Home Fires Burning

by Robert Inman

  “Lord, Biscuit,” Fog Martin boomed, slapping his belly, “by the time we lick the Japs I’ll bust a gut from eating donuts.”

  “You’ll die a patriot,” Jake said. “We’ll lay you in state over at the courthouse and I’ll run an obituary that says, ‘He busted a gut, but saved the country.’ We’ll put up a statue on the courthouse lawn with a hole in its belly.”

  Biscuit Brunson leaned over and propped his elbows on the worn linoleum top of the counter. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’ll need some kind of statue on the courthouse lawn when this business is over.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake asked.

  “You know, something to honor the fighting men.”

  “Why the hell would we want to do that?” Jake snorted. “I’d think everybody would just want to forget the damfool business and get back to being normal. Besides, there’s no statue over there for the First War people.”

  “No, but …”

  “Your daddy was in the First War, wasn’t he, Biscuit?”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “So, the town ought not to play favorites.”

  “Well,” Biscuit insisted, raising up, “maybe we could do a statue for all the fighting men from all wars. Go clear back to the Revolution.”

  “Hah!” Jake boomed. “What few people there were around here in the Revolution were a bunch of renegades and outlaws. They didn’t give a damn who won the war, as long as folks left ’em alone. Hell, this was the frontier during the Revolution.”

  “Okay, then,” Biscuit forged on, “you could go back to the Civil War.” He thought a moment. “Your grandaddy was in the Civil War, Jake.”

  “Damn right, and he wouldn’t have stood for any statues on the courthouse lawn, either.”

  “Well, just the same, I think we ought to have a statue,” Biscuit said. “What do you think, Hilton?”

  Hilton Redlinger shifted around on the counter stool and reached for another donut. “What kind of statue are you talking about, Biscuit?”

  “I don’t know, I guess some kind of statue of a soldier,” he said, describing it in the air with his hands.

  “Hey,” Fog Martin broke in. “How about the sailors, Biscuit? Lots of us got relatives in the Navy. Your own boy’s a Seabee.”

  “Yeah, and what about the Army Air Corps and the Marines and the merchant seamen?” Hilton said.

  Biscuit wiped his hands briskly with his dish towel. “Okay, then, how about a cannon.”

  There was a moment of silence and then Jake guffawed. “A cannon! God knows, that’s what we need on the courthouse lawn, boys. A cannon! We could put the air raid warden in charge of it, and then the next time a flock of Zeroes comes over, Tunstall could blow ’em out of the air! How about it, Tunstall?”

  Tunstall Renfroe gave them a sour look. “I think General Mac-Arthur can take care of the Japanese, Jake.”

  “Speaking of Japs, you-all heard about the Germans?” Hilton Redlinger asked.

  “We’ve been hearing too much of ’em the last few days.” Biscuit said, wiping the counter where Hilton had slopped his coffee dunking a donut.

  “Some of ’em are gonna be right here in town tonight,” Hilton said.

  “My God,” Jake exclaimed. “Tunstall’s been right all along. It’s the invasion, by God. Tunstall, you better get home and grab your pith helmet and organize the militia.”

  “Naw,” Hilton said. “They’re coming for the Christmas program. A bunch of ’em from the POW camp over at Taylorsville. Rosh Benefield invited ’em.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Tunstall said. “Folks might be a little sensitive about Germans, what with this breakthrough in Belgium. Are you going to deputize any extra men tonight, Hilton?”

  “No need to do that,” Hilton said. “There’s only going to be a handful of ’em, and they’ll have a bunch of MPs from the prison camp guarding ’em. There won’t be any trouble.”

  “When did you find out about it, Hilton?” Jake Tibbetts asked.

  “Last week,” Hilton said.

  “Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me about it so I could get it in the paper?”

  Hilton shrugged. “Rosh didn’t think we ought to get folks stirred up.”

  Jake snorted. “Stirred up? I’ll tell you when they’re gonna be stirred up. That’s when they get to the auditorium tonight and see a bunch of Heinies sitting there enjoying themselves.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Fog Martin broke in, “I think they ought to stay out of the refreshments.”

  Jake slapped his hand on the counter. “You well-meaning public servants are gonna be the death of us, trying to protect us from ourselves.” He jabbed a stubby finger in Hilton’s direction.

