I remember how the radio was on, playing music. One minute we were listening to some patriotic tunes—and the next minute President Truman’s voice was interrupting to announce how the Allies had dropped a bomb on Japan that was two thousand times stronger than any bomb ever used in wartime.
“What?” Mrs. Delaney spun around. “Willajean, turn up that radio.”
As the president kept talking, all of us were so still, you woulda thought we’d been turned into pillars. “The bomb has harnessed the power of the universe,” the president’s voice of doom continued, “and it will bring down a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.”
Right then, I thought poor Mrs. Delaney was gonna collapse. The eyes behind her glasses glazed over and her body started swaying. Peaches’s hand flew toward her elbow, trying to catch her. I grabbed a chair and she sank into it. Man oh man, it was close. A few more inches either way, and she woulda been facedown.
The president kept talking about the bomb that had been dropped on Japan—an atomic bomb, he called it. But Mrs. Delaney had stopped listening by then. She was staring toward the kitchen window, where the curtains were hanging limp as laundry. No wind. “The world’s ending,” she whispered weakly. “The apocalypse is coming.”
I’m telling you, her faraway voice gave me the creepy-crawlies.
“Now, Mrs. Delaney, you know that’s not true,” Peaches said, hands on her hips, her righteous voice taking over from the radio. “The president of the United States wouldn’t come on the radio to tell us the world is ending. It’s a beautiful morning, everything outside looks fine and dandy, nothing different at all. Here, put this cloth on your forehead to calm yourself down, and stop worrying about nonsense.” She ran a towel under the spigot and then held it toward Mrs. Delaney, who waved it away.
Mrs. Delaney was an avid Bible reader. She studied her scarlet-edged copy faithfully every night, and the Book of Revelation seemed to be one of her favorites. “Never hurts to be prepared for what’s coming,” she’d tell us, whenever she sat down to read. Which probably explains why she was convinced the end of the world had arrived.
“We’ve gone and let out the four horsemen, God help us, we have,” she repeated, rocking back and forth as if she was in a trance, eyes staring. “The sun’s going to go out next and the stars are going to fall out of the sky and fire and earthquakes are going to consume us.”
“Now, you hush up, Mrs. Delaney.” Peaches’s voice was firmer. “The world hasn’t ended yet. No need to go scaring everybody over something that hasn’t happened.” Meaning me and Willajean, of course, although I think she’d given Peaches the end-of-the-world jitters too. When a train thundered past the house a few minutes later, all of us jumped about ten feet.
It was Peaches who switched off the radio and ordered me and Willajean out the door. “Get some air. Don’t want you listening to all this bad news. Here’s some money for some ice creams.” In the hallway, she dug some change outta her purse and handed it to us without even looking at it. “Go on now.”
Me and Willajean stepped outside like we’d been sent into a minefield. Doom was coming. A brown sparrow darted in front of us and the thought crossed my mind that the ordinary sparrow could be the last bird we ever saw. Couldn’t help looking around at all the possible lasts: last bird, last wilty geranium, last spiderweb, last pillowcases on the line, last empty milk bottles on the steps. The sky was the same washed-out blue it had been for weeks, but the color felt like a trick—a peaceful camouflage curtain, hiding something unknown behind it.
“You afraid?” Willajean asked me, eyes blinking behind her glasses. “Because I am.”
“Naw,” I said, keeping my voice easy.
“What if they drop one like that on us?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know? Why couldn’t they?”
Willajean was too smart for her own good. Sometimes I wished she’d just stop thinking.
“Tell me why they couldn’t, Levi. Tell me some reasons why not.”
While I was trying to come up with an answer, tears started coming down Willajean’s face, and pretty soon the girl couldn’t breathe from all the hard crying she was doing. We had to stop walking and I dug around in my pockets trying to find something to offer her, but all I had were the pennies and nickels from Peaches and crumpled bits of paper.
