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won’t need them anymore, but someday you may want your father’s things. You’re going to be just like him. Maybe even taller.”
    He bows his head. Maybe he’ll be as tall as his dad. Everyone says he looks like him. But he’ll never be like his dad. He’ll never be brave. He’ll never be a hero. He never would have made it out of the Philippines alive, much less helped anyone else survive. He practically got both him and Eugene killed on the pier earlier today, just by being an idiot as usual.
    “Oh, don’t look so down, Francis. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for everyone. Here,” she says, rummaging on the shelf above the clothing rack. “Why don’t you take this now?”
    It’s his dad’s old army canteen. Once, when he was little, his dad took the canteen out and showed it to him and Luke and Mike Jr., saying: This canteen meant the difference between life and death for me during the war . Without it I would never have made it up Bataan, much less through the three years that followed. Sometimes it’s the littlest things, boys. It was unusual for his dad even to talk about the war, so they all knew what he was telling them was something important.
    Shouldn’t one of his brothers have the canteen? Wouldn’t they be mad if they found out their mom gave it to him? He screws the top off and peeks carefully inside, as though a little bit of his dad might be distilled within.
    “Mommy,” Sissy says from where she is lying on the carpet furiously coloring, her hair a shout of red-gold around her round, freckly face. Everything his baby sister does, she seems to do furiously. “Will you read to me now?”
    His mom is strangely still, far away. It takes her at least a minute to answer. “Ask Luke, dear. I have to get started on dinner now. Mike and Patty Ann will be home soon.”
    Mike has a full-time summer job bagging groceries at the Safeway. Patty Ann is waitressing at Peter B’s Galley, in the bowling alley. She got Luke a job in the alley also, on Friday and Saturday nights, plus Luke has taken over mowing the lawn for the church and rectory while Mike is bagging groceries. Next summer, his mom says, he should get a job, too: With you getting bigger, you’re going to want more pocket money. Anyhow, it’s important to learn how to work, as important as book learning.
    Francis should get a job bagging groceries like Mike, Luke said. All the ladies will head for the register he’s working and tip him double if he carries their bags to their cars. He’ll earn enough for his own set of wheels twice as fast as Mike will.
    Hush, his mom said, laughing. That’s no way to talk. He’s still a baby.
    If anyone can set his mom laughing, it’s Luke. But he’s not a baby. He’s not a man, but he’s not a baby, either.
    He stuffs the canteen into the top of his pants, bundles the two boxes up with string, and carries them, one by one, out to the car. He didn’t even understand what was so funny about what Luke said. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was Luke making fun of Mike somehow.
    In the kitchen, his mom is trying to get the oven to light. The oven hasn’t worked properly for more than a year. Sissy follows him down the hall to his bedroom. “Read me this?” she says, climbing onto Luke’s bed and sticking the book in her hand between Luke’s face and novel.
    Luke pushes the book’s bright green, red, yellow, and blue cover away. “I’m already reading something. And Goodnight Moon is a baby book. You’re not a baby.”
    “I like it.”
    “It’s a going-to-bed book.”
    “Please, Luke.” Sissy crawls up beside him and tucks her bright head against his shoulder. “Luke, Luke, Lukie-Luke.”
    Luke sighs and sets his book down.
    He shoves the canteen under his mattress. It makes a big lump. His mom should have given the canteen to Mike. Mike plans to join the army in two years, or at least go ROTC. He may be the only one tall enough ever to wear his dad’s suits, but Mike’s