He threw himself into holiday plans, wanting all the traditional trappings—the food, the tree, the gifts, the celebration—in case he never had the chance again. He made a scooter for the boys and bought them Holloway suckers, Cracker Jacks, Bunte’s Tango bars and Captain Marvel comic books. For Elly he bought something frivolous—the popular Chinese Checker game. It took two to play Chinese Checkers, but he bought it anyway as a portent of hope for his return.
December 22 brought news that a large Japanese landing had been staged just north of Manila. On Christmas Eve came news of another, just south of that city, which was in danger of falling to the enemy.
After that Elly and Will made a pact to leave the radio off for the remainder of the holiday and concentrate on the boys’ enthusiasm.
But she knew. Somehow, she knew.
Filling the stockings, Elly looked up and watched Will drop in a handful of roasted peanuts, nearly as excited as if the stocking were his instead of Thomas’s. She felt a stinging at the back of her nose and went to him before any telltale evidence formed in her eyes. She laid her cheek against his chest and said, “I love you, Will.”
He toyed with her hair as she stood lightly against him. “I love you, too.”
Don’t go, she didn’t say.
I have to, he didn’t reply.
And in moments they returned to filling the stockings.
For Will, Christmas morning was bittersweet, watching the boys’ eyes light up at the sight of the scooter, laughing while they dug into their stockings, holding them—still in their pajamas—on his lap while they sampled the candy and ogled the comic books. These were firsts for Will. He lived them vicariously with Donald Wade and Thomas as he himself never had as a boy.
Elly gave him a mail-order shirt which he wore while they played Chinese Checkers and the boys rode the scooter across the living room and kitchen floor.
For dinner they had no traditional turkey. Will had offered to take Glendon’s old double-bore shotgun and try his hand at bagging one, but Elly would hear none of it.
“One of my birds? You want to shoot one of my wild turkeys, Will Parker? I should say not. We’ll have pork.” And they did.
Pork and cornbread stuffing and fried okra and quince pie with Miss Beasley as their guest.
Miss Beasley, who had celebrated so many wretched Christmases alone that she glowed like a neon light when Will came to pick her up in the auto. Miss Beasley, who had actually excited Elly about having an outsider at her table for a meal. Miss Beasley, who brought gifts: for Elly a beautiful seven-piece china tea set decorated with yellow birds and clover on a background of tan luster; for Will a pair of capeskin gloves; for the boys a pair of glass and Pyralin automobiles filled with colorful soft cream candies shaped like elephants, horns, guns and turtles, and a new book, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, which she read to them after dinner.
Christmas, 1941... over too soon.
When Will returned Miss Beasley to her brick bungalow on Durbin Street, he wore his new gloves and walked her to the door.
“I want to thank you for all the gifts you brought.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Parker. It is I who should be thanking you.”
“These gloves’re...” He smacked them together and rubbed them appreciatively. “Why, they’re just... heck, I don’t even know what to say. Nobody ever gave me anything so fine before. I felt awful ‘cause we didn’t give you anything.”
“Didn’t give me anything? Mr. Parker, do you know how many Christmases I’ve spent alone since my mother passed away? Twenty-three. Perhaps an intelligent man like you can figure out exactly what it is you and Eleanor gave me today.”
She often said things like that, calling him an intelligent man. Things no other person had ever said to Will, things that made him feel good about himself. Looking into her fuzzy face, he clearly understood what today had meant to her, though her expression would never show it. She remained as persimonny-mouthed as ever. He wondered what she’d do if he leaned over and kissed her. Probably cuff him upside the head.
“Elly, she didn’t know what to make of that tea set. I never saw her eyes grow so big.”
“You know what to make of it though, don’t you?”
He studied her eyes for a long moment. They both knew; that when he was gone Elly would need a friend. Someone to have tea with perhaps.
“Yes, ma’am, I reckon I do,” Will answered softly. Then he put his gloved hands on Miss Beasley’s arms and did what his heart dictated: he placed an affectionate kiss on her cheek.
