Tallgrass Page 6

  Mom knew that, and she wanted Helen to understand that the things in the basket were presents, not just hand-me-downs. “Afton Gardner made a layette with Scottie dogs on it,” Mom said, “and there’s a cunning little quilt we pieced.”

  Helen bit her lip. One tooth was crossed a little over the other.

  We all stood there, none of the ladies knowing what to say, Helen looking off into the distance. I’d been feeling lonely with Marthalice gone, but I had Mom and Dad. Helen had nobody. Her folks had kicked her out, her husband was gone, and Susan was crippled from polio and couldn’t walk into town to see her. “Susan worked on one of those quilt squares,” I said suddenly. “Mom let me make one, and I told Susan, and she said she wanted to stitch on it. I thought you’d want to know.” My face felt warm, and I looked down at the porch floor and the Stitchers’ feet. The women had worn their good boots, not old galoshes. They wanted Helen to believe they were there on a social call, not there to hand out a charity basket.

  “Susan?” Helen asked.

  “I know I wasn’t supposed to tell her, but she was so excited you were going to have a baby.” I looked at Mom then, wondering if I’d said the wrong thing. I squirmed, hoping she wouldn’t scold because I’d let Susan know about the quilt.

  But Mom was smiling at Helen. “We all are. Nobody’s had a baby in a long time.”

  After a pause, Helen asked, “Which square?”

  “The worst one. I’m not very good.”

  “I’ll look for knots. Susan’s the worst there is for getting her thread tangled up. I’m always having to straighten it for her. I mean I was” She paused. “I guess it wouldn’t be nice if I turned down a quilt Susan helped make. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings.” The women smiled at Helen, who added shyly, “I think I have some tea bags.”

  “We wouldn’t want to rob you,” Mrs. Gardner said.

  “It’s no trouble.”

  Helen stood aside, and the ladies walked in, Mrs. Rubey exclaiming, “Why, isn’t this the dearest place,” although the room was plain, with so few chairs that I’d have to sit on the floor. Mom patted my shoulder as she passed me and gave me a look that said she was glad I’d come. I was, too. I didn’t always say the right thing, but that day I guess I did. And I’d learned from the Stitchers that there was a nice way to give a present, especially when somebody needed it.

  JUST BEFORE NEW YEAR’S, Buddy came home. We hadn’t expected him, and I was the first to see him, because I was outside sweeping snow off the side porch. Our house was two stories, with a parlor and bedroom on the first floor, three bedrooms upstairs, and a one-story ell in the back of the house for the kitchen and a dining room big enough for a round oak table plus a sofa and rocking chairs. Nobody used the parlor door in the front of the house—or the parlor, either. People always came around to the side, where wide steps led up to a porch. Unless the preacher called or the Jolly Stitchers met to quilt, visitors sat in the dining room.

  As I pushed the snow through the spindles at the edge of the porch, using a broom instead of a shovel, because the snow was dry and as powdery as baking soda, I saw an old Plymouth stop and a soldier get out on the passenger side. I started down the steps, thinking he wanted directions. But the soldier headed for the side porch, and then Sabra went tearing past me, barking and hopping up into the air, wild with joy, and I knew the soldier was Buddy. He came up onto the porch and hugged me, which wasn’t something we did in our family. But he was that glad to be home. And I was that glad to see him. I hugged him back, holding my face against the rough wool of his coat and smelling the cigarettes and hair oil. I could have held on forever, but Bud said, “There now.” I let go, and he looked me over. “You grew up while I was gone.”

  “You did, too,” I told him, and it was true. Buddy was taller and bigger, and in his uniform with the heavy coat and smart hat, he looked like a man. I grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door, yelling, “Everybody come a-runnin’! I’ve got a surprise for you!” I felt important that I’d been the first to see Buddy.

  Mom emerged from the kitchen, her hands wrapped in her apron, and said, “Oh my stars.” She put her hand over her heart and slid into a rocking chair.

  Granny was right behind her, and she rushed past Mom and grabbed Buddy and said, “Our soldier boy is home.” Buddy looked at me as if to ask if she knew which soldier boy he was and from which war, but I couldn’t tell, so I just shrugged.

  Buddy knelt beside Mom and took her hands, and gazing at Buddy, she said, “Rennie, you better go get your father.”

