Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause

by Mignon F. Ballard

  “You might consider easing up some on all you do in this town, Phoebe dear. Elderberry will get along just fine if you let someone else fill in once in a while. I’m afraid you’re wearing yourself out.”

  Phoebe laughed. “You’re a fine one to talk!”

  “Ah, yes, but I limit my obligations. You know very well what I mean—all these committee meetings, doing this and doing that, and going here and there all the time—and that’s in addition to taking care of all of us. Monroe’s been gone for a good while now. Don’t you think it’s time to slacken the pace?”

  Phoebe began on another apple. “I never thought of that, but I suppose you’re right. I just got in the habit when Monroe was alive … he liked me to stay in touch, you know.”

  “And I’m sure he would like you to stay healthy as well.” Miss Dimple pared an apple in a series of continuous curlicues and, with a sigh of satisfaction, tossed the unbroken peeling over her left shoulder, where it landed with a plop on the green Linoleum floor.

  Phoebe looked on in amazement. “Now, why in the world did you do that?”

  Dimple Kilpatrick smiled. “Why, didn’t you know? If you don’t break the peeling, and toss it over your left shoulder, it’s supposed to tell you the initial of your sweetheart.”

  “You surprise me, Dimple. I didn’t know you were interested in anyone.” Laughing, Phoebe tried to get a look at the coiled peeling on the floor behind them. “Mind telling me who’s the lucky fellow?”

  But Dimple hastily scooped up the peeling and threw it into the trash can. “You’ll be the first to know,” she said, “but for now, I have papers to grade.”

  She smiled to herself upon leaving. Not only had Phoebe laughed for the first time in ages, she could have sworn she was actually trying to pare an apple without breaking the peeling.

  * * *

  To keep her students on their toes that warm September afternoon, Charlie Carr devised a game of multiplication “baseball.” She had found that third graders would work harder to memorize their tables if a competition was involved, so improvised bases were determined on each of the four walls of the classroom and the children divided into two teams: red for the army and blue for the navy. After about fifteen minutes of play, the red team was ahead by two runs when Freddie Myers came up to bat for the blue team and soon had two “strikes” against him. Arithmetic was not one of the child’s better subjects, so to boost his confidence Charlie asked him what she considered an easier question, the product of five times five.

  Five, the magic number. Charlie smiled to herself. Will had written earlier that he would attempt to telephone her at five that afternoon. He had something to tell her, he said, something he didn’t want to put into a letter …

  “Miss Charlie, make Freddie sit down!” Harold Shugart complained. “He said five times five was twenty and he’s done struck out. It’s our time now.”

  “But I meant twenty-five!” Freddie wailed. “Please give me another chance, Miss Charlie.”

  “I’m sure your intentions were good, Freddie. However, your answer was wrong,” Charlie began, startled into the present. How could she allow her mind to wander in the middle of an exercise?

  “My daddy says the road to you-know-where is paved with good intentions,” Linda Ann Orr said primly.

  School had been in session less than a month, and Charlie had already learned to ignore some of Linda Ann’s comments. She did so now. “If all of you promise to study hard, we’ll schedule another game in a week, and both teams will have a second chance to win,” she told them in what she hoped was her best don’t-argue-with-me voice she’d learned from her own former teacher, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick.

  This was one of the days her mother worked at the ordnance plant, and she and Delia would have to have supper ready early if they were to get to rehearsal by seven. Phoebe’s cook, Odessa, had shared a recipe for tuna croquettes that were not only inexpensive but surprisingly good and, if you added enough mashed potatoes to the canned tuna, it would go a long way.

  “If you’ll have the potatoes ready, it won’t take long to put them together when I get home,” she’d told her sister at breakfast, but Delia was nowhere around when Charlie got home that afternoon, and she found the potatoes still in the bin in the pantry. She had peeled and sliced the last of the tomatoes and cucumbers from their small victory garden and was rolling the croquettes in cracker crumbs prior to frying when her sister breezed in the front door, crying baby in tow.

