As they all inched down the aisles, wedged together toward the exit, she suddenly appeared, close against him, surprised and caught.

"Hey, look, Eileen," he said, "hey, look, I'm sorry. I was out of line. Just feeling a little weightless upstairs, okay?"

She studied the expression carefully, thoughtfully. She didn't flick on a quick okay-soldier smile. She bit her lower lip and frowned. "I shouldn't have run off like that. My fault, I take offense too quickly." Then she grinned. "That's very Irish, isn't it? Listen, good luck, O'Malley. I really mean it."

He held her wrist; it was warm in his large hand. She was very short, and he had to lean down to her. "If you really mean it, how about a phone number? Come on, O'Flaherty, I've been gone a long time. I could use some kindhearted company. For a couple of drinks?"

She dug a scrap of paper from a pocket in her skirt and as they moved, their bodies carried along by bodies, down the aisle, she jotted her name and address and phone number, then pressed the paper into his hand.

"I'm a working girl, you know, Patrick. Kind of give me a shove toward the front of the ship, will you?"

The address was in Woodside, Queens, and Eileen winked at his puzzled expression. "I told you I share with four others: my mother, father, and two brothers. Come on down here a minute." When he ducked down toward her, she whispered in his ear, "That's where we start from. There are places, you know."

She disappeared in the press of young male bodies and when he finally saw her again, some twenty minutes later, and she checked his name on her clipboard, he carefully put his duffel bag on the floor next to his feet, reached for her face with both of his hands and for a long moment held his lips against hers to the cheers of the other soldiers.

Eileen O'Flaherty, freed finally, grinned, adjusted her cap and smoothed her blouse and said cheerfully, "Well, isn't it nice that the soldier enjoyed his flight so much."

THIRTY-TWO.

DUDLEY KENYON'S WAKE WAS held at the Armory on Seventh Avenue and 125th Street. It was a misplaced gray fortress with battlements overlooking unworthy terrain.

The hall where the coffin had been placed was huge, a drill hall converted for the purpose, with an arrangement of chairs, banks of flowers, an aisle down which black ushers escorted visitors.

"Yes, can I help you?" The man's voice was powerful and deep and he held his head to one side as a sign of courtesy to the soldier who stood so obviously ill at ease in the surroundings.

"Yes, sir. I've come to pay my respects to Private Kenyon and his family."

The funeral director said, "How kind of you. May I have your name, sir, to relay to the family."

As he gave his name, the funeral director jotted it on a small pad which he held in the palm of his hand.

Beyond the solicitous funeral director, Patrick saw nothing but dark faces. To his left, he spotted flashes of bright color, young men and women decked out in African garb, men and women dressed alike in long, flowing billows of color, topped by huge, fragile, billowy, spun-sugar bubbles of hair. As he went down the aisle, he felt a wave of hostility unmistakably directed at him. He caught the coming together of faces, the folding of arms, the unblinking bright eyes that followed him and made him intensely aware of himself.

He was escorted to the coffin and he could feel all the attention in the room center on him, on the back of his head, along his neck and stiff, rigidly erect body. He tried not to look anywhere but at the coffin, but he glanced involuntarily at the honor guards who flanked the flag-draped box. The tall, thin chocolate soldier at the foot was stoned out of his skull; his round eyes, glazed, looked through Patrick without seeing him; his mouth was slack and he was humming softly.

Patrick crossed himself, bowed his head and stood uncertainly since there was no kneeling bench. He stopped midway through a prayer and opened his eyes and stared at the contours of the coffin. He tried to visualize Kenyon inside, in there, Kenyon dead in there, but nothing came back to him and the bright tomato-red of the stripes of the flag held his gaze to fascination. What the hell any of this had to do with Kenyon or with him he couldn't say.

His elbow was touched lightly and he moved away from the coffin, grateful to be escorted to the side of the room where everyone was dressed in black and seemed older and somewhat less hostile and angry.

"This is Private Kenyon's mother," he was told. "This is Private Patrick O'Malley, come to offer his respects."

Patrick offered his hand and said, "I'm sorry for your trouble, Mrs. Kenyon. Dudley was a friend of mine."

She lifted her face, tilted it to one side for a better view of him and in so doing offered a better view of herself. It was an unexpected face, neither young nor old, ageless, smooth and warm and brown. She narrowed her dark eyes for a moment and her voice was deep and a small smile crept up the corners of her mouth, vague and familiar. She held his hand firmly in her own gloved hand and examined him with interest.

