Small Town Girl (32 page)

Lorena pulled open the driver’s door. No one was in the car. Of course no one was in it. Fern had seen Jay get in Garvice’s truck. Fern had seen him go.

“Do you think Tanner would care if we let Scout ride in the backseat?” Lorena asked over her shoulder.

Kate moistened her lips and blinked hard. “Not as long as his paws aren’t muddy. And it’s way too cold today for mud.”

Lorena held up the seat and the dog hopped right in as though he remembered riding to their house in this car. “Do you think you can start it?” She scooted past the gear stick and settled in the passenger’s side, waiting for Kate to get in.

The seat wasn’t still warm from Jay sitting in it. It couldn’t be. Yet she was totally aware that he had sat in the seat only a few hours before. That his hands had been on the steering wheel she was gripping. The car even smelled like him.

And the music started in her heart. More than anything in the world she wished she could dance to that music with Jay.

I
t wasn’t as cold in Alabama as it had been in Kentucky when Jay had boarded the train the middle of December. That part was good. All the farm work had kept him in shape, so the running and marching and training weren’t as hard for him as some of the other recruits. That was good. He didn’t have to make any decisions. Just follow orders. That too was good.

March here. Run there. Line up for this. Fall in for that. Eat what was plopped on his tray. Say “yes sir.” Become a machine. A killing machine. Above all, don’t think.

Don’t think. That was what he needed to remember. Not to think about what he’d left behind in Rosey Corner. Not to think about the other guys stretching out on their bunks at night reading the letters from home. Not to see the packages of cookies and socks the other men got in the mail. He didn’t need any of that. He’d always been on his own. His months in Rosey Corner had done nothing to change that.

Night after night, he lay in his bunk and told himself that, but he couldn’t convince his heart it was true. His heart wouldn’t let him lock out Kate and Birdie and Graham. He couldn’t even keep them from sneaking into his thoughts while he was marching in the rain or sunshine. Instead he wrote
letters in his head to Mike and Graham. He thought about what he might write to Birdie and what she’d write back to him. And he thought about getting a letter from Kate.

If only he hadn’t been so worried about a door slamming in his face again. If only he had marched right to Merritt’s Dry Goods Store and leaned on the counter until Kate talked to him. If only. But instead he had sneaked around Rosey Corner like some kind of criminal who needed to leave the scene of the crime as fast as possible.

He didn’t know why he had taken Birdie the car. Oh, he’d come up with reasons. The car wasn’t going to bring him all that much money if he sold it. He was attached to the heap and wanted it to be somewhere for him when he came back. If he came back. He owed Birdie something after hitting her on the road.

But hours of marching gave a man too much time to think. It was hard to keep lying to himself while he was slogging through mud with a cold rain slashing him in the face and a sergeant yelling in his ear that if he thought this was bad, he’d better learn to be a hundred times tougher before he went overseas.

The truth was, he’d gone back to Rosey Corner with his car for one reason and one reason only—in hopes that Kate Merritt would stumble across his path. And then he’d done everything possible to keep that from happening. He could have lingered. He could have not looked for the first ride down the road. He could have stopped and talked to Fern when he spotted her staring at him. But he hadn’t.

March. Don’t think. Forget Rosey Corner.

Christmas came. Nothing to celebrate in his corner of the world. Mike would tell him different. Mike would tell him that the reason for celebrating Christmas was the same every year no matter what else was happening. He wondered about Mike. Whether he’d been drafted. Whether the Army
would be able to make him into a killing machine. A man who preached love. Now he might have to carry a gun instead of a Bible.

The Army had chaplains. And plenty of lay preachers in the ranks, if Jay’s division was any indication. Men with Bibles in their hands morning and night. Men who kept telling the others, the ones like Jay, that they needed to get right with God before they boarded a transport ship for their first battle.

Perry Stoddard latched on to Jay as his personal missionary project. Perry wasn’t much more than a kid. Claimed to be twenty, but he didn’t look eighteen. Whatever his age, he was ready to step up to save America the same as the rest of them. He was slim to the point of skinny and lacked some being as tall as Jay. Perry said that would be a plus in the tank divisions. He figured he would fit real well down in the gunner’s position.

