“Look!” I said. “It says right here that the president’s wife was on the train in Hickory. It says about a hundred people was watching for her to come stand on the platform and wave at them.”
“Did she do it?”
“No, she didn’t. But they seen her in the dining car.”
Wow! It didn’t seem possible that President Roosevelt’s wife had rode right through little old Hickory. I wondered if the president would ever go through. I’d give my overalls just to get a glimpse of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
While I was reading the paper, I seen a reminder that there was a paper shortage because of the war. We was supposed to turn in every last bit of paper we could find so it could be reused. So after we ate the cake and played for a while, I went inside and gathered up all the newspapers and put them in order by the date.
All of a sudden, something caught my eye that I had missed before. There on the first page on July 4—right where I don’t know how I could’ve missed it—was a story about our dog. Of course, the story didn’t mention Pete by name, but it had to be him, on account of it was in the paper right after Bobby went to the hospital—when Pete disappeared. And now we had seen him there with our own eyes.
“Ida!” I called. “Ellie! Come here and look at this.”
The girls come running into the living room and I read it to them.
DOG FOLLOWS POLIO VICTIM TO HOSPITAL
To a little black terrier who has stationed himself out at the Emergency hospital the word polio is some mysterious something which keeps his young master away from home.
According to the nurses at Health Center the mangy looking pup arrived Saturday and evidently has every intention of staying until his master is released.
The dog has burrowed a pint-size fox hole in which he sleeps at night, and wags his tail thankfully when the nurses throw him bits of food during the day.
The hospital has a strict no-visiting rule, but the self-appointed canine sentry has taken matters in his own paws.
Besides being a man’s best friend, he figures that rules for human conduct don’t apply to a fellow’s dog.
“That’s our dog!” squealed Ida.
“Pete’s in the newspaper,” said Ellie. “Ann Fay, why didn’t you tell us?”
“I didn’t know he was in the paper. I just now seen this.”
“But you read the paper every day,” said Ida.
“And you skip things so we won’t cry,” said Ellie.
“I didn’t know nothing about Pete being at that hospital. I was so upset about Bobby I didn’t even miss that dog till you mentioned him. I betcha he hopped in the back of that hearse and hid there till it got to the hospital. That dog is too smart for his mangy britches.”
“How come Momma didn’t tell us about Pete?”
“Well, if you ain’t noticed,” I said, “we can’t exactly talk to her. Besides, I think she’s keeping it a secret. If that hospital finds out whose dog it is, they might take a notion to send him home again. Momma probably wants him there close to Bobby.”
“Is Bobby gonna come home soon?”
That bad feeling hit me again when Ida asked it. But I said what she wanted to hear. “Yeah,” I said. “He’ll be home real soon. And Pete and Momma will too.”
“And Daddy? Is Daddy coming home?”
“Of course,” I said. “Ain’t that what he says in his letters? He’s going to win that war, and before you know it he’ll be back. Then we’ll all be together again.”
It was easy to say what my sisters wanted to hear. But I didn’t feel so sure of any of it.
That night when I put the girls to bed, we prayed for God to bring Bobby and Daddy home safe, just like we prayed every night. Then I went outside and sat on the front porch and looked up at the moon. I imagined God was sitting on the top edge of it with His legs hanging over the sides.
So I didn’t bother to close my eyes. I just looked at the moon and talked to Him. “What’s happening to us?” I asked. “When we sent Daddy off to the war, I felt like our family was breaking apart. And today I felt it again. Why did I feel like that today when Momma was squeezing me so hard? Oh, God, please, please, keep us together.”
I thought praying was supposed to make me feel better, but all I could feel was Momma’s fingers digging into my arms and her hanging on to us three girls like we was all she had left in the world.
12
The Hearse Comes Back
August 1944
Not even a week after we seen Momma at the hospital, that big black hearse drove up to our house again.