Willajean’s words poured out along with her tears. “I want to be a poet like Emily Dickinson someday and write poetry everbody reads, and live in a nice house that isn’t yellow, and save all the dogs in the world, and have a handsome fellow who loves me and thinks I’m pretty, and marries me …” The torrent of words kept going. “It isn’t fair, all those people in the Bible got to live as long as they wanted—why does the world have to come to an end while we’re living in it?” She turned toward me, her glasses steamed up and her face a mess of tear trails. “I know I’m not pretty at all or your girl or anything, Levi, but do you think you could kiss me just this once?”
What? Under the word shocked in the encyclopedia woulda been a picture of my face right then. Kiss Willajean Delaney? In the middle of a neighborhood street?
“Please, Levi, nobody’s ever kissed me. I’m going into high school and nobody’s ever kissed me and I don’t want to die without being kissed by somebody.”
Her face looked so certain of our doom that the same worries started running through my brain. What if the world ended and all the time I spent getting ready for my future—wearing Vaseline on my hair and going to school and all—was wasted too? What if my life was over before it was started?
I know it probably sounds crazy, but just in case Willajean Delaney was the last girl on earth I’d ever meet, I decided I’d better kiss her. Not on her lips, of course. I got my limits, you know. Even if I was sure the world was ending right then, I wouldn’t kiss Willajean Delaney on the lips. I planted a fast kiss on the side of her face. Well, closer to her ear than her cheek. It was strange to be that up-close to a girl’s face, though. I could smell the strawberry jam Willajean always put on her toast for breakfast. Her cheek wasn’t as soft as I woulda thought either. Not like a sponge cake, which is what I was expecting—more like an apple. Not that I went around kissing apples much.
After I kissed her, Willajean’s eyes lit up, even with all the tears. “Thank you, Levi.”
“Sure,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets and double-timing it down the street. Told myself maybe love is kissing somebody you don’t like, just to keep the world from ending.
Lucky for me, the world was still there the next day. It was a big relief to know Willajean wasn’t gonna be the last and only girl I ever kissed. I think all of us felt grateful for getting another hazy August day on earth when we got up the next morning. With the Delaneys’ yellow house already starting to boil, the four of us ate breakfast on the porch and listened to the radio, which didn’t tell us much. No more atomic bombs had been dropped, so that was good news. But the Japs hadn’t surrendered. Nobody seemed to have any idea what would happen next. Felt like the world was holding its breath.
“Wait till the men hear all this news when they get back. They aren’t gonna believe everything that’s happened,” Mrs. Delaney kept saying over and over, like a stuck button on a jukebox—until Peaches finally changed the topic to ants and how they were crawling up her bedroom wall, which sent Mrs. Delaney running off in search of them and left us in peace.
Late that afternoon, the troopers finally came back from their fire mission. I was on the back steps, peeling potatoes, when the C-47s soared over town. “Peel faster, Levi,” Peaches called out from the kitchen window, “or we’re never gonna get them potatoes mashed in time to feed the boys if they’re hungry.”
After the planes disappeared, we went back to our work. Didn’t give them a second thought. About an hour later, we heard the familiar rattling sound of Graphite in the distance, and we went out front to meet the fellows like we always did. P
eaches was particular about the routine. She always wore the same dress, stood in the same spot, and held Victory up, so she could watch her daddy coming down the road. Mrs. Delaney and Willajean fixed lemonade and cookies. I had the job of standing on the porch and telling everybody when Graphite turned the corner.
This time, what seemed strange was the slow way the car made the left onto the Delaneys’ street. Nobody said a word, but I think all of us had the same feeling of something being wrong. When the automobile got closer and it was clear my father was driving and Cal was next to him, all of us took a deep gulp of relief. Heard Peaches whisper a hallelujah. But the grim look on my daddy’s face straightened us right up. “Cal’s all right,” he said stiffly, as he got out of the car and came around to the passenger side. “Just got banged up some.”
