Blue (6 page)

August 1944

At first I just hung on to my momma and leaned into her softness. She smelled like cooked greens and bacon. I buried my face against her and said, “I brought you some corn on the cob and tomatoes.”

“Oh, honey,” Momma breathed into my ear. “I can't believe they let you in.”

“I just had to see you and Bobby.”

Something changed in Momma when I said that about Bobby. She let out a little cry that put me in mind of Pete whenever one of us stepped on his foot by accident. And I felt her arms go real tight around me like one of them clamps Daddy uses to glue two pieces of wood together.

“Mrs. Honeycutt, is this your child?”

I turned around and seen it was that cook, Mrs. Townsend. Before Momma could answer, I heard a squealing, “Momma! Momma!” And the next thing I knew, Ida and Ellie was throwing themselves at her legs. They almost knocked her over and me too.

Momma was so startled she began to cry. I didn't know whether to fuss at Ida and Ellie for not listening or be glad for my momma that they was there.

But to tell the truth, I don't think Momma had more than two seconds to be glad any of us was there. All of a
sudden people was coming from every which way, and my poor momma was standing there all red-faced with three young'uns hanging on to her.

“What's going on?” demanded a man in a uniform. He turned to Junior.

Junior threw up his hands. “I just brung some vegetables to the cook,” he said. “I didn't bring these girls in. Honest to God!”

“We brought ourselves!” I said. “We wanted to see our momma and maybe wave to our brother. He's inside.”

“No visitors allowed,” said the guard. “You have to leave.”

“Oh, please, sir,” I heard my momma say. “Just let them stay a few minutes.” She was hanging on to every one of us and dropping kisses on our heads like we was all she had in the world. Her fingers was digging into my arm.

That's when I got the same feeling I had at the train station that day. About our family and how it seemed like we was breaking apart. Her hugging me so desperate was giving me that bad feeling.

The guard took ahold of my arm. “It's not safe for any of you to be here,” he said. “You have to leave.”

I didn't argue with him. Suddenly I wanted to leave. I wanted to get away from Momma.

But Ida and Ellie latched on to Momma like a tick on our dog, Pete.

I grabbed both of them. “Stop making a scene. You don't wanna get Momma in trouble, do you?”

They wasn't paying no attention to me. “Help me, Junior,” I called.

Junior come and unwrapped Ida's arms from Momma's legs, and by the time I had Ellie loose, he had the truck
door open and was shoving Ida inside. I carried Ellie kicking and screaming and pushed her in too. Then I climbed in and pulled the door shut quick before they could climb back out. We was all in a sweating, squirming heap when Junior climbed in the other side, cranked up the truck, and shoved it into gear.

I got a last look at Momma just before we went around the corner of the building. She was standing there with her mouth open, wiping loose hairs away from her face and looking like she had got a visitation from an angel.

Junior was driving fast—too fast for the hospital grounds—and there was plenty of people running out to see what was going on. All of a sudden he hit the brakes hard and I seen that a little black dog had run across the road right in front of him.

It took me a second to realize it was our dog. I couldn't believe my eyes. I never thought I'd see that dog again. “Pete! It's Pete!” I hollered. “Stop and get him, Junior. Let's take him home.”

But Junior wasn't stopping for nobody—not even the policeman that stopped him on the way in. The policeman's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he seen us girls in that truck with Junior. It was a crazy, scrambled ride. The girls was crying and we was all smushed up against each other, me sitting half on top of both of them.

I hung on to the dashboard till we were out of the road that led to the hospital. “Junior,” I said, “you were right about Pete. He followed Bobby to the hospital. Did you hear me, girls? Pete ain't dead. He's back there watching over Bobby.”

It felt good to hear myself say it. I just knew Bobby would get better with Pete there being his guardian angel.

All of a sudden I felt good—like I had climbed a mountain. I had actually got to see Momma and take her some corn and tomatoes. I knew I should fuss at Ida and Ellie for not staying put in them weeds like I told them to, but instead I felt like celebrating. So I said, “Junior, take us to the lake.”

“I'm taking you straight home and don't say a word about it,” said Junior. He kept glancing in his mirror like he thought the town of Hickory was fixing to send the police after him.