Ida and Ellie was playing hopscotch in the dirt and I was picking green beans in the garden. Momma was in the front seat, but I didn’t see no sign of Bobby. I went running to the car to see if they had him laying in the back.
But then I seen Momma’s face and she wasn’t smiling. When I got to her door, she just sat there, unraveling the blue trim she had crocheted onto her handkerchief. She didn’t look at me. But I could see her eyes was all red from crying.
Ellie and Ida was crowded up to the car door, asking for Bobby. I pulled them back and said, “Let Momma out. Can’t you see Bobby ain’t with her?”
I could see they was fixing to hit her with a flood of questions. But even with the door shut and the window rolled up, she was shrinking away from them like she was scared of her own young’uns. So I just blurted it out, which I should not have done. But it’s not like I had time to plan the right way to say such a terrible thing. So I just said it fast and straight.
“Bobby ain’t coming home. He’s dead.”
And even if I did know it in my heart already, it still got me by surprise. I still felt like somebody had put a knife in my stomach.
I held the girls back while the driver helped Momma into the house. She sunk into the sofa and didn’t say a word. Ida and Ellie was hanging on to her, begging her to say it wasn’t true. She didn’t answer them one way or another. Instead, she shrunk herself into the corner of the sofa till it seemed like she was smaller than the twins.
The man stood at the screen door. “Where should I put your boy?” he asked.
That’s when I knew they had brought his body home and we was going to bury him ourselves.
Momma just stared at her raggedy handkerchief and didn’t bother to answer. So he turned to me.
“Does he have a box?” I asked.
The man shook his head and looked kind of sorry. “No, I offered. But your momma said you couldn’t afford it.”
I didn’t know what to say about where to put my dead brother. I couldn’t stand the thought of carrying him into the house. Bobby always slept with me, and I was afraid that if I laid him on my bed I wouldn’t ever be able to sleep there again.
I run and got a baby-sized crazy quilt that Grandma Honeycutt had made. I folded it and laid it on the porch floor. Then the man opened the back of that hearse and laid my brother out on that quilt with all them colors and shapes and zigzaggy stitches. And I kept thinking how him dying didn’t make no more sense than the design in that quilt.
At first I couldn’t even look at him. I didn’t want to see what my baby brother looked like dead.
But that man put his hand on my shoulder. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. And I knew he wanted to leave and go on with his life—whatever that was.
So I forced myself to look at Bobby.
In some ways it wasn’t so bad. His face was round and cute as ever. His curly brown hair had got almost as long as a girl’s while he was at the hospital. But his legs and arms and body was skinny and shriveled up to nearly nothing.
After the man laid him on the quilt, I didn’t have no idea what to do next. All I could think of was to run for Junior. But I just couldn’t leave the twins alone like that, with Bobby’s dead body on the porch and Momma coming apart like that handkerchief she was picking at.
So I asked the man, “Will you take my sisters to Junior’s house on the way out? It’s just up the road a piece. Th
ey know where he lives, and he’ll know what to do.”
Ida threw both arms around my waist and screamed, “No! I ain’t getting in that car.” Ellie grabbed onto both of us and said she wasn’t neither. So I hobbled as best I could to the car with them stuck onto me like that. I started pulling their hands loose.
“Help me,” I said. “They’re whiners, but once they get to Junior’s you won’t have to worry with them no more.”
Somehow we shoved the twins in. As they was driving away, I seen them clinging to the dashboard and looking all scared toward the back of that car. That’s when I realized I had just shoved my sisters into a hearse.
I reckon they must have been terrified of what else was in there. Well, I knew the closer they got to Junior’s house the safer they would feel, so I didn’t try to stop that car.
Suddenly the world was so quiet I could hear the grasshoppers clicking around in the yard. A crow cawed just like it was any other day when I was in the garden or hanging out the wash.
I sat down on the porch floor beside my dead brother and listened to the birds and insects. A fly walked across Bobby’s eyelids. I shooed it away. It come back, but I stayed right there and waved my hand over his face every time it tried to land.
