Peaceable Kingdom Read Free Page A

father was, too.
    “You got older,” Jimmy said. “This is like The Twilight Zone .” And he must have thought so—that time had stopped in his absence. I invited him in, made him sit down, and then told him about my sister.
    Jimmy got up and left the house. He didn’t ask whom she’d married. He didn’t ask where they lived, though I knew he was going to find her.
    Once again I waited, counting down the hours. This time, although weeks passed, it was like counting one two three. Four—the phone rang. It was Greg. He had come home from the office and found my sister packed and gone.
    A week later my sister called collect from St. Petersburg, Florida. She said Jimmy knew a guy, a buddy from Vietnam, he had found Jimmy a rental house and a job with a roofing company. They had hurricanes down there that would rip the top of your house off. She emphasized the hurricane part, as if that made it all make sense. In fact, she seemed so sure about the sensibleness of her situation that she made me promise to tell Mother and Greg she’d called and that she was fine.
    Mother had less trouble believing that my sister had been kidnapped than that she’d left Greg and taken off with her dead boyfriend from Vietnam. It was a lot to process at once; she’d seen Jimmy buried. Greg had never heard of Jimmy, which made me wonder about my sister. I thought about Reynaldo, how forcefully she had seized him, how easily she’d let him go.
    My sister had called from a pay phone. All she’d said was “St. Petersburg.” Mother telephoned Mrs. Kowalchuk and got Jimmy’s address from her. Afterwards Mother said, “The woman thinks it’s a miracle. The army loses her son, she goes through hell, and she thinks it’s the will of God.”
    Mother wrote my sister a letter. A month passed. There was no answer. By now Greg was in permanent shock, though he still went to work. One night he told us about a dipless chip now in the blueprint stage. Then even Mother knew we were alone, and her eyes filled with tears. She said, “Florida! It’s warm there. When is your Easter vacation?”
    We took my father’s Buick, a decision that almost convinced us that some reason besides paralysis explained its still being in our garage. I sat up front beside Mother, scrunched low in the spongy seat. States went by. The highway was always the same. There was nothing to watch except Mother, staring furiously at the road. Though the temperature rose steadily, Mother wouldn’t turn off the heat and by Florida I was riding with my head out the window, for air, and also working on a tan for Jimmy.
    It was easy finding the address we got from Mrs. Kowalchuk. They were living in a shack, but newly painted white, and with stubby marigolds lining the cracked front walk.
    “Tobacco Road,” said Mother.
    Then Mother and I saw Jimmy working out in the yard. His back was smooth and golden and muscles churned under his skin as he swayed from side to side, planing something—a door. Behind him a tree with shiny leaves sagged under its great weight of grapefruit, and sunlight dappled the round yellow fruit and the down on Jimmy’s shoulders.
    Jimmy stopped working and turned and smiled. He didn’t seem surprised to see us. As he came toward us a large dog roused itself from the ground at his feet, a longhaired white dog so much like the one my sister spoke to in our yard that for a moment I felt faint and had to lean on Mother.
    Mother shook me off. She hardly noticed the dog. She was advancing on Jimmy.
    “I wasn’t dead, it was a mistake.” Jimmy sounded apologetic.
    “Obviously,” said Mother. Then she told me not to move and went into the house.
    I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted. Every muscle had fused, every tiny flutter and tic felt grossly magnified and disgusting. I had never seen Jimmy without a shirt. I wanted to touch his back. He said, “I got my grapefruit tree.”
    “Obviously,” I said in Mother’s voice, and Jimmy grinned and we