by Eden Butler
“Cousin,” he said, patting my back as he held me, clumsy fingers tangling in my hair. “I’m okay. Hush now. I’ll be okay.” But I didn’t believe him, wouldn’t, not until he was home away from the crowd, away from the train, away from the war that had sent him back broken.
***
At night, in the small farmhouse, there were only the smallest of noises that I could hear. Every night since I was a girl, Uncle Bleu would play something low and sad on his radio. He never bothered with the news, not often, or the radio dramas or variety shows that tried to distract us from the war overseas. Tonight, though, there was no music, not from my uncle. He was happy, I knew. His boy was home, lessened, perhaps, but home Uncle Bleu would not have cared if Mattie had come back limbless and mute, as long as he came back.
There had been other noises in that house as I grew up, of course. Sometimes, when I was a teenager, I’d hear Mama humming as she went through the accounts and bills from the orchard’s profits. She could do arithmetic like most folks managed blinking, thoughtless and second nature, and sometimes, she’d confessed, the task was so simple that she found herself humming or singing something silly she’d heard her Papa croon to her when she was a girl.
Now, though, there was nothing at all except some low, sad Billie Holiday record I heard echoing from the kitchen. Mama’s medicine rendered her near catatonic as of late and Uncle Bleu’s snores rang up the stairs so I knew it could only be Mattie unable to sleep or do more than wonder what would become of him. He’d been that way for a week now, and though he never spoke about his doubts, I knew him well enough to understand when he was feeling beyond the reach of anything good at all.
I found my cousin at the kitchen table, leaning back against the hard wooden chair with his walking stick leaning next to a half empty bottle of bourbon. The record player sat next to him, with Billie’s gravelly voice asking her man not to explain a thing. Light visuals, I thought, for a man returning from war to be listening to, but Mattie had always loved Lady Day and so I didn’t tease him for his melancholy choice.
Next to the record player, Mattie had scattered a deck of cards and in between slow sips of bourbon, he fanned the cards across the table, playing a game of solitaire.
“Winning?” A quick peek at Mama, snoring on the sofa and I grabbed the bottle, tucking it in my elbow as I got a cup from the cabinet. My mother turned in her sleep and I watched her for a moment, head moving as she adjusted on her pillow.
“I never win at solitaire, Ada Mae.” When I glanced at him, I saw that Mattie was watching my mother, too, his own head moving as though he couldn’t believe the state of her. “She’s gone so thin and pale.” I nodded, though I knew he didn't see me. “Why won’t she sleep in her bed?”
The dark liquid of the bourbon looked warm and smelled bitter as I poured a bit into my cup, and Mattie turned from my mother to watch me, his eyes meeting mine when I took a sip. “She says the mattress is too soft and the living room puts her closer to the bathroom.” My cousin moved his eyebrows up, an unspoken comment that he kept to himself. I answered with a shrug.
“The world’s gone a little nutty.” There was a bitter humor in Mattie’s tone, but I couldn’t disagree with him. Instead, I watched the needle move closer to the end of the record until only the scratchy sound of dead air came through the speakers. My cousin thumbed the corner of his small stack of cards, a nervous gesture that somehow didn’t bother me. “You’re working at a factory and not minding the trolley, my dad’s barely giving any care to the orchard and Aunt Cora is wasting away from cancer.” Mattie finished off the rest of his bourbon and reached for the bottle. “Then this afternoon, Deacon Smith comes for a visit, asking after you, moving around the kitchen like he knew his way around. Seemed mighty friendly, that one. More so than he’s ever been around here.”
“I was with Sarah Miller when he came," I shrugged again. "Uncle Bleu kept him company.” Sarah had asked me some weeks back if I minded her taking up the trolley cart at the station now that the rations were loosening with Germany’s surrender back in May. There was an end to the war coming, though those who’d made it through Europe’s brutality were now being shipped off to the Pacific to do battle with Japan.