  “Now, Jake,” Hilton said, his voice rising, “you wouldn’t want to get over to the school tonight and have some trouble over these Germans, would you?”

  “I’d rather not back into anything,” Jake said. “And if a fellow doesn’t know something, he’s backing up. There’s only two things standing between man and perfection, gents, and that’s meanness and ignorance. You can’t do anything about meanness because man got that in the Garden when woman sneaked the apple in on him. But you can do something about ignorance. Mankind would be half-perfect if he wasn’t so goddamned dumb.”

  They all laughed at that, and Biscuit filled up their coffee cups again and Fog Martin had another Victory Donut and they watched Ideal Benefield pass by on the sidewalk headed for the radio station two doors away to do her Saturday morning “Club News and Community Views” program.

  After a few minutes, Ollie Whittle came in, coatless, shivering from the short dash from the radio station. Ollie took a stool between Fog Martin and Tunstall Renfroe. “Top of the morning to you, gents,” he boomed. Ollie had a strong, resonant, glad-to-meet-you voice. He was tall and wavy-haired with a big hawkbill of a nose that he pulled on all the time. Biscuit shoved a mug of coffee in front of him and slid the donut platter down the counter. Ollie would have a half hour to drink coffee and visit while Ideal Benefield did her program on the radio.

  “What’s the latest on the Belgium situation?” Tunstall asked him.

  “From what little they’re saying, it looks pretty grim,” Ollie said, taking a slurp of coffee. “The Germans have driven almost to the Meuse and they’ve still got Bastogne surrounded. I get the impression our boys have gotten cut up pretty bad. I think they caught Bradley with his pants down.”

  Ollie Whittle was sort of a local authority on war developments because he had a news ticker up in the radio station and some big Rand McNally maps of Europe and the Pacific tacked on the wall where he plotted the course of the latest action.

  “Well, what are Montgomery and Patton doing about it?” Fog Martin asked.

  Ollie pulled at his nose. “Montgomery sent reinforcements right off. In fact, it was some of his folks that got cut off at Bastogne. But nobody’s heard a peep out of Patton.”

  “You can bet he’s itching to get in the middle of it,” Fog said. “I wonder why Ike don’t cut him loose?”

  “He may be waiting for the weather to clear,” Ollie said. “It’s been miserable all week. The Air Corps is grounded. They can’t get a thing in the air.”

  “Well, the whole damn thing is Montgomery’s fault,” Jake said.

  They all turned to stare at him. “What do you mean, Jake?” Ollie Whittle asked.

  “Montgomery’s a ninny. He won’t budge an inch unless he’s got all the odds in his favor. He wants all the troops, all the supplies, perfect weather, and a band of bloody bagpipers to skirl when he steps off to the march. It has to be done in grand style and on a grand scale, or Montgomery’s not your boy.” Jake tapped his spoon on the counter for emphasis. “And Ike, the idiot, just keeps mollifying old Monty. Lets him sit up there in Belgium fat and warm through the winter with his tootsies roasting and his pudding baking.”

  “Now wait a minute, Jake,” Tunstall Renfroe protested, “Montgomery’s a br
illiant general.”

  “Brilliant my ass,” Jake said. “We’ve been bailing the English out from the beginning. They got themselves in a pickle because they wouldn’t call Hitler’s hand early on, so they came squawking to good old Uncle Sam, and now the whole damn Limey island is afloat with U.S. greenbacks. And Montgomery struts around like the Duke of Dundee when he and his boys would be bare-assed without a pot to pee in if it hadn’t been for us. The tea-drinking sonofabitch.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Tunstall said.

  But Jake blasted right on. “The trouble with us Americans is, we never got over being hillbillies. We can fight like hell and hold our liquor with the best of ’em, but we still haven’t learned which fork to use. So you put us in with a bunch of folks who’ve got more manners than sense, and we just turn to jelly with embarrassment. I’ll bet old Ike’s got to the point that when he’s around Montgomery, he feels like he forgot to wash his hands the last time he took a pee.”

  Ollie Whittle laughed, a deep chuckle that rumbled up out of his stomach. “Jake, that’s the damndest discourse I ever heard. I can’t decide if it’s brilliant or just pure horse manure.”

  “Horse manure,” Tunstall Renfroe said.

