I remembered the scratchy feel of Pop’s wool coat sleeve against my cheek. Every once in a while he’d give me something to play with during preaching—his watch on a chain, his pocketknife, or a pen and paper. But then I turned eleven and he started shrugging me off. It was like my birthday came and he walked away from me.
What would it be like to be ten again? With me leaning on Pop’s arm?
I could see the back of Ann Fay’s neck where her hair had separated. I don’t know why I wanted to send that rubber band whizzing for that white spot. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether it was a good idea. I just made my hand into a gun shape and wrapped the rubber band between my thumb and trigger finger. Then I aimed and let it fly.
Zing! I hit her smack dab on that spot of flesh. And boy did she yelp! Baby Bobby, who’d been snoozing on Myrtle’s shoulder, woke up screaming. Just like that, the reverend stopped praying.
I closed my eyes real fast.
But I could hear Myrtle shushing the baby. I imagined Leroy pulling Ann Fay close and looking at the spot on her neck. I sure hoped my face wasn’t as red as I thought it was. Someone giggled. Reverend Price went back to his prayer and finished up, and the choir sang a final song—“Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war …”
I tried to leave real quick. But when I got to the end of the pew, Peggy Sue was there waiting on me. “Junior Bledsoe, how could you do such a thing?”
“What?” I tried to sound innocent.
“You know what I’m talking about. I saw you shoot Ann Fay with that rubber band.”
“Good grief! What are you, a German spy? It was an accident, Peggy Sue. And anyway, you’re supposed to have your eyes shut when the preacher is praying.”
“Huh! Practice what you preach, Junior Bledsoe.”
People were going past us, but Leroy and Ann Fay were standing right in front of me. Leroy had his hand on her neck, and I could see his thumb making soft circles on that spot where the rubber band hit her. He reached his other hand to me, and there, wrapped around his fingers, was that rubber band. “Did you lose something, Junior?”
“Sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.” That sounded just stupid and I knew it, but still, I tried to explain. “I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t plan it. It just happened.”
Leroy nodded. “See that it doesn’t happen again.” His voice was cold as an icebox.
Momma spoke up then. “I’m sorry, Leroy. Junior won’t get by with this.” She jabbed my arm. “Tell Ann Fay you’re sorry.”
From the look in Ann Fay’s eye, I was sure she didn’t want to hear sorry coming out of my mouth. She’d rather be mad at me. That girl sure had some fight in her. But I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Ann Fay. I didn’t mean it. Honest, I didn’t.”
Ann Fay folded her arms across her chest and gave me a look that would take the pelt right off a squirrel. “I guess you think I believe that, Junior Bledsoe? Well, I don’t.”
“I will see that Junior gets his just desserts,” said Momma.
Sometimes Momma had a strange way of putting things. Dessert today was the sweet potato pie she’d made for Sunday dinner. But she wasn’t talking about that, because I couldn’t have any. In fact, she made me miss dinner altogether.
“You’re spending the afternoon in your bedroom, but first I expect you to go outside and gather up your blankets and pillow. No more sleeping on the porch for you.”
“Momma! That’s not fair. Me shooting that rubber band doesn’t have anything to do with Granddaddy. He’s mean as a rattlesnake and I can’t share a room with him.”
“You can and you will,” said Momma. “I won’t have you catching your death by sleeping outside.” She threw open the back door and stood there with one hand on her hip and the other pointing to the corner of the porch where I’d been sleeping.
“I’m not going.”
Momma didn’t argue. Instead she went outside and came back loaded down with bedding. She stopped not two feet away and looked me dead in the eye. “Your pillow is still out there. Get it. I’ve lost one man to stupidity, and I do not intend to lose another for acting the fool.” Her chin started wobbling, and for some reason my determination did too.
By the time I came inside with my pillow she was shoving bedroom furniture back to where it belonged because Granddaddy had taken over the whole room. Now he looked like he was fixing to raise Cain.
