Four Years from Home Read online

  It’s amazing how startlingly effective a little snow is on the exposed neck of a sleeping person. I remember sneaking into Sam and Harry’s room one cold night with a spoonful of snow from my windowsill and dropping it on Sam’s neck. Just a spoonful… I was hunched down between their beds so he couldn’t see me. Sam screamed bloody murder — loud enough to bring reinforcements. But the cavalry was too late. By the time my parents got there, I had already slid under the bed, only at the last second noticing Harry watching me. I scowled at him with a threatening fist. He smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Sam always suspected me of that one but never came out with a direct accusation. So I guess Harry never finked on me. Big deal. I could have beaten him to a pulp anyway, Sam, too, for that matter.

  That was then. This was now. This time there was no hiding under the bed. I was way too big. And this time there was no escaping the fact that Sam was more than a match for me. Actually, we had never really come to serious blows since he’d gotten bigger than me, but my kingly senses told me that he was now the physical superpower in the Ryan family and I the waning monarch; that, and the fact that he once pushed me so hard that I fell over a chair and nearly wet myself. Me suicidal? I actually thought I had been very quiet when I scooped up a handful of snow from the pile by the window, and I thought I had been extremely quiet, padding soundlessly to his bedside, and I also thought… well that didn’t matter much when his hands closed around my neck and he threw me down on Harry’s bed.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I could see that reasoning with him was the only way out — the last resort of the weak and deposed. I pointed to my watch and rasped, “Time to get up.”

  We sat quietly around the kitchen table while Mom and Dad busied themselves with making breakfast. When we were growing up, Sunday breakfast was the one and only day that we all ate at the same time without rushing off to do something. We weren’t allowed to do much on Sundays anyway, so no one was in any hurry to get to it. There were no sports, no work, just a day of rest. But something was not right this time. Breakfast was supposed to be after Mass, not before. We were supposed to be fasting for Holy Communion like good Catholics, weren’t we? The glances we exchanged told me that Mary, Sam, and Kate also realized this but somehow having our world turned upside down by Harry’s death made it all irrelevant. So why was Kate staring at me like that? She looked first at me, then at the fridge, then back at me. I twirled my empty orange juice glass in my fingers…

  “Oh, right.” I said awkwardly. Harry’s job was always the orange juice and Mom and Dad were waiting for it to mystically appear, thus proving that Harry was still alive. I got up, accepting the mantle of orange juice-making succession, and made the worst orange juice I have ever tasted.

  “Too much water,” Dad grimaced.

  “He used tap water, Dad. Harry always used water from the fridge. This tastes like chlorine.”

  “Shut up, Mary. What do you know?” Another eloquent defense on my part — I should have been a lawyer.

  Mom started to cry. I took her hand — so unlike me that I embarrassed myself. “Sorry Mom, I’ll do better next time.”

  Sam and I made a go of shoveling the driveway, but we both knew it was hopeless. If we busted our butts we would have it clear in an hour. That would give us about an hour to drive the mile or so to church through a foot and a half of snow on unplowed roads. Now I’m usually not a staunch proponent of totally hopeless causes unless losing benefits me in some way, and I’m pretty sure Sam isn’t either. Why didn’t we stop? I thought about this for a moment and also about heaving a shovelful of snow at him but let this death wish pass quietly unfulfilled. I always envisioned myself burning in hell for my crimes, not freezing to death like a Popsicle. Sam turned my way, apparently reading my mind, his shovel ready to defend. There was no doubt his could have easily picked me up, stuffed me head first into a show drift, and left me there to freeze to death, forever altering my destiny of ending my days in Nicky Amendola’s gym bag.

  Had we been twenty years younger, we could easily have dug ourselves a really cool tunnel system like the one we’d made that one winter when the snow was higher than we were. I was ten or eleven, I don’t remember. But I will always remember that year because we had a record number of snow days off from Saint Catherine’s. Some people said it was because a kid had fallen into a snow-filled window well at the school and died, but it always seemed to me that this was just another example of my inevitable triumph over those things I hated the most — school being near the top of that list. Or, more likely, God probably saw how bad a year I was having and decided that I needed a break.

  That was also the year of the Nazi’s Devastating Defeat at the Foxhole — which is what I called the near death experience of that dope, Kevin Shannon. Sam, Harry, and I had been on patrol in the snow-covered woods beside our house. The woods were quiet — no Germans for miles around. We were between battles and our mission was to make sure the perimeter was safe. One of the key points in the Allies’ defense line was the foxhole, a position we had claimed in the early days of the fighting. It was clearly marked on my map as ours — after all, we were the ones who had dug it and dragged the plywood I had stolen from the Ioli’s under-construction house over to it, and the ones who had labored to conceal it with that and a few inches of dirt. It was a ton of work for us… well for Harry and Sam. I was of course working hard ordering them around. But we were the ones who used it as a hideout. It was ours… well mine. In any case, no one else was allowed in it and anyone caught in it was the enemy.

  I stopped the others when I saw the footprints in the snow leading up the slope to the secret entrance. “Someone’s in the foxhole,” I whispered.