“And why was it necessary for someone to keep him company?” I didn’t like the small frown on Mattie’s face or how coolly he moved around the question he clearly wanted answering.
“Say what you want and stop being coy. You lost a leg over there, cousin, not your bluntness.”
For a moment, the shock on his face registered. My mother and Uncle Bleu had tiptoed around Mattie for a week, treating him with a tenderness that I could tell set his teeth on edge. They didn’t know what to make of him. They didn’t know how he planned to live his life or how he’d set off to do it. For every pat on the back, for every moment that someone fetched his cane or asked after his bandages, treated him, in fact, like he was some stranger in his own home, there was a wince and deep grinding of his jaw that announced my cousin’s irritation. More than anything, he wanted to be treated normally. I’d just spoken to him like I had every other time in our lives and by the tremor pulling at the corner of his mouth, I guessed Mattie appreciated it.
“Well now, I’ve missed the hell out of that good old Mills honesty.” He tipped his glass at me and I snorted a laugh at the overly suave, forced gesture. “For a second I thought you’d gone on like my pop and Aunt Cora treating me like they’d lost all notion of who I was.”
“It’ll take them time…it’s only been—”
“Later.” Mattie shook his head, already uninterested in discussing how our folks had treated him. “Tell me about Deacon and you. You got plans with him?” Mattie didn’t smile then and I could make out the lecture forming behind his lips before he uttered a sound. He’d never cared for Deacon or his daddy and I understood why.
“It’s not like that,” I started, pulling the bottle back toward me, pausing before I poured a glass when Mama’s snoring got particularly loud. For no real reason at all, I leaned across the table, whispering, though Mattie didn’t join me. “I think Mama thinks I’ll be all alone, an old maid, if she…well…if she passes before I’m married off. She only wants me cared for, even if she’s gone about it all wrong.” He wasn’t impressed with my explanation. “I haven’t…exactly, given him a reason to keep away.”
“And what about your Irishman?” I’d told my cousin nearly everything about Garreth—how we met, how often we wrote, even the promise I’d made him about waiting despite Mattie’s advice. That conversation had cemented Mattie's and my relationship, and I think was one of the few times since he had returned where he felt like his old self again. But I hadn't told him about my most recent, my most terrifying fear. It was as if admitting it to anyone would make it more real. But with Mattie staring at me, his face open and concerned, and the bourbon, and the sounds of my mother snoring softly on the couch, I could not keep my fear to myself anymore.
“He got transferred, last I heard and then…nothing.” The glass was cool to the touch and I slid it along my bottom lip to hide the worry in my voice when I spoke. “He hasn’t written and I, just…I don’t know why.”
Mattie leaned on his elbows and then nodded, likely to himself, scratching at his chin as he finally leaned back against the chair. “Let me get this straight then. Your fella is off fighting in Europe, after he begged you to wait for him, after telling you what he felt for you and then he doesn’t write and you what, cousin? Give up after a few weeks and let Deacon Smith think you might be interested in him?”
I slapped my hand to the table, ready to throttle Mattie when he arched an eyebrow up. Mama stirred on the couch and I lowered my voice to a harsh whisper. “No! Of course not.”
“Hell, that’s what it sounds like.” He went on scratching his chin, then shook his head as though I’d disappointed him. “Weeks? Aw, Ada Mae, there were some guys in my unit that couldn’t get mail out for months, sometimes nearly half a year. Unt
il you hear something official, you don’t give up.” I glared at him and he waved me off. “I know what I said to you, after Lionel…well. It was a bad month, back then and I was worried about you may be getting attached to someone you didn’t know, someone who could be anywhere and might not be able to come back to you. I didn’t know about your Irishman then, or I might of kept my thoughts to myself.”
“And now you don’t worry about that?”
“Now I know,” he said, tapping his leg, “that getting out of the war is just the small reward. All any of us want now, no matter what we gave up over there, is a normal, peaceful, quiet life. If this Garreth fella has promised you that, then by God, cousin, you wait for it.”
