“Shhhh. Please, Rachel, please don’t cry. There was nothing you could have done to stop that. It’s not your fault. I promise you, it don’t make me love you any less. If anything, I love you more for telling me. I know now that you really love me or you would never have told me.”
“I was a…afraid no..body would ever want me if they knew I…I had a bl…black man’s baby,” she said, snubbing like a small child who’d been on a long crying jag.
“It wasn’t by choice, sweetheart. You were ra…, you were taken against your will.”
“I love you, Tom,” she said. “You are such a wonderful man.”
“And I love you. I love you more than anything else on earth. Now, you never have to speak of this ever again. We are gonna be so happy together. I’m gonna see to it that you are the happiest woman who ever lived. Whatever it takes. No matter how hard I have to work, I promise you I will take good care of you, even if it cost me my own life.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
No matter how much thought and how many minute details we put into our plans while they are still in the abstract, when reality presents itself, sometimes the outcome doesn’t even remotely resemble what we had envisioned. It turned out the marines had a waiting list, and I didn’t want to wait. It took all the fortitude I could muster to force myself into joining now, anyway. Once I found out Rachel shared my feelings, and how having her in my arms was the best feeling I ever had, or ever would experience, I didn’t want to leave her for even a minute. When the marines told me about the waiting list, I knew if I didn’t immediately go to the army recruiters, the only way I would ever be a part of the war effort would be if I was forced into it through conscription.
So I joined the army. After basic training was over, I found out that the Japs I had planned on fighting would be on the other side of the world from where I was going. I was assigned to the 34th infantry and was shipped off to Ireland from Brooklyn, New York. I did get to see the Statue of Liberty while in New York, but that was about the extent of my sight seeing. The army was all business. We were sent from Brooklyn to Belfast, in Northern Ireland. I knew my progenitors were Irish, but at the time I wasn’t sure what part of Ireland we had come from. I was desperately hoping it wasn’t Northern Ireland, once I’d spent a few days there. I had nothing at all in common with these folks. The city and the surrounding countryside were breathtakingly beautiful, however, and I found out that the Titanic had been built there at the Harland and Wolff shipyards. I learned that the Catholics and Protestants were always fighting with each other, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I wondered what it would have been like if us Baptists back in Alabama had declared war on the Methodists. I don’t think there would have been very many casualties.
I missed Rachel more than words can describe, but I also missed Ben, Abby, my aunt and uncle, and just about everybody else I knew. The only thing that kept me going was the rigorous training. During the day I didn’t have time to dwell on how homesick I was, and at night I was too tired to think about it for very long before my worn out body and mind succumbed to sleep. I wrote three letters every day without fail. One to Rachel, one to my aunt and uncle, and one to Abby and Ben. Sometimes I would write Abby and Ben separate letters and put them in the same envelope, depending on what I wanted to tell Ben. Man talk was usually boring to women. Ben would be graduating from Morehouse very soon and had turned down an opportunity for a Rhodes Scholarship. He had decided instead to accept a scholarship to Harvard for his post graduate studies. I figured if I could live vicariously through Ben and his astounding accomplishments, along with Rachel and hers, I could create a sort of fantasy world that would help me escape the ugly and cruel reality of where I was and what I was about to see.
*****
After a few months, the time finally came for me to earn the meager wages the army was paying me. So far nothing had made sense to me, and what we were about to do was no exception. Of course I wasn’t privy to all the information that our mission was supposed to accomplish, though I had learned it had been a subject of contention between our commanders in Europe and the British commanders. I later learned that President Roosevelt had overruled the advice from his own commanders and had decided to go along with the British. What didn’t make sense to me, was the enemy we were about to encounter. I thought the Germans and Italians were who we were supposed to be fighting. When I heard our objective was to secure the North African coast that was occupied by the Vichy French, I was really confused. I thought the French were our allies. I later learned that the Vichy French were led by a fascist admiral named Francois Darlan, and they were allied with the Axis powers of Hitler and Mussolini.
