Creola's Moonbeam (4 page)

The young men, tuxedo-clad and sweating profusely, performed admirably as they clearly wished for the ceremony’s end. The boys were more than ready for the festivities at my parents’ country club. Most of them were still trying to recover from overindulging at the rehearsal dinner party the night before.

My groom was a nervous wreck. Beau sweated more than anyone else in the church, but to me he appeared as calm, cool, and as dashingly handsome as a knight in shining armor.

As my sister had three years prior, I wore Mother’s gown of antique, ivory lace. I carried peach roses and beamed as Daddy walked me down the long, green-carpeted aisle. Mother and Creola, both dressed in shades of pink, stood together on the front row and took turns weeping and making fun of one another for doing so.

Mother said our ceremony was the second most joyous day of her life, the first being her own wedding.

Creola added, “If only Miss Moonbeam and Beau weren’t still such babies. I can’t believe my Moonbeam’s all grown.”

“You look like a princess today,” Daddy whispered in my ear. My father’s eyes were teary. As much as my family approved of Beau, it was obvious that none of them were ready for their last little girl to grow up.

Everything went off as planned at the church and at the reception, with the exception of minor mishaps. A waiter stumbled and dropped the sterling silver punchbowl in the center of the ballroom. Mother was horrified but also extremely relieved that none of our guests’ outfits were splattered with raspberry punch. Daddy, his buddies, and Beau’s fraternity brothers were elated that it was the non-alcoholic punch that got spilled.

My parents had arranged for a uniformed driver to whisk Beau and me away in grand style after the reception. We were to ride across town in Daddy’s brand-new, 1967, midnight-blue Oldsmobile. We would then pick up Beau’s car in the shopping center parking lot and be on our merry way to the Smoky Mountains for our honeymoon.

Beau’s Chevy was there all right, exactly where he’d parked it the night before.

“Good Lord, Beau, look at
that
!” I yelled.

“Damn stupid jerks,” he shouted, muttering much worse under his breath.

Beau’s groomsmen had written all over his car with white paint. Their crude comments went far beyond the traditional, good-natured,
Just Married
wishes. My brain mercifully (for Beau’s future relationships with these old friends) blocked out anything specific.

“Where’s the nearest place we can get the car washed, Harriette?”

“Two blocks on the left. There’s a gas station on the corner.”

Beau gunned the engine. Moments later, the new Mr. and Mrs. Beau Newberry had resolved a good bit of our problem.

But that’s not all.

Mother drove the same make and model Chevrolet as Beau’s. I can only imagine her stunned reaction upon returning home to find
her
car covered with sexually specific graffiti. Seems that the pranksters, in their rush to embarrass us, managed to confuse the two automobiles. Time was of the essence, so they failed to remove the paint from Mother’s car.

I always hoped the language on Mother’s car was milder than on Beau’s. It must have been pretty steamy, however, because, right after all the festivities were over and done with, my mother insisted that Daddy wash her car!

“And, dear, best do so in our driveway. Don’t
dare
take it to the service station. People will talk.”

Daddy, still dressed in his tux, stood with garden hose in hand, wondering what kind of boy his daughter had married. He prayed sincerely that the groom was nothing like his groomsmen.

Mother never mentioned the ill-fated practical joke to me, but Daddy confronted Beau the very first chance he had. My father was still complaining to Beau about the incident up until our first child was born. But Daddy was too gentlemanly to discuss such things in front of “the girls,” meaning Mother and me.

As Beau and I drove north toward Gatlinburg, Tennessee on our honeymoon, the car radio was playing
My Girl
. We sang along, “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day ... ”

Other drivers were honking and waving at us. We finally realized why.

“Guess we’d better get another carwash,” grimaced Beau. “Those idiots must have used enamel!”

“Whatever you say.” By then, I was too contented to care about much of anything but Beau. I smiled. “I’m your
wife
. How strange is that?”

“About as strange as me being your husband.”

“We’re a couple of old married folks.” My voice drifted. I admired the needlepoint purse on my lap. “Look, Beau. Can you believe I finally finished the bloomin’ thing?”

I’d struggled to complete the needlepoint monogram and did so only with the able assistance of Aunts Harriette and Ophelia. God bless them. My new initials, done in yellow on a white background, were in block letters. They spelled out “H-O-N,” for Harriette Ophelia Newberry.

Technically, it should have been HOBN, for Harriette Ophelia Butlar Newberry, but that simply didn’t look right. “Too busy,” explained the lady at the needlepoint shop. “Just use HBN.” But Mother and I agreed that we couldn’t offend Aunt Ophelia by leaving out her
O
. Also, it didn’t matter to Daddy that I omitted the
B
for Butlar. He was far too wrapped up in the mounting wedding expenses.

“It’s just a purse, darling daughter,” he said. “Whatever makes my daughter and my wife happy.” Always the diplomat, Daddy made that particular statement so often in April, May, and June of 1967 that he sounded like a robot.

So
HON
it was.

As we rode down the highway, Beau politely and enthusiastically made jokes over my handiwork. He proclaimed, “You’re a real,
HON-ey
to me, sweetheart.” He turned and quickly kissed my cheek.

