The Vain Conversation

  “The boy’s got to learn, some people aren’t worth—”

  “We don’t need trouble, Wayne.”

  Just then Mr. Venable scooted his chair, pushing it away from the table. He looked in their direction, right at them, it seemed to Lonnie, and beckoned his hand. Lonnie gasped, looked at his father, whose face went pale and tense. But then he realized the man was waving to someone on the street. In a moment, Sheriff Cook came in, and Mr. Venable shouted “hey” to him, and the sheriff, a short stout man, danced between the chairs, his leather gun belt squeaking every time he twisted his hips. In a moment, Mrs. Crookshank came out. She brought the sheriff a soda, patted Mr. Venable on the back, and laughed loudly about something the family didn’t hear. Then she scanned the restaurant, and saw the Hensons. She patted Mr. Venable again, and smoothing her apron, came to their table.

  “It is so good to see you again,” she said to Wayne with a little nod of her head. She tussled Lonnie’s hair, and extended her hand to Aileen. “I know I must have met you before, this being Bethany and all, but it has been a while, Mrs. Henson.” Aileen nodded. “Y’all ain’t got your drinks yet?” Mrs. Crookshank waved to the waitress, and told her to bring drinks. She cleared her throat and clapped her hands to get the attention of the diners. “Yoo-whoo, patrons! Patrons of Maribelle’s Diner! We have a very special person with us today. This is Private First Class Wayne Henson, not long home from fighting Nazis in Germany.” She turned to Wayne whose face had reddened. “Private Henson, we are so proud to have you back and we thank you, and we thank God for your service.”

  “Amen!” a voice said from the back of the restaurant. It came from a dark-skinned man and it resonated in a baritone. Lonnie thought the man must have been one of the colored preachers. The man said nothing else, but it seemed that his voice, interjected into the silence following Mrs. Crookshank’s speech, was an affront to the diners. They turned to look at him, some scowling, and then they turned back to look at Wayne, whose strained smile embarrassed Lonnie.

  “Here, here!” Mrs. Crookshank said, and then the diners offered up words of gratitude and praise and were soon back to their lunches.

  The waitress brought their sodas, and a moment later, their lunches. The plates were heaping with food, and the waitress made a point of saying it was on the house. “How nice,” Aileen said. She smiled broadly and looked across the table at her husband. Then suddenly she pulled Lonnie next to her and kissed his cheek. “This is so nice, everything.” Lonnie thought both of his parents would cry, but then his mother handed him a bottle of catsup.

  The food was good. Lonnie kicked his feet as he tasted it, everything in turn and then a sip of grape Nehi. His father, who had been taking big forkfuls of food, put down his fork and stood up.

  “Keep your seat. Keep your seat.” Venable was approaching the table. Lonnie stopped chewing and his stomach seemed to flip.

  “Mr. Venable, sir,” Wayne said.

  “I told you to keep your seat,” Venable said. Venable was just over six feet tall, only a little taller than Wayne, but his lean features with a beaked nose, high forehead and slicked-back curls made him seem much bigger than Wayne. “Welcome back, soldier.” Venable made a playful salute to Wayne, then nodded at Aileen and winked. “Whenever you are ready,” Venable put his hand on Wayne’s shoulder, “you come on by the feed store to talk to me about cropping.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Venable, I’ve been thinking—”

  “Come talk to me.” He nodded to Sheriff Cook and left.

  One Saturday morning, a few weeks after Aunty had left, Wayne, wearing his Ike woolen army field jacket, took Lonnie hunting. They went down the spring path, toward Christmas Hill, an old homestead reclaimed by woods. They passed several fields, occasionally let to sharecroppers by Venable or Jacks, the big landowners. Since the war these fields had fallen fallow, but rabbits still foraged in the grasses along the border with the woods and in the blackberry bramble on the northern foot of the hill. Wayne carried the shotgun, the one that had killed Toby. It was a 12-gauge Winchester 21, good for hunting squirrels, turkeys, grouse and quail, as well as rabbits. On the path they spoke quietly, the boy asking about the gun and hunting. The boy wanted to go deer hunting, but Wayne snorted, told him that deer hunting was for rich men who could afford blinds, who had the time to sit around all day drinking liquor. They had pigs anyway, and didn’t really need the venison. When they left the path, Wayne insisted on silence. They walked slowly, stopping frequently to listen and to scan the trees for squirrels and the underbrush for birds or rabbits.

