memorized the entire Yankee roster.

"I don't think that's a good way to read something," said Meryl Lee.

"Why not?"

"You can't just skip the boring parts."

"Of course I can skip the boring parts."

"How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?"

"I can tell."

"Then you can't say you've read the whole play."

"I think I can still live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."

"Who knows?" she said. "Maybe you can't."

I tried my insight into reading Shakespeare on Mrs. Baker.

"I see," said Mrs. Baker. "But doesn't this play in particular pose a problem for your new method, Mr. Hoodhood?"

"What problem?"

"That there are no boring parts in this, Shakespeare's greatest play of all." She looked at me, and she almost folded her arms across her chest but stopped at the last second.

"I guess that would be a problem," I said.

"Read it all," said Mrs. Baker. "Even Polonius."

"And if it gets boring?"

"It won't get boring."

"It already is boring."

"Then I suggest you start again. This is the story of a son who is asked to take vengeance for what has happened to his father, who has been dreadfully murdered. But he's not sure that he can trust anyone in his family. What might you do in such a situation?"

"I'd run over the murderer with a Ford Mustang."

"Short of that colorful extremity."

"Well," I said, "I guess I'd start by looking around for someone to trust."

Mrs. Baker nodded. "Now," she said, "begin the play."

The next day, right after lunch recess, the atomic bomb sirens wailed again in Camillo Junior High. I guess Leonid Brezhnev was still at it.

We scrunched under our desks again and put our hands over our heads. No talking! Absolute silence! Breathe quietly and evenly!

"This rots," said Danny Hupfer.

"No talking, please," said Mrs. Baker.

"I have a question," said Danny.

"After the drill," said Mrs. Baker.

"This is important," said Danny.

Mrs. Baker sighed. "What is it, Mr. Hupfer?"

"Isn't it dangerous for you not to be under your desk?"

"Thank you for your concern. I will take the risk."

"But suppose an atomic bomb was really coming down, right on top of Camillo Junior High?"

"Then," said Mrs. Baker, "we wouldn't have to diagram any sentences for the rest of the afternoon."

"It might be worth it," whispered Danny.

If Danny sounded a little snippy, you have to realize that his bar mitzvah was coming up, and he was more terrified of his bar mitzvah than an atomic bomb. He was really touchy about it, even when you tried to encourage him.

"You've been taking Hebrew lessons for this for a year," I'd remind him.

"Years."

"So how hard can it be?"

"How hard can it be? How hard can it be? How hard do you think it can be if your rabbi is standing right next to you, and your parents and grandparents are watching you, along with every aunt and uncle and cousin and second cousin—even some you've never met—and two great aunts who immigrated from Poland in 1913 and a great uncle who escaped the tsar, and every one of them is looking at you and crying and waiting for you to make a mistake, and if you do, they'll holler out the right word and stare at you like you've shamed the whole family and they'll never ever be able to walk into the synagogue again. How hard do you think it could be?"

"Maybe it would help," I said, "if you scrunched under your desk and breathed quietly and evenly."

"Maybe it would help," he said, "if I stuck this gum up your nose."

Meryl Lee and Mai Thi and I decided that we should find better ways to help Danny than putting gum up our noses. So every lunch recess for most of May, we sat inside and listened to him recite what he was going to read at the service—even though we had no idea if the words he was saying were coming out right or not.

At the end of every recess, he was always ready to run away to California.

"I can't do this," he'd say.

"You can do this," we'd say.

"I don't want to do this," he'd say.

"You want to do this," we'd say.

"I don't even care about this," he'd say.

"You care about this," we'd say.

It was sort of like a play—which, as you know, I have some experience at.

That's how it went every day.

You can see how that didn't put us into the mood for atomic bomb drills, which was too bad, since in May there wasn't a single day that went by that we didn't practice for an atomic bomb. Meryl Lee and Mai Thi spent most of the time under their desks softly singing the music from Camelot—which Mrs. Baker didn't seem to mind, even though there was supposed to be absolute quiet. Danny practiced his Hebrew, which is hard to do when you have your hands clasped over your head. I threw spitballs at him, which is even harder to do when you have your hands clasped over your head. And Doug Swieteck went to sleep, and when he went to sleep, he really went to sleep. Let me tell you, you don't want to be in the seventh grade and have people hear you snore. What you hear when you wake up is humiliating. Not as humiliating as yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, but humiliating enough.

