Nineva had experience with depressed white women. Miz Banning didn’t smile the last four years of her life, and Nineva had held her hand every day. She began sitting with Liza for long periods of time and trying to engage her. At first Liza said almost nothing and cried a lot. So Nineva talked and talked, and told stories of her mother and grandmother and life as a slave. She brought tea and chocolate cookies, and slowly pulled back the curtains. Day after day they sat and talked, and gradually Liza began to realize that her life was not nearly as harsh as others’. She was privileged, and lucky. She was thirty years old, and healthy, with her best days in front of her. She was already a mother, and if she had no more children she would always have a beautiful family.
Nine weeks after the miscarriage, Liza awoke one morning, waited until Pete was out of the house, dressed in her chinos, found her gloves and straw hat, and announced to Nineva that she was needed in the garden. Nineva followed her there and whispered to Amos. He watched her carefully, and when the sun was up and she began to sweat, he insisted they take a break. Nineva arrived with iced tea and lemon, and the three of them sat under a shade tree and had a laugh.
Before long she and Pete were back to their old ways, and while they enjoyed themselves immensely, there was no pregnancy. Two years passed with no news. By her thirty-third birthday, in November of 1940, Liza was convinced beyond any doubt that she was barren.
Chapter 23
The cotton looked especially promising by late summer of 1941. The seeds were in the ground by mid-April. The stalks were waist high by July 4, chest high by Labor Day. The weather was cooperating nicely with hot days, cooler nights, and a heavy rain every other week. After a long winter of clearing land, Pete had managed to plant an additional eighty acres. His bank loans had been extinguished and he was privately vowing to never borrow against his land. As a farmer, though, he knew such vows were not binding. There was so much he could not control.
The encouraging outlook in the fields, though, was tempered by events around the world. In Europe, Germany invaded Poland two years earlier to start the war. The following year it began bombing London, and in June of 1941 Hitler attacked Russia with the largest invasion force in history. In Asia, Japan had been fighting in China for ten years. Its success there prompted it to invade the British, French, and Dutch colonies in the South Pacific. Japan’s goal of the complete domination of East Asia appeared unstoppable. In August of 1941, the United States supplied Japan with 80 percent of its oil. When President Roosevelt announced a complete oil embargo, Japan’s economic and military strength was imperiled.
War seemed imminent on both fronts, and the great debate was how long the U.S. could sit on the sidelines. Pete had many friends who were still active in the army, and not a single one believed the country could remain neutral.
Eight years earlier, he had left the military life behind, and with regret. Now, though, he had no misgivings about his future. He had grown accustomed to the life of a farmer. He adored his wife and children and found happiness in the flow of the seasons, the rhythm of the plantings and harvests. He was in the fields every day, often on horseback and often with Liza at his side, watching his crops and pondering ways to acquire more land. Joel was now fifteen and when he wasn’t in school or doing his numerous chores on the farm, he was in the woods with Pete stalking white-tailed deer and wild turkeys. Stella was thirteen and breezing through school with perfect grades. The family had dinner together every night promptly at seven, and they talked about everything. Increasingly, the conversations were about war.
As a reservist, Pete was certain that he would soon be activated, and the thought of leaving home was painful. He scoffed at his old dreams of military glory. He was a farmer now, too old to be a soldier, at least in his opinion. He knew, though, that the army would not be concerned with his age. Almost weekly he received another letter from a West Point pal who had been activated. All of them vowed to keep in touch.
His orders came on September 15, 1941. He was to report to Fort Riley, Kansas, the home of the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry, his old regiment that was already in the Philippines. He requested a thirty-day delay to oversee the fall harvest, but it was denied.
On October 3, Liza invited a small group of friends to the house to say farewell. In spite of Pete’s efforts to allay all fears, it was not a happy occasion. There were smiles and hugs and offers of good luck and so on, but the fear and tension were palpable. Pete thanked everyone for their thoughts and prayers, and reminded them that across the country scores of young men were being called into duty. The world was on the verge of another great conflict, and in trying times sacrifices were required.
The new preacher, Dexter Bell, was present, along with his wife, Jackie. They had moved to town a month earlier and had been well received. Dexter was young and enthusiastic and a real presence in the pulpit. Jackie had a beautiful voice and had wowed the church with two solos. Their three children were well mannered and polite.
Long after the guests were gone, the Bannings, with Florry, sat in the den and tried to delay the inevitable. Stella clung to her father and fought back tears. Joel, like his father, tried to appear stoic, as if all would be well. He added logs to the fire as they warmed in its glow, each subdued and frightened about the uncertainties before them. The fire eventually died and it was time for bed. Tomorrow was a Saturday and the kids would sleep in.
A few hours later, at sunrise, Pete tossed his duffel into the rear seat of his car and kissed Liza good-bye. He drove away with Jupe, who was now twenty years old and a handsome young man. Pete had known him since the day he was born, and for years Jupe had been one of Pete’s favorites. He had taught the kid how to drive, got him licensed and insured, and he, Liza, and Nineva used Jupe to run errands in town. He was even allowed to drive Pete’s pickup truck to Tupelo for feed and supplies.
Pete drove to Memphis and parked at the train station. He told Jupe to take care of things on the farm and watched him drive away. Two hours later, Pete boarded the train and headed for Fort Riley in Kansas. It was packed with servicemen headed to bases all over the country.
He had left the army with the rank of lieutenant, and reentered as the same. He was reassigned to his old unit, the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry Regiment, and spent a month in training at Fort Riley before being hurriedly shipped out on November 10. He was on the deck of the troop carrier when it sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, and he wondered how long it would be before he returned. On board, he wrote two or three letters a day to Liza and his children and mailed them in port. The troop carrier stopped for supplies at Pearl Harbor, and a week later arrived in the Philippines.
Pete’s timing could not have been worse. His assignment could not have been more unfortunate.
Chapter 24
The Philippines is a collection of seven thousand islands spread over a far-flung archipelago in the South China Sea. The terrains and landscapes change dramatically from island to island. There are mountains that top ten thousand feet, dense forests, impenetrable jungles, coastal floodplains, beaches, and miles of rocky shorelines. Many of its larger islands are crossed with swift rivers that are not navigable. In 1940, it was a country of vast mineral resources and food supplies, and thus crucial to the Japanese war effort. U.S. war planners had no doubt that the Philippines would be an early target, and they also knew that defending it would be next to impossible. It was geographically close to Japan, an ambitious enemy whose imperial army was savagely invading every neighbor in the region.