Test Pattern Read Free Page A

isn’t what Lorena was at ten, that maybe there’s been some twist in time and ten isn’t what it was twenty years ago.
    Remnants of trash skitter across the parking lot—wrapper from a Baby Ruth, that waxy paper they give you with a doughnut. Where did she park? The lot’s so jammed with cars, Lorena can’t think straight, oh, there it is, way on the other side, sky-blue Dodge two-door coupe. Oh, no, she remembers, she forgot to get gas and the gauge is on empty. She’ll have to stop at the Texaco. She trots across the parking lot, the heels of her flats scraping asphalt.
    She’s intent on fishing her keys out of the purse dangling from one elbow. A soldier shambles toward her, thumbs in his front pockets, hands curved toward his crotch, hat tipped over his fore-head. Is that … no, couldn’t be … the same soldier who was yelling at her and Delia when they left the trailer?
    His hair is cut close along the sides, sidewalls, she thinks they call it, and he walks with a loose lope that she recognizes from somewhere, an unhinged walk that belongs to someone she once knew. Does he know her? He must, because he quickens his step and aims in her direction.
    “Hey, Lorena, wait up,” he’s saying. “Remember me? Binky?”
    Binky? Binky Quisenberry?
    He looks different. Maybe it’s the uniform. Or that haircut. Or the skinny little mustache. But the nose over the mustache is the same, broken just enough to give him that tough-guy Marlon Brando look, and his eyes are still the color of rain.
    It
is
Binky. She hasn’t seen him since high school.
    “Binky? Is that you?” Then, “Was that you, yelling at us outside the trailer?”
    “Aw. If I’da known who it was I was yelling at, I wouldn’ta.” He looks sheepish, gives her a crooked grin. “I watched you walking to the A&P and it dawned on me, why, damn if that ain’t Lorena, so after I got outta the trailer, I decided to hang around.”
    Well, she thinks, the saying is true. There’s something about a man in uniform. Seeing Binky in these starched and pressed khakis brings back memories of him in his football uniform, monumental padded shoulders distorting the dark blue jersey with the number “50” appliquéd in yellow across its back.
    Now he wears the peaked cap low on his forehead and speaks lazily of the army, how he’s home, this time to stay. She leans against the round fender of her car and shifts the bag of groceries from one hip to the other. She wishes she had worn makeup, combed her hair, something, but who knew she would run into Binky Quisenberry in the A&P parking lot?
    “You’re still in uniform,” she says. “Where’ve you been?”
    He lights up a Lucky, his big hand curved to protect the Zippo’s flame from the wind. “Been everywhere. Been in the army since WWII. Saw action in the Ardennes. I was there, right in the thickof it, got wounded. Don’t remember how, actually. It was all a blur. I remember ducking, then an explosion. I was in the VA hospital for a while.”
    “Wow,” says Lorena, eyes big.
    “Hey, you wanna see something?” He pulls his shirt open, shows her something jagged and white and lumpy going over his shoulder and down his back. “Got this. Wounded in action.” Impulsively, she reaches out and runs her finger along it. It feels like cold Cream of Wheat.
    “Wow,” she breathes. Her finger tingles as if she had caressed something forbidden and exotic, and she shudders with the danger of it. “Did you get hurt in Korea, too?”
    “Korea?” He buttons up his shirt again. “Well, I didn’t exactly see combat in Korea. Actually, I never went to Korea, not that I didn’t want to go but I was stationed at Fort Bragg and don’t think that wasn’t a challenge, working at the PX, keeping track of the stock, not to mention the shoplifting by the enlisted men’s wives, you wouldn’t believe what went on.” He frowns. “It’s not just battle that wins the war, you know, it’s morale, too. That’s