  I went out to the barn, where Dad was milking Lottie, and for a few seconds I watched the rhythmic pull as the milk squirted into the bucket. Dad’s hands were like weather-hardened leather. I hopped from one foot to the other, waiting for him to look up.

  He didn’t, but finally he asked, “Was that a car I heard?”

  “Yes, sir. There’s a man inside to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “Some soldier.”

  Dad looked up quickly then and searched my face, and I realized he was afraid that the soldier might be someone with bad news about Buddy. “He hitched a ride from the depot,” I said quickly, and grinned.

  When Dad saw the grin, he asked, “Is he a young soldier, as handsome as me?”

  “Nobody’s that good-looking.”

  “By Dan, you’re right about that.”

  “He’s smarter than you are, though.”

  Without breaking his rhythm, Dad squirted milk at me. “I reckon it’s not your brother, then.”

  “You won’t know unless you go in there.” I slid onto the edge of the milking stool, pushed him aside, and took over without so much as missing a beat. Dad had taught me how to milk after Buddy went to college, and he told me I was pretty good at it, but I figured he’d said that because he wanted me take over the milking for him. Still, I was pretty good.

  Dad got up slowly, squeezed my shoulder, and said, “You’re not worth much, Squirt, but I sure am glad we’ve got you at home yet. I guess we’ll keep you awhile longer.”

  It might have been the nicest thing he’d ever said to me, and it told me that although Bud had come home, Dad and I still were best pals. I swallowed and waited a long time, so that my voice didn’t crack, before I asked, “You milked June yet?”

  “All done.”

  The back door slammed then, and Dad glanced up with a dopey look on his face and said, “Well, I’ll be. He’s not so bad-looking at that.”

  Dad stood by Lottie’s stall, letting Buddy come to him, and they shook hands, and for a minute Dad didn’t speak. Then he put his arm abound Buddy and said, “Son.” That was all. The two of them went inside, and although the barn was so cold that I kept on my mittens while I finished the milking, I felt as warm as Christmas morning. My family wasn’t much for hugging and kissing and paying compliments, unless they were backhanded ones, but we all knew we loved one another fiercely. I wished I could bring Marthalice home and keep us all together, safe until the war was over. I knew we couldn’t go back to what we’d been before the war, with Buddy and Marthalice in high school and me a little kid building a fort out of tables with quilts over them. But still, I wanted us to be together again. I wished that every day until the war ended.

  THE NEXT DAY, BECAUSE it was school vacation, Buddy asked me to ride into Ellis with him while he picked up a carton of cigarettes at the drugstore. Dad had told him to take Red Boy, and I climbed in beside Buddy, shivering in the icy cold, my hands underneath my thighs to keep them warm, since the truck had no heater. The wind battered us as we drove over the frozen dirt ruts of the road, past fields covered with snow. But as we reached town, I rolled down the window so that I could wave and yell “Buddy’s home.” I wanted the whole town to hear.

  “I’m not the first soldier to come back to Ellis on leave, you know,” Buddy said the third or fourth time I called to someone.

  “Yeah, but you’re the best one.”

  “I guess that�
�s about right,” Buddy agreed, sounding just like Dad. In fact, he was a lot like Dad, the same size, the same thick hair. Both squinted when they smiled, and Buddy had Dad’s ears, which stuck out a little too much. I didn’t have their hair, but at least I didn’t have the ears, either.

  Buddy parked Red Boy at an angle in front of the Elliot Drugstore, but I told him that Mom and Dad didn’t trade there anymore. “Mom doesn’t like Mr. Elliot, and Pete Elliot’s still a dumb duck. Besides, Mr. Elliot put up a hate sign about the Japanese.”

  Buddy backed the truck out into the street and drove another block to the Lee Drug. “Does everybody here hate those people in the camp?”

  “I don’t guess everybody. Dad doesn’t.” I shrugged.

  “How about you?”

  “I’ve never met any of them. They don’t come into town much.” I jumped down out of Red Boy, but instead of rushing ahead of Buddy into the store, I waited by the door so that I could walk in next to him and people would know we were together. I took his hand, something the old Buddy wouldn’t have let me do, but my soldier brother didn’t seem to notice.

