Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

  She sat down in the aging recliner that was closest to the telephone. She dialed her mother-in-law.

  Toni answered on the second ring.

  “I just called to find out if my children are driving you crazy yet,” Claire told her.

  Toni laughed. “From time to time,” she answered. “Seriously, they are doing great. They have their moments, but you know kids are always better behaved with other people than with their parents.”

  “I’m counting on that being the truth,” Claire said.

  “Right now, everybody is at the hospital.”

  “Ernst took all of them?”

  “No,” Toni answered. “Even he wouldn’t take on a job like that. Keeping Peyton at his side will be tough enough. But we do have the advantage of having three doctors in the family. Zaidi went with Ben and Presley went with Nick.”

  “Oh that’s great,” Claire said. “Anytime my kids can get some one-on-one attention, they always behave better.”

  As she listened to her children’s grandmother lovingly and enthusiastically report on their antics, their bravery, their intelligence, Claire smiled and luxuriated in the moment. It was so rare to get any feedback about her kids. As a parent she made a thousand judgment calls a day, trying, hoping, praying that she was doing right. But she was never sure if her kids were doing okay because of her efforts, or in spite of them.

  As she sat there in Bud’s chair, her eye was drawn to the lamp table beside her. On it was a neatly folded, two-day-old newspaper, a metal lid with a handful of screws inside and a family photo. Claire had seen the picture many times. It was vintage 1960s. Bud, looking grim and uncomfortable in gray suit and narrow tie. Geri, with a teased-up hairdo so high it looked like a giant balloon around her head. And J.D., Jack’s dad, just a boy with a mischievous grin and teeth too big for his face.

  Claire had not realized until that moment how much that grin was like the twins’. She always thought they looked like her family, but looking at young J.D., she was not so sure.

  “Claire? Claire are you still there?”

  “Yes, sorry.”

  “I thought I’d lost you for a minute there.”

  “No, I guess my mind wandered,” she said by way of apology. “I haven’t had a lot of sleep.”

  “I suspect not. How is it going up there?” Toni asked. “How’s Bud?”

  “He’s still hanging in there,” Claire answered. “We talked to the doctor this morning. He didn’t promise us anything, but he wasn’t as pessimistic as Bernard.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she said. “Or at least I think it is. Sometimes drawing these things out can be very hard. But it’s important that Jack be up there. And I’m glad you’re with him.”

  “Yeah,” Claire agreed, hoping she sounded more sure than she felt.

  “Bud just lays there breathing for hours and then he has these…these…attacks. He starts struggling and gasping and fighting the covers.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I thought he must be in pain. But the doctor thinks he’s having nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “Yeah. Did you know that Bud had a history of posttraumatic stress disorder?”

  “Really?” Toni sounded surprised. “No, I didn’t know that. J.D. never said anything.”

  “I think J.D. had already passed away before he got diagnosed.”

  “I knew Bud was in WWII,” Toni said. “He was a big hero of some kind. That was probably the most important reason that J.D. joined up with the air force. He got a high number in the draft lottery, so he probably wouldn’t have been called. J.D. was very proud of his father’s service. I remember him talking about a little box of medals that was stored under his bed. J.D. wanted to be just like his father. And he wanted Bud to be proud of him.”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  “Have you seen any of the family?” Toni asked.

  “Theba and her husband were at the hospital when we got there,” Claire answered. “And Bernard came by this morning and gave us the key to the house. We had every intention of staying in a motel in Tulsa, but he was nearly horrified at the idea.”

  Toni chuckled. “Yes, the Crabtrees are firm in their belief that commercial lodging is for people who have no family.”

  “Apparently so,” Claire agreed. “Now we’re forced to commute from this small unfamiliar house in Catawah to the hospital in Tulsa, forty miles each way. It doesn’t seem like the best plan, but I didn’t want to cross any of the family and Jack was too tired to argue.”

  “Well, make the best of it,” Toni said. “I’m sure Bud has probably left the place to Jack, so it’s probably good for him to familiarize himself with it again.”

  “It doesn’t seem like he was ever familiar with it at all,” Claire said.

  There was a long pause on the line as Toni hesitated before her response.

  “Actually, Jack spent a lot of time there,” she said. “I lived there with Bud and Geri when J.D. was overseas. I was alone and pregnant and they just took me in.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, they were good people,” Toni said. “I don’t think I would have made it through those first few months without them.”

  “And they were grieving, too.”

  “Yes, yes, they were.”

  Toni paused. Claire wasn’t sure if she was examining a memory or conjuring up something to say. When she spoke, it turned out to be both.

  “I decided to leave Jack with them when I came back to San Antonio,” she said.

  “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “I told them that I wanted to go home and they helped me. They were great to me,” Toni said. “And to Jack. I went back to my old life, attended college, dated and managed to get remarried while they raised my son.”

  “Wow, I can’t believe I’ve never heard that before.”

