The Sound of the Hours

by Karen Campbell

‘Me! Me!’ In the clamour, Rosa bumped Cesca into a basket of aubergines; purple fruits tumbling on the floor.

  ‘Careful!’

  ‘Ach, don’t bother putting them back in. Stick them in your pinny, Ces. Half are for Auntie El anyway – my earnings for clearing Signor Bertini’s field. Now,’ Joe beckoned Vita, ‘age before beauty.’

  The gelato had turned rose pink, with a sweet berry-scent. Her irritation melted as Joe’s head moved closer to hers. But she would never get to taste the deliciousness that was surely there, because Renata ran in, just then, just at the point Joe was lifting the spoon to Vita’s mouth, and it would have been good and cool to taste it in the darkness of the cave. She was sure it would have been good.

  ‘Never mind that!’ Renata was shouting. ‘The King’s just declared war. On the Germans!’

  The cave filled with silence. Vita felt Joe’s hand reach for hers. It was Cesca who spoke first.

  ‘Does that mean he’s at war with Il Duce? Is the King at war with us?’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Baby.’

  Frank’s mom, buttoning up his coat though the sky was a high, bright California blue. A group of white girls sat on their suitcases, watching. The redhead in the middle gave a little wave. Frank turned away, mortified.

  Momma wore her Sunday coat, and her yellow-sprigged dress. ‘I am so proud. Now, you eat well and keep clean, OK?’

  ‘I am. I’m wearing my best shirt.’

  ‘I know you are, honey. And you look just fine.’ She brushed his shoulders with the back of her hand. ‘And don’t get into any fights – and don’t go looking out the window when you pass through Mississippi.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The white folks there just don’t like us, is all.’

  ‘Momma, they don’t know us.’

  ‘I mean, us. They don’t like Negroes.’

  ‘Oh, Momma. Come on.’

  ‘I’m just saying, Francis.’

  ‘Francis, do as your mother says.’ In the brief closing of his father’s eye, Frank saw solidarity, amusement. A desire for peace. Was his pop about to hug him?

  ‘Be good now, son.’ Firm handshake. Gruff. ‘ASTP, huh? Specialised training? And you definitely get commissioned after?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Well. Be good,’ he repeated.

  ‘Bye, Pop.’

  ‘You listen to your father, Francis. Be good. Always. Be good, and say your prayers – and wash, you hear me? Keep your teeth clean.’

  ‘Yes, Momma.’ Bending to kiss her, then seizing her whole in his arms, so tight that her mauve heels left the station platform.

  ‘Oh, my baby boy.’

  ‘Noreen. That’s enough. Let the boy go.’

  Only it was him holding on to her. Frank wanted to stay right there, inside the feathery collar of his mother’s coat, with her perfume sweet and strong. Gloved hands that were smooth over his, reaching up and kneading his cheek.

  ‘Baby. Home is where you are loved the best. And missed the most. Remember that, you hear? Now you kiss your little brother.’

  Willis Junior was tucked, blurry, behind Pop; there was a slick of moisture over Frank – he couldn’t see them all, ’cause of the heat and. . . hell, he must be sweating hard for it to be this sticky. Little Willis found him first, his toecap making contact with Frank’s shin.

  ‘You don’t kiss me, Francis Chapel. Don’t you dare!’

  ‘Hey! I wasn’t going to kiss you, peanut brain. And get cooties? I don’t think so.’ He scooched down a little, so he was eye-level with the kid. ‘Hand?’

  Willis offered it, grudgingly. His skin was hot.

  ‘Will you look after Momma when Pop’s at work? You know how to fix her iced tea, don’t you?’

  ‘Yup. And I can mow the yard good as you.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Francis!’

  Grabbing his little brother, hard round the middle. ‘Love you, buddy.’ Could feel the thin frame shaking. ‘Hey! What’s this?’

  ‘You coming back, Francis?’

  ‘’Course I am.’

  ‘Billy Clerkin’s big brother didn’t come back.’

  ‘He was up in one of those dumb airplanes. I’m gonna be right on the ground, probably stuck in an office someplace. They’re sending me to college, remember? I’m gonna be an engineer.’

