The Future Homemakers of America (5 page)

‘See,’ she said, ‘I just made it up like a skirt, cover those ugly old legs, then I thumbtacked it down, with this real pretty wrapping paper to cover the top. Now if I can get my hands on a nice piece of bevelled glass, I'll have the darlingest dressing table on the base.’

I said, ‘You okay, Betty? Ed's not giving you a hard time?’

‘I'm just fine,’ she said. ‘Now, you give my best regards to Kath and John, and I'd like you to take them a little something from me.’ She handed me that bar of Ivory soap like it was a piece of the True Cross.

We drove out one morning, after I dropped Crystal. Betty said she'd have loved to mind Sandie, only Deana and Sherry had caught some terrible skin condition, highly contagious, got it in the school yard, rubbing up close to urchins probably never seen a bath tub in their lives, so they were home, painted with violet-coloured lotion, grizzling and tormenting each other. So Sandie came with us, sitting in the back with her mom and Gayle, begging for more when Lois rolled down the window, pretending she could hear the Thing out there, coming to get us.

9

John Pharaoh was home alone. ‘Not here,’ he said, pacing up and down. ‘She's working at the singling, but do you drive over Brakey way, you'll see her. She's at the Mayday Shed. Hello, tuppence. You want to see what I got?’

Sandie ran off with him and Lois followed her. Gayle helped Audrey carry the food parcels inside, and I just leaned against the trunk of the car and watched some little bird that was hovering and singing about a mile over my head.

‘Skylark,’ Audrey said, when she came outta the house.

Gayle said, ‘Ain't this place something! I mean, my folks don't have much, but they got a TV at least. They got a car. These guys gotta be real poor.’

Aud said, ‘And they sleep in their kitchen, I hope you noticed.’

Gayle said ‘Oh, folk do that in Boomer. When we were all home there was eleven of us. Girls head to tail in the kitchen bed ‘cause girls gotta be up first. Where'd he say she was today?’

She was at Mayday. It was one of the beet farms. That's what she did. Little jobs here and there, whatever was going, according to the season.

I wouldn't have minded some kind of work myself, ‘stead of sitting indoors reading my stars in the same old magazines over and over, but when you marry the military you become a Dependent Wife, and DWs weren't allowed to work. Your job was to stand by your bunk, wait for him to come home from Beer Call and tell you another thousand different ways he'd put his hide on the line up in the big blue yonder. How things have changed.

I found out later, from Kath, that singling beets wasn't no exciting career. You just stood in a shed with a bunch of women, all Jexes or Gotobeds, splitting up the clusters of sugar-beet seeds, chopping them up and getting paid nickels and dimes.

‘That's not hard,’ she said, ‘that's just boring. Then August, I go tater riddling. That's hard and boring.’

I asked her one time, ‘How come you're out working and John stays home?’

‘He works when he can,’ she said. ‘But he's not a strong man. He's got bad nerves. He's under Dr Brameld, but he can't do nothing for them though by the seem of it. He catches eels, though, and sells them. When the eels are running, he does well at them. And that's an early start, up at four, emptying the traps. Then he has to get them down to Brandon, in time for the pick-up. He makes traps. Cuts the willow. Strips it. They come from all over to buy his traps. A man come all the way from Welney looking for John to make him a willow grig.’

It seemed like John Pharaoh was a regular little eager beaver. I kinda wished I'd never asked.

Anyways, that was where he'd disappeared to with Lois and Sandie that morning, showing them around his eel-trap empire, making little Sandie squeal with his tray of lugworms. We found them while we were showing Gayle the privy, giving her the full guided tour, like it was the Alamo. Sandie peeping out from behind Lois, daring herself to go and take a close-up look at the worms, and John holding up a basket, shape of a pickle, but six foot high.

You ever sin one big as this?’ he said, giving Lois a knowing smile, and she roared.

‘See,’ she said, when we were driving home, via Brakey, looking for something that might be a beet shed, ‘see, they catch different kinds, depending on the time of year. And sometimes they use nets and traps, and sometimes they use … like a spear, and just catch them one at a time, and sometimes, on a good night, they might catch twenty pounds of them, just in one of those baskets, and the big traps are called grigs but the little ones are called hoileys, and … what else … ?’

‘Tune in same time next week,’ Audrey said, ‘for the Wonderful World of Eel Fishing presented by Lois Moon.’

