This Is Not the Tropics: Stories

The Boy in the Band Uniform

59 The Boy in the Band Uniform The boy in the band uniform was standing in Samuel’s kitchen when Zoe saw him from the hallway. Behind the boy she glimpsed through the garden-level window the sidewalk and the steps that had brought him into the house. She hadn’t heard him come in. Samuel chopped an onion for the stew boiling on the stove. He did not acknowledge the boy’s presence. Samuel was a surgeon, and she had seen him cut like this, precise and firm, during surgery at the field hospital where they had met. Zoe was a nurse. The boy stood stiff and still, at attention, but he did not seem ill at ease with Samuel’s silence. Nothing indicated he had just spoken, though Zoe had heard him before she entered the room, “Sir, we have no food. We need food. Will you help?” The band uniform had obviously been tailored to fit the boy’s slender body. The thick fabric bunched slightly, but otherwise the tailoring was expert. The uniform had been carefully pressed as well. He wore also a white plastic hat with a chin strap. The white The Boy in the Band Uniform plastic had yellowed everywhere except for a white patch in the middle where an insignia of some sort had been removed. In the other room Zoe heard Samuel’s friends William and James laughing together. She understood finally they were mimicking the boy, marching and saluting, collapsing together in laughter. Grown men mocking a boy. This hilarity over the misfortunes of others still shocked her. No matter how she tried, she could not find a way to understand it. She had seen it numerous times, how people ran from their houses if they heard an explosion nearby, not with concern or even curiosity, which she might have understood, but with glee. Excitement. Tragedy an entertaining spectacle. There was the day she had been traveling by jeep between hospitals when she and the driver had come upon the scene of a terrible accident. A large crowd had gathered, yet no one made an attempt to help. There had been no survivors. Although the bodies had not been disturbed, no one showed any sign of moving on. Instead, among the gawkers was a feeling of elation, hilarity even, as people took turns miming what had happened bringing the crowd to laughter, or striking the poses of the dead to great approval from the group. They were slaphappy over catastrophe. She justified the behavior by telling herself it was how they dealt with so much pain and suffering. Still, the way William and James were carrying on 60 The Boy in the Band Uniform 61 now made it hard to extend her theory to this situation. When she looked back to the kitchen the boy was gone. Samuel had finished chopping the onion and was now cubing the mutton. The smells were wonderful. Samuel did all the cooking. Each evening he came home from the hospital and cooked as a way to forget the day. “Where did he go?” Samuel did not look up from his work. “I sent him along.” “So quickly? What did you give him?” He looked up at her then back down to his work. “I gave him nothing.” Zoe went to the window and looked out on the street. The boy was nowhere to be seen. “Nothing? Is he coming back?” “No. I can’t encourage this sort of thing. It will start a problem.” She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she did, “What sort of problem?” “You’re letting your feelings get in the way again, Zoe.” He was right. Her feelings were getting in the way. This was Samuel’s house, his food. She couldn’t offer what wasn’t hers, but she could go out on the street and find that boy and give him what he needed or go with him to find it. She had admired the boy’s initiative. Unlike so many others, he was not sitting on a street corner begging. She had been impressed with his desire to look smart and sharp, how he had taken it upon himself to go The Boy in the Band Uniform ask for help. Samuel was waiting when she spoke, “You haven’t answered my question,” she said. “That was an enterprising boy. He was a nice boy.” “I don’t know anything about that boy except that he’s...