  ‘What if the airplanes come at you, though? Like they did on them boats?’

  ‘Well, you know how fast I am. I’ll just run. They’ll never catch me.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘But what about all the fire trails and ’splosions? I seen it at the movie theatre. All the big lights banging. That’s when it gets you.’

  ‘You know what? That’s just them painting up the sky – it’s like a secret war code, so’s the soldiers can talk to each other.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Willis blew the air out his nose like a little bull.

  ‘Yes, sure. Willis, you are looking at the man who scored A1 on the top army intelligence tests. And they told me that stuff already. So.’

  ‘So.’ Willis shook his head, slowly, but there was the beginning of a smile. ‘So. Michael Carrera says you are full of—’

  ‘Willis!’ said his mother. ‘That’s enough. Francis needs to get on his train.’

  Good a way as any to leave them: Momma proud and teary, Pop quietly above it all, and Willis thinking he was full of shit. Frank jumped aboard, sat on the bottom berth in a compartment of the pullman. The car was tagged at the end of the regular passenger train, set aside for military.

  Four weeks ago, Frank had been a college freshman. Straight-A black kid at white-towered Berkeley, on a campus teeming with girls, slick college girls who made his clever mouth dry at the edges. Studying math and science and wishing it was art, and wanting something big to happen. Been wanting that for years. He was sick of being invisible.

  The poster on the bulletin board said if you signed up before you turned eighteen, you’d get a sixth-month deferment. From a war you’d no cause to fight.

  Lesson one: they lie.

  Since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour, this war had been churning on, a constant presence like the ocean: over there, a thought, occasionally, when the scent on the breeze turned. A theoretical possibility you might have dipped into. Perhaps. Young men going to do their country proud. You heard a lot about the marching off, not so much about what happened after.

  Only now, the theory was fact. They’d used up so many US soldiers, they were moving to draft black folks. Soldiering’s for white men, said a white boy in his class. You’ll only be shifting and shovelling anyway.

  ‘Is that right?’ he’d asked his buddy Charlie. ‘Don’t we get to fight?’ He’d added the ‘get to’ at the last minute, figuring it sounded better. Frank could run fast, and he could box. Track and field were permissible activites – you could even shoot hoops, and practise catch, but some invisible line excluded black students from joining teams. Which was fine. Team games alarmed him, mostly due to the fact there’d be others to let down beside himself. He wasn’t any kind of leader. Killing might the ultimate loner activity. But it contained, on its flip side, the possibility of being killed. Being killed was not the change of which Frank dreamed.

  ‘Nuh,’ said Charlie. ‘My cousin’s over in Europe right now. All they do is keep stuff oiled. War be over soon anyway – damn Eyeties even started fighting with themselves.’

  Charlie was so sure about the world. Practise as he might, Frank could not capture the easiness with which his buddy rolled through life, and women. Charlie reckoned if they drafted you, you’d be gone within the month. This way, we enlist, we show willing – and get six months longer here. Six months was half a year: half a year when Frank could perfect his swagger, maybe kiss a girl and join the OTC and practise being a man. A uniform might help. If you had a uniform, that was a shorthand. Meant you didn’t ha
ve to speak. And a uniform was a uniform was a uniform. It might break through that other invisibility, the one nobody really spoke about in Berkeley because they were college kids and so, so smart. A uniform would make you an American. Hell, a uniform might give you a vote.

  Frank removed his jacket, folded it neat inside the tiny locker. Space was so cramped you didn’t need to stretch. He’d told his folks not to wait. The little window faced the opposite side of the tracks, so he’d no idea if they were still there. Two berths in this slim chamber, but he’d heard some guys slept top to tail. The thought repulsed him, someone’s dirty feet in his face. Charlie had got his six-month stay of execution after all. Whoever bunked with Frank would be a stranger.

  Most of the other guys swilling on the platform had been in uniform. He guessed he’d get his at Fort Benning, which was no big deal but it would have been nice to start out looking like he belonged. Should he take the top berth or the bottom? Some guy’s butt above you, or your face two inches from the roof? Bottom felt more roomy. As he dithered, he could hear the clip, clip of boots down the corridor. Then a slowing, then a pause. He part-stood, sharp flash-thought; it would mean relinquishing ownership of the bottom berth, so, no. And down again. Deep breath as the door opened. This was it, this was it, he could be anyone at all in this new place. Man, he could be Charlie.