"Didn't nobody call him Dudley," she said softly.

"No. No, ma'am. I mean, we always called him Kenyon. We all did."

She nodded as though he had met some requirement, released his hand and indicated the chair beside her. "Your ears are fire-red. You walk from the subway in that cold wind?"

He touched an ear stupidly and nodded.

"Well, you were good to come all this way," she said without knowing where he'd come from, only that it had to be some distance from where they were now. It was an acknowledgment of a different kind of distance and Patrick bit his lip because he didn't know how to speak to her. "You were together in Nam?"

He nodded again, then realized he had to speak. "Yes, ma'am, same unit. We were, well, Kenyon and I, we worked together for more than a year."

Her eyes, beetle-black, carefully blue-lidded, slightly theatrical, with long fringy lashes, studied his face and accused him of nothing, yet he felt accused. The accusation came from within himself, pounded with his heartbeat, his eye blink, his every awareness of life. He sat here and Kenyon, what was left of what used to be Kenyon, was up there in that box under that flag.

Look, lady, I'm alive. Okay. You don't know anything about it, about how it was, about Kenyon and me and living and dying and killing and getting killed.

A bead of sweat started down along his temple though he didn't feel warm. He felt somewhat short of breath and each inhalation included the heavy, sweet scent, sweet and spicy, powdery, sensuous, which surrounded Kenyon's mother. Her face was broad, with high cheekbones that gave an odd smiling countenance. There was something almost mocking about the way she held her head to one side, the way she studied him and was aware of his discomfort.

She clicked her tongue against her teeth and spoke with an edge of annoyance, as though it was a passing, temporary thing, this whole thing about Kenyon. "I told that boy he was a damn fool for getting into it, but he never asked my opinion or cared a damn for it anyway." She shook her head and stared straight at the coffin for a moment, then back at Patrick as though for confirmation that she was right after all. "Listen, were you with him? Right then?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't call me 'ma'am,' honey. Sounds like you fit to choke over it." She watched the blood fill his face and reached for his hand and smiled. "It's okay. I guess you just a little bit out of water here. I know about you, Patrick O'Malley."

He showed surprise and she sighed. "Oh, Kenyon wrote to me." Her voice was husky and she directed a sardonic glare at the coffin, then turned back to Patrick. "He wrote home to his mama, like all good boys do. For a little piece of bread, Mama, a little loan against the future. Well, what the hell, he ain't got much a future now, has he?" Her voice changed, filled with a womanliness, a rich wholeness that encompassed Patrick. "He told me you was a friend, baby, and you came here, so I know he was right. I'm glad you was a friend." Her hand pressed his once, then released him, an acknowledgment of who he was and that he was not an intruder here. She moved her head to indicate the other side of the room, her eyes went toward them, then back to him. "Don't you pay them no mind but don't go expecting they're going to thank you for coming like you was King Tut or something."

Her attitude and manner disturbed him. Some essence of her surrounded him, and at the center of himself, he felt a terrible panic and sense of loss for something he'd never had. She created an intimacy with him and he wanted more, wanted some part of herself, some share of the deep world wisdom her bright and weary face revealed. Yet in his uneasiness, Patrick was not unaware that she stirred some fierce and lonely sexuality within him.

This is Kenyan's mother, for Christ's sake.

It didn't matter. She was more; she was someone elemental, who didn't have to be defined or explained or located. She was someone he would never know and he wanted some share of her unknown warmth and amused, ironic, unquestioning understanding and acceptance of unspeakable things.

Kenyon had said, "Hell, my mama got lots a' bad reflections on her. Don't bother her, why the hell should it bother me?"

Patrick understood something about that now. There was a different measuring here, a different meaning for Kenyon's mother. She was of a different reality.

"Oh, Gawd," she said suddenly. "Oh, Lord, here she comes, the old woman. No way to keep her out once she gets it into her mind."

Patrick turned toward the center aisle and watched a small, straight, thin, gray-haired old black woman hurry toward the coffin. The funeral director followed closely and a pruney old man in clerical garb limped after them.

"That's Kenyon's great-grandma," Kenyon's mother told him.

"His great-grandma?"