They hadn’t been assigned to units yet. Training first to toughen them up for war. To make them soldiers instead of merely recruits. Perry was tougher than he looked. He could keep up with Jay on most of the training courses and was generally ahead of him when it was crawling under and climbing over.

“Lean’s the way to go,” Perry told Jay with a laugh. “Don’t have to dig as big a foxhole and makes me a lot smaller target for the enemy.”

“Tanks are plenty big,” Jay said.

“They are.” Perry’s eyes lit up. “That’s how come I want to be in one. Then I’ll be plenty big too. For the first time ever.”

They were in the barracks waiting for the lights-out order. Perry, who had the bunk next to Jay, was sharing a box of cookies he’d gotten in the mail earlier that day. He was always getting mail. Around them, the men were settling in for the night. Some of them were shooting the breeze with the men close to them, the way Jay and Perry were doing. Others were
already sacked out, their heads under their pillows to block out the noise and the light. A few were reading, and here and there a man was propped up against the wall, writing a letter.

“Your mama bake the cookies for you?” Jay asked. They were heavy on cinnamon and tasted a lot like some Mrs. Franklin had made while Jay was working on their farm. Maybe he should write to her and see if she would send him some cookies. She’d be surprised if he wrote her, but he didn’t have any trouble believing a letter from him in her mailbox would make her smile.

“Yeah, I always tell her to send double when she sends something to eat so I can share with you and the other guys.” He fingered the letter that had come with the box. “Mama, she didn’t want me to sign up. She thought I should wait awhile, see what happened. Like she thought it was all gonna be over quick as anything. But it’s not. I’ve got a little brother chomping at the bit to join up too. He’ll be old enough to enlist come June.”

“That’ll be hard on your folks, having both of you in the Army.”

“Well, we won’t be the only brothers in the Army.” Perry looked up at Jay. “It’s funny how I feel plenty old enough to be here, but I don’t like thinking about my little brother going over there to get shot at.”

Perry took a bite of the cookie and chewed awhile before he asked, “You got family, Tanner?” When Jay didn’t answer right away, he rushed on. “I guess I shouldn’t pry, but you never get no mail.”

“That’s okay,” Jay said, smiling at the boy. “Answering a few questions is a fair price to pay for some of your cookies. I parted ways with family a long time ago after my mother died. I might be able to find my old man if I took a notion, but I doubt he could find me. I don’t guess anybody knows where I am.”

Perry looked like he wasn’t sure he could believe Jay. “Nobody?”

“Nobody.”

“But that’s awful.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad.” Jay reached for another cookie. “Not as long as I have a bunk buddy like you I can bum cookies off of.”

“But everybody needs family. Somebody to worry over you being gone and pray about you when you go off over there.” Perry looked almost sad, and then color crept up into his cheeks, as if he was afraid he might have said the wrong thing. “I mean, it seems like that to me.”

“I’ve got this little sister praying about me,” Jay said to keep the kid from feeling sorry for him. Birdie wasn’t really his little sister, but thinking about her maybe remembering him in her bedtime prayers gave his own heart a little lift. Could be Kate would be sitting right beside her when she prayed. Could be Kate might whisper a prayer for him too.

He pushed the thought away. If prayers did any good, a lot of things would be different. The Germans would have stayed in Germany and not tried to take over the world. The Japanese wouldn’t have bombed Pearl Harbor. He wouldn’t be sitting there in an Army barracks feeling like the loneliest man in the world.

But Perry looked cheered at once. “Well, see, you do have family. Whether she knows where you are or not, she’s asking the Lord to watch over you. And the Lord knows where each and every one of us is. All the time. He’ll take care of us.”

“Yeah, kid, maybe he will.” Jay wasn’t about to say anything to rob Perry of his belief. In that tank, if he ever got in it, he’d need all he could get. An odd yearning feeling crawled through Jay. It might be good to have something to put in that empty spot inside him. To have the feeling that somebody was watching over him, loving him in spite of his shortcomings.

Kate hadn’t been able to do it. He used to think Mike did, but then he hadn’t wanted Jay around Rosey Corner. Right now, Birdie did, but that was simply because she was so young. She didn’t know him all that well. But the Lord Perry believed in, the one Mike said was his personal friend, if he really existed, he was supposed to know everything about everybody and love them anyway. Why was it so easy for others to believe and so hard for him? Maybe his aunt had been right and his heart was too hard for anybody to love.

