Something was wrong. The oilcloth was pulled halfway off the table and the teapot and a cup lay smashed on the floor. There was no sign of Lois.
‘Now what?’ she said. ‘John Pharaoh! Now what have you gone and done? Look at my teapot. That's in pieces. Look at it, Peg. That's in smithereens. I'll have his hide.’
She must have heard something outside because she turned on her heel and pushed past me. I followed her, round the other side of the house, where he kept his traps, and there they were. Lois, with that high colour she got so easy. He had her pinned up against the back wall, looked like some kinda spear he had in his hands, evil-looking prongs on the end, pressing right up against her belly.
His head was jerking around, spittle flying outta his mouth, and Lois had her eyes closed. I believe she was preparing to meet her maker.
Kath grabbed John from behind, pulled him off balance. Then she pushed him away from Lois with the shaft of the spear.
‘Drop that now, John Pharaoh,’ she said. ‘Drop it or I'll give you what for.’ She had gotten herself between him and Lois. ‘Get her out of here,’ she said to me. ‘Now leave go of this glave, John. Leave go of it. You don't behave yourself, you'll have to be took away and locked up.’
Lois ran for the car. ‘That's right,’ Kath called after her. ‘You clear off out of here. You must have done something, get him all worked up like this.’
He'd allowed her to take the spear outta his hands, but he still had a wild-eyed look about him. I didn't want to leave her there alone with him, but I sure didn't want to stay neither.
I said, ‘Kath?’
‘Just get her out of my sight,’ she said. ‘Go on. Clear off, the both of you.’
Last thing I saw as I looked back was Kath pushing John into the house. She had the eel-glave in her hand. She looked like she was in charge. His head was down and he had a kinda defeated look about him. Except for his hands. I could see them, twitching, twitching.
I drove back to Drampton. Lois didn't speak. Neither did I. I felt sick to my heart. I didn't even look at her till we were parked outside Betty's.
‘Pair of throwbacks,’ she said. ‘My God, what a pair!’ She was pretending to laugh it off, but she was shaken, I could tell.
I said, ‘You should never have gone there. You knew he might show up.’
Crystal come running out with Deana Gillis. ‘We made a Farewell for you,’ she said to Lo. ‘We made cake and everything.’
Then they ran back in, to tell Betty the guest of honour had arrived.
I said, ‘You sure do like to make the big exit, don't you. You afraid folks might forget you, if you just go nice and quiet? What happened? You ask him for one last roll in the hay?’
‘Peggy,’ she said, ‘I swear, I couldn't have rode in that car another minute, and I was just minding my own business, sitting out on the grass in the sunshine, when he come along and started in on me. He's some kinda crazy.’
I said, ‘Well, it's a pity you didn't work that out sooner. I mean, if me and Kath hadn't turned up when we did, I reckon you'd have been skewered, you and that poor child you're carrying. You ever think of that? You ever think of poor Herb? You ever consider Kath?’
She started getting outta the car. ‘Hell, Peggy,’ she said, ‘how's it feel to be so goddarned perfect?’
Betty was at the door in her sweetheart apron. She was carrying Sandie on her hip, smiling and waving. Little did she know what Lois was hissing at me under her breath.
‘You and the Pie-Crust Queen there, and Mrs Audrey “when we get to be Captains” Rudman. The whole lotta you just drive me nuts.’
She slammed her door. I slammed mine. Then we went into Betty's and sat around drinking coffee, like nothing had happened. I kept thinking of Kath, though, on her own out there with that madman. It was all right for Lois. She was gonna climb aboard that transport and leave all her troubles behind.
There were gifts for the baby. Cute little things Gayle had knitted and a kinda rag doll Betty had made for Sandie. Real neat. Betty was so clever with her hands.
Lo was fooling around. She sang ‘I'll Be Seeing You’, close harmony with Gayle, and we drank her good health in Canadian Club. Wished her a happy landing and a baby with a small head.
Everyone was sad to see her go. Even me. Darned if I could say why.
