"What do you know, Mo?" Frank quips in his newly acquired central Jersey slang.
"Not much Bro, you?" retorts Francis recalling that same dialect from his pre-war Philadelphia days.
"Could be our year with Stargell in left," the younger twin hedges, looking west instead of at the tears in his brother's eyes.
"It's only April," shrugs Francis swiping at his cheeks. "First they gotta beat the Dodgers and Giants."
"When are you heading west?" Frank grunts, taking a quick puff from the Chesterfield barely gripped between index and middle fingers.
"Any day now. Due in White Sands in May."
It had been twenty years since the twins had last seen each other, but it seemed like two lifetimes ago. Frank had done his time in the Army's liberation of Europe and returned to a new daughter in Eastern Kentucky, but Francis had stayed on at Weisbaden until a recent transfer to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
In the spring of 1963 the country was beefing up air defenses in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of the previous fall. It was just the chance Francis needed to convince his German wife to bring their ten-year-old son stateside.
"Stopping by Fairchance?" entreats Frank sending a stream of smoke into the slow dusk as a loose line of big black birds flaps north toward First Watchung.
"Not with Edna here. Say, can you drop off these metals?"
"An Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross? Good thing that tail gun of yours didn't sight us rolling into Dachau."
"Yeah, one if by land, two if by air and all that rigamarole."
"What about your little girl in West Virginia?"
"We'll take that one to our graves, little brother."
"I don't know what to say, Francis."
"All we can say is see you next time around."
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