“It’s papers and pictures and stuff,” Noah said. “My grandparents saved all their letters from the war. Some of them are pretty funny, and they’re all really cool to read. Grandma was really good friends with Grandpa’s first wife, Mae, and they saved all the letters they wrote to each other, too. Here, check this out. This one’s from Grandpa: Dear Dot, Whoo-whee!”
“It doesn’t say that,” Roger scoffed.
“Does too. Look.” Noah sat next to him on the couch, close enough so that Roger could see the letter, but not close enough to accidentally bump him and hurt him more.
Roger read aloud, slowly, trying to decipher Walt’s cursive. “We’ve gone up against the Germans and sent them running, weeping for their mothers! Hah! Finally, at last, we are part of this giant effort, this huge Allied machine, created to fight the Nazis’ evil.” He looked up at Noah. “Cool. He writes just like he talks. Oh, I know how jealous you must be, but it’s such a thrill, one I can’t begin to describe! (One I dare not describe in such detail to Mae.) So that’s kind of weird. He’s still married to Mae, but he’s writing to Dot?”
“They were all friends,” Noah told him. “Grandma was a pilot—a WASP, they called ’em. It stood for Women Airforce Service Pilots. Before World War Two, women didn’t do much of anything besides stay at home and take care of the house and kids. Then suddenly we were at war, and all the men joined the Army or Navy, and there were all these jobs that someone needed to do. So women stepped forward and said ‘I can do that.’ Grandma knew how to fly. Her first husband was a flier during World War One, and after he died, instead of selling his plane, she taught herself to fly it. Pilots were needed—even just to transport planes from one place to another in the United States—and she was one of the women who could do that. That’s how she and Grandpa met. She was delivering a plane to his air base. She told me she and Grandpa didn’t fall in love until a few years after Mae died.”
“Yeah, what’s she going to tell you? That she was messing around with a married man?”
“No,” Noah said. “That’s not what happened.”
“Okay,” Roger said.
“It’s not.”
“I said okay.”
“You said okay like you didn’t mean it. There’s letters and diaries and all kinds of stuff in here—there’s three whole drawersful—that prove—”
“I believe you,” Roger said. “Read the rest of that thing. I want to hear about how he killed all the Nazis.”
“Well, he doesn’t go into detail about—
“Just read it, Nos.”
Noah cleared his throat. “You should have seen the faces of the crews of the bombers when we landed and they found out that the pilots of their fighter escort—who had fought like the devil and not lost a single plane to the Nazis on that trip into Italy and back—were Negro men.
“We’re damn good, Dot. That isn’t false bragging but the truth—our record is remarkable. True, we’ve flown only three missions, but each time all of the bombers have returned untouched. The bomber squadron COs have started to ask for us by name—a true double victory.
“I’m beyond proud to be part of this. It’s true there is still much to overcome. My men—all officers—are billeted in places not fit for animals, while the white officers live in fancy hotels. Segregation is SOP, and disrespect is rampant.”
“What’s SOP?” Roger asked.
“It’s a military acronym. It’s stands for standard operating procedure. And segregation is when white people and black people are kept apart. Like, here’s a bathroom for white people only, and here’s another bathroom—usually smaller and dirtier—for colored folk.”
“That sucks,” Roger said.
“Yeah. And it’s weird reading these letters, too. All of them—Mae and Grandma and Grandpa—call black people Negroes or colored. At the time that was what African Americans were called—it wasn’t meant to be derogatory. It was pretty shocking the first time I read it, like, ‘Whoa, Grandma, were you a racist, calling Grandpa colored?’ But she’s probably the least racist person I’ve ever known. The words are just words. She once told me if when you grow up, everyone points to the sky and says ‘Blue,’ then you call the sky blue. But if the sky turns around and tells you that it prefers to be called azure and that being called blue is derogatory, then you make sure you stop calling the sky blue. Even if you’ve been doing it all your life.”
