Just as his heart began its familiar pounding, Dolly called his name. “Reed! Come and join us, honey!”
He could only hope his lips didn’t quiver when he tried to smile as the men all greeted him and shook his hand. Harry and Jesse introduced Reed to their wives.
“You’re Daisy’s friend,” he said when he met Anna.
She looked surprised. “How do you know Daisy?”
“I took a walk by the creek yesterday afternoon, and she was sittin’ on the bank with her sketchbook. She told me the two o’ you got my room ready. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I hope it’s comfortable?”
“Perfect.”
“Anna, honey, will you help me get everything on the table?” Dolly called from the kitchen door.
“Well, now, I might not be able to boil water, but I can carry food,” Evelyn said as she followed Anna into the kitchen. The men took their seats, and the women brought Dolly’s breakfast to the table: scrambled eggs, country ham, homemade biscuits and pear preserves, sausage gravy, creamy grits with fresh butter, a pitcher of cold milk, and coffee.
“Did Daisy show you any of her drawings?” Anna asked Reed.
“Yeah, she’s really good.” He didn’t tell them about the portrait she had drawn of him. Somehow that seemed too personal.
“Before I forget, I have news to report,” Harry said. “I picked up a Talladega Daily Home yesterday, and you’ll never guess who was on the front page.”
“FDR,” Evelyn said.
“Well, of course he was there, but who else?” Harry said, looking around the table. “Nobody wants to guess?”
“Out with it,” Evelyn said.
“Our very good friends the Clanahans from Reno, Nevada!”
Everybody around the table looked stunned, except for Reed, who had no idea who they were talking about.
“Who are the Clanahans?” he asked Joe. Dolly had seated the two of them next to each other.
“The most detestable twosome you ever did see,” Joe explained. “Boarded here for a coupla weeks till they finally pushed Si too far and he run ’em off with his shotgun.”
“What on earth were those two doin’ on the front page o’ the paper?” Dolly wanted to know.
“They had been arrested!” Harry said with relish.
“What!” Dolly exclaimed.
“Can’t think of anybody I’d rather see locked up,” Si said.
“Well, they’re out on bail now,” Harry said. “The newspaper said they were caught attempting to vandalize the property of a coworker who accused the not-so-honorable Mr. Clanahan of stealing parts from the Army factory.”
“Si, reckon we oughta be worried?” Dolly asked.
“The men o’ the house can keep an eye out for anything suspicious, Dolly, but I doubt they’d show up here. They’ve done seen the business end o’ my shotgun once. Doubt they’d wanna eyeball it again.”
“Still makes me nervous,” she said.
“No need,” Si assured her.
“I didn’t mean to worry the ladies,” Harry said. “Pay me no mind, Dolly. I just wanted us to have an opportunity to rejoice together at the thought of those two behind bars.”
“Well, we’ve rejoiced, so let us move on,” Evelyn said.
“Reed, are you a fisherman?” Joe asked.
“Used to be. It’s a little tricky now—kinda hard to get in and out of a boat or stand for very long.”
“Well, that just gives Si and Harry an excuse to rig somethin’ up for you,” Joe said.
“Perhaps pulleys could be involved,” Harry suggested.
“Si’s gonna want something motorized,” Jesse said with a grin.
Evelyn shook her head. “Reed, I am afraid Si brings out the mad scientist in my husband, so you will just have to excuse them both. Perhaps you can be a positive influence. Joe and Jesse have proven absolutely useless, as they merely fuel the fire and get right on board with whatever contraption the other two dream up.”
Everybody laughed. Reed smiled and looked around the table as the morning chatter went on. There were no anxious stares telegraphing, Please tell us this is the day you’ll forget the war and turn back into the boy you used to be. Most of these people had no idea who he used to be. He could breathe easy—really easy—for the first time since he’d shipped out.
What if she doesn’t show? Reed never considered that possibility until he had changed into a T-shirt and his old high school gym shorts. He was sitting on the edge of the twin bed on the little porch Si had built for him when he heard an engine turning over and over. He could tell by the sound of it that it wasn’t going to crank.
