Read The Gulf for Free Online Page A

moved toward the house. Just before he got there, he changed his direction, for the smaller building.
    His wife was standing with her back to him, bent over a brick kiln. Steam hissed up out of it, and a sulfurous stink. As the door creaked, she straightened from a peephole and inserted a plug. She tapped a gauge, then turned. She looked at him for a long time before her eyes followed his arm down to the paper.
    â€œWhat was it?”
    Wordless, he extended it. It hung between them for a moment, then passed, gloved hand to gloved hand. After a moment, her lips went white, sucked against her teeth.
    â€œWhat is it? A rehearsal?”
    â€œNo. It’s real.”
    â€œAre you going?”
    â€œI’m thinkin’ on it.”
    She looked at the kiln, touched it lightly with the tips of her fingers. Then she looked away, out a square of wavy old glass filmed with powdered clay. “There’s Mike. Breakfast’s ready.”
    Gordon bent at the back door to pull off his boots. In damp stocking feet, he padded on into the kitchen. The boy was standing at the stove. He was twelve, tall for his age, with an abstracted, introspective look. His light hair sprang up in a cowlick. He was wearing jeans and boots and a Poison T-shirt under a flannel shirt. When he saw them, he smiled shyly and said, “Hi, Mom, Dad. Y’want some eggs?”
    It had taken two years after he married Ola for the boy to call him that. It sounded good to him. “Yeah, thanks, Mike. You sleep good, pal?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    Gordon sat heavily, then caught his wife’s eye and got up again. When he came back, wiping his hands, his plate was steaming with hot eggs and fluffy buttermilk cakes oozing sweet butter and homemade maple syrup.
    â€œHow’s Wanda doing, Dad?”
    â€œThe antibiotic cream’s working,” said Gordon. He ate for a while, then added, “Teats don’t seem to pain her much as they did yesterday. It’s more expensive than that sulfur ointment, though.”
    â€œMike, what are you doing today?” his mother asked him.
    â€œWe’re gonna meet down at the church and fly some airplanes. Jimmy said I can fly his P-51.”
    Gordon cleared his throat. “Michael.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI might have to go away for a while. If I do, you think you can help Mom run the farm here?”
    The boy had been smiling, and it lingered yet forgotten on his face as the eyes receded, sinking away like flat rocks dropped into a glacial lake. “What do you mean?” he said.
    â€œI mean, going back to active duty. In the Navy.”
    â€œFor a weekend? For how long?”
    â€œI don’t know how long.”
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œI think maybe a good piece off.”
    The boy sat looking at his plate, but he didn’t move to eat. He murmured, “You said you wouldn’t leave us. That you’d stay here.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t be because I wanted to,” said Gordon. “You understand that, son? But I gave them my word, y’see. There are things, if a man’s promised to do them, he ought to no matter what. I promised to go back if they needed me. They say they do.”
    The boy glanced up. His eyes were still distant, but a kind of desperate longing filled them now. “You mean, for a war?”
    After a moment, Gordon said, “Not exactly.”
    The boy cried out then, something inarticulate and savage, and his voice was twisted and high. Part of it was: “You liar. You fucking liar! And I’m not your son! ” The plate hit the floor with a pottery crack. They heard his footsteps rapid on the stair and then, just as the door slammed, a sob.
    His mother bent to pick up the pieces. She ran her finger cautiously over a fractured edge. They looked at each other across the table. “He’s right,” she said. Her eyes were quiet and sad. “You told him you wouldn’t leave. Like his