  “Well, it’s not something I’m really proud of,” Toni said. “I mean, it really sounds even worse than it was. I dumped my son on his grandparents and went on my way. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. And I think they did, too. But we paid a high price. I missed so much with Jack, his first tooth, his first step, his first word.”

  Claire could hear the anguish in her mother-in-law’s voice and she felt it herself. As a mother, it was hard for her to even imagine not being there with her baby.

  “I did grow up a lot,” Toni said. “And then, when it was convenient, I just drove up there with Ernst and picked Jack up. I had no idea what I’d missed until I had Ben and Nick.”

  “Jack has never said a word.”

  “He never says anything to me about it, either,” Toni said. “And I’m so grateful. I feel terribly guilty about it. I never bonded with him like I did with the other boys.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, of course you did,” Claire assured her. “He’s just different from his brothers, that’s all.”

  “And different can be good,” Toni stated. “I’ve always believed that. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that Jack does.”

  Bud

  I awoke to a hissing sound, a terrible, terrifying hissing sound. It was the sound of air escaping from my raft. The rafts weren’t much to speak of. And like the escape chute, a G.I. never knew if the damn thing was going to work until it was too late to do much about it. Mine had worked perfectly. Maybe because I was the newest man with the newest equipment on the crew. Or maybe just because I was lucky.

  But with that hissing sound, I didn’t feel lucky. If the raft failed, I’d be in the water. The water meant almost certain death. The Solomon Sea was full of predators. I’d already seen what they could do. I’d seen Lt. Randel. The memory nauseated me. Deliberately, I forced my mind away from it. I couldn’t think about Lt. Randel or Sterno or Mugs or any of them. I had to think about myself. If I was going to live, I was going to have to think about myself. And I was going to have to stop the air from escaping from my raft.

  I followed my ears as I m
oved my hands over the rubber and found the tiny hole. It couldn’t have been in a worse place. It was on the near underside, just above the water line. I could hold it secure with just one finger. Relief washed over me, quickly followed by despair. I had to hang one arm over the side of the raft in an uncomfortable position and keep a finger atop the hole. How long would I be able to do that? Six…eight hours? A day?

  No one was coming for me. That truth skimmed across the pervading terror in my head. Nobody knew I was here. Nobody would come looking. It had taken them three weeks to find Eddie Rickenbacker—and they were looking for him. He was an important man. A hero. Bud Crabtree was a nobody. A lowly private from a town nobody had ever heard of. With nobody to mourn him. Almost nobody. The blow would probably kill Mama. And then there was Geri. My wife, Geri. Or not exactly my wife.

  The night in Fort Smith, after we’d married, I walked my bride out into the fresh air of the night and then vomited in the rosebushes. Berthrene made no attempt to hide her disgust. Even Les was visibly annoyed with me. But Geri wiped my face with a damp handkerchief and soon we were back in the rumble seat and on our way. The motion made me feel worse. I laid my head in her lap and she stroked my forehead, the way my mama had done when I was a baby. It was comforting.

  Les stopped at a circle of Traveler’s Cabins just outside of town. He rented one for himself and Berthrene.

  “Have you got any money, Bud?” he asked me.

  “Eighty-three cents.” I managed to croak out as an answer.

  “It’s okay,” Geri said. “You all go on. We’ll be fine sleeping out here in the car.”

  Les and Berthrene moved a little away from the car and seemed to be in deep discussion for several minutes about something. Then Les came back.

  “You can share the room with us,” he said. “You girls can have the bed and Bud and I will take the floor.”

  It sounded like a good idea to me. I sat up, a little too abruptly and the world spun.

  “Don’t be silly,” Geri said. “This is your wedding night. Bud and I will be just fine out here in the car. It’s a pretty night and there is nothing like camping under the stars.”

  The newlywed couple didn’t take that much convincing. And in the end they brought us blankets from their room. Geri and I snuggled up together in the front seat.

  By morning I was cold sober, my pounding head seemed swollen to three times its original size. My mouth tasted like some mangy mountain critter had crawled inside it and died. I was stiff and sore and grouchy as a bear. I was also married, though I had not availed myself of the privileges of a husband. My seventeen-year-old bride was still a virgin, not from any great sense of chivalry on my part, but because I’d been too drunk to function. Well, perhaps not that drunk. I made a groping attempt, but was basically pretty naive about the mechanics. After a couple of unpleasant gasps of pain from Geri, I just decided it wasn’t worth it and went to sleep.

  In the clear light of day, I was grateful. Geri and I could swear Les and Berthrene to secrecy. We could quietly get the dang thing annulled and nobody would be the wiser. I wondered if the judge could do that this morning.

  “What time is it?” My first question of the morning to Geri.

  “It’s after ten o’clock,” she answered. “If you’re worrying about your mother, there’s no need. I called Stark’s Grocery and asked to have Skeeter stop by your house and mine when he went out on morning deliveries.”

  “What reason did you give?”

  Geri looked momentarily puzzled at my question.

  “I didn’t need a reason, I just told the truth,” she said. “We got married in Fort Smith last night, and we didn’t want our folks to worry about us not coming home.”