  A stocky boy stepped inside: roll-up cigarette, duffel bag almost half the size of him slung over one shoulder. He wore a yellow shirt, sleeves rolled high and tight so the packed balls of muscle burst like pea-pods below. ‘How you doing?’ The boy drew on his cigarette. ‘I’m Luiz.’

  ‘Good to meet you. I’m Frank.’

  ‘I’ll take the top, yeah?’ He chucked his bag up.

  ‘Sure. I. . .’ Frank’s fingers, spreading on the coverlet. ‘I’m fine here.’

  The train jolted forward and they were off. He wanted to run to the corridor, wave to his momma as they sped away – what if they were waiting still? – but this Luiz guy was eyeing him through smoke, so.

  So he didn’t. And he would always be sorry for that.

  They rumbled on for an hour or so; he guessed Luiz was sleeping. He sure wasn’t talking. Frank flicked through a paperback, but he couldn’t concentrate. He’d packed a blank notebook too, to record this for posterity. Here’s me, on my berth. Shouldn’t they be doing something? Was there a roll call, a bunch of instructions to be given? Regulations to read? Was he officially ‘in’ the army now, or could he jump off at the next station if he chose?

  Did he have choices? He thought of the lieutenant in the recruiting office. Pleasant man, full of Southern courtesy.

  ‘You know,’ the man had spoken languorously, ‘you boys are something of a dilemma. One we did not seek.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Plenty shouting from your Negro papers, your Negro politicians. Plenty stamping feet. But some folks think coloured troops ain’t. . .’ He’d smiled, tapping his pen on his teeth. ‘Well, that you don’t have the temperament for war. What you say to that, Chapelle?’

  ‘It’s Chapel, lieutenant.’

  ‘You done much fighting, boy?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘But you smart? You a college boy, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So how you feel, being bellyached at day and night. Folks yelling instead of asking?’

  ‘I guess that’s the army, sir.’

  ‘You want to serve your country, Chapelle?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If I tell you you’ll be cleaning latrines for the next two years, that you be cleaning up white boys’ shit for you service, you OK with that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If I tell you you spooks ain’t no better than a bunch of women and all we got for you is nursemaiding in the hospital, you be all right with that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If I said you niggers can’t fight because you split at the first sign of trouble and your motherfucking brains is in your dicks, you be all right with that, Chapelle?’

  ‘No, sir!’

  ‘No, sir, why, sir? You wan’ fight me, boy?’

  Frank’s hands were trembling. ‘No, sir. I want you to shut up.’

  A knock at the door, and then an orderly had entered with Frank’s test scores, except Frank thought it was probably to arrest him, and he’d steeled himself, waiting for the hustle out, and then the lieutenant had coughed and gone: ‘Heh, heh. Show me some bite, boy.’ Tapping his pen on his teeth again. Blue ink on his finger. In a minute it would spread to the side of his mouth. ‘You get yourself shot, you blood will run just the same ruby red as mine. You got me?’

  ‘Sir. Yes, sir.’

  The lieutenant’s eyes had swept down to the blotter on his desk. ‘Uh-huh, Chapelle. Dismiss.’

  Lesson two: let it go.

  Another hour of bumping and rolling, and Frank began to doze. Then the legs of Luiz appeared in front of him. He’d changed into uniform green. Tunic made him seem taller. You could still see the tightness of his arms underneath.

  ‘Wanna get some eats?’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘It’s the army. They ain’t gonna starve you, man. Come on.’

  Not understanding how Luiz knew these things and he didn’t, Frank followed. Had there been an induction message he missed? All his letter said was he’d to report to this train. They walked along the corridor of the sleeping car; he could hear a few voices, the twang of a guitar behind a door. Through the next car, a passenger car, where people turned and watched them go. Then it was the dining car.

  ‘Help you, boys?’ said the waitress.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. We’re headed to Fort Benning, and I wanted to check what provision had been made for us to dine here?’