“My father uses a word that’s worse than those,” Roger said. “I get the shit kicked out of me if I use any four-letter words in the house, and then he uses that word, like that one’s okay with God.” He shook his head, like a baseball pitcher shaking off a catcher’s signal. “I don’t want to talk about him. Read the rest.”
“But when we’re in the sky, and those dastardly Germans are trying to shoot down both us and the bombers we’re protecting … Oh, don’t those bomber pilots think of us as equals then! That’s it. He says, you know, Write back soon, God bless and stay safe, write and tell me how Mae is feeling—she was sick a lot—sincerely, Walt.”
“You know, your grandfather told me to call him Uncle Walt,” Roger said. “You think that’s okay? I mean, instead of Mr. Gaines?”
“I’m sure it’s okay,” Noah said, “if that’s what he told you.”
“He was a real hero in the war, wasn’t he?” Roger asked, shifting on the sofa and wincing despite his attempts to hide how much his backside hurt.
“Yeah,” Noah said.
Roger was silent then, just looking at the picture of Walt and his squadron. “I’m proud to know him,” he finally said. “And I’m proud to know you, too.”
Noah wanted to cry. He knew that Roger didn’t want to talk about his father, but he had to ask, “Is he going to hit you again, just for coming over here?”
“I don’t know,” Roger said, but it was obvious he was lying.
“Maybe, you know, you shouldn’t come here when he’s home,” Noah said. “You said he wasn’t home that often—”
“I like coming here.” Roger was trying hard not to cry now, too. “I hate him.”
“I do, too,” Noah said. “You know, when I turn eighteen, I’m going to join the Navy. I’m going to become a Navy SEAL, and then I’m going to come back to Fort Worth and scare the hell out of your father. I’m not going to kick his butt—that would be lowering myself to his level.” That was something Grandpa was always saying. Don’t lower yourself to their level. “But I’m going to scare him so much he messes his pants!”
Roger started to laugh at that, but almost immediately he was crying. Oh, he was pretending that he wasn’t. He kind of turned away and curled up into himself and tried to cover his face.
Noah didn’t know what to do.
So he did what he always did when he didn’t know what to do. He ran to get his grandfather.
Walt came into the living room as fast as he could with his bad leg, but when he saw Roger’s battered face, he stopped short and made a sound like someone had punched him in the stomach.
He scooped the little boy up—and at that moment, with tears running down his face, Roger looked every inch a little lost boy. Walt held him on his lap, his big arms around him. He just held him and rocked him and murmured that it was all right, that Roger had found a place to come where he’d be safe.
It wasn’t until Walt pulled Noah down onto the sofa and wrapped one of his big arms around him that he realized he was crying, too.
They sat there together for a long time.
“What do I do?” Roger finally asked, in a very small voice. “I don’t want to pretend you’re not my friends until he goes back out on the road. But … I’m scared of him. I’m such a coward.”
Noah held his breath, hoping that his grandfather understood how terribly hard it must have been for tough-as-nails Roger to admit that.
“We could call the police—”
“No.” Roger was adamant. “I won’t do that. He’s my father.”
“Then you should sta
y close to your home for a week or so—until he leaves town again,” Walt advised.
“Let him win?” Roger scoffed. “No way. I’m coming over here whether he likes it or not. He can just beat the shit out of me every night. I don’t care.”
“But I care,” Walter told him. “And Noah does, too.” He sighed. “Has Noah told you why I have this limp?”
Roger shook his head.
“Young Ringo, I’m stunned,” Walt teased. “Am I supposed to believe that you never so much as asked?”
That got a small smile. “Well, sure, I asked, sir. But Noah said I had to ask you. And I didn’t because I didn’t want you to think I was rude. I thought you might not want to be reminded about being wounded in the war—”
“This limp isn’t from a war wound, young man,” Walt corrected him. He rubbed his knee almost absentmindedly. “No, I made it through World War Two with nary a scratch. It wasn’t until I returned to the States, in 1945, that I nearly lost my leg.”
