by Ann Gabhart
Victor could even now shut his eyes and see some of the lines from those letters written in Nadine’s hand although the letters themselves were lost to the mud. The lilacs are blooming. I took a deep breath of their sweet scent and blew it into this letter for you. I say your name every night as I look up at the brightest star in the sky and it sings like poetry in my heart. I carry you in my prayers all day long. He especially treasured each and every I love you. Simple words, but words he needed to read over and over.
Anytime they had a mail call and Victor’s name wasn’t called, his spirits sank so low that he sometimes wasn’t sure anything he remembered about the summer was true. Maybe it had all been only a dream and Nadine had never given her love to him. Maybe he was going to wake up and there would be the truth like the mud sticking to him. But then the next mail call he’d have a letter. A letter that said she loved him. That she would always love him. No matter what happened. That she could hardly wait until he came home. That she would be there waiting for him.
Not all the letters were good. Some brought bad news. The one where she told him she’d lost the baby before she got far enough along to show under her full skirts. That had been a sad day in the mud. Gertie’s letter a couple of months later, telling him their mother had contracted influenza and died. It hadn’t seemed right for bad things to be happening back home when so much was bad all around him. He’d somehow expected home things to be protected in the circle of his memory, to stay the same until he got back to Rosey Corner.
They hadn’t written to him about Bo. Aunt Hattie had decided there’d be plenty of time for Victor to be sorrowful about that later on after he got home. The only reason they’d told him about his mother was that he’d know something was wrong when he didn’t get any more letters from her.
But Bo had died over there. Killed in action, fighting alongside the French. The American generals wouldn’t let the black soldiers go into combat with the white soldiers, but the French didn’t worry about color. They needed men to take the place of their fallen comrades. So they embraced the black troops who came ready to fight the German enemy and to die beside them in battle. Like Bo.
Aunt Hattie was afraid Victor might lose heart if he knew Bo had been killed. That he might think if Bo couldn’t make it through the war, then there wouldn’t be any way he could. Aunt Hattie might have been right. But in a war it wasn’t always the best man who came through alive. Sometimes it was the luckiest. The man who was ducking behind a tree when the enemy bullet came his way or the man in the back trenches when the artillery fire came. And hadn’t Bo always told Victor how lucky he was? Lucky to have a mother and father with means. Lucky to have him, Bo, watching after him and keeping him out of trouble. Lucky to be able to go to school. Lucky to be fast on his feet. Lucky in love.
That was the last thing Bo ever told him. Bo had come through Louisville before being shipped out after going home to see Aunt Hattie. He came by the boardinghouse, where Maudie McElroy let him sleep on the back porch before he caught his train east.
As they sat out on the back steps, Bo shook his head at Victor and Nadine. “I’m a-lookin’ at the two of you and I still can’t hardly believe it. You got the preacher’s daughter to say yes.” He gave Victor’s shoulder a playful punch and laughed.
Nadine’s face colored up, but she didn’t quit smiling. A person couldn’t keep from liking Bo no matter what he said.
Victor squeezed Nadine’s hand. “I did.”
“Will wonders never cease?” Bo laughed again. “I don’t know whether you know it or not, Miss Nadine, but this boy here fell for you practically as soon as he was out of knickers. Lovesickest pup I ever saw. And now look at him. One lucky dawg. Luck like as how he’s got, it don’t never run out, so don’t you worry your pretty head about him, young Miz Merritt, if this war drags on and he has to follow me on over there. He’ll be comin’ back across that ocean. That’s for sure and certain.”
Victor had thought then that he had to join up. To prove his courage to his father. But nothing had ever proved that or was likely to. Not going to the war. Not coming home. His father wouldn’t even think it took courage for Victor to stand up and go to the door of his shop to meet Aunt Hattie. But it did. It took a great deal of courage, because Victor knew what she’d come to say.
“Aunt Hattie.” He kept his voice light and cheerful like she was just another customer come to get some piece of iron bent. “And what can I do for you today?”
