In the Shadow of Alabama

by Judy Reene Singer

  “So, who do you think did it?” I ask Willie. “The explosion, I mean.”

  “Hogarth,” he answers softly. “There’s no question in my mind. We all knew it was Hogarth. He hated your father. He hated all of us. Besides, he had made threats.”

  “What did the army do about it?” I ask. “Because my father never said anything about an explosion.”

  “They said it was a careless cigarette.” He gives a bitter laugh. “But none of us were smokers. Then they said maybe it was some kind of industrial accident, but we knew.”

  “Is that what my father thought?”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “He still wasn’t talking when I got discharged, so I never knew what he thought.”

  I think back to old conversations I had heard between my parents. “I remember he tried to get total disability for his hearing,” I say. “And some kind of medal.” I never cared enough to ask either one of them about it, and the matter had been long dropped. But I remembered the tortuous patches of skin on my father’s arms and legs and back, an uneven quilt of pale, pinched, textured skin that he took great pains to cover. “They wouldn’t give award benefits to him, because he couldn’t prove anything was service-related.”

  “Oh, I know,” Willie says. “I tried for it, too, for my ears.” His hand reaches up to gingerly touch his hearing aid. “But after a while, they said that all the records got burned in Ohio in 1957, and then, after a few years, they denied that there had been any explosion at all. They said I made it up just so I could get benefits.” He sighs, but it’s more like a shudder. “Like I was imagining I was deaf.” Another bitter laugh, and he rolls up his sleeve to reveal a twin arm to my father’s, with white and pink-tan skin mapping a agonizing route, up past his elbow. “Imagining I got burned. Does this look like my imagination?” He shows me his scars, and the lightning illuminates his face, and it is all pain.

  * * *

  By the next morning, the streets are washed clean from the overnight rain. Soon I will be flying home to New York. Willie and I are eating breakfast together.

  “I’ll have waffles and syrup and a couple of sausages,” Willie tells the health aide. She is a large black woman in her sixties, with red hair, and her name is Rita.

  “This ain’t a restaurant, darlin’,” she purrs in a silken Jamaican accent, and puts a bowl of Cheerios on the table. “Skim milk, one piece of bread, sugar-free jam. And what be your glucose this mornin’? You shouldn’t even get this ’til I know your numbers.” She gives him a strict look.

  He beams at her. “You remind me of my late wife,” he says, pulling the Cheerios across the table and picking up his spoon. “My number was ninety-two.”

  She smiles and slices a corn muffin for him and spreads some sugar-free jam across the surface. “Guess you can be havin’ this, then, ’stead of the bread,” she says, putting it in front of him.

  He bows his head a little. “I think you’re gonna work out just fine,” he says and picks up a piece of muffin.

  I watch him eat, then sip the coffee Rita has put in front of me, along with a muffin.

  “I brought the album with me this time,” I tell Willie. “It’s in my suitcase.”

  “I’d be glad to have it back,” he says, licking jam from his fingers. “We’ll do a little exchange before you leave. One old album for one old ring.”

  * * *

  It is a solemn ceremony of exchange. Willie is sitting in his wheelchair dressed in a pale gray shirt and black sweater and dark gray slacks, one pants leg tucked under him, his shoe shined to mirror black. He has put on his old army hat, and a small American flag pin is secured to his shirt pocket, both taken from the box of memories. He sits upright. Rita is looking on from the kitchen, arms folded over her pale blue Perma Press uniform, watching us with amusement and curiosity. I have put on a white sweater and dressy black slacks and black slingback heels. Willie deserves nothing less.

  I present the album to him. He takes it and caresses it, then puts it down on an end table in the living room. He puts a slender finger into his shirt pocket and takes out a gold ring with a blue stone.

  “Sergeant Fleischer,” he says, his eyes raised to the ceiling, “thank you for saving my life at great risk to your own.” He salutes the ceiling. “I have never forgotten what you did. I wish I could do more to show my gratitude.”

