Prisoners of War (4 page)

SIX

FRANK HOLDER had lost a lot in the last year, and one of the things he didn’t have any longer was the radio aerial on his pickup truck. The spindly little thing had gotten bent, and then it had rusted, and one day while he was driving into town to buy some cottonseed, it broke off and flew past his window, and he didn’t bother to stop and retrieve it. But he wished he had it, not because he liked listening to the radio—he found the uppity way announcers talked annoying, and considered listening to music a waste of time—but because the aerial would’ve been the perfect place to attach the flag he now had to drape from his side planks.

His sense of himself as an American was all of six months old. Before that, if you’d asked him what he was, he might have given any number of answers, depending on who was asking, and none of them would’ve been “American.” If it was the preacher from Arva’s church, he’d say, “Nothing,” because he knew the fellow was trying to trick him into admitting he was a Christian. If it was somebody from Memphis or Jackson, he’d say, “I’m a redneck.” And if somebody from New York was fool enough to walk up and ask, he’d say, “I’m a Southerner, and you’re not, so why don’t you get on back where you come from?”

He now would say he was an American because he wanted to find common ground with his son, and that’s how Biggie had always referred to himself in the letters he sent home before getting killed back in February at the Kasserine Pass. He’d said he was proud to serve with the boys in his company, who came from all over, and he never would have known them if they hadn’t all come together as Americans, to do what was right for their country.
Some’s from Michigan, some’s from New York, there’s fellows here from Indiana and California and a lot of what you hear about folks from them places is not so. They sound di ferent than us but they’re not. It’s hard to think your granddaddy fought a war against these people, but I’m glad they’re on my side now and me on theirs.

That Biggie had felt the need to explain why he’d ignored his father’s wishes and enlisted was to Frank’s great shame. He’d told his own son that he was a goddamn fool and an ingrate, too. “Me and your momma,” he’d said, “what did this country ever do for us? We durn near starved to death back in ’33 and ’34, and ain’t nobody got a answer but to wear the Blue Eagle. You know folks was coming down here offering to buy babies if we’d rut one up? That’s right. Folks in big long cars, people that couldn’t have babies and wasn’t meant to, and they wouldn’t come inside, they’d stand out there in that goddamn yard and make a offer while they smoked a big old smelly cigar. Happened not once, but twice. Second time, the fellow’s wife was in the car herself, and when I told him to get his ass out of my yard and get it out fast, he shakes his head and says folks like us deserve to starve, that we’re too ignorant and backward to survive. And you mean to go die for that kind of bastard? You was sitting on the porch at the time, and he didn’t want
you,
boy,” he’d said, jabbing Biggie so hard in the chest that he almost lost his balance, “because you already had the look of a poor man in your eyes. He wanted him a nice fresh
baby.
”

There was scarcely a day, hardly an hour even, when Frank failed to recall that conversation. Every time it came surging back in on him, he wanted to fall to his knees, and if he was where nobody could see him, he did exactly that. He’d knelt down in the cotton patch and in the outhouse; he’d even climbed out of his pickup to kneel in the middle of the road. He wasn’t praying when he dropped down, just assuming what he saw as the proper posture for a man who’d called the son he loved names.

He’d been thinking about that conversation shortly before the colored boy who worked for Alvin Timms stopped the bus near his barn. Holder and three of his hands were in the lot, all of them hot and sweaty, trying to shore up sagging joists in the feed shed. Termites had eaten a good bit of the floor, and as he lay on his back looking up through the rotten boards, sweat stinging his eyes, he found himself thinking that the world, when you got right down to it, was just crawling with vermin. If you added up the creatures that served some purpose, like building something or growing food, then added up the ones that were only here to eat and shit, to hurt and kill, you’d see how far out of balance things really were. He was getting to the point where he didn’t give a damn at all and would just as soon knock the shed down as shore it up. It could cave in while he was under it, for all he cared.

Then the colored boy parked Alvin’s bus on the side of the road and honked the horn—not once, but twice.

His son was dead, the termites were eating his feed shed, his cotton crop was so scrawny that he hated for anybody to see it and a nigger felt like he could pull up to his barn and make a ruckus. “Now if that don’t beat the blue-butted devil,” he said. “He think he’s in Chicago?”

If he’d been the kind of man who reasoned things through, he might have realized that L.C. couldn’t see him because he was under the shed, that he could only see three colored men standing in the yard, that if he’d known a white man was within range of that horn, he would never, under any circumstances, have blown it. But Frank Holder applied reason to hard objects only, to a pump that wouldn’t prime or a hoe that needed filing.

He pressed his palms against the ground and shoved himself backwards; then, as soon as he’d cleared the shed, he rolled over and bounced up. He was a big man—huge, most folks would’ve said—and when he began to move in a particular direction, people got out of the way. His hired help scattered fast.