When we got home, I used the last of our sugar to make a cake for the twins. Then I took some old copies of the
Hickory Daily Record
and the cake out to the corncrib. We set up some sweet-potato crates for tables and chairs and had us a regular playhouse. Ida and Ellie ate the cake while I read the paper to them.

“Look!” I said. “It says right here that the president's wife was on the train in Hickory. It says about a hundred people was watching for her to come stand on the platform and wave at them.”

“Did she do it?”

“No, she didn't. But they seen her in the dining car.”

Wow! It didn't seem possible that President Roosevelt's wife had rode right through little old Hickory. I wondered if the president would ever go through. I'd give my overalls just to get a glimpse of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

While I was reading the paper, I seen a reminder that there was a paper shortage because of the war. We was supposed to turn in every last bit of paper we could find so it could be reused. So after we ate the cake and played for a while, I went inside and gathered up all the newspapers and put them in order by the date.

All of a sudden, something caught my eye that I had missed before. There on the first page on July 4—right where I don't know how I could've missed it—was a story about our dog. Of course, the story didn't mention Pete by name, but it had to be him, on account of it was in the paper right after Bobby went to the hospital—when Pete disappeared. And now we had seen him there with our own eyes.

“Ida!” I called. “Ellie! Come here and look at this.”

The girls come running into the living room and I read it to them.

“That's our dog!” squealed Ida.

“Pete's in the newspaper,” said Ellie. “Ann Fay, why didn't you tell us?”

“I didn't know he was in the paper. I just now seen this.”

“But you read the paper every day,” said Ida.

“And you skip things so we won't cry,” said Ellie.

“I didn't know nothing about Pete being at that hospital. I was so upset about Bobby I didn't even miss that dog till you mentioned him. I betcha he hopped in the back of that hearse and hid there till it got to the hospital. That dog is too smart for his mangy britches.”

“How come Momma didn't tell us about Pete?”

“Well, if you ain't noticed,” I said, “we can't exactly talk to her. Besides, I think she's keeping it a secret. If that hospital finds out whose dog it is, they might take a notion to send him home again. Momma probably wants him there close to Bobby.”

“Is Bobby gonna come home soon?”

That bad feeling hit me again when Ida asked it. But I said what she wanted to hear. “Yeah,” I said. “He'll be home real soon. And Pete and Momma will too.”

“And Daddy? Is Daddy coming home?”

“Of course,” I said. “Ain't that what he says in his letters? He's going to win that war, and before you know it he'll be back. Then we'll all be together again.”

It was easy to say what my sisters wanted to hear. But I didn't feel so sure of any of it.

That night when I put the girls to bed, we prayed for God to bring Bobby and Daddy home safe, just like we prayed every night. Then I went outside and sat on the front porch and looked up at the moon. I imagined God was sitting on the top edge of it with His legs hanging over the sides.

So I didn't bother to close my eyes. I just looked at the moon and talked to Him. “What's happening to us?” I asked. “When we sent Daddy off to the war, I felt like our family was breaking apart. And today I felt it again. Why did I feel like that today when Momma was squeezing me so hard?
Oh, God, please, please, keep us together.”

I thought praying was supposed to make me feel better, but all I could feel was Momma's fingers digging into my arms and her hanging on to us three girls like we was all she had left in the world.

August 1944

Not even a week after we seen Momma at the hospital, that big black hearse drove up to our house again.

Ida and Ellie was playing hopscotch in the dirt and I was picking green beans in the garden. Momma was in the front seat, but I didn't see no sign of Bobby. I went running to the car to see if they had him laying in the back.

But then I seen Momma's face and she wasn't smiling. When I got to her door, she just sat there, unraveling the blue trim she had crocheted onto her handkerchief. She didn't look at me. But I could see her eyes was all red from crying.

Ellie and Ida was crowded up to the car door, asking for Bobby. I pulled them back and said, “Let Momma out. Can't you see Bobby ain't with her?”

I could see they was fixing to hit her with a flood of questions. But even with the door shut and the window rolled up, she was shrinking away from them like she was scared of her own young'uns. So I just blurted it out, which I should not have done. But it's not like I had time to plan the right way to say such a terrible thing. So I just said it fast and straight.

“Bobby ain't coming home. He's dead.”

And even if I did know it in my heart already, it still got me by surprise. I still felt like somebody had put a knife in my stomach.

