A Cup of Normal (27 page)

The women of Nebraska did something heartfelt and remarkable during World War II. Upon hearing their sons would be on the next train through town on the way to deployment overseas, they gathered together and cooked a big meal: cookies, cakes, hot coffee and more to give them before they left. Even though they discovered their sons were not on that train, they invited the soldiers in for the feast. Thus began a tradition. Every time the train stopped in town, the women from miles around were there, offering up a home cooked meal, music, and birthday cake before the soldiers went to war. I found myself thinking about the boys who passed through town on that train and never came home again. This is their story.

WHEN THE TRAIN CALLS LONELY

It’s Johnny’s words I hear every morning
, before the Nebraska night has given up to the pale light of day. His voice draws me out from under my wool blanket and across the wood floor worn down to slivers. I quickly pull into my day stockings and trousers — my night gown’s too short now that I’ve done some growing and spreading — and the cold air snaps welts across my bare skin. Fifteen. A woman. Old enough to be a wife. Old enough to be Johnny’s wife. As soon as he comes home.

It’s his words that keep me hoping. Hoping for a life better than the one I got dropped into. The McMahons took me in, put me up instead of killing me, like maybe they ought of. They had a big farm, cows and chickens and pigs. The Missus pushed out a baby every spring up until the year I got there. There was a lot of unborn babies that year, too many. If the Missus hadn’t been walking the creek grieving, I’d probably still be where my own kin left me, squalling by the tracks.

’Course then maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about Johnny. Worry about whether he was coming home in the day or the night. Alive or dying.

A train called out, low and lonely. It would be daylight soon. I pulled on my boots and laced them up.

Talcum didn’t do much to cover the color of my skin, not fair enough for most folks’ tastes. And my eyes, well, folk looked away from them. I’d taken a hand mirror out to the fields one day and spent time looking at my eyes. Strange color, yellow as river sand with flecks of green. I didn’t see the power of them. But when I looked too long at someone, they looked away, and soon as I was gone, they’d whisper about who my kin might be and why I’d been left behind.

Johnny had come into town young, his whole family down to just him and his dad. Some folks said they were drifters, but they took on quick with the elder Smiths up the road and stepped right up to keep Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s small farm in shape. Johnny’s dad was good with fixing fences, and his drinking didn’t mostly get in the way. I’d been taught to mind my manners and elders, so I never brought it up. The other McMahon young waved it in the air like a sweaty rag whenever Johnny came to school, and Johnny, he just kept his head up, and pretended he didn’t hear them.

I never said anything when Johnny walked by because he had my breath, and I couldn’t get it back when I looked at him. It’d been years like that, Johnny walking by, growing straighter, taller, stronger, and me standing like a shadow, unbreathing, quiet as water stilled at the sight of him.

The summer I turned thirteen, I spent days practicing how I’d say hello to him. I snuck out behind the barn and held my breath until I nearly passed out. Then I made myself say hello. Over and over. None of the McMahon young found me at it. None of them had time to, what with the war needing every able-bodied man and boy.

That year, Mr. McMahon took to his bed, and it was all any of us could do to keep up for him. We stayed by his side every hour of the day, so he wouldn’t slip too far into the dreaming lands. Sometimes in the night, Mr. McMahon would look at me, his cloudy eyes going blue, hard and clear, and tell me the dreams he saw. I got to thinking that those dreams might be a fine place to be. Got to thinking that maybe that’s where all the townfolk’s unborn babies might be, staying in the warm and softness of that world, instead of coming over into the hard light of ours.

On a warm June day, when I should have been minding my chores, I stood out beneath the hackberry tree by the road and waited. Off far and lonely, I could hear the train calling out. Like a wolf who lost its mate, but didn’t know any better than to go on keening, looking for a life long spent. Like a soul coming down the living tracks from the dreaming world.

Johnny walked up the road from out of town, his boots kicking up dirt too lazy to lift, a new pitchfork slung across his wide shoulders. I stepped out into the street. My heart rattled my breastbone so hard, my cotton dress trembled. All the rest of me trembled with it. Johnny looked up at me and nodded, and then my breath was gone, caught up in the force of him, like he was hard wind coming down to suck away the sweet summer breezes in me.

