Heroes by Robert Cormier Page A

table tennis championship. What a great day for you, Francis …”
    A deep sadness settles on me, as if winter has invaded my bones.
    “You made it possible. You let me win.”
    “You miss the point, Francis. You deserved to win. It was more than a game. More than a score. You played like a champion and deserved the trophy …”
    Why did it have to turn out like this?
    “But those days are gone now. And the war is over. Everything’s different. Not only the war but everything,” he says. Lifting his hands, he studies them. Then looks down at his body. He rubs histhighs. “No wounds that you can see, Francis. But I’m worn out. They called it jungle fever at first but I don’t think they really know what it is …”
    Maybe your sins catching up with you
.
    “And you, Francis. Will you be okay? Will you heal? Be like new again?”
    “Yes.” I don’t feel like going into all the details or telling him about Dr. Abrams because it’s not going to happen, anyway.
    Silence falls in the room and he shifts his body in the chair. I touch the gun in my pocket to remind me of my mission.
    “How did you get in the army so young?” he asks, focusing his eyes on me, the way he did in the old days, as if my words were the most important he had ever heard.
    I tell him about the forged papers. “They were taking anybody with a heartbeat in those days.”
    “Just a kid.” Shaking his head, his eyes alight with admiration. “And you became a hero …”
    I had always wanted to be a hero, like Larry LaSalle and all the others, but have been a fake all along. And now I am tired of the deception and have to rid myself of the fakery.
    I look away from him, out the window at the sun-splashed street. “I’m not a hero,” I tell him.
    “Of course you are. I heard about you, read the stories in the newspapers …”
    “Know why I went to war?”
    “Why does anybody go to war, Francis?”
    “I went to war because I wanted to die.” Lowering my voice as if in the confessional with Father Balthazar: “I was too much of a coward to kill myself. In the war, in a battle, I figured it would be easy to get killed. And I wouldn’t be disgracing my father and mother’s name. I looked for chances to die and instead killed others, and two of them kids like me …”
    “You saved your patrol. You fell on that grenade …”
    “When I fell on that grenade, I wasn’t trying to save those GIs. I saw my chance to end it all, in a second. But a freak accident happened. My face got blown off and I didn’t die …”
    His voice is a whisper: “Why did you want to die, Francis?”
    “Don’t you know?” Stunned by his question, then realizing that he hadn’t seen me that night.
    “Nicole. Nicole Renard.”
    His mouth drops open and he flinches as if reeling from an unexpected blow.
    “I stayed behind that night.” My own voice is now a whisper. “I heard what you were doing to her.And I saw her afterward. Those eyes of hers and what was in them …”
    Shaking his head, he says: “You wanted to die because of that?”
    I still want to die
.
    “What you did to her. And I did nothing. Just stood there and let it happen …”
    “Oh, Francis. You’re too hard on yourself. You didn’t do anything you should feel guilty about, that should make you want to die. You couldn’t have stopped me, anyway, Francis. You were just a child …”
    “So was she.” My lips trembling.
    A long sigh escapes him.
    “Is that why you came here? To tell me this?”
    I take the gun out of my pocket.
    “Here’s why I came.”
    I aim the gun at him, my finger on the trigger.
    But my hand is shaking and my caves are running and I am suddenly overwhelmed by the knowledge of what I am about to do. Why has it come to this?
    “You could have had anybody,” I say, my voice too loud, booming in my ears. “All those beautiful ladies at the dance that night. Why Nicole?”
    “The sweet young things, Francis. Even their heat is