I held the girls back while the driver helped Momma into the house. She sunk into the sofa and didn't say a word. Ida and Ellie was hanging on to her, begging her to say it wasn't true. She didn't answer them one way or another. Instead, she shrunk herself into the corner of the sofa till it seemed like she was smaller than the twins.

The man stood at the screen door. “Where should I put your boy?” he asked.

That's when I knew they had brought his body home and we was going to bury him ourselves.

Momma just stared at her raggedy handkerchief and didn't bother to answer. So he turned to me.

“Does he have a box?” I asked.

The man shook his head and looked kind of sorry. “No, I offered. But your momma said you couldn't afford it.”

I didn't know what to say about where to put my dead brother. I couldn't stand the thought of carrying him into the house. Bobby always slept with me, and I was afraid that if I laid him on my bed I wouldn't ever be able to sleep there again.

I run and got a baby-sized crazy quilt that Grandma Honeycutt had made. I folded it and laid it on the porch floor. Then the man opened the back of that hearse and laid my brother out on that quilt with all them colors and shapes and zigzaggy stitches. And I kept thinking how him dying didn't make no more sense than the design in that quilt.

At first I couldn't even look at him. I didn't want to see what my baby brother looked like dead.

But that man put his hand on my shoulder. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. And I knew he wanted to leave and go on with his life—whatever that was.

So I forced myself to look at Bobby.

In some ways it wasn't so bad. His face was round and cute as ever. His curly brown hair had got almost as long as a girl's while he was at the hospital. But his legs and arms and body was skinny and shriveled up to nearly nothing.

After the man laid him on the quilt, I didn't have no idea what to do next. All I could think of was to run for Junior. But I just couldn't leave the twins alone like that, with Bobby's dead body on the porch and Momma coming apart like that handkerchief she was picking at.

So I asked the man, “Will you take my sisters to Junior's house on the way out? It's just up the road a piece. They know where he lives, and he'll know what to do.”

Ida threw both arms around my waist and screamed, “No! I ain't getting in that car.” Ellie grabbed onto both of us and said she wasn't neither. So I hobbled as best I could to the car with them stuck onto me like that. I started pulling their hands loose.

“Help me,” I said. “They're whiners, but once they get to Junior's you won't have to worry with them no more.”

Somehow we shoved the twins in. As they was driving away, I seen them clinging to the dashboard and looking all scared toward the back of that car. That's when I realized I had just shoved my sisters into a hearse.

I reckon they must have been terrified of what else was in there. Well, I knew the closer they got to Junior's house the safer they would feel, so I didn't try to stop that car.

Suddenly the world was so quiet I could hear the grasshoppers clicking around in the yard. A crow cawed just like it was any other day when I was in the garden or hanging out the wash.

I sat down on the porch floor beside my dead brother and listened to the birds and insects. A fly walked across
Bobby's eyelids. I shooed it away. It come back, but I stayed right there and waved my hand over his face every time it tried to land.

I looked at Bobby's thin little body that had lost all its chubbiness while he was shut up in that iron lung. I seen close up what polio can do to a person.

How was I going to explain this to my daddy? Somehow I knew if he was here, he would've stopped it. But he put me in charge and I messed everything up.

I thought how Daddy told Bobby to play some every day and Bobby was doing his best to listen to him. But I made him work till he dropped.

My tears started dripping onto Bobby's face and running down his cheeks and into his ears. I didn't wipe them off because I knew he was cold and I couldn't bear to feel the coldness. I just wanted to remember him warm and snuggly.

I could still feel how he would climb onto my lap and beg me for a story. And I could hear how he giggled when I told him his pictures was so good they should be put in a magazine.

Then I remembered that I had burned every last one of his pictures. Now what was I going to remember him by? The crying overtook me then, and next thing I knew, I was laying half across him, sobbing like a baby.

And his body cooled me like the creek does on a hot summer day. I didn't even hear Junior drive up in Daddy's truck, but all of a sudden I felt Bessie's big arms around me. She hugged me like a momma and I felt her rocking me like a big cushiony rocking chair.

She kept saying, “Have mercy. Have mercy on this poor child.” At first I thought she was talking about Bobby. But
then I knew she was talking about me because she said, “She's just a young girl and life has hit her so hard already. Have mercy.”