  “Oops! I forgot to cook the potatoes—sorry! Millie called and wanted to rehearse the skit, and she has some great ideas for our costumes. Wait till you see them.” Delia transferred a fussy Tommy into Charlie’s waiting arms. “Here, see if you can calm him down while I heat his oatmeal for supper.”

  Charlie held her hungry little nephew against her shoulder and kissed his wet cheek. Would she and Will ever have one of their own? The thought brought a happy surge of warmth that began in her toes and settled comfortably in her heart. She glanced at the clock. In twenty minutes he would call.

  “Why don’t I change Pooh’s diaper while you warm his supper and set the table?” she suggested. “Mama should be home any minute, and we can have an early supper.”

  But Jo Carr had been home only a few minutes before the telephone rang, and Charlie, still struggling to pin a wiggling baby’s diaper, heard her mother answer from the hallway.

  “Yes, Lou, I know … I won’t forget. It’s on my list. She said what? Well, how does she know? My goodness, Lou, you should know by now you can’t believe … yes, I remember…”

  Charlie looked at the clock. In five minutes Will would call, and her aunt Louise could go on and on forever. Panicking, she took the windup alarm clock into the hall where her mother had settled comfortably for an extended chat.

  “Wait a minute, Lou, Charlie’s trying to tell me something … yes, Charlie, I know what time it is…”

  Sighing with frustration, Charlie set the dry-diapered baby in his grandmother’s lap and scrambled to find a piece of scrap paper on which she hastily printed: “WILL IS GOING TO CALL AT FIVE. PLEASE GET OFF THE PHONE!”

  But although her mother quickly made her excuses and hung up the receiver, the telephone remained silent. At five thirty, her stomach in turmoil, Charlie went back into the kitchen and heated shortening to fry the croquettes for supper.

  “Do you want me to heat up a can of corn?” Delia asked as her mother settled Tommy in the high chair that had belonged to his mother, and to Fain and Charlie before her.

  “I guess.” Charlie wanted to cry. She didn’t care what they ate, or even if they ate. Will had said he would call at five and that was thirty minutes ago. Over thirty minutes ago. She didn’t think she would care if she ever ate again.

  “Charlie, you told me yourself, Will said he would try to call at five,” her mother reminded her. “He might not have been able to get to a phone. Just be patient, honey, you’ll hear from him in time.”

  But like some of her grade school students, Charlie Carr had no patience with patience. She longed to hear Will Sinclair’s warm, distinctive voice with more than a suggestion of his rural North Carolina upbringing and an endearing hint of humor. And she wanted to hear it now.

  They had just sat down to supper at a little after six when the telephone rang again. Charlie answered on the second ring.

  “Hey,” Will said. “Do you think you could just squeeze yourself through the telephone wires and pop out here on my end? I’d sure like to hold you, Charlie Carr.”

  Charlie smiled. If only it were possible! “You’re the one who can fly.”

  “I’d be standing at your door right now, but your Uncle Sam’s downright selfish about sharing his planes—especially the B-13s we’re flying now—gets kinda testy about it.” Charlie could picture him standing there with a funny little half smile on his face. “I’m glad I caught you,” he continued. “Had to stand in line for the phone, and there are a bunch of fellas making ugly faces at m
e right now, so guess I’d better hurry …

  “Listen, is there a chance you might be able meet me in Rome this weekend? I’ve an opportunity to fly with a buddy to Gadsden, and he has an uncle there who’ll let us use his car to get over to Rome. His girl’s in school there.”

  Charlie knew of Shorter College in the northwest Georgia town because that was where Delia was slated to go before she decided to marry right out of high school.

  “Elaine—that’s Don’s girlfriend—says you can stay with her in the dorm. I only have a twenty-four-hour pass, but it would give us at least a few hours together.”

  The few seconds of silence on the line were heavy with longing from both directions. “Charlie? If I could only see you—even for a little while! Please say you’ll come.” His voice was husky with emotion, and Charlie Carr felt her heart dissolve into warm mush. A team of oxen couldn’t keep her away.