  Inside, Redhead Joe Lee was stacking round blue boxes of Evening in Paris dusting powder in a showcase. “Well, look who’s here. We’re proud as Punch of you boys,” he said, coming from behind the counter and holding out his hand and shaking his head as he looked Buddy up and down. “I suppose your dad won’t be fit to live with for the next month, what with you coming home looking like a soldier in a Pepsi-Cola advertisement.”

  “You know, I fell off old Pumpkins, our horse, when I was a kid and landed on my head. Dad said I wasn’t any good for nothing after that. He says if I’m the best the army has to offer, we might as well surrender.” Bud laughed.

  “That’s your dad’s way of complimenting you, all right.”

  Buddy shook Mr. Lee’s hand. Then Mr. Lee extended his hand to me. I wiped my hand on my overalls and took it.

  “Half of Mom thinks I’m going to be a war hero, and the other half wants me to spend my enlistment as a supply clerk,” Bud said.

  “And which half’s going to win out?”

  “I couldn’t say. They don’t ask me. If they did, I’d defend my country in Hawaii, protecting the palm trees and the hula-hula girls.

  “That’s choice work,” Mr. Lee said, then turned serious. “My advice to you is, don’t go looking to be a hero. Your folks don’t care about you getting a Purple Heart.”

  “I don’t intend to get one,” Bud said. I stared at him wide-eyed, thinking how awful it would be if he got hurt. He rubbed the top of my head and said, “Don’t look so glum, kiddo.”

  “Danny Spano got wounded,” I told him. “He was in a truck accident at Camp Carson, and he got discharged. He limps.”

  “Danny Spano fell off a bar stool, but don’t tell nobody you heard it from me,” Mr. Lee said. He chewed on the end of his mustache, which was not really red, but orange, and raised an eyebrow at Buddy.

  “Taken in the line of duty,” Buddy said, and they both laughed. I didn’t get it and thought then that men and women didn’t always find the same things to be funny. Men had a sense of humor meant just for men, like the Jolly Stitchers had one for one another.

  Mr. Lee straightened the jars of Pond’s Vanishing Cream that were sitting on the counter. “Old Man Spano acts like Danny won the Medal of Honor, although you and me know Spanos weren’t in the front of the line when courage was passed out. Danny didn’t get no good-conduct medal, I can tell you that,” Mr. Lee said.

  “Oh, Danny’s not so bad, at least that’s what Marthalice said once. I wouldn’t know myself. Beaner Jack’s another thing,” Buddy said.

  Mr. Lee left us to find a hot-water bottle for a woman who wore a Christmas corsage of silver bells and red ribbons pinned to her coat and complained she couldn’t keep her feet warm at night. Buddy and I wandered around the drugstore, examining eyewash and Ipana toothpaste, Buddy stopping to talk to people who shook his hand and wished him good luck and said they were proud of our boys in uniform. Mr. Spano came in for a tin of chewing tobacco and nodded at Buddy but didn’t speak to him. Looking through the window, I saw Beaner with Pete Elliot, lighting cigarettes under the corrugated iron awning across the street. Beaner turned his back to the wind and cupped his hands around his cigarette, and when he turned back, the tip of the cigarette glowed red.

  “You want a Hershey bar or a Baby Ruth?” Buddy asked me, looking at the stacks of candy bars next to the cash register, and I told him a Hershey. Buddy took one from the display, then reached under the counter for a Whitman’s Sampler, the big cream-colored box with a design on top like Granny’s cross-stitched picture that hung in our living room. “Mom and Granny will like this,” Buddy said. Whitman’s was my favorite, too, because there was writing inside the lid that told you about each piece of candy, so that you could avoid the coconut and the caramels. And when the candy was gone, you could use the box to store things. He put a carton of Lucky Strikes beside the candy, paid the girl at the cash register, and we sat down on stools at the green marble soda fountain, where Bud ordered Coca-Colas for us. I wondered if people would think I was on a date. Sure, right after they recognized me as Betty Grable.

  The girl poured the Cokes into cone-shaped paper cups stuck in metal holders. “Sir,” she said, setting down Buddy’s drink in front of him. “Ma’am.” Nobody’d ever called me that before, but then, I’d never before sat at the counter of the Lee Drug with a man in uniform. I sipped my Coke through two straws, but Buddy drank from the cup, sucking on the ice when he was finished.

