by Frank Deford
“But it didn’t.”
“No, a lifetime is too long for most things. Now, of course, they stopped making Maryland rye years ago, but bourbon tastes the closest to it, so I have some for old time’s sake every now and then. And I think this would be one of those nows and thens.”
“Okay,” I said, rising.
“But just a finger now, Teddy. Or a thumb since you’ve got skinny fingers.”
“I’ll make one for myself too, Mom.”
“Well, that’s fine. Lots of water: sippin’ whiskey we called it.”
“And, Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you want to put your wig on?”
Her hand shot up to her head and she felt it. “Oh my, I was still half-asleep. I’m sorry you have to see me such a fright.” I started to protest. “No, no, don’t try and be polite, Teddy. But it squares the circle, I think. I came into this world as bald as a bowling ball, so I might as well go out the same way.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and by the time I’d fixed us both a thumb of Old Crow, she was back, with her wig firmly in place, and even a little lipstick on for good measure. She made a point of going across the room and picking up the vase with the flowers in it that she’d brought in memory of Daddy. Carefully, she set it on the table, right in front of her. I had the tape recorder out, so I put a new tape in and turned it on. When Mom was sure it was spinning, she took a sip of her bourbon, and began again.
So, Teddy, the long and short of it is precisely what that telegram said, that Jimmy Branch, your dear father, was killed on August the 7th, 1942, on Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands.
She let that sink in again. I took a sip of my drink and tipped my glass to the father I never knew. Mom offered a little salute at my gesture.
He was one fine man, your father, Teddy. I’m so sorry you never got to know him. And I’m sorry he never got to know you. He would’ve been proud of his son. I should’ve told him I was having a baby, Teddy. At least he could’ve taken that to his grave. Poor, poor Jimmy.
“Mom, excuse me: where’s Tulagi? I thought it was Guadalcanal.”
Yes, Guadalcanal was the main target. The Japs had built an airfield there, and we wanted to take it from ’em. But Tulagi was a smaller island, just across the channel, so we had to take that, too. There were three battalions assigned to the task, under a colonel named Merritt Edson. They called him Red Mike.
“Red Mike?”
That’s what they called him. They had better nicknames back then. They were descriptive. I knew two or three boys named Red myself. Well, one was Reds. And another boy we called Freckles. I knew a Fats and a boy we just called Noggin because he had a huge head. That would be “politically incorrect” now, I suppose. But back then, you were what you were, and it was Red Mike who led the Marines onto Tulagi.
“Do you know how Daddy was killed?”
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Exactly. Weeks after I got that telegram, my mother forwarded me a letter. It was from Jimmy’s platoon leader, a second lieutenant—Daniel Carmody was his name. I’m afraid it wasn’t complicated, Teddy. Just a bit of irony. The Japs were caught completely off guard at Guadalcanal. They’d been rolling through the war like you-know-what through a goose, and they weren’t ready for someone to actually fight back. God Almighty, they took Singapore on bicycles.
So, anyway, the Marines just waltzed onto Guadalcanal. It was days before the Nips—we called ’em “Nips,” then, so I’ll let that word pass my lips now, since we’re talking about the ones that killed dear Jimmy—before they began to fight back on Guadalcanal. But the crowd on Tulagi had their act together better, and as soon as Red Mike’s gyrenes landed they began to prepare to throw them back.
The boys came ashore at Tulagi about eight in the morning, and—this is what Lieutenant Carmody wrote me—of all things, the first thing they had to get across was a cemetery. But just beyond that was a little hill. Hill Two-oh-Eight. That’s where the Japs were dug in. Jimmy was not only in the first bunch, he was the point man. He volunteered for that, the damn fool. So he started up the hill, and that’s when the Japs began their counterattack. That’s when they started firing. For all I could tell from that letter, Jimmy was the first man they hit. I guess he was ducking and running from one spot to another, leading the way, and one time he didn’t make cover, and he took a machine gun burst. Well, he didn’t suffer, Teddy. They ripped him to pieces.