Even before my daddy got there to help, Cal was doing his best to ease out of the car by himself. “Busted an arm this time,” he said to all of us, pointing at the sling that crisscrossed his chest. “And messed up a couple of ribs pretty good.” Then his brave smile seemed to crumble and his shoulders started to shake. Peaches pushed the baby into Mrs. Delaney’s arms and flew toward him. My father leaned over too, resting his hands on his legs, like he was trying to compose himself. It took me a minute to understand what Cal was saying to Peaches as the two of them held each other as careful as glass. His injuries were nothing, that’s what he kept repeating. “I’m fine,” he said over and over to Peaches.
Finally my father filled in what Cal couldn’t. “We had a couple of jumpers hurt pretty bad.” He paused, staring down at his boots. “And we lost one of our men.”
We were prepared for bad news, but none of us were expecting to hear those terrible words. In all the dangerous jumps they’d done, the 555th had never lost a man. It was the one thing they were most proud of. Being unbeatable. Invincible. Lucky. I remembered how Uncle Otis used to tell customers that the only thing separating the lucky from the unlucky was time and a good haircut.
Their luck had run out, my daddy said.
Peaches was the one who finally asked the question nobody else could. “Which of the troopers was it?” she said, looking in my father’s direction for the answer.
I know it’s probably a mortal sin to say this—but part of me hoped it would turn out to be one of the fellows we didn’t know real well. Or somebody like Ace, who wasn’t well liked by anybody who did know him.
It was a hard slam in the stomach when my daddy said it was Mickey. I heard Willajean gasp behind me.
Mickey. My father couldn’t be right about the name. That’s the first thought that went through my mind. There had to be a mistake. It couldn’t be Mickey, the soldier who hardly looked old enough to be a paratrooper. The kid who’d pitched horseshoes with me and Willajean on the Fourth of July. The one who’d caught a rainbow trout with his bare hands in the Umatilla River. It was like hearing the sudden news of the atomic bomb dropping and realizing that anybody’s life could come to an end in an instant. It made death seem real close to all of us, you know what I mean?
My father’s face was an unreadable mask—a silent movie—as he stood by the car. Couldn’t decide whether I ought to go over and put my arm around his shoulders or not. Didn’t want to start us both crying. Mrs. Delaney touched my arm and whispered that she and Willajean would go inside and make some strong coffee for everybody’s nerves. Think they must’ve tiptoed up the porch steps behind us, with Mrs. Delaney still holding tight to Victory.
But my father didn’t stay. He told me and Peaches that he wasn’t ready for talking about what had happened yet. “If Cal wants to talk about it, that’s up to him. I have a responsibility to Mickey’s family first” was all he said before he walked stiffly back to the car. He was the picture of aloneness as he drove away by himself, and I felt as if I was watching the last person on earth leave. Wished I’d known better what to do.
Later on, Cal told us more of the story, although I’m not sure any of us wanted to hear it. Willajean ran upstairs, saying she didn’t want to know how Mickey died—that she wasn’t gonna believe it was true. I guess the rest of us felt duty-bound to stay. We sat around the kitchen table with the supper preparations scattered where we’d left them. A pan of potatoes on the range. A wilting pile of greens on the counter. Mrs. Delaney poured us cups of coffee that were strong enough to take rust off a car. Nobody drank more than a sip or two.
Cal said the trouble had happened when they were landing. The drop zone had been tight with trees and rocks. “A couple of us busted bones and got cut up by branches as we were coming down,” he said. “It was a real tricky spot to land on.”
But Mickey got the worst of it, he said, getting tangled high in a hundred-fifty-foot fir tree. He’d been trying to lower himself to the ground with his letdown ropes when something happened.
Cal had to stop talking and gather his emotions before he could continue. “Could’ve slipped, or lost his grip on the rope, or who knows,” Cal told us, his voice dissolving more with each word. “Nothing any of us could do to help him. Nobody could’ve survived the fall from the height he was at.” The men had spent two days walking through the mountains to bring Mickey’s body to a town where it could be flown back to Pendleton.
