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up sand. Her husband behind them, boyish, too, with the red flush
across his cheeks and the thinning hair scattered every which way
across his head. The baby rolled, roiled, beneath her ribs and the
beach grass shuddered in the wind. He sat beside her heavily, while
the two boys fell on the shoe box full of soldiers, carrying it off to the
foot of another dune—for this had been their plan all along, to restage
Okinawa or Omaha Beach, continuing the war game they had begun
last night in their room, across the sheets and blankets and pillows of
their twin beds, in one of those hours of grace when they had not
quarreled and their parents had not called to them to
     
put out the light. They had named each member of their platoon—
Murphy, Idaho, Sarge, Smitty—ambushed some Germans, and
collected commendations from Patton himself. This morning when
their father had come into their room to say, “We’re heading for the
beach,” the dissolution of the plans they’d made to continue the push
toward Berlin right after Mass was quickly compensated for by the
possibility of dune and sand—Okinawa, Omaha Beach, North Africa
and Rommel.
     
It was their father who had put the football in the trunk.
     
Now they scattered their men across the sand and among the
bending stalks of sea grass. Their sister heard the changed pitch of
their voices, the harsh and breathy pitch they used when they were
speaking for someone else in an imaginary game. She rose to join
them. The bear was still in her arms but once again forgotten.
     
“Can I play?” she asked finally, understanding, even at six, that
the timidity of the question invited a single reply.
     
“No.” Looking to each other, not to her.
     
She watched them. The orders they barked were low and intimate,
running under the sound of the wind.
     
“Can I have a man?” she asked.
     
“No,” again, but now their parents on the blanket together looked
toward them.
     
“Boys,” their father said, a warning. And a single green soldier
was plucked from the shoe box of reservists and replacements and
tossed her way, through the air. She picked him up from the sand. The
mold had shaped his features precisely, a strong jaw and a sharp nose,
the little combat helmet and a sash of ammunition across his chest.
Unlike the men her brothers preferred, this one had no rifle pressed to
its shoulder, no hand grenade about to be thrown, but stood instead
with his arms extended from his sides, palms out. His head was
slightly raised, as if whatever he confronted was still at some distance,
and was larger than just another man.
     
His name was Steve. Steve Stevens. And he was a scout, sent
ahead. Alone.
     
She moved him through the sand, up over the boulders and hills
that were the arms and legs of the bear.
     
John Keane, leaning over his knees, watched the children
carefully, seeing that they behaved and then, reassured, allowed
himself to lie back on the blanket. The sky was blue. They were nicely
out of the wind. He placed his fingertips on his wife’s back, just
lightly. The football had reminded him that he was not (he would have
said) entirely pleased with the behavior of his two sons. It upset some
notion he had of order, of rightness, that Jacob, the older, was the
smaller of the two, the lesser athlete, the lesser student. It made
something unkind, even cruel, about Michael’s efforts to outdo him.
Michael’s triumphs over his older brother—and the self-satisfaction
they brought him—came too easily. Jacob’s defeats seemed too
indicative of a certain kind of future.
     
He kept his fingers on his wife’s back and placed his forearm over
his eyes. The wind was just above them. It seemed to skim the tops of
the surrounding dunes, bending the grass. But here the sun on his
knees and on his forearm felt warm.
     
His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight
of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for