Mare's War (22 page)

Bob looks at Delly, then at Ruby, nervous. He thinks Ruby and me shouldn’t say stuff like that in front of a white girl, but I know she is not hearing anything from
us
. Tiny is leaning over her, lighting up her cigarette and talking real sweet and low.

“Ruby.” Bob’s finally made up his mind. “You wanna dance?”

“Fine,” she says, and gets right up, mouth still tight.

Tiny grabs Delly and heads after them, and Jake asks if Annie wants another drink. James looks at me, but I look down at the table. I can’t dance no jitterbug, and anyway, I still have got my drink. Lessons with Annie and Peaches don’t mean I can dance with a real boy, not yet.

They change the record to play something soft. “Tommy Dorsey’s ‘Marie,’” James says. “You’re Marey Lee, right? Close enough. Come on and dance.”

My mouth just dries out. Me? I can’t. What if I open my mouth and he hears how country I am? What if I step on his feet?

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, huh?” James is still waiting.

“Sure. Okay.” I can barely talk, but Annie gives me a thumbs-up.

The dance floor is no bigger than a postage stamp. James is tall and handsome, a real knockout, and he’s a good dancer, too. He hums in my ear, and I can smell his hair pomade as he puts his arms around me.

We swing through not just one dance, but two. James asks me where I am from and says he is from Dayton, Ohio. He tells me he was a salesman back home, makes two hundred dollars a week already and he is only twenty-five. I don’t say too much. I just listen. I know a smooth talker when I hear one. When we get back to the table, Ruby is smiling, and I can’t keep a grin off my face.

Before I get time to catch my breath, Bob asks me to dance, and Jake asks Annie. James takes Ruby, and then we switch. I dance with James one more time.

“Hate to break up the party, girls, but we’ve got a train to catch,” Annie says. “This curfew-on-leave thing is for the birds.” Ruby and me groan, but Annie keeps at us till we get up.

“I wouldn’t mind you lot stopping with me,” Delly says, looking around at us. “We live just past Oxford, if you don’t mind an extra railway stop.”

“Thanks, Delly,” Annie says. “We’ve got to be back to night, but maybe we’ll take you up on that tomorrow?”

“I’ll take a rain check on that drink,” Ruby says, and she stands up. Bob smiles at her with his whole face, a different kind of smile than before.

“Maybe I’ll see
you
tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” Ruby says, like she doesn’t care.

I look at James. “Thanks for the dance,” I say, trying to sound grown.

“Think nothing of it,” says James, waving his hand. “Maybe I’ll see ya around.”

After some more talk, Jake, Bob, and Tiny walk us to the station. Bob walks with Ruby, while Tiny and Jake take turns telling us their fool stories. There are a lot of uniforms out, and folks are singing and laughing too loud. I can smell cheap whiskey and perfume, and I see folks weaving out there on the sidewalk, rolling like a ship in a high wind. One painted dolly grabs hold of Jake and says, “Hey, soldier! Slow down!”

“Hurry up,” I hear Annie say. “We can’t miss this train!”

Jake grabs her, and they run on ahead. I do my best to follow on, close as I can.

We walk on through a big old crowd in front of another juke joint, and Tiny steps in front, trying to clear the way for me. I slip sideways between folks, ducking under his arm. The crowd shoves, and Tiny jostles me, then straightens up.

“Watch it, boy!”

It is a slow moonshine drawl, but I hear the crack of an overseer’s whip behind those three words. My stomach hits my backbone. I spin around, trying to find a face.

He is close to us, just another khaki uniform and a pair of broad shoulders. His face is hardly visible, but I can still see his mouth all twisted up. He hawks, and a gob of spit lands right next to our feet. He looks at Tiny, spoiling for a fight.

“There’s no ‘boy’ around here,” Tiny say, real slow, his voice real calm. “We don’t want any trouble.” Tiny puts his hand on my back, and he pushes, just a little. I know what to do. I start moving. Fast. Sister Dials always says folks who get liquored up don’t make no kind of sense. It is best not to try and reason with them. Neither of us wants trouble, especially since Bob and Jake are somewhere ahead of us and I’ve got a train to catch. I step up my pace, and Tiny does, too.

We get another couple of feet before we know for sure that boy is following us. Him and some other folks I can’t see. I look up at Tiny, and his face has gone empty, like his mind is somewhere else. He has got his hand on my shoulder, and he doesn’t say anything.