We were aboard the British destroyer HMS Broke, bound for Algiers. We were accompanied by the HMS Malcolm. Our objective was to land on the portside of Algiers and capture the port facilities and prevent their destruction by the French. I had quickly made friends with a gregarious fellow named Reginald Middleton, who was a member of the Royal Navy. Reginald had been educated at Oxford and was about five years older than me. Needless to say, he knew much more about what to expect than I did, having served in the navy for two years and having personal knowledge of the French. Reginald reminded me a lot of Ben. He loved long, verbose conversations about every topic imaginable, from medieval history to science and current affairs. He even paced like Ben did when he got on a roll. I told him all about Ben, my own life seeming too uneventful and fruitless to garner much enthusiasm for conversation. Of course, I did tell him about Rachel and how we had declared our love for each other only days before I joined the army and was shipped off. Reginald had a wife and daughter back home in London and we showed each other letters we had received from our loves. Rachel had given me several pictures of herself before I left, and we would swap out, me looking at his wife and him at Rachel. Reginald’s wife was pretty, with long dark hair and big brown eyes. She had dimples that reminded me of Abby’s. Of course, she wasn’t nearly as pretty as Rachel. Nobody was.
Reginald said he didn’t believe the French would put up much of a fight, if any at all. He thought most of them were not very loyal to their fascist leader and would quickly side with us. There was no mistaking the fact that Reginald was well educated and knew more about most subjects than anyone I knew personally, except Ben. But Reginald was dead wrong when it came to the Vichy French and their willingness to fight.
*****
It was not yet daylight when the shelling began. It started as a few loud booms that seemed like nothing more than harmless noise, although it was a frightening sound to hear in the early morning hours with darkness all around. Our sister ship, the Malcolm, was hit first. The combination of the huge gun’s blasts and the boom from the explosion of the boilers on the Malcolm vibrated through the coastal waters of the Mediterranean like a volcano that had erupted under us. Our ship was tossed around like one of those rides I’d seen at the State Fair. The Malcolm was hit several more times before it finally retreated. By now, we were being hit by the French batteries. I was knocked off my feet several times as our ship would retreat from shore and then come back again. We were ordered to stay in our places as the big guns on our ship returned fire. All I could do was hold on and pray until we finally broke through the boom and landed ashore. The landing crafts were loaded and we followed the surf as far as the boats could go.
I jumped out and ran through the surf, being knocked off my feet twice by the crashing waves. It was hard to distinguish between the sound of the French batteries, the big guns being fired from the ship, and the roaring of the sea. I could see through the smoky haze, a small cliff up ahead, beyond the beach. It offered protection from the gunfire, if only for a few minutes, until we could get organized. I ran as hard as I could in my GI boots and pants that were soaking wet and felt like they weighed a ton. It was as if I were running in a mud bog. I could feel the suction from the water in my boots every time I took a step. I knew there were men all around me. Fellow soldiers who were as
confused as I was. But it felt like I was the only one on the beach at that moment. Like the other men were apparitions. I didn’t really have time to be afraid. Dazed and disoriented would be a better description. I had had a similar feeling a couple of times in my life when something out of the ordinary happened suddenly. It was as if I weren’t really there, at least not in body. My mind was willing me toward the safety of the cliff, my body was merely responding, almost involuntarily. It was the same way your brain causes your heart and other vital organs to function without you realizing it’s happening.
I remember the sound of the blast and my body flying through the air. It seemed as if time had been slowed down or suspended. I remembered nothing else until I saw a face staring down at me. The gunfire now sounded far way. The face I saw was close. Close enough that I could feel his breath and could detect the odor of cigarettes on it. The face looked like someone I knew, or had known. I was quickly going through the cluttered closet of my mind, tossing things around, trying to locate the memory of the face. Finally, the sound of the voice gave it away.
