“My, such a fuddy-duddy,” Miss LaRaina said.
Phoebe’d picked up on my jitters, and my behavior struck her as rude or immature. Her pretty lips seemed to’ve wrapped themselves around a sour lemon drop.
“So how’s Miss Giselle?” she suddenly piped, then went back to sucking her make-believe candy.
“Fine,” Mister JayMac said. “Now. Where would you gals advise taking our hero for a victory supper?”
“Ast him where he’d like to go,” Phoebe said.
Mister JayMac said, “But he’s ignorant of his choices.”
“Ast him what he’d like to eat,” Phoebe said. “American, Eye-talian, Chinese.”
Mister JayMac lifted an eyebrow at me. At that moment, I had all the appetite of a spooked cat. I was trying to adjust to Miss LaRaina’s presence and cooling down from nine innings of sticky twilight baseball.
“The Live Oak Tea Room at the Oglethorpe,” Miss LaRaina suggested.
Phoebe looked at me. “Thass a nice place.”
“The Linenmakers booked rooms at the Oglethorpe,” Mister JayMac said. “The tea room’s going to swarm with em.”
Miss LaRaina smiled at her uncle. “I know.”
Mister JayMac’s jaw tightened. “Have a care,” he said. “For decency. For your daughter.”
“Phoebe’s not likely to put the mash on a Linenmaker. She hates ballplayers.”
“Not awluvem,” Phoebe said.
You could’ve fooled me. The pinched V between her eyebrows and the pucker of her mouth didn’t say fondness, not in any language I knew.
“The Oglethorpe Tea Room is out,” Mister JayMac said.
“Corporal John’s over on Penticuff Strip?” Miss LaRaina said. “It’s got an attractive clientele.”
“Absolutely not.”
“A joke. It’s closed today anyway. Sunday sure limits a body’s choices here in Highbridge.”
Mister JayMac herded us into the parking lot, where Darius had pulled the Caddy as close as he could to the main gate, given the fans still about. Darkness’d just begun to settle, and several groups of people smoked and gabbed in the parking lot. Dance music drifted from a radio through an open car window. Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller.
Before we could get in the Caddy, a hefty man in overalls and a frowzy woman in a print dress came over. Their clothes seemed to have as much dust as cotton in them.
“Jordan McKissic?” the man said. “Thass you, aint it?
“It is. How may I help you?”
“Show him, Sue Beth.”
The woman-Sue Beth-pushed a paper under Mister JayMac’s nose. He retreated a step.
“S from the War Department,” the man said. “Hit us a coupla days back. It’s our Donnie.”
“He aint coming home,” the woman said. “He done got kilt in North Africa.”
“I’m sorry,” Mister JayMac said. “A terrible thing.”
“You oughta be,” the woman said. “You done for him. You took him when he coulda had him-shoulda had him-a heping-job zemption. Eye-talians didn’t kill our Donny. You did it with a stinkm fountain pen.”
Mister JayMac said, “Please, folks, tell me yall’s names.”
“The Crawfords,” the man said. “Ira and Sue Beth. Little people, ordinary folk. Ordinary!” Crawford didn’t exactly shout, but his kettle-drum voice carried. Some loitering fans began ambling towards us.
“Donnie never shoulda gone!” Sue Beth Crawford did shout. “And you damn-all know it too!”
“Mrs Crawford, God bless your martyred son,” Mister JayMac said. “I’m sorry every American boy who dies has to make that sacrifice.”
“Yessir,” Ira Crawford said. “But the draft board had its quota to fill so you thew our innosunt young un in.”
“Every boy in the hopper’s innocent in one way or another. Thank God we don’t yet have an army of criminals and cynics.”
“Yore precious ballplayers don’t go!” Crawford accused.
“Not one Hellbender comes from here,” Mister JayMac said. “They’re too young or old, or their local draft boards exempted them. I pulled no strings for any player.”