One of the atomic bomb drills came on a Wednesday afternoon, about halfway through the month, right about the time the Yankees were batting .187 as a team and were stuck in ninth place again—just like last year. It was one of those hot, still days that come before summer and that remind you what July is going to be like. When I scrunched under the desk, I could feel immediately that the air there was kind of heavy and steamy, and that I was going to start sweating pretty quickly—which I did. This was really unfair, since everyone else had already left for Temple Beth-El or Saint Adelbert's.

I think that Mrs. Baker probably agreed.

"This, Mr. Hoodhood, is ridiculous" she said—and she wasn't even scrunched under her desk.

I leaned out from under my desk. My hands were still clasped over my head.

"Mrs. Baker?" I said, even though I was supposed to be breathing quietly.

"Yes," she said.

"Would you mind not calling me 'Mr. Hoodhood'? It sounds like you're talking to my father."

Mrs. Baker sat down at Danny's desk. "You're still angry about Opening Day," she said.

"I just don't want to be him already."

"But you have similarities. Meryl Lee showed me your drawing. It was wonderful. Anyone can see that you have the soul of an architect."

"Maybe," I said.

"But you want to decide for yourself," said Mrs. Baker.

I nodded. I wanted to decide for myself.

"And you're afraid," said Mrs. Baker, "that you won't get the chance."

"That I won't get the chance to see what I can do with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," I said.

"Not many people do," said Mrs. Baker. "Even Hamlet waited too long."

The sirens wailed, as if to remind us that there was supposed to be absolute silence.

"This is ridiculous," Mrs. Baker said again. "Here we are in the middle of Act III, and we have to leave Shakespeare to curl up underneath a desk for an atomic bomb drill, which is, by my count, the sixteenth time you've practiced curling beneath a desk, as if anyone needed to practice curling beneath a desk."

She rolled her eyes.

Then she seemed to make a sudden decision.

She gave up patrolling the aisles and walked back to the Coat Room. She seemed to be rummaging around. And then suddenly, there was a crash and a splatter, and almost instantly the entire classroom smelled like Long John Silver and his crew were yo-ho-hoing over bottles of rum. Lots of bottles of rum.

Mrs. Baker's voice came out of the Coat Room. "It seems that the crock with Mrs. Kabakoff's pilgrim cider has fallen from the top shelf. Would you please run and bring Mr. Vendleri?"

I did. When he came into the classroom, his eyes widened. "Smells like a brewery in this classroom," he said.

"Indeed," said Mrs. Baker. "You'll have to air it out after you mop up the cider."

"You can't stay in here with a smell like this," he said.

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Baker. She looked at me. "Then we shall have to go on a field trip."

"Afield trip?" I said.

"We are going to survey points of local architectural interest."

I thought for a minute.

"Are there any?"

Mrs. Baker had pulled her white sneakers out from her lower desk drawer. She looked up at me. "Yes," she said.

We walked together to the Main Administrative Office—where all the secretaries were scrunched up under their desks—and Mrs. Baker explained to Mrs. Sidman that our classroom smelled like a brewery, and that she certainly did not think that she could keep a student there, and that she would like to take the opportunity to go on a field trip while Mr. Vendleri cleaned the room.

Mrs. Sidman had one eyebrow raised the entire time she was listening, but Mrs. Baker had her arms crossed, and you know how convincing that can be. So Mrs. Sidman agreed, and Mrs. Baker filled out a form, and one of the secretaries crawled out from beneath her desk and called my mother, and then we got into Mrs. Baker's car and she drove me around and showed me all the points of local architectural interest.

We crossed over the Long Island Expressway to the north side of town, and meandered down side roads until we stopped beside the Quaker meetinghouse. "This was built in 1676. Think of that, Holling. When it was built, people were still living who had been alive when Shakespeare was alive. A hundred and fifty years ago, it was a station on the Underground Railroad. Escaped slaves hid right here."

We meandered down more side roads. "That's the first jail house on Long Island," Mrs. Baker said. "It has two cells, one for men and one for women. The first man to occupy the cell had stolen a horse. The first woman had refused to pay the church tax because she was not a member of the church. She wanted to define freedom for herself. Think of that. You can see the bars in the windows where she would have looked out."

