by J. D. Horn
“I done told you, baby. The Judge, he can’t get along without your mama. But it ain’t gonna be for long. You two will be home before you know it, and complaining that you got to stay here with your tired old mama, rather than visit your fancy new friends up north.”
Joy stretched up, looking over their mama’s shoulder directly into his eyes. He knew his mama was fibbing, so he turned his head to watch out the window.
“What’s the town called again?” Mrs. Green asked, sounding like she’d be excited to be going in Willy’s place.
“Highwood,” his mama said, “and Hettie works for a real nice family real close to there in a place called Lake Forest. Don’t that sound nice?” his mama asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. “Auntie Hettie said they’s a lake there bigger than you’ve ever seen, right behind the house where she works.”
“Why, that sounds real nice,” Mrs. Green said. She patted his knee again, causing him to look at her. “Real nice.”
“I’ve been up to that area,” the pastor called back to Willy. “You like snow, don’t you? I remember your mama telling us how excited you were the first time you saw it.” He paused. “Up there, you’re gonna see snow piled up almost as high as you,” he said and laughed.
“What are they gonna do for coats?” his mama asked, sitting up straighter, and clasping Joy even tighter. It worried him that he could hear the worry in her voice. “It’s gonna get real cold up there soon, and Willy done outgrew the coat he wore last winter. I didn’t even think . . .”
“The good Lord is gonna provide,” Pastor Williams interrupted her. “You just have faith. We’ll pass the plate this Sunday, see to it your sister can buy good, sturdy ones for them.” The pastor’s promise seemed to make Willy’s mama relax. She slid back down, and commenced to rocking his sister like she was a real baby, not the six-year-old she was. She might not be a baby, but she was still too little to realize they were gonna be gone a lot longer than their mama was letting on. Willy wished he couldn’t tell his mama was lying to them either.
As they drove past, Willy’s eyes were drawn to a couple of people walking along the side of the road. He turned to look at them, as they in turn followed the passing car with their gaze. A skinny white boy in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, followed a few feet behind by an old woman, limp gray hair hanging pretty much down to her waist.
“She the one sending those letters?” Mrs. Williams asked, and Willy turned back to see the preacher’s wife staring over her shoulder at the two they’d just passed.
The pastor nodded without ever taking his eyes off the road. “That’s what we reckon. The scripture quoted was spelled correctly. Everything else was spelled phonetically, like the words were being guessed at.”
“What letters are these?” Mrs. Marshall asked, piping up for the first time.
“Nothing at all, sister,” Pastor Williams said. “Just the ramblings of an uneducated zealot more interested in watching the end of the world than making it a place Jesus would be proud of. Every church within twenty miles of Conroy, white and black, got one. Some written by hand, some carbon copies. But they’re just a bunch of nonsense, really.”
“What did these letters say?” Mrs. Marshall pressed the reverend.
Mrs. Williams looked back and shook her head. “Our Lucille doesn’t want to hear any of this now. And it isn’t really appropriate for the children to hear.”
“I want to know,” Willy said, curious only because the details had been labeled unsuitable for him to receive.
“Mrs. Williams said no,” his mama said, this time turning back so she could trace a finger along his cheek. Something about that gesture frightened Willy. It didn’t feel like a “watch your mouth,” it felt like a good-bye.
“Suffice it to say,” the pastor said, “she spoke of end times and quoted Exodus 12:22. You can look that up for yourself, sister, when you get home tonight.”
“I can look it up right now,” Mrs. Marshall said, tugging a well-worn black leather-bound Bible from her large purse. Willy watched as she flipped open to the passage, and read silently to herself. “Hmmm . . .” she said, closing the book and returning it to the bag.
As they drew nearer to town, a wall of fog enveloped them, making it impossible for Willy to pick out most of the familiar landmarks. They rode on, no one speaking, till the car passed a nearly concealed sign that Willy knew to read “Welcome to Conroy,” even though he couldn’t make out the letters today.