Grabbing his keys, he made his way outside and found Anna at the wheel of Jesse’s truck, trying the ignition for him while he looked under the hood.
“Can I help?” Reed asked.
“The others already left, and the foreman will fire me if I’m late,” Jesse said. “If you’ve got any ideas, I’d be grateful.”
Reed took a look under the hood. “Can you turn it one more time, Anna?” He listened to the engine turn over and over. It wasn’t going to fire. “That don’t sound like a quick fix, Jesse. Tell you what—take my keys. You can drive my truck to work and I’ll see what I can do with yours this afternoon.”
“I couldn’t do that, man.”
“Where am I gonna go? It’ll give me somethin’ to do. Get outta here so you won’t be late. Just set my toolbox outta the back before you leave.”
“Thanks—really, thank you,” Jesse said. He and Anna started for Reed’s truck, but then he stopped, turned, and came back. “I just want you to know—I tried to go. They wouldn’t take me.”
Reed shrugged. “You’re goin’ where they sent you. Same as the rest of us.”
While Anna said goodbye to Jesse, Reed hobbled back to his porch and found Daisy standing at the screen door.
“What’s with that?” She was pointing to the bedsheet Dolly had tacked over the only wall of screen wire that was visible from the loop road.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”
As Daisy stepped inside, he sat down on the bed and explained the sheet. “When I told Dolly you were gonna help me, she tacked that up there—said the gossips on the loop might talk, so she’d just put a stop to it before it started.”
Daisy shook her head. “That’s Dolly. She’s right, though. When you live someplace where nothin’ happens, people talk about anything they can get their hands on. I’m guessin’ that’s why both doors to your room are wide open?”
“Yep.”
Daisy pulled the porch rocker beside the bed and sat down. “So tell me what we’re doin’.”
He handed her a couple of sheets of paper with exercise diagrams printed on them. “The idea is that if you help me do these for a while, I might get to where I can do ’em myself. And then if I do ’em long enough and often enough, my leg might get closer to normal so I can stop walkin’ like I’m one step away from the old folks’ home.”
“I follow that,” she said, which always made him smile. “Looks like you’re supposed to be lyin’ down for the first one.”
As Reed lay down and stretched out on the small bed, Daisy scrutinized his bad leg for the first time. “Dang,” she said.
“The answer is no. You cannot draw my leg.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ about drawin’ it.”
“But you were thinkin’ it.”
“Okay, yeah, I was thinkin’ it. I don’t mean to be an oddball. It’s just that drawin’ things helps me understand ’em, you know?”
“I don’t think you’re an oddball. But there ain’t no way you’re drawin’ this mangled mess.”
He knew how his leg must look to her. It was covered with long, jagged scars where another medic and later surgeons had worked to save it after shrapnel tore it to pieces. His knee was especially bad.
Daisy studied the first exercise on the papers he had given her. “This first one looks simple enough. I’m
just supposed to lift your leg a little bit off the bed and help you bend your knee in toward you.”
Standing by the bed, Daisy put one hand under Reed’s knee and the other under his ankle and lifted his leg a few inches off the bed. But his knee wouldn’t bend at all. “You can push a little harder,” he said. He could tell she was being as gentle as possible as she tried to push down on his ankle and up on his knee, but he still felt a sharp pain and winced.
“Hold on a second—stay right there.” Daisy lowered his leg onto the bed and went into the house.
It was so depressing to think about walking like this for the rest of his life. At twenty-one, he was looking at a lot of years walking like an old man and being of no use to anybody. Just as he felt himself beginning to choke in what he privately called The Dust Storm, Daisy came back onto the porch. She was carrying a wet towel.
“Let’s try somethin’,” she said, wrapping the towel around his knee. It was warm, bordering on hot, and it felt wonderful. “Just let that sit there for a minute. While we wait, why don’t you tell me somethin’ you remember about Dolly from when you were a kid.”