Just then, with Mattie’s eyes glassy from the bourbon and my throat burning a little, likely not from the drink, I warred between the inclinations to tell my cousin to mind his own business and hugging him something fierce just to remind myself that he was real and here and safe. Of the two of us, Mattie was the one with a hard road to walk. He didn’t flinch or pull away when I tugged on his hand to hold it, but my cousin did exhale, shoulders falling as though he’d just decided to let go of the tension he’d been keeping inside himself.
“And what about you? What will you do?”
A smile came quick behind another shot of bourbon and then Mattie shrugged, laughing a little at himself when a small cough caught him off guard. “Find a gal who doesn’t much mind a one-legged man, one who likes to laugh and have a good time and spend the rest of my life trying to forget the hell I just crawled through.”
CHAPTER TEN
Dear Garreth,
It’s over. That’s what they tell me. I feel like I’m in my own special war and there is no returning from it, not while there is no word from you. I pray you are well. I pray you return to me soon.
From Ada to Garreth, 1945
We did not celebrate August fifteenth when Japan surrendered. The Mills and Williamses took no part in the celebration of the final battle. Our soldier had returned home. So many hadn’t and it had been months now that I had not heard a single word from Garreth. It had occurred to me that if something had happened, to him, I wouldn’t know; I had no idea if he had even mentioned me to his family. I hadn’t given up, though, just as Mattie encouraged me not to do. But I had other things occupying my time and thoughts.
Mama died on a Sunday, just as the sun went down and the call came to the house that Sarah Miller’s older brother Bobby had been liberated from a Japanese P.O.W. camp. The happy news was short-lived and ill received. An hour later, we had news of our own.
She lay still and quiet on the worn out couch, unlike so much of her life, she did not fight or rage or do anything resembling a fuss. But, that was Mama. She was strong, but she let things come as they would, when they would. It struck me, in fact, that the only time my mother had gotten upset as of late had been when it came to me wanting to stay clear of Deacon Smith.
“He’s a good man,” she’d told me, just days before she died. “And good men are hard to come by, Ada Mae. You mark my words.” But a coughing fit came over her just then, racking and jerking her small frame, and her advice to me was all but forgotten.
Now there was no coughing. No noise at all, save Uncle Bleu’s low, muted voice as he called our kin on the telephone and arranged things with Richard Mossey to come and collect the body. But I couldn’t think of her as just a body, even now. She had been hard and sometimes cold, but she’d still been my Mama and I’d never get another one. That’s the thing about grief— it comes even if you are only half expecting it, even if you want to push it away. When it claws its beefy, sharp claws inside you, you are given two choices: rise and fight or curl and die, and unlike my mama, I’d always loved a good fight. For the most part.
Still, it was a struggle. They took Mama away on a gurney with a twisted wheel that jerked to the right as its brothers went on rolling straight ahead and the sight of it twitching to the side, being disobedient to the other wheels on the table, filled me with such a queer sense of loss that I turned away from Uncle Bleu and his patting hand on my shoulder, turned away from Mattie and the half empty bottle I knew he kept underneath his first floor bed. That wheel and someone else going away forever had undone me and for once, I didn’t want to fight.
Instead I climbed into my bed, the metal frame creaking and thumping against the wall when I tucked under the blankets, reaching out to slip my hand into the drawer of my bedside table. There rested the letters from Garreth that I had read and reread a thousand times. All those letters that had contained so much of himself. All the promises he’d made to me, collected in every line, in every loop of script.
“I think of you always, love, when my heart is near to dying, when I think I cannot live another second for the weariness in my bones and the heaviness in my chest. And then, there you are, right inside my head, smiling, laughing, and then there is another moment, just there, where I believe I will not be left bloodied on the cold German ground.”
Had he been, though? Had Garreth been left to ground? Had he died all alone, broken and twisted like so many others had been? I sifted through the letters, coming to another one, sent months before when things were still good. When I had no doubts or worries that would take any of the hope I’d been given from Garreth.