The boy sat at the wheel, fingertips drumming his kneecap, his eyes clamped shut. He was humming.

Frank smacked the side of the bus with an open hand. He figured that would make the boy’s eyes pop open like those doors on cuckoo clocks, but for some reason they stayed shut. So he slammed the bus again, setting it rocking on its axles. Then the boy took notice.

“You think that horn’s a trumpet, or
what
?”

“No sir,” the boy said.

“Think you one of them nigger bandleaders?”

“No sir.”

“I like to rose up and hit my head when that damn thing went off. What you in such a goddamn hurry about?”

“Mr. Alvin say tend to business and then get on home.”

“Mr. Alvin does, does he?”

“Yes sir.”

“Mr. Alvin know you’re sitting on the bus with your eyes shut and chanting mumbo jumbo?” The boy just looked at him, and his silence was enraging. “Mr. Alvin tell you that when a white person asks you a question, you supply an answer and make it fast?”

“Yes sir.”

“So let’s try again, just like before. Because some folks seem like they need to practice. Ready? One, two, three. Mr. Alvin know you’re sitting on the bus with your eyes shut and chanting mumbo jumbo?”

“No sir.”

“That’s better. You been to school, ain’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“How much?”

“Seven or eight years’ worth.”

“Sir.”

“Seven or eight years’ worth. Sir.”

“So you familiar with the concept of being sent home with an assignment?”

“Yes sir. Sir.”

Frank considered the possibility that he was being made fun of, then rejected it. The boy was so scared now that he’d probably developed a stutter.

“I’m gone give you an assignment,” he said. “Call it a chance to further your education. What I want you to do, when you get through with your route, is to tell Mr. Alvin Timms, ‘Sir, I been sitting on that big yellow bus chanting mumbo jumbo. And a gentleman by the name of Mr. Frank Holder done seen it and corrected me.’ Think you can do that?”

For just an instant, the boy looked away. Then, as if he realized his answer would be disallowed unless he was staring at an appropriate spot, he aimed his gaze below the man’s eyes but above his waist. “Yes sir,” he said.

“That’s good,” Frank said. “Keep improving that comportment and you can’t never tell, maybe one day you’ll make janitor at the Piggly Wiggly. Ever nigger loves the city.”

To send the boy on his way, he slapped the fender again and kicked one of the tires, but even that brought him no pleasure.

SEVEN

SATURDAY NIGHT. There had been a time—not so long ago, either—when those two words, linked together, had possessed magical qualities. Shirley remembered one time in particular. It must have been 1936, because by then they’d quit renting from the Stancills and were living on their own place. Jimmy Del had gone into town that morning to see old man Gaither for the purpose of requesting that year’s furnish, but the banker came very close to saying no. As it was, Jimmy Del told her, he’d loaned them enough to get the crop in the ground, but not nearly enough to buy any of the new fertilizers that might actually have made cotton grow on land as poor as theirs. When she asked him what they were going to do now, he tipped his hat back and grinned at her. “Why don’t we invite some folks over and build us a big old bonfire?”

They came from all over the community—the Youngs with their hand-cranked Victrola and a bunch of hard-pressed 78s, Luke and Noonie Baker, the Washington brothers and their wives, the Blanchards, Alvin and the store clerk he was seeing. They ate molasses candy with parched peanuts, the kids used a tin can to play stickball and later on, when the young ones had been put to bed, those not opposed to drinking sipped wine made from possum grapes. She got drunk and danced with every man she knew, and Jimmy Del sat there on the porch steps, master of the ball, grinning and cranking that Victrola.

Then the war started—“Yet another of those bastards” was the way he once put it—and he turned morose and brooding and couldn’t get along with her or Dan or Alvin or anybody else, either. He’d sit on the back steps for hours at a time, whittling a piece of wood, watching the shavings pile up around his shoes.

And Saturday night came to mean no more than any other.

“You mark my words,” Alvin said. “When they look back on this year, they’ll say there wasn’t a single good movie made. Not a one.”

This Saturday night, they were walking down the street past the darkened Western Auto, where several lawn mowers stood on display behind the window. She’d been seeing the same stuff in all the store windows for the longest time, and knew the lack of variety wasn’t due solely to a shortage of new products. Most folks had stood all the change they could take and weren’t looking for anything new, whereas Shirley had weathered so much change that she wanted a lot more of it. If she’d had her way, she would’ve torn down every building in town, replacing all of them with bigger, modern-looking structures made of glass and steel. She would’ve lined the windows with bright lights and filled the shelves with wondrous junk.

She walked as close to Alvin as she dared. Not just because she was on the side nearest the street and a light rain had begun to fall, dripping on her whenever she stepped out from under the awnings, but also because she wanted him to offer his arm. And he wouldn’t.

