Jimmie seized the letter. He frowned perplexedly and looked around the table. His family seemed scared. “It just says,” Jimmie reported calmly, “that Biff, my proud young brother, has been drafted.”
“Just!” said Biff. “Just says!”
“What’s the matter with that?” Jimmie asked.
Mrs. Bailey was rising. A dewy light shone in her eyes and her face was working.
She ran to her son’s side. “Oh, Biff, Biff, Biff! I won’t let them take you away. My boy, my youngest boy!”
Her husband threw into the scene a tone of reasonableness. “Take it easy, Mother.
This whole thing’s preposterous, and you know it. There must be something we can do.
I’ll look into it—immediately.”
“Of course, you can do something,” Mrs. Bailey answered, sniffling, but comforted. “It’s such a waste! Biff was just getting ready to hunt for the right job!”
Jimmie glanced at his frantic mother, his frowning father, and his sister, who seemed to be undergoing mixed emotions. Then he brought his gaze “I’m not scared,” Biff said harshly. He met Jimmie’s eyes, and Jimmie knew that was the truth. “But I’ll be everlastingly damned if I’m going to spend a year of my life marching around with a lot of Boy Scouts, getting up at the crack of dawn, doing day labor, eating swill—just because Franklin Delano Roosevelt says there’s an emergency! And that’s flat!”