"Shh…"
"And I was screamin, Red!… Re-e-e-d!" He lifted his face and screamed it to a silent sky, screamed it so long and loud the veins stood out like marble carvings along his temples, up his neck and above his clenched fists.
"You didn’t kill him, you were trying to save him."
Rage replaced his grief. "I killed my best friend and they gave me a fucking Purple Heart for it!"
She could have argued that the Purple Heart was justly earned, in a different battle, but she could see this was no time for reasoning. He needed to voice his rage, work it out like pus from a festering wound. So she rubbed his shoulders, swallowed her own tears and offered the silent abeyance she knew he needed.
"Now his fianceé writes-God, how he loved her-and says, It’s okay, Corporal Parker, you mustn’t blame yourself." He dropped his head onto his arms again. "Well, doesn’t she see I got to blame myself? He was always talkin’ about how the four of us were g-gonna meet after the w-war and we’d maybe buy a car and go on v-vacation someplace together, maybe up in the Smoky Mountains where it’s-it’s c-cool in the s-summer and him and me c-could go-go f-fish-" He turned and threw himself into Elly’s arms, propelled by the force of anguish. He clasped her, burrowing, accepting her consolation at last. She held him, rocked him, let his tears wet her dress. "Aw, Elly-Elly-g-goddamn the war."
She held his head as if he were no older than Lizzy, closed her eyes and grieved with him, for him, and became once again the mother/wife he would always need her to be.
In time his breathing grew steadier, his embrace eased. "Red was a good friend."
"Tell me about him."
"You want to read the letter?"
"No. I read enough letters when you were gone. You tell me."
He did. Calmly this time, what it had really been like on the Canal. About the misery, the fear, the deaths and the carnage. About the "Last Supper" on board The Argonaut,steak and eggs in unlimited supply to fill a man’s gut before he hit the beach expecting to have it shot out; about boarding a rubber raft in a pounding surf that roared so loud in the limber holes of the sub that no man could be heard above it; about that bobbing ride over deadly coral that threatened to slash the rubber boats and drown every man even before they reached the Japanese-infested shore; about arriving wet and staying so for the next three months; about watching your fleet chased off by the enemy, leaving you cut off from supplies indefinitely; about charging into a grass hut with your finger cocked and watching human beings fly backwards and drop with the surprise still on their faces; about learning what three species of ants are edible while you lay on your belly for two days with a sniper waiting in a tree, and the ants beneath your nose become your dinner; about the Battle of Bloody Ridge; about watching men lay in torment for days while flies laid eggs in their wounds; about eating coconuts until you wished the malaria would get you before the trots did; about the twitch of a human body even after it’s dead. And finally, about Red, the Red he’d loved. The live Red, not the dead one.
And when Will had purged himself, when he felt drained and exhausted, Elly took his hand and they walked home together through the late-afternoon sun, through the orchard, through the flower-trimmed pergola, to begin the thankless job of forgetting.
Chapter 20
The war had been hard on Lula. It deprived her of everything she cared most about: nylon stockings, chocolate ice cream-and men. Especially men. The best ones, the healthy, young, virile ones were gone. Only shits like Harley were left, so what choice did she have but to keep on getting what she needed from the big ape? But she couldn’t even blackmail him anymore. In the first place there was no gas to drive to Atlanta and window-shop the way she used to-who could go anywhereon three measly gallons a week!-and even if she could, there was nothing in the stores worth blackmailing for. That damn Roosevelt had control of everything-no cars, no bobby pins, no hair dryers. And nothing, absolutely nothingchocolate! It was beyond Lula why every GI in Europe got so many Hershey bars they were giving them away when folks back home had to do without! She’d put up with a lot, but it took the cake when Roosevelt handed down the order dictating what flavors of ice cream could be made! How the hell did he expect a restaurant to stay in business without chocolate ice cream? And without coffee?
Lula rested a foot on the toilet lid and spread brown leg makeup from toes to thigh, riled afresh by having to do without nylons. How the hell many parachutes did they need anyway? Well, never let it be said that Lula didn’t look her best, no matter what inconveniences she had to put up with. When the makeup was applied, she carefully drew a black line up the back of her leg with a "seam pencil." Dressed in bra and panties, she scooted into her bedroom, leaped onto the high bed and turned her back to the dresser mirror to check the results.
Straight as a shot of Four Feathers blended, right from the bottle!
From her closet she chose the sexiest dress she owned, orange and white jersey with enormous shoulder pads, a diamond cutout above the breast, bared knees and nice, clingy hips. One more time she’d try it, just once, and if she didn’t get results this time, the high and mighty Will Parker could cut holes in his pockets and play with himself for all she cared. After all, a woman had pride.
She squirmed into the dress, tugging it over her head, then returned to the bathroom to comb out her pincurls and fashion her hair into its usual whisked-up foreknot of curls. At least she had wave-set; the curls were hard as metal springs and bounced against her forehead gratifyingly.
All zipped, made-up and perfumed, she patted her hair, posed before the mirror with hands akimbo and calves pressed close, like Betty Grable, practiced her kittenish moue, bared her teeth to check for lipstick smudges, and decided the man’d have to be out of his mind to choose Crazy Elly See over this!
She licked her teeth, breathed into her cupped palm, smelled her breath and dug in her purse for a packet of Sen-Sen. Damn Wrigley’s right along with Roosevelt, for supplying the entire U.S. military service with free gum for the duration of the war while people out here who were willing to pay for it had to suck this rotten Sen-Sen!
But her breath was sweet, her legs sexy and her cleavage showing as she set out to bag her prey. Hot diddly, that man set her to itchin’ worse than ever! An ex-Marine now with a Purple Heart-imagine that!-with a bit of a hitch still detectable in his walk. It only made him more appealing to Lula.
She’d seen him from the window of the restaurant the day in May when he returned from the war, and she’d nearly drowned in her own saliva watching him limp up those library steps to see that old biddy, Mizz Beasley. Before he’d reached the door Lula had pressed her pubis against the backside of the counter for a little relief, and it hadn’t changed since. By August she was still watching the square incessantly for mere glimpses of him, and when he wasn’t in town all she had to do was think of him to get the old juices flowing. Lord, the way he’d looked in that uniform, with those crutches, and that tan, and those sultry eyes beneath the visor of his Marine dress cap. He was the best piece of flesh this town had to offer, and Lula’d have him, by God, or wrinkle up trying!