Enduring

by Donald Harington

  The problem, though, was that Raymond was not monogamous by nature. Despite his presumed betrothal to Latha, he remained a wolf. He might be Stay More’s most eligible and desirable bachelor, but he could not resist any opportunity to chase skirts. Every, who had done so many favors for Latha over the years, now showed up to do another one: he told Latha who and when and where Raymond was still philandering. “You’re just jealous,” Latha said to Every, but she couldn’t help listening to the details. Every never lost a chance to finger Raymond’s affairs, until Latha began to suspect that Every was just making it all up. But one night when Raymond was supposed to be with her and wasn’t, Every came and got her and took her hand and led her through the village to the gristmill, where, atop some bags of cornmeal, Raymond was humping Wanda Dinsmore up to the point where he began his “Ah, God!” exclamations.

  Instead of confronting Raymond on the spot, she drew Every out into the tall grasses of the gristmill’s meadow and said to him, “If they can do it, so can we!” and she lay down with him right then and there and hoisted her dress and spread her legs. Just before she reached the mountaintop and started over, and her mind went blank and blissful, she caught sight of Raymond and Wanda standing on the edge of the mill’s porch, watching them.

  When consciousness returned, it was Wanda, not Every nor Raymond, who was fanning her and applying a rag soaked in cool creek water to her brow. “Heavens to betsy,” Wanda said, “I do believe you passed out and missed all the excitement.”

  Then Wanda told her what had happened. Apparently Raymond’s double standard had torn him up. He pulled Every up off of Latha and shoved him away, then threw a punch that missed Every and sailed over his shoulder. Every came back with a fist that practically broke Raymond’s jaw. Raymond managed to get a lick or two into Every’s stomach, but Every connected with lefts and rights and uppercuts, and pretty soon Raymond was on the ground, bleeding and moaning. “Boy howdy,” Wanda said, “them fellers was so busy clobberin one another they never noticed you weren’t watchin.” Raymond managed to get to his feet and take one more swing at Every, which missed. Then he began running as fast as his legs would carry him, with Every hot on his heels.

  Chapter fourteen

  According to the way the story was told for years, Raymond ran all the way to Jasper, where he enlisted in the Army. The entire World had been at war for some time, and in that year, 1917, the United States had joined the fracas and was actively recruiting servicemen. The same dramatic version of the story also would have us believe that Raymond’s five brothers ganged up on Every Dill and forced him to go to Jasper and enlist in the Army also.

  Whatever the truth, the two boys were soon fighting together in France, in the same outfit, the same platoon. They were the only two Stay Morons actually to serve in the First World War. Their homesickness as well as their sense of being outsiders among a bunch of soldiers from exotic places like Brooklyn and Boston and Baltimore made them cling to each other, and they became best friends as well as comrades-in-arms. Eventually Every apologized for having driven Raymond into the rash act of enlisting, and Raymond apologized to Every because his five brothers had forced Every to enlist also.

  Latha continued to wear Raymond’s ring, for the reason that it was the only jewelry she had ever owned and it twinkled in the sunlight and Raymond’s father, John Ingledew, who owned the Stay More bank, gave Latha a job as teller in the bank, her first true employment. Even if the salary was nothing to speak of, it helped her put food on the table for her parents and grandmother. Both Every and Raymond wrote letters to her. Raymond still considered Latha to be engaged to marry him. Every of course knew she was engaged to Raymond and, as he had told her before leaving Stay More to enlist, “I’m gonna go over there and protect him for you.” Raymond’s letters contained descriptions of the little white house they would share some day, with a white picket fence around it, and a pack of dogs, and a flower garden for her to work in, but mostly the subject of his letters conjectured what they would do together in their nice feather bed, where he would “pound it into her.”

  Every was promoted to sergeant, whereas Raymond was promoted only to corporal, a fact which Every wrote to her, saying, “Tole Raymond that when I get to be general I’ll make him a colonel if he’ll let me have you; he said he’d think about it.” Although Every was clearly a brave, fearless soldier, and she had not forgotten the fact that he had taken her over the mountain more than once whereas Raymond didn’t know how, Latha found herself, during their long absence, letting her heart grow fonder of Raymond. We depend on our mind’s eye for our judgments, and in her mind, not having seen either of the boys for a long time, Raymond was the more gallant and certainly the more handsome. She was polite in her replies to Every’s letters, but signed them “your friend,” whereas she signed her letters to Raymond “with love.”

  If Every was hurt by this difference, he didn’t show it. “Today they pinned the Craw de Gur on me—that’s one of the medals the Frenchies give out—the only decoration Ray’s got is the Dose of Clap—the Frenchies give that one out too.” And when people coming to the bank asked her, “Heard lately from yore sweetheart?” it wasn’t Every they were referring to. She answered one of Every’s letters by telling him that he could do himself and her a big favor if he stopped thinking of her as a possible girlfriend.

  The local newspaper, the Jasper Disaster, carried little news from the front, but Latha eagerly read it all, trying to track the armies that were engaged in such gruesome combat in places like Ypres and Reims. The Germans were dying like flies, but they were also slaughtering lots of British and a considerable number of Americans. There was growing belief that the war might soon be over.