“You knows what you can do for me, Victor Gale Merritt.” She stepped right up to him and poked her finger in his chest. She’d never been a big woman. Victor had been taller than her by the time he was ten. And now age had stolen a few inches and every ounce of extra fat until she was nothing but skin and bones and pure power. Every wrinkle on her face was frowning as she peered up at him through her steel gray eyebrows. “You can be goin’ on home at suppertime and not be letting the alcohol turn your feet off the right way.”
He didn’t have any defense. Sometimes it was better to just be quiet and take the beating he deserved. He looked down at the ground and felt beaten already. “You’re right, Aunt Hattie.”
“I knows I’m right. You has got to take care of your girls. What’s the matter with you that you’d go off to that wicked place when your girls are needin’ you?”
“I don’t know,” Victor mumbled.
“That ain’t no answer. You look back up here at me and come on out with the truth.” She waited until Victor raised his eyes back to her face. The skin was still furrowed between her eyes, but now it was a concerned frown. “What’s the matter with you, Victor?”
He didn’t know how to answer her. What truth could he tell her? He wasn’t sure he even knew the truth. The dreams. The ache in his shoulder. The noise of the cars passing on the road out front. Nadine running home to take care of her father. The child Lorena he wasn’t going to be able to protect. Kate’s eyes when that happened. The emptiness in his soul.
The look on Aunt Hattie’s face softened, and she put her rough hand on his cheek. “She ain’t left you, Victor. She’s standin’ right beside you same as she has through all your years together.”
“But I’m not good enough for her, Aunt Hattie. I haven’t ever been good enough.”
She pulled her hand back and gave his cheek a little smack. “Don’t you let my ears ever hear you say that again, Victor Gale Merritt. You as good as any man I ever knew.”
“You might be the only person who ever thought that.”
“How about your Nadine? Didn’t she marry you and wait through the war for you and carry your babies? You can’t be shuttin’ your heart to love like that.”
“I’m not doing that,” he said quickly. Then he stared at Aunt Hattie. “Am I?”
When she just kept looking at him without saying anything, he went on. “I’d die for Nadine.”
“I knows you would, child, but sometimes it’s harder to live for somebody, and that’s what you’s got to do right now.”
Her voice was full of caring, but that didn’t keep her words from pounding into him like hammers striking soft metal. Trembles pushed through him. “You told me that once before. A long time ago. When Press Jr. died.”
“It ain’t always easy to be the one still living.” There was understanding in her eyes.
“I’ve been having dreams, Aunt Hattie. They won’t let me be. Even in the daytime all the dead haunt me.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him down close to her face. “You ain’t got the first reason to feel guilty about still breathing air when others ain’t. It wasn’t none of your fault that my Bo died over there in France or that young Press Jr. didn’t get out of that river.”
“But maybe it should have been me instead of them.”
“That ain’t for us to decide. Things happen and people die. The good Lord helps the rest of us go on living.” Aunt Hattie studied Victor’s face. “He’ll help you too, with whatever’s tormenting you.�
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“Did he help you when Bo died?”
“I couldn’t a made it if he hadn’t. That was a bad time.” Aunt Hattie dropped her hands from Victor’s shoulders and sat down in the chair by the forge.
Victor pulled his stool over to sit beside her and wait till she was ready to start talking again.
She stared off at the wall for a few minutes before she said, “It weren’t just Bo, though that was a blow that like to kilt me. But your sweet mama going at almost the same time was nigh on more than I could bear. So many folks dyin’ over there and over here. But the Lord, he tol’ me he’d let me know when my time was up. That until then, he’d help me keep livin’, keep catchin’ babies when they got born, keep watchin’ over Nadine till you come home. You know how Mr. Preston and Preacher Reece didn’t give that girl the first bit of help, and Gertie, well, Gertie, that child does good to keep herself helped.”