“Your letter on the fifteenth gave me pause, it did, that maybe you would not be so against leaving Legacy Falls. You’ve spoken so much of going away, of seeing the world, but most do not fancy themselves ever really leaving home. I hope you’ll be able to. I hope I can be there to go along with you. There is a great, large world out there, Miss Ada and I do so want you to see all you can of it and I want so desperate like to see all of you that I can.”
Now I had nothing stopping me. The boys were coming back and reclaiming their jobs at the factory; they had no need of us girls anymore and almost all of us had been let go. I had no ties to this farm, save for what Uncle Bleu and Mattie wanted of it. And even then, it wasn’t really mine to contend with. The orchard would go on, or it wouldn’t, and I wondered, with no trolley to man and no mother to tend to, where I’d end up after the war, after…everything. The pages of Garreth's letters felt thin and delicate in my hands, no matter that they’d seen the battlefields in France and Germany. I imagined that I could still detect a hint of Garreth’s cigarettes on the pages and though I hated the smell, I brought the letters close, inhaling, trying to stay the ache in my heart.
Months, it had been and there was no word.
“Good men are hard to come by, Ada Mae.” Mama’s warning played on like a record, over and over and that stupid, weak worry that she’d implanted in my mind from the time I’d first started thinking about boys beyond their being annoying—the one that told me I needed a man to care for and one to care for me—managed to burrow its way in next to my heartache.
Garreth was a good man, but he wasn’t here. Lord knew where he was at all. Deacon Smith, Mama had often tried to make me see, was a good and honest man. He was solid. He had a tenderness behind all the shy awkwardness he showed the world.
But he was not what I wanted. Need, maybe, but not what I could ever want.
“Garreth, what happened to you?” I asked the small picture on my bedside table. He looked a vision in his uniform, his smile easy and carefree, with that cap cocked to the side and that jaunty, dangling cigarette at the corner of his mouth. Snow faintly dotted his thick, dark hair. He’d mentioned the picture being taken just after an offensive in Belgium. “Bloody mess of muck and worry, that one,” he’d written.
I dropped the letters to pinch the corner of the picture frame between my fingers. “What happened?”
Whatever you want, love, I’ll give to you even if it means I’m made to crawl through foxholes and bodies and bullets to do it.
But he hadn’t crawled through anything to get to me. At least, I guessed he hadn’t. Mattie’s encouragement came to mind and I wondered, despite the end of the war, despite the q
uiet that had come my way, whether it made any sense at all to write to him. Just one more time. I glanced back over at that picture, at those sparkling eyes and the strong cut of his jaw and I moved without really realizing I was doing it.
The day had been overwhelming. The days to come would be worse. My mother was gone. She was never coming back and all I had left was my uncle and cousin and the fleeting grasp of hope that Garreth had not died in the war; that maybe somewhere he had been taken care of and thought of me, wished he could come back to Legacy Falls just one last time.
My desk was cluttered, but I left my bed and sat down at it, pushing aside my hair ties and pins, the scattered scarves and the letter Farrah had sent me when she’d landed in California on what she had called an “extended vacation” to her sister’s house after Bill’s funeral, even though we both knew she would not be coming back. My stationary was nearly empty, only two sheets remaining, and so I chose my words carefully, being brief, but honest. Hopeful, but not desperate as I wrote.
Sometimes I cannot breathe. The thought of you as anything other than safe and sound and free from any injury tears me up inside. It has been months, Garreth, and I find myself so distracted by the thought of you. My mother is gone now. She died not three hours ago. I have little left in the way of hope, yet I cling to it. That hope is all I have now. My world is shifting, changing, and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring or if it will include you in it.
Still, there is hope, the small hope that you are not harmed, that you are looked after. So many haven’t been and my worry is that you, the solitary bastion of happiness I have allowed myself, has been lost forever. I pray you are not. I pray God protects you and one day soon you return to me. I have not forgotten my promise. I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait a lifetime if I have to.