She didn’t cuff him.
She turned the color of a gooseberry and blinked rapidly three times, then scuttled into the house, forgetting to bid him goodbye.
Within five weeks after Pearl Harbor Bell Aircraft built a huge new bomber factory in Marietta. The last civilian auto rolled off the assembly lines in Detroit, and Japan had seized Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, cutting off ninety percent of America’s rubber supply. National Price Administrator Leon Henderson was pictured in every newspaper in America pedaling his “Victory bicycle” as a stand-in for the automobile. The wealthy deserted their Saint Simons Island mansions as German submarines began patrolling the coast, and the people of Georgia organized the Georgia State Guard, a citizens’ army composed of those too young, too old, or too unfit for the draft, who set about preparing coastal defenses for an anticipated German invasion. Georgia convicts were conscripted and put to work round the clock to improve seashore approaches and build bridges over which the homegrown army would defend their state.
And up at the mill one day Harley Overmire set his jaw, shut his eyes and ran his trigger finger through a buzz saw.
The news had a curious effect on Will. It galvanized his intentions. He decided suddenly that not only would he join up, but he’d join the toughest branch—the Marines—so that when he came back cowards like Overmire could never look down on him or his again. It seemed almost fated that the very day he made his decision the draft board made it irreversible. The letter began with the infamous word that had already taken thousands of men from their homes and families:
“GREETINGS...”
Will opened the draft notice alone, down by the mailbox, read the words and shut his eyes, breathing deep. He gazed at the Georgia sky, blue and sunny. He walked at a snail’s pace up the red clay road and sat for five minutes beneath their favorite sourwood tree, listening to the redbirds, the winter quiet. He’d rather do anything than tell Elly. Rather go than tell her he had to.
She was nursing the baby when he returned to the house, lying diagonally on the bed. He stopped in the doorway and studied her, impressing the image in his memory for bleaker days—a woman in a faded print dress with the buttons freed, her hair in a loose tan braid, one arm crooked beneath her ear, the infant at her breast. A lump formed in Will’s throat as he knelt beside the bed and laid the backside of a finger on Lizzy’s pumping cheek, then skimmed it over her delicate skin. He leaned on his elbows close to Elly’s head, his gaze still resting on the nursing infant.
Don’t tell her yet.
“She’s growin’, isn’t she?” he murmured.
“Mm-hmm.”
“How long will you nurse her?”
“Till she gets teeth.”
“When will that be?”
“Oh, when she’s about seven, eight months.”
I wanted to be here to see every new tooth.
His knuckle moved from the baby’s cheek to his wife’s breast.
“This is my favorite way to find you when I come in. I could watch this till the grass grew right up over the porch step and into the house and never get tired of it.”
She rolled her head to study him, but his eyes followed his finger, which glided over her full breast.
“And I reckon I’d never get tired of you watchin’, Will,” she told him softly.
Elly, Elly, I don’t wanna go but I got to.
Contemplating mortality made a man say things he otherwise w
ould hold inside. “I wondered so many times if my mother ever held me, if she nursed me, if she was sorry to give me up. I wonder every time I watch you with Lizzy.”
“Oh, Will...” She touched his cheek tenderly.
At that moment his feelings for her were convoluted and he struggled to understand them. She was his wife, not his mother, yet he loved her as if she were both. For some ungraspable reason he thought she had a right to know that before he left. “Sometimes I think I halfway wanted to marry you ‘cause you were such a good mother and I never had one. I know that sounds strange, but I... well, I just wanted to tell you.”
“I know, Will.”
His head lifted and their eyes met at last. “You know?”
Her thumb brushed his lower lip. “Reckon I knew all the time. I figured it out when I washed your hair the first time. But I knew it wasn’t the only reason. I figured that out, too.”
He stretched to kiss her, his shoulder pocketing Lizzy’s head while the sound of her suckling and swallowing continued. He would never forget this moment, the smell of the baby and the woman, the warmth of the one against his shoulder, the other beneath his hand, which rested on her warm hair. When the kiss ended he stared into Elly’s green eyes while his thumb idled on the part in her hair. Slowly he collapsed to rest facedown against the mattress, still embracing them both.
