Prisoners of War

by Steve Yarbrough

  “Dan,” Shirley said as they sat there in the pickup, “I don’t want you to join the army. I’ve never come right out and said so before, but I don’t want you to. That means somebody else’s son will, and I know it’s selfish to think like that, but I don’t give a damn. I’ll do anything you ask, give up anything that I already haven’t, though I don’t know what that could be. Just please, let’s talk to Alvin and ask him to help us work something out.”

  Jasper Sproles had managed to get under the only tree left standing in that part of the cemetery, and he looked like he was cowering as Alvin stood gesturing with his hands, even pointing a finger right at Jasper’s chest.

  “That’s not what he’s over there talking to Mr. Sproles about, is it?”

  Hard lines formed on her face, and for the first time he glimpsed the old woman she would become. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. These days, I know a lot less about Alvin’s business than you probably think.”

  The picture in the living room had been on his mind lately, and he kept thinking about how the Polish prisoner had taken the two men for twins. He’d also been trying to recall a single instance in which Jimmy Del Timms had called him “son.” It seemed now that he’d always used some version of his name— rarely Daniel, mostly Danno or Danny Boy—or else, when discussing him with others, he’d say, That boy of mine.

  “Momma . . . I want to ask you something.”

  She clamped her knees around the gearshift, closing her hands over the knob. “Sounds like a question I may not want to answer.”

  “It may be one you can’t answer.”

  “Then go ahead, and we’ll see if I can.”

  It appeared that underneath the tree, Sproles was agreeing to whatever request had been made of him. Nodding his head vigorously, he held both hands up as if to fend Alvin off.

  “Who’s that man over there?” Dan asked.

  “What?”

  “That man under the tree, talking to Mr. Sproles. What word would you use to say what he is to me?”

  At first, he thought she couldn’t help but misunderstand the question, because he’d posed it so inelegantly. But he could tell, soon enough, that she knew exactly what he was asking.

  “A minute ago, you called me Momma,” she said, “and it’s ridiculous how happy I was to hear it. I used to hate that word because it always seemed to rule out so much else. I didn’t like wife or momma or sister-in-law. But when you said Momma just now, it didn’t change a thing in the world about who I am or what I am. It was the right word, at the right moment, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

  Alvin offered Sproles his hand, but instead, Jasper pulled his coat sleeve back and pointed at his watch.

  “Well, the word for what that man, as you put it, is to you is the same one you’ve always used. The word for what he is, or was, to me probably exists in some language, but it’s not a language I can speak. So I just call him by his name. That’s the best I can do.”

  His chest felt constricted, like the time he’d come down with pleurisy, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

  “Now, since I answered your question,” his mother said, “I’d like you to answer mine. Can we go ahead and do whatever we have to, to keep you out of the army?”

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “But please don’t ask me why, because that’s something—right now—I just don’t know.”

  FORTY SIX

  ON THE FRIDAY before Thanksgiving, Dan helped Alvin load eight five-gallon cans into the back of the pickup. His uncle pulled a paint-stained tarp out from under his porch and they spread it over the cans, then weighted the corners with bricks.

  The cans contained refund gas, injected—Alvin warned him—with red dye so any law officer or Civil Defense agent could identify it as strictly for agricultural use. If anybody stopped him and looked at the cans, he should say he’d left Mississippi at a moment’s notice to see his brother in the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, and that he hadn’t had time to unload this gas he’d purchased for his uncle’s farm. Carrying refund gas down the road in a pickup, Alvin said, wasn’t a crime; short of dropping a string into the tank, nobody could tell he’d filled up with it, and he doubted they’d go to that trouble.

  Dan himself wasn’t so sure, and since Alvin had plenty of fuel coupons and had given him more than enough money to travel on, he asked why it wouldn’t be easier to buy what gas he needed en route. But Alvin shook his head. “A dog that won’t gnaw its bone,” he said, “will one day wake up hungry.”

