“Sure. I know that. But beyond that, I want the world to go on . . . After me . . .”
She said, “I get mixed up when you talk . . . I have a headache.”
Momma said, I hate the way things turned out for her. Momma cried hot tears. I hate her . . . Then she got hold of herself and she said, She was always a mess . . .
Nonie had her life in wartime because I stayed with her ill parents. I gave part of her youth to her—and then she suffered because of that. I gave up my childhood and early adolescence—this was talked about; it was known and discussed. I wanted my sister Nonie to serve the war effort—I wanted her to have her life . . . I wanted her to be rich and have her daydreams happen. I wanted her to leave me alone.
When Nonie was in Forestville with the Warners and working for the Air Corps, Aunt Casey, or perhaps Cousin Daniel, or Uncle Abe, in their sense of law and of decorum, of appearances and of indebtedness, made her call me long-distance every few weeks. Because I’d made her escape possible. And because I was having a drab life.
I heard a voice behind her say, Ask him what he needs . . . I never got the clothes or the books I told her I needed. At her saintliest, she was still practical in her feelings toward me—Live and learn, Momma said to me. She said, And let live . . . Look at you, you’re the home front . . . And she’d laugh.
It is a kind of spiritual discipline to forbid oneself to wish anyone ill . . . One hides behind words, one says to oneself, almost in an inward whisper, I want to get away . . .
Meanwhile, as part of the deal, my parents did not tell me what to do. They could only ask things of me but they couldn’t give orders. I got to do what I wanted—in a sense . . . In a sense, I was the head of the house now . . .
Time has done this. I am becoming tall . . . And people spoke of that . . . Momma said, You’re beginning to have a face . . . People talked about that, too.
Momma said, Nonie’s starting to like you a little; you’re sort of cute like that guy in the movies with the freckles—and as you know, a girl gets good feelings about people she gets to take advantage of . . . Ha-ha . . .
Momma had not lost her sharpness . . .
The Telephone Call
“Guess who . . . But don’t say who . . . Zip your lip, save a ship . . . Well, let’s have our monthly talk—but don’t give me a headache this time, okay?”
Black plastic phones . . . If the window of her office at the air base was open, I could hear the planes warming up, cooling down, landing and taking off . . . Sometimes I could hear military talk in the background . . . behind her moody, heroic-young-woman-in-wartime voice . . . Kindness in rebuke to chance is justly exalted—corrupted—by death, by danger, by the sight of death . . . I have an incurable pale fever: a peculiar ironic fever of patience with .anyone’s love for anything—their love of the actions in not liking me, for instance . . . A fever of impatience, too.
But, first, the kindness: “How are things out there—you still like it out there?”
“Yes.” Impatiently.
“Work is okay?”
“Oh, work is boring . . . so boring . . . I could die . . . I put things in cubbyholes . . . that’s all I do, all the time—I’m good at cubbyholes. I’m the strong, silent type—I’m one of the big wheels . . . the Colonel wants to run off with me—I’d be a good service wife . . . The more fool him . . . I’m just the girl who can say no . . . Well, how are you? How is every little thing? Old U. City, how is it?”
I hardly knew her . . . At a distance, my ignorance about her was a cold thing in my chest . . .
Her voice: “I don’t put things in cubbyholes . . . I’m just teasing you. We’re having a real cute sunset, Brother, Brother mine . . . Little Brother mine . . . You’re not in any trouble, are you? Well, keep it up . . . I’m not talkative today. This isn’t a good time for me . . .I’m havin’ a reel guhid tyimmm . . . How about you, Little Brother . . . If no one is too fancy, I all-us say, why not have a good time? You’ll be glad to know I hev lunned to spell here in sun-sun-sunny Carolina . . . I like fliers; you should be a flier . . . I think fly-boys are special . . . Wiley, they uhr smart and quick—they’re small—you know it’s better to be small? I don’t know if you can be a pilot now . . . I wish you were the pilot type—you want to be a fighter-plane pilot you better cut off your legs, right off at the knees—ha-ha . . . You’ll need new eyes: pilots got to have eyes like hawks . . . You’ll need to hew a new head, too . . . I like the men here—they need to talk—they talk to me; I know what’s going on—believe me, you have to love guys like these—I hate whiners: what I like are winners . . . I can do without the chisellers . . . And the weaselers . . . The Air Corps is no place for that type, believe you me . . . You have to do what you have to do if you’re a real person and that’s the end of it. Well, you’re not the worst man I know—if you buckle down, there might be some use for you yet . . . No complaining now, you hear—we got to hev a solid home front . . . Well, I called—you’ve heard from me . . . And I’ve heard you . . . Another county heard from . . . I’ve got to get back to work . . . The war is calling me . . .”
