Learning

Norgren 9 Constance Norgren Learning The whole family takes the D train from Brooklyn to visit the Intrepid. They can see the gray masts from Ninth Avenue. It's Saturday, early spring. Sam is six. He peers through the gunsight and maneuvers the long gun. Robert climbs into the cockpit of the small bomber, makes the noises of explosion, shuts his eyes. They walk on the deck, imagine fighter planes landing right where they are. Outside, they stop to get pretzels and talk. They say it's for the history. They say that this has nothing to do with war. The veteran searches for his buddy among 57,000 names. There are five pages of Jones in the directory of the dead. He's drunk on beer. He finds it: T. Jones. We called him T. for Trouble. He looks around for somebody to listen, tells her about Jones: his read and yellow headband, the radio that he never turned off, the photograph of a girl that he never talked about— a girl next to a car, the night they all got tatooed and he yelled loudest, the father who taught him to shoot at tin cans. ...