Straying From the Path Read Free Page A

represented of an episode long since faded to history for most of them. But the oldest ones, the wives and siblings who remembered the looks on their loved ones’ faces when they’d come home, they always seemed grateful that someone else remembered. The worst were the funerals where only the children and younger generations survived.
     
    Theorists said there would always be war. No war to end all war ever had. They also said that there would come a time when countries wouldn’t need soldiers anymore. Computers and robots would fight the wars. From a room a thousand miles away from the battle, anyone could push the buttons that launched the missiles or guided the rovers.
    They were right.
    * * *
    I was too old for this. I was too old to be alive. I was too old to survive the days ahead.
    “You don’t look so good, John,” said Ken. We sat together at the shuttleport in Denver, at the gate to his flight. His suborbital left first, to take him back to Boca Raton, mine to Seattle. This was the last for us. There would never be another meeting. We had only each other to bury now.
    “Well, thanks,” I said with a drawl. We’d both lasted so long, now it was a race.
    “Just tired,” he said. “You just look tired.”
    “Of course I’m tired.”
    He grunted and turned away, a gruff response to my snapping at him.
    I stared at him to gauge how he looked. How tired was he? How much life was left in his wiry frame? He had a narrow face, uncommonly long limbs and body. His skin, soft and wrinkled, hung on his bones like crepe. In his young days, he must have been a burly man, overwhelming. Now, he sagged, like the air had gone out of him. I hadn’t noticed any change in the years we’d been attending funerals together, since Frank died and Ken stood with me while “Taps” played at his funeral. No cancers were eating him, no organs had failed or been replaced. But I knew how these things worked. His heart could just give out, and that would be that. On the battlefield or in old age, I had never been able to guess who’d die next.
    “How are you feeling, Ken?”
    “Tired.”
    “Too tired to do another one of these?”
    “If I have to do another one, I will.” He looked me up and down, squinting, lips pursed during a thoughtful pause. “You know something I don’t?”
    “I don’t know a damn thing.”
    “Glad I’m not the only one,” he said, chuckling.
    “I’ve been thinking about the war.”
    “Jesus, why?”
    “Back then, dying didn’t seem so bad because I wasn’t alone. I knew there’d be someone there to bury me.”
    “I don’t think about dying.”
    “I don’t believe you. Not even back then?”
    He stretched out in the padded seat, pulling his arms over his head. Joints groaned, but he seemed pretty limber for a ninety-seven-year-old man. He had sharp eyes; he was always looking farther away than anyone else around him, to another country, another set of skies. A smile always wrinkled the corners of his lips.
    “This one time I remember. Outside Bangkok. A guy next to me stepped on a mine. Tore him apart. I still see it, how close I came. But I don’t think about it.”
    I still thought he was lying. We’d lain on death’s door back then and managed to survive. Now, here I was again. My chances had seemed so grim, then. I didn’t know anything when I was a kid.
    A shuttle rolled up to the gate and an electronic voice announced the Atlanta flight. My heart began pounding, for no reason at all.
    “That’s my flight,” he said, taking hold of his bag and preparing to stand.
    “Ken—” I didn’t want him to go. I’d never see him again; I’d never known anything so firmly in my whole life. We had a few moments. How could I beg him to stay alive? Stay alive long enough to play “Taps” at my funeral. It wasn’t right, to ask him to make that sacrifice for me, to be the last one. Let fate decide, as it always had. Don’t think about dying. He looked at me, waiting expectantly