She did not acknowledge Henry’s presence as he walked up her front steps, so he said, “Ma’am?” then was sorry he had spoken as she jumped at least two inches at the sound of his voice. She looked younger up close than she had from across the street, and he decided she had to be the mother of the girl he had seen at a distance, instead of her grandmother, as he had originally thought.
“Oh, Lord, you gave me a fright!” she said, smiling now though she had one hand clutched tight to her bosom.
“I’m sorry. I just wondered if you might have some work for me. I could clear a garden spot for you, plant it if you like, move stuff around, whatever you need—my name’s Henry Sanders; I live over there,” he said, motioning with one hand back to their house across the street where it sat on its stacked stone pillars.
“Mrs. Morgan,” she said in introduction, smiling again as she nodded her head, and Henry decided he liked her, even if she was jumpy.
“Anything that needs doing, I can help you with,” he said, not wanting to let her get off the subject.
“I’ll have to ask my husband, but I’m sure there’s something you can do—come to think of it, I know there is,” she said, and turned and opened the screen door. “There’s something I need help moving. Lewis says he’s too tired when he gets in. Jimmy—that’s Lewis’s son, my step-son—said he would come move it, but he hasn’t yet.”
She led him inside and through the front and middle rooms of the house and to the kitchen as she talked.
“My daughter and I tried, but it’s too heavy for us to move it by ourselves—oh, this is my daughter, Olivia. Olivia, this is—oh, I’ve forgotten your name—”she said, turning, the hand clutched to her bosom again as she stared at Henry.
“Henry Sanders,” Henry said, looking past her and to the girl sitting at the eating table with a book open on the wooden surface before her. The girl was about his age, with brown hair that she pushed behind her ears as she stared up at him.
“Henry’s going to help us move the big chifforobe in the front room,” Mrs. Morgan said, but Henry hardly paid attention to her. He smiled, and the girl smiled in return.
He helped to move the chifforobe, then stood on a chair to hang curtains over the tall windows in the kitchen. Olivia helped with the curtains, which he found made it very difficult to think about it what he was supposed to be doing.
When the work was finished, it never once occurred to him to ask to be paid.
As 1940 drew toward a close, it seemed clear that the world was changing. Business was picking up, and there were more people at work than there had been in many years, throughout all the Depression, but the growing prosperity had come at a harsh price. News of the war in Europe sat heavily within everyone. October had seen the first peacetime draft ever, and most people were saying now that it was only a matter of time before the United States would become involved in the war.
There were more hours available at the mill for Janson and Stan both, bringing extra money home to the family, and Elise supplemented their income even more with additional sewing she was taking in. Times were getting better in Eason County. There were jobs to be had, and more opened up as the months passed. Social Security monthly payments had begun during the year, bringing needed money to many older people who had before been dependent on their children, or on the kindness and charity of relatives or friends just for survival. Elise heard the critics of Social Security, but she also heard so many others who understood—the payments had brought back some measure of dignity to so many people, dignity that old age and hard times had taken from them.
President Roosevelt was entering an unprecedented third term, after a battle at the polls with Republican Wendell Wilkie, and the country was settling in for another four years under FDR—if only they could stay out of the war.
Empty houses in the village filled again as the months of 1941 passed and the mill took on a third shift for the first time since the early years of the Depression. Mill hands had been worked hard in the past months, Walter Eason trying to avoid taking on new workers even though an increase in business had seemed to demand it. Like so many others, he knew how easily prosperity could turn to disaster, but at last the workers were taken on, and life in the village seemed again much as it had been in the years before the Crash in 1929—but Elise knew there were some things that would never be the same. Electricity now lighted their rooms, where kerosene lamps had had been the only light they had known years before. Electricity had allowed them the radio with its music and programs, its news reports, and the seemingly constant news of the war in Europe and the activity of Japan.
War filled the news broadcasts, glared at her from the headlines of newspapers, and filled the newsreels that were shown before the few picture shows Elise saw. War seemed to be all that anyone could talk about, and Elise could do nothing but pray—please don’t let it come. Please—things are so much better now. Please—
The years of sharecropping were left far behind them, the years of worrying whether they would be able to feed the children through the winter, the years of threadbare clothes and freezing feet in the cold months were all gone. They had money hidden in that cigar box in the kitchen. They had food. They had decent clothes and shoes on their feet. There would be a good Christmas this year, and they had money to face hardship if it came again—and there was Janson’s dream of regaining his land.
On the first Sunday afternoon in December, Elise entered the kitchen to find Janson at the table, the cigar box open before him. Judith was at a friend’s house for the afternoon, and Catherine at church to practice for the Christmas play. Henry was across the street with Olivia, where he seemed to be now most of the time, so she and Janson were alone, which Elise realized they were so very rarely.