  Dan had brought a thermos of coffee from home, and he shoved it under the seat, along with a sack of sandwiches Shirley had fixed. Then Alvin handed him something that looked like a claw made of light metal.

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “You use it to scrape your windshield. Fellow gave it to me when I went up to Ohio that time to get them old buses with your daddy. Careful with it, or you’ll scar the glass to where you can’t see a damn thing.”

  “Think we’ll run into ice and snow?”

  “Could be. It’ll be cold’s the only thing I can tell you for sure.”

  Dan got in and started the engine, letting it warm up. Rather than tip his hat and walk off into the store, Alvin waited by the truck until Dan finally nodded good-bye, then tapped on the window, motioning for him to roll down the glass.

  With the two of them face-to-face, Dan noticed that his uncle’s mustache was streaked with gray. Creases had formed around his eyes and mouth, and his neck was developing that pebbled texture you saw on older people. The tuft of chest hair poking out of his collar was almost white.

  “If you get into a bind,” Alvin told him, “call me. Tell me exactly where you are, and I’ll come try to buy you out.”

  “And if that don’t work?”

  “Well,” Alvin said, and now he did tip his hat, “then I reckon we’ll be in the same place at least.”

  L.C. was waiting on Rosetta’s porch, and it didn’t look like he was taking much with him. His guitar, wrapped up in an old cottonseed sack, lay propped against a cardboard valise not much bigger than a hatbox. Tucked under one of his arms was a great big Bible.

  “Rosetta ain’t home?” Dan said.

  “Gone down to the store.”

  “She know what you mean to do?”

  “Your uncle come over and talked to her, then I did, then he come over and talked again. Then we give her a day off and start all over. Somewhere in the middle’s where it got settled.”

  “Sounds like she put up a pretty good fight.”

  “Yeah, but she finally say it’s better to freeze to death than get shot.”

  “Where you going, it’s possible to do both.”

  “Where you liable to be going, too.”

  “I can’t say you’re wrong there,” Dan said. “You ready to get on the road?”

  “Let’s hit it.”

  Dan picked up the valise, carried it over to the truck and slipped it underneath the tarp as L.C. shoved the big Bible and the guitar in beside it.

  “When we hit the cold weather, won’t that guitar crack?”

  “That thing done already been cracked two, three times,” L.C. said. “One night, I busted it over some nigger’s head, then picked it up and glued the pieces back together. Seem like it sound better now.”

  Pulling onto the road, Dan glanced over to see if L.C.’d display any sadness at leaving a place he’d lived for nearly ten years, but he just leaned back, shut his eyes. And within a couple minutes, he was sleeping soundly.

  Traffic lights halted them several times that morning, and the farther they got from Loring, the longer the looks they began to draw. In your home county, being seen in a pickup truck with a colored person was one thing; two or three counties away, though, it was another thing altogether. While waiting for a light to change in Tunica, Dan spotted a policeman sitting down the street in his cruiser, giving them the eye, but when they drove through the intersection, the cruiser didn’t move.


  Somewhere L.C. had a card stating that Lexington Charles Stevens had complied with the Selective Service Act, registering for conscription with the local draft board in Loring, Mississippi. If anybody confiscated the card and checked the number, it would prove to be bogus—and then, Alvin said, he was strictly on his own. Jasper Sproles would feign ignorance, while allowing that he did remember going to the office one morning and finding a window open, even though he was ninety-nine percent certain he’d latched it the previous evening.

  In which case, Alvin observed, L.C. would be a thief as well as a draft evader, thus presenting somebody with an interesting dilemma: to send him to prison, where he could be worked to death, or to the war, where he could be shot to death? If it came to that, Alvin bet they’d opt for prison, since there was always a chance the war wouldn’t kill him. But L.C. told him there was a third possibility—and knowing white folks, that was probably the one they’d choose. They’d send him overseas and, if he survived, ship him back home and put him in prison anyway, and then, right before they’d worked him to death, shoot him.

