A Soldier's Son
That spring we all lived in the shadow of a distant, but approaching, conflict.
By John E. Hodgkins
Temple, Maine, 1943. One Sunday in early spring, Pa's friends Vilio and Elmer come to the house, each carrying a bag filled with a quart of Krueger or a few stubbies of Genesee ale. On other Sundays they have been relaxed, but not today. Sipping out of their bags, they talk hollow at first, uneasy, not nervous but fidgety. Pa goes down cellar and fills a pitcher from a wooden barrel of last year's apple cider, fermented enough now to be a possible cure for cancer, and sets it on the kitchen table.
