Aunt

Anna

&

4.2.

Uncle Joe

a story by Clarkson Crane

I wasn't especially pleased, that Sunday, when Bob. told me his Aunt Anna and his Uncle Joe were coming from Deep River, Kansas, to California and that he had invited them to spend a month with us. I really had no right to object. Our house in the East Bay Hills belongs as much to Bob as to me and it certainly is large enough-three bedrooms, one of them with twin beds, and in the living room a sort of studio couch where someone can sleep if necessary. The year before, my mother had been with us for a week. and Bob had got along beautifully; I think Bob liked to have a mothersubstitute around; probably, that was why he seemed so glad Aunt Anna was coming.

She

"You don't think they' 11 suspect?" I asked.

Bob laughed.

"What could they know about such things? After all, Deep River, Kansas. Anyway, did your mother suspect?"

"I really don't know. I don't think so."

"Of course, she didn't," said Bob.

At any rate, my right shoulder, the one that stopped the shell fragment on Iwo, began to ache, as it always does when something disturbs me. The fact that I was wounded on Iwo doesn't mean I was a hero or anything like that. Far from it. I was away behind the fighting, which was almost over, minding my own business, when these three shells came over, God knows why. Probably just the whim of some Japanese officer. But they killed two men and wounded seven, so the whim paid off. The war was over as far as I was concerned (just three months after I shipped out of San Francisco), over, that is, except for several army hospitals and four or five trips to surgery.

So my shoulder began to ache. "What are we going to do with Pandora's box?" I asked.

Bob thought for a minute. I always like him when he looks He was standing in our thoughtful. brick-paved patio, the sunlight on his crew-cut blond hair. My old painful feeling for him swept through me and I knew I'd agree to anything no matter how many aunts and uncles he brought home.

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