Ken's War Read Online Free Page A

screamed at rescue workers to “get me out of here”
filled his mind.
    The next morning his dad was standing at his
doorway, his presence seeping into Ken’s half-dream, and fully
waking him. A greenish dawn illuminated the window.
    “That was a helluva storm,” Paderson said.
His fingernails rasped on his whiskers.
    “Typhoon. No worse than a thunder boomer back
home,” Ken said. He let his head fall to the pillow where he slept
a sound, dreamless sleep for the next seven hours.
     

 
    Chapter
Three
    ~ Forget Your Training ~
     
    He sat on the edge of the stainless steel tub
waiting for it to fill with warm water. Filling the tub took a long
time. Mindful of keeping his cast above the water, he stepped in.
Instead of being rejuvenated by the warm water, he felt the
negligible strength he had leech out. After the water had cooled,
he stepped out of the tub only to discover no towel was around for
him to dry himself. He shivered. The effort of putting on his
clothes drained him of energy, energy he needed to cope with
strangeness. His clothing, soft with several days’ wearing, made
him feel like himself again, if only on the surface.
    When he’d felt sick before, his grandma used
to give him ginger ale and his mom fed him baby aspirin that tasted
like candy, but didn’t do any good. He and his dad hadn’t packed
those things. If that guy in the Quonset warehouse could find
anything you wanted, finding soda pop in Japan should be a cinch
for him. Ken headed for the hut.
    Wizard was at his battered desk opening mail.
His cat, Neko, was scattering envelopes onto the floor with her
tail.
    “Morning,” the private said, “I wondered when
you’d be making your rounds.”
    “You’re awful old to still be a private first
class,” Ken told Wizard. Neko poured herself off the desk and
scooted outside.
    “You’re awful old to be so ill-mannered.” He
opened a bottle and poured orange soda into two glasses filled with
chipped ice.
    “Soda pop! Where’d you find that?”
    “I’ll never reveal my sources. You can push
bamboo under my fingernails and set them afire, but I won’t betray
my sources.”
    He knew Wizard was pulling his leg with that
fake Kraut accent, but Ken was unable to round up the energy to
laugh, even for politeness’ sake. He sipped soda, rested his head
in his hand, and watched Wizard’s Adam’s apple work like a pump
under the stubble on his throat.
    “Your bones and your eyeballs are achy,”
Wizard said. “You think about exploring the pine forest or climbing
the mountain or playing in the waterfall, but after eating
breakfast you’re too sluggish.”
    “This is my breakfast,” Ken said. And
it tasted sickeningly sweet.
    “What are those hash marks on your cast?”
    Ken self-consciously touched the cast on his
arm. “I’m counting down the days to when Dad and I return to the
barracks in Pennsylvania.”
    “Where’s your mom?”
    “She’s in the States, waiting for us at the
house.” Where she’d have a bowl of warm oatmeal topped with lumps
of brown sugar ready for him in the mornings, and he’d watch
cartoons, and later he’d take the car for a spin. He thought he saw
a skeptical look flit across Wizard’s face. In a rush Ken said,
“She said she needed time to herself, and she didn’t want to live
in Japan. She said she had a lot of odds and ends to take care of.
She said it’d be better if Dad and I left her alone for a little
bit.”
    The more reasons she’d given Ken in trying to
explain why she wasn’t joining them in Japan, the less convincing
the combined weight of them became. This list of lightweight
reasons wasn’t convincing Wizard either, Ken could see. “She said
she needed a vacation.”
    “A vacation from what?” Wizard’s gently
probing blue eyes swelled Ken’s throat up with an embarrassing
sadness, a sadness like he’d experienced when his parents had
finally told him about his grandparents.
    “She said it’s only