He stared up at the ceiling as he remembered. “First time I ever took my bike out by myself—hadn’t been ridin’ for more than a coupla days—I got a little full o’ myself and came around that curve out there way too fast. Hit some gravel and went tumblin’. Tore my knee up. Kinda rattled me too, because I wasn’t even cryin’ when Dolly came runnin’ across her yard. Guess she had been in the garden or somethin’ when it happened. I remember just lyin’ there, lookin’ up at the sky—prob’ly in shock now that I think about it—and Dolly scooped me up and ran in the house with me. Laid me down right on her kitchen table, put some dish towels under my head, and went to doctorin’ my leg and wipin’ my face with a cool towel. I musta passed out because all I remember is that coolness on my face and then wakin’ up with my knee all bandaged and Dolly hoverin’ over me.”
“So this knee thing with you has been goin’ on for a while.”
Reed looked at her and smiled. “You could say that.”
“Tell me another one. How ’bout somethin’ that don’t involve blood.”
“That’s easy. Dolly’s chocolate cake . . .”
As Reed started talking about Dolly’s chocolate icing, Daisy loosened the hot towel around his knee and began to gently move the stiff joint up and down, ever so slightly. He told her how the icing tasted like fudge and Dolly never made him eat the cake.
“Sounds like her,” Daisy said. “’Course, she coulda saved a lotta eggs by just makin’ you a pan o’ fudge.”
“Yeah, but that wouldn’a been near as special. There was somethin’ about knowin’ I was supposed to eat that cake but didn’t have to. I figure Dolly knew that.”
“Well, look at you,” Daisy said.
While he was focused on Dolly’s cake, Daisy had managed a small bend in his knee. He could see it. He could feel it.
“Don’t try to do a bigger bend,” she said. “Just try to repeat the little one a few times.” She helped as he repeated the first bend four or five times and ended with a slightly deeper one before he needed to rest. She sat down in the rocker beside him.
“Daisy, thank you. I really mean it. How’d you know to try the towel?”
“Daddy always kept horses. You’d never try to work a horse with cold legs, so I figured . . .”
“In other words, you just took me to the vet?”
“Next time you get a rabies shot.”
The two of them were still laughing when Dolly came through Reed’s room and onto the porch.
“What’s all this commotion I hear? Y’all are havin’ too much fun to be gettin’ much done.”
“Hey, Dolly,” Daisy said. “Reed here just figured out that I’m usin’ Daddy’s ol’ horse-trainin’ tricks to make his knee bend again.”
“Well, I reckon anything that works on four legs oughta work just as well on two. Anybody want lemonade?”
“Sure,” Daisy said.
Dolly went into the kitchen for a minute and then came out with three glasses. Reed sat up on the edge of his bed to make room for her.
“Hey, Dolly, where’s Anna?” Daisy asked.
“Over at the lake helpin’ out. She’s been settin’ up the concession stand right after breakfast and watchin’ over the shallow end, where the little ones play. Jo-Jo and the other girls were all too happy to volunteer as lifeguards for the deep end, just so all the boys will see ’em in that tall chair with the big umbrella. They always look like they just stepped outta the beauty parlor when they climb into that chair.”
“I’m guessin’ Jo-Jo’s a regular?”
“Oh my land!” Dolly said. “If that young’un don’t soon find herself a husband, she’s gonna run us all crazy. Reed, you better not poke your head outta this house if you don’t wanna get swarmed with husband-huntin’ girls.”
He glanced down at his leg. “I don’t think I’m what they have in mind.”
“Well then, they’re just plain stupid!”
“You tell ’em, Dolly,” Daisy said. “Reed, you musta been one fine kid for Dolly to take up for you like that.”
“I don’t remember much about him,” Reed said, “but if he keeps me on Dolly’s good side, he’s aces.”
“You just wait,” Dolly said. “I’m gonna introduce the two o’ you to each other.”
“We prob’ly oughta put some ice on that knee to keep the swellin’ down.” Daisy got out of her rocker and headed for the kitchen.
Reed winked at Dolly. “Don’t I get a sugar cube?” he called after Daisy.