“Tiny,” I say.

“Don’t talk, walk,” he says, and I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on the ground.

Don’t know why I want to look back. I’ve seen these folks before. All of us have seen them before, don’t care where we’ve been, and hate always looks the same. It has got the same face, the same voice, the same mouth all twisted up sour, trying to say all those poison-mean things.

I trip over something in the road, take a little hop, and walk faster. My ankle throbs.

“You all right?” Tiny grabs my elbow.

“Just fine,” I say, but my voice is tight. “Tiny …”

“Can you walk faster?”

I can.

“Yeah, you better run, you uppity nigra.” I hear the voice again, sneering. “We strung up a big ugly nigra like you back home.”

Now all I can think about is rope prickling raw against my skin. About colored boys who been dragged through the street and strung up for looking sideways at a white girl. About all of us who have ever been chased, been beat, been tarred. I wonder about Tiny. What is he thinking? How could he convince himself that white folks weren’t nothing to think about here? My heart is about to burst right out of my chest, it beats so hard.

Tiny walks faster, and I try to keep up.

“We’re going to get you to that train,” Tiny says, pretending like that is the only thing that has got me worried. “Don’t you fret, Private Boylen.”

I keep my head down. It is supposed to be safe to walk after dark with a man, but walking with a colored man with white folks after him means I might be better off on my own. Leastways, then nobody would be chasing me about to kill me.

“Forgot who you are, nigra—found out you can get a white girl here. Been seeing you and them other coons of yours stepping out with them English whores.”

Tiny’s face is like polished rock. His nose is flared, like air is hard to take in.

“What’s her name, nigra? You call that whore by your mama’s name?”

Tiny stops cold. His hand on my back pushes, hard.

“No!” I blurt. “Tiny, don’t—”

“Run.”

I run.

Before I get two steps, I hear a solid
whump
, and somebody grunts, hard, like the air just got knocked right out of them. Folks on the street start screaming, and I start hollering for Jake and Bob, feet flying. Next thing I know, Ruby has got me by the arm, telling me to calm down.

“They got Tiny.” I can’t hardly talk. “Tiny. They gonna beat him to death.”

Bob grabs my arm. “How many?”

“I don’t know—maybe five?” I can’t stop shaking.

“I’ll see you, Ruby,” Bob says. He looks behind us, looks back at Ruby, trying to decide. “I’ve got to go,” he says, and he runs.

I hear whistles, and Ruby grabs my hand. “MPs.”

“I’ve got to go back. I can tell them what happened. I can—”

Ruby grips my arm. “We’ve got to go. We can’t miss that train.”

I look back. “Ruby! The MPs will haul them
all
in, and—”

Ruby shakes her head, but she won’t say nothing, not about Bob, not about nobody. We run to the station, and our train is already there. We climb on, wrap up tight in our coats, and walk through the cars, looking for Annie.

“Are you girls all right?” she says when we find her. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Ruby just flops down on a seat like her strings have been cut. She rubs her face while I tell Annie what went on.

Annie nods her head. “Jake said it, all right. Colored soldiers are fighting two wars over here.” She sighs and looks out at the dark as the whistle sounds and the train jerks and starts to move. “One of these wars it doesn’t look like they’ve got any chance to win.”

“It’s their own fault this time,” Ruby say, suddenly hot. “Why are they stepping out with English girls? They’re bringing trouble on themselves.”

Annie shakes her head. “No. We’re all American soldiers. We’re here fighting for democracy; isn’t that what they tell us? They’ve got the right to step out with anyone. And the English don’t take kindly to anyone telling them what to do, so they won’t stop seeing them.”

“Specially not that Delly.” Ruby smiles a little. “She is something, the way she just spoke right up, cool as anything,
and invited us over. She doesn’t know us from a hole in the ground!”

“I’m going to stay with her tomorrow night,” Annie says, then she looks at Ruby and me. “You girls should come, too.”

“I don’t know,” I say. I am not sure about Delly at all. Tiny sure likes her, though. It don’t bother me who Tiny steps out with, but it seems to me he’d better be real sure she’s worth all the aggravation before he starts beating folks over her.

“It’s just one night,” Annie says. “Come on, girls.”