  They startled a covey of grouse, rare for the area. Lonnie cringed, nearly shouted as the birds exploded into flight and alarmed gobbling. Wayne aimed but did not manage to fire a round. He raised a finger to his mouth and pointed to Lonnie to walk in the direction where the covey had flown. Slowly, they made their way. When Lonnie snapped a twig under his shoe, Wayne froze in his tracks and indicated for the boy to stop. After a minute, they heard birdsong from the treetops and continued slowly through the underbrush, stepping quietly, bent low to camouflage themselves. Lonnie began to feel as if he were in a story about hunting in which a boy and his father hunted for a magic bird. He pretended they were Creek or Cherokee, and he became more aware of the woods’ sweet leaf-rot, the curly blue lichen on the tree trunks, the red winterberries, half hidden in the litter. He wanted to smile, except that his father looked so intent, his jaw twitching. They tracked the birds for thirty minutes, hearing them in the distance occasionally, but eventually losing them.

  Coming to a jut of rock that overlooked a small creek, Wayne sat, broke open the gun for safety, and took turkey and cranberry jelly sandwiches from his pocket. “Hunters got to eat, even if we don’t catch anything.” He handed a sandwich to Lonnie, who found a seat on a corner of the rock and leaned his back into his father’s side. They hadn’t finished their sandwiches when they heard the boom of a shotgun and what sounded like applause, the flapping wings of the grouse. Lonnie felt Wayne’s body jump and tense, and he turned in alarm to see what was wrong with his father. The shot came again, closer, and again Wayne tensed, his face pale.

  “Pa?”

  “It’s all right,” Wayne said breathlessly. He was no longer sitting on the rock, but squatting above it as if ready to dive to the ground. “Just another hunter.” He laughed nervously and put his hand on Lonnie’s shoulder. Then he stood, snapped the Winchester shut, and wiped sweat from his forehead. His sandwich lay on the ground, broken open so its contents were dirtied. Again, Wayne laughed. He kicked at the sandwich. “Go ahead and finish up, lest we let that bastard get all of our birds.” Then another blast came, this time just on the other side of the ridge above their heads. Wayne pushed Lonnie to the ground, threw himself beside the boy, and aimed the gun in the direction of the blast. Again they heard the explosive flapping and guttural bird call.

  Without standing, Wayne called out. “Whoo-whoo. Hey now, we are down here. Hey now, whoo-whoo.” A man presented himself at the top of the ridge. Like Wayne, he wore an Ike jacket. He was the colored man from the restaurant. He broke down his shotgun, and came down the hill and stopped a few feet from them. Looking up at him, Lonnie thought the man looked very tall and in the shadows, very black. Nervously, he looked at Wayne, but was confused by the expression he saw on his father’s face, trembling and blushed. Lonnie looked at the colored man. He, too, seemed confused, his forehead furrowed. Then Wayne raised his hand slowly and saluted the stranger.

  The stranger shook his head. “No sir. You’re not supposed to—”

  “I will.” Wayne’s voice was hoarse.

  “I’m just a corporal—”

  “I will.”

  In the distance something frightened the covey and the sudden clapping of its wings cut through the woods. The men looked at one another, Wayne holding his salute. Then the colored man straightened his shoulders and saluted in return, holding the salute stiffly. Soon both men seemed on the verge of tears. Th
e boy took his father’s free hand, the shotgun see-sawing in the crook of his elbow, and tugged. Only then did the two men relax.

  “You were there, too?” Wayne asked.

  “Yes sir. Third Army.”

  “Yes. Third Army.” Wayne named his battalion.

  “761 Tank Battalion,” the stranger replied. His voice resonated a little.

  “Excuse me, sir.” Wayne nodded and held out his hand. He said his name.

  “I know who you are,” the man said, shaking hands. “I saw you at Maribelle’s a few weeks back. Bertrand Johnson.”