But I’d practiced — I’d spent days practicing. I bit the inside of my cheek and exhaled.

“Hello,” I said.

“Morning,” Johnny said, and that word sang in me.

“I suppose I’d like to be your wife,” I said. That was beyond manners. No girl ever asked a man to betroth, but summer was getting on, and soon winter would fall. I didn’t know if I’d ever get my breath back to ask him again, to even speak to him, so I’d taken my chance.

Johnny got still. Camped back on one foot and looked at me.

The train called out again and I could hear the engine now, feel it deep under the soles of my feet, moving the world as it came. I thought right then if Johnny said no, I’d find the train and take it out of here, out of this hard living world to a place of dreams.

“You want a man who doesn’t have more than the clothes on his back?” He shook his head, slow. “Not much of a husband, Elisabeth. Not enough for a McMahon.” He looked off over my shoulder, back at our big two story house, recently painted white, with the clean picket fence around. The Missus liked showing the neighbors we had enough. Enough and some to spare. But it wasn’t like that. We got by from the farm okay, but with Mr. McMahon’s sickness, and the two oldest boys, Jacob and Matthew, joining the war, and the next two boys soon to go, things had been falling by the side. Too many things.

“When I’m enough,” Johnny said in a way that made me think he’d said those words before, maybe enough that he’d worn them in, nice and comfortable. “I’ll come back for you. Then I’ll marry you, Elisabeth McMahon, and we’ll have children of our own.” Johnny walked off, a cool wind following him.

All I could think was I wasn’t a McMahon, not really a McMahon, but what nerve I’d had was gone, leaving me still as a lake, staring hungry at a sky that would not give up its rain.

It was that night Mr. McMahon left us. I sat in the rocking chair in his room when he pulled free of his bed, free of his covers and his mortal shell. He stood, wearing his Sunday best and stretched his arms out like he’d just had a good long sleep. He turned to look at me, blue eyes hard, clear.

The train called, far off and lonely, and he looked that way, toward the sound.

“I’ll be going now, Elisabeth.” His voice was stronger than I ever remember hearing it. “You tell them I’ll miss them.”

“Don’t go. Please.” I stood and held a hand out for him. He didn’t say he was going to miss me, the orphan daughter who did not carry his blood. The girl who saw the dying as well as the living. “Just settle back under the covers and I’ll fetch the Missus. She wouldn’t like you leaving without saying good-bye.”

Mr. McMahon smiled and his eyes were no longer hard. “She’ll see me yet. For now, I have a road to be walking, and my boys to see.” He touched my hand with his fingers, and it was like winter breathing ice across my palm, burning cold.

Then he wasn’t standing there talking to me anymore. When I looked over to his bed, he wasn’t breathing either.

I cried myself into the Missus’ room. Those of us left, the McMahon women, spent the next few days quiet, or in tears, cooking and cleaning for the funeral. We kept to ourselves, like five strangers in the same house not knowing what to say to each other. Silence took up the space where Mr. McMahon used to be, and none of us had the strength to chase it out.

Johnny did not come to the funeral. It was the next day I found out why. He’d gone off and joined the war.

Seemed like all the men left town over the next few weeks, leaving women and boys and old men behind. The school rooms echoed, and the only voices in the halls, in the churches, were soft and high.

I took to staying home more. Days I worked the farm the way the McMahon men would have, and nights I spent writing letters to Johnny, though I didn’t know where to send them.

Johnny’s dad took his leaving hard. I went out in the fields to visit him, to bring him rolls, or fresh milk. But he turned those things away, and pulled close to drinking instead.

Each day he drank a little more and worked a little less. So I took to helping him, working the elder Smith’s farm every day after I finished my chores at home. I thought maybe I could give Johnny’s dad some strength for living, but soon, he just sat and drank, and watched me do his work. The work Johnny used to do.

Last I saw Johnny’s dad, was late one night by my bedside. He had his hat in his hands. He stood there though my door had not opened, solemn, shaking his head, dressed in a Sunday best I’d never seen him wear.

“Tell him I love him, Elisabeth,” he said.

I nodded. It was the most he’d ever said to me.