“I thank you for Nadine.” Victor reached over and touched Aunt Hattie’s hand on her lap. “And for me.”
“No need for thanks. Your Nadine did more for me than I could ever do for her. She understood that I’d lost one son and that I wouldn’t be able to bear losin’ the other.” Her eyes came back to Victor’s face as she took hold of his hand and squeezed it. “While you might not be my natural born child, you ever’ bit a child of my heart. And I’m proud of the man you turned out to be.”
He dropped his eyes away from hers. “I’m not.”
“You the onliest one what can change that. And you is the one who has to be there for your girls.”
“I don’t know if I can. Not the way they need.”
“They just need you,” Aunt Hattie said softly. “That’s all they’s ever needed.”
“I can’t keep back the bad things.”
“Nobody can ever keep back all the bad things. It ain’t possible for the likes of us. We just has to ride through those bad times together. You need to give Nadine some understanding and not be deserting her when she’s needin’ you.”
“Deserting her? I’m not doing that, am I?”
“That’s somethin’ you have to answer.” Aunt Hattie gave his hand a little shake. “But that ain’t all your trouble. You know they’s gonna come after that little child.”
“I know. Kate won’t understand that.”
Aunt Hattie let out a long sigh. “That’s God’s own truth. Our Kate done thinks she been anointed by the Lord to take care of that little one and I ain’t doubtin’ she has, but there’s some that thinks they’s more powerful than the Lord. Leastways here in Rosey Corner.”
“What am I going to do, Aunt Hattie? I can’t fight my father.”
“We in the same boat on that one, Victor. Mr. Preston’s done wrong about all this. It ain’t right givin’ that baby to Ella Baxter, but that’s what’s gonna happen and there ain’t nothin’ under God’s heaven we can do about it.” Aunt Hattie squeezed Victor’s hand again. “Exceptin’ to help Kate through it, and you can’t do that from the inside of a bottle.”
“Don’t you think I want to quit?” Victor cried. “Don’t you think I’d have already quit if it was as easy as just wanting to?”
“I done tol’ you, child. You can’t do it alone. You’s got to let the Lord help you.”
Everybody kept telling him that, as though it was the easiest thing in the world. As if he could just hold the bottle and his addiction up in the air and the Lord would reach down and grab it all away from him. They hadn’t, none of them, carried the bottle around and tasted its temptations. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell Aunt Hattie that. So instead he said, “And what about Lorena?”
“We’s just gonna have to pray we’s wrong about that Ella.” Aunt Hattie didn’t look too sure that prayer was going to be answered. “Besides, we ain’t goin’ nowheres. We’ll be right here in Rosey Corner if that little baby needs something. And the good Lord watches over his little babies.”
She stood up and so did Victor. “Pray for me, Aunt Hattie.”
She reached up and touched his cheek again. “I already do, child. Ever’ day. And you just remember that in the good Lord’s mighty eyes, we’s all nothin’ but little babies.”
21
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The next Sunday morning after their preacher was felled by the stroke, the Rosey Corner Baptist Church met for Sunday school as usual and then walked across the road to have services with the Christian Church.
Nadine didn’t go to church. Carla went in spite of crying and going on all morning about how she wouldn’t be able to bear being at church without Nadine’s father there with her, but when Ella knocked on the door, she was out it in two minutes. Once she was off the porch, Nadine stood in the middle of the sitting room and wrapped the silence around her as she thanked the Lord for the respite from the woman’s constant moaning or harping. It was like waiting on two invalids—one by stroke and one by orneriness.
Nadine told herself she should ask for forgiveness for her lack of charitable thought when it came to Carla, but then again she’d never read the first word in the Bible that said a person wasn’t supposed to face facts. The first fact was Carla was about to drive Nadine over the edge of sanity. The second fact was that Carla wasn’t going to lift a finger to do anything as long as Nadine was there to do it for her.