We drove out to the east side of town and circled Hicks Park. "This has changed a great deal over the years, but it was once Hicks Common, where the first settlers of the town grazed their cows and sheep. Those larger oaks—no, the oaks, Holling, over there—were probably saplings then. And the building backing up against the park—that clapboard building there—is Saint Paul's Episcopal School, where British soldiers were housed during the American Revolution. The silver communion ware it owns was made by Paul Revere, and one of the original Hicks family members hid it in a cellar so it wouldn't be stolen during the war."

On the south side of town, we passed Temple Emmanuel. "That is the fourth temple on that same site," said Mrs. Baker. "The first building was burned by lightning, the second by British soldiers who found out the congregation was supporting the Revolution, and the third by arsonists. In all those fires, the ark holding the Torah was never damaged. It's still there today."

And on the west, on the far outskirts of town, we drove past what looked like a garden shed. "The first abolitionist school," Mrs. Baker said, "where Negro children could come to learn to read and write and so escape the ignorance that slavery wanted to impose. Right there, Holling, is the true beginning of the end of slavery."

I never knew a building could hold so much inside.

On a bright blue day when there wasn't an atomic bomb on any horizon, when the high clouds were painted onto blue canvas, when tulips were standing at attention and azaleas were blooming (except for the ones in front of the Perfect House) and dogs were barking at all the new smells, I saw my town as if I had just arrived. It was as if I was waking up. You see houses and buildings every day, and you walk by them on your way to something else, and you hardly see. You hardly notice they're even there, mostly because there's something else going on right in front of your face. But when the town itself becomes the thing that is going on right in front of your face, it all changes, and you're not just looking at a house but at what's happened in that house before you were born. That afternoon, driving with Mrs. Baker, the American Revolution was here. The escaped slaves were here. The abolitionists were here.

And I was here.

It made me feel sort of responsible.

Before we got back to Camillo Junior High, we passed Saint Adelbert's—"built almost a century ago with the pennies of Italian immigrants," said Mrs. Baker.

"Let's go in," I said.

Mrs. Baker paused. "Would your parents approve?" she asked.

"It's a point of local architectural interest," I said.

So we went in.

It was the first Catholic church I'd ever been inside, mostly because Catholic churches are supposed to be filled with idols and smoking incense that would make you so woozy that you'd give in and start praying on your knees, which Presbyterians know is something that should not be done. But it wasn't like that at all. We came in, Mrs. Baker dropped some money into the offering box, and we walked down the main aisle. The afternoon light slanted down through the high windows, so that up close to the ceiling the air was flecked with glowing gold specks. Down below where we were, it was shadowy and warm. I ran my hand over the dark wood of the pews, worn smooth. There was no carpet, so we could hear our own footsteps as we walked toward the altar, where a crucifix hung suspended—a pale white Christ with bright red wounds.

For a hundred years, people have been coming together in this dark, I thought, breathing quietly and evenly. For a hundred years. It made me wonder.

"Mrs. Baker," I said.

"Yes, Holling."

"I have a question."

"Yes."

"It doesn't have anything to do with points of local architectural interest."

"That's all right."

"After the game at Yankee Stadium, when Mel Stottlemyre took you up to meet the boss, did you ask him to have Kowalski and Associates do the renovations so that Meryl Lee could stay?"

A pause.

"Whether or not I spoke about the renovations to Yankee Stadium is not something you need to know, Holling."

"Then I have a second question."

"Does this one have anything to do with points of local architectural interest?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"If an atomic bomb drops on Camillo Junior High, everything we've seen today will be gone, won't it?"

Another long pause.

"Yes," she said, finally.

"And it really doesn't matter if we're under our desks with our hands over our heads or not, does it?"

"No," said Mrs. Baker. "It really doesn't matter."

"So why are we practicing?"

She thought for a minute. "Because it gives comfort," she said. "People like to think that if they're prepared, then nothing bad can really happen. And perhaps we practice because we feel as if there's nothing else we can do, because sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

"Is there anything else we can do?"

She smiled. Not a teacher smile.

"Two things," she said. "First, learn to diagram sentences—and it is rude to roll your eyes, Holling. Learn everything you can—everything. And then use all that you have learned to grow up to be a wise and good man. That's the first thing. As for the second..."

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's.

I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh.

I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then.

I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California—or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself.

And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle.

