Different Drummers

by Jean Houghton-Beatty

  “You catch on real fast. Why don’t you go ahead and make an appointment for your driver’s license.”

  “You mean I’m already that good?”

  “Sure you are. You’ve just driven twenty-five miles without one mistake. I told you there ain’t nothing to it.”

  “I wonder how Bob managed it,” she said.

  “He probably memorized the signs and everybody knows what red and green mean on the traffic lights. There’s a lot of people who can’t read or write and most of them are drivin’ cars.” Freddie was matter of fact. “I know a guy who drives a big delivery truck and you wouldn’t believe what all he can do. His boss writes down the names of the streets and he looks for them, matchin’ them up but not really reading them. The house numbers are on each package and the guy knows what goes where.”

  Kathleen switched off the ignition. “I suppose it wouldn’t be so hard once you got the hang of it, but what about a driving test. Don’t you have to be able to read to pass that?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Don’t guess Bobby ever bothered with a license though.”

  Freddie ran his hand along the dashboard. “This sure is a nice car. I wish I had something like this instead of my old rattletrap of a pickup.”

  * * *

  Kathleen passed her driving test the following month, and suddenly life didn’t seem so bad. She had a good job and a charming little house right next door to the Tates. And wasn’t she making friends everywhere? Even though she’d never considered herself a good Catholic, sometimes she longed to talk to a priest. One of these days, she promised herself, she’d find a Catholic church in Columbia and go to confession. In the meantime, she began attending services at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. After a few weeks she began to look forward to Sundays when she would join Bernie Beauchamp and Patsy Ashcraft on the fifth row from the front.

  As she drove home from church one Sunday in late September, the familiar “Deep Purple” came softly from the radio. She turned up the volume and hummed along with the singer, the poignant words bringing with them the memory of Ron Velnes. The remembrance was so strong, it was as if he sat beside her in the car. She turned to look into his smiling eyes, crinkled in the corners, looking at her in that special way. This had been one of their songs and as it ended, she wished the man on the radio would play it again.

  Her peaceful Sunday mood changed then from euphoric to one of quiet desperation. Why did Ron keep coming back like this? More and more he intruded in her dreams. He was supposed to be a forgotten thing, part of her past. Just when she seemed to be getting her life in some sort of order, something would remind her of him. She couldn’t afford these reminiscences. God knows, her life was complicated enough. Wanting to linger in the wonderful land of memory but knowing the danger there, she pulled her mind away from Ron and the old days. Pressing her foot on the accelerator she gunned the car, the feeling of speed freeing her mind.

  She became a regular visitor to the Tate house, encouraged in the beginning by William Tate, whom she knew invited her more for female companionship for his wife than any other reason. One Saturday she stopped by the house.

  “I’m going into Columbia, Belle. Can I get you anything while I’m there?”

  “No, except, I wish—”

  “What is it? I’ve got all afternoon.”

  Belle had that wistful look Kathleen had seen before.

  “Ah, that’s not what I meant. I just wish I were going with you.”

  This was the first time Belle had alluded to being housebound, and Kathleen prayed for diplomacy in her reply.

  “Do you want to give it a try? I’d be right there with you all the time.”

  “Oh Lord, Kathleen, I wish it were that simple. You don’t know the times I’ve looked out the back door and longed to cross the yard to your house. That house was built for my mother and the whole time she lived in it, I never went to see her. Not even once. When she became very feeble she spent her last days in this house with us.”

  She looked around the room as if it had suddenly become her prison. “And now you live in that little house, and still I’ve never been inside. If I can’t walk across my own yard, how in the name of all that’s holy can I get in your car and drive to Columbia with you?”

  “What would happen if you did?” Kathleen asked gingerly, anxious not to offend.

  “God only knows.” Belle gave a bitter laugh. “Years ago, William tried to take me to a psychiatrist in Columbia. I’m ashamed to say I had some kind of a fit in the car before we’d even left Eddisville, and he had to bring me right back. That was the night I slashed my wrist.”

  She pulled back her sleeve to reveal the scar which Kathleen had seen many times.