I’m sorry to be so graphic, but now that you know . . .
Mom reached down and took a sip. So did I. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know how to feel. I’d just discovered that I’d never known this man who was my father—well, this man who had fathered me—and so I was filled more with curiosity than sadness.
Mom only shook her head.
Lieutenant Carmody said he died bravely, a hero, in the service of the United States of America. I guess. Does just getting killed make you a hero? Maybe he was more a hero that time he took after the mugger in Brooklyn. But you know, Teddy, I’ve often thought that Jimmy might well’ve been the first American in all the war who was killed after we started to fight back. The very first. On the ground, I mean. There’d been Midway, on the sea. But when we finally did go on the attack, it was on August the 7th, 1942, and it was Jimmy Branch who was the first one to move up and fall. Your father. Jimmy Branch: killed first, Hill Two-oh-Eight, Tulagi, the Solomons. That was the start of us winning the war, and Jimmy . . .
She shook her head, more mournfully now.
. . . was the very first. It was so much like him, I have to say. All his life, Jimmy would go forward. Always moving up, moving on. He’d get blocked—he wasn’t at all lucky, Jimmy—but then he’d just step sideways and go forward again. All his life. Right to the end—going up that damn hill. I can just see him having an Old Gold and saying, yeah, sure, lieutenant, I’ll go ahead, I’ll be the one out front. I can just see that. He deserved better.
“He got you, Mom.”
Yes, I was the best he had in his life. I don’t say that immodestly. There was so very little good he ever did have. It wasn’t difficult for me to be his best thing. I’m just so glad I could give him the most joy in his life. Very few of us can say we were that to another soul and know it’s true.
“You still think about him, Mom?”
Oh Lord, Teddy, yes. But with time, less and less. I’d always dwell on his memory on his birthday. And our anniversary. Horst came upon me crying once, and I had to tell him why, that Jimmy and me had been married this day. So, after that, on May 10th, your father would always gimme a little distance, you know. Maybe if you’d looked more like Jimmy that would’ve reminded me more of him, but you always favored me—
“I know.”
—so when you got to be twenty-something, Jimmy’s age when I knew him, when I loved him, there was none of that, seeing him in you. So, yes, he faded, Teddy, but no, I never forgot him. Bless his heart.
“So then it was just a question of Horst taking his place?”
Mom nodded, but barely, and when she finally did begin to talk again it was one of the rare times when she wouldn’t look directly at me. She said:
Teddy, forgive me.
“For what, Mom?”
Well, for what I did to Jimmy. You know, I never cheated on Jimmy, and I never cheated on Horst. All my life, I never slept with another man. But if, for purposes of discussion, if Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart had shown up one afternoon in Missoula and said he had a room down at the Holiday Inn and he’d like me to come down there and roll in the hay with him, and I did, somehow I think that still wouldn’t’ve meant that I didn’t love your father—Horst.
But, oh my, what I did to Jimmy.
“But he was dead, Mom.”
That’s true. But o’course, I didn’t know that then. Just the instant Horst got out of that cab that day and said, “Hello, Sydney.” Well, I was a goner. God forgive me, when I opened that telegram, I didn’t just think about poor Jimmy. I thought—
She stopped and looked back at me.
You get the picture, Teddy.
“I understand.”
Do you?
“I think so.”
Well, thank you, if you do. If you can understand, then maybe I don’t even need your forgiveness. Anyway, let’s call a spade a spade: the instant I read that telegram I was destined to be with Horst. Destined, Teddy, destined.
I had to get with him. I had to hide him. Somehow. You see, I knew it was only a matter of whether it would be Goldstein and the Nazis who’d find him and kill him, or the FBI would catch Goldstein, and he’d tell on Horst, and then they’d find him and put him in prison.
I remember, then, I began second-guessing myself that I’d gone down to Washington and told them all about Goldstein. Otherwise, who would have known, Teddy? Who would have known a man named Horst Gerhardt was in the United States? What I’d done for my country was against what I’d done for my love.
