I had loved July because it felt so good to be home from the hospital and having Daddy home too. But going into August was like running into a sticky spiderweb. I kept feeling like some furry critter was crawling on me, but I couldn’t see it to brush it off.
School was about to start, and I didn’t want to go back. I dreaded how other students would stare at my skinny leg and ugly metal brace. And I hated that my best friend, Peggy Sue Rhinehart, would be going to ninth grade without me.
Mountain View School has all twelve grades in one building, so she’d only be one room away. But we wouldn’t be able to sit together or meet at the pencil sharpener. And when I saw her at lunch she’d be with her new best friend, Melinda somebody, who moved here from Cherryville while I was in the hospital.
Every day I picked up my crutches and hobbled to the mailbox. And every day Imogene did not write to me. On the way back to the house, the clicking sound of my braces would mock me. She forgot all about you. She forgot all about you. She forgot… How could a couple of pieces of metal sound so much like a real person talking?
On top of everything else, Daddy was starting to wear on Momma’s nerves. Seemed like no matter how she pushed, he wasn’t going to look for a job. He’d been to the American Legion to establish his veteran’s benefits. But now that his war wound was healing, Momma wasn’t satisfied for him to collect government money.
She had wanted so much for him to come home from the war. But it was starting to feel like now she wanted to push him out of the house.
It wasn’t that Daddy was lazy. If Momma asked him to pick tomatoes, he’d head straight for the garden. If she needed him to draw water for doing the wash, he’d be happy to oblige. He just didn’t seem to have any get-up-and-go.
Still, on the first Monday in August, he promised Momma he’d go to the manpower office right after dinner. It was a damp gray day.
She fried some squash and I set out light bread, mayonnaise, and tomatoes for making sandwiches. We all sat around the table and held hands—pretty as a picture. Daddy said the blessing and I stared at him the whole time.
I watched the little bone in his cheek moving while he talked in his soft voice, telling God how thankful he was to be home again and how delicious Momma’s cooking tasted and how he wished everyone in the world could have the same good things.
Before the war, Daddy hadn’t been anywhere much except down in Georgia where he was brought up. And here in North Carolina where he and Momma moved when they got married.
Then he went off to fight Hitler and got attached to other parts of the world. And to the people over there. Sometimes when he sat on the porch the pace of his rocking would slow down and pretty soon it would stop altogether. Daddy would always be staring at something then—a clump of grass in the yard or maybe a mud puddle. But I could tell he wasn’t actually noticing them things. He was seeing a field in France or a muddy road in Germany.
And he wouldn’t hear us when we talked to him. He was hearing people speaking languages he couldn’t understand. He’d told us how they cheered when the American soldiers liberated them from Hitler. “You know what?” he said. “Cheering is the same all over the world.”
One day when Ida crawled up on his lap he said, “When I was in Berlin I met a snaggle-toothed girl like you. She held on to my leg and wouldn’t let go. So I picked her up and gave her a piece of chewing gum.” His voice got real soft and worried then. “Those children didn’t need gum. They needed houses. And for their daddies to come home. Alive. All in one piece.”
One thing my daddy prayed for at every meal was the end of the war. Listening to him ask for it—so soft and sincere—always made me feel like it would happen. And soon.
Well, when I sat down to dinner that day in August, I just didn’t know how soon.
Quick as Daddy got done praying, Ellie jumped up and switched on the radio.
At first after Junior give us that radio we mostly listened in the evenings, in the living room. Sometimes me and Momma would fold the wash, and Ida and Ellie would match up the socks. And Daddy would carve little animal shapes out of wood.
But that was before a foggy July morning in New York City when an American army bomber accidentally crashed into the Empire State Building. Eleven floors caught fire and fourteen people died. It was such big news that Daddy turned on the radio in the middle of the day. And left it on all afternoon.
After that, the rules about listening to the radio didn’t apply. Daddy moved it into the kitchen so we could hear it while we canned beans.
So this time, when Ellie switched it on, Daddy didn’t tell her not to. He just said, “Ellie, did you ask to get up from the ta—?” He never even finished the question on account of he realized that the regular program had been interrupted for a special announcement from President Truman. In the middle of the day!
The president’s spokesman said that the United States had dropped a bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Our boys had been dropping bombs on Japan for weeks. But according to the radio, this wasn’t any ordinary regular old bomb—it was an atomic bomb with more than two thousand times the power of the British “Grand Slam.”
I could see right off that my Daddy knew what a Grand Slam was and that it made him real worried about this new bomb. He had just picked up his knife and was fixing to spread a glob of mayonnaise on his light bread. But when he heard that, his knife clattered to his plate, his face went tight and then slack, and I saw the light go out of his eyes. And all of a sudden I got a real bad feeling, like it was my daddy who had got hit with that bomb.
The man on the radio told us that the Japanese would not be able to withstand another such assault and that the war would likely be over real soon.
Well, Ellie for sure didn’t ask could she get up from the table this time. And Ida didn’t either. The two of them jumped up and took each other by the hands and danced around the kitchen like that. They were a-whooping and ahollering and I felt like doing the same thing—at least until I saw my daddy’s face.
Then I was confused. If the war was ending, shouldn’t I be on my feet—on my crutches, I mean—dancing and singing? But if I was to go by Daddy’s reaction, there wasn’t nothing to celebrate.
Momma reached over and put her hand on Daddy’s and said real quiet, “Leroy, this is good news—the war is nearly over. It’s just a matter of time.”
Daddy didn’t say a word. He just stared at the glob of mayonnaise on his light bread. I noticed it quivering ever so slightly. But Daddy was so still, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.
I didn’t bother reaching for my crutches. I just hung on to the kitchen table and scooted back my chair and pulled myself to my feet. Then I locked my leg brace into place so I wouldn’t collapse on the floor. I grabbed onto Daddy. And I hung on like he was the bread and I was the mayonnaise and it had already been spread.
Most times when I hug my Daddy he pulls me up against him and lets me feel his heart beat. But this time he just sat there with his arms resting on the dinner table. It was like he didn’t even notice that Momma had took his hand and I had wrapped my arms around the front of his shoulders.
I could feel his Adam’s apple working up and down under my hand. And that scared me a little. So I put my head against his.
He just sat there. He didn’t turn and hug me. He didn’t even squeeze Momma’s hand. Or move at all. Not on purpose, anyway. But then I felt him shaking. The day was so warm and humid we were both damp with sweat and I was practically sticking right to him, but still, he was shivering.
I looked at Momma, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at him, and I saw a kind of fear in her pretty brown eyes. They should have been crinkled shut with smiling on account of the war being almost over. But she was studying him so hard I could almost see the worry wrinkles being made.
It scared me to see my parents like that. I didn’t know what to do, so I just left them be. I worked my way around the corner of the table and sat on my chair so I could pick up my crutches. Then I headed for the back porch.
Ida and Ellie were still dancing and singing some stupid made-up song about the war is over. I couldn’t get to the door because of them jumping around.
“Stop it!” I said. “That man did not say the war is over! This is not something to be whooping and hollering about!”
I didn’t know why I said it, but I knew it was true.
The man on the radio had said that we had more power than ever to destroy our enemy. He did not say that we were destroying ourselves in the process. But I was watching my daddy when he heard the announcement. Without saying a word or hardly moving a muscle, he had let me know that killing someone you hate isn’t the same as living in peace.