  “I don’t think I really wanted to kill myself. I didn’t even have the nerve to slash my other wrist. A cry for help I think is what it’s called. I’ve had a few of those.”

  Belle’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I honestly don’t know how William handles it. He’d like for us to travel the world but instead is married to an emotional cripple.”

  Kathleen was sorry she’d brought up the question of Belle Tate coming with her. “I don’t think Mr. Tate looks at it the same way you do. He loves you very much.”

  Belle’s gaze was unfocused, fixed on some desolate lonely place only she could see.

  “It started when we heard Cooper wasn’t coming home. I couldn’t bear the pity in the eyes of my friends. Some of them had boys overseas but they all came back. I began to avoid people, making excuses for not being at our bridge club. That was the way it started and it ended up with my being a prisoner in this house…” She turned to look at Kathleen. “Have you ever met anybody who had such a thing as this?”

  Kathleen’s voice choked slightly. “No, I haven’t. It must be awful for you and I’m so sorry. But there are all kinds of phobias, you know.”

  Belle nodded. “I know, but mine has to be one of the worst. I mean, if I was afraid to fly, I could ride the bus instead. Take elevators, for instance. Now, there’s a good fear. If I had that, I could just take the stairs. Everybody accepts these little fears as eccentricities, but because I haven’t been over my own doorstep in over eight years I’m sure all of Eddisville is convinced I’m crazy as a loon.”

  Kathleen put an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “I’m betting one of these days you will walk over that doorstep. You’ll open the door, and walk right out into that South Carolina sunshine.”

  Belle fiddled with the freshly picked roses in the crystal bowl on the dresser.

  “I’ve never told you how much I admire you, have I Kathleen? You’re so young and yet you were brave enough to leave everything you’d ever known behind you, get on a ship and come to a place you knew nothing about. Oh, I know you were in love, with your head in the clouds, but it must have still taken an awful lot of courage. How did you do that?”

  Kathleen picked up a fallen rose petal. “I don’t know. Nina, my sister, thought it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard of. She said there was no way she’d do it. Looking back on it now, I don’t know whether it was brave or just plain foolhardy.”

  Belle gave an understanding nod, or maybe something in Kathleen’s voice gave her away. “Yes, you’re bound to get homesick, especially with Bob in Korea. I for one though am glad you came. You’ve helped a lot just being my friend.”

  “No, you’ve helped me,” Kathleen said. “You and Mr. Tate. I couldn’t have made it without you. If you hadn’t rented us the house, and if Mr. Tate hadn’t hired me, I hate to think what would have happened to me.”

  She knew for sure, although she didn’t say it, as fragile as her marriage was, it wouldn’t have survived at all in Otis’s house.

  Sarah came in carrying a tray. “I’ve made coffee and got some fresh baked cookies. Can you have a cup with us before you go spending all your money?”

  Kathleen laughed. “I’m not spending a lot of money. I’m trying to save as much as I can for when Bob gets home.”
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  “How’s he doing?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know. I had that first telephone call from him right before he left for Korea. But, well, I haven’t heard from him since. You know how men are about writing. I try not to worry about him.”

  “Yes, well, where he is there probably isn’t much time for writing. I’m sure he’ll be all right.”

  Kathleen took a cookie. “I hope so, Sarah. I hope so.”

  “By the way,” Belle said, more and more like her old self. “William bought us a new TV yesterday, and we wondered if you’d take the old one off our hands.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Kathleen said. “You’ve been far too good to me as it is.”

  “Oh, it’s only a loan. After all, we are renting you a furnished house, so you can just consider it part of the furniture. But if you don’t want it, William can always give it to the Salvation Army.”

  Kathleen grinned. “Now how can I refuse it when you put it like that? Of course I’d love to have it.”

  * * *

  Kathleen received her first-ever written communication from Bob. It was a plain sheet of paper on which he’d drawn a fair likeness of a Studebaker and a stick-like figure at the wheel whom she assumed was her.

  Underneath he’d written. “I am OK. Hope you are the same. Love Bob.”

