Exley by Brock Clarke

this year’s book was about a war (I guessed that every America on the Same Page book would be about a war until America stopped being in one), except this year the book was about an old war, where people rode horses instead of planes and helicopters and tanks, and fired pistols instead of automatic rifles. I say “people,” but it was really about a boy who was too young to fight in the war but joined the army anyway because his fatherhad fought and died in the war and the boy loved his father and he also loved his father’s horse and gun, which were now the boy’s, since his father had died, and which the boy took into battle, which he couldn’t stop talking about: he couldn’t stop talking about the bodies and the bullets and the blood, the blood, and it was clear that the boy, or the author, or both, loved the battles and the bodies and the bullets and the blood, too, even though he, or they, kept saying how really terrible it all was.
    â€œI remember now,” I said. I reached into my desk and pulled out my copy of the book. I’d read the book the Friday before, in the nine five-minute periods between when one class ended and the next began.
    â€œGood,” Mrs. T. said. Then she looked at us with big, hopeful eyes. We were probably looking at her the same way. None of us knew what we were supposed to do next. I think America on the Same Page’s idea was that after reading the book, we wouldn’t be able to look at the world in the same way, and if that were the case, then we wouldn’t be able to talk about it in the same way, either. But how
were
we supposed to see it? How
were
we supposed to talk about it? I think we expected Mrs. T. to tell us; I think she expected us to tell her. But we weren’t going to tell her anything. You could see Mrs. T. realized this, too. It was scary, a little, to watch Mrs. T. become less hopeful and more resentful as she realized that maybe America was on the same page, but we definitely were not. Her eyes got smaller and smaller as she tried to figure out what to do. Finally, she opened to page —— of the book and told us to do the same. We did. Then Mrs. T. put on her glasses (they’d been hanging on a black string around her neck) and read this passage:
    It was finally morning. It had stopped raining and the sun had begun to shine and there was a rainbow arcing yellow and blue and bloodred over the battlefield and the steaming bodies of the men and their horses. The ones that were still alive were moaning in the newdawn; the ones that were dead were dead. The boy realized how awful it was to be dead, because once you were dead, that was all there was to be said about you anymore. “My father is dead,” the boy said. It felt terrible to say that. “But I am alive,” the boy said, and that felt wonderful. And then the boy realized why there had been wars and why therewould always be wars: because it was better to be alive than to be dead. The boy shouldered his father’s rifle and whispered, “Go,” in his father’s horse’s ear. And they went.
    When Mrs. T. was done reading, she took off her glasses, looked at us, and asked hopefully, “Well, what do you think?”
    No one said anything at first. The only sound was Harold tapping his pencil against his forehead. This was how he thought. Everyone else was quietly looking down at their desks, waiting for Harold to say something first. Because Harold was always the one who said something first.
    â€œI didn’t like the part about the rainbow,” Harold finally said.
    â€œYou didn’t,” Mrs. T. said. It wasn’t a question. Her voice was so flat you could have slept on it.
    â€œBecause you don’t even
need
rain,” Harold said. “I went to Niagara Falls this summer. There was a
rainbow
, but no
rain
. Only water. It should be called a waterbow. That’s what I feel.”
    â€œSo whatever,”