  Two high school girls came into the drugstore and fussed over the face powders and rouges and lipsticks, twisting the tubes up to see the colors. They sat down on stools next to Buddy, and one of them, Marlys, leaned forward, her elbows on the counter, and said, “How’s tricks, Rennie?”

  That took me by surprise, because Marlys had never spoken to me. I knew she didn’t care about tricks, however; she wanted Buddy to notice her. When he’d joined up, Buddy was just another farm boy, but grown up and dressed in his uniform, he really was as handsome as a Pepsi-Cola model. Buddy looked at Marlys and nodded, then began crunching his ice. Mr. Lee came over and picked up the green check that the counter girl had torn off a pad and set down in front of us. He crumbled it and said, “Your money’s no good here, Bud.”

  Buddy thanked him, and I whispered, “Do people always buy things for you?”

  “Only when I’m with a pretty girl.” He grinned at me, and I smiled back. This was one of the great days of my life.

  We’d finished our Cokes, so Buddy picked up his cap, which was lying on the counter. Just then, Marlys sucked in her breath and said, “Oh my. Who let them out?” We swung around on our stools and saw three little Japanese boys who looked like brothers. The camp gave the Japanese passes to go into town to shop, and we saw men and sometimes women walking past our place in groups of three or four. They kept to themselves in town, doing their business quickly, quietly, nodding if someone spoke to them, but not going out of their way to be friendly. They shopped at the dry goods or the Lee Drug, but not the Elliot Drug, because of the sign. Some of the older Japanese boys had gone into the pool hall once, but the regulars made it clear that they weren’t welcome, so the Japanese hadn’t gone back.

  I looked around for the boys’ parents, but they weren’t in the drugstore. The two older boys examined the candy bars and boxes of chocolates, but the youngest, who might have been eight, stared at the soda fountain through steel-rimmed spectacles. When he saw us looking back at him, he turned his eyes to the floor, then moved behind one of his brothers.

  “We just got invaded by Japs,” the second girl said. They both looked at Buddy as if they expected him to pull out a tommy gun and mow them down.

  “Dad says they’re Japanese, not Japs,” I said, loudly enough for the two girls to hear me. The one who’d asked about tricks rolled her eyes, but I didn’t care. Those little boys weren’t going to hurt any
body.

  “What if you have to fight the Japanese?” I whispered to Buddy.

  He put on his cap and stood up. “It won’t be those three.” As we passed them, Buddy patted the little one on the head, ruffling the boy’s beetle-colored hair, and said, “Hey, soldier.” The boy glanced up at Buddy, his eyes big behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

  Buddy and I were almost to the door when Mr. Lee asked the boys where their parents were. The oldest boy shrugged. “Sneak out, did you?” Mr. Lee asked. Sometimes Japanese kids crawled under the bob wire at the camp to chase jack rabbits or hunt for arrowheads. They usually didn’t come into town. When the boy didn’t answer, Mr. Lee told the three they’d better get back to camp before somebody spotted them.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said.

  “Just a minute now,” Mr. Lee said. “You boys like ice cream?” They nodded, and Mr. Lee told the fountain girl to give each of the kids a double-decker cone.

  We went outside, where Pete and Beaner were leaning against our truck. Pete blew two streams of smoke out of his nose, then dropped his cigarette onto the ground. He pumped Buddy’s hand. Beaner slapped Buddy on the back and asked him what it was like being in the service. Then Beaner lowered his voice and said something I couldn’t hear, and Buddy shook his head while the other two laughed. That was more men’s humor. I was sorry those boys were there, because I didn’t want to share Buddy with them. But it was Buddy’s choice to be friendly, not mine. He asked when they were going to join up.

  “Heck, we ain’t got our draft notices yet,” Pete said.

  “I’m thinking I don’t want to turn out a cripple like Danny. He got hit by a truck,” Beaner added.

  Buddy glanced at me, as if warning me not to say we knew what really had happened to Danny, but I wasn’t that dumb.

  “Speak of the devil,” Pete said as Danny crossed the street. His hair hung in his face and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. I thought he was hoping somebody would say he looked an awful lot like John Garfield. But John Garfield didn’t have a gimpy leg, and he wasn’t a Spano.