“Will, what’s wrong?”
He swallowed, his face flattened into the bedding, which smelled of them and of baby powder.
“You picked up the mail, didn’t you?”
His thumb wagged across her skull. Tears stung his eyes but he pinched them inside. No man cried, not these days. They marched off to war triumphant.
“I was thinkin’,” she continued chokily, “maybe I’ll make a quince pie for supper. I know how you like your quince pie.”
He thought of prison mess halls and soldiers’ rations and Elly’s quince pie with a lattice crust, and worked hard to keep his breath steady. How long? How long? The baby stopped suckling and heaved a delicate, broken sigh. Will pictured her milky mouth falling gently from Elly’s skin and turned his temple to the mattress. Opening his eyes, he saw Elly’s nipple at close range, almost violet in hue, still puckered while Lizzy’s moist lips occasionally sucked from an inch away.
“I promised the boys I’d take ‘em to a movie one day. I got to be sure to do that.”
“They’d like that.”
Silence settled, growing oppressive. “Can I come along?” she asked.
“Movie wouldn’t be no fun without you.”
They both smiled sadly. When the smiles faded they listened to each other breathe, absorbing the nearness and dearness of each other, storing memories against lorn days.
“I have to teach you to drive the car,” he said at length.
“And I got to give you that birthday party I promised.”
They lay in silence a long time before Elly uttered a desolate throaty sound, reached up and gripped the back of Will’s jacket. Burying her face in the bedding, she held him so and grieved.
Later he showed her the letter and, while she read it, told her, “I’m volunteering for the Marines, Elly.”
“The Marines! But why?”
“Because I can be a good one. Because I already had the training my whole life long. Because bastards like Overmire are cuttin’ off their trigger fingers and I want to make sure his kind can never make degrading remarks about me or you again.”
“But I don’t care what Harley Overmire says about us.”
“I do.”
Her expression soured as the hurt set in: he’d made such a decision without consulting her, to jeopardize the life she now valued more than her own. “And I don’t have anything to say about it, whether you go to the Army or the Marines?”
His face closed over, much as it had beneath his cowboy hat during his first days here. “No, ma’am.”
He had nine days, nine bittersweet days during which they never spoke the word war. Nine days during which Elly remained cool, hurt. He took the family to the movie, as promised—Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The boys laughed while Will took Eleanor’s unresponsive hand and held it as both of them tried to forget the newsreel which showed scenes of the Pearl Harbor attack and other actions in the Pacific that had occurred since America had entered the war.
He taught Elly to drive the car but couldn’t get her to promise she’d use it to go into town in case of an emergency. Even while practicing, she refused to leave their own land. In other days, under other circumstances, the lessons might have been a source of amusement, but with both of them counting down the hours, laughter was at a premium.
He put up more cordwood, wondering how many months she’d be alone, how long the supply would last, what she’d do when it was gone.
She gave him a birthday party on January 29, three days before he was due to leave. Miss Beasley came, and they used the new china tea set, but the occasion held an undertone of gloom, this arbitrary day of celebration for a man who’d never celebrated his birth before, celebrating it now because it might be his last chance.
Then came his last night at the library. Miss Beasley was waiting when he arrived for work and gave Will his last paycheck with as much warmth as General MacArthur issuing an order. “Your job will be waiting when you get back, Mr. Parker.” No matter what her feelings for Will, she’d never used his familiar name. It wouldn’t have seemed right to either of them.
He stared at the check while his throat tightened. “Thank you, Miss Beasley.”
“I thought, if it’s all right with you, I’d come down to the train station to see you off tomorrow.”
He forced a smile, meeting her eyes. “That’d be nice, ma’am. I’m not sure Elly will make it.”
“She still refuses to come to town?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied quietly.
“Oh, that child!” Miss Beasley grasped her hands and began pacing in agitation. “At times I’d like to sit her down for a stern lecture.”