“No,” she shot back. “But you can graze in the backyard if you want to.”
CHAPTER
sixteen
Joe Dolphus pulled two folding chairs from the bed of his truck and set them up under a patch of shade.
“This place looks familiar,” Reed said.
“I ’magine Si and your daddy brung you here one time or another. Si said it was prob’ly a waterin’ hole for horses back in the day, but he stocked it with catfish and bass years ago, and they still bite pretty good.”
Reed had been at Dolly’s for several weeks now, but this was the first time he’d had an opportunity to go fishing. He and Joe unloaded fishing rods, a small cooler, and a tackle box, then cast their lines and settled in.
“I can’t think of a thing in the world I’d rather do than drop a hook in the water,” Joe said.
“Me neither. I never cared much for huntin’, but I always loved to fish. I’ll do about anything that gets me on the water.”
“You ever think o’ buildin’ you a cabin or somethin’ on the river?”
“Never did before, but now it seems like anything’s possible—anything or nothin’. Can’t make up my mind which.”
“I remember feelin’ the same way when I came home from the first World War. That don’t help much, but maybe it’s somethin’.”
They saw a fish jump a few yards away from the spot where they’d cast.
“Now, I think that’s just plain mean-spirited in a fish to do somethin’ like that,” Joe said, which brought a chuckle from Reed. “You an’ me oughta commit ourselves to landin’ that rascal in a skillet this very day.”
They reeled in their lines and cast again where the fish were jumping and then sat quietly, watching the ripples roll across the water and listening to the cicadas.
“Daddy kept tellin’ me I’d be fine.” Reed broke the silence but kept watching his line in the water. “And I don’t mean him any disrespect, but he spent his war workin’ for a general at a command center in London. He was never on the front line. It’s different up there.”
“Yes, son, it is. It’s mighty different up there.”
“Si told me you were at the front. Where’d you serve, if you don’t mind my askin’?”
“In France. At the Marne.”
“Against the Germans.”
“That’s one word for ’em.”
Reed smiled at Joe. “We came up with a few ourselves. Guess they had some choice names for us too.”
“I don’t know why some men can come home and go back to business like it never happened,” Joe said. “Me—I couldn’t. It was awful hard for a long time. But I was lucky to have Margaret. She was a lovin’ wife and a patient woman. Stood right by me. Took us a few years to leave the worst of it behind—all the nightmares and the flashbacks. You gotta work through ’em on your own time, Reed. Don’t let nobody tell you it oughta be this way or that. You helped defend your country, an’ you can be proud o’ that for the rest o’ your life. But them captains ain’t around when your ghosts go to walkin’. You gotta face them rascals down the best way you know how. If you’ll take an ol’ man’s advice, find you a helpmate. Find you a good wife who’ll see you through—and who’ll let you see her through. Ain’t nothin’ better.” Joe pointed to Reed’s cork. “Wup! Looka yonder—you ’bout to let one get away.”
Reed felt the tug on his line, let the hook set, and reeled in a big catfish. He put it in a basket and cast again. “I just can’t help wonderin’ . . . if the damage is permanent.”
“Son, anybody that goes through combat comes out of it with permanent damage—if he’s lucky enough to come out of it at all.”
“I’m not talkin’ about flashbacks or nightmares or stiff knees. I’m talkin’ about . . . I don’t know what to call it.”
Joe nodded. “You’re wonderin’ if you’re still a decent human bein’.”
“I didn’t have to kill many, but I had to kill some. And what I felt when they were comin’ at me, tryin’ to end me so they could get to friends o’ mine who were already bleedin’ and sufferin’—well, it scares me to think about it.”
“I know that feelin’.”
“Aren’t we s’posed to love our enemies?”
“S’posed to. But that’s a mighty hard thing to do when they’re runnin’ at you with a bayonet.”
“Near impossible.”
“Lemme ask you somethin’, Reed. If you was to look up and see a little German boy—one barely big enough to walk—toddlin’ toward the edge o’ that pond, what would you do?”
“Get there quick as I could—make sure he didn’t fall in.”
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