Seems the English have they own ideas about us “blacks,” about our colored soldiers, and about us. All I know of the English is that they talk fast and pretend that don’t nothing bother them, not war, not bombs, not nothing. It might be all right to stay with this Delly, to get a look at what Tiny sees in her. And anyway, it is only one night.

Back at base, we all hold out our passes, and the MP checks us in. Ruby starts humming a song, and I remember James singing in my ear. Seems like so much has happened since then. Too much.

Well, my first time in London, and I have drunk alcohol, danced with men, and run away from a fight. This has been some kind of birthday.

Delly’s house looks like all the other ones in Reading—brick and brown. In the front room at Delly’s house, they’ve got a “sixpenny fireplace,” like the gas stoves Ruby says they have got in the Red Cross hotel. They also have a picture of the old English king. Delly’s mama, Mrs. Georgina Dye, sits in that front room and sews up something with a lamp on her, keeping her eye on the street, where Delly’s little brothers play. She has got blackout curtains pinned up at the side, too.

If she was but taller and a little broader in the beam, she would look just like Sister Dials, sitting up there, talking about, “Adele! Introduce your friends,” like we are somebody special.

In our shoulder bags we have brought gifts. Doris got us some C rations—beef stew in cans and such—and Mrs. Dye is glad like we brought her diamonds and gold. Ruby brings a stash of chocolate bars from back home, and I bring three oranges and K rations. K rations have got a
can of Spam or cheese, a few crackers, cookies or candy, a few cigarettes, and powdered coffee. Mrs. Dye want to open up that powdered coffee for us ’cause she say Americans like their coffee, but we told her we would have tea just fine.

We eat “tea,” like a late lunch, I guess, and sit down to what Delly and her mama and her little brothers eat. The house stinks like cabbage; Mrs. Dye seems to like her Brussels sprouts. Ruby scrunches up her face at the smell, but I have smelled worse when Mama butchered a hog.

Tea is thin sandwiches with margarine and peppery “cress,” which don’t taste like nothing different from creasy greens back home. Course, at home, nobody puts greens in a sandwich. They have also got carrot, cabbage, and sweet pickle grated up on white bread for a treat, which is all right, I guess.

Mrs. Dye says we have “bangers and mash” for later on. Haven’t never had anything like that, but Annie say it is only mashed potatoes and sausages that pop open when you cook them. Annie says the sausages are made out of pork, but Ruby says they taste like sawdust and cotton to her. I am sure glad we brought a little something. Folks here don’t have no kind of good food in this war.

Delly asks where we want to go tonight. Ruby looks at me and says she wants to go see Piccadilly Circus.

“Let’s go to Rainbow Corner, then,” Delly says. Rainbow Corner is a big old Red Cross club right down-town so popular that even the movie stars go, like Irving
Berlin and James Stewart. Ruby looks up at Delly like she’s crazy. We
know
we have got no business there.

“Better not,” Annie finally tells her, smiling a little. “The club for the colored servicemen is in Winchester.”

“But that’s so far!” Delly says, frowning. “We can’t go all that way!”

Annie shrugs and straightens up her collar. We none of us say nothing for a minute, thinking about last night and Tiny and Bob. “We
could
go back to that little joint we were at last night,” Ruby says, like she don’t care, but Annie is already shaking her head.

“Bob won’t be there,” Annie says, real quiet. “Likely the MPs took the whole lot of them in for disorderly conduct, and we won’t see them for days.”

Delly sighs. Some boys from Tiny’s unit already have let her in on the news. “Well,” she says finally, “mustn’t sit here and sigh all night.” She smiles and asks Ruby something about growing up in Texas.

Ruby still looks at Delly like she don’t know about her, but Delly doesn’t bother me none. English girls are not like regular white girls, and Delly is not like anyone. She talks and talks about how she went to “university” before the war; she asks me about folks back home, about Mama and Feen. She asks if any of us got a young man back home, and she tells us about her school friend who went off to the Royal Air Force. She hasn’t heard what happened to him, and there’s been no letter from him in a long while. That’s why she volunteers with the Red Cross
after she gets off from the factory. Delly works on Station Road, making Spitfire planes.

Delly pins up her hair while we are getting ready to go out. “Marey,” she says. “You’re too quiet. Where do you want to go?”

Ruby looks at me, trying to say something without talking. I am in the hot seat. “Well … we could see a film.”