“It wouldn’t do any good, ma’am.”
“Does she think she can hide in that woods forever?”
“Looks that way.” Will studied the floor. “Ma’am, there’s somethin’ I got to ask you. Somethin’ I been wonderin’ for a long time.” He scratched the end of his nose and looked anywhere but at her. “That day when that woman Lula was in here, I know you heard what she said to me about Elly, about how her family locked her in that house on the edge of town and that’s why everybody calls her crazy. Is it true?”
“You mean she’s never told you?”
Lifting his gaze, Will slowly wagged his head.
Miss Beasley considered at length, then ordered, “Sit down, Mr. Parker.”
They sat on opposite sides of a study table amid the smell of wax and oil and books. Outside, plodding hooves sounded on the street, merchants closed their shops and went home for supper, an auto rumbled past and faded while Miss Beasley considered Will’s question.
“Why hasn’t she told you?”
“I don’t rightly know, ma’am. It must bother her to talk about it. She’s got touchy feelin’s.”
“It should be her place to tell you.”
“I know that, ma’am, but if she hasn’t yet I doubt she will tonight, and I’d sure like to know before I leave.”
Miss Beasley debated silently, staring Will full in the face. Her lips pursed, relaxed, then pursed again. “Very well, I’ll tell you.” She twined her fingers and rested them on the tabletop with the air of a judge resting a gavel.
“Her mother was a local girl who became pregnant out of wedlock and was sent away by her parents to have the child. Eleanor was the result of that pregnancy. When she was born, Chloe See—that was her mother—brought her back here to Whitney. On the train, the story goes. They were picked up at the depot by Eleanor’s grandparents and whisked off in a carriage with the black shades securely drawn, and taken to their house—the same one that still stands on the outskirts o
f town. Lottie See, Eleanor’s grandmother, pulled down the shades and never pulled them up again.
“Albert See and his wife were queer people, to say the least. He was a circuit preacher, so it was understandably difficult for them to accept Chloe’s illegitimate child. But they went beyond the bounds of reason by keeping their daughter a virtual prisoner in that house until the day she died. People say she went crazy in there and Eleanor watched it happen. Naturally, they thought the same thing of poor Eleanor, living all those years with the rest of that eccentric bunch.
“They might have kept Eleanor locked up forever, but the law forced them to let her out to go to school. That’s of course when I first met her, when she came here to the library with her classes.
“The children were merciless to Eleanor, you yourself know how cruel after what that—that painted hussy Lula Peak spewed out to you in this very building.” Miss Beasley tucked her chin back severely, creating bifolds beneath it. “With little more provocation I would have slapped that woman’s face that day. She’s a—a—” Miss Beasley puffed up and turned red, then forcibly squelched her choler. “If I were to express my true feeling for Lula Peak it would make me a twattler no better than she, so I’ll restrain myself. Now where was I?
“Oh, yes—Eleanor. She wasn’t gregarious like the rest of the children. She didn’t know how to blend, having come out of the home life she did. She was dreamy and stared a lot. So the children called her crazy. How she endured those days I don’t know. But she was—underneath her dreaminess—intelligent and resilient, apparently. She made out all right.
“This is all heresay, mind you, but the story goes that Albert See had a mistress somewhere. A black mistress in whose bed he died. The shame of it finally tipped his wife over the edge, and she became as tetched as her own daughter, hiding in that house, speaking to no one, mumbling prayers. All of Eleanor’s family died within three years, but it was their deaths that finally freed her.
“How she knew Glendon Dinsmore, I can only guess. He delivered ice, you know, so I suppose he was one of the few people ever allowed into that house. Albert See died in 1933, his wife in ‘34 and his daughter in ‘35. The women died right in that house that had become their prison. It wasn’t a week after Chloe’s death that Eleanor married Glendon and moved to the place where you live now. Her grandparents’ house has sat vacant all these years. Unfortunately, it keeps people’s memories alive. I sometimes think it would be better for Eleanor if it had been torn down.”