“In a crash?” Roger asked.
Walt chuckled. “Not the kind you mean. But it was certainly a crash—of free-thinking people head on with ignorant ones. You see, I came back from Germany in late 1945 to find that my life—as I knew it—was completely gone. Now that the war was over, there was no longer a place for a black pilot in the new Air Force. After serving for so many years, I was a civilian again. An unemployed civilian. My wife had died shortly after I’d been sent overseas, and my daughter—whom I hadn’t seen since she was an infant—was living here in Fort Worth, Texas, with Dot, my wife’s best friend, who had opened her own crop dusting enterprise, along with a flight school.
“Seeing Dot again was …” Walt chuckled. “Well, we’d exchanged hundreds of letters during the war, but let’s just say she gave me quite a welcome home—the kind that warranted an immediate marriage. When that news got out, her family was less than pleased. A white woman marrying a black man—not a very popular concept, not in this part of the country at that time. We talked about going to California or New York City, but Dot’s business was already doing quite well, and my daughter, Jolee, had settled in, so … But then Dot’s brothers came a-callin’. She had three brothers, two older and one much younger.
“They came and told their sister that she would no longer be part of their family if she married ‘that nigger.’ Forget about the fact that ‘that nigger’ was more educated than the three of them combined. Forget that ‘that nigger’ was a former colonel in the Air Force, who had spent years fighting for this country, for freedom, for them. By marrying ‘that nigger,’ Dot would bring terrible, awful shame upon her family.
“Well. As I’m sure you can imagine, Dot told them in no uncertain terms where they could go and what they could do with themselves when they got there.” He laughed softly. “Back then she had a mouth that rivaled yours, Ringo dear. She sent them running for their very lives. Or so we thought.
“It turned out that Dot’s youngest brother—he couldn’t have been more than seventeen—stayed behind. When I came out of the house to see what vegetables the garden might yield for our evening meal, he was there, waiting for me. He was holding a shovel, but I didn’t think of it as a weapon. I didn’t think to be on guard. He was just a boy. It never occurred to me that out of all Dot’s brothers, this one might be the most dangerous.
“He came at me, swinging that shovel like a battle-ax, and it hit me in the leg, right beneath my knee. The blade had been sharpened, and the damage done was severe. There was so much blood—you boys know what that’s like. He was shouting to Dot about how maybe she had no qualms about marrying a black man, about the kind of life she’d have with everyone in town shunning her—shunning them—but maybe the idea of being married to a crippled black man would make her change her mind and save their family from this awful embarrassment.”
Walt rubbed his knee again. “I was in and out of the hospital for quite a few months. Those doctors had to work hard to save my leg, but save it they did. And I should have known better, but after I came out of my first surgery, I asked Dot if she was sure that she still wanted this, wanted me. She just looked at me. Then she walked out of the room and came back about thirty minutes later with the preacher from the Baptist church, who married us right then and there.
“Some months later, I was walking again. With a cane, but I was finally up and about. And I realized some things Dot had been withholding from me for a while—that whenever she drove into town and parked on the street, her car windshield would be smeared with cow manure. That our postbox had been mangled, that a dead cat had been hung from a tree out back, that small fires in the shape of a cross had been started on our lawn, that she’d received obscene phone calls and hate mail calling her a nigger lover and worse.
“It was obvious that her brothers were behind it, but when I called the police I was told ‘Boys will be boys.’
“Well, when I heard that, I put on my Air Corps uniform with my chestful of medals, and Dot and Jolee put on their best dresses—and boys, I’ll tell you, Dot’s an eye-catching woman in a pair of coveralls, but in a yellow dress with high heels … We climbed into the truck and we went into town.