  Then Latha stopped receiving letters from either Raymond or Every. Weeks went by. She continued to write her letters to both, but received no answer. Finally, she had a brief letter from Every, who was in a field hospital near the Somme. He had been shot in the legs by machine gun fire, but was expected to be able to walk again, by and by. He said he would probably have to face court-martial for striking an officer, but he hoped as soon as the war was over he could come back to Stay More and tell Latha everything that had happened. He was very sorry to have to tell her now that her fiancé was missing in action. Latha turned immediately to her boss, John Ingledew, and asked him if he had heard anything about Raymond being missing. “No official word,” John Ingledew said. “Not yet nohow.”

  But gossip soon spread that poor Latha’s intended was either killed or captured by the Germans. She was showered with sympathy. People even brought food for her, as you do after a funeral. Some of the girls her own age, whom she had scarcely known during her years at the Stay More school, began to congregate in the bank’s lobby and, whenever there were no customers to distract her, chatted with her in the most friendly, warm, and kindhearted manner. She made more friends than she’d ever had in school, even the high school in Jasper. They invited her to parties at their homes, but whenever there was a play-party with boys participating, they expected her to sit demurely by herself and not participate in the games that involved dancing and holding hands.

  Everybody took it for granted that she was waiting for Raymond and they assumed that if she said her prayers at night (she didn’t), she was praying for the safe return of her fiancé. As the months went by, and a new year came, Latha was thought of as “the girl who waits.” As beautiful as she was, she could have taken her pick among the eligible bachelors who’d had the sense not to join the Army, but it was commonly believed that the dreamy look she had in her eyes meant that she was still somehow communicating with Raymond. The war in Europe was over and the Ingledews had not received any official word regarding Raymond.

  On slow days at the bank, when there were few customers and few of her new girlfriends to chat with, Latha would sit at a chair behind the counter and read a book. Her boss, John Ingledew, told her he didn’t think that looked proper for a bank teller to be doing, but he reckoned t
here probably wasn’t anything better to do except count the money. She would count the money for half an hour and then read for several hours. She usually had her dinner while doing this. Mr. Ingledew always went home for dinner, and he always said to her, with a wink in his voice if not his eye, “Watch out for robbers.”

  One day during dinnertime she heard a commotion in the road—the sound of a horse galloping down the main street—and then she saw it come to a stop outside the bank’s big window. The rider jumped off and came limping into the bank. He was wearing a soldier’s uniform, with the chevrons of a sergeant on the sleeve. With his doughboy hat cocked down over his face, she did not recognize him at first. He thrust a folded note at her and her hands trembled as she unfolded and read it:

  THIS IS A STICK-UP. FORGIT THE MUNNY. BUT HAND OVER YOURSELF. ALL OF IT. P.S. I LOVE YOU MOAR THAN ENYTHANG IN THE HOLE WIDE WURL.

  She looked up, and recognized his grin before she recognized the face: the old familiar, half-bashful, half-mischievous expansion of the mouth with just a thin line of the white teeth showing. She almost exclaimed his name but instead wadded up the note and flung it at him, saying, “You gave me a bad scare. I ought to get the sheriff on you.”

  He held up his hands as if she were pointing a gun at him, and said, “Aw, please, Latha, the only crime I’ve done was borry a horse from a feller without him knowin it, so’s I could come and see ye.”

  They exchanged words. She made it clear that he was not the one she wanted to see, and that in fact she didn’t want to see him at all. He said he had some information she might like to hear. He was going to go say howdy to his mom and dad and then he’d come and talk to her.

  When the bank closed at four, Willis Ingledew the storekeeper told his brother John that Every Dill was back in town, and the two men stalked off up the road toward the Dill place. Latha followed. She did not want to be seen, so she cut through the woods and eavesdropped from the side of the house. Old Billy Dill and his ugly wife and son were sitting together in the dogtrot. They exchanged howdies politely but then John Ingledew angrily demanded to know what Every was doing there.

  “Wal,” Billy said, “I caint see none too good ’thout my specs but looks to me lak he’s jest lollygaggin thar and airin his heels.”

  “I got a idee,” said Willis, “he’s maybe sniffin around after a sartin gal, and me’n John are wonderin if he aint completely disremembered that that gal belongs to John’s boy.”

  They argued the matter of whether Latha could belong to someone who is dead. They argued the matter of whether Raymond actually could be dead. The Ingledews wanted Every to get out of town and have nothing further to do with Latha. There were seven Ingledew brothers and they would provide an escort party to see that he left town if he did not leave of his own volition before noon of the following day.