28
Four weeks passed by and I didn't see Kath. I wanted to go up there, straighten things out between us, but I was scared he'd be there, waiting to skewer any callers. The eels were finished for the year, so Vern had stopped going too — and I never dared tell him what had happened that day. He ever found out, Herb'd have heard about it. Hell, there could have been a lynching.
Month of September, Vern was flying night sorties so I hardly seen him. Suited me. We didn't talk much any more. He was doing things he couldn't tell me, top secret, he reckoned, and even when he wasn't, I hated all that jock stuff, talking like bad things could never happen to him up there, like he was untouchable, or if they did, that he had what it took to get himself outta trouble. I guess that's the kinda arrogance it took to climb into one of those death traps every day. Didn't make good pillow talk, though.
And me, I just didn't have anything much to say. Never went anywhere. Hardly did anything. Lorene Bass's cosmetics party. Bake Sale at the OWC. That was my action-packed life. With Lois gone, there weren't too many laughs neither.
Then one day I smelled that sickly old sugar-beet smell and I knew the harvest had started. Only time of the year John Pharaoh was in paid employment, far as I knew, so I figured there was a good chance I could see Kath without running into him.
There'd been a hard frost, first one of the fall. But I could see her, as I come along the drove, sitting outside the door in that red wind-breaker Lois gave her, working at something. Soon as she heard the car, she jumped to her feet.
‘I thought you'd gone,’ she said.
I said, ‘I wouldn't have gone without saying goodbye.’
‘No … well …’ she said, ‘I spoke very harsh to you last time … when we had the upset …’
I said, ‘Hey! It's forgotten.’
‘No, but I shouldn't have done it,’ she said, ‘after all your kindness. It was copper-knob I was mad at. Not you.’
I said, ‘Let's just forget it ever happened.’
‘I'll make a brew,’ she said. ‘Only I'm sitting out here, ‘cause I'm peeling these onions. I'm making piccalilli, go with the eels. But do you get that smell in the counterpane you can't shift it anyhow.’
I said, ‘How're things with you?’
She knew what I meant. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘right as ninepence.’
Then she said, ‘Copper-knob had that little baby yet?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not till Christmas-time. And now we've got another one on the way. Betty's expecting.’
She thought about that for a minute. ‘You'd have thought she'd have been more careful,’ she said.
But Betty was thrilled. She'd been on at Ed about it, ever since Sherry was born. Kidded him she'd found out a sure way of getting a boy next time, douching with baking powder or somesuch.
‘I swear,’ Lois had said, when Betty was trying to explain how it worked, ‘she's a one-off. She's the only woman I ever met found a way of combining sex and baking. Keep your eye on her, Peg. She sounds like Vern's dream woman.’
Kath finished putting the pickles in brine and we went out driving, just like old times. She took a turn behind the wheel and we went all around, Smeeth, Beck Warren, Brakey, so she could give all the peasants her royal wave, show them she couldn't only drive, she could do it one-handed.
She slowed right down when we got to May Gotobed's. There was laundry hanging on a line, must have been out all night, sheets and skivvies frozen like boards.
Kath laughed. ‘Look at her drawers, all frez,’ she said. ‘They look like they're made out of wood.’ There was no sign of May. She said, ‘She only hangs them out to show them off. She thinks ow
ning a pair of bloomers makes her a cut above.’
We drove on. ‘I don't know why she bothers,’ she said. ‘That only makes for extra washing and I know for a fact she never had none till she went into service.’
I said, ‘Are you telling me there are women round here don't wear undies?’
‘Too stifling,’ she said.
We passed one of the little trains hauling beets up to the factory.
‘John working?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He's on the unloading at Mayday. He had a bit of a setback, you know, after that business with the glave. I thought he might not be straight in time for the campaign, then we'd have been in a fix. We'd have missed that money. But he's pulled through. I made him stay on the bed, nice and quiet, and he's pulled through.
‘Peggy,’ she said, ‘I hope you won't take this amiss …’ She hesitated. ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘there could have been a bit of carrying on, with copper-knob and John Pharaoh?’