My father was taking it hard, Cal told us. “Boots is having a real tough time of it.” His eyes shifted toward me. “I think he’s blaming himself for okaying the tight drop zone and letting everybody jump. Says if it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have had jumpers hurt and Mickey wouldn’t be dead. I tried to tell him anybody who jumps into the sky with a parachute strapped on his back takes the chance of dying.”
Peaches jabbed her finger in Cal’s direction. “And you ain’t doing it ever again, Calvin Thomas. Not ever. Don’t care what the Japs do in this war or how many forests burn up. You ain’t jumping again. Not if you plan on staying married to me.”
“We’ll see,” Cal answered.
“Nope, we ain’t seeing nothing.”
Then, in the middle of all this sadness, the two of them started razzing each other like old times. Peaches with her arms crossed and her eyes giving that prickly stare. Cal poking at her knotted arms, trying to make her laugh. You could tell Mrs. Delaney didn’t know what to think about them. I used to see the same thing at funerals with Aunt Odella. How a roomful of people could go from a bottomless pit of grief to laughter in the span of a few minutes. Sometimes I wished I was the same way.
* * *
Guess my daddy kept his emotions inside too. The only way you would have known how hard he was taking Mickey’s death was if you’d seen what happened the next day.
I was standing in the hallway when I heard Graphite drive up and the frustrated slam of a car door. Cal was fast asleep next to the fan in Mrs. Delaney’s front room, where we’d been trying to give him some peace and quiet after all he’d been through.
Without even thinking, my daddy called out Cal’s name before his feet hit the front-porch steps. Poor Cal jumped up so quickly, he was lucky not to snap a few more ribs. I don’t think we were supposed to hear what was said between the two of them on the privacy of the porch, but being only a few feet away, I couldn’t help it.
You could hear my father’s soft voice shaking with fury. “Just met with the colonel. He said I can’t escort Mickey’s body home for burial. Tried to tell him it’s my responsibility to do that for Mickey and his family. I was Mickey’s commanding officer on the mission and he was just a kid, couple years older than my own son.”
My ears burned, listening.
“Who’s the colonel want to send?” Cal asked.
My father told him none of the officers were being allowed to go. “Colonel says he’ll only approve sending two enlisted men. That’s it. Says there’s no need to waste an officer on an errand like this one.”
A bunch of cusswords about the colonel ricocheted through the screen door, and then there was a long space of silence. I eased my back against the wall, worrying they’d guesse
d I was there.
But Cal’s voice spoke up again. “You want me and Peaches to escort Mickey’s body back home? You know we’d be willing to do that for anybody. Me and Peaches would see to it that everything was done right and honorable for him, and we could give his folks a hand with whatever they needed.”
My father didn’t answer.
“You know I won’t be jumping again for weeks, maybe months,” Cal continued. “So I’m no damn use to the outfit right now anyway. I’ll just be pushing paper or counting pencils or who knows what. Colonel shouldn’t care a scratch about me going—probably be glad to get rid of me. Afterward, me and Peaches could go and stay with her folks in Georgia until my arm gets healed up.” Cal tried joking. “By then, the war will probably be over, and I’ll have cracked enough bones to be let out of the service anyhow.”
“An officer always looks after his men. It’ll be on my conscience forever, not taking him home,” my father said.
“It’ll be there no matter what you do, Boots. You know that as well as I do. All of us are family.”
Guess my father must’ve decided Cal was right. And convinced the colonel too. The next day, Peaches and Cal were packing up to leave. From the way Peaches was humming to herself and talking to baby Victory about all the people she’d meet in Georgia, I don’t think she was too unhappy about going home. Mrs. Delaney made a big fuss over the two of them, saying how much she was going to miss being like a granny to Victory. “It’s been years since I had any little babies around here. I got so used to her.”
Cal and Peaches tried talking to me before they left. After we had listened to the news broadcasts about the second atom bomb being dropped on Japan, we went and sat on the porch steps in the dark. It felt almost like old times back in Southern Pines, if you could ignore the trains roaring past every so often. Cal insisted he and Peaches would be real upset if I didn’t look them up again someday and come for a visit. How I was always welcome, no matter where they were.
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