  I take the ring and study it, the first time in my life that I have ever held it. My father’s old bar mitzvah ring—mitzvah meaning “good deed” in Hebrew—which is what this is all about anyway. It shines cold in my hand, but I can see more in the blue stone than just my reflection.

  “Private Jackson,” I say. “Thank you for this. You are truly a man of honor.” And I salute Willie back.

  I shake Rita’s hand, kiss Rowena good-bye, and tell her how lucky she is to have Willie, because he is a good, loving father.

  Rowena holds me for a moment, murmuring, “The fire that burns the bread, melts the butter.” I step back and give her a puzzled look, and she tilts her head and gives my shoulder a little squeeze. “Just so you know,” she says, “I also lived with a father haunted by ghosts.”

  Chapter 44

  Any time is the right time to ride a horse, but there is something special about the very early morning. It is the part of the day not yet anchored to burdens, too young, too new to be considered a hard day, a sad day, a difficult day. It is a day still innocently full of optimism and fresh vows.

  * * *

  Lisbon is eager to move toward the woods. I barely touch him with my legs as he trots along the dirt path we have worn through the underbrush. Here and there, the leaves betray the end of summer with traces of orange and red. His hooves beat a tattoo against the earth, the one-two rhythm of the trot, while he tosses his head, impatient to move into a soft canter. I hold him back a little, until we reach a small clearing beyond the trees, and then let him out. His body rocks into the canter, the waltz of the equine—one-two-three, one-two-three—and we cover the ground in a dance for two. We have worked it all out. He trusts me not to hurt him; I trust him not to hurt me. It’s the best kind of love. I canter along, feeling the balance between us, and I don’t have to think, I don’t have to plan things, figure anything out. Sandra has taken my mother back to Georgia; David hasn’t called. Every ride is between me and my soul and Lisbon. Every ride is new. It has been a hard summer, and I’m not sorry to see it go.

  * * *

  Malachi is slipping away, thinner than a blade of grass, more like a strand of hay. He had been so vital and Willie had been so frail, yet nature sees fit to take what it pleases. Strong trees get felled, slim reeds bend, the reed sometimes outlasts the tree. By the time I got back from Boston, he was a whisper of a man, wrapped in blankets, lying in his hospital bed, a big, soft pillow under his head. I sit by his side every day and watch his nurse adjust the IV that carries pain medicine into his veins.

  “How are you doing?” I ask him, even though his eyes are closed. I refuse to ask his nurse; to ask her is to lose the connection with him.

  He can barely smile. “I’m all right,” he whispers, then adds ruefully, “I could use some Potter’s mixture.” He takes a pained, coughing breath and says something I can’t hear. I bend down to put my ear near him. “You got to grab the brass ring, missy,” he whispers raggedly.

  “Lisbon?”

  He coughs again, and turns his head away for a moment to catch his breath. The nurse steps up to wipe his mouth.

  “I’m calling the fence company,” I tell him. “I’m putting Lisbon in his own paddock.” He nods approvingly.

  Sometimes a horse is just a horse, not an issue, not a philosophical commentary. Lisbon will never be brave, and it doesn’t matter to me anymore.

  I sit for a while, worrying about the way Malachi’s breathing sounds. “My sister is going to come presently,” he suddenly says. A flash of pain crosses my heart, and I reach out to hold his hand.

  I stay with him all the next day, and we tal
k about the farm. He tells me what he wants me to plant in the spring, what I should do if I get another windswept foal, which horse to sell, which to keep, makes me promise to name a horse after him so that something of him will be left with me. I sit by his bed, stroking his thin arm, afraid to speak, because if I let a word slip out, the tears will follow and I am afraid I would never be able to stop them. I know he can’t put the gardens to bed and he won’t be here to wake them again in the spring. I want to beg him to stay with me, but I know it isn’t up to him. The day, spent like a fast dollar, is relenting its authority to the night; the sun slips from our grasp.