  That was all. She stared at the drawing and the childlike writing, at the same time longing desperately for a real letter from him. Was he all right? Did he miss her? Anything to know how he was feeling. Something inside her made her keep on trying and the next day she bought a camera. Freddie took a picture of her at the wheel of the car. She took a couple of him clowning around on the grass. They went to Bennington Street when she was sure Otis and Selma wouldn’t be there, and Freddie took pictures of her and Beulah hoeing in the garden. Kathleen had on Beulah’s old straw hat. After she’d used up the roll she sent them to Bob. She wrote a couple of lines with simple words, and finished with “I love you,” not even sure whether he could read that much and if he could was it true anymore? He seemed almost a stranger now and she hardly thought about him at all. Surely if you were deeply in love with your husband and he was away fighting in a war, you’d think about him more than she thought about Bob. Yet she felt she owed him her loyalty, and hoped the deep love would return when he did.

  * * *

  The stifling summer days at last gave way to the occasional autumn breeze and Kathleen realized with a thrill the hottest summer she’d ever known was over at last. The weeks slipped by, one by one. September made way for October. Kathleen pulled out her warm navy blue coat, in readiness for the chilly days ahead. She remembered the day she and her mother had shopped all day for it, looking for something stylish enough to impress her in-laws. On Wednesday nights she’d pick up Beulah in the car and bring her home to watch TV. They’d eat popcorn and watch the Arthur Godfrey show. When Kathleen asked Beulah about the pain, she said she hadn’t even had a twinge since the night they’d sat together on the porch.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By the second Tuesday in November, the first cold snap of the winter swept down from the north and into South Carolina. Kathleen buttoned her coat up to the neck as she walked to work. The chill wind made her think of home and if she didn’t lift her head and look around, she could have been on any street in England. When she stepped inside the offices of the Gazette she saw Bernie and Lennie deep in conversation at the coffee pot. They stopped talking when they saw her, almost as if they were discussing something they didn’t want her to know about.

  She smiled at them. “What’s up?”

  Bernie looked at Lennie and then back to Kathleen. “You mean you haven’t heard the news?” she asked. “About Otis?”

  Kathleen shook her head. “I haven’t seen him in ages.”

  “It was in The Palmetto Chronicle.”

  “I don’t get a morning paper. I’ve been planning to subscribe. Just haven’t got around to it.”

  “He made the headlines on the second page,” Lennie said. “Get yourself settled and then come into the conference room. Mr. Tate’s already in there.”

  Kathleen slipped out of her coat and hung it on the rack beside her desk, then ran a comb through her hair. She tingled all over. What could Otis possibly have done that would warrant headlines in a Columbia newspaper?

  She picked up her notebook and three newly sharpened pencils and headed for the conference room. She smiled a good morning to Mr. Tate as she pulled out her usual chair.

  Lennie handed her a newspaper. “Take a look at that.”

  Kathleen stared at the big bold type spread across the top of the second page.

  “Eddisville Preacher Mistakes Woman’s Death for Spiritual Happening.”

  Mr. Tate raised his head from his own copy and pushed his glasses up from the end of his nose. He looked at her, concern showing plainly on his face.

  “Even though you usually attend staff meetings, you don’t have to stay for this one if you don’t want to. After all, Otis Conroy is your father-in- law.”

  Kathleen wanted to say she wouldn’t miss it for the world. “No, please, I’d like to stay,” she said instead. “Otis and I haven’t seen each other in ages, and anyway, we’ve never seen eye to eye. Don’t feel like you have to hold anything back on my account.”

  Lennie leaned back in his chair, hands laced at the back of his head. “Looks like Otis whipped his congregation into a frenzy yesterday. He even had them dancing in the aisles.”

  “Yeah,” Bernie said. “This time I think he was really up his tree. I mean, what do we have here. An old lady comes forward to be born again but dies instead. And Otis, he stands over her screaming she’s on her way to glory land.”