It was his mother who broke the silence that had fallen over them. “You’d better let us out a good distance from the station, Pastor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lucille,” he said, “I’m taking you and the children to the station. Gonna make sure they get off all right.”
Willy could see Mrs. Williams’s shoulders tense.
“I can’t let you do that, Pastor. If the Judge finds out you knew about my kids leaving . . .” She stopped short, and her face turned ashen. “We should’ve gone to the station in Tupelo, or maybe Muscle Shoals. What if the man at the station recognizes the children? What if he won’t sell us tickets?” she said, her voice coming out in a higher pitch, her words coming more quickly.
“Pull over here,” Mrs. Green commanded with an authority Willy had never heard before in her voice. From his perch on Mrs. Jones’s lap, Willy could see Mrs. Williams reach over and gently place a hand on her husband’s forearm. He turned his head, giving her a quick glance, and eased the car to the side of the road. He shifted the gear to park and killed the engine.
The pastor climbed out, then circled around the back of the car, opening the front door—Willy’s mama’s door—first, and then Willy’s. Willy slid off Mrs. Jones’s lap, and stood watching as his mama tried to pass Joy to the pastor so that she could more easily get out of the car. Joy refused to be handed over, tightening her arms around their mama’s neck.
The pastor stepped back, out of the way, and Willy’s mama shifted her feet to the ground. “It’s okay, baby,” she said to Joy. “Mama’s got you.” She placed her hand on top of the girl’s head to keep it from getting bumped as they exited the car, and stood, turning and facing Willy with a smile. She shifted Joy into one arm, and motioned Willy forward with the other. He took a couple of uncertain steps toward her, knowing that if he didn’t slow all this down, soon he’d be missing her. When he reached her side, she wrapped her free arm around his shoulders and pulled him into her. “You getting so big,” she said as if she’d hadn’t noticed his growth before. “You gonna be taller than me when . . .” She fell silent.
“Help me out, Mary,” he heard Mrs. Green say, and craned his neck to see Mrs. Jones offering a hand to the older lady. Mrs. Green slid out of the car, and ambled toward them, moving slowly. “My hip is acting up again,” she said rubbing her side. When she got to them, she grasped Willy by the shoulders and pulled him back from his mama. “You all go on now, Pastor,” she called out to their companions. “I’m gonna take care of this. Make sure these children get to go on this special trip.” Willy turned to see her beaming down on him.
Mrs. Jones slid back into the car without another word, closing the door behind her, but Pastor Williams hesitated. “Are you sure about this, sister?”
“Course I’m sure,” she said, releasing Willy and waving her hands to shoo the pastor away. “That white man who sells the tickets, he knows you, ’cause folk around here are worried about what you up to in ‘that church.’ He knows Lucille ’cause the Judge told him he’d better recognize her. But an old woman like me and a couple of Negro children? Even if he bothers to take a look at us, he’s ain’t gonna look at us twice.”
Pastor Williams nodded, then went and opened the trunk, pulling out the case their mama had packed for them and a tin he’d seen Mrs. Williams fill with cold chicken and biscuits drizzled with molasses. He handed Willy the tin, and set the case by their mama’s feet. He squatted down so he looked Willy straight in the eye. “You need to be a man for your mama, and keep an eye on
that little sister of yours. Don’t you let her out of your sight, not for one second. You see to it you two get up to your auntie’s place safe. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Willy said, feeling a weight fall on his shoulders.
The pastor rose and then leaned in to place a kiss on Joy’s cheek. “You do what your brother tells you.”
“No,” Joy said, and buried her face back in their mama’s shoulder.
The pastor placed a hand on Joy’s back. “You do what your brother tells you,” he repeated, though this time it was clear that his words were a command, not a request. He cast Willy one last look, then went back to the car, firing it up and pulling away. Within moments, its taillights faded into the fog.
“Now, children,” Mrs. Green said, “I need you two to take a moment and give your mama all the loving you can.” Her words caused Willy to feel nervous butterflies in his stomach. “You two gotta say your good-byes here before we get to the station, ’cause we’re gonna play pretend once we get there.”