“We parked on Main Street, and together we did a little shopping, making a point to patronize every store in town. Dot introduced me—even to those who knew me—as her ‘new husband, Colonel Gaines the war hero.’ We told everyone of our plans to expand our little airstrip, to acquire more planes, to hire more pilots and mechanics, to expand our flight school—all of which would pump life and money into this part of town. Nearly every shopkeeper jumped at the chance to shake my hand, especially when I opened a business account with them.
“Our last stop was at the hardware store, and by then we looked like a parade. After having spent two thousand dollars on various supplies and lumber—which back then was a substantial amount of money—we had folks tagging along to see what we might purchase next.
“I also think there was some anticipation, because all three of Dot’s brothers worked at the hardware store.
“We sent Jolee across the street with some girls from her school, to the soda fountain, and went into the store. The owner was very happy to see me. He had no clue of the trouble between Dot’s brothers and me. All he knew was that I was there to spend a pile of money.
“Other people from town did know of the tension, and the crowd grew—hoping, I think, that a brawl would break out.
“There was, of course, no chance of that. One does not brawl when one’s beautiful wife, dressed in her best yellow dress, is by one’s side. Instead, I purchased bullets—both for the side arms I’d picked up in Italy and Germany, and for the double-barreled shotgun Dot kept down at the airfield.
“I bought enough ammunition to supply a small army. Or to fight a small war. Boxes and boxes—and they were heavy, too. I told the store owner I couldn’t manage it with my bad leg and my cane. He was more than happy to call his hired help out of the back room to carry our purchases out to our truck.
“The chief of police came in at that point, no doubt to make sure I didn’t have murder in mind. ‘Going hunting?’ he asked me.
“ ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘Boys may be boys, but here in America a man has the right to be a man—to protect his property and keep his family safe from harm. We’ve had a bit of trouble out our way and my intention is to see that it stops.’
“Now, all three of Dot’s brothers were there, and I knew I hadn’t made them happy—they were going to fetch and carry for me, a black man.
“But I had their attention—as well as that of most of the rest of the town. So I told them that when I was first attacked, I hadn’t expected that kind of violence. But from now on, I would be ready. And the next time—if there was a next time, and I fervently prayed there would not be—I wouldn’t be the one lying bleeding in the dirt. ‘I killed plenty of Nazis during the war,’ I announced, ‘and I am not at all adverse to killing a few more.’
“And then I turned back to the
storekeeper and I did something that made Dot a little angry.” Walter chuckled softly. “She didn’t say anything at the time, but, believe me, Ringo, I heard quite a lot about it later.
“I bought a shovel,” he told them. “The same kind that Dot’s youngest brother had used against me. I paid for it, and I handed it to him. ‘This is to replace the one you lost,’ I told him. I thought he was going to soil his pants. That’s one thing I’ve learned about bullies, boys. They scare easily.
“Well, we walked out of that store,” Walt said, “loaded all of that ammunition into the truck, and went on home. Dot held her tongue until Jolee was in bed, and then … Me oh my oh, she was furious. She felt I’d put myself in terrible danger by putting that shovel back into her brother’s hands.
“But I told her that I’d made sure I was in a position of power before I did that. I made it impossible for her brother to take a swing at me there and then with the sheriff standing by, and I made it difficult for him to come after me later. Although there was always the possibility that he would. But that was what those bullets were for. We were both going to be armed for the next few weeks—months, if necessary—and keep Jolee nearby.
“You see, my handing him that shovel was a message—as clear as the message that came from our purchase of that ammunition. I was letting him know that if he and his brothers wanted this war to continue, it was no longer going to be fought with shovels. I was telling them that I was not afraid.”
Walt looked at Roger. “I know you disagree with your father. I know you recognize that his opinions about who should or should not be your friends are obsolete—that they’re sorely outdated and just plain foolish and ignorant. But you must be careful. Think before you act, Ringo. Knee-jerk reactions are well and good if you’re six feet tall and built like an oak tree. But he is big and you are small, and he can hurt you. Don’t put the shovel back into your father’s hands until you are certain he won’t use it against you again.”
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