Bloodlines

Jack put a hand on O’Co

“He’s a smart kid,” Jack said. “Why don’t you be smart, too, Mitch?”

Yeager gave a small nod. “Sure. A smart man can wait for what he wants. Someday you’ll find out just how smart I can be, Jack Corrigan.”

He turned and walked away.

“Who told him?” Co

“I don’t know, Co

“Your fault? No!” he said fiercely. “You never would have peached on me to the likes of Mitch Yeager!”

Jack smiled ruefully. “Appreciate the faith, kid, but my guess would be that Lillian told Mitch just to spite me. She’s a little irritated at me.”

“What does she care? She’s married now. To that rich Linworth fellow.”

Jack didn’t say anything.

“She wanted to marry you,” O’Co

“No, kid. No, that’s not true. As far as Lily was concerned, I was just fun and games. Hobnobbing with the hoi polloi, that’s all. She flirted with men like me and Mitch because it was exciting to her, but she was always going to marry money. When you’re older, you’ll understand.”

“Does it make you sad?”

“Hell, no,” Jack said.

After a moment, O’Co

Jack laughed. “So am I. She’s got one hell of temper, and she’s probably mad at both of us. At Mitch, too. Probably told him that a kid caught him at his game-kind of thing she’d do, just to piss him off.”

The memories of those early days with Corrigan were bittersweet to O’Co

“Through the best of times, and the worst of times,”he said softly to himself.

Some of the worst came quickly to mind. Jack’s near-fatal car accident, which left him with the limp that kept him out of the service. A dozen other dark days, but without any hesitation he could name the worst of these: April 6,1945.

Maureen and his mother had both found high-paying jobs at one of the war plants-Mercury Aircraft. It had allowed the family to move into a nicer place. Maureen worked days, then took care of their father in the evenings while their mother worked second shift. O’Co

He remained devoted to his sister, and protective of her. Every evening, when Maureen’s shift ended at five, he was there at the gates of Mercury Aircraft, waiting to walk her home. Often, a neighbor who worked at the plant would join them on this walk, but he liked it best when it was just the two of them, away from their neighbor and away from their parents, able to talk and dream of the future. They did that more often in those early days of April. The war was coming to an end, it seemed-the Allies had crossed the Rhine.

O’Co

If the war didn’t end soon, though, he feared Maureen would end up an old maid, taking care of their parents until she was past the age of marrying. He was seventeen, and felt sure that Maureen was nearly at a nuptial dead- line-that she only had until she was about twenty-two to find a husband. His mother and older sisters had all been married before the age of nineteen.

It was just the two of them still at home, Co

O’Co

Dresses or no, he lost hope for Maureen-he soon realized that with the war on, it was nothing but women and old men there at the aircraft plant, anyway. She hadn’t a chance of meeting a man who was near her age, unless he had some problem that made him 4-F. She told him that he was judging them too harshly, and that if he didn’t stop standing by the gates of Mercury Aircraft, scowling at every man who talked to her after work, she’d never meet anyone.

Once, when he complained that one of her dates was 4-F, she reminded him that Jack was 4-F because of his ankle-but the moment she said it, she apologized. They both knew how hard it was for Jack not to be able to enlist. After that, O’Co

He began to suspect that she had stopped telling him about the men she was interested in. Lately, he noticed she wore a heart-shaped locket, hidden beneath her blouse, but he saw it fall free of its hiding place when she bent to pick up a paper she had dropped. He questioned her about it, and she told him she had purchased it herself to keep men from a

“You are!” she told him.

That Friday night in April, he didn’t meet her after work. He had a night off from his job at the Express, and he had a date. For months now, he had been one of the many young men who sought the attention of another high school senior, Ethel Gibbs, and she had finally agreed to go out with O’Co

Looking back on it now, he could not remember where he had pla

He could, however, recall perfectly that moment when her mother opened the front door and looked in a puzzled way at the young man who stood before her, wearing his best clothes, smelling of his father’s cologne. He remembered Mrs. Gibbs’s blushes as she stammered confused apologies on her daughter’s behalf. Ethel had left an hour ago, she said in dismay, with- but she halted mid-sentence, not naming O’Co

He had delayed going back home, had wandered around the streets of downtown Las Piernas for a couple of hours before deciding that he might as well swallow his shame and let Maureen know that Ethel had stood him up. Going up the steps of the porch, he wondered how she would take it. Probably be more disappointed than he was, really.

As he opened the front door, he saw that although there was no blackout ordered that night, the house was nearly in total darkness. He heard his father shout frantically, “Maureen! Maureen! Is that you?”