  Alvin had laughed last night as he related this conversation to Dan and Shirley. Then he said he sure hoped L.C. could make a living playing music, since nobody would need to shoot him if he had a regular job. He’d simply die of boredom.

  They crossed the river in Memphis, which L.C. apparently hadn’t counted on. After he gazed at the murky water, a mile or more across and topped with whitecaps, he looked suspicious. “You sure you know the way?”

  “I got a map right under the seat.”

  “Well, I don’t,” L.C. said, “but I seen one before, and look to me like Chicago’s on the other side the river.”

  “Yeah, but look a little closer and you’ll see there ain’t no road that runs straight up the east bank.” Once they rolled down off the bridge into Arkansas, he reached under the seat and handed the map to L.C. “I got the route marked. We’ll cross the river again in St. Louis.” He glanced over. “You ever heard tell of Reelfoot Lake?”

  “Naw.”

  “Well, back in the last century, an earthquake made a great big hole and the Mississippi filled it in. History books say the river ran backwards for three straight days. That damn lake’s still there, and it looks pretty wide. I reckon that’s why you can’t drive straight up.”

  “Aw,” L.C. said, staring at the map, “I heard about that thing. What you say done it?”

  “Earthquake. Seismic activity.”

  “That wasn’t no seismic nothing.”

  “So what was it—evil spirits at work?”

  “Naw, that ain’t it, neither. For one thing, evil spirits don’t work. They just lay around, don’t run all over town hustling business. Business come to them sooner or later. But all this meanness going on lately, folks gutting theyselves like it’s hog-killing time, spilling blood enough to fill up a lake its own self—what you think that’s evidence of? Good spirits at work?”

  If he didn’t answer, Dan figured, L.C. would eventually shut his eyes and start humming, then make up some words to fit the moment. While that could be annoying, right then it was just fine, so he kept on driving. And sure enough, in a mile or two, L.C.’s foot began to pat the floorboard.

  blood on the highway

  blood on the hillside too

  poor boy got to kill you

  what else he got to do

  Somewhere in northeast Arkansas, Dan pulled off the highway onto a gravel road, then parked behind a run-down country church. They ate lunch, took turns slipping off into the bushes, then refilled the tank. They left the empty cans behind, like Alvin had told them, when they drove off.

  Night caught them twenty miles south of St. Louis, in a cold white mist that looked like it might turn to sleet or snow. Dan pulled onto the shoulder so they could finish the remaining sandwiches and the last few sips of coffee. His eyes were starting to burn, his legs were stiff and his back ached.

  “Want me to drive some?” L.C. asked.

  “You feel like it?”

  “Might as well.”

  “Think you can handle St. Louis?”

  “Good as as you can.”

  When Dan climbed out, the cold cut right through him, and it was thrilling. He stood there for a moment or two, watching the cars and trucks go by, most of them traveling north. For all the time he’d spent behind the wheel of one vehicle or another, he’d never had the sense of actually going anyplace. But now the opportunity for movement was upon him. In a month or so, he’d be bound for basic, where he’d meet men from all over the country. After that, there was no telling where they might end up. In a year, he could be someplace in the Pacific that he didn’t even know existed, or in Paris or even Berlin. He might see the town where his father had lain in prison, and find himself fighting over the same piece of ground.

  None of that seemed daunting. It seemed more like a just reward for living these past months with a stiff upper lip, doing what needed to be done without complaining too much.

  He walked around to the passenger side and climbed in; then L.C. pulled onto the road. As always, he drove too fast, but before long they found themselves behind a military convoy, which slowed him down considerably. He darted into the left lane, but the view ahead was not promising: a long line of jeeps, six-by-sixes, scout cars and tankers—traveling about twentyfive miles an hour—for as far as they could see.

  “Shit,” he said, pulling back in behind the last vehicle.