“Don’t you say a word, Hammer Bledsoe,” said Momma. “I’m of half a mind to move Junior in and you out. So if you want a roof over your head and food in your belly, I suggest you move that radio back to your side of the room and be quiet.”
Granddaddy shut his mouth. He didn’t say a word, not even to me, when Momma went to the cedar chest for clean sheets.
When my bed on the floor was made up and she was gone, I flopped down and pulled the pillow over my head. I was not in the mood for listening to the Melody Boys singing gospel hymns on the radio. I thought about Ann Fay. She must wonder what she’d done to deserve the way I’d treated her lately.
Nothing, I thought. I mean, nothing except being a girl and a chatterbox too. But ever since Pop died, just the sight of her and Leroy together made me want to smack something with my fist. I knew it wasn’t her fault Pop was gone. He had sort of been gone ever since my eleventh birthday.
Even with the pillow over my head I could still hear the radio. Now someone was talking about Japan being mad at the United States for cutting off oil supplies. Some politician was of the opinion that Japan was likely to start a war with us.
Granddaddy kept changing the stations. It was like he was carrying on his own private war, listening to one station praising peace negotiations with Japan and another one saying the Japanese would not stop until they owned all the islands of the Pacific Ocean, including the ones that America laid claim to.
“Look for an attack from the Japanese,” said Granddaddy. “Them Japs are sneaky. Our president had better hit them before they hit us.”
Sometime during the afternoon I fell asleep. I dreamed that Japanese soldiers were sneaking around in our yard. They had me and Momma trapped in the house and Pop locked up in the shed. I could hear him out there calling for us. Momma was trying to get out the front door and I was at the back, but the doorknob was stuck. And I kept yelling for Pop to come fix that doorknob so I could go out to him.
It didn’t make sense, but that’s how dreams are. When I woke up, Granddaddy was singing along with the radio. “There’ll be peace in the valley for me …”
Nothing made sense in real life either.
That afternoon, the Yankees won the fourth game in the World Series. DiMaggio got a hit. He’d broken his streak back in July, about a week after Pop died. But he was still golden in my book because, for a little while during each game, he got Granddaddy shouting about something besides America going to war.
11
RESPECT
October 1941
Miss Pauline was explaining dangling participles. If you asked me, she wasn’t doing a good job of it, because I wasn’t catching on. But all of a sudden, I heard my name. “Junior, can you give us an example?”
“Uh—no, Miss Pauline. I don’t think so.”
I heard Dudley snort and everyone else start to laugh, and that’s when I realized I had just called her Miss Pauline.
“I’m sorry. I meant to say ‘Miss Hinkle.’ I really did.”
Miss Hinkle squinted her eyes real narrow and pressed her lips together and stared. She waited until everyone in the class stopped snickering, and then she finally spoke. “Mr. Bledsoe, I want you to write three paragraphs on the importance of respect. You may do this while the others are eating lunch.”
“Yes, Miss Hinkle.” I heard Dudley making snickering noises again.
“Dudley, since you find this so amusing, you may join him.”
The rest of the class went to eat and we sat in the room, writing. Or trying to, anyway. I stared at my p
aper. Time was passing and my belly was growling and I’d only written three sentences. I tapped the page with my pencil, as if that would make some words come out of it.
Respect. If I was to write what I really thought about that word, I’d say it was something other people had and I wanted. I’d write that respectable people seemed to look down on the rest of us but maybe that was because they didn’t know what we were going through. And that if certain people knew how Momma had stood by Pop, maybe they’d respect her more. If there was anybody in the world who deserved some respect, it was Bessie Bledsoe.
But I didn’t write any of that. First of all, Miss Hinkle probably knew most of it already, and second, she wasn’t talking about that kind of respect. She wanted me to say something about how we weren’t just neighbors anymore. How she was my teacher and I should remember to treat her as such. I should say Yes, ma’am and No, ma’am and Please and Thank you and Excuse me, at all the right times. I should sit up straight and not write my name on my desk or make tapping sounds with my toe when other people were trying to think.
