Home Leave: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

from the line. That kind of nostalgia depressed me, and I decided to inject some hard truth into the conversation.
    “We sold ours off to Nesbit,” I said, referring to the farm conglomerate that had bought our land a month earlier. “They’d been bugging us for years. I almost miss talking to James Yancey on the phone each week, telling him no.”
    The others laughed ruefully, and Frank scowled at me. It was an unspoken rule that James Yancey’s name not be said aloud in polite conversation, and my misdemeanor was swiftly punished with silence and the sad scraping of forks, the way I had once punished kids who said “goddamn” on the playground by sticking them on the time-out bench. Most of the Village residents had sold to James Yancey too, long before Frank and I had. The few lucky enough to have passed their farms down to sons or sons-in-law now beamed silently at me down the table: I’d done them the favor of broadcasting their good fortune.
    At the end of lunch, Beth strode into the cafeteria clutching several folders, having finished her meeting with the director. “You guys ready?” she asked, hovering over Frank and me. “Wow, Mom, that brisket looks delicious.”
    “It’s not bad,” I replied, employing the phrase that everyone at the table, and everyone in Chariton, has relied on for years to complain without risking offense, a statement that summarizes our beliefs more neatly than the Nicene Creed. We didn’t expect anything in the first place, it implies, so how could we be disappointed?
    *  *  *
    Once the prizes are given out, they pack up the whole county fair in a mere twelve hours, and it is just another empty lot across the way. That isn’t bad to stare at either, even though all our neighbors go back inside.
    The following evening, Frank asks me to read the letter he’s written to the newspaper editor. I’ve never really read his writing before, aside from what he’s signed on Christmas cards, plus his letters to me during the war, when he was in the Pacific.
    To Whom It May Concern:
    I was troubled to find several errors in a recent article of your venerable publication, concerning Chariton High alum Chris Kriegstein. I have included the correct information below. I was saddened to see the sinking of the newspaper’s standards. I remember when you could turn to Tiger Tracks for solid information, not made-up crap.
    “I don’t think you can write ‘crap’ in a letter to the editor,” I object, putting it down.
    “Well, that’s what it is,” Frank says.
    “What about hogwash?”
    “Nothing with farm animals in it.”
    “Trash?”
    “Read the sentence to me out loud.”
    “All right,” Frank says, nodding appreciatively as I read. “Trash. I like it.”
    I continue.
    Here are the facts: not only was my son Chariton High’s top scorer in basketball, he was also the only student to make varsity, in three sports, from his freshman year onwards. He took his team to the regional finals his senior year, a game against Vernon, a school four times as big as Chariton, where he scored 45 points.
    He is not living in Saudi Arabia making instruments; he lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Elise, where he is the CEO of Logan Mechanics. He is a very successful businessman and has lived in the following countries: the USA, Germany, England, China, and Singapore. He and Elise were blessed with two daughters, Leah and Sophie. Sophie died in 1996 and is buried at the Lutheran churchyard in town.
    “That’s nice you wrote about Sophie,” I say. “But shouldn’t you mention Beth, too?”
    “What about her?”
    “I don’t know, that she’s his sister?”
    “Everyone knows that already,” he says, and so I leave it be.
    *  *  *
    The next week they run Frank’s letter (he refers to it as his “editorial”), and Beth brings us five copies. The editor has taken out “made-up trash” and put in “misinformation.”
    “Censorship,” Frank says, darkly.
    We take it