  “You told Mr. Stark that!”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Then everybody in Catawah knows by now!”

  “So what? Everybody in Catawah was going to find out anyhow.” Her eyes suddenly narrow. “Oh wait, you were hoping they wouldn’t find out. You were thinking it could be some kind of secret marriage. You’re ashamed to be wed to one of the trashy daughters of Dirty Shirts.”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” I insisted with all the shocked self-righteousness of a liar. “I just wanted to tell Mama myself. I don’t know how she’ll take it.”

  Geri nodded. “I may not be exactly who she was wanting for you,” she admitted. “But I’ll make her like me, Bud. I’ll be so good to her, she won’t want to live without me.”

  I nodded grimly at that.

  We didn’t discuss it again until midafternoon riding once more in the rumble seat headed in the direction from which we’d come.

  “This is what I’m thinking about this marriage thing,” I yelled at Geri over the noise and wind. “We can both get what we want here.”

  She looked at me expectantly, her chin raised slightly almost expecting a fight.

  “I want to go into service as quick as I can,” I told her. “With you, as my wife, taking care of Mama, I could do that.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I’ll probably be killed,” I said with all the bravado of youth and inexperience. “If I am, you’ll get my military insurance and you’ll always have a home with Mama, if that’s what you want.”

  She hesitated for a long moment.

  “And what if you do come back?” she asked.

  The answer that hung in my mind was I’m never coming back. Even if I lived, I wasn’t going to live in Catawah. I was going to start off anew somewhere else. Somewhere exciting and adventurous. Someplace where living wasn’t just day-to-day drudgery. I was going to leave Mama in Geri’s care and never look back.

  I was smart enough and deceitful enough not to share any of these thoughts with her.

  Instead, I grinned broadly and winked. “If the Krauts or the Japs don’t get me, Geri, then I’m all yours.”

  She smiled back at me. It was the first genuine smile I’d seen on her face all day. To the surprise of both of us, I leaned forward and kissed her.

  Geri moved into the house that evening. Old Dirty Shirts brought her and her meager bag of personal things over to the house. He stood awkward and uncomfortable in the front room.

  “That Geri, she’s stubborn near to the point of stupid and goes after what she wants,” he told my mother. “She had her eye on your boy for years now. I figured it wouldn’t come to nothing, but here it is come to wedding.”

  Geri blushed, her defiance disappearing completely in her embarrassment.

  To her credit, my mother made her weary way to the front room to greet the man. She treated him with politeness and respect, as she did Geri. What she actually must have thought, I’ll never know.

  But the wedding was done and everybody knew and wished us well and no one asked questions about why a couple that had never dated should suddenly up and marry. It was a time of surprise weddings.

  Not being any more of a cad than I could bear to be, I decided that I would not have intercourse with Geri. Rationally, that seemed to me the most correct way to handle things. It would be wrong to leave her with Mama and a baby.

  Of course, the right thing, the intelligent thing is sometimes the toughest thing to do. Especially when it involved lying as chaste as a monk alongside a soft, healthy, sweet-smelling young woman. After about forty-five minutes on the very first night, I moved to the living room. But even my nights on the couch were sexual torture.

  It was that temptation that spurred me more quickly into my military service. After little more than a week of married life, I got up before dawn and drove into Muskogee to enlist.

  Mama couldn’t believe I was leaving. She insisted that she would write a letter to President Roosevelt and that he’d understand that I was needed at home. Geri told me not to worry.

  “I’ll take care of your mama. She’ll be fine,” she said. “You just take care of yourself. I’m counting on you coming back to me.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised, though I still had no
intention of returning to her.

  The most difficult part of taking my leave was that I felt obligated to be serious, dutiful and stoic, when what I wanted to do was celebrate. I was appropriately subdued, but the minute I boarded that bus for camp, there was a smile on my face.

  I got to see some places I’d probably never have seen, like Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and Alexandria, Louisiana and Wendover, Utah. I met some people who were so different from me, it was like we were from different planets. And I learned some things about myself. Some of which I felt good about and others that I wasn’t so proud of. I got two good stretches of leave that year. I didn’t head for home on either one of them. I spent one of them learning how to ski. The other I traveled up to Massachusetts to attend a bunkmates wedding. It was the only Polish wedding I’d ever been to in my life and it was memorable for the strangeness and exuberance. I think he was hoping to fix me up with his sister. But, of course, that couldn’t happen. I hadn’t mentioned to anyone that I was married, which would have made going out with local girls a bit dicey. I didn’t feel married, so I just conveniently pretended that I was not.

  If I tell the truth, I didn’t immediately discover a love of military life. I learned from the jump go that there was a right way, a wrong way and an army way. I’d been my own man almost my whole life and suddenly there were NCOs and officers who didn’t seem to have one jot more sense than I did, and they were busy every moment of their lives telling me how to do everything from wiping my ass to firing a rifle.

  Some of the fellows thrived with the discipline, regimentation, the routine. And others, like me, chafed at it.