Her face beamed with dark, hard pride and her eyes stayed on the old woman. "My own grandmother; eighty-nine years old and full of hell, but I wished she'd a' stayed home."

"Oh, Lawd," the old woman called out in a thin, high, shrill, piercing voice as she arrived at the coffin. She leaned over and whacked the coffin with the palm of her hand for a few resounding thumps and called out, beseeching the high ceiling, "Oh, Sweet Lawd Jesus, have mercy on his poor sinner's soul. Oh, Lawd, have mercy. Sweet Jesus, have mercy. He goin' home now!"

From the other side of the room, the bright African side, came a deep voice, sardonic, mocking, "A-men, sister, a-men. Lawdy, he a' goin' home!"

There was a soft wave of scornful laughter which rolled slowly from that side of the room, swept across them tangibly, heavily.

The old woman whirled around, glared wildly and shook a fist of anger at the direction of the sound. "Shame! Shame on you. Shame! The Lawd see you. He know who you are. Yes, Sweet Jesus, you sees them sinners, don't ya?"

A man's voice called out in answer, "Yah, sister, I sees 'em all right, I does!"

The whole left side of the room began to vibrate with a chanting sound accompanied by the sharp crack of hand-clapping.

"Oh, shit," Kenyon's mother said, "they gonna start that again?"

The minister, hardly bigger than the old great-grandmother, and as old, wrapped a wiry arm about her shoulders and directed her toward Kenyon's mother. Patrick stood up quickly to make room for her and Kenyon's mother held her in the chair firmly, powerfully.

"Now, grandma, they just funnin' you," she said. She winked at Patrick, included him in some small and personal conspiracy. "They just mean little bastards, grandma, but don't you go giving them nothing to work with, you hear? You know and I know, our Kenyon, he never did go for your Jesus stuff. So if you'll just knock it off, I'll get them to knock it off, okay?"

As she spoke, she relaxed her grip, relented her strength carefully, once assured the old woman would stay put. The old woman's bony hand poked and dug into the depths of her large, cracked black-leather pocketbook, then withdrew a small, worn, leather-covered Bible. The hand dove again, moved frantically, then emerged with smudged plastic-framed eyeglasses. She put them on, blinked hugely, then confronted Patrick "Who this here?" she demanded brusquely. "Who this white boy standing here?"

Kenyon's mother motioned him closer; she caught his sleeve and pulled him toward them. "Why this here is a soldier same as Kenyon was, come to pay his respects,"

Under the old woman's accusing, angry glare, Patrick nodded awkwardly and took the small, cold, dry hand in his and was afraid his grip might crush the collection of fragile bird bones. "I'm sorry for your trouble, ma'am. Real sorry about your great-grandson."

She stared with her roundly magnified eyes and pulled her hand free, then shoved the glasses up along her nose. "Gone home to Jesus. Lawd, yes, gone home. Oh, Sweet Lawd, but don't I know trouble. You think I don't know trouble, boy? I've known my troubles and that sweet lamb's gone home to his Savior and his Lawd now. Amen."

Kenyon's mother stood up, spoke privately to the old minister who took her place and bent with the old woman over the Bible. The two of them chanted in thin-voiced unison over the small printed words as the old woman's finger traced along needlessly. Both of them knew the words by rote, yet she pretended to pick them out.

"Well," Kenyon's mother said heavily, "you might as well meet Kenyon's wife. That is, if you've a mind to."

"Well, yes, I guess so." He didn't want to meet any of them. They sat sprawled or stood languidly among the wooden chairs and waited and he felt his intrusion and their resentment. He just wanted to get the hell out of there, but the touch of Kenyon's mother, her hand on his arm, led him toward them.

The mass of color, the wild patterns, the shapeless garments, the rounded full heads, the dark faces, were indistinguishable one from the other. They seemed to him like toys, manufactured dolls in their studied, tight casualness.

She was tall but he couldn't tell if she was heavy or thin beneath the hang of her brown-and-yellow garment. Her long hands seemed bony as they played with the edges of her sleeves, plucked and pinched as she confronted him. Her face, light brown, skin drawn tight against flat bones, wasn't pretty. It was contorted, nostrils flared with quick-breathing anger, lips pulled back into a threatening smile.

"Who's this?" she asked with a snap of her fingers toward him. "This what the Army sent to make it all come fine?"

"This is a soldier buddy of Kenyon's," Kenyon's mother said and released his arm and stepped back and watched.