  Hilton Redlinger scratched at the white stubble on his chin. “What gets me is the way you’re carrying on about the war, Jake. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you speak much about it. I didn’t know you took much interest.”

  Conversation froze. It hung in the air of the cafe like a pall. Biscuit cleared his throat and began wiping the counter with his towel. The rest of them stared self-consciously at their coffee cups, all except Hilton Redlinger. Hilton hitched himself around on his stool and looked directly at Jake, and Jake thought to himself, The sonofabitch did it on purpose. Every man there knew that Jake Tibbetts had a profligate son off at war somewhere and that Jake thought Henry a goddamned fool and the war a damfool business. But it was Jake Tibbetts’s private agony and they had left it alone. Why now? Why Hilton?

  “I’m interested in any case where mankind is making an ass of himself,” Jake said evenly, returning Hilton’s gaze. “Wars are made by men who are too old or fat to fight. The trouble with this one is, we let their fat old men tell our fat old men how to fight it. And when we’re supplying all the troops and the ammunition, that’s making an ass of yourself.”

  Jake and Hilton looked at each other for a long moment and finally Hilton said, “Well, it’s for sure we’re too old and fat to fight.”

  That broke the tension and there was a little smattering of nervous laughter. Biscuit refilled their coffee cups and everybody had another Victory Donut while they waited for the awkward moment among good, old friends to pass.

  Lonnie Tibbetts heard and saw it all from his stool next to the door, understood that something uncomfortable had passed between his grandfather and Police Chief Hilton Redlinger. But he catalogued it as another half-fathomed transaction in the mysterious secret code of grown-up men, to which he was again silent and uninitiated witness.

  What interested him more than this secret code just now, though, was the thought of the Christmas program tonight. Everybody would be there at the high school auditorium. Em Nesbitt, the telephone operator at Central, would sing “O Holy Night” and Mayor Rosh Benefield, Lonnie’s other grandfather, would read the Christmas story from the Bible. Then one of the ministers would deliver a Christmas message. The Methodists and Baptists took turns at that. Finally, Mrs. Eubanks’s Rhythm Band from the elementary school would play “Jingle Bells” and “Up on the Housetop.” Lonnie would play the wood block and his best friend, Bugger Brunson (Biscuit’s grandson, properly known as Lee Mason), would play the flutofone. It wasn’t a long program, just enough to get folks in the right mood. There would be punch and cookies in the school cafeteria after the program, and then everybody would go home and get ready for Santa Claus.

  And now, Germans. He could picture them in his mind — tall, stern-faced men in gray uniforms, goose-stepping down the aisle of the auditorium, the Army MPs guarding them with tommyguns. Lonnie agreed with Fog Martin. The Germans ought to stay out of the refreshments.

  He thought about all of this as he sat staring out the big plate-glass window of Biscuit Brunson’s cafe at the bright, bitter day, seeing the red brick courthouse and the empty street as a picture framed by the window, every line etched in thin, precise pen strokes — the naked branches of the pecan tree, where the old men played pinochle in warm weather, the brown stub of the banana tree that Fog Martin’s brother Herschel had planted next to the courthouse years ago. In summer, it shot out thick green stalks and broad leaves and even, one year, a bunch of tiny bananas no bigger than your thumb. You could, if you wanted your imagination to do so, turn the picture into summer and imagine the banana tree green and taller than your head, imagine the sidewalk scorching the bottoms of your bare feet and the heat phantoms shimmering off the slate roof of the courthouse. The pecan tree would make a big puddle of shade on the green lawn where four old men argued over their pinochle cards at a rickety table. Herschel Martin would putter around the banana tree, talking to it as if he were the father of those tiny green bananas. And people would move slowly, gliding like vapors in and out of the cool dark hallways of the courthouse.

  But that was summer, good for its own savoring. Now, the picture in the window was bright and sharp and bare, tinged with the delicious anticipation of the day before Christmas.

  Just now, in this morning’s picture, a man in overalls, flannel jacket, and battered felt hat started down the steps of the courthouse, then stopped abruptly, threw up his arms, and dashed back toward the door. An automobile, a Chevy coupe, the only car Lonnie had seen that morning, slewed sideways in the street directly in front of the cafe, jumped the curb, and careened up on the brown grass of the courthouse lawn, throwing lumps of sod from beneath its spinning rear wheels. Lonnie stared, spellbound, wondering if what he was seeing was a picture embellished by his imagination.