“You’re gonna be alright, amigo. Just hold on to my hand.”
“M…Manuel. Manuel Cruz….wh…where am I?”
“You’re safe, Tom. You just hold on until we can get you out of here.”
I tried shifting around and sitting up. A sharp pain pierced the left side of my body that was so excruciating, I thought I would die that second. I did my best to stifle a scream as I settled back down. As the pain subsided a little, it was then I felt something wasn’t right. Something was missing.
“I…I can’t feel my leg, Manny.”
“Your leg is still there, Tom. It’s just battered up some, that’s all. The doctors will fix you right up.”
Somehow, Manuel’s voice didn’t sound convincing. I was afraid to look at my leg. I saw other men laying beside me, some injured, some probably dead. I hated myself for getting hit so soon after we landed. What good had I been, other than maybe a decoy? What if I was crippled for life? Would Rachel still want to marry a man she would have to spend the rest of her life taking care of?
CHAPTER TWENTY
“You’re head is bleedin’, Johnny. What in the world happened down there?”
“Damned if I know what it was. That water is so dad-blamed muddy I couldn’t see anything. It felt like I hit my head on something that was metal. Hurt like hell, too.”
“Well, at least we got our trotline untangled. You don’t reckon somebody’s boat sunk, do you?”
“Could be. I wish I could see better down there.”
Pete was thinking as he helped Johnny back in the boat and checked the gash on his head. He didn’t think it looked serious enough for them to stop what they were doing. Of course it wasn’t his head that was bleeding and had a big knot that was beginning to turn blue.
“What if somebody ran off the road in their car?” Pete said. “That bank is steep. Somebody could run off and nobody would know it unless they happened to be walkin’ along and seen the tire tracks. Ain’t nobody ever walks that steep bank much.”
“Ah, hell, Pete. You’re always comin’ up with stuff like that. It’s prob’ly an old washin’ machine or something somebody throwed away.”
“Well, what if it was a car? There might be a body down there.”
Johnny sighed and looked at Pete, knowing Pete was never going to be satisfied until he jumped back in, swam down there and checked it out. He thought it was a waste of time. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face in the murky water. But maybe he would be able to tell by feeling what the object was, or at least be able to prove to Pete it wasn’t a car. Pete wasn’t a very good swimmer, so Johnny knew it was up to him. Pete could really be a pain in the ass sometimes.
Without saying a word, Johnny flipped backwards off the boat and hit the water with a loud splash. He took a deep breath and ducked under the water, swimming down in the direction of where the line had been tangled. After he had gone down what he judged to be ten or maybe twelve feet, he felt what he thought were the roots of an old tree trunk. It must have been a big tree, because the roots ran on for several feet and were large in diameter. Johnny figured it was a tree that had once stood at the waters edge and had finally given up to years of erosion when the winter and spring rains flooded the river and overflowed the banks. He was careful not to get himself tangled up in the elaborate maze of roots that he couldn’t even see. He kept blindly groping his way around until he finally found the tree’s trunk and started feeling his way up the slimy, decomposing bark. When he had held his breath as long as he could, he swam back to the surface, doing his best to swim straight up so he wouldn’t lose his location.
When Johnny reached the surface and located Pete and the boat, he saw that they were several feet away.
“Bring the boat over here,” Johnny yelled to Pete, with labored breath as he treaded water.
Pete picked up his oar and paddled his way hurriedly toward Johnny. Johnny grabbed the side of the boat to rest himself, breathing heavily.
“Did you find anything?” Pete asked.
“I found a tree,” Johnny answered, gasping for air. “I thought whatever it is must be hung up on that tree. A few more feet and it would have gone off the edge into the main channel of the river. It would’ve prob’ly been gone forever then. As soon as I catch my breath, I’ll go back down.”
“Be careful down there and don’t get yourself tangled up. If it was up to me to save you, you’d be a goner,” Pete said, laughing.
