Morning Glory (46 page)

Until the night they had a thunderstorm at three
A.M.
An immense clap of thunder shook the house, and Will sprang up, yelling as if to be heard above shelling, “Red! Jesus Christ, R-e-e-e-e-e-d!”

“Will, what is it?”

“Elly, oh God, hold me!”

Again, she became his lifeline, but though he trembled violently and sweated as if with a tropical fever, he held his horrors inside.

Physically, he continued healing. Within a week after his return he was restless to walk without crutches, and within a month, he followed his inclination. He loved the bathtub, took long epsom salts soaks that hastened the healing, and always eagerly accepted Elly’s offers to scrub his back. Though he’d been ordered by Navy doctors to have checkups biweekly, he shunned the order and took over tending the bees even before he discarded the crutches, and went back to his library job in his sixth week home, without consulting a medic. His hours there were the same as before, leaving his days free, so he painted and posted a sign at the bottom of their driveway—
USED AUTO PARTS
&
TIRES
—and went into the junk business, which brought in a surprising amount of steady money. Coupled with his library salary, government disability check and the profit from the sale of eggs, milk and honey, which was constantly in demand now that sugar was heavily
rationed, it brought their income up to a level previously unheard of in either Will’s or Elly’s life.

The money was, for the most part, saved, for even though Will still dreamed of buying Elly luxuries, the production of most domestic commodities had been halted long ago by the War Production Board. Necessities—clothing, food, household goods—were strictly rationed, at Purdy’s store, their point values posted on the shelves beside the prices. The same at the gas station, though Will and Elly were classified as farmers, so given more gas rationing coupons than they needed.

The one place they could enjoy their money was at the theater in Calhoun. They went every Saturday night, though Will refused to go if a war movie was showing.

Then one day a letter arrived from Lexington, Kentucky. The return address said Cleo Atkins. Elly left it propped up in the middle of the kitchen table and when Will came in, pointed to it.

“Somethin’ for you,” she said simply, turning away.

“Oh...” He picked it up, read the return address and repeated, quieter, “Oh.”

After a full minute of silence she turned to face him. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Sure.” But he didn’t, only stood rubbing his thumb over the writing, staring at it.

“Why don’t you take it down to the orchard and open it, Will?”

He looked up with pain in his deep, dark eyes, swallowed and said in a thick voice, “Yeah, I think I’ll do that.”

When he was gone, Elly sat down heavily on a kitchen chair and covered her face with her hand, grieving for him, for the death of his friend whom he couldn’t forget. She remembered long ago how he’d told her of the only other friend he’d ever had, the one who’d betrayed him and had testified against him. How alone he must feel now, as if every time he reached out toward another man, that friendship was snatched away. Before the war she would not have guessed the value of a friend. But now she had two—Miss Beasley and Lydia. So she knew Will’s pain at losing his buddy.

She gave him half an hour before going out to find him. He was sitting beneath an aged, gnarled apple tree heavy with unripe fruit, the letter on the ground at his hip. Knees up, arms crossed, head lowered, he was the picture of dejection. She approached silently on the soft grass and dropped to her knees, putting her palms on his forearms, her face against his shoulder. In ragged sobs, he wept. She moved her hands to his heaving back and held him lovingly while he purged himself. At last he railed, “Jesus, Elly, I k-killed him. I d-dragged him back to that f-foxhole and left him th-there and the n-next thing I knew a b-bomb hit it d-dead center and I t-t-turned around and s-saw his r-red h-hair flyin’ in ch-chunks and—”

“Shh...”

“And I was screamin, Red!...
Re-e-e-d!”
He lifted his face and screamed it to a silent sky, screamed it so long and loud the veins stood out like marble carvings along his temples, up his neck and above his clenched fists.

“You didn’t kill him, you were trying to save him.”

Rage replaced his grief. “
I killed my best friend and they gave me a fucking Purple Heart for it!”

She could have argued that the Purple Heart was justly earned, in a different battle, but she could see this was no time for reasoning. He needed to voice his rage, work it out like pus from a festering wound. So she rubbed his shoulders, swallowed her own tears and offered the silent abeyance she knew he needed.