"Mrs. Kenyon, I'm very sorry. About your husband."

She stared at his offered hand and slowly, deliberately slid her hands up along her arms, inside her wide sleeves. "Yes, you're sorry. You're sorry, shit. How come you standing here and he's lyin' in that box up there?"

Someone came beside her, a man dressed in a red-and-black robe. He had a neat round Afro and a small mustache and beard. He put an arm around the girl and she tried to shake him off.

"No, let him tell me. How come all these white boys come marching home on their two good legs and how come Kenyon's up there in that damn box?"

There was absolutely no place to begin. He scanned the waiting faces and they blended into the embodiment of his own accusation. He murmured something, some words of regret, turned and left them without hearing what they said.

It had started to rain with a cold, hard intensity. He yanked his cap from his back pocket, jammed it low on his brow, bent into the wind. A street voice called out from the doorway of a tenement but he didn't catch more than the sentiment: Get outta here, you.

He was almost at the subway entrance when he realized he had been hearing his name. He turned and waited as the bearded man in black and red came toward him.

"You got time for a drink?"

Patrick shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"

It was dark in the bar, which was filled with men hunched over drinks, whispering together, laughing, arguing in groups of two or three. Sudden bursts of sound punctured the air; the jukebox shrieked with jangling music. A few heads turned, eyes slid over him with mild curiosity as Patrick followed to a booth in the rear. The man slid in opposite, held up two fingers toward the bar.

"Scotch okay?"

"Fine."

"I'm Kenyon's brother."

Patrick squinted in the bad light and the face did seem familiar, even seen in the dimness, but whether it was because it was the mother's face or brought with it memory of the dead brother, it was hard to say. The drinks arrived and the waiter said, "How's it goin' down, Ed-boy?"

"Yeah, Charlie."

He touched Patrick's glass with his fingertips, moved it slightly toward him. "Look like you need this. Not used to the cold weather?"

Patrick shook his head. He felt the rawness down his spine. The cold wrapped around him and he shuddered, took a good swallow and grimaced. "Wow, that'll kill the cold."

"You in Nam long?"

"As long as Kenyon. Nearly a year. We were medics together. I saw him get it." His fingers wrapped around the glass and he was silent for a moment, then raised his face in resolve. "Look, you want to hear about it? I mean, do you have a need to hear about it? Because if you do, I'll tell you. But if you don't, hell, let's let it go at that, okay?"

Kenyon's brother carefully lifted his glass and gestured for Patrick to do the same. He tapped their glasses together and said, "Cheers, baby." He drank, eyes closed, sighed. "That's what I needed. Look, reason I came after you was this. I wanted to thank you for coming. You didn't have to and I wanted to thank you."

"Goddamn it, I did have to and don't you thank me."

Ed Kenyon considered the pale blond kid for a long moment, studied him, searched him, then he nodded slowly and drank again.

"When's the funeral?" Patrick asked.

The brother shrugged. "Well, there's a bit of a to-do about that. Like about everything else in this whole thing. Kenyon's wife wants one kind of funeral; his grandma wants a down-home-style Baptist service. They're kind of pulling it between them. I guess when it gets right down to it, it don't matter what the hell they do at this point."

"It don't matter shit what they do at this point," Patrick said. He spoke in Kenyon's voice with Kenyon's inflection. Both men seemed slightly stunned, as though some communication had finally been accomplished without any effort, consciously, on their part.

Patrick emptied his glass and asked if Ed wanted another, but Ed shook his head. "You don't want another drink now, baby. You go on home now."

"Yeah. I guess so." He leaned back and felt empty and directionless. "Jesus," he said softly, "we were friends."

"I'm glad you were, O'Malley. I'm glad you were."

There was nothing left of it now. He wanted to tell Kenyon's brother that there should be something left of it, that he wasn't a stranger, that the black faces which regarded him with cold, hostile suspicion, which had declared him an intruder, had no right, didn't know. He felt tired and the Scotch hit him across the forehead. He reached out a hand toward Kenyon's brother, palm upward. There was a slight, awkward hesitation, then Kenyon's brother slapped his palm and turned his own hand for the ritual. With Kenyon it had been a warm and joyous and easy and natural contact. Now Patrick felt embarrassed and self-conscious. He eased himself from the booth.

"You take care now," Kenyon's brother told him.