Rafe laid back on the pillow and watched the smoke from his cigarette pirouette up to the rafters, only to be atomized by the ceiling fan circling in lazy arcs above. Charles would take care of her. Charles would provide. He took a drag, drawing the harsh smoke deep. He didn't know if he would be building landing strips in the Pacific or bridges in Europe. He didn't know if he would live or die. He only knew that Charles would take care of his sister.
Their wedding would be next Sunday, and the morning after that he would be on a Greyhound headed off to officer candidate school a few miles north, in Ft. Banning, Georgia. In three months he would be one of thousands of 90 Day Wonders with a single brass bar on his shoulders, then to the Army Corps of Engineers. If he made it, but he knew he would. He was ready for this. He wanted this. He wanted to avenge Pearl Harbor. Well, avenge, yes, but not in a rage, not out of control. He never lost it, he was never in a rage, which is why he was becoming an officer. He was methodical, calculating, systematic. Precise. Yes, that was the best word: precise. He took a final drag and crushed the butt into the ashtray on the nightstand.
Charles had taught him precision because everything Charles did required it. Every mortise, every dowel, every cut on every piece of wood, was a study in geometric perfection. Precision required patience, assembly required precision. When whatever was being built was finished, whether a chair or a table or, in what Charles was making now- a bed, it would be as perfect as natural woods and fibers would allow.
Charles had wanted to enlist after Pearl Harbor but his gimpy leg made that impossible. It was a good thing, too. Someone so kind would not survive, Rafe thought to himself. He was an artist, enwrapped in his woods and glues, nails, screws, and stains. His interest would have been in the stock and butt of the rifle, its curves and finish, not in what the rifle did. It was a good thing because now Charles would take care of his Caroline.