“Now his fiancée writes—God, how he loved her—and says, It’s okay, Corporal Parker, you mustn’t blame yourself.” He dropped his head onto his arms again. “Well, doesn’t she see I got to blame myself? He was always talkin’ about how the four of us were g–gonna meet after the w–war and we’d maybe buy a car and go on v–vacation someplace together, maybe up in the Smoky Mountains where it’s-it’s c–cool in the s–summer and him and me c–could go–go f-fish—” He turned and threw himself into Elly’s arms, propelled by the force of anguish. He clasped her, burrowing, accepting her consolation at last. She held him, rocked him, let his tears wet her dress. “Aw, Elly—Elly—g–goddamn the war.”

She held his head as if he were no older than Lizzy, closed her eyes and grieved with him, for him, and became once again the mother/wife he would always need her to be.

In time his breathing grew steadier, his embrace eased. “Red was a good friend.”

“Tell me about him.”

“You want to read the letter?”

“No. I read enough letters when you were gone. You tell me.”

He did. Calmly this time, what it had
really
been like on the Canal. About the misery, the fear, the deaths and the carnage. About the “Last Supper” on board
The Argonaut,
steak and eggs in unlimited supply to fill a man’s gut before he hit the beach expecting to have it shot out; about boarding a rubber raft in a pounding surf that roared so loud in the limber holes of the sub that no man could be heard above it; about that bobbing ride over deadly coral that threatened to slash the rubber boats and drown every man even before they reached the Japanese-infested shore; about arriving wet and staying so for the next three months; about watching your fleet chased off by the enemy, leaving you cut off from supplies indefinitely; about charging into a grass hut with your finger cocked and watching human beings fly backwards and drop with the surprise still on their faces; about learning what three species of ants are edible while you lay on your belly for two days with a sniper waiting in a tree, and the ants beneath your nose become your dinner; about the Battle of Bloody Ridge; about watching men lie in torment for days while flies laid eggs in their wounds; about eating coconuts until you wished the malaria would get you before the trots did; about the twitch of a human body even after it’s dead. And finally, about Red, the Red he’d loved. The live Red, not the dead one.

And when Will had purged himself, when he felt drained and exhausted, Elly took his hand and they walked home together through the late-afternoon sun, through the orchard, through the flower-trimmed pergola, to begin the thankless job of forgetting.

The war had been hard on Lula. It deprived her of everything she cared most about: nylon stockings, chocolate ice cream—and men. Especially men. The best ones, the healthy, young, virile ones were gone. Only shits like Harley were left, so what choice did she have but to keep on getting what she needed from the big ape? But she couldn’t even blackmail him anymore. In the first place there was no gas to drive to Atlanta and window-shop the way she used to—who could go
anywhere
on three measly gallons a week!—and even if she could, there was nothing in the stores worth blackmailing for. That damn Roosevelt had control of everything—no cars, no bobby pins, no hair dryers. And
nothing,
absolutely
nothing
chocolate! It was beyond Lula why every GI in Europe got so many Hershey bars they were giving them away when folks back home had to do without! She’d put up with a lot, but it took the cake when Roosevelt handed down the order dictating what flavors of ice cream could be made! How the hell did he expect a restaurant to stay in business without chocolate ice cream? And without coffee?

Lula rested a foot on the toilet lid and spread brown leg makeup from toes to thigh, riled afresh by having to do without nylons. How the hell many parachutes did they need anyway? Well, never let it be said that Lula didn’t look her best,
no matter what inconveniences she had to put up with. When the makeup was applied, she carefully drew a black line up the back of her leg with a “seam pencil.” Dressed in bra and panties, she scooted into her bedroom, leaped onto the high bed and turned her back to the dresser mirror to check the results.

Straight as a shot of Four Feathers blended, right from the bottle!

From her closet she chose the sexiest dress she owned, orange and white jersey with enormous shoulder pads, a diamond cutout above the breast, bared knees and nice, clingy hips. One more time she’d try it, just once, and if she didn’t get results this time, the high and mighty Will Parker could cut holes in his pockets and play with himself for all she cared. After all, a woman had pride.

She squirmed into the dress, tugging it over her head, then returned to the bathroom to comb out her pincurls and fashion her hair into its usual whisked-up foreknot of curls. At least she had wave-set; the curls were hard as metal springs and bounced against her forehead gratifyingly.