  Wayne said he knew the family. “Nice folks. I am sorry I didn’t know who you were in the restaurant. If I had’ve, I would’ve said something, cause it’s important that we stick together.” Bertrand kicked a little at the leaf litter. “I mean, we have been through something folks around here don’t know nothing about. You can’t talk to them about it. They don’t know what you talking about, lest they been there. You ever have the feeling you want to talk about it, but you can’t find no one to talk to. Can’t find the words to talk to them about it so they will know.”

  Bertrand answered slowly, his voice losing its resonance. “Yes sir, I know what you mean.”

  “Good.” Wayne nodded, looked off to his right. “I live over yonder, off of the state road, on the road that cuts down through some of Venable’s fields.”

  “I know where you live. I grew up right over the hill a bit.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Been seeing you around since you were about five or six, I reckon, though, I didn’t know your name until I read about you in the paper.”

  “Oh yeah?

  “Yeah.”

  They faced each other squarely, and Lonnie thought they might be getting ready to fight. “Well, then,” his father said. “How about you come by the house and we can talk about what we did over there.”

  Bertrand sighed deeply. “But, you know, folks around here don’t like mixing.”

  “Mixing? I don’t give a damn what folks like.” His father rubbed his hand across his brow. “And, hell, Corporal, I ain’t planning to mix with you. I just want to talk to you.” He wiped his mouth. “Don’t you think, Bertrand, that after all we have done, after all … that we two soldiers have done, we can mix if we want to? God damn it, things have got to change in Talmaedge. We just can’t go on the way we used to after the rest of the world has turned upside down.”

  Bertrand seemed to think, shifting his weight, then he smiled, broadly, and nodded. “Amen, Mr. Henson.”

  Wayne’s shoulders relaxed and he smiled. “Name’s Wayne, Bertrand.” He pointed to Lonnie and introduced him.

  “Did you kill anything?” Lonnie asked.

  “Lonnie!” His father startled him. Then he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “Oh, he means birds. Did you hit any birds?”

  Bertrand said he had two, and they walked to the ridge top to look at them. Bertrand gave one of them to Lonnie, and in parting the two men agreed that they would meet again on the next Saturday and hunt.

  But on the next Saturday, the family rose long before dawn, packed the Ford and started the eight-hour drive to Savannah. That week the mail man had brought a telegram from a cousin. Aunty had passed.

  After the funeral, they went to the water front on East River Street. Lonnie had never been in a big city, much less a port city, with its oily river full of the traffic of seal-skin gray naval ships—destroyers and cruisers. He stood by the riverbank and waved to the sailors. On one ship, two sailors, their white caps glowing in the sun, leaned on a railing. They waved back. Suddenly, Lonnie thought he wanted to be a sailor and to go upon the water to far away countries. Seeing the sailors cheered him up, especially after the somber funeral, little of which he remembered, except for Aunty’s placid face, her shrunken frame in the same black dress she had worn to the station and her hands folded across her stomach holding a silk lily.

  Constantly wakes lapped against the pilings, and from the distance came a knocking of a pile driver. Military men, both soldiers and sailors, roamed the streets. They smoked, laughed and more than once whistled at Aileen in spite of Wayne’s presence. From alleyways came heavy whiffs of dead fish, stale beer and dank cellars. Lonnie could have walked up and down the slippery cobbled street all afternoon, but his mother insisted they leave the waterfront and they shopped Bay Street without buying anything, until they came upon a store that sold furniture. Aileen spotted a baby’s crib, painted white with pink and blue scrolls along the headboard. She kissed Wayne in public when he bought it for her.

  FOUR

  “I missed you last Saturday.” Bertrand stood on the back porch stair of the Henson house. The morning was warm and foggy and a light rain fell through the mist. Wayne opened the door and invited Bertrand from the stoop into the screened-in porch. Lonnie stood behind him.

  “Well, I don’t reckon I will,” Bertrand said. “I only dropped by because you said we might go hunting, and I missed you last Saturday.”

  “Step on in, Corporal.”

  “No sir, “I see that I’m disturbing you now. I shouldn’t have come by so early. But I missed—”

  “We’ve been up for hours,” Wayne said. “I have just this minute come in from feeding my pigs and pulled my shoes off. I didn’t think you would be out hunting with the weather.”

  “I just thought it would clear—”

  “Now come on in, soldier.”