“And I’m proud of him. I’ve always been proud of him.”

“Yes sir,” I said.

The train called loud, heading out, and he looked that way, just like Mr. McMahon had a month earlier. He put his hat on his head, and while I watched, he wasn’t there any more.

They said he’d taken his bottle down to the tracks earlier that night. Passed out. They said the conductor never even saw him.

There wasn’t enough of him left for a burial, but we did what we could. The elder Smiths made sure he had a sturdy coffin, likely one of their own they’d been saving. They made sure he had a grave up on the hill too, not down by the creek where it floods every spring.

I stood there after the burial, hurting, for myself, Mr. McMahon, for Johnny. Hurting for Johnny’s dad who couldn’t believe his son was coming home. I did not know how one heart could hurt so much and still keep on beating.

But the days still came and I found myself mending fences, pitching hay, feeding cattle. I did it for the Smiths who insisted on paying me a small wage. I did it for Johnny’s dad who had ran out of strength for living. But more, I did it for Johnny, hoping if I did it good enough, he’d come home to me.

After three months, my hands were strong as any man’s, and my height was coming on. I forgot what it was like to wear a skirt, and wore my older brother’s trousers, hemmed and taken in at the waist. I cut my hair to keep it out of the way of the men’s work we all had to do: fixing and running the farm and equipment, slaughtering and packing, delivering goods, budgeting, planting, and paying the bills. Missus kept a tight hand on our meals. She prided herself on always having something left in the ration books each month, enough sugar she could make up dozens of cookies to mail off to Jacob and Matthew, and the two younger boys, Seth and Roy. She always had enough left to give out at gatherings, at funerals.

She even came upon the idea to meet the train on its stop at the depot each day. She’d take a dozen cookies, some apples, or what extra we had to give to the boys leaving for war. All the other McMahon girls helped her at it, and eventually all the women in town pitched in, bringing what they had to the depot, meeting the men on every train that stopped. All the women helped, except me. I didn’t think I could look at those men’s faces. Look at them and know they might not make it back home.

I never said so to the Missus, but I already saw the men at night. Lots of men, some young, some old, all of them stopping by my room on their way to dying. They came by when the train rumbled through town. They stood by my bed wearing their Sunday best, and every one of them had things they wanted me to tell their kin. I don’t know who told them to stop by and talk to me before they moved on to the dream world. I thought maybe it was Mr. McMahon, and thinking that made me feel good, like it was his way of saying he missed me.

I kept paper and pen under my pillow, and took down names, addresses, and the things that needed to be said. I bought stationery, envelopes, and stamps with the money the elder Smiths paid me. I put the letters in the mail each week. On the envelopes I wrote “Yours, Most Sincerely.” I felt like I was doing some small good, doing my part to help with the war.

But when Jacob and Matthew showed up in my room, wearing their Sunday best, I did not want to see them. Jacob’s red hair was combed back slick, showing blue eyes like his father’s, but older than I remembered, and Matthew’s hair was so short, I could see the freckles up high on his forehead. They stood by my bed, Jacob smiling in a sad sort of way, Matthew just looking sad.

“Elisabeth,” Jacob said.

I shook my head. “No. Jacob, you shouldn’t be here.”

He nodded like maybe he thought the same thing and looked off toward the train. I couldn’t hear it calling, but he could. Both he and Matthew knew it was coming.

“Tell Mama I love her. Tell all the other girls the same. We fought hard, Elisabeth. We made what difference we could, just like Mama told us to.”

“Don’t say you’re going, Jacob. The Missus can’t take any more. I can’t take any more.”

“Tell her what I said. And remember you’re my sister, always have been. Strong as steel, just like Mama.” He tousled my short hair and his touch was like snow on the wind.

The train called out, and this time I heard it.

Matthew spoke up, his voice quieter that I ever remembered. “Tell Mama the same — I love her, and tell the girls so too. What you’re doing is a good thing, Elisabeth. It means a lot to us all. And tell Mama we got her cookies. That helped too.” He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek and I froze inside, not from his touch, but from his pulling away. I couldn’t feel my hands, couldn’t see the paper. I was too numb to say good-bye. Too numb to write down a word they’d said, even long after they’d left.