The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  “You’uns keep yore seats and don’t go to chitterin and chatterin. I’ll be right back,” she said, as if she knew for a fact that she would.

  But she didn’t come right back, and when she finally did, Doc came with her. He had his arm around her, which made us giggle and snicker and titter, until we all saw the reason he had his arm around her was not romantic but just sympathetic: she was sobbing and shaking. I whispered to my seatmate, you, to help you understand: nobody, in the history of her seven or eight years as a schoolteacher, had ever seen her betray any emotion before, any feeling of any kind—not humor, not anger, not sorrow, not anything.

  “I reckon ye’d best let me tell ’em, Esty,” Doc Swain said to her. “You just sit down there at your desk and let me say it.” He helped her into her chair, where she buried her face in her hands and went on blubbering, and then he turned to face us. “Folks,” he addressed us, and I admired him for not calling us “boys and girls,” which we were, “I’ve got some sad news to tell ye. Lawlor and Dulcie Coe has just received word from the U.S. government that their boy Gerald has—” Doc, who betrayed emotion a good bit more readily than Miss Jerram but never wore his heart on his sleeve, began to moisten up a bit around the eyes. “Gerald, as most of y’uns know, was servin in the marines in the Pacific, and his outfit was involved in the American attempt to take Iwo Jima, a Japanese stronghold. The American effort has been victorious, and that island has been taken at the cost of over four thousand American boys’ lives. You heared me correct. Four thousand, five hundred marines killed dead. Don’t hardly seem worth it, does it? All that many for just a little ole sandpile out in the ocean. But Gerald Coe was one of ’em, I’m sorry to have to tell ye. He died a hero. He gave his life after slaying dozens of the enemy. We ort to be proud of him, I reckon.”

  Doc, who’d pulled baby Gerald and his two brothers into this world nineteen years before, stopped then and waited for our response. Most of us were too shocked to see straight. When Boden Whitter had died in that kamikaze attack back in October, some months before, the news hadn’t been brought to the schoolhouse, and besides, Boden hadn’t been a member of either the Allies or the Axis. But the first to speak up was Jim John Whitter, Boden’s brother. “Goddamn you Japs all to hell!” He shook his fist at each of us.

  “Don’t forget Mare was a Jap,” I pointed out.

  Joe Don Dingletoon protested, “Not our Japs. Them real Japs.”

  The two students most affected by the terrible news happened to be deskmates: Mare’s kid brother Sammy, my age, who seemed to be paralyzed with disbelief, and Gypsy Dingletoon, who, perhaps not even remembering that her deskmate was the deceased’s own brother, elbowed him so she could reach the aisle. She ran down the aisle and out of the room, slamming the door behind her. I wanted to suggest that you run after her, and help her, but you couldn’t have done that. So I got up to go after her myself.

  “You, Dawny!” Miss Jerram hollered, having raised her soaked face to see who’d slammed the door, futile, since whoever had slammed it was already out. “Where d’ye think you’re off to?”

  “Somebody better see to ole Gypsy,” I said. “Somebody ort to see if she’s okay.” It hit me that my fellow students were perhaps just as mystified as Miss Jerram about why I’d want to check up on old Gypsy. I glanced at Ella Jean, and she alone seemed to know why I was leaving. She obviously wanted to go with me, but couldn’t. I left.

  Gypsy was out in the schoolyard, leaning against a tree, crying her heart out more eloquently than Miss Jerram had been doing. I didn’t know for sure what to say to her. Come to think of it, I had never spoken to her before, although of course she knew who I was. But come to think of it, I had never spoken to any girl, not just Gypsy. Although I had a great attraction to older women, I was not having much success understanding girls. Gypsy was three years older than me but she was still a girl. I couldn’t tell what girls wanted. They never could make up their minds. They were always changing their minds, and, worst of all, nothing ever seemed to please them. Nothing anybody could do would make them happy. Girls, I guess, were born to be sad, with or without a good reason. But now Gypsy Dingletoon had a very good reason. She had all the reason that anybody would ever need.