  This? This urbane soldier was duffel-bag Luiz?

  ‘Sure. Well, there’s a few of your boys over there.’ She pointed at a full-up table, where young, pink-faced soldiers were tearing into a basket of bread rolls. ‘Let me see. You can get one appetiser and one entree, or one entree and one dessert. Water and two cups of coffee too. Why don’t you get yourselves seated and I’ll bring the menu over?’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  She looked at Frank. ‘Mm-hm.’

  The tables next to the soldiers were all occupied, so they chose one further down. Across the aisle was an elderly couple, and behind Frank a family was sharing out salad greens. He touched his forehead to the old lady opposite as he sat. ‘Ma’am.’

  Luiz took the menu card from the waitress, barely glanced at it. ‘Soup and steak, please.’

  Frank spent longer studying the card, so long in fact that the waitress was summoned by the old couple, and had moved over to them.

  ‘Where d’you reckon we are now?’ he asked Luiz.

  ‘No idea.’

  All I know is, once we hit south, my momma said—’

  He was interrupted by the waitress. ‘Excuse me, boys. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Luiz placed his water glass, carefully, on the table.

  The waitress was in her fifties, a faded beauty with puffy hands. She lowered her voice. ‘I’m real sorry, but I can’t serve you. Not here.’

  ‘Not here? Why?’

  ‘Well,’ she chewed on her lip, ‘I can serve you, son.’ She turned to Frank. ‘But not you.’

  ‘I’m a soldier too! I just don’t have my uniform yet.’

  ‘It’s not that. . .’ Her glance slid sideways, to the elderly couple who were straight-backed, slurping soup.

  A sudden wash of shame. He could feel the sweat prickle on him, sharp little stabs on every portion of his skin, and inside his head, where they became sharp little hammers, beating on his eyeballs. He stood up to go, but Luiz tapped his wrist. ‘Hold up, buddy.’ He raised his voice. ‘You want to tell me why you won’t serve a soldier of the US Army, ma’am?’

  Frank shook his head. He was staged like a marionette, for all the world to see.
Like a wet eel writhing on a hook. ‘Please, man. Don’t.’

  Further up the car, the other soldiers were taking notice; he could see the nudging, whispers. One big, meaty grin. They were legion; around twenty white faces in the car, all staring up at him. The boy who did not wish to be invisible.

  ‘It’s fine, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Can I have soup and steak in the pullman car?’

  ‘You go on. I’ll bring it right along.’

  He felt his way back down through the dining car, past the old couple who were just rigid bars, past a family not-eating, through the passenger car where he heard crystal laughter, caught a glimpse of red hair, down the corridor of the sleeping car, groping round the door, sliding it shut. Keeping his spine hugged there, tight up against the peeling wood. The flesh on his knuckles taut. Shiny black knuckles.

  Frank was not naïve. He might be cushioned in laid-back California, where, so long as you didn’t cross the line, there was a veneer of egalitarianism. School was mixed and – technically – you could dance with white girls. The US Army was segregated; he’d accepted that. But to be forbidden to eat in public? That the fact of his teeth on show, that his jaw working, would offend the sensibilities of good folks around him? How unclean did they want him to feel? Not just him, but his momma? Folks like his momma? Would they look at that sweet, Godly woman who polished and scrubbed all day and see only dirt?

  There was a knocking on his door. Frank stood himself straight, slid it open. Not the waitress but a soldier, a white man with silver bars on his tunic, same as the soldier in recruitment.

  ‘Chapel?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Come on through. Chowtime.’

  ‘But the lady—’

  ‘Chapel.’ He was staring at his clipboard. ‘You might think you’re some fancy-assed college boy who deserves room service, but not on my train. Now shift your butt through to that dining car. And get your goddam uniform on.’

  ‘I don’t have one, sir.’

  ‘How come you don’t have one?’

  ‘Not been issued, sir. I was rushed straight through.’

  Aptitude scores that were ‘off the scale’, mechanical and classification tests so good, they were sending him straight to ASTP. ‘Not been to Fort MacArthur either. It’s on my record, sir. Francis Chapel.’