What would you do for love, Teddy?
“I really don’t know, Mom.”
Well, it turned out, it wasn’t a conflict with me for very long.
“Why’s that?”
You want me to tell you or you want to read it?
“If you’re still up to it, I’d like to hear it from you.”
All right, Teddy, but don’t hate me when you hear.
“Come on, Mom, I could never hate you.”
You have no idea what I did, Teddy. Not a clue in the world.
All right. That next day, which was Thursday, I couldn’t bear to go into the office. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Late that afternoon, I went down to the river to swim. Just for the heck of it, sometimes I’d wear my old Women’s Swimming Association suit, with the big S on my chest, and that day, because I was finally starting to show with my baby—that’s you—I decided to put it on one last time. If you’ll recall, Teddy, that was the suit that was very sheer, very revealing.
“Yes, indeed, I do recall.”
Well, I was walking back up to the house, and all of a sudden I see this big black DeSoto coming down the driveway. I felt sort of naked, Teddy, but I had a big beach towel, and so I wrapped that around myself and approached to see who it was. The car pulled to a stop in front of the house, and a short man in a dark suit got out. He hadn’t noticed me, so he went straight to the front door and rang the bell and peered in. Like always on the Shore back then, I’d just left the door open, except, of course, for the screen door. You had to keep the screen door closed or the flies would get in. It seems to me there were more flies back then. Everybody was always saying: close the door or the flies will get in, and you don’t hear that anymore, do you?
“No, now that I think about it.”
Anyway, flies aside, Teddy, as I watched the man up there on the porch, it naturally occurred to me who it must be. The FBI, of course. “Hello,” he called out, looking through the door. “Anybody home?”
Damn it. I knew it. I’d left something in that pocketbook so they could trace me.
Well, obviously the jig was up. So I called out, “I’m coming,” and I waved to him (making sure to keep that towel around myself).
As I got closer, the man walked over to the side of the porch where I was coming from and said, “Sydney Stringfellow?”
“Well,” I replied, “I’m Sydney Stringfellow Branch now.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet, flipped it open and flashed me a badge, which of course didn’t surprise me, inasmuch as I knew he was the FBI. “I’d like to ask you some questions, Mrs. Branch.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just let me get out of this wet bathing suit.” It was still damp, Teddy, and, anyway, if I was gonna be grilled by a G-man I at least wanted to be properly attired.
“I’d rather we talk right here,” he said. Still quite polite, you understand.
“It’ll just take a minute for me to change,” I replied.
But this time, when he answered me, he was much sharper. “No, ma’am, I’d like to talk to you right here, right now, thank you very much.”
Now that surprised me. It struck me as being so out of character. But by chance, at that moment, I happened to glance over toward his car, and I noticed the license plate. It was orange. I’d lived in Brooklyn long enough to recognize that license plate: New York State. And as much as my mind was whirling, I knew one thing: that the FBI would be coming up from Washington.
Maybe he saw me look at the car. Certainly he saw that my expression changed. He stepped right up to the porch railing, and this time when he spoke, his voice was full of actual menace. “Come up onto the porch,” he said, staring at me with hard eyes. He had heavy eyebrows, too, which accentuated the harshness. “Right now.”
You know, Teddy, every one of us has said things that we wish we hadn’t.
She looked at me for affirmation. “Oh yeah,” I said.
Well, I have too, I’m afraid, but never in my life, neither before or since did I ever say anything so stupid as I was about to utter. Just one word. And the instant it passed my lips—barely more than a whisper at that—I knew it was the dumbest thing I’d ever said. But just a reflex, Teddy. And it was done.
“What’d you say, Mom?”
I said: “Goldstein.” And there it was. Now he knew I knew. In the next instant, he pulled a pistol out of a holster from under his jacket and pointed it right at me. “Now, come on up,” he said. Naturally, I obeyed. I’d never had a gun pointed at me. It’s a thing to make you shiver, lemme tell you.