  Bertrand nodded, smiled, and stepped onto the porch. Wayne stepped back, giving Bertrand room, inviting him into the kitchen. Again Bertrand hesitated and asked if he should take off his boots.

  “We don’t stand on ceremony,” Wayne said. “You make yourself comfortable.”

  Quickly Bertrand leaned his gun on the wall, took off the boots, and spoke to Lonnie, calling him “young squire.”

  “What’s that?” the boy asked.

  “You haven’t heard of the Knights of the Round Table, King Arthur, and all that?”

  “I have, but what is a squire?”

  “A young knight. A young hero.” Bertrand winked at Lonnie.

  “I ain’t no hero.”

  Bertrand reached out as to pat the boy’s head, but drew his hand back. “Well, not yet you aren’t, but I suspect one day you will be.”

  “Aileen,” Wayne called, as he led Bertrand through the house to the parlor. “Aileen, we got company.” Wayne waved Bertrand to the sofa and sat in the chair across from him. He crossed his legs at the ankle, wiggling his socked toes. “Go tell your momma we have company,” he told Lonnie.

  Lonnie left the two men, each staring at the other and smiling. Neither said anything. The child rushed through the house and found his mother in the bedroom in the back of the house where they had set up the crib.

  “What company?”

  “Bertrand.”

  Aileen looked puzzled a moment and then an expression of recognition came to her. “He’s in the house? Where is he?”

  “He’s in the good room.”

  “Your daddy let him in the good room?”

  Lonnie ran back to the door of the parlor, not wanting to miss what the men were talking about. He found them still staring, smiling, making small talk, seemingly comfortable in each other’s presence. Aileen followed and stood behind Lonnie. Wayne introduced her to Bertrand. Bertrand stood. Aileen nodded.

  “He’s the one who gave us the bird we ate the other Sunday.”

  “I thank you,” Aileen said, neutrally. “It was right nice of you.” She turned to go, but Wayne stopped her, asking her to bring coffee.

  “No sir,” said Bertrand. “I didn’t intend to come in. I think I’ll be heading on, anyway. I doubt the weather will clear.”

  “I don’t think it will,” said Aileen. She started away again, but stopped to call Lonnie to come with her. In the kitchen she measured the coffee into the pot, dipped in water from the water bucket, stoked the stove and set the pot on to boil. Her movements were stiff and she ta
lked in a hush. “I don’t see what’s so important that he got to bring him in the house, into the good room.”

  “They are soldiers. They saluted and everything.”

  “That don’t make it right. I met colored people, too, over at the factory and I’d bring them home too, if there was cause. But to sit him up in the front room and to tell me to make coffee. He must think he’s Ole King Cole or someone.” When the pot began percolating, she sent Lonnie to find out what Bertrand took in his coffee.

  The men were no longer smiling. Wayne sat with both feet on the floor. Bertrand leaned forward. They generated such intensity that Lonnie did not want to interrupt, lest he break the charm that had settled in the room. His father was talking about hedgerows and cold, and from what he could make out, the story seemed to include a fairytale landscape of dark walls of vegetation that rose up around the road so that the soldiers seemed boxed into a rat’s maze. He understood something of his father’s feeling, for he had gone deep into corn fields with the tassels waving above his head and stalks surrounding him for as far as he could see. If he tried running the lancet leaves would whip him, but to stand still was to suffocate in the sweet, milky perfume of the corn and gnat swarms. But his father spoke of cold, of ice and mud, and of men with numb fingers and blackened toes.

  “I didn’t know what you took so I put some sugar and milk in it.” Aileen handed a cup of coffee to Bertrand, who rose quickly and accepted it with both hands. She handed the other cup to Wayne who took it and set it down on the coffee table. Wayne started his story again, but Aileen interrupted to ask if he needed anything else from her. Then she tugged Lonnie on the ear, indicating that he should follow her.

  They sat for most of an hour in the back bedroom, while Aileen sewed ruffles on a skirt for the crib and Lonnie thumbed through a Superman comic book, one he had read several times. He wondered what the men talked about, but it was useless to strain since he couldn’t hear them. Finally, he heard Bertrand leaving and he started to the door, but his mother sharply told him to sit. Presently, Wayne came and stood silently at the entrance to the back bedroom. Aileen did not look up from sewing. “Did you have a nice little visit?”