***

That afternoon when I came back home, the station wagon was gone, and the Mustang was gone, and the whole house was empty.

Even the mailbox was empty, except for a flyer for my sister from the Robert Kennedy campaign, announcing that he would be stopping on Long Island before the New York primary. My sister would have flipped.

And I realized that the biggest part of the empty in the house was my sister being gone. Maybe the first time that you know you really care about something is when you think about it not being there, and you know—you really know—that the emptiness is as much inside you as outside you. For it so falls out, that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why, then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession would not show us while it was ours.

That's when I knew for the first time that I really did love my sister. But I didn't know if I wanted more for her to come back or for her to find whatever it was that she was trying to find.

See, this is the kind of stuff you start to think about when you're reading Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. You just can't help being kind of melancholy—even though if you had to play him on stage at the Festival Theater, at least you'd be a prince and wearing a black cape instead of being a fairy and wearing yellow tights.

And that's why, when my sister called that night—long after my mother and father had gone to bed, when she knew that I would be the only one awake to pick up the phone—I started to cry right away.

And she did, too.

Both of us not saying anything, just crying into the telephone.

What jerks.

Somewhere in between all the crying, I heard that she was in Minneapolis—which I guess is on the way to California—that she was alone, that she had exactly $4 left in her pocket, that she didn't know what she was going to do since a bus ticket to New York City cost $44.55, that I couldn't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever tell Dad or Mom that she called because she couldn't bear to hear what they would say to her and she wasn't sure if they even would say anything to her, and what was she going to do now?

I guess she hadn't found herself.

"Where are you?" I said.

"In the bus station. How else do you think I'd know that a ticket to New York City costs $44.55?"

"Is there a Western Union window there?"

"Of course there's a Western Union window here. All bus stations have a Western Union window." She paused a moment. I guess she was looking around. "Holling?"

"Yes."

"I don't see a Western Union window here."

The operator told us that we were almost out of time and we should deposit thirty-five cents for another three minutes.

"I don't have any more coins!" yelled my sister.

"Get to the nearest Western Union station tomorrow morning," I said quickly. "I'll—" Then the phone went dead. All because of a stupid thirty-five cents in coins. Like Bell Telephone was going to go bankrupt because of one phone call from Minneapolis to Long Island in the middle of the night.

I didn't know if my sister had heard what I'd said at the end. But the next morning, I was waiting outside the Commerce Bank on—I'm not kidding here—Commerce Street when it opened at 10:00. This may not sound like a big deal, but if you knew that Commerce Street was only a block over from Lee Avenue, and that I'd been hiding from eyes that would have wondered why I wasn't in Camillo Junior High for the last hour, you'd be impressed.

I handed my $100 Salisbury Park savings bond to the teller.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school?" she said.

"I'm a little worried that an atomic bomb might drop on it," I said.

"Probably the school will make it through the day," she said. "What do you want to do with this bond?"

"I need to turn it in for cash."

She looked at the date. "If you turn it in for cash now, you'll only get fifty-two dollars. If you hold on to it, in just a few years it will be worth a hundred dollars."

"I don't have a few years," I said.

"Because of the atomic bomb?"

"No."

She turned the savings bond over and looked at it again. "Do your parents know that you're cashing this in?"

"Yes," I said.

I know, I know. You don't have to tell me.

The teller fingered the savings bond. "All right," she said finally. "Fifty-two dollars. I hope you're going to do something worthwhile with the money."

I nodded, and she counted the bills out onto the counter.

Further down on Commerce Street was the Western Union. I put the money up on the counter.

"I need to send all this cash to Minneapolis," I said.

"It's going for a visit, is it?" said the Western Union man. This was worse than a teacher joke. This was even worse than a nurse joke.

"I need to send it to my sister."

The Western Union man counted it out. "That's a lot of money," he said. "Where are you sending it exactly?"

"To the Western Union closest to the Minneapolis bus station."

"Huh," he said. He pulled out a directory and thumbed through it. It took about half an hour before he found Minneapolis.

"Well," he said slowly, taking his glasses off, "looks like they've got two bus stations. There's the one on Heather Avenue. And there's the one on LaSalle."

"Heather Avenue," I said. "Send it to the one on Heather Avenue."

The Western Union man put his glasses back on. "It'll cost you $1.75," he said.

"Fine."

"And what's the name of the recipient?"