I asked her, “Are you engaged? Are some of the instructors aces? What battles did they see? Tell me before you go . . .”
“I give them their marching orders, Little Brother . . . I don’t ask them about the war . . . I know what they have to do and I expect them to do it . . . They don’t give me any back talk . . . Live and learn . . . Listen, I have to run. Good-bye . . .”
I say, though, now, she was a different person then, in those moments.
Her voice was different—blandly confident, then shaky, relieved, defensive . . . intimate in the way women’s voices were in the movies sometimes.
She said, “You want me to marry a hero?” She asked me.
“A good guy . . . that’s all . . .” I said carefully.
She said, “Well, I know one hero—Huddleston—he’s Canadian . . . I’m wearing his wings . . . You can take my word for it, Little Brother mine, HE’S A HERO . . .”
“God, Nonie, really . . .” Then: “Does he—does he have nightmares about the war?”
She said, “I tell THEM, Don’t press me too hard—I’d be no good to anyone if I had a broken heart . . . I like them all. I wear their wings—I wear my heart on my sleeve. I don’t really. I wear three sets of wings on my blouse . . . I let them all photograph me . . . Hi, Marina,” she said to someone at the other end. “Hi, Jocko . . . Oh, you’re such a devil, Jocko . . .” Then, to me, in a different tone: “I tell them they’re all devils . . . Jocko was wounded over Lae . . . He’s the funniest man I know: get away from me, you bastard! Stop that . . . Life is funny . . . You believe in luck?”
“I don’t know . . . I guess so . . . Why? Do you?”
“Well, sure . . . I have a job to do. I happen to care about my work . . . I have someone I love—and he’s a REAL hero, Wiley—he’s a REAL gentleman, Wiley, and not a sorry excuse for a man. I’m sad in my heart . . . Wiley: this awful war . . . But I put a good face on things . . . I have good morale . . .” Then: “Can you help me?”
“Does he—does Huddleston—have ‘a lovely, lovely family’?” I don’t quite know why I thought a little irony semi-smoothed out would calm her but it did . . .
She roused herself for the struggle: “Oh yes—they have a wonderful, wonderful house . . . I’ll have a very good life . . . He has real stick-to-it-iveness, he’s not a stick-IN-the mud, he’s not moody . . . The men here are closer to each other and to me than family ever is . . . than it can be . . .”
Mom said, She went mad for a while . . .
It felt strange to hear her. I wonder what it’s like to feel yourself going mad in a war? A whiz or whisper of dangerous meaning? A sudden suffocating elasticity of one’s charity so that you can bear no one’s pain at all? Is it a virus perhaps, a virus that expands your sense of things profoundly?
It felt as if she loved me—in a way . . .
Not in any way that was useful
to her . . . Or to me . . .
“You get to fly any of the planes?”
“Machines go crazy—it isn’t just fun-and-games: planes get metal fatigue . . . I named my typewriter. I don’t let anyone else use it: it’s a giant-killer; it’s full of beans—Jack—I have a new friend—Huddleston—he looks like Clark Gable . . . He’s blond . . . I think blonds are happy . . . Well, wait ‘til you see him. He has the most beautiful, beautiful hair . . . I can’t keep my hands off his hair . . . I finally found someone to love—and his name is Roy. Pierson. Huddleston . . . Don’t tell Mom. Or Dad. Are you listening? I bring you news from the news fronts of the world. Well, read it and weep: This dispatch is about a small group of guys who were wiped out to protect the retreat of their buddies. A lot of what I do is stupid here, Little brother mine—it’s all catch-as-catch-can. Luck—you couldn’t stand it. You wouldn’t be any good here . . . I can’t jaw-jaw on the long-distance phone to you all day—the walls have ears . . . I have someone with big ears listening to me right here right now . . . Roy, go ’way . . .”