  And then the airplane roared by, its wheels barely above the pavement, swooping through the space between the cafe and the courthouse.

  “What we ought to do is buy out the goddamn Limeys and finish off the job …” Daddy Jake was saying as the roaring explosion of the airplane drowned him out.

  “What the hell!” Hilton Redlinger bellowed.

  And then there was the crash of falling glass as the big plate-glass window at the front of the cafe caved in, followed by a blast of frigid air. Everything shook and rattled like Judgment Day and the noise was enormous. Lonnie Tibbetts fell off his stool.

  “My God, it’s an air raid!” Tunstall Renfroe yelled.

  They all dived for the floor, shouting. Jake grabbed Lonnie around the waist and pressed him down on the cold linoleum.

  “They’ve shot out the window!” Biscuit screamed. “My plate glass! Lordy, they’ve shot it out!”

  Hilton Redlinger had his pistol out now, the big Colt revolver that no one had ever seen him fire. “Christ, they’ve shot Fog,” he said. Fog Martin sat on the floor, staring at them dumbly, blood trickling down his face from a cut on his forehead. He wiped his face with his hand and gaped at the blood. Hilton took aim, bracing his gun hand with the other, and fired two shots through the gaping hole where the plate-glass window had been. The roar filled the room. Lonnie jerked his head up and he could see people running from the courthouse across the street.

  “They’re gonna bomb the radio station,” Ollie Whittle cried. “They always go for the radio station! My God, Ideal Benefield is up there!”

  Lonnie thought fleetingly of plump, powdered Ideal, interrupting her club and society news to describe an air raid attack. Lonnie could feel the panic in the room, could see the men’s eyes wide with fright, even Daddy Jake’s. His breath was coming in short gasps next to Lonnie’s ear. Hilton Redlinger let fly with two more shots and one of them struck the window frame and ricocheted off with a whang and buried itself THUNK in the top of the counter.

>   “God, stop it, Hilton,” Tunstall Renfroe said. “You’re going to kill us all.”

  Lonnie bolted up out of Jake’s grasp and ran for the door.

  “Lonnie!” Jake yelled after him, but Lonnie was through the door and out on the sidewalk, looking down the street and watching the plane becoming a speck just above the horizon east of town. Ollie Whittle charged past him on the sidewalk, sprinting for the radio station upstairs over the bank, where Ideal Benefield already had the window open and was shouting down, “You men there, what’s going on? You there. What was that noise?”

  He had just gotten too low, that was all. He hadn’t meant to get that low. He just wanted to see if he could catch a glimpse of Tunstall Renfroe through the front window of the Farmers Mercantile Bank, because he would prefer not to land his plane in front of Tunstall Renfroe’s house and spirit Tunstall’s daughter away if Tunstall was home. Marvel, he thought he could handle. She giggled a lot and might think it was enchanting, a young man coming in a plane for her daughter. But not Tunstall.

  But Billy Benefield had just gotten too low and before he knew it, there was nothing to do but go under the electric power lines instead of over them, and so he had swooped down between the courthouse and the row of stores on the north side of the square and luckily the poor fool in the Chevrolet coupe had gotten out of the way in time. A Curtiss Stearman was a maneuverable plane, but you didn’t just stand it on its tail, or you’d stall out and then it would be goodnight, nurse. So he had dipsy-doodled under the power lines and for the split second when he was down between the buildings, he could hear the throaty roar of the Pratt and Whitney engine bouncing back at him off the brick storefronts to his left and he could see the red blur of the courthouse to his right and the flash of the stark-limbed pecan tree just out of reach of his wingtip. He had known exactly where he was, that there was another brace of power lines down at the end of the street and that he had to get the nose up quickly and put some distance under the wheels of the Stearman before he reached the next intersection. And he did. The Stearman responded powerfully, the great blades of the propeller swallowing chunks of air as he felt the thrill of danger race through his own body — his heart in his throat, his fanny puckered up like a prune. He held his breath for a long moment and then he pulled back smartly on the stick and cleared the power lines and gained altitude as he passed over the Jitney Jungle Super Saver and the hardware store, and then he let his breath out with a whoosh. He looked back over his shoulder as he climbed away from the downtown, and he could see people running out of the courthouse and the stores, ants swarming from a stepped-on hill.