  “I don’t think we have enough gasoline rations for me to drive, but I’ll try to get there by bus,” she said. “No, I take that back … I will get there by bus.” Charlie took down Elaine’s address and phone number and promised she would see him soon. She would walk all the way if she had to!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Oh, why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? Something was wrong, bad wrong, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Who would believe him? Besides, he had secrets of his own. All this time he’d had an uneasy feeling he needed to look over his shoulder, but now it was more than a feeling, and he knew it as well as he knew his name. Somebody wanted to kill him.

  * * *

  The bus to Rome was a sea of khaki, and although almost every seat was taken when Charlie got on in Atlanta, at least ten servicemen rose to offer her a place. Thanking them, she declined and made her way to the middle of the bus, where she squeezed in beside a grandmotherly woman with a lapful of knitting.

  “Socks,” the woman told her. “Socks for the servicemen. It keeps me occupied, and I like to feel I’m doing my part for the war effort, no matter how small.” Mrs. Estelle Addington was on her way back home to Lindale, Georgia, after visiting her sister in Atlanta, and within five minutes Charlie knew she had two grandsons in the army and one in the navy; her husband, Ralph, had just retired from the cotton mill; and the summer before, she had put up forty quarts of tomatoes and forty-three of green beans from her victory garden.

  To save time, Jo Carr had insisted on driving her daughter to meet the bus in Atlanta. Where else would she use her gas coupons? she said. And to save money, Aunt Lou had packed a lunch of fried chicken, deviled eggs, and dainty cream cheese and olive sandwiches cut into triangles with the crusts trimmed off. Charlie’s seatmate accepted a drumstick but refused more, saying she had eaten a huge breakfast and expected her daughter to have dinner ready when she got home, so Charlie shared with the two young soldiers across the aisle. They were on their way home on leave, they said: one to Acworth, and the other would get off in Cartersville. The bus stopped at every little crossroad along the way, and where some passengers disembarked, others took their places. Some of them slept, most looked tired, and all were young. After polishing off his third deviled egg, the private who would get off the bus in Cartersville said he planned to catch a ride home from there, and Charlie assured him he wouldn’t have a long wait. Most people made a point to offer a ride to anyone in uniform, and it was considered unpatriotic to pass one by.

  Today, Charlie decided, she would put the puzzle of the missing shotgun, the gruesome discovery of the skeleton, and Phoebe Chadwick’s peculiar behavior from her mind and concentrate on the long-awaited reunion with Will. How refreshing it would be to pretend—even for a little while—that it was all a bad dream! She had boarded the bus early in the day, but it seemed to take forever to reach its destination.

  In the small city of Marietta, rows and rows of tiny apartments, shaded by pines, lined the road to provide living quarters for the thousands of men and women who had come there to work at the Bell Bomber Plant, where they labored steadily to produce the fighter planes Will and his fellow pilots might one day fly. She knew that Miss Dimple’s brother, Henry, lived nearby and was involved in the development of a special project there.

  The bus was sweltering, and Estelle and her lapful of yarn took up more than her share of the seat. Somebody behind them was eating a banana, and the smell of it was almost overpowering. One of the young men who had shared her lunch insisted on treating her to a Coke when they stopped at tiny Kennesaw, and Charlie drained the bottle gratefully. From the bus window she could see the still-green slopes of Kennesaw Mountain, the site of a major battle during the War Between the States, with the village scattered below.

  Charlie was glad Aunt Lou had thought to provide lunch as the stops were frequent and tiresome, and morning wore slowly into afternoon. By the time they reached Emerson, her clothing was sticking to her back, and she took advantage of a restroom break to dash cooling water on her face.

  The blond pageboy she had taken so much trouble rolling on socks the night before now hung in damp, limp strands about her face, and her dress looked as if she’d slept in it. As much as she looked forward to seeing Will, Charlie hoped she would have time to freshen up and change when she reached the college, and since Shorter was located several miles from the bus station, she would have to take a taxi to get there.