Praise the Lord, Nadine’s father had started showing some improvement. While he still struggled to speak, he was saying more words that she could understand. Plus he’d gotten back some of the use of his leg and arm so that with help he could get out of bed and sit in a chair. Even before Kate told Nadine what Aunt Hattie said about letting the church people help, Nadine had decided it was time to go home.
Nobody had come right out and told her Victor was drinking again, but enough of her father’s visitors had looked uncomfortable when they tried to make small talk that she’d known. Plus he hadn’t come by since Tuesday. He should have come by to see her even if he didn’t care about her father. What in the world had ever happened to the young man brave enough to walk up on her porch and ask to court her? But of course, it wasn’t her father he was scared to face now. It was her. He knew she’d be furious at him when she saw the drinking signs in his eyes.
She was furious with him. He couldn’t even stay away from the drink long enough to be there for their girls while she took care of her father. He surely realized she had to take care of her father. He’d have done the same if it had been his father, though heaven only knew neither father had ever gone one step out of the way to help them. Still, they were family and a person had to take care of family. The Lord help her, she’d even have to take care of Carla if it ever came to that. Nadine shut her eyes and said a fervent prayer for Carla’s health. Either that or more patience. Lots more patience.
A small voice inside her head said maybe she needed some of that patience for Victor. Things weren’t easy for him either. Those dreams from the war had come back to torment his sleep. She’d been patient when he’d first come home from France. She’d seen how the war had bruised his soul and understood he needed time and love. Love she was more than willing to give him. It was so good to have him home. To be able to stop worrying that he’d never come back to her.
Sometimes she had heard that echo in his letters from France. His fear that he’d never make it home. But it was Bo who hadn’t made it. Bo who had died in the trenches with the French. Bo who was buried in a cemetery over there. Bo who had always looked so strong and sure of himself even though he was a Negro in a white world. He got a French medal for bravery. They had sent it to Aunt Hattie. People told her she should hang it on the wall, but she took it out in her backyard and buried it as though they’d sent her Bo’s body back in that little box.
She and Nadine searched through the woods for the right rock to use as a marker, and then Graham Lindell helped them carry it home. Nadine and Graham both cried when they laid that stone on the ground over the spot where the medal was buried, but Aunt Hattie hadn’t shed a tear.
/> Victor hadn’t cried when Nadine told him about Bo either. He was too battle weary. All he’d seen had pushed him way beyond tears. He wouldn’t tell her about it. Not the part that haunted his dreams. He told her how the French countryside looked. He talked about the people he met. How he never got to Paris, but some of the other soldiers in his company had. He even talked a little about how cold it was sitting in the mud and waiting, but he didn’t talk about the things that made him wake up in the middle of the night sweating and flailing his arms. He said he didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it, but it had kept coming out in his dreams.
So she had whispered words of love in his ear, and he clung to her and loved her in return. Slowly he fought back the terrors of the war, and they stepped forward into their future. He took a drink now and again to dull the ache in his shoulder where he still carried some German shrapnel, but he was home every night rubbing her feet and reading poetry to her and singing silly songs to Evangeline even before she was born.
They had been able to laugh then in spite of his war wounds and her fear of giving birth for the first time. He and Aunt Hattie had carried her through that fearful time as memories of her mother dying in childbirth accompanied each new pain. Now three beautiful girls later, she was just as much in love with him as she had been then, and she had no doubt of his love for her.
Yet something had happened. He was having the nightmares again, and instead of leaning on her, he was going to the bottle for comfort. She didn’t understand it. Nothing had changed except that they were older. Shouldn’t that make it easier for him to lean on her? Had her anger made her back away from him so he couldn’t lean on her?
She didn’t deny that the distance that had come between them was partly her fault, but nothing she did seemed to quell the anger when she saw him turning to the bottle. She couldn’t pray it away. She couldn’t ignore it away. She couldn’t yell it away. It was there, a hard knot inside her chest. And now at this time of crisis he had let the bottle call him again.