After another minute of resting, Johnny took another deep breath and disappeared beneath the brown water. He tried his best to fight what little current there was and go straight down. He found the tree trunk quickly and once again started feeling his way along, in the opposite direction of the roots. He tried to find a hold so he could pull himself along easier, but the bark was as slick as glass. Just as he was about to resurface again, his elbow bumped something that was hard. He put his hand on it and could tell it was some kind of metal. He had no time to investigate further. His lungs felt like they were about to explode, so he did his best to swim to the surface again in as straight a line as possible. After another brief rest at the boat, he submerged himself again and was lucky enough to swim right to the object. This time he found something he could hold onto, and was able to pull himself around, using his sense of feel to try and identify the mysterious hunk of metal. One thing was for sure. It wasn’t a washing machine. He could feel what he thought was probably the side view mirror of a car, and then what he was sure was a door handle. He pushed himself away and swam back up for the last time. He found the boat and grabbed hold of the side, exhausted.
“Well, did you find it?” Pete asked him, with excited anticipation in his voice.
Johnny held up his hand, indicating he needed a minute to catch his breath before he could answer. Pete quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him back in the boat. Johnny laid down flat, breathing hard. His heart felt like it was trying to fight it’s way out of his ribcage. When he finally caught his breath enough to speak, he told Pete to row to shore. They needed to get in touch with the sheriff.
*****
It wasn’t the first time McClain’s Wrecker Service had pulled a car out of the Coosa River. It wasn’t even the tenth time. Rayford McClain was an old hand at this. People who needed money desperately and didn’t mind bending the law a little to get it, found the Coosa River the ideal place to make a car disappear and claim it had been stolen. Then, after a little haggling with the insurance company, they would collect a check. The only problem was that sometimes they would get snagged by a sandbar, a rock, or maybe even an old tree before they got out into the deep water. Then those pesky fisherman or swimmers would find them.
Rayford had a heavy-duty Peterbilt wrecker that had a winch on the front and back. If it could be moved, Rayford could move it. The diesel engine whined, the twin exhaust pipes blowing big puffs of black smoke in the air as the sheriff and other onlooker
s waited impatiently to see if they would recognize the automobile that was about to emerge from the muddy waters of the Coosa River.
When Rayford’s latest catch finally came into view, the sheriff saw that it was a Chevrolet pick-up. Part of the truck was covered with a muddy film, including the license plate. One of the deputies walked over to the drivers side door and pulled on the handle. The front fender was slightly bent into the door and the handle was jammed from being submerged in water so long.
“Hey Carl,” the deputy yelled to one of the onlookers who he knew well, “come here and help me get this door open.”
The sheriff was busy wiping the mud away from the license plate as the deputy and Carl struggled with the door. Rayford saw them and got a long pry bar from behind the seat of his wrecker. He walked over and wedged the bar between the door and the bent up fender.
“Now pull on it,” Rayford said, straining.
The deputy and Carl gave the door a hard yank and it flew open, making a metal-on-metal, moaning sound, as if it were angry it hadn’t been left alone in its watery resting place.
“Oh shit!!” Carl screamed, jumping back from the door as if the cab of the truck was full of snakes or some other horrible creature.
The crowd of onlookers all rushed toward the truck, wondering what ghastly sight Deputy Stevens had just discovered. The sheriff pushed his way through the crowd of gasping men and women and almost stepped on a human skull that had broken loose from the rest of the skeleton when it hit the ground.
“Back up,” the sheriff shouted to the crowd. “Back away, and nobody touch nothin’.”
“It fell out as soon as we opened the door,” Deputy Stevens told the sheriff, his face as white as a piece of loaf bread.
“I know who it is,” the sheriff said. “This truck has a Jones County license plate. Even if it didn’t, I would’ve recognized it, anyway. This truck belongs to George Winston. And that pile of bones is Ned Higgins.”
The Sharecropper Prodigy Page 14