All zipped, made-up and perfumed, she patted her hair, posed before the mirror with hands akimbo and calves pressed close, like Betty Grable, practiced her kittenish moue, bared her teeth to check for lipstick smudges, and decided the man’d have to be out of his mind to choose Crazy Elly See over
this
!

She licked her teeth, breathed into her cupped palm, smelled her breath and dug in her purse for a packet of Sen-Sen. Damn Wrigley’s right along with Roosevelt, for supplying the entire U.S. military service with free gum for the duration of the war while people out here who were willing to pay for it had to suck this rotten Sen-Sen!

But her breath was sweet, her legs sexy and her cleavage showing as she set out to bag her prey. Hot diddly, that man set her to itchin’ worse than ever! An ex-Marine now with a Purple Heart—imagine that!—with a bit of a hitch still detectable in his walk. It only made him more appealing to Lula.

She’d seen him from the window of the restaurant the day
in May when he returned from the war, and she’d nearly drowned in her own saliva watching him limp up those library steps to see that old biddy, Mizz Beasley. Before he’d reached the door Lula had pressed her pubis against the backside of the counter for a little relief, and it hadn’t changed since. By August she was still watching the square incessantly for mere glimpses of him, and when he wasn’t in town all she had to do was think of him to get the old juices flowing. Lord, the way he’d looked in that uniform, with those crutches, and that tan, and those sultry eyes beneath the visor of his Marine dress cap. He was the best piece of flesh this town had to offer, and Lula’d have him, by God, or wrinkle up trying!

The back door of the library was unlocked. She turned the knob soundlessly. Inside, a radio played softly and a dim fog of light showed at the far end of the narrow back hall. On tiptoe Lula crept its length, paused at the end to peer into the poorly lit main room of the library. He had only one light on, and the blackout curtains drawn. A stroke of luck—privacy!

He was working with his back to her, squatting down on one knee, peering up at the underside of a table with a screwdriver in his hand, whistling along with “I Had the Craziest Dream.” Lula silently slipped off her shoes, left them beside the checkout desk and crossed the room on catfeet.

Stopping close behind him, she could smell his hair tonic. It set her nostrils quivering and her private muscles twitching. As usual, Lula followed the instincts of her body, not her brain. She didn’t stop to figure that you don’t blind-side a jumpy ex-Marine who’s fought on Guadalcanal, whose reaction time is quick, whose instincts are deadly and who’s been trained in the art of survival. He looked good, he smelled good, and he was going to feel good, she thought, as with a feminine, gliding motion she moved in and began slipping her hands around his trunk.

His elbow flew back and rammed her in the gut. He lurched to his feet, spun, knocked her off-kilter, landed a deadly blow on the side of her neck and slammed her to the floor, where she slid six feet before coming to a stop wrapped around the leg of a table.

“What the hell are you doing in here!” he exploded.

Lula couldn’t talk, not with the breath knocked from her.

“Get up and get out of here!”

I can’t, she tried to say, but her jaws flapped soundlessly. She curled up and hugged her stomach.

War had taught Will that life was too precious to squander in any way, even a few precious moments spent with people you didn’t like. He stomped over and jerked Lula roughly to her feet. “What you got to learn, Lula, is that I’m a happily married man and I don’t want what you’re sellin’. So get out and leave me alone!”

Doubled over, she stumbled several steps. “You... hit... me... you bastard!” she managed between gulps.

He had her by the hair so fast he nearly left her leg makeup on the floor.

“Don’t you ever call me that!” he warned from behind clenched teeth.

“Bastard, put me down!” she screamed as he held her aloft.

Instead he raised her higher. “Whore!”

“Bastard!”

“Whore!”

“Owww! Put me down!”

He opened his hand and she fell like a piece of wet laundry.

“Git out and never come sniffin’ around me again, you hear? I had enough of your kind when I was too damn dumb to know the difference! Now I got a good woman, a
good
one, you hear?” He picked her up by the front of the dress, slammed her to her feet and nudged her roughly from behind—nine times—all the way to the back door, snatching up her shoes on the way. He fired the shoes like two orange grenades into the alley, pushed her outside and offered in parting, “If you’re in heat, Lula, go yowl beneath somebody else’s window!”