I snuck a peek at Dudley. He was staring into space and chewing on his pencil. “What you looking at?” he snarled. “Mind your own beeswax.”
After the first day of school I hadn’t said a word to Dudley about his daddy and the night my pop died. Mostly I avoided him because I had enough to think about without arguing with someone I’d rather not talk to. But now, since he seemed determined to pick a fight with me, I went along with it. “It’s about time you tell me what your old man was doing on the night my pop died. What’d you find out?”
“Like I said, mind your own business.”
“What happened to my pop is my business. And I better not find out your sorry old man had anything to do with it.”
Dudley let on like he hadn’t even heard me.
I had half a notion to go stand over top of him until he paid me some respect. I was fixing to do just that when the class came back from lunch.
Miss Hinkle took one look at my paper. “First of all,” she said, “it appears that you’ve been twiddling your thumbs instead of writing. And second, your handwriting leaves much to be desired. Were you using your left hand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Dudley. “He sure was.”
The truth was, I didn’t remember which hand I used. I’d been worrying too much about what to write.
Miss Hinkle ignored Dudley. “I want you to finish this, Junior. And then rewrite it. Your small t’s should not have loops in them.” She quoted from that confounded handwriting book. “Do not fail to see and correct all errors.”
“Yes, Miss Hinkle.” I sure didn’t know when she thought I’d have time to rewrite a whole page, plus do my other work.
When I got home, I hadn’t even changed into everyday clothes when Momma came up with jobs for me. “The sweet potatoes have to be dug before we get frost,” she said. “And we’ll need a whole lot more firewood before winter sets in.”
I knew that. But knowing it didn’t mean I had time for doing it. Between Momma and Miss Hinkle I was covered over with more work than one person could possibly do.
But I dug the sweet potatoes and carried them to the back porch. After I cleaned up, I finished the essay. I still had to copy it over in my best Palmer longhand. But my brain and my muscles were plumb worn out for one day. So I put it off until the next morning.
12
FRUSTRATION
October 1941
I crawled out of bed early and worked at the kitchen table. The more I thought about that pencil in my right hand, the more I wanted to switch it to my left. But with every word leaning in the wrong direction, Miss Hinkle would know.
Momma came into the kitchen in her nightgown and bed jacket and Pop’s thick wool socks—squinting against the light. “You’re up early.”
“Homework.”
She hugged her bed jacket close around her. “And you couldn’t load the woodstove first?”
“Wasn’t thinking. Just trying to do my homework.” I left my paper on the table and went to the porch for wood. Pop would’ve had the fire laid last night so all he had to do this morning was stir the ashes and blow on them to light the kindling.
Unless he was out drinking, of course.
Momma didn’t seem to notice that all his jobs had been left to me. I carried in wood and lit the fire and went back to copying that essay. I was just starting the last paragraph when she started fretting again. “Are you watching the clock?”
“I’ll be done in a minute, Momma.”
“You still have animals to tend to. Breakfast is ready.” Momma set a bowl of hot grits beside me and when she did they splashed onto my paper. I jumped up. “Look what you did!” I yelled. “Miss Hinkle will make me do it all over again. And when am I supposed to do that? Between all the firewood and tending animals and doing whatever else Pop left for me to do, it’s a wonder I have time to go to the outhouse.”
I didn’t look at Momma, but I could tell she’d gone still as a statue.
“I’ll go milk.” I grabbed the bucket and my coat and escaped out the back door.
It was warmer in the barn with the animals. I fed Grover first and leaned against his neck for comfort. “I’m sorry I haven’t been paying you any mind,” I said. “But my life is plumb crazy. I can hardly find time to feed my own face. Maybe I should skip school today. Then you and me—we could take a ride up the mountain.”