It was always hard for her to talk to me . . . Always . . .
“I’m getting to be a little crazy, Brother mine . . . I’m going a little crazy, Brother-of-mine . . . I’m not having such a real good time . . . War, war, war, boots, boots, boots . . . You can imagine . . . Children are advised to go to bed early . . . This isn’t a good time for children . . . Well, tell it to the Marines . . . I’m a young woman, I’m not a machine. I don’t sleep like myself . . . The paperwork is coming out of my ears . . . Well, be a patriotic civilian and don’t leave our boys in the lurch . . . Onward, Christian soldiers . . . I do what I can—I think I’m coming down with flu—tell me in twenty-five words or less what’s the point of being holier-than-thou? Tell me: luck is funny, isn’t it? I’d be a good gambler . . . A lot of the guys crack up: the wiseguys and Sir Galahads, they don’t last. But I’m not like that . . . Some guys make me sick . . . They drive me mad, if you really want to know . . . You don’t know anything yet . . . You don’t know anything about anything . . . Well, what would you like for your birthday? . . . Wiley, is what it all is, the main thing in life, what it comes down to, Wiley, tell me your opinion, is it all, all it is, just plain dumb luck?”
“That’s a good question . . . A lot of people ask that.”
“Well then, tell me . . . what is it, what do you think?”
“I don’t think it’s ever just one dumb thing . . .”
“I always forget what stupid answers you give . . . Talking to you is a pain in my hind end . . . You’re a little idiot who thinks he knows it all. Well, don’t take any wooden nickels. Well, my time is up. I have to go; I’m going now. I have to clear this line . . . Keep your chin up and your worries down: may you live forever, keep a stiff upper lip, Little Brother mine . . .”
She wasn’t crazy often—maybe she was. I often hated her when she was crazy. I don’t want to imagine myself her. I don’t want to know if she felt guilty or not, and if she did, what she felt guilt for. I don’t want to know her. I don’t want to know what she was like. Hell, twenty years later, she burned to death. I don’t want to imagine her on the long slide inside herself toward the flames . . .
HOMOSEXUALITY
or Two Men on a Train
In Which I Partly Enter a Story from Which I Am Excluded
The train ride: reality sometimes has the feeling of oppression that some of one’s dreams have. First, across the great spread of flat Illinois plain, the abomination of vastness of American distances, the train went, crowded and lurching, the view altering daylong in the dirty windows.
In the queer clackety-clack addition of motionful moments, myself a fatherless orphan (and time-ridden and disbelieving), I travelled with my twenty-nine-year-old rich cousin.
The other travellers in their individual and momentary travelling states were young soldiers in kepis, with strong, appalled faces, tense, war-readied, khaki’d bodies in most of the seats which had horsehair upholstery. And prosperous, cautious-faced, somewhat shocked-with-travel civilians, sometimes freed-looking, as if drunken, as if having truly drunken-by-travelling selves, an excitement of this . . .
At the time of S.L.’s funeral, Benjie, he had said, “Daniel’s a serious person, but me? I’m pure Gone-with-the-Wind, honey.”
The atmosphere of kindness directed at me—well, it wasn’t unknown to me. I was skinny, perhaps a hundred and forty pounds and over six feet tall and rather unthreatening and young-looking, rather strong (from exercise). I was stubbornly ordinary in manner in what I took to be all the time with lapses—in short, some of the time—and, while I was perhaps odd-looking, people often stared at me, strangers spoke to me, touched me or tried to, and were more often anxious to be helpful than not, quite a bit more often than not.
Daniel’s kindness: the story so far: Aunt Casey and Cousin Isobel, her youngest child, came to St. Louis in the spring I was still twelve; they were considering colleges for Isobel, a tall, poor-skinned, good-looking, angularly postured and quick-talking and comically wild girl, drug-taking, jazz-loving in the style of advanced small-town girls in those years, and very bright and snobbish. Maybe psychologically fragile. A little loony.