  “Lissen up,” he says as the night climbs through the window. He raises his head for a moment, then drops it back on the crisp white pillow, closing his eyes from exhaustion.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Open my satchel,” he whispers. “It’s for you. Everything you need is in there.”

  * * *

  The leather satchel is old but well-preserved. Dark brown, wrinkled with patina and shine that says it has been cleaned with saddle soap maybe hundreds of times. It smells warm and comforting in the sun. The tag tied to the handle has my name on it, which surprises me. I thought perhaps it was a plane tag, that perhaps Minnie was going to fly Malachi back to wherever he needed to be. That was before I realized about Minnie. It zips right open. And it is empty. Totally empty. Puzzled, I run my hand through the side pockets and find a piece of lined notebook paper. I turn it over. Malachi’s neat cursive, in pen, which is what he used when he wrote me important notes. Travel light. That’s all it says. Travel light.

  * * *

  I sit on the hay bale in front of his cottage and stare at the paper for a long time. A breeze ruffles my hair and brings the smell of horse and woods and fresh hay. I have to think about this, Malachi’s last message to me.

  And then it is like an eye opening within my heart. The words suddenly startle me. And I know what he means.

  There was my father. He had to have been a good man to think and behave the way he did. He had to have been a good friend, a good officer, a good husband, his head filled with little poems and silly pieces of jewelry and riddles and songs for my mother, only to be defeated, destroyed, shattered, by hatred, by senseless rules that everyone thought was just nature’s way. He had been decimated by the war. He had given his sanity to it. That really, my father died in the war. He died a hero. A war hero, and they deserve a special understanding and forgiveness.

  I think how the injuries filter down to their families, like loose change falling between the sofa cushions. Collateral damage.

  I think of Sandra, budgeting for my mother, so that she will have something left in the end, when she’ll need more care. Dear Sandra, struggling to find love in a piece of cake, needs me to tell her that she is a good daughter and a good sister, and that I love her, because if I save up all my love, who do I give it to in the end? Who will even be there, in the end, for me to give it to? I will die with a heartful of hoarded love, like preserved crab apples, bitter and shriveled, and lonely. The anger has to end sometime, and as I watch Malachi slip further and further away, I realize I can’t be worse off than worrying about living without things that I am already living without.

  Malachi is right. It is time for me to leave it all behind. The baggage, the burden, it was all awful and way too heavy to carry with me for so long. A plane, overburdened with cargo, cannot soar. It loses its lift, stalls, and crashes. I realize, when there are no more points to be made, when there are no more hearts to break, when you suddenly see through the clouds and beyond the sky, it’s time to drop the cargo and take flight. Travel light.

  I call David and he answers.

  “Do you love her?” I ask. “Do you love her?” I don’t want to know, but it is my charge to find out what I have done to him.

  He takes a deep breath. “I just don’t know,” he says. “She isn’t so complicated.”

  “I am sorry,” I tell him. “Please forgive me. I did this to us, and I was very wrong. I was so wrong.” The words come from my mouth in chokes. This is a new language for me, a new geography. I am making new rules. “When you are ready to give the ring to someone, I would like it to be me.”

  “I’ll remember that,” he says.

  “I’m sorry for trying to prove a point every minute of our time together,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I can change, I will change.” I have left myself vulnerable now, a windswept foal slowly straightening its legs to take its first tenuous, normal steps. Anything can knock me over, but I have to try. “I love you,” I tell him. “I’ve always loved you.”

  “I know,” he says and there is a long pause. I hear him breathing on the other end, maybe even crying.

  * * *

  Malachi passes quietly in the middle of the night, like the wisps of fog that hang over the pastures and are gone by morning. He goes so quietly, a breath taken, a breath expelled, soft as a foal’s muzzle, and gone. I put my head down against his chest. He wasn’t my father, and I’m not sure I need him or anyone, anymore, to be my father. We get what we get and make our adjustments. And when it is over, I suppose we make our peace with what’s left, because there is no point in doing otherwise.