  She didn’t know that I knew she had a good reason. She probably didn’t know I was standing there behind her, watching her drench the bark of that elm with her tears. I decided I had better speak very quietly and gently. “Gypsy,” I nearly whispered, but still it made her jump out of her skin so I even put my hand on her arm as if that magic might make her climb back into her skin. “He was my friend too,” I said. I wished I could cry too, but I couldn’t.

  She stared at me and her whole face screwed up as if an invisible giant’s hand had twisted it, and she bawled harder than ever. Finally she mumbled, “Just leave me be.” And she motioned for me to exit her life.

  It wasn’t a good situation to be in, for me as well as her. For something even as momentous as my first conversation with a girl, let alone something as dramatic as a pubescent boy trying to console an older girl on the death of the soldier who had been her boyfriend and lover, we needed a backdrop more spectacular than that drab gray March morning, although the first fragrances of springtime were already full in the air. What we needed was a gentle rain to match her tears, no, what we needed was a downpour to dramatize the awfulness of death, and to remind Gypsy that there were founts of water that could make her tear ducts seem like mere seeps. Friend Reader, could you help? Maybe a little thunderstorm, just enough to drown out her sobs with the crashes and peals, and to commence splattering us with big drops of rain? A well-controlled effort. Thank you.

  When the rain hit, Gypsy glanced back toward the schoolhouse, as if to gauge the distance and to realize it was too far to make a dash, even if she could stand to return to her classmates, and then she glanced at the girls’ outhouse, right handy nearby, and started to leap for that, but stopped, stared at me forlornly as if, despite my impudence in following her in her misery, I was all she had in this sad world at this sad moment, and she reached out and grabbed my hand! Friend, are you still helping? She took my hand! And she led me into that outhouse with her. We did not close the door, which despite your possible preconception of it, did not have a crescent moon carved into it. (You should know that the Stay More school didn’t have a boys’ outhouse. The boys, like males everywhere in these parts, just preferred to go off into the bushes or woods somewhere.) Gypsy and I stood there in the shelter of that shed, watching the rain come down—perhaps it was getting even harder—and listening to the thunder, and smelling the rain-drenched fragrances of March grasses and weeds and the earliest flowers that obliterated the stale smells of girls’ body functions that pervaded the privy. By and by, Gypsy seemed to realize that her tears couldn’t compete with that rainfall, so she hushed her crying. And when she sat down, so did I, our posteriors not positioned over the two holes as if we were using them but on the wood beside them.

  “How come ye to foller me out of the schoolhouse?” she asked quietly. “How didje even guess that it jist kills me to know pore Gerald’s dead?”

  “You were his sweetheart,” I said. “I just wanted to see if I couldn’t give ye any comfort.”

  “But I never tole nobody we was promised!” she said, then remembered that she had. “Exceptin Eller Jean. She didn’t tell ye, did she?”

  I couldn’t help snorting. Whenever I laughed, I tried to avoid snorting, but it was involuntary, like sneezing. “Course not, silly,” I said. “What reason would Eller Jean ever have for even lookin at me, let alone tell me anything?”

  My grumbling lament made Gypsy look at me as if she couldn’t quite remember having seen me before. “Why, Dawny,” she protested, looking me over, “I reckon Eller Jean has cast ye a glimpse or two. I’ve looked at ye. And ever week I’ve read that paper ye put in our mailbox. Cover to back.”

  I was flattered because not many people in Stay More admitted to regular scrutiny
of the Star. Gypsy’s acknowledgment of it made me realize that I might have had an ulterior motive for following her out of the schoolhouse: in the next issue of my newspaper I’d have to run a front-page story about the heroic death of Pfc. Gerald Coe in the taking of Iwo Jima, and it wouldn’t hurt if I could interview the girl he left behind, and possibly publish a few words of her feelings about the matter. Ernie Pyle taught me that reporters must be objective, cold, and even cynical during emotional moments.

  “Gypsy,” I requested, bravely, “would ye mind too awful much if I jist tole in the next issue of the paper how you was fixin to marry Mare—Gerald—if he came home?”