  Her friend across the aisle waved good-bye to her as he left the bus in Cartersville, and a few miles down the road, her seatmate squeezed past her to reunite with her waiting husband in Lindale. Charlie smiled as she watched the older couple’s shy embrace, which amounted to a brief “half hug” and a kiss on the cheek. Would she and Will be like that when they grew old? And how would he greet her now?

  Charlie scooted next to the window to make room for a young mother with a sleeping baby in her arms. The baby—a girl, the mother said—was not quite three months old. Her father, an ensign in the navy, was on duty somewhere in the Pacific, and they were on their way to Rome for an extended visit with her parents.

  Charlie told her about her sister, Delia, and how much joy little Tommy had brought into their lives. “I’m getting to be an old hand at changing diapers and mixing formula,” she said.

  The young mother smiled, but she seemed tired, and Charlie offered to hold the baby so she could rest. In a very few minutes, her seatmate fell into an exhausted sleep with her head nodding on her chest.

  The baby was hot against her breast, and Charlie shifted her onto her shoulder. She smelled of sour milk and sweet baby sweat, and her hair curled in fair damp ringlets above her tiny ears. Although Charlie spent a lot of time taking care of her nephew, the main responsibility of his care belonged to Delia. How would she cope if she were in the same situation? Charlie wondered. Would she still be able to teach? And how awful it must be to be separated from your child’s father, not knowing if he would ever be coming home. She knew this was probably why her sister grasped each opportunity to take part in the social activities of the community, why she spent so much time with the new coach’s wife. Fun things. It kept her from thinking of all the horrid disasters that might take place.

  It was hard enough to be apart from Will knowing of the dangerous training he was undergoing and that soon he would be in combat. But still, she longed for more—to be a part of him and to share his life

  Soon … soon. The outskirts of Rome raced by the window. Soon she would see his face, feel his arms around her.

  * * *

  “Don phoned from Gadsden, and they should be here before too long,” Elaine said on greeting her. “They want to take us to the General Forrest for dinner, and my aunt Pat has invited us over for dessert. She and my uncle don’t live far from here, so we’ll be able to spend some time there before we have to be back in the dorm.” Because she was a senior, Elaine said, she was allowed to stay out until eleven on weekends. The curfew was familiar to Charlie, who had graduated from Brenau College less than two years before.

  Charlie did the best sh
e could with her hair and changed into a dark skirt and the apple green blouse she’d bought for the occasion from Emmaline’s daughter, Arden, at Brumlow’s Dry Goods. Because most of the nylon was now being used in the manufacture of parachutes, women had to rely on cheap rayon stockings, which were prone to tear and run. Some had even resorted to “painting” a seam on the back of their legs with an eyebrow pencil.

  Charlie smoothed her rayons on carefully and hoped they would be presentable for at least this one night. Her three-year-old pumps, shined and resoled, and her mother’s pearls completed her attire.

  Plain! I look so plain! Charlie made a face at herself in the mirror. Well, it was too late now. She would just have to wear what she’d brought. The General Forrest, Elaine told her, was a nice hotel and the food was good, but you didn’t have to dress to the nines. Charlie added a dab of lipstick and pinched her cheeks for color. She was glad to see Elaine in a modest sweater and skirt.

  The young men, they were told, were waiting for them in the lobby, and Charlie’s heart thundered so on the way downstairs, she was sure Will must have heard it. He sat in a wing chair by the fireplace with his hat on his knee, and of course he stood when they entered. Charlie held her breath. She just wanted to stand there and look at him.

  “Just let me look at you,” Will said, and Charlie laughed. How did he know she was thinking the same thing? He didn’t touch her except to take her hand because the housemother was sitting by the window with needlework in her lap, but they all knew her eyes weren’t on the needlework. Elaine took care of introductions all around; the housemother told them she hoped they would enjoy their dinner at the General Forrest, the two women signed out in the little book beside the door, and they were free!

  Will and Charlie climbed into the backseat, and he waited until they were a good way down the drive before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “I’ve been thinking about this for months,” he whispered. So had she. Charlie kissed him again. His uniform was different, his hat was different, even the insignia was different, but his kisses were the same, and it would have suited her just fine to spend the rest of the night right there in his arms.