  “Well, I’ll tell ye, sir,” Every said. “As far as getting out of town’s concerned, I got to go back in the morning anyhow. As far as seein that girl’s concerned, hell and high water aint gonna stop me. But I’ll tell ye why I got to go back in the morning. I got to face court-martial. Want to know why they’re court-martialin me? Cause I knocked a lieutenant flat on his ass. Want to know why I knocked him flat on his ass? Cause he wouldn’t let me crawl fifty feet through the woods to untie Raymond from a tree. Want to know why he wouldn’t let me? Cause the Germans had tied Raymond to that tree for a decoy, to ambush us. Want to know what Raymond said to me after I’d knocked down that lieutenant and went to him anyway and tried to untie him? Said to me, ‘Get away from here, you fool!’ Want to know what I said back to him? Said back to him, ‘Naw, Ray, I done writ yore sweetheart and tole her I’d fine you by and by and git you out alive or else die tryin.’ Want to know what he said to me then?” Every’s voice choked. But he cleared his throat and continued in a fierce, quivering tone. “Said to me, ‘Ev,’ said to me, ‘Ev, no sense in both us getting kilt. Clear the hell out a here while ye kin! It’s a trap!’ But I started untying him anyhow, and I said to him, ‘I don’t see no trap. Reckon if it’s a trap, they aint about to settle for just me. They’re waitin to git a few more before opening up.’ But just then I s’pose they got tired of waitin and figgered I was all they’d ever git. They opened up. See these here red scars on my laigs? Them’s machine gun bullets. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t no more of stood up and finished untying him than I could of took off and flew. And him screamin at me, ‘Ev, you fool, clear the hell out a here!’ So I did. My boys were brave enough to come down and open fire on that machine-gun nest long enough for me to drag myself out of there.”

  There was a long silence. Eventually John Ingledew asked in a quiet voice, “Was Raymond hit? Did they hit him?”

  “I don’t know,” Every said. “Some a that spray that cut me down might’ve hit him, but then on the other hand maybe that tree he was tied to was shieldin him. I don’t know. The next thing I knew a couple a my boys had tuck me under the arms and dragged me clean outa there afore I could take a good look back. Then that lieutenant I’d clobbered came up mad as a rattlesnake and kicked me in the face. I woke up in a field hospital.”

  Latha, listening, was touched by the tale of Every’s bravery. Although she was distressed to learn how the Germans had used Raymond by tying him to that tree, she began to realize there was still a slim chance that he might have survived the machine gun fire and was still alive in a hospital somewhere. This is the reason that, on the way home, she selected a tall mullein stalk and named it Raymond and told it she hoped he would still be alive somewhere, and then bent the mullein down to the ground.

  She returned home, did her chores, had supper after taking some supper to her ailing father in his bed, then waited long into the evening to see if Every would dare show up. Sitting on the porch she heard the call of the whippoorwill, coming from the woodlot. That had once been the sound that Every had made to let her know that he was in the vicinity.

  Then he appeared. She recognized his shape in the dark. “Go away,” she said.

  “Got to tell you something first, Latha. Want to tell you about ole Ray. He was a real brave boy, lots more of a man than me. I want to tell you what he done.”

  But she told him that she’d already heard his story as he told it in the dogtrot of his house. “Too bad you couldn’t have got him out as easily as you got him in,” she said.

  “You still blaming me for that?” he asked, hurt.

  “I’ll forever blame you for that,” she said.

  “But listen, Latha, he’s not coming back,” Every said, then he tried to get her to agree to at least not marry nobody else until he could get this court-martial business finished and done with and could get some word to her.

  She said the only word she wanted was official word from the government that Raymond is dead and buried.

  “You might never get that,” Every said. “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll wait.”

  “You might wait forever.”

  “Then I’ll wait forever.”

  He reached out to embrace her, perhaps to kiss her, but a lantern flared up and Tearle Ingledew, Raymond’s brother, pointed his shotgun at Every and swore, and then the air was filled with cusswords from each of Raymond’s four other brothers, each of them armed with weapons pointed at Every’s head or heart. Every challenged them to lay down their arms and take him on man for man. A distant shot was fired, and the lantern went out. In the darkness a fracas broke out, joined by Every’s buddy since childhood, Lawlor Coe, and then by Every’s father, old Billy Dill. But Latha’s own father, Saultus Bourne, joined the Ingledews, so the fight was unequal, five against three. While much mayhem ensued, the Ingledew forces were victorious and Every was forced to leave. He hollered for Latha to come with him, and when she would not, he begged her to wait for him. “You’ll never come back,” Tearle Ingledew snarled at him. “If you come back, it’ll be to git yoreself measured for a coffin.”

  Latha did not watch Every run out of sight. It is ver
y bad luck to watch someone go all the way out of sight. It means they might die.

  But the time would come when she wished she had watched him go out of sight. Each day she checked the bent-down mullein stalk but it never straightened. The frost came and killed it, but the next summer she named another mullein stalk after Raymond and bent it down. While she was at it, she decided to name another mullein stalk after Every and bend it down too. Another winter came and killed both of them.

  Old Billy Dill, the wagonmaker who was Every’s father, had a stroke and died, and Latha went to his funeral, although nobody else showed up for it. She wept during the funeral from the memory of the time Every’s father had taken them for a sleigh ride in the snow. One day when Lawlor Coe came into the bank, she asked him if he had heard anything from Every, but he had not. She said she wondered what the punishment for a court-martial was. They didn’t execute you, did they? No, Lawlor said, but they probably sent him off to the prison at Fort Leavenworth for a few years.