  It was one of those days when so much snow was coming down that sounds hardly traveled at all, when the idyllic peace of the forest is actually more akin to having the Get Smart Cone of Silence lowered over you. Would you believe?

  “What?” Sam protested as I grabbed him and Harry and ducked down, shoving them into the snow. Those were the good old days when I could still push them around.

  “Listen! Someone’s in the foxhole. And tracks! There!” I pointed at the indentations in the snow leading up the hill. “Nazis, I’ll bet. They’ve taken our position. I knew this would happen. That dumb West Point Lieutenant should never have left it unguarded.” I was the master of fantasy, even then, taking any situation, absurd or otherwise, and turning it into my own personal wonderland… The Adventures of Tom Ryan, starring Tom Ryan as Tom Ryan. Produced and directed by…

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Then you’re deaf, Sam. You don’t hear that?” Sam actually was hard of hearing in one ear, but I never let that get in my way. And, just in case you’re wondering, I had nothing to do with that loud explosion that broke his left eardrum.

  Harry shivered. “I’m cold.”

  “Maybe they’re our prints.” Sam was clearly not the soldier I was. Vic Morrow would have kicked him out of his squad his first day and Combat! would have been a much better show.

  “We should check it out.” It was easier to ignore Sam than to try and reason with him.

  He groaned.

  “Just do what the man says.” Harry laughed, still shivering.

  “Zip it, private! That’s my line. I’m Sergeant Saunders, and if you don’t want to be busted to yard bird, you’ll shut your yap.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harry saluted smartly.

  I remember really wanting to slug him then, but I let it go and we circled around the knob, our recon mission coming up blank.

  Harry was studying the holes in the snow. “Those prints are less than a half hour old.”

  “Who are you, Tonto or something?” I reconsidered my earlier decision and was about ready to really pound Harry for his stupid observations when I realized he was probably right. The snow was falling heavily, already filling up the footprints. They had to have been recently made or they would have been gone in
that storm. I whispered, “Let’s fan out,” motioning for Sam to take the left and Harry the right. I, of course, would take the middle. It was only fitting for the hero to be in the middle, where the battle would be won.

  On my signal we fired a warning shot on top of the covering. There was so much snow that our snowballs barely made a thud. I yelled, “Come out with your hands up, you Nazi cowards! We know you’re in there!” We fired another round.

  It was quiet, too quiet. Maybe they couldn’t hear us? Maybe we couldn’t hear them? I thought back through the Combat! episode that had been on the week before and remembered how Sergeant Saunders’ squad had flushed out the enemy by creating a diversion, a loud noise, a hand grenade — that was it. When the Nazis rushed out of their bunker, they walked right into the waiting B.A.R.s of the good guys. A perfect plan… There was a large rock, about the size of my head, lying at my feet. That would wake them up. I chucked it onto the top of the foxhole and it hit with a thunk that I’ll never forget.

  I honestly never saw Kevin’s head pop out of the entrance and look around after my yelling to come out. I was too busy looking up at the rock I was holding over my head, steadying it for one, momentous heave. I never heard Sam or Harry yell for me to hold my fire. That snowstorm muffled everything… well almost everything. I jumped back in horror at the bloodcurdling scream Kevin let out when the rock crashed down on his skull. I never saw so much blood at one time, not real blood anyhow. I’d covered myself in fake blood many times for the cool effect it had on my sisters, but even that was nothing compared to this. I was so grossed out I threw up in the snow.

  The important thing was that we had defeated the Nazi invasion and that our position was secure. Casualties from friendly fire or otherwise were a part of war, regrettable to be sure, but a part of war nonetheless. And their horror was far outweighed by the deterrent value of our victory. They would think twice before attacking us again.

  Anyway, that was my official position at my court martial, presided over by Mom and Dad and Kevin’s parents. But it wasn’t going well for me. Kevin had a concussion, a really cool knot of stitches on the shaved part of his head, unlimited ice cream and the rest of the month off from school. I had no sympathy for him. I had toyed with the idea of self-inflicting such a wound, but couldn’t bring myself to do the bonking.

  “It was an accident, right, Tom?” Dad was doing his best to lead me into an admission that I didn’t mean to hit Kevin with that rock. I guess he was representing me at the trial, but with him, you could never be sure.

  There was no way I would admit to that. No way. “It’s soldiers like me and my boys that stand on the walls of freedom protecting you from the things you don’t want to talk about at the dining room table. What happened was no accident. He was in our territory, behind our lines. He was the aggressor, not us. We were defending our country, your country. You should be thanking us for our patriotism, not condemning us.” I gave them some of my best stuff. I can’t remember which TV show it was from, but I was beaming with pride.

  “Oh my God, you little monster,” Mrs. Shannon gasped, covering her face in her hands.

  “I don’t want that boy of yours anywhere near my son again, ever,” Mr. Shannon wagged his finger at Dad. “He’s a menace and the only reason we’re not pressing charges is because we are Christians. Your son needs help, Dan, serious psychiatric help, and you should see that he gets it before anyone else gets hurt. Too bad he didn’t turn out like Harry. Then none of this would have happened.”