“Play pretend what?” Joy pulled her face back from their mama’s bosom, and faced Mrs. Green with an upturned chin and wary eyes.
“Well,” Mrs. Green said, her voice taking on a musical quality. “We are gonna play pretend that your mama, she ain’t your mama, and that you two are my grandbabies, been down here visiting for a spell, but now heading home. Your mama, she ain’t gonna come all the way in with us. She gonna wait across the street and watch us play.”
“I don’t want to play that,” Joy said.
“Ah, sure you do,” Mrs. Green said, “it’ll be fun.” Mrs. Green nodded at their mama, signaling with a small gesture of her hand that Joy needed to be put down.
Willy could see his mama was fighting back tears as she lowered Joy to her feet. “You a big girl now,” she said. “Too big for your mama to carry.” Still, Joy resisted the separation, wrapping her arms tight around their mama’s skirt.
“Go on,” Mrs. Green said, nodding toward his mama. “You go give her a hug, too.”
Willy didn’t have to be told twice. It suddenly dawned on him that this was happening no matter how much he or Joy protested. Their mama pried Joy loose, then knelt down so that she could hold them both at once.
Too soon, Mrs. Green came and took Joy by the hand. Joy tried to tug herself away, but Mrs. Green held firm, and soon Joy surrendered. Mrs. Green held out her free hand to Willy. “Hand me that tin. I’ll carry it, and you and your mama take turns with the case.”
THREE
The world outside the window disappeared in a blink as the train drew near Conroy. One moment it was there, the next, Corinne saw nothing but a swathe of dirty white. Fog, denser than any she had ever witnessed, had descended on the train, swallowing it whole. Unlike the cascading mists that crept over San Francisco’s Twin Peaks, this fog seemed like a rigid and unyielding curtain.
“It’s the paper mill that causes it,” said an elderly man across the aisle. Corinne spotted a leather satchel on the seat next to him. His case was distinctive, and it marked him as either a doctor or a veterinarian. There was something prim about the gentleman—the crispness of his collar, the careful way his manicured hands held his hat on his lap, the precision of his tie’s four-in-hand knot. No, this man did not spend his days plodding around pastures. Then again, maybe Corinne had just grown accustomed to a rougher crowd, people for whom fineries were unaffordable luxuries.
“I’m sorry?”
“The fog. It’s steam from the paper mill.” He nodded toward the window. “Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is McAvoy, Wilson McAvoy.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Dr. McAvoy.”
He narrowed his eyes in puzzlement, but then he caught sight of his own case, and a smile tilted his lips up. “Ah, you are a very observant young lady . . .” His pause implied a question.
“Corinne. Corinne Ford.”
“Well, Miss Ford, be glad the train won’t stop in Conroy long, because the smell the plant gives off is rather pungent. I, on the other hand, do not share your luck. I run the infirmary at the mill and do most of the doctoring around the county.”
“I’m a nurse myself,” she volunteered.
“Is that so?” he asked, and turned a little so that he could see her better. “If I may ask, what is your destination?”
“I’m actually getting off in Conroy also,” Corinne said. In Korea, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accept Private First Class Elijah Dunne’s proposal of marriage and agree to follow him wherever he called home. War gave every situation a heightened sense of urgency. While in a war zone, there was not an abundance of time to consider options; one simply looked for the most expedient solution to the problem at hand. The promise of a new beginning with the handsome, if somewhat callow, soldier she had nursed back to health in Korea had been Corinne’s solution. With it would come a new name and a new home, thousands of miles from San Francisco, a place to which she could never return.
Corinne’s nursing skills, combined with an urgent need to flee, had led her into the Army Nursing Corps. And the Nursing Corps had led her to Incheon, on the west coast of Korea, not much below the now all-important 38th parallel.