‘I understand this right?’ Vern said. ‘You drove out there, guzzling gas, took half the commissary and a bottle of good liquor too, and she wasn't even home?’

I said, ‘Yeah. Must have put fifteen mile on the clock. Jeez, you're starting to sound like Ed Gillis. He's got radar-tracking on Betty.’

‘Know what's good for you, you'll stay outta Ed and Betty's business,’ he said. ‘Know what's good for you, you'll quit running round, fraternising with a bunch of breeds. Hell, Peg, why can't you stay home and make a pie once in a while?’

‘Hell is a bad word,’ Crystal said. ‘Also jeez. Miss Boyle says.’

‘Vern,’ I told him, ‘I can make pie
and
go visiting.’

I'll say this about Vern. Sometimes pie was all it took.

‘Honey,’ he said to Crystal, ‘you tell Miss Boyle welcome to the free world, thanks to folks like your daddy, and you can say any goddamn words you please.’

‘You don't tell Miss Boyle no such thing,’-. I said to her when I was tucking her in, ‘and you know what? Mommy's gonna get you a princess dressing table, all pink and pretty.’

I was thinking I'd get Miss Homemaker of America to give me a hand. Betty always seemed to have a hundred ideas how to turn a prefab cabin into what she called ‘a gracious and lovely home’. I figured, if I kept Vern sweet, smartened up the quarters, made the occasional pie, I'd be able get off base once in a while without getting the third degree. Get away from the whine of the jets and the rattling of the windows. Now I'd got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road, and handling that funny money of theirs, I was starting to enjoy going out there.

Crystal said, ‘Mommy? Do I have to have a princess dressing table? Can I get roller skates instead?’

10

I fell and busted my collar bone, coming outta the PX where the kids had been skidding around, polishing the ice. They strapped me up, till the bone knit, which good as put me in the slammer for a while. Couldn't drive, couldn't hardly pull up my own shorts. Couldn't stop Betty Gillis running in and out performing acts of neighbourly kindness. Vern ate all the soup she brung in. That man was a walking Disposall. I just lived on codeine and Pepsi and prayed next time he got orders it'd be for Ramey, Puerto Rico.

‘You rest up now,’ Betty said. ‘I'll take care of things. You're in the best place. You seen what kinda weather we got today?’

They called it a Fen Blow. Looked like a sandstorm to me. A sandstorm on the far side of the moon.

‘Just when you thought it couldn't get worse,’ Lois said. ‘Here, open nice and wide and I'll steady the gun in your mouth. Hell, no. Let me go first. You can make your own arrangements. I got Herb at home and you'll never guess what he's doing.’

Herb loved chopping wood.

Thirty-six hours they didn't fly a single sortie, because of the Blow, and Vern was like a bear with a boil on his backside, driving out to the facility every five minutes, looking for a patch of clear sky.

I said, ‘Why can't you quit prowling around and do something? Play checkers with Crystal or write your mom. Do you know Lance Rudman writes his folks every week?’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Well that figures. Pushing a pencil's about what Rudman's cut out for.’

Vern didn't have much time for Lance. Okey Jackson was the one Vern rated, even though he looked so wet behind the ears, and there were jocks in the squadron had seen real action in Korea. Whatever it was they got up to up there, and I really didn't care to know, Okey was the one kept showing them he had the moxie.

Soon as I got the strapping off, I shampooed my hair and pin-curled it. I was just going to the closet to get the dryer hood when I heard the siren. Then the crash trucks started up.

First time I ever heard that, back at Kirtland, I ran right outside, looking down the flight-line for smoke arid then when I seen it I wished I hadn't, because I didn't know what the hell to do with myself. By the time we got to Drampton, England, I guess I'd learned there was no point. Wait long enough I knew I'd either be getting a visit from the chaplain, standing on my doorstep like the Grim Reaper hisself, giving me my wake-up call, Or, I'd be hearing from Betty Gillis on the jungle drums.

It took her thirteen minutes.

‘Breathe again,’ she said. ‘It's 366 Squadron. You wanna come up here for coffee?’

So we all rendezvoused at Betty's. She was minding Sandie again, didn't seem to know where Lois was.

I said, ‘One of these days that kid's gonna start calling you Mommy.’