  And I think if Malachi had a little more time, I might have convinced him that nature is not immutable; she makes and breaks her own rules all the time. She can bring death in the winter and turn it all around in the spring. She can take an unforgiving, stubborn heart and split it open and then close it again, filled with the grace of clemency. She can take a heart that has lived like an empty barrel, echoing angrily with noise from the past, and fill it with hope. Love, even.

  * * *

  I watch the horses eating their hay. The sun lays warm on my shoulders, and there is a slight breeze that comes through the woods and smells like pine, and brushes through my hair like Malachi used to brush the hair from my eyes after I’d ridden. Maybe it will all come to nothing. Maybe love doesn’t need to be returned like an envelope with its stamp missing. Maybe it exists for itself and that’s fine. I will be all right; I will fight to be all right. I might thrive, even. Overwhelmed, I fold my arms on the fence rail and lay my head down in them.

  And weep.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I can never thank my agents, Jane Gelfman and Victoria Marini, enough for always being so supportive of me, always optimistic, and always ready with encouragement and a kind word. I welcome their criticisms and suggestions and am forever grateful that it is because of them that I am able to pursue my passion of writing.

  Also, many thanks to my editor, Esi Sogah, for her enthusiasm, for being so exacting, asking for more clarity, for pushing me to write better and better. Her insights and requests brought more dimension and heart to my story, and I am very appreciative.

  HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE

  My father and I weren’t mortal enemies, but to say we didn’t get along was an understatement. I didn’t understand his rage and bitterness, followed by periods of withdrawal. He was a bully; he cried at odd moments; he shunned most social life. What I did understand was that I couldn’t live with him. I ran away from home at the age of fifteen, right after I graduated from an accelerated high school program, and never returned. I went to college, I married, had children, divorced, attended graduate school, married again, and had an entire life without him in it.

  We didn’t speak for a long time. Years passed, and my mother, with whom I had kept in touch, occasionally mentioned some kind of medal she was trying to help my father get from his years in the Army Air Corps. He had saved his men from an explosion. That’s all I knew. Eventually I learned that my father had been drafted to serve during World War II. It was 1941; he was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn and had never been out of his element. He was sent to Gunter Field Air Force Base, in Montgomery, Alabama, 58th Air Base Squadron, 66th Air Base Group.

  The heart of Dixie. It was his first taste of the South.

  He made master sergeant,
and was put in command of a platoon of men, all of them black. He and they were assigned to the Housekeeping Squadron, where they took on the maintenance and cleaning of the Vultee BT-13s, the bomber training planes. I want to emphasize that it was the South, 1941, a Jewish sergeant, and an all-black platoon. My father became outraged by the treatment of his men. He had a strong sense of social justice, which stayed with him his entire life, and he wanted his men treated properly. He fought for them, for their rights as United States soldiers, and was treated miserably for it. It culminated in a mysterious explosion that tore their hangar apart. He rescued as many as he could, but was forever haunted by the men he lost.

  He was recommended for a medal by his base commander. Time passed, and it was overlooked. On July 12, 1973, there was a huge fire at the National Personnel Record Center, in St. Louis, Missouri, where veteran service records were stored. All his records were destroyed, along with the recommendation for a medal. Years later, in 1997, when he was already elderly, he received a letter from the French government commending him for saving French lives by preventing additional Vultee crashes. He never knew who had written them on his behalf, but he was very proud of being remembered.

  It wasn’t until I was an adult that PTSD was finally diagnosed in people who had undergone physical and emotional trauma. And there it was. My father was suffering from PTSD. It explained everything. Over a period of time, my father and I reconciled, of sorts.

  Just before he died, he was elected into the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame in 2003, and honored by the Phoenix NAACP the same year. But he never did receive recognition from his government. It embittered him even further.

  The events that take place in this book mostly belong to my father’s story; all of them are true, but there are a few events I included that I thought were so telling of the culture of that period, so horrific, that it seemed right to add them to the book. Names are changed for the sake of privacy, but the stories are real and heartbreaking.