I looked at Bobby’s thin little body that had lost all its chubbiness while he was shut up in that iron lung. I seen close up what polio can do to a person.
How was I going to explain this to my daddy? Somehow I knew if he was here, he would’ve stopped it. But he put me in charge and I messed everything up.
I thought how Daddy told Bobby to play some every day and Bobby was doing his best to listen to him. But I made him work till he dropped.
My tears started dripping onto Bobby’s face and running down his cheeks and into his ears. I didn’t wipe them off because I knew he was cold and I couldn’t bear to feel the coldness. I just wanted to remember him warm and snuggly.
I could still feel how he would climb onto my lap and beg me for a story. And I could hear how he giggled when I told him his pictures was so good they should be put in a magazine.
Then I remembered that I had burned every last one of his pictures. Now what was I going to remember him by? The crying overtook me then, and next thing I knew, I was laying half across him, sobbing like a baby.
And his body cooled me like the creek does on a hot summer day. I didn’t even hear Junior drive up in Daddy’s truck, but all of a sudden I felt Bessie’s big arms around me. She hugged me like a momma and I felt her rocking me like a big cushiony rocking chair.
She kept saying, “Have mercy. Have mercy on this poor child.” At first I thought she was talking about Bobby. But then I knew she was talking about me because she said, “She’s just a young girl and life has hit her so hard already. Have mercy.”
13
The Funeral
August 1944
While Bessie was rocking me, I heard the screen door open and Momma come out on the porch. She reached for Bobby, so I got up and let her have him. She went and sat on the steps with him hugged up against her like he was sleeping on her lap. Only he didn’t curl up against her the way he always done. He just hung there like one of the twins’ paper dolls that don’t care nothing about the person that’s playing with it.
Ida and Ellie crowded in on either side of Momma. When Ellie felt how cold Bobby was, she come back and got the quilt and covered him up. Momma wrapped it around his body and cuddled him like he was a newborn and said, “Hush, honey, don’t cry.”
But I didn’t know who she was talking to, because every one of us was crying.
Then Bessie went and knelt on the porch floor behind my momma and put her arms around her and said, “Have mercy.” She leaned her forehead into the back of Momma’s hair and said, “We stopped by the Hinkles’ to use the telephone. Reverend Price will be here soon.”
Momma nodded, and I thought she looked grateful.
Bessie said, “I’m going inside and cook y’all a good meal. Junior is out back looking for some wood to build a box for Bobby.”
I knew Daddy had some cedar boards in the shed because he had made a wardrobe for Momma last Christmas. So I started around the side of the house to see if I could help. It was better than watching my momma suffer.
Junior was dusting off them leftover boards when I got there. He had put on his best blue jeans and a blue plaid shirt like he was going to town. I picked up a rag and started helping him. He didn’t look at me or say a word.
When his daddy died, I didn’t know what to say neither. Now I thought how Bessie was the one who always knew the right thing to say. Have mercy. It didn’t try to make you feel better or explain something that couldn’t be explained. It just felt like a prayer.
I spoke up to save Junior the trouble. “Daddy was gonna build Pete a doghouse from these boards,” I said. “When he comes home from the war.”
“I don’t reckon Pete come home with your momma, did he?” asked Junior.
“No,” I said. “Leastways, I didn’t see him.”
I could tell from the way Junior was eyeballing them boards that he was trying to figure how long to cut them. I knew he didn’t want to go around to the front porch and measure Bobby for his coffin. “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” he said, “if that dog would come dragging in here to sleep on Bobby’s grave. Dogs have a way of knowing these things.”
I picked up a board and set it on end to make sure it come up to my waist. I knew exactly how high Bobby was, standing next to me. “This one’s a good length,” I said to Junior. “Use it.”