You can think a thing over many times and still have no idea how you'll answer the question, if ever it's asked. I said, ‘Do you think so?’
‘I asked first,’ she said. ‘Do I turn along Hiss Drove, we can come up along the back, go and call on Audrey and little Gayle?’
They called it Hiss Drove on account there was river otters along there, cute little things, and if you were real careful and quiet you could see them playing in the mud. Audrey had showed me one time. But if they caught wind of you, they'd start hissing and whistling — like sounding the alarm, I suppose.
Eventually I said, ‘I don't know, Kath. Lois is a law unto herself. As for John, well … you'd know better than anyone.’
She nodded.
I said, ‘Whatever, she's gone. She won't be back.’
She parked nice and tidy, outside Audrey and Gayle's place.
Gayle come bouncing out. ‘You hear?’ she said ‘We're going home! Okey's got orders. Wichita, Kansas. November fifteenth. Vern heard anything yet? Lance didn't.’
There was more to that than met the eye.
29
They all got orders, excepting Lance. He made Captain, so him and Audrey moved into quarters on base, some ways down from us, or up from us, in a manner of speaking, farther away from the whine of the jets.
‘Farther away from the scraping of cheap flatware,’ as Lois wrote me. ‘Six weeks to go and I'm about the size of King Kong. Irene reckons they'll have to knock down a wall to get me out of here. I told her not to worry. My waters go, like they did with Sandie, they'll take the whole building with them.’
Betty was blooming, making lists and advising me on the correct way to clear a billet.
‘Start at the top and work down,’ she said. ‘You'd be amazed how dust does settle on drapes.’
Vern and the rest of them had drawn Temporary Duty to Smoky Hill, through April, then on to Wichita, training on the B-47s. It was all the same to me. Killing time till he come in off assignment. Killing time till he went back. Waiting for my life to start happening. I looked at it this way: at least I'd be waiting on the right side of the Atlantic, Ocean.
Most days me and Gayle'd meet for a Pepsi, and sometimes Betty'd come along too.
‘My, we're like the ten little nigger boys,’ she said. ‘And then there were three.’
She was down at the laundry all hours, freshening up her baby clothes and diapers even though she had months and months to go.
‘Peggy,’ she said to me one time. ‘Why don't you and Vern have another one? Be company for Crystal. I always think it must be a tragic thing to be a lonely only.’
There was nothing tragic about Crystal. She was out roller-skating in all weathers. Then she'd come in, all red-faced from the cold, and eat everything I put in front of her. She was like her daddy in that respect. He'd have ate skunk, as long as it was under a pie crust.
Come bedtime, she'd say her prayers like she'd learned in school and she'd settle down, her rabbit-fur mitts on the pillow next to her, and her skates where she could see them. She never gave me a speck a trouble, even when Vern was away. Not like the Gillis girls, always having nightmares and climbing in with Betty the minute Ed was gone.
I said, ‘No, Betty. I'm done with babies. Some day I'd like to do something with my life, instead of mopping the same patch of floor day after day. I have another brat now, that'll set me back six years.’
‘But you are doing something,’ she said; ‘You're caring for a highly skilled aviator. You don't take care of him, he can't do his job and next thing you know, those Russians'll be ruling the world.’
Funny enough, I'd been giving some thought to Vern not being able to do his job. Not the way Betty meant. Him losing his edge ‘cause he wasn't getting enough pie. Augering in because I couldn't get rid of the ring around the tub. I wasn't buying that. But his sinuses were causing him trouble. Change of altitude and he was in agony some days. He had swore me to secrecy, of course. Any doubts like that about a man, he can wave goodbye to promotion. So it'd started me wondering, if it really came to it, that he couldn't be of further use to the United States Air Force, how we'd get by.
‘Know what I do?’ Betty said. ‘Every morning when I look in the mirror to fix my hair, I say to myself, Betty Gillis, just think of that young Queen Elizabeth of England. She's pledged to put duty first, the rest of her life. Now you do the same.’
