Fish often wondered if his grandpa didn’t treat him with an extra dose of such restraint. When Fish told of a snake behind the barn, a tree branch that snapped with him on it, or a porcupine in the hayloft, his grandpa would just smooth the air over with his hands, as if washing it all, and then he’d wave Fish back to the dinner table, or the milkshed, or whatever he was busy with.
This need to smooth over disturbance reminded Fish of his own father, the sorts of things he would say before leaving for another deployment. Fish hated deployment, but knew it was shameful to say so. His dad would kneel down next to his packed duffel bags. It’s no big deal, he’d say. I’ll be back before you know it. But it was a big deal, and he wouldn’t be back for months. And no amount of hand-waving could smooth over his father’s long absence. Fish idolized the man. It wasn’t just that his dad was a sergeant in the National Guard. It wasn’t the way he folded those exotic desert uniforms into his green canvas bags. Instead, it was the simple presence Fish missed most—the way his dad’s whiskers covered the sink after he shaved, the shape of his jaw, the way his father used to smile and wink at Fish when his mom chided him too much. With that wink Fish always felt he’d been offered the keys to manhood, and all other hidden knowledge in the universe. Don’t worry about it, that wink seemed to say. Just keep busy. I know.
Fish’s dad’s buddies called him Bear. He was of medium build but solid strong. And it pleased Fish to no end when his mom or his grandma said he was turning out to be the spitting image of his father. Fish would stare in the mirror and try to see it. The blue eyes. The high cheekbones. Fish prayed for whiskers. On weekends, his dad often took him to the armory, to sit on the tanks, or to the machine shop, where he worked when the Army didn’t need him. They’d drive in his Ford truck, stop for Cokes, and then pull into the shop and talk with machinists on the Saturday shift. Fish used to watch the metal shavings spool from the lathes while the men pushed and pulled and adjusted the machines in a way that seemed a mystery to him. Fish got to start a tank motor once. Another time, he watched his dad walk in a Labor Day parade. Fish needed nothing in life.
But then it all changed. Channel 13 brought news from overseas that began to absorb the adults, and the armory started calling on the phone more often. Not long after, Fish heard words at home that he couldn’t piece together, other than that they made his mom cry quietly and his father’s smile seem strange. Kuwait and oil fields. Iraq. Jordan. Saudi.
Dad’s first deployment took him away for part of the winter. Fish watched the news on TV when his mom allowed it. Scud missiles. Naval rockets. And Republican Guard tanks, retreating. When his dad came home from the war one month early, the town of Ironsford had a parade, and Fish got to eat an entire bag of cotton candy and sit on his dad’s shoulders, straddling the man’s sunburned neck. That summer, the neighborhood boys played war amid creeks and leaf piles, arguing over who got to be General Powell, President Bush, or better yet, Schwarzkopf. Fish always used the name Bear. In late fall, when the trees were naked and the leaf piles gone, Fish’s dad deployed again, to the peacekeeping force in Saudi.
The floors seemed colder that winter. At night the wind blew through the frozen tines of the maple outside Fish’s window, and Fish would close his eyes and picture his dad walking across some desert dune, leaning into the wind and shielding his eyes, looking always homeward. In Fish’s mind, the desert was frozen too, and he often wanted to go there, bring a blanket, offer his father warmth, wipe the sand from the corners of his eyes. When his dad came home this time, there was no parade. It was as if the town and the boys had tired of it all, forgotten about it all. The war was over, and yet Fish’s father still deployed. Fish’s dad didn’t take him to the armory anymore, though he seemed to spend more time there. The house stayed quiet even when the Ford was in the driveway. Fish would sit at the table and watch his father chew his food. The man looked older, unfamiliar somehow, a foreign visitor. Dad would sometimes turn the TV on during supper, pause midbite, look at the fork in his hand, and get up from the table and go outside. Mom would point her fork at Fish’s plate. “Eat, please,” she’d say, and then she’d make her way out to the kitchen and stand by the screen door.
On a school night in spring, when the buds on the maple hadn’t opened yet, the phone rang late and Fish heard his father answer in the kitchen. Fish was in bed. His mom walked softly downstairs. There was talking and then silence, and then Fish heard his mom say, “Tell them you won’t go.”
His father uttered a muffled response.
Fish heard nothing for a time.
“We can’t do this again. Tell them you won’t go back.”
His father’s voice became louder.
“Fischer and I are alone!” yelled his mother.
“I said,” his father bellowed, giving every syllable its own breath, “this is not my choice!”
Mom started crying. Fish stopped breathing. His father boomed. His mom moaned. A glass shattered. The whole house stood still on its bones. Crickets went quiet. This was wrong. This was dead wrong. Fish’s parents