  Like Harry… Dad didn’t believe in shrinks, and I found out later that evening that he didn’t much like Mr. Shannon either. He used all adult words to explain this to Mom, but it sounded to me like “If that snot-nosed, booger mouth, pimple-pushing jerk could get his head out of his ass, he’d see that this is just boys being boys.” My level of admiration for Dad grew greatly that day.

  I never saw Kevin Shannon again, well more accurately, he never saw me. I kept constant surveillance on him through my network to make sure he wasn’t saying anything about me that I would have to cream him for. Nothing really came of it. About the only thing I did find out was that Harry went to see him every day after school. Every day! I guess he felt guilty about it though he had nothing to do with it. He’d sit and play with him for almost an hour before he had to do his paper route. What a dope. I hated him for that, the traitor…

  NASA’s final and most successful, moon landing, Apollo XVII, had returned to Earth a week or so before that Christmas in 1972. Harry would have loved the photos that they was releasing daily, especially the one the Post-Gazette said was the only human-witnessed full Earth view showing the African and Antarctic continents. It was summer in the Southern hemisphere and winter in the Northern. Boy, was it winter here. By the time Sam and I had dug our way to the end of the driveway, there was at least an inch of snow blown off the yard covering Sam’s hard work. We never made it to church. Mom wouldn’t get out of bed. I could hear her crying from my room as I stared out the window at the Ioli’s house across the street. I hated Mrs. Ioli. She was a pain in the butt and did everything in her power to make life miserable for everyone around her, especially me. It was no wonder everyone hated her.

  “Tom, phone.” Kate poked her head around the door.

  “Okay, thanks,” I drew myself back from the threshold of a newly hatching plan to torture Mrs. Ioli one more time for old times’ sake.

  The phone in the upstairs hall was just outside my room. This wasn’t particularly convenient since I never bothered to answer it. It was never for me. It was just annoying that I was closest to it. Fortunately I had long ago figured out the exception to the “closest to it” rule — it was never for me. I wondered who could be calling me at home, or anywhere, for that matter. No one ever called me. Maybe it was the guy from the school calling to say he couldn’t make it. Now that would be totally unexpected. “Hello?”

  “I know what happened.” The voice was a whisper. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female.

  “What?” I was sure what was said but the shock of someone mimicking my patented harassment tactics caused my uncharacteristically inane response. “Who is this?”

  “I know what happened and I know what you did,” the voice repeated. It could have been a girl, or maybe a wimpy guy with a girlie voice. I couldn’t tell. There was a click at the other end.

  “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again…” I hung up, staring at the black rotary phone. Why would I like to make a call? My parents really needed to invest in Touch-Tone technology.

  “Who was it?” Kate asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I don’t know. Wrong number, I guess.”

  Who would call and say such a thing? Was it one of my many enemies playing a joke on me? Did it have some connection to Harry? This last thought passed through my mind quickly but was immediately ushered out by the memory of a series of crank calls I had made to Mrs. Ioli when I was fifteen. Her stupid dog had disappeared and she had put up signs around the neighborhood with a number to call if anyone knew anything. Naturally, I had to call the number repeatedly, using several of my “disguise” voices to make sure she didn’t know it was me. The classic from that adventure was, “Hello Mrs. Ioli. This is Franny from McDonald’s. A customer found your pet’s dog tags in their hamburger.”

  Either this was someone who really knew what had happened to Harry or some kid just making the calling rounds on Christmas. I had a lot of enemies who would love to ruin my Christmas, but it was probably just some stupid kid.

  Everyone pretty much stayed in his room until dinnertime. I think they were all waiting for someone from Kenyon to magically appear at our front door and hand them a sealed envelope with the secrets of Lourdes and Fatima and the answers to their questions about Harry’s death. Now that would have been a real miracle. I was just watching TV and waiting for the stupid snow to stop. It finally did and the sky cleared before the sun set, highlighting the woods in a war
m yellow glow. Woodsy snow scenes were my all-time favorites, but only when viewed from indoors. I have a hard time appreciating anything when I’m freezing to death.

  It’s amazing how many meals can come from a single Christmas turkey — reheated turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey tetrazzini, hot, open-faced turkey sandwiches, turkey and vegetable soup, turkey blah blah blah, turkey ad infinitum, turkey ad nauseam. The list was endless. For a food event of such biblical proportions, I had a name — the “Miracle of the Turkey and Gravy.” Tonight, we had turkey, rice, and vegetables in some sort of gooey, yellowish mix that no one had a name for. My name for it, of course, could never be spoken at the Ryan dinner table because strangely enough they didn’t care to think of puke and food at the same time.

  Dad was the first to speak, a feat in itself, considering the gooeyness of the dinner. “Did someone call?”

  No one answered at first. I was busy trying to prevent the congealing of the turkey mess on my teeth when Kate caught my eye. “Oh, there was one call I took, but it was a wrong number,” I said.

  “What did they say, Tom?” Kate pressed. “You looked really weird after you hung up. Was it someone from the school?”