The toolshed was just ahead of me. And the johnny house off to the right from that, waiting for company to come to its door. Personally, I’d be thrilled if I never visited johnny again. Not having an indoor bathroom was just one of the things that got extra complicated by polio. I looked past the outhouse to the walnut tree with the tire swing turning slowly in the breeze. It made me wish I was a young’un again.
Then, just like that, Junior was standing in front of me. Seemed like he had got so big while I was in the polio hospital. I’d been home for three weeks already, but I still hadn’t got used to his broadness.
“Hey, Ann Fay,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.”
“I brought you a radio.” Junior held out a brown box with a cord hanging from the back. I could see it shining in the moonlight.
“A radio? Whatever for?”
“To listen to, silly.” He put it on my lap and sat down on the step beside me. But first he pulled a short black comb out of his back pocket and run it through his hair. That was another change in Junior. Seemed like all of a sudden he was awful concerned about which direction his curly brown hair was going.
“Junior, I can’t take this. Radios cost a lot of money.”
“Didn’t cost me a dime. Ruth Whitener gave it to me for fixing her flat tire. A customer gave it to her when they couldn’t pay their bill. She already has one, and you know me and Momma do too. It’ll help pass the time of day. Since you don’t get around like you used to.” Then real quick, Junior added, “And it can be for your daddy for serving his country the way he done.”
“Well, if you’re sure…” I rubbed my hands over the shiny case and tried to imagine my family listening to war news right in our own home. Used to be we’d have to go over to Junior and Bessie’s if we wanted to hear the radio. And to read a newspaper we had to wait for our neighbors, the Hinkle sisters, to share theirs with us.
“Do you think the war’s about over?” I asked.
“Of course. Our boys are clobbering the Japs. They can’t hold out much longer.”
I knew I could count on Junior Bledsoe to have an opinion. If there’s anyone that’s got an opinion on every subject, it’s Junior. “I hope you’re right,” I said. And I laid my head down on that radio. I sure wished I could listen to Franklin Roosevelt giving one of his fireside chats from the White House. “I still can’t believe he’s dead.”
“Huh?”
“President Roosevelt. I’d give anything to hear him talking to me on the radio again. Junior, it makes me so mad! I was all set on going to his Georgia Warm Springs Foundation for people who had polio. And maybe even seeing him there. Why did he have to die?”
“Well, Ann Fay Honeycutt, it’s not like he done it just to make you mad. He wore out, that’s all. Besides, what did you want to go there for anyway—to see the president or to get over polio?”
“Maybe both,” I said. “This blasted brace on my leg is dragging me down. And getting rid of these crutches would be like breaking out of jail. I bet if I’d met Franklin Roosevelt I’d have felt so good I’d be walking by now.”
“Probably not,” said Junior. “I say if you want something bad enough it doesn’t matter if you’re in Warm Springs, Georgia, or right here at home. It all depends on what’s inside of you.”
I rolled my eyes, but of course Junior couldn’t see it. Like I said before—that boy has an opinion on just about everything. But I didn’t argue with him. “Maybe,” I said. “You know what else I want?”
“Bet you’re gonna tell me.”
“I wanna see Imogene Wilfong, my colored friend from the hospital. Too bad you don’t have a car. You could take me to Greensboro.”
“Yeah,” said Junior. “Too bad I don’t have a car. We could really go places then. Tell ya what. I’ll start saving my money.”
“Did you ever have a colored friend?”
“Huh?”
“What do you think, Junior? Can white people be friends with coloreds or do we have to stick with our own kind?”
Junior shrugged. “Like I said, if you want something bad enough, you can get it.” He stood up. “There’s a colored man works on the farm during haying season. Jake can throw a bale like nobody’s business, and take a tractor apart and put it back together. And he’s real good to joke around with. Time flies when I’m working with him.”
“Does that make him your friend?”
Junior shrugged. “I only see him during haying season. We’re not girls, Ann Fay. We just work together.” He stood up. “I better get back. Just wanted you to have the radio.”
“Well…thanks a heap.”
“Like I said, didn’t cost me a dime.”
Before I knew it, Junior was halfway across the yard and I was alone on the back porch. Thinking how Momma and Daddy had each other on the front porch and how I should just leave them be. Ida and Ellie too—they and their paper dolls didn’t need me hanging around.
I leaned against the porch post and imagined I was in the Hickory polio hospital. In the contagious ward. I remembered how my daddy come to me in my fever, walking on water and holding me so I felt safe.
But that was all in my head. He was actually on the other side of the world, fighting in the war.
I thought about the hard cramping I had in my legs and my arm. And the feel of the hot blankets the nurses wrapped around my muscles to make them relax. How it felt like they was burning my skin off. And how Imogene was right there in the bed beside mine. “It mostly hurts at first,” she said real soft when I hollered out. “After a while it starts to feel better.”
I could still hear the sound of her voice, playing like a radio show in my head.
As bad as it felt at the time, there was something about that contagious ward that I missed. Something about just resting and letting someone else take care of me…
That first day in the ward was like a dividing line in my life. Kind of like the ditch my daddy dug once between his garden and the wisteria vine that was trying to take it over.
It was a line between being strong one minute and weak the next. It was the beginning of a new kind of fear. Was I going to spend the rest of my life in a bed? Or even die? Those things didn’t happen, but now that I was home from the hospital I was learning one thing. I would never fit in again. I was different from everyone I knew.
Except Imogene. But she wasn’t around, and I didn’t have any way to get to her either.
So I decided to go inside and write her a letter. I set the radio on the porch floor. Daddy could carry it in later.
But I tell you what’s the truth—if I’d only known how it would bring the war into the middle of my family, I would’ve told Junior to give the stupid thing to someone else. Maybe they could’ve handled the news it brought better than my daddy did.