  She read aloud from the paper. “The woman fell to the floor clutching her chest. When people near at hand showed concern, Preacher Conroy insisted she be left alone because she was, in his own words, ‘in the presence of a higher power.’”

  Mr. Tate coughed. “Yes, well…”

  But Bernie carried right on. “Five minutes elapsed before Conroy deemed it necessary to check her pulse. An ambulance was then called and the woman was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.”

  “OK, Bernie, OK, that’s enough,” interrupted Mr. Tate firmly. “We all know what it says.”

  “Kathleen doesn’t.” Bernie said defensively.

  “Well, she does now.” Mr. Tate bit into a donut and picked up his coffee cup. “Pete Gaskin from the Chronicle rang me before I left the house this morning,” he said. “The New York Times apparently plans to run a piece on it tomorrow and most probably The Washington Post will pick it up too. You know how most of these Yankees feel about the South. They think it’s some dark, strange place, where the Ku Klux Klan marches down Main Street twice a week. Even though most of them have never been south of the Mason-Dixon line, they think each town has its own moonshine still and is full of rednecks, religious maniacs and snake handlers.”

  He looked across at Kathleen. “They’re going to jump on this one with both barrels.”

  “Can’t you just see the headlines in our next issue?” Lennie said. “Overzealous Otis Goes Overboard.”

  Mr. Tate turned up the radiator, rubbing his hands in the chilly room. “That sounds OK for The New York Times, Lennie, but Eddisville’s a hell of a long way from New York. The people who buy this paper, along with those who pay for the advertisements in it, are our bread and butter. We can’t afford to offend, even though I have to say it’s mighty tempting.”

  Kathleen chewed the end of her pencil. “Is there anything they can do to Otis because of this?”

  Mr. Tate shook his head. “I doubt it. After all, technically speaking, the woman dropped dead of a heart attack. It was none of Otis’s doing except I guess he got her excited and worked up, but they can’t get him for that. They’ll probably just hammer away at his hell-fire and brimstone preaching. When you get right down to it, it’s just a human interest story. He could be made
to look a fool for being negligent with one of his parishioners, but I doubt even that will happen.”

  The following Friday, subscribers to The Eddisville Gazette were given only the facts. William Tate had decided he’d wait to do an editorial after he’d seen the mood of the letters that would surely come.

  Beulah didn’t mention the incident to Kathleen but when she said she hadn’t gone to church that day, Kathleen guessed she probably didn’t even know about it.

  * * *

  Kathleen put together a Christmas parcel for Bob. She knitted him a sweater and Beulah baked cookies. Sarah sent over some brownies she’d baked and Belle contributed fudge. Freddie heard little everyday things were hard for the GIs to find so he brought toothpaste, razor blades, and good soap.

  Freddie and Mary Mayhew walked miles in the woods with Kathleen until they found just the right Christmas tree for her little house. It was a cedar and not the sort Kathleen was used to. Freddie said everyone in the South used cedars and when it was decorated it would look pretty darn nice. And he was right. When they’d trimmed the tree with the decorations Kathleen had found stuffed in the corner of the bedroom closet, it looked as nice as anything she’d ever seen.

  Packages came from home and when she placed them under the tree, she hoped she could somehow make it through Christmas without falling apart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kathleen knew she was dreaming. She had to be. How could she possibly be on a train headed for London with all her family? It was such a wonderful dream, though, that she decided not to wake up yet. In dreams of this kind, you could wake up any time you felt like it. She’d done it before.

  They were all on their way to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Dad and Kevin looked smashing in their morning suits, complete with top hats. Dad had been commissioned by Buckingham Palace to bake a huge coronation cake. He sat opposite her in the railway compartment, with the cake on his lap and laughing hard as little Dorothy broke off huge pieces of icing and stuck them in her mouth. Mum and Tina looked beautiful in their tiaras, even though they still had pin curls in their hair. What a shame their nylons were full of holes. Would the queen notice? Kathleen told herself she’d have to send them some more pairs. But how could she do that? She didn’t seem to be anywhere near Eddisville. Still, that was a relief. She was back with her family and going to London to see the Queen.