I told him, and he took the money and sent $50.25 to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a Western Union station on Heather Avenue, even though I didn't know if my sister was at that station or if she even knew that money was coming. I thought of her sitting alone in a place where everyone else was going somewhere, or wandering the streets of Minneapolis, looking for a way to come home to a place that was emptier without her.

Sort of like Hamlet, who, more than anything, needed to find a home—because he sure couldn't find himself.

I spent the afternoon hiding around town—which is not easy, since this isn't that big a town, and it would take a whole lot less than an atomic bomb to make it disappear, and since anyone who saw me might tell the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 or Mrs. Baker. And if either of them heard ... well, put me under that bomb.

I waited for a call from my sister that night. But it didn't come until late Friday night. From Chicago.

On the way.

On Saturday morning, I told my parents at breakfast that my sister would be at the Port Authority in New York at 10:50 that morning.

They looked at me like I had just chanted Hebrew.

"She'll be in the Port Authority at ten fifty?" repeated my mother. Her hand was up to her mouth, and her eyes suddenly filled.

"Yes," I said.

"How is she going to get home from there?" asked my father.

"I guess she was hoping you would go and pick her up."

"Of course," said my father. "Of course I'll drop everything and pick her up. Of course I have nothing else to do." He stood up. "If she went out in a yellow bug, she can come home in a yellow bug."

"She's alone," I said.

"You're not going to see me driving all the way into the city on a Saturday. She can take the train."

"She may be out of money."

"Well, whose problem is that?" he said.

"It doesn't matter whose problem it is. She can't get back home unless you go get her," I said.

He looked at me. "Who do you think you're talking to?" he said.

"She needs help."

"Then you go get her, Holling. The car keys are up on my dresser." He laughed.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said, and went outside to start up the lawn mower.

I went upstairs and got the car keys. The Ford Mustang car keys—not the station wagon.

"Holling," said my mother when I came back down. "I think he was being sarcastic."

I went to the front closet and found my jacket.

"Holling, what are you doing?"

I held up the car keys. "I'm driving into New York City to pick up my sister from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at ten fifty. "

"You don't know how to drive."

"I've seen movies."

I went to the front door.

"Holling," said my mother.

I turned around.

"You can't drive in by yourself."

"Then come with me."

She looked out to the backyard. "We can't do that, either," she said, and her voice was as sad and lost as Loneliness.

I went out to the garage and sat in the Mustang. The red leather still smelled new. The steering wheel felt right in my hands.

It wasn't like I'd never driven before. My mother had let me drive the station wagon around parking lots—the big ones down at Jones Beach, where you can go for two or three miles before you hit anything more dangerous than a seagull. I'd gotten out of first gear plenty of times, and even up into third gear twice. And the Mustang was smaller and handier than the station wagon. I probably just had to think about turning and the car would feel it.

But driving around Jones Beach parking lots is a whole lot different from driving on the Long Island Expressway into New York City. And even if I could get on to the expressway, I wouldn't know what exit to get off.

Toads, beetles, bats.

I came back inside. I threw the keys on the kitchen counter. My mother was putting out a cigarette and starting to make pound cake for lunch.

Outside, the mower fussed at the edges of the lawn.

I went into the living room and sat down on the couch.

And Meryl Lee called.

Because her father was going in to Yankee Stadium.

Would I like to come?

"Can I get to the Port Authority from Yankee Stadium?" I said.

Meryl Lee asked her father.

"It's too far, but he says that if you can leave right now, we'll have just enough time to drop you off." She was quiet a moment. "I think he feels like he owes you something," she said.

I went into the kitchen. "I need money for two train tickets," I said.

"Train tickets?" my mother said.

"And money for two lunches."

She stared at me.

"Big lunches," I said.

She went upstairs for her pocketbook.

I was there when the bus from Chicago pulled in at 10:50.

The Port Authority was all noise and rushing. The accumulated combustion from the buses had thickened the air. The whoosh and squeak and hollering of the brakes and the distorted announcements over the P.A. system and the newsboys hawking and the pell-mell of more bodies than belong in any one building gave the place a general roar. As for the floor, you couldn't have found a greater confusion if the ceiling had been lifted off and the sky had rained down ticket stubs and newspapers and Baby Ruth wrappers.