‘Be fine by me,’ she said, ‘she's such a little cutie. Way I see it, Peggy, some folks just aren't cut out to be mothers, and if I can lend a helping hand, why, I'm doing Sandie a favour too. You heard the way Lois yells at her sometimes? Tell you the truth, I'd love another little one of my own, only Ed's acting stubborn about it.’

Betty had been putting out feelers, trying to find out the news from 366. See if there were casualties. Pretty soon her telephone started ringing. One of their Invaders had come in on a tight turn and an engine flamed out. The crew had had to eject, and they were all safe home bar one, a sergeant called Benedetto, left one of his legs behind in the wreckage.

We kinda knew his wife. You see girls around, get to recognise their faces. But the Benedettos were quartered on Soapsuds Row, down by the hangars, and besides, we were First Lieuts. We didn't socialise with the enlisted.

Gayle said, ‘Is he gonna die?’

Betty said, ‘Honey, they can do wonders these days. They'll give him a new leg and a disability pension and everything.’

Audrey said, ‘That's right. Air force takes care of its own. Now let's do something to perk ourselves up. How about a Scarf Exchange? And I have a tangerine lipstick somebody might like.’

Gayle said, ‘He still could die.’

Betty said, ‘We'll have no more of that kinda talk, thank you, young lady. Now, I have a tray of brownies here needs arranging nice and pretty. Care to make yourself useful?’

Gayle dumped the brownies on the plate.

I whispered to her, ‘You wanna come out driving, after? Get off the base for five minutes? Celebrate me getting back the use of my shift arm?’

She nodded. Little Sandie was looking at her, so solemn. Even she knew something had happened.

Betty's Best-Ever Brownies

2 sticks sweet butter 4 eggs

4 ounces powdered chocolate

2 cups sugar

½ A cup sifted flour i teaspoon McCormick's vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350°C. Grease and flour a large baking tray.

Melt butter over a low flame, stir in chocolate and set aside to cool.

Beat eggs and sugar until pale and creamy. Fold in the chocolate mixture and blend carefully. Gently add the flour, pour into pan and bake until just set (20—30 minutes).

Leave in pan until cool Cut into squares for serving.

11

Instead of heading up to Brakey we went over by The Warren, the only little bit of woodland in the neighbourhood, spruce mainly, and came through it on a narrow track, trees pressing in both sides, but I liked it a lot better than having that big Norfolk sky watching every move I made. There was a nice earthy smell in there, too, like spring might be on the move.

Gayle was still quiet, so I just talked to myself.

I said, ‘This is like the fairy forest in one of Crystal's bedtime stories. You see any handsome woodcutters? No, well, I guess Herb Moon's still winging his way home with the rest of the boys.’

‘How come nobody ever talks about it?’ she said. ‘Peggy? About crashes and stuff? Like this morning, Benedetto nearly didn't make it, and we just go to coffee at Betty's and sit round, asking her why her brownies taste so good? Can you explain this to me, ‘cause I just don't get it? I mean, when you hear there's a plane down, when you hear those trucks going off, don't none of you ever get the shakes, waiting for the holy Joe to come creeping up the path, tell you you're widow of the week? Hell, Peggy, don't none of you get scared?’

I pulled over.

I said, ‘Well, course we do, hon, but we're not just any old wives. We're air force. We gotta stay calm and steady for our boys. You know that.’

She said, ‘But why can't we talk about it?’

I said, ‘Because the boys never do, and if we did, it'd be like jinxing them. Every day they just go out there and do what they gotta do, and you know what? They're the best. Benedetto blew it, is all. Whaddya expect from 366 Squadron?’

I could bullshit for the Lone Star State.

‘Peg!’ she said. ‘I'm not so dumb I'd say anything to Okey. But that don't mean us girls can't talk about it. Picking through Audrey's goddamned scarves and Benedetto's leg's still out there in whatever's left of his plane, sitting there like a piece a baloney.’

She had the shakes.

‘Happens to 366, it can happen to 96
^th
, it can happen to the air force Chief of Staff hisself. What about when the flaps jam?’ she said. ‘What about when the throttle lever seizes? Stuff happens. Ejector seat don't eject. Hell, sometimes these things just … they just … break. Don't make no difference then if it's a combat ace up there or a blind chimpanzee. I'm scared, Peggy. I'm scared it's gonna happen to my Okey. Then what will I do?’