So that’s what we used to cut the others by. Junior put the boards across the porch with the extra part hanging out over the edge. I sat on them to hold them still while he cut them with Daddy’s handsaw.
The sawdust settled like snow on Junior’s black shoes.
When it come time to hammer them boards together, I made Junior let me take a turn. I needed to hit something, and them nails was convenient. I imagined polio germs was on them nailheads. I hit them hard and straight.
It done something for me to smack them nails. It was like being mad took the place of hurting—for a while, anyway.
When the box was all nailed together, I went and got a can of oil from the cellar steps. I rubbed oil into the wood just like Daddy did on Momma’s wardrobe, and it give the box a nice shine. Then Junior and I carried it around to the front porch. Momma was still there trying to cuddle with Bobby and using her thumb to push his curls behind his ears.
Reverend Price was there too. He had brought his wife, Mavis, with him, and Lottie Scronce too. Lottie is the woman from church whose two boys was killed in the war. Now here she was, standing with them other church people around the bottom of the steps, patting my sisters on the head and not saying much. Tears was dripping off her trembly chin. Then all of a sudden, just like she done at church every Sunday, she snapped open her pocketbook and pulled out a mint candy for each of my sisters.
The preacher was trying to make arrangements for the burial, but Momma wasn’t saying much. Sometimes she would nod, like when Reverend Price suggested digging the grave under the mimosa tree. “I think it’ll be easier to dig there,” he said.
But I knew he was looking at the lacy leaves and feathery pink blossoms and thinking how it would always be a pretty site.
Junior set the cedar box on the porch floor, and I took the quilt and folded it so it would fit inside. I made a little pillow for Bobby’s head. And Lottie Scronce put a mint candy inside. She’d given Bobby one every Sunday since he was two years old, so I reckon she wanted to do it one last time.
Reverend Price asked me for a shovel, so I took him around back and let the women help Momma put Bobby in that cedar box.
I got the shovel from where it hung over two nails on the shed wall. Junior found a pickax, and the three of us walked down to the mimosa tree. We took turns digging, and I dug just as good as the men did because I was madder than both of them put together.
And
besides, I had to do Daddy’s part.
By the time Reverend Price decided it was deep enough, his white shirt was soaked plumb through and had smears of red dirt on it. He pulled a comb and a handkerchief out of his back pocket and made himself look like a preacher again while Junior and I drunk water from the dipper in the bucket on the back porch. Bessie brought the preacher a cup of cold water from the refrigerator.
I went inside and pulled on my blue Sunday dress. Then I grabbed Ida’s and Ellie’s navy blue dresses with the white pinafores and shoved them over their heads while they sobbed.
“Slick your hair down,” I said. I run a brush through mine and got a barrette out of the little cedar box my daddy made for me last Christmas. I seen a dime and two pennies laying there in the box. They put me in mind of the pennies Daddy give Bobby when he went away. I thought how Bobby hung on to them like they was his last piece of bread.
I took those pennies out of my box and went to the porch and put one in each of Bobby’s hands. “There you go, Bobby,” I said. “That’s from your daddy.”
But they slid right out of his hands onto that crazy quilt.
When everybody was all set, Reverend Price and Junior carried Bobby’s box on their shoulders down to the grave. Ida and Ellie walked between them with their hands stretched up, barely touching the box with their fingertips but still trying their best to carry Bobby one last time. The rest of us followed so quiet all you could hear was our feet crunching on the dry grass. We stood around the grave, and Junior and the reverend wiggled the box into the hole.
I reckon the funeral home would’ve done a better job, but I know it would not have been done with as much love as we put into it. Every one of us took turns shoveling dirt on that box.
Mavis Price started singing “Amazing Grace” and Bessie joined in, singing the harmony. They stood there like two opposites—Mavis thin and neat with her white lace collar and her blue hat, and Bessie large and soft with her green flowered dress and Momma’s pink apron. It was smeared with flour and food stains, and Bessie’s dark hair had some flour in it too.
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