But as soon as the 10:50 bus from Chicago parked itself, everything stopped. The rush, the roar, the squeak, the whoosh—they all stopped. Really. Like Leonid Brezhnev had sent over an atomic bomb and wiped it all out.

They did not start up again until my sister got off the bus, and she ran out of the diesel combustion and right to me, and we held each other, and we were not empty at all.

"Holling," she said, "I was so afraid I wouldn't find you."

"I was standing right here, Heather," I said. "I'll always be standing right here."

For lunch, we had grilled cheese sandwiches and Cokes and chocolate doughnuts at a counter in the Port Authority. Outside, we bought pretzels from a stand, and then we walked to Central Park, hand in hand. We lay down in the Sheep Meadow, and my sister told me about driving west, with the sun on your face. We got up and walked around the Pond, and stopped at an outcropping of boulders that fell out of the woods. Around us was every shade of green you could ever hope to imagine, broken up here and there with a flowering tree blushing to a light pink. All the colors were garbled and reflected in the tiny ripples of the water. Then through the wandering paths of the Ramble, looking as if we were up in the mountains of California, and then across Bethesda Terrace, where we sat on the stone walls and traced the carvings with our fingers until someone hollered at us to get off there! Then back along the Mall underneath tall elms, until we passed the statue of—no kidding—William Shakespeare, who stared down at us sternly, probably because he is wearing tights and is embarrassed doing that in front of everybody.

We walked slowly. We talked a little. I told her about our atomic bomb drills and about our town and about The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. She told me about Minneapolis and how she got out of the yellow bug and wouldn't get back in and how Chit drove away, and about going to the Western Union and finding the money for the ticket, and falling asleep for the first time in two days on the bus to Chicago. But mostly we didn't talk. It was spring in Central Park, and being there with my sister was enough.

We took the train out of the city and walked from the station. When we got back home, it didn't matter that my mother had made us burned grilled cheese sandwiches for supper. It was just so good that the house wasn't empty anymore.

My father said only one thing during supper:

"Did you find yourself?"

"What?" said my sister.

"Did you find yourself?"

"She found me," I said.

By the end of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Laertes is stabbed, the queen is poisoned, and the king is poisoned and stabbed—which is pretty much the same thing that happens to Hamlet. By the time it's all over, there are these dead bodies all over the stage, and even though Horatio is hoping that flights of angels are coming to sing Hamlet to his rest, it's hard to believe that there's any rest for him. Maybe he knew that. Maybe that's why he dressed in black all the time. Maybe it's why he was never happy. Maybe he looked in the wrong places trying to find himself.

Or maybe he never had someone to tell him that he didn't need to find himself. He just needed to let himself be found.

That's what I think Shakespeare was trying to say about what it means to be a human being in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

And speaking of being found, that's what happened to Lieutenant Baker, too!

Really.

After almost three months in the jungles of Vietnam, he got found.

I was there on the last Wednesday afternoon of May, a cool and blue day, when Mrs. Sidman came in with an envelope and handed it to Mrs. Baker. She took it with hands that were trembling. She tore the top slowly open, and then stood there, holding the telegram, unable to pull it out to read it.

"Can I help?" said Mrs. Sidman.

Mrs. Baker nodded.

"And then I'll take Holling to my office so that you can be alone."

Mrs. Baker looked at me, and I knew she wasn't going to send me to Mrs. Sidman's office so that she could be alone. You don't send someone away who has lit a candle with you.

"I suppose not," said Mrs. Baker.

Mrs. Sidman took the envelope, then held out the opened telegram to Mrs. Baker.

But Mrs. Baker closed her eyes. "Read it," she whispered.

Mrs. Sidman looked at me, then down at the telegram. Then she read the first line: "Sweet eyes ... stop."

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sounds you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race—and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.

Then put all those together.

And they would be nothing compared to the sound that Mrs. Baker made that day from somewhere deep inside that had almost given up, when she heard the first line of that telegram.

Then she started to hiccup, and to cry, and to laugh, and Mrs. Sidman put the telegram down, held Mrs. Baker in her arms, nodded to me, and took her out of the classroom for a drink of water.

And I know I shouldn't have, but I picked up the telegram and read the rest. Here is what it said:

SWEET EYES STOP OUT OF JUNGLE STOP OK STOP HOME IN TIME FOR STRAWBERRIES STOP LOVE TY STOP

Shakespeare couldn't write any better than that.