What in the hell, Chuck thought, turning into the Williams’s walk, was life all for—if not this: kids to pass on kinship to?
When dinner was over, the plenteous dinner his aunt provided, in part from the big vegetable garden in the empty lot behind the house, they “relaxed in the parlor.” He had played with Irma, the new baby, blonder than the others, he’d said, practically silver-haired. He had thrilled the youngsters and their parents with an eyewitness account of the take-off of a guided missile. He’d shown Don the right way to hold his bow and arrow—and shot a hole through a diaper on the clothesline, accidentally. He’d arbitrated a quarrel between Marie and Tom and admired Sarah’s kindergarten art work.
Now, with a tumbler of elderberry wine, he sat with Ruth and Jim. Fireflies winked above the lawn and sounds of play told where the older kids were. The young ones already slept. It was peaceful.
His aunt and uncle asked, diffidently, about service. Did he hate it? Was it really rugged?
Jim, who had been deferred in the Second War because of his family, seemed to hide under the question a mixture of guilt and romantic expectation.
“It’s just dull,” Charles said. “Lord, the kids are growing! Marie’s really a young woman!”
Jim hitched a suspender and rubbed his Adam’s apple. “That’s what she tells us daily,”
he laughed. “She’s a year and a half older than Nora.”
“Nora,” said Charles, “is getting the same idea. She cut her own hair the other day….”
They laughed at the story.