Two days before we were due out on the transports, I took Kath driving one last time. We saw swans flying in, low, come all the way from Russia, according to Audrey, to get away from the Russian weather. It was a sobering thought that there were worse places to spend November than Drampton. If you were a swan.
I said to Kath, ‘Do you know, all the places we've been posted, I never made a friend before. Somebody from outside, like you.’
She said, ‘What I've seen of that base you're on, you don't hardly need to venture outside the fence. You could live inside there and never bother with what's outside.’
I said, ‘I'm glad I did, though.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I'm glad you did too. And I hope we'll still be pals. Send Christmas cards.’
I said, ‘And who knows, maybe some day you'll come and visit? See how we do things.’
‘What?’ she said ‘In America?’
I said, ‘Sure. You'd love it.’
‘That's across the sea,’ she said. ‘I can't see that coming off. Not unless we come up on the Pools.’
I said, ‘You know Audrey's staying on? You might see her.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘she knows where to find me.’
I said, ‘Anything you'd care for from the commissary? Last chance for Almond Joys.’
‘No, thank you,’ she said, ‘but that was nice while it lasted. And I hope I didn't speak out of turn, about copper-knob. I mean to say, I liked her really. She had a bit of spark about her, didn't she? That's the thing, though. It's the sparky ones you got to keep an eye on. And you can't watch a man twenty-four hours a day.’
I said, ‘Kath, don't give it another thought.’
‘I won't,’ she said.
And that was how we parted. I would have liked to tell her how much I was gonna miss her, but you have to watch your step with the English, that you don't overstep the mark.
I kissed her goodbye.
‘Cheerio, then,’ she said. ‘And all the best. I hope you go on all right.’
30
Me and Crystal were back in Converse, Texas for Thanksgiving of ‘52, in the bosom of my loving family. I wish I could say it was a happy occasion, but my sister Connie was there, always got some hard-luck story, and there wasn't no killing of the fatted turkey on my account. Matter of fact, it was Swanson's TV Dinners all round, and Crystal, being cussed, had to start with dessert, burned her mouth on the apple pie.
She was having a tough time of it anyhow from her Gramma Shea. My mother, who had never showed a ounce of interest in her only granddaughter, said she couldn't understand a word the child said since she'
d been away among foreigners. I don't think Mom or Connie had the first idea where we'd been. If it was east of Texarkana, they just shook their heads.
I stayed down there through Christmas. It wasn't what I wanted, but there was no quarters ready for us up in Kansas and the Sheraton penthouse suite was already took. Vern blew in on a four-day pass, looking for a little action, seeing as we'd been apart so long. It didn't deter him I was on the couch and Crystal was right there, in two easy-chairs pushed together.
‘Tell your Mom we gotta have the other bedroom,’ he said. But we couldn't. Connie had to have that, for her bad back. Ask me, the only problem she had with her back was getting it up off the mattress.
It felt like we were sleeping in Santa's Grotto, all the glittering stuff my mom liked to deck the place with. Anything that didn't move got tinsel. Connie sat around so much I wouldn't have been surprised to come in and find her covered with twinkling lights.
Christmas Eve, I said to Vern, ‘I wonder how Lois is doing. She's due any day now.’
‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Meant to tell you. It's a boy.’
I'd have loved to call her up, but of course friend husband didn't know where she'd be. If she was back at her cousin Irene's, that was no help, ‘cause I didn't have an address or even Irene's name. And if they'd gone up to Herb's folks, I doubt they even had the telephone there.
I said, ‘Everything go all right?’
‘I guess,’ he said.
I asked how much he weighed and Vern said how the heck would he know. I asked did he have a name yet.
‘Yup,’ he said. ‘… It'll come to me.’
I said, ‘Herb happy?’
‘Like the cat that got the canary,’ he said. ‘You wanna mess around?’
After Christmas Vern was back at Smoky Hill on instrument training. We were promised quarters at Wichita within the month.
I said to him, ‘I don't know I can stand another night on this couch. I might see if I can get a rental.’
‘You stay where you are,’ he said. ‘You think we got money to burn? What's wrong with you anyhow? Wives like going home to see their mom.’
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