Janson smiled up at her, looking almost embarrassed at having been caught in his frequent counting of their savings.
“Do you think it grows when you’re not looking?” she asked, sitting down beside him on the bench.
He ignored her words, and said instead, “In a couple more years, we might have enough t’ see about buyin’ th’ land, even if we have t’ take out a mortgage.” He looked happier than she had seen him in years, and she knew he had to feel hopeful about the future to even consider taking out a mortgage for the farm he had lost so many years before. He hated credit. It was what had taken the land from him in the first place.
“Do you think the man who owns it now will sell?”
“He will—I swear we ain’t gonna get this close an’ him not sell t’ us. He don’t farm it all, an’ there’s a tenant in th’ house—I think he’ll sell it. He has t’.” He smiled and closed the cigar box, then ran his fingers over the top of it. “In a few years we could be on th’ land, Elise, ready t’ get a crop in th’ spring of ’45, or maybe even ’44 if times stay good.”
He looked so determined, so happy, and she loved him so much. After all the years of work, of struggle, of doing without, after the Depression and the years of sharecropping—it was so close, his dream, what had kept him fighting through all that time.
She smiled and reached out to touch his hand, but stopped as the front door slammed open. Henry was yelling, “Pa!” as he ran through the rooms, sending doors crashing back against walls and upsetting the rocker in the middle room as he ran past it.
He burst into the kitchen, his black hair in disarray, his young face a mixture of shock, disbelief, and excitement.
“Have you heard?—it was on the radio at Olivia’s. The Japs just bombed us, someplace called Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii!” he panted, looking from one face to the other.
Elise stared at him for a moment, then felt Janson’s hand close tightly over hers.
They had known it was coming.
The United States would have to enter the war.
PART TWO
1941
6
Yesterday, December 7t
h, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan . . .”
Hardly anyone was moving about the streets of Eason County that Monday morning. The quiet Alabama day seemed a haven, a stark contrast to the hell and destruction that had been visited upon Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Throughout the mill village, people were gathered around radios, listening to the voice of President Roosevelt, of the man who had seen them through the years of the Depression, and who would now see them through these trials.
“It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago . . .”
Elise sat in her favorite rocker in the front room of her home, her eyes, as were the eyes of everyone else in the room, on the radio resting on the table nearby. Janson leaned against a wall only a few feet away, his arms crossed. Catherine was at Elise’s feet on a stool, Henry sitting on the edge of the old sofa. Elise’s friend, Dorrie Keith, and Dorrie’s husband, Clarence, were beside him. Their sons, Steven and Jerry, both young men now, stood nearby; their older brother, Wheeler James, was stationed on a ship in the Pacific, and no word had been heard from him since the attack. His mother sat now worried, as did Lynette Pierce, the girl Wheeler James had asked to marry him only days before shipping out.
“The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu . . .”
Lynette turned away, fighting back tears, and Elise saw Dorrie pat her hand. When Elise looked toward Janson again she saw a muscle twitch in his jaw, but his green eyes never left the radio. At her feet, Judith scooted closer on the braided rug—the girl had wakened the household screaming during the previous night. She had dreamed the Japanese were bombing the village and that the mill houses were on fire. For the first time in her children’s lives, Elise had not known how to comfort one of them, but had spent the remainder of the night in her own dreams, had seen the mill burning, and planes flying overhead, planes that had red suns painted on the undersides of their wings.
“As commander and chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.”
Applause began, gradual but building. Elise saw Stan turn his eyes to the fire in the fireplace near where he stood, his brows lowered and his face angry. Janson’s cousin, Sissy, sitting in a chair alongside the couch, looked up to where her husband, Tim, stood beside her, their two-year-old daughter, Nora, in his arms. Tim touched her shoulder lightly and gave her a nod, and a smile that Elise knew was meant to be reassuring.
“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” There was sudden applause, loud and deafening, interlaced with shouts of assent. Elise’s eyes moved to Janson for a moment, then back to the radio.
She could hardly see through her tears.
“. . . With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.” Again applause halted the President’s words, immediate and prolonged. Lynette cried openly now, and Dorrie got up from the sofa and moved to pat the girl’s back comfortingly. No word was spoken in the front room of the mill house, just the sound of FDR’s voice over the radio as the applause ended and he resumed, and the words came, words they had all been expecting.
“I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”
Janson reached to turn off the radio, ending the applause that greeted the President’s words. Silence fell in the room but for the sound of the girl’s crying and the popping of logs in the fireplace. Then Judith’s voice came, sounding so young and very frightened.
“Are the Japs gonna bomb here, Mama?” It was the same question the girl had asked time and again since she had learned of the attack. There was honest fright in her eyes, fright that Elise felt as well, though not for the same reasons.