  “Just be patient,” Dan told him. “Chicago’ll still be there in the morning.” He leaned back, intending to sleep for five or ten minutes, then wake up and see St. Louis.

  Instead, he opened his eyes to a landscape whose only buildings seemed to be grain elevators. Light snow was falling. A red light was flashing in the rearview mirror, and L.C. was saying, “Oh Jesus.”

  The Illinois deputy sheriff was short and smooth-faced, and you could tell, as soon as he reached L.C.’s door, that he was a serious and thoughtful man. No chaw of tobacco swelled his jaw. In his pocket he would carry no half pint bottle.

  “Let me see your driver’s license,” he said.

  L.C. reached into his coat for the license and handed it to him.

  The deputy shined his flashlight on the card. “You’re a long way from home. Mind telling me what brings you up our way?”

  Dan leaned over so the deputy could see his face. “My brother’s in a naval hospital,” he said. “Momma sent me to see him.” He gestured at L.C. “He . . . my friend here, he came along to help me drive.”

  “Must be a good friend,” the deputy said pleasantly. “Glad to see they’re making that kind of progress down south. Which naval hospital’s your brother in?”

  “That one up there at Great Lakes Naval Station.”

  “He’s in good hands, then,” the deputy said. “Now correct me if I’m wrong, but you young men are not actively engaged in any type of war-related activity at the moment, are you?”

  “No sir.”

  “I didn’t think so. It’s your brother that’s in war-related activity, right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And he’s in the hospital at Great Lakes.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The deputy still had L.C.’s license in his hand. He stepped back away from the pickup, shining his light at one of the front wheels. “The reason I asked about war-related activity is that I noticed—driving along behind you young men at a rate of speed far in excess of the posted limit—that the tires on this pickup look to be brand-new. And they are. To my eye, they look like first-grades, and I’m sure you know those are reserved for military use.”

  He grasped the handle on L.C.’s door and pulled it open. “Why don’t both of you step out now and help me see what’s underneath that tarp back there.”

  Dan climbed out, but L.C. sat there staring through the windshield. For a second, Dan wondered if he was planning to leap out and throw himself at the deputy, or just take off across the field. Instead, h
e finally swung his legs out from under the dashboard and walked carefully to the back of the truck. While the deputy shined his light in the bed, they removed the bricks and lifted off the tarp.

  The deputy surveyed the items: the guitar, the suitcase, the Bible, the remaining gas cans. “Carrying some extra clothes to your brother?” he said.

  “No sir,” Dan said. “My friend just brought a change along for himself.”

  “In case he decided to stay up here with us?”

  “No sir. He just thought maybe we’d have trouble with the truck and he’d have to work on it, and he can’t stand being dirty.”

  The deputy flicked the beam at L.C. “That right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Can’t fault you for that,” the deputy said, redirecting the beam. “And sure as hell can’t fault you for traveling with the Good Book. Looks like one of you’s musically inclined, as well. I like a good song.”

  He turned his attention to the gas cans, playing his light over the caps on each of them, instantly noticing the red stains. He leaned over, twisted off a cap, shined the beam at the opening and looked into the container. “That’s refund gas,” he said.

  “Yes sir,” Dan said. “Me and my uncle run a farm.”

  “I understand Mississippi’s big farm country. This is, too. But around here, we’ve had a problem with people buying that refund gas and then filling their trucks and cars with it.” He used the flashlight to gesture at L.C. “Step up front there if you will and raise the hood.”

  After L.C. did as he’d been told, the deputy leaned over the engine and screwed the nut off the carburetor, then removed the top and shined his light inside. “I’m deeply disappointed in you boys,” he announced. “In addition to depriving the military of much-needed rubber, you’re ensuring that somewhere a tractor’s been idled.”

  Suddenly, the light was in Dan’s eyes. The deputy trained the beam there forever, blinding him, making him want to throw his hands up in front of his face.

  “You look like you’re old enough to be in the army.”