The League of Berries and Laurels -- Ch. 6 (Pt. I)

** To Be Decommissioned on 4/1/24 **

For a time, Francis was a radiant presence within the household, as he was within the folds of the family, and in the world at large, seeming ever relaxed, and often he joined his two younger brothers, and the twins, in the den to watch the cartoons of Japan. His cadet uniform, worn when he returned home and all were glad to see him, his father’s brooding anger the lone notable exception, has since been pressed and laundered to remove the salt stains about the hem. It hangs in the sparse closet of his sparse room. Despite its resplendence, it will not be donned until the time arrives for Francis to depart the frame of this house once more by morning’s light, looked upon with the same admiration as was afforded his arrival, for San Diego. His laughter was, for a time, more profound than his sibling’s, who are at an age that the cartoon was designed to amaze, rather than underwhelm. The villain’s continuous and awesome transformation into ever more refined and lethal forms struck him, in particular, as false; the alien fighter’s ability to meet these demands by finding ever more reason to fight, falser. It was later, as they were watching professional wrestling, a product that was forbidden in the house until Francis had control of the remote, and for which the twins were still led to their room, obligingly, one step at a time, that Ulie began to notice another aspect. Pale, agitated, and sweaty was this.

When he was in his early humor, their mother’s dotage was absolute, and, as sensitivity would note, any mention of San Diego or its causes were immediately supplanted with gay remembrances of times when the family was all together, or, failing that, talk was stopped up with every manner of meal. When the latter aspect produced itself, all was bitterness, scrutiny, and harassment.