Brief Encounters with the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

going to get me,” said the man I didn’t know. He said this more to himself. Then he said to the rest of us, “I’m going to get one of those
essential
jobs, so that when the draft comes, they pass me up.”
    “There’s not going to be any draft,” I said. It was my turn to state something as fact.
    The man looked at me in astonishment. He cocked his head. Then he guffawed and wiped his handkerchief over hisentire face in one swift motion. “How’d you figure that one out, my man?”
    “It’s going to be a quick war,” I said. “Marines are going to take the peninsula first thing.” I drew in the air as if I was standing in front of a map. “Here’s the bay … here’s the peninsula … you’ll see.”
    The guys got quiet as they pondered this.
    “Anyway,” I said cheerfully, “even if it’s a long war, there’ll still be plenty of people willing to join up.”
    “Plenty of
people
?” The man I didn’t know snorted. “This here’s the guy”—he turned to Troy and Quincy—“who thinks it’s only going to be a hundred degrees in August.”
    At the hospital, the air-conditioning was going full blast and the sweat froze on my skin. It was almost twelve o’clock and I was exhausted and parched. I was also hungry. I went back to blaming Roberto for everything. People with all sorts of ailments came and went in the waiting room, and I thought about how this must be what it’s like when soldiers get back from battle. I wasn’t sure if Roberto had checked in under a false name. He was nervous about not being a citizen and was always going out of his way to cover his tracks. He had no driver’s license, no bank account, no telephone, and his new apartment still had the name of the previous tenant, Cynthia Abernathy, on the mailbox even though she hadn’t lived there for two years. Every so often he’d get a package for her, and he’d tell the delivery guy some elaborate and unnecessary story about how Cynthia was his wife but she was out of townbecause her mother was dying and he didn’t know when she’d be back but he’d let her know that a package had come for her when he talked to her next but he wasn’t sure when that would be because her mother was dying. It was always the same story. He was positive that the INS was tracking him and the delivery guy was an agent. In the meantime, he’d accumulated several mail-order kitchen gadgets, including an electric egg-beater.
    “Don’t you think they’re going to start wondering why your mother-in-law never dies?” I’d ask him.
    He never liked this. “You’re going to be
penitent
one day,” he’d say, dropping in one of those words he’d learned specifically for the SAT. “You’re going to be
penitent
when they come for me. They’re going to lock me up somewhere, like they did those apple pickers, and you’re never going to hear from me again.”
    “I’m looking for Roberto Díaz,” I told the hospital receptionist.
    She checked the computer. No, she said, there was no Roberto Díaz listed.
    “Then I’m looking for Rob Days,” I said.
    No, sorry.
    “How about Bob Hays?” I was trying to recall all the various permutations he had used over the years.
    No.
    “I’m looking for Tyler McCoy,” I said, because this was the name of the main character in his favorite gangster film.
    The receptionist punched in Tyler McCoy, and I could tell by the way she slowly struck the keys that she was getting suspiciousor impatient. “You sure do have a lot of friends,” she said.
    “I sure do,” I said. And Tyler McCoy was in Room 831.
    He was asleep when I got there, lying on his back with his mouth wide open like a drowning man trying to suck oxygen. He had bandages running ear to ear, and his nose, always prominent, seemed gigantic under the bandages, as if he had an anvil for a nose. His eyes were swollen, his hair was matted, and a
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rested on his stomach, rising and falling with his haggard breath. Across the