“I better write Mama and tell her I liked the cookies so she’ll send us some more.” Perry opened up the box where he kept all his letters. He pulled out some paper and a pencil and held them toward Jay. “Here. Why don’t you write your little sister? Maybe she’s got big enough to bake some cookies herself.”

When Jay hesitated, Perry pushed the pencil and paper toward him. “Go ahead. Take it. I’ve got plenty. Mama makes sure I don’t run out of writing material. She says she can’t stand it if she doesn’t hear from me every week. In fact, if you don’t want to write to your little sister, you can write to Mama. Or my little sister. Sally would like having a feller like you to write to. Mama says she’s getting boy crazy, and if she don’t watch her, she’ll be getting married before she’s seventeen.”

Jay laughed and took the paper and pencil. “Guess I’d better stick to writing my little sister then. Don’t want to encourage that.”

After writing the date, Jay stared at the blank page as though he expected words to appear without him putting the pencil lead on the paper.

Perry didn’t notice as he scribbled away on his letter. “You ain’t already married, are you, Tanner?”

“Nope.” He hoped his short answer would stop the kid’s questions, but it didn’t.

“You got a girl?”

“Nope.” The truth of that sliced through him. Maybe he should write to Kate. Beg her to forgive him for being drunk even if he wasn’t. He wondered what Alice Wilcher had told anybody about that night. He hoped the silly girl had learned her lesson. He wished there had been somebody else there that night to keep her out of trouble. But maybe it turned out for the best. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to work out between him and Kate. If he couldn’t believe in the Lord and answered prayers, maybe he could simply believe in fate. Fate had thrown them together. Fate had torn them apart.

“How about you, Perry?” Jay said to keep the kid from asking more questions. “You got a girl at home?”

The color rose in Perry’s cheeks again. “There is this one girl, but she doesn’t know I’m alive.”

“Well, maybe you’d better take this back and write and tell her that you are.” Jay held the paper out toward him. “Could be that’s all she’s waiting for. To know you’re breathing.”

Perry waved his hand away. “Keep it. I told you I got plenty. I can write Rosa if I take a notion, but that’s for your little sister.”

Jay scooted back on his bunk and leaned against the wall. He thought about writing
Dear Birdie
. He thought about it a long minute. Even went so far as to write
Dear
, but then he hesitated. He held the pencil poised over the paper, but he didn’t touch the lead down as he thought about what he might write.
Dear Birdie, How are you? Is Scout okay? Hope he’s keeping out of trouble now that he’s got a new name. How about you? Are you keeping the car all shined up? Has your mama made any of those brown sugar pies? Wish I had a whole one to eat all by myself right now. How’s Kate doing? Tell her I wasn’t drunk. That I don’t plan to ever get drunk again even here in the Army where getting drunk is pretty popular.

He mentally scrubbed out those last lines. He couldn’t write that to Birdie. If he wanted to say that, he should be writing
Dear Kate
first. He thought about simply folding the blank paper and laying it aside, but Perry kept peeking over at him to see if he was writing.

The kid was harmless. He meant well. He just couldn’t understand somebody without family. He had grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles and too many cousins to count. The whole kit and caboodle probably got together every Sunday after church. Enough family to suffocate a person. Jay didn’t have to worry about that. He had breathing room. Plenty of breathing room.

“You’d better hurry and get something written before Sarge yells lights out,” Perry said.

He shouldn’t have let Perry think he was a friend. But what else did a man have in the Army but his buddies? Jay held in a sigh, put the pencil point down on the paper, and told himself to think about all the cookies the kid would be sharing with him from his mama and all those aunts and grandmothers. Cookies. That was it. He’d make Mrs. Franklin happy when she made one of her mailbox treks. He’d write to Birdie. He would. Just not yet.

Dear Mrs. Franklin
, he wrote. It was easy to scrawl a few words across the paper for her. He didn’t have to write the first thing about Kate. Instead he could write words that didn’t mean a whole lot. And while he wasn’t really writing to the person he wanted to write to, it felt good to be writing to somebody.