I went to some effort to make myself presentable; and Isobel, eighteen, and I, thirteen, were “in love” for three days—necking, going to movies, some petting.
She ended the affair, having met a boy her age, dark, shadowy, very smart, overweight, a troubled, monied bully, also fragile but tremendous in a way, too. They stayed in touch for two years.
Casey was considering social colleges, not too bookish, but good enough in terms of education, and with a reputation of not being anti-Semitic and very cruel to the young women in them.
Casey had an amiably spectacular forward-jutting, very good-looking face and a long, thin body which was encased in tight clothes; and she was very popular in St. Louis with women. She met no men; and she and S.L. did not meet. Nonie at that time was living with Casey in Forestville and with Isobel, Abe, and the sons, Benjie and Daniel. Daniel had already been drafted.
Dad asked me, indirectly, to stay away from Casey; and Casey reacted at once and for all time.
Dad had said she was a liar and a bully and that she did not like men and that he’d thought her okay and that had misled him about Lila, whom he’d thought, also, to be unlike Casey . . . It is difficult to explain how I listened and, at the same time, did a lot of not-listening to the same words: I half attended, a tall, vague, hidden boy—with sudden periods of daydreamlike boldness although probably not much like the boldness then in style among boys in St. Louis County and not a boldness much like Dad’s.
I don’t know how to explain what I heard and didn’t hear. Mom said Dad didn’t want me to like Casey. Stories were hinted at, family stories, stories partly acted out in a scene or half-scene or two and were referred to, stories I knew a little bit about from other times, the family’s version, or S.L.’s version . . . Dad as a narrator was always oblique, allusive, and he fell short of mimicry—he relied on your knowing the story, on everyone’s having the same experiences, or on comprehensions being widely and genuinely available.
His stories, when he was ill, were often short of drama; it was bad for his heart for him to be excited. The bits of allusive story he recounted (and which he expected me to understand) were oddly told both as gesture and overall—what ages he and Casey were and what the issues and motives were; or where he sat in the room or what day of the week it was or what time of day—all that was artfully omitted; the texture of comprehension had to do with bits of parable of masculine fate, how men were mistreated, used up, damaged, driven mad. He kept sliding into descriptions taken from movies and the effect of movies on him: one was the part of Tom Sawyer in which Tom and Becky were lost in the cave, or locked in—I no longer remember—and another chief reference point was a pacifist movie about the First World War called All Quiet on the Western Front.
Both of those we
re useful in describing the cruelty of life to a man. Outside, then, of a wrong Casey had done him, I recognized very little in the stories and speeches and libels or truths he told me. But the oddly grammared way he spoke, underplayed and yet somehow exclamatory and using bits and tags—and accents from all over—and images and dialogue from those two movies and some others, and his discursive or terse dismissal and contempt: he was not bookish at all; and the ways he spoke were not much related to books or even to newspapers very much; but, always, so far as I could guess (feel-and/or-recognize), from living or at one time living men with actual voices who had stood in front of him and spoken in some way he had found of interest and had appropriated for his own later use—for his large vocabulary of common speech.
Lila, Nonie, and I rarely reviewed his stories with one another. We were, ipso facto, confronted with the obvious problem that the stories were sheathed in opinion and in mood, often in mood as opinion, and were changeable, accordingly; nor was it clear what the degree of fact was and where and how to grip those facts—he was a fabulist, a liar; and I tended to believe his lies didn’t matter—that he essentially spoke the truth.
When I say we, the immediate family, did not often try to discuss his stories, review them, come to a joint conclusion, I mostly mean I did not agree with Mom’s approach or with Nonie’s.
He judged us as listeners; he had .decided Lila was a terrible listener; and Nonie too; and he often walked out of the room unable to finish what he had begun to say.
He often found my reaction—whether it was a spoken one or a gestural one or a facial expression or one of the body, slumping shoulders and the like—inadequate, stupid, not to the point; but he didn’t always break off when he spoke to me.
I think he told me that Casey’s family life was rich and was unclean but okay and well bred but terrible and fancy-schmancy—not at all bad compared to rednecks and trash but not like him, Dad.
The Runaway Soul Page 54