Of course I couldn’t skip school. That would just provoke Momma even more. After milking Eleanor, I carried the bucket inside. “I don’t have time to strain it.”
“I’ll do that for you,” said Momma. “I wrote a note to Miss Pauline, explaining about your paper and all you have on your shoulders right now. Eat your breakfast.”
Ten minutes later, I started out the door with her pushing my arms into my jacket sleeves. “I’m sorry, son,” she said. “I don’t mean to weigh you down. But there’s work to be done and your pop isn’t here to do it.”
There was a bitterness to the way she said your pop. I had this feeling she wasn’t claiming him just then. That somehow I deserved all the work he went off and left for me to pick up. Maybe it was true. Because, as far as I could remember, he never drank before my eleventh birthday. It must have been my fault he started drinking.
Momma handed me my lunch bag and then my books, and when she did, a tear splashed onto my hand. “Go on,” she said, “before you miss your bus.”
13
WAR MANEUVERS
November 1941
I was sound asleep when all of a sudden I heard a commotion under the house. Jesse and Butch were making the awfullest racket, which meant someone had to be coming in on our property.
“Tell them dogs to shut up!” yelled Granddaddy.
I sat up and saluted in his direction. “Yes, sir!” I reached for my overalls and pulled them on over my long handles. After stuffing my feet into my shoes, I headed for the living room and looked out the window. I couldn’t see much for all the cedar trees between our house and the road, but I saw movement out there, and I declare, from all the vehicle noises it sounded like the United States Army was moving in.
Jesse and Butch were by the cedars, fixing to bark their own ears off. I headed out there, hollering for them to hush, but they didn’t pay me any mind. They probably didn’t hear me for all the noise.
When I rounded the bend by the cedars I almost fell over. Going right past our yard was one army jeep after another. And not just jeeps but tanks and even motorcycles. It was like the war had come right there to our front yard.
The soldiers riding by were grinning. Some of them, anyway. Others looked serious as a storm. One saluted as he rattled past on an army tank. Another laughed and elbowed his buddy. They lifted their caps and ran their fingers through their hair, and I realized they were poking fun at me. I must have looked a sight with my hair going every which way and my eyes barely open.
I wondered if I was even awake. Maybe I was dreami
ng. Because what in the world were soldiers doing here, heading toward Bakers Mountain?
Right behind me I heard a voice. Granddaddy’s voice. And boy did he sound happy. “Yee haw! The United States Army has come to town.”
The old man had barely left the house since he moved in. And now, there he was standing by the road, straight as a light pole with his hand at his forehead, saluting. He had his right stub over his heart.
A soldier jumped off one of the tanks and ran up to Granddaddy. “Sir,” he said, “I should be saluting you. I believe you served in the Great War.” His eyes fastened on Granddaddy’s stub.
Something happened to Granddaddy’s face then. It went from being serious and proud to just kind of slack and sad. But only for a second, until he caught himself. Then he cussed and shook the soldier off. His arms dropped to his sides, and he turned and stalked back toward the house.
The soldier looked confused. “I offended him. I didn’t intend to. I wanted to thank him.”
“Never mind him,” I said. “He’s cantankerous that way. What’s happening? Am I dreaming?”
The soldier laughed. “Having a nightmare, more likely. We’re practicing for war. Didn’t you hear? Someone should have informed you the army was moving in.” He nodded toward Bakers Mountain. “Looks like you and me’ll be neighbors for a few days.” He offered his hand. “Private Frank Jenkins. Call me Frank.”
“Yes, sir. I’m Junior. Bledsoe. We’re mighty proud to have you, sir. Are you really practicing for war?”
He nodded. “I’m on the Blue Team. We represent one country. Our enemy, the Red Team, is heading up the other side of the mountain. We’ll be practicing our skills and testing our equipment, which is pitiful. Some of those boys are carrying wooden guns. I had a real one, but one of the Reds stole it in a maneuver in Davidson County.”
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