“No, they won’t bomb here. Don’t you worry about that.”
“I’m gonna sign up tomorrow,” Jerry Keith was saying, his expression filled with rage.
“No, you’re not, not yet. You’re ma’s got enough t’ worry about already,” his father said, staring at him from the sofa. “With Pete gettin’ called off furlough because of the bombin’, an’ Wheeler James—” His words trailed off, his eyes going to the floor.
“Damn Japs,” the young man growled, and his brother Steven put his hand on his shoulder.
Stan had been staring at the stump of his right arm. There was anger and rage on his face as there had been in Jerry Keith’s voice. After a moment he drove the end of the stump hard against the mantel. Pain showed in his features as he gripped what was left of the arm and turned away.
Elise stared at him for a moment, thinking she should go to him, thinking she should do something, but her eyes touched on Janson instead—he stood just as he had minutes before when the President’s speech ended. A muscle worked in his jaw, his eyes remaining on the now-silent box.
At last he lifted his gaze to her, and Elise caught her breath—there was in his expression something she had seen on the faces of Jerry Keith and Stan.
She thanked God that at thirty-four he was too old to be drafted. She could only pray that he was beyond the age to volunteer as well.
The telegram came within days, and Dorrie’s hands were shaking so badly that she could hardly read it. Elise watched her friend’s face, seeing the fear that had lived there for days turn to horror. Wheeler James Keith, the bright, intelligent boy who had at one time wanted nothing more in the world than to be allowed to finish school, would not be coming home.
In the days that came, Elise knew there were many such telegrams: “The Secretary of War desires to express his deep regret that . . .”
Just weeks before Christmas, and the entire world was changed. Four days after FDR’s speech, war was declared on Japan. On December 11th, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Only two years before, the country had been operating under a neutrality law, but now we were in the war, and in it for the duration.
The Christmas season took on a hard, forced cheerfulness as families said good-bye to young men they knew they might never see again. Couples rushed to be married before soldiers could ship out, and Elise knew that some women wed near-strangers in the heated rush—it was the boys’ duty to fight, they seemed to think, and the girls’ duty to give them something to come home to.
The economy took an upsurge as businessmen and ordinary people alike began to stockpile items they believed the war would leave in short supply. The government placed huge orders, and suddenly there was work for anyone who sought it, especially as jobs were vacated by men departing for the war.
War—it was now everywhere. Elise knew few families who were not touched in some way. In the front windows of so many homes hung banners with blue stars, one for every brother, son, or husband taken in the draft or who had volunteered—and, as the months passed, far too many of those blue stars were replaced with gold, as men from Eason County lost their lives.
Everyone wanted to do their part. Conservation was the order of the day, conservation of food, of resources, of whatever it seemed the military might need. Rubber tires were rationed. New wool blankets were unavailable at home so the boys could have warm uniforms and blankets overseas. Scrap drives were held for raw material needed in the war effort. Paper, old pots and pans, unused iron bed frames, rags, old cl
othing—everything was being collected to help in the war. Wartime production was getting into full swing; people were making money; the Depression was finally ended—but goods were scarce, and what was available seemed to rise in price almost every day. There were shortages of food items as people hoarded anything they thought might become scarce. Prices spiraled so badly that by late April the cost of living had increased by fifteen percent over the days before the war.
In mid-April, Elise heard that the President had sent a plan to Congress for handling the problems of the war economy. They said FDR wanted heavier income taxes, a limit on incomes, wages to be stabilized, and more drastic rationing to take place, as well as a reduction in farm prices, and curbs on the use of credit. The Office of Price Administration set price ceilings on many items at March levels, but few people complained—there was a war going on, they all seemed to say, at least outwardly, and we all have to pull together if we are going to win it.
Rationing had begun. Before the war most sugar had been imported; now it was in short supply, not only because of the amounts needed to feed the people at home and the men fighting overseas, but also because it was needed in the manufacture of explosives. On April 27th the sales of sugar ceased. On May 4th, registration began in schoolhouses the country over for rationing coupons, and the following day sales of sugar resumed to those who had received War Ration Book One from the Office of Price Administration. Each person was allowed a half pound of sugar per week, but few people seemed to think that was enough. Elise was certain she knew quite a number of people who had lied when asked how much sugar they had on hand when they were issued their ration books. Elise had told the truth, and had had that amount in stamps torn from the ration book she was given. Now, as she drank bitter, unsweetened coffee—in the rare times she could get it—or had to scrimp and save her sugar rations to make a small treat for the children, she found herself thoroughly hating those who had lied and who were hoarding now, just as she hated all those she suspected were buying sugar in the black market that had sprung into life as soon as rationing began.
There Is a River Page 4