The Boy Who Went Away by Gottlieb Eli

Author:Gottlieb, Eli [Gottlieb, Eli]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2015-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

THE ONLY ESCAPE OUT OF THINGS SEEMED TO BE to get sick. To get red, rashy, weak in the head; to feel yourself shooting up tall, and then suddenly shrinking, or to experience the sensation that your skin had been drawn taut like the top of a tom-tom drum, and made to throb. Temporary sickness could be inhaled from the poisonous particles brewing in the air over the smoky town dump, which would turn your face dependably green for two days; it could be gulped from certain of the potions with which Harta caused her body to smell like a garden (Prince Matchabelli worked like a charm). Sickness was rest; sickness was attention; sickness, above all, was a way to swing the focus of the family away from Fad.

Another more specific advantage to being sick was that it allowed me to watch Vietnam on television without interruption and for hours at a time. When baseball wasn’t on that summer, there was always Vietnam—a loop of hilly green forests, little men with skewed Asian eyes, and peaceful villages erupting in flame. On top of Vietnam, there was that other war, the war that was taking place on the streets of America right under our noses and in living color. This was the war waged by students against the war in Vietnam, who could be seen on television in broad daylight shouting, running, and falling as if in combat. They carried signs and peace symbols and were trampled regularly by the horses of the police. Blood gushed through their long hair and down their colorful T-shirts. If they were boy students, they sometimes fought openly with the police, throwing punches like on real boxing matches.

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