So, I came up the porch steps and stood in front of him, lookin’ down at the muzzle of that pistol starin’ me in the face. I was surprised by how small Goldstein was. Horst hadn’t mentioned that. For some reason, that irritated me. The little Nazi creep. Made me think of that awful Goebbels. Still, I was scared to death, but I did ask him again if I couldn’t change my clothes.
“You’re welcome to,” he told me. “Only I’m afraid I have to be with you.”
“What are you, a peeping Tom?” I asked. (I don’t believe we said “pervert” back then, Teddy.)
“Look,” he said, without taking offense, “you can turn your back on me, but I’m not lettin’ you outta my sight.”
“All right. Never mind.”
“Have it your way,” he said, beckoning me, with the pistol, to go inside.
“Make sure you close that door so the flies don’t get in,” I said, which was really an idiotic subject to bring up under the circumstances, but the damn flies were always on my mind. And he did close the door, and there I was, alone in the living room with him. I asked him if I could at least throw something on over the bathing suit. I don’t know why, Teddy, but even if he killed me, I didn’t want him to see the outline of my . . . you know . . . through that sheer suit. At least I wasn’t gonna give him that little treat. So he let me go over to the coat closet, and I got out an old linen jacket that I’d wear when I was weeding and whatnot.
Then I crossed back and took the chair he motioned me to. He sat sort of catty-cornered from me, on the sofa, so he could keep that pistol close on me and pointed right at me. “Okay,” he said then, when we were settled, “where’s Gerhardt?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
He immediately raised the gun up, pointing it right at my face. “Don’t gimme that, lady. You know my name. He told you. So where is he?”
“Please lower the gun,” I asked, and at least he did that; he brought it back down. But he still kept it pointed at me. At my heart, Teddy. I tried to figure out what I could tell him that would be the most innocent. You see, I could tell he really didn’t know much himself, that he was fishin’.
“Go on, go on,” he snapped.
“Okay,” I began. “Horst called me.”
“Where from?”
“He didn’t say. This was a few days ago.”
“When?”
I tried to calculate. “Sunday. I’m pretty sure it was Sunday.” I said that because I kn
ew that was the day Horst was in New York, supposed to be meeting Goldstein.
“So what did he say?”
I got a little sharp with him then. “Just relax and lemme tell you,” I said. “He wanted to talk to me.”
“Why?”
“Will you let me talk?” He nodded, grudgingly. “Well, obviously you know about me because Horst and I were in love at the Olympics, and he called me because he wanted to tell me that he wanted to see me again. Now you gotta understand, I haven’t seen him since ’36. He stopped writing me five years ago. I haven’t heard one word from him in all that time, and out of the blue, he calls me. And once I got myself together, I explained that I was married and having a baby.”
“You’re having a baby?”
“Yes, I’m almost four months pregnant.”
I thought that might soften him up a bit, but he just snapped: “So, okay, where’s your husband?”
I paused for a second. Maybe I should tell Goldstein he’d just gone out to the drugstore or something. Maybe he’d leave then. But I took too long to respond, and he got wise. “He’s not here, is he?”
Stupid me: I’d blown my chance. First I’d said something I shouldn’t’ve said. Then when I should’ve said something, I didn’t have the sense to. Now there was no use pretending. I just told him: “He’s a Marine. He’s . . . he’s in Guadalcanal.”
Goldstein only nodded at that. “So, then what’d Gerhardt say?”
“Well, he said he wasn’t surprised that I’d gotten married, but it disappointed him. So, naturally, I asked him what in the world he was up to? I mean, it’s a little baffling, a German in the United States when we’re fighting a war against Germany. And what he told me was that he was on an undercover mission here, and he was supposed to meet a guy named Goldstein in New York, but his intention all along was not to carry out the mission, and so if he couldn’t see me, he was just gonna get lost.”