“I liked
Road to Morocco,
” she said.

“That was last year.”

“Well, then, what about
Mrs. Miniver
?”

“That was last year, too. See, you’ve proved my point. This is a year to forget.”

They passed the dime store and turned the corner onto Loring Avenue. A group of girls came toward them, talking loud and acting silly. As they got closer, a chubby redhead blew a huge bubble, which another girl promptly punctured. Bubble gum clung to the plump girl’s face, sending the rest of them into rollicking hysterics. The little redhead peeled some of the gum free and stuck it in the other girl’s hair; then all of them took off running, shrieking their lungs out.

“You remember what that felt like, I reckon?” Alvin said as they walked on down the block.

“What?”

“Being the age of them kids.”

“More or less.”

“I don’t. Seem like I’ve always been forty-two years old.”

“Last year, you said it seemed like you’d always been forty-one.”

“Well, last year it did. I’ve always thought it was a shame I wasn’t born in 1900, since my body seems to keep such perfect time. If I had’ve been, everybody could just look at me and tell how old the century was. Then we wouldn’t need no calendars.”

“I don’t need a calendar to tell how old this one is. It’s older than any century’s got a right to be.”

“You saying not all centuries was created equal?”

“They may have been created equal. They just don’t stay that way.”

The rain fell harder, and by the time they got to the parking lot, it was coming down in sheets. He told her to wait under the awning while he got the truck. She watched him pull his collar up, then hunch over and dart across the pavement, water splashing as he ran.

When he reached the truck, he stood there in the rain with his back to her—probably fishing for his key. Then he turned around and, instead of opening the door, pulled his hat off and threw it straight up, the waterlogged fedora spinning in the air like a yo-yo.

“Recess!” he hollered while the rain pelted down. “Ain’t it time for recess?”

Turning up her collar, Shirley stepped into the downpour, grateful at least for the chance to get soaked.

They sat in the porch swing at his place, listening to the Opry and watching the rain. He produced a bottle and poured her a drink, but since he didn’t pour himself one, she left hers untouched. She’d gotten sloppy the last time she’d been over here, and he’d left the next morning to spend a week in St. Louis, not even letting her know where he’d gone. He came back with a story about meeting Stan Musial that she felt sure he’d made up.

“It keeps raining like this,” she said, “I guess all the cotton’ll just float away.”

“It won’t float away. Weather Bureau says the front’ll pass through tonight, and then we’re looking at sunshine. We’ll get Dan in the field with them Germans by the middle of next week.”

“If he doesn’t take a notion to hit the road.”

“He ain’t the road-hitting type. Not as long as he’s got some responsibility to shoulder.”

He leaned back in the porch swing and crossed his arms behind his head—a frequent gesture on his part, and one she’d always hated. She believed that if you’d sat him down in a chair against a brick wall, facing a firing squad, he’d rear back like that right before they shot him. Just to keep anybody from suspecting he might value his life.

“But he’ll make a perfect soldier,” he said. “They ask for volunteers, his hand’ll go up every damn time.”

“Somebody’s hand’s got to go up sometime, I guess.”

“If a war’s to be fought, it sure as hell does. That’s exactly what Jimmy Del thought.”

“But not you.”

“No,” he said, “not me. I was always the worthless one. And I’m worth a lot less now than I was back then.”

She felt herself starting to melt. She added up to so much less than she used to. The years were slipping away, just as people had, and more of both would be gone in no time. She rarely let herself wonder what would happen when Dan enlisted. Being in that house alone was something she couldn’t imagine doing. There were no bars on the windows, but there might just as well have been.

“I think I want to look for a job,” she said.

“What for? You know I’ll help y’all make it.”

“I have to help myself make it.”

“Well, if that’s what you want.”

“Did you think any more about driving me up to Memphis? Before I look for work, I ought to do something about my clothes.”

“I don’t believe us taking trips together’d be a real good idea.”

“You used to think it was a great idea.”

“Well, things used to be different. You know that as well as I do.”

“Yes,” she said, “and when they were, it made a lot less sense for us to go to Memphis or anywhere else. But we went all the same, didn’t we? My God, how far we went.”

She picked the glass up and took a big swallow of whiskey, then rose and walked over to the edge of the porch. Rivulets ran down the screen, which sagged wherever several drops clung together. The air smelled of ozone, and a cool breeze was starting to blow.

When she turned around again, she’d made up her mind to hurt him, if only she could find the right words. Then she saw the way he was looking at her, his eyes starting at the floor and traveling up her body, moving slowly, lingering over this detail and the next, caressing every inch of her before coming to rest, finally, on her face.

Whistling, he shook his head. “Shirley, if I had a million dollars, I still don’t think I could afford you. Just flat couldn’t meet the asking price.”