  My simple question set her to bawling again, and I could only sit there and wait it out, as we were both waiting out the storm. I stared through the open door of the privy at the schoolhouse. Then she abruptly quit crying and stared hard at me. “Was it Gerald tole ye? Was it? Did he go and tell on us?”

  How could I answer, without revealing that I’d been prying and peeking? I decided I’d better lie, which I’m very good at. I nodded my head, and said, “I tole ye, he was my friend too. But he made me promise I’d never breathe a word of it to nobody else, and I never did.”

  Gypsy sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, but she didn’t go on crying. We stared at the mountains that rose before us. Those hills seemed a kind of tangible metaphor for our condition: the hills cut us off from the outside world, the hills surrounded us and sheltered us and hugged us, but most of all they kept us private, they kept us privy to ourselves, our own deepest secrets which we need not ever reveal. But I needed to tell my newspaper subscribers the truth about our hero and his girl. Would it have been ghoulish of me to insist on it to her?

  When we had been sitting in the shelter of that outhouse for what seemed a long time, Gypsy announced, “I gotta go.”

  But it was still raining in buckets, and I pointed out, “You’ll git wetter’n a dog.”

  She stared at me as if I’d insulted her. But then she understood that we weren’t talking about the same thing, although I didn’t understand. “Naw, I mean, I gotta go,” she said.

  “Well, go on, then,” I said. “I’m gonna wait till the rain stops.”

  “Silly, I’m tryin to tell ye I’ve got to mail a letter.”

  “A letter?” I said. “The post office is way over yonder.” I gestured toward Latha Bourne’s store, where the post office was.

  “Don’t you know nothin?” she said with exasperation, and sighed. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I’ve gotta go to the outhouse.”

  “But you’re already in the outhouse,” I pointed out.

  “Dawny, you are real dumb. Don’t ye know what this outhouse is for? Wal, I’ve got to use it!”

  “Oh,” I said, and must have blushed at my slowness. I am told I blush readily but I’ve never been able to verify it by blushing in a mirror.

  “Just to wee-wee,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Do ye want me to step outside?” I asked, over the sound of the thunder crashing and the downpour pounding the roof of the shed.

  “Naw, but shet the door,” she requested.

  Was anybody in the schoolhouse looking out the window? Doc Swain’s car was still in the yard. Was he still trying to comfort Miss Jerram? Or was he talking to all of them about heroism and devotion and sacrifice and all those fine things? Wouldn’t anyone who really did look out the window and see the outhouse door closed wonder what in tarnation we were doing? I pushed the door shut.

  “Don’t turn around,” she requested. “Jist keep yore back turned till I tell ye.”

  With the door closed and the sky totally beclouded, it was fairly dark in there, I couldn’t have seen her anyhow, but I kept my back to her, and could only imagine what she was doing, raising her dress and sitting over a hole. Minutes passed. When it seemed to me that she’d been sitting there long enough for number two too if she wanted to, I said over my shoulder in a gentle undertone just loud enough to reach beyond the crash of rain and thunder, “Aint ye done yit?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I was done a while back. I’m jist a-sittin here, thinkin about pore Gerald. I just caint believe we won’t never see him ever no more.”

  The image of them together on that creek bank that night came back to me. I wondered at the truth of the rumors I’d heard that girls actually enjoy doing that. Was Gypsy going to miss that? If she really needed that, couldn’t some other boy do it with her for her?

  Almost as if in response to these licentious and false-hearted thoughts, the door opened, and there was Ella Jean. She quickly entered, dripping wet from her dash through the downpour, the droplets falling from her hair and the hem of her dress. “Miss Jerram tole me to run out here,” Ella Jean said, “and see what become of y’uns.” Gypsy and Ella Jean hugged each other tightly and immediately the two of them began crying together.

  “He aint never coming back!” Gypsy wailed.

  “Never coming back!” Ella Jean sobbed, like an echo from the distant mountain. They wailed and sobbed. Again I wished I could cry too. I felt like it, but I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t a girl, even if this was the girl’s outhouse. It was crowded in there, three people in an outhouse meant for two at most. “How come you’re here, Dawny?” Ella Jean asked me.