I kissed him back.

“Honey, indeed. Honey Newberry.”

I liked it. That was the last time anyone but my parents, Aunt Harriette, or Aunt Ophelia ever again called me
Little Harriette
.

Our first married Christmas was the only Christmas we spent apart. Beau was in Vietnam. I would never forget that night.

Beau had been oddly quiet throughout dinner that night. A great cook I wasn’t just yet, but the roast beef tasted pretty good to me. Something was wrong with him, and he was obviously not ready to tell me what was going on. We went to a movie. As we sat in the theater watching Steve McQueen in
The Sand Pebbles,
Beau fidgeted, not making eye contact with me, not eating our shared popcorn, and not paying a minute’s attention to the film. He continued to squeeze my hand again and again as if he were trying to resuscitate someone’s heart.

Later on, Beau would admit that his initial reaction to the shock of the news was to take the afternoon off for a round of golf. He desperately needed the time to get his mind off what was happening and to figure out how to tell me about it. As a rule, he was a fine golfer, one who shot under eighty. Beau Newberry didn’t break one hundred that round.

We pulled into the driveway of our small rental house. Beau put on the brake and turned to me. “I’ve got to go over there.”

“Over where?”

“Vietnam.”

It was a warm summer night, yet I was suddenly chilled to the bone. We had waited two whole years to get married because we both wanted to graduate from college first. It had only been a few short weeks since our wonderful wedding. My entire body started to tremble.

The wheels of my mind began to turn as I tried to figure out how to keep this from happening to him, to us. Pull strings? Who could we contact to get the orders changed? Perhaps the orders were wrong? Could it be a horrendous mistake? He’d enrolled in ROTC as a sound way to earn extra money for college. But Beau Newberry with orders to Vietnam? How could this be? Could I wish it away? No. Could I pray for it to disappear? I’d surely try.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, there’s no doubt about it. I got a letter. I couldn’t make much sense out of the military mumbo jumbo, but a pamphlet fell out of the envelope. It read ‘Familiar Vietnamese Phrases.’”

I had to laugh.

So did Beau.

Then we wept.

Beau left in six weeks.

I cried, I crumbled, I cocooned my crushed self. For days, either I couldn’t eat a thing or I ate like a pig. Then I cried and I cried and I cried.

Beau was gone. I felt powerless and very, very afraid for him. His parents were terrified, too. Beau was still their baby boy. My parents, as much as they loved Beau, were as concerned for me as they were for my young husband.

Creola vowed to get back at the “Yankee” government. She was childless, and considered us her own. “I’ll show them how I feel about them hurting my babies.” She became a war protester, writing letter after letter to President Johnson. Creola once picketed in front of the army recruiting office in Humphrey. Her actions didn’t help Beau, but it made her feel like she was doing something. I loved her for it.

I pulled myself together and landed a job as a newspaper reporter. It was interesting enough. I stayed busy. As a reporter, I was assigned to write feature stories. I also wrote about other people’s weddings. I was jealous of every bride and groom. At the same time, I genuinely hoped Vietnam wouldn’t separate them as it had us. I wrote letters to my second lieutenant every night. Never much of a writer before or since, Beau wrote back to me.

As the fall holidays approached I dreaded the sight of a grocery-store turkey because I saw the holiday bird as a depressing harbinger of happy times for everyone but me. I wanted to stomp Halloween pumpkins to pieces, and I knew full well that Christmas was going to be hell. I thought about carrying matches with me to set fire to anything that happened to be red, green, and festive.

On one particularly lonely afternoon in December, I came upon a woman ringing her Salvation Army bell. I dropped a dollar in her bucket. As I hurried away, my cheeks were awash with tears. The next morning, I actually walked into a street light pole while trying to avoid a store window with its ornamented tree, fake fireplace, and happy family of mannequins.
Get a grip, Honey
.

I thought about a conversation I’d had with Creola at Mother and Daddy’s on the previous Sunday. After dinner, my parents were in the living room whispering something about Mary Pearle. Concerned, I walked in, but Mother quickly ushered me out.

“She’s not your worry right now, dear. Everything will be fine. Besides, you have Beau to think about.”

She closed the door.

“Mother?”

“Come in here,” called Creola from the kitchen. “You can help me clear off the dishes.”

“But, Crellie —”

“But nothing. I need you.”

Creola had set a trap and I fell right in. She started with tender concern, “Precious little bride, I know you miss your Beau. Of course, you do! Just as he misses you. Miss Moonbeam, there’s an old saying that goes like this, ‘The days are long, but the years fly by.’ I’ve been around long enough to know it’s true.”

“I hope so.”

Then Creola Moon got me. As angry as she was about Beau’s being in Vietnam, my
Crellie
said, “I am a little surprised at you, baby girl. And I don’t quite understand.” She paused as I stacked the dirty dishes and she gathered the silverware. Then Creola charged, “Feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t sound one bit like the brave little girl I raised.”

“I just miss him so much, Crellie.” I cried as I slumped down on a dining room chair. I buried my head in my arms, and in doing so, knocked over what was left of my iced tea. “Damn!”

Mother called from the living room, “Everything all right in there?”