For a moment, Corinne was not on this train to Conroy, Mississippi. Instead, she was walking through a boxcar in a refugee train, dousing the displaced with DDT to control the pests they carried on them. On the first of those trains, when she still believed the conflict would be short and the riders soon returned to their homes, she tried to offer comfort, to hearten her charges, though few of her words were understood. On the last train, just a month before she herself left Korea, she avoided the eyes of those she sprayed and bandaged. And she no longer flinched as she covered the corpses that would be removed from the train, freeing up a bit more space for those who might still live.
If she wanted to sleep at night, Corinne needed to believe in the righteousness of her experiences overseas. If the American troops had been more successful over there, the sound of the brass bands would have drowned out any questions of whether the military involvement had been right or wrong. Only in defeat did the country fall quiet enough for the small questioning voices to be heard. But what was done was done, and what had been lost was lost. She squelched the plaintive voice inside herself, pushing it into a little box and locking it up tight.
“I’ve faced worse,” Corinne said, more as an encouragement to herself than as a response to her fellow traveler. Two years of the smells of blood and feces in tent hospitals and trains. “Much worse,” she said and offered him a grin.
“You from up north?” her companion asked, causing Corinne to wonder why he’d made that assumption. “Your accent,” McAvoy explained.
“Oh, no. Out west. California,” Corinne said, suddenly tiring of the old doctor’s attention. Intentional or not, he was forcing her to relive too many memories. The scents and sounds of war gave way to the feeling of a gun recoiling in her hand. Her mother’s screams and the sight of her stepfather clasping his hand over a wound and tumbling forward. If only she’d had the nerve to kill him outright, she might have been able to go home after a while.
“The fog burns off around noon,” the old man offered by way of apology. “At least it usually does. And you’ll get used to the smell quickly. I barely notice it any longer, except after I’ve been away awhile. Pardon me if I am being intrusive, but I feel compelled to ask: What could possibly bring a young lady such as yourself to Conroy?”
The trained slowed and blew its whistle to announce its impending arrival. “A proposal of marriage,” Corinne responded.
“Then I suppose congratulations are in order,” he said, his words partially muffled by the sound of the train’s brakes.
“Thank you.” Corinne acknowledged the expression of good will with a smile and a slight nod. A nagging voice told her that she should be glowing, a blushing bride-to-be, but this was as close to effusive as she was likely to get at the moment.
“May I
inquire as to the name of the lucky young man?” McAvoy said and stood. “Conroy is a small town; if he’s from around here, chances are good I know him.” He chuckled. “Truth is, chances are good that I delivered him.” The doctor offered Corinne his arm to help her rise. She took it, allowing him a sense of gallantry, even though she trusted her own strength to stand.
“Elijah Dunne,” Corinne said, leading the doctor to the exit. His silence caused her to look back at him. McAvoy’s complexion had gone gray.
“Mr. Dunne,” he said, with a smile that looked about as genuine as the one Corinne had pasted on her own face. “Didn’t have the pleasure of bringing him into the world, but I did nurse him through a bout of measles. He’s a fine young man. A hero. A credit to his country.” The doctor rattled off these rapid-fire platitudes as he hastened Corinne off the train.
He stopped in his tracks once he’d guided her onto the platform and, after a little more consideration, added, “He’ll always have that limp, but they did a fine job of saving his leg.” Corinne had played no small part in that concerted effort. “I hope his buddies keep his injury in mind on your wedding night.” He smiled at Corinne’s perplexed expression. “We got us a little tradition in these parts called shivaree. Folk gather outside the new couple’s house and make all kinds of racket. Try to force their way in. If they manage to get to the groom, they’ll spirit him away before . . . well, before he gets the chance to enjoy his newfound conjugal rights.”
Corinne shook her head in disbelief.
“No, I’m not kidding,” the doctor continued. “The poor fellow gets dumped miles from home, and sometimes spends his whole wedding night just trying to get back to his bride. It’s gone by the wayside for the most part, but the rowdier boys ’round here still keep it alive, and your Elijah’s friends have oft been counted amongst the unrulier.”