  Her simple speaking of my name, which I don’t believe she’d done before, thrilled me. I told Ella Jean, “I just came out here to see if I couldn’t comfort her.”

  “How did ye know she needed any comfort?” Ella Jean asked.

  “Gerald told him,” Gypsy said.

  “He never,” Ella Jean challenged me.

  “Yeah,” I claimed, “I knew they were supposed to get married.”

  “So you’re gonna put that in your newspaper?” Ella Jean wanted to know.

  “I’d sure like to,” I admitted.

  “Gypsy,” Ella Jean counseled her older friend, “ye mought as well git used to the idee. Folks is gonna know about it, one way or th’other.”

  “I don’t want them Allies to know it,” Gypsy said. “They hated Gerald. They suspicioned it was Gerald who somehow got ahold of Old Jarhead for us.”

  “But Doc said Mare died a hero,” I pointed out. “Nobody hates a hero.” That casual remark set the two girls to weeping again and holding each other, and I wished one or both of them would hold me too.

  “Them Allies hate everbody who’s not Allies,” Gypsy observed. “And I’d as lief they never learnt me and Gerald was promised. So don’t go sayin it in your paper, Dawny.”

  Ella Jean put in, “Miss Jerram’s gonna take the hickory to all three of us, lessen we git back in there soon.”

  When we returned to the schoolhouse, Doc Swain was gone, taking Sammy Coe with him, excused because of the bad news about his big brother. Miss Jerram had regained her composure. Although the mood was still somber, as I went to my seat the Allies had fits of giggling, snickering, whispering, eye-bulging, mouth-twisting, cheek-popping, and catcalling, which required a reprimand from Miss Jerram, although she also reprimanded me for leaving without permission. “Dawny, do you want to stand and tell us all what-all you was doing in the girls’ outhouse?” That question set the Allies to guffawing and slapping their sides.

  What to say? “Nome,” I refused.

  “What do you mean, ‘nome,’ anyhow?” Miss Jerram said. “I’m tellin ye to get on your feet and declare what you ran out after Gypsy for.”

  I stood. “She’s one of us,” I said. “Axis. We watch out for each other. It looked to me like she took sick or somethin.”

  “Are you sick, Gypsy?” Miss Jerram asked.

  “I was, but I’m okay now, I reckon,” Gypsy said.

  Miss Jerram studied Gypsy for just a moment longer than was necessary, and I suspected she might have guessed the source of Gypsy’s sickness: her heart. “It’s a awful sad day for us all,” Miss Jerram observed.

  Chapter nine

  When thick March had not yet been gi
ven a fair chance to take off and bud and breathe, a pall fell upon Stay More, and with it the impossible rains. News traveled fast without any help from The Stay Morning Star, which I wanted to shut down, not only because everyone—except possibly the hermit Dan and his daughter—already knew that Mare Coe was dead, but also because I didn’t know what I could possibly print about the tragedy. Anything coming from me would be juvenile, meddling, and futile: it couldn’t have done anything to help the mood of the town. The shaggy mountains wanted to fluff with green; it was time for them to, but our dismal grief seemed to stun nature herself into dark, black, gray withdrawal. And then the impossible rains began.

  What good were words, anyhow? I did not have, and could not get, an interview with Mare’s main survivor, Gypsy, nor could I even reveal that she was his main survivor. Besides, in the midst of this gloom, during a thunderstorm, another rock came crashing through the window of the Star office, with another note tied to it: “Youl wish you had of staid in the girls privvy if we catch you.” Whichever Ally had thrown it must have got awful wet for his pains. I told Latha I’d pay for a new piece of glass to put in the window (it wasn’t a big plate glass window, just an eight-light sash with small panes), but I didn’t show her the note.

  Those rains, which may have started when Gypsy and I ran into the outhouse at the school, never let up but grew gradually harder in their intensity. Not even the oldest kids could recall ever having seen such rainfall; it lasted for days and days, as if—Gypsy said—the skies were going to have themselves a good long cry over Mare’s death. Later all of that toad-strangling downpour seemed only a rehearsal for the day of the big storm.