“Mebbe you did, mebbe you didn’t,” Ira Crawford said. “But you cain’t say the same bout thatere black nigger. How come he aint on bivouac someres?”
Darius heard this-he had to’ve-but he opened the Caddy’s rear door and helped Phoebe and Miss LaRaina in.
“Mr Crawford, federal law forbids inducting Negroes in greater numbers than they appear in the general population. Hothlepoya County has almost as many coloreds as whites so we take more than most boards, but a limit exists.”
“Hog slop,” Ira Crawford said.
“Look, even if we loaded the Army with coloreds, they’d end up in service units-the quartermaster corps and such. They probably wouldn’t fight and die like you and the missus seem to want em to.”
Near the big Caddy, you could’ve heard a cricket poot. Sue Beth started to cry, Ira cursed. They joined hands and walked back through the dusty lot to a dented Ford pickup loaded down with feed sacks.
“I am sorry about your son!” Mister JayMac called out.
“I bet,” said somebody unseeable in the crowd.
The Crawfords slammed opposite doors and rattled away in their spavined pickup.
“Git in, sir,” Darius said. “I’ll drive yall to the Royal.” He meant the Royal Hotel, a place with a restaurant supposedly even better than the Oglethorpe’s.
Off we rode. Mister JayMac sat next to Darius, brooding. Miss LaRaina jabbered away, happy that the Hellbenders had won and made a move in the standings.
17
In the Chamberlain’s room at the Royal Hotel, we all had prime rib-except Darius, who ate beef soup and French bread in the kitchen. (Judging by the fruity smell on his breath after, he’d also tossed back some of the house wine.) Mister JayMac’s mood improved. Miss LaRaina was his “date.” Phoebe, going by age and seating arrangements, was mine.
Talk ran from baseball to a possible invasion of Sicily to Phoebe’s plans for her senior year at Watson High. I learned that in Georgia the senior year was only a student’s eleventh of public schooling. (Not until after the war did Georgia create a twelfth year.) That made me-next to crackers Ankers, Heggie, and Dobbs-nearlybout a college man.
“S a bother you cain’t talk,” Phoebe finally said to me. “You shore this condition aint some sort of numbskull play for sympathy?”
“Be nice, Phoeb,” Miss LaRaina said. “And purge yourself, please, of those irritating cain’ts and aints.”
“I cain’t,” Phoebe said. “It aint in the cards. And I’m bout as nice as Mr Boles deserves.”
Mister JayMac changed the subject. “You talked when I met you. You stammered, but you talked. What happened?”
“Smart, Uncle JayMac,” Miss LaRaina said. “You’ve asked him to tell you what rendered him speechless.”
“Taint a silly thing to ast if he’s faking,” Phoebe said. “It makes tons o sense.”
I’d’ve liked to tell Mister JayMac that what’d struck me dumb was seeing Miss LaRaina jaybird nude on the stairs, but that sequence of events didn’t exactly gibe. Everyone stared at me, though, like I might talk; and if my tongue’d worked, I’d’ve given them the Gettysburg Address just to be polite. In fact, I tried to talk: a gargle, a gag, a hack.
Which disgusted Phoebe. “Dogs,” she said. In my inside jacket pocket I had the small notebook Jumbo’d given me. I pulled it out. Mister JayMac saw me patting my pockets for something to write with and reached me his fountain pen. (The one he’d used on Donnie Crawford’s draft papers?)
I opened my notebook and thought. What could I tell these people? I couldn’t tell them about Sergeant Pumphrey. Hell, I couldn’t even think about that. I probably didn’t think about it. I had no mental picture of Pumphrey at all-the man didn’t exist for me in Highbridge.
So I printed: On the train from Tenkiller I had a had dream. My daddy flew at me in a plane. A long metal runway rolled at me and knocked me down. When I woke up I couldn’t talk. I tore out the sheet of paper and passed it across the table to Mister JayMac.