May–June 1945
At first when our president died, I wondered if we could win this war without him. But I reckon he still led us through. Things ended quick, just like people was saying they would. The last day of April, Hitler killed himself—which was a sure sign the war wasn’t going his way. Then about a week later the Germans surrendered.
Church bells rung all over town, and for a minute you didn’t know whether to be sad because of Roosevelt not getting to hear them or happy because it meant the war was over. But the happiness took over, and then you should’ve heard the noise in the polio ward. Such a whooping and a hollering! We all started talking how our daddies and brothers would be coming home.
Harvey stopped whistling and humming and went to outright singing.
I ain’t gwine study war no more,
Ain’t gwine study war no more,
Ain’t gwine study war no more …
I started thinking my daddy was coming home. But then people said our boys wasn’t coming home right away. They still had work to do in Europe, cleaning up after the war and helping lost people find homes again. And some of them would be shipped to islands in the Pacific Ocean to fight the Japanese, who was doing their best to take what part of the world Hitler hadn’t got his hands on.
The war wasn’t really over yet. Not until the Japanese surrendered too.
I prayed my daddy wouldn’t have to go to the Pacific. If he couldn’t come home, I prayed he would get to help rebuild Europe. As much as he hated the killing, maybe now he could do something he felt good about. I give up on the idea of seeing him soon, and I tried hard not to be selfish about it.
I put all my attention to seeing Momma and the girls. My physio said I could go home soon. My left leg was still weak, but I promised to do my exercises every day. And with a special brace and crutches, I was learning to walk. It wore me plumb out, but I practiced every day. I was determined to get out of that hospital.
I decided that after I was home awhile I would probably still go to Warm Springs. Dr. Bennett come to Charlotte to check on us every so often, and he was still making plans for me to go.
It wouldn’t be the same as going while Roosevelt was alive. But I had a feeling that just being in Warm Springs, breathing the air he breathed—just that would give me the courage to face anything that come my way.
Imogene went home before the war was even over. It seemed like just when we got Harvey to deliver our letters, she left me. I was happy for her. Of course I was. But me, I was lonelier than ever. Well, at least I had her address. And I was going to write for sure. And she had already sent me one letter.
Dear Ann Fay,
See why I picked you out a blue color for your bottle? Because of you being true as the sky above. When that Harvey told me that yellow rose was the president’s flower, I told him to take it right on back to you. But he said that would be a slap in your face, and I knew he was right.
Well, I tell you what—I cried when I heard our president was dead, and I cried even more when I got that rose. I reckons that brown-and-rainbow-colored bottle on God’s windowsill is full and running over.
I’m home now and my momma is trying to fatten me with biscuits and fried chicken and all other kinds of home cooking.
I put that rose in my momma’s china cabinet with the glass door. No one can touch it. But everybody who sets foot in this house has to look at it if I have anything to say about it.
I won’t ever forget the one who gave it to me. Your friend,
Imogene Wilfong
When I read Imogene’s letter, I decided that the minute I got home I would put it in my little cedar box in the place of the president’s yellow rose.
Finally, right before the Fourth of July, the hospital sent a letter to Momma telling her to pick me up on the weekend. I knew Junior would have to bring her. I was anxious to see him again too. And his mother and Peggy Sue and the Hinkle sisters and Reverend Price and just everybody.
That Saturday morning was sunny and hot. I was awake before daylight and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I thought I would jump plumb out of my skin, waiting on Momma and Junior to get there. My bag of letters and personal items was packed and ready. But I was still wearing a hospital gown because I had to wait on Momma to bring me some clothes.
It made me sad to think how they took my overalls off and probably burnt them when I went to the Hickory hospital. Them overalls was a sign of strength to me. They made me want to do for my family so Daddy would be proud. I could hear his voice plain as yesterday, saying, “I expect you to be the man of the house while I’m gone.”
My daddy’s voice never left me. It was what got me through all that work in the garden, taking care of my sisters while Momma and Bobby was at the hospital, and struggling to walk again.
I stood at the window, straining to see my daddy’s truck outside. I kept looking for Momma and Junior to come across that parking lot, but I didn’t see them.
Then I heard a voice behind me. “Ann Fay Honeycutt, are you coming home with me or not?” And it was his voice. It was my daddy’s voice. It scared me so bad to hear it like that, so unexpected. I was afraid to look because I knew I must’ve heard it in my head.
But I turned and there he stood—and not in his uniform neither. He was wearing black Sunday pants and his longsleeved blue shirt with the sleeves rolled half up. His eyes was the color of overalls. And truth. And faithfulness.
And wisteria blossoms.
I couldn’t run to him but I forgot that I couldn’t, so I tried to. And I went crashing to the floor. Then my daddy run to me. He sunk to his knees and pulled me to him. “Daddy,” I said. “Why are you here? I didn’t know. Oh, Daddy, I didn’t expect you.” We sat on the floor and both of us cried till his shirt pocket was all wet.
Momma was there too. Daddy stood and helped me to my feet and pulled both of us into his big arms. I felt that broken-up feeling again because the girls and Bobby wasn’t there. But I knew I would feel it for the rest of my life, so I’d just have to get used to it.
Momma handed me a bag and told me to go get dressed. When I reached inside, I found my blue overalls—the ones Daddy give me when he went away. I just couldn’t believe it. “But I thought they burned them,” I said.
“No,” said Momma. “They boiled them along with the rest of the laundry at the hospital. And when I came to visit, they returned them to me.”
“But you never told me.”
Momma just smiled and give me a quick kiss on the forehead. “I must’ve forgot,” she said.
Daddy’s truck was parked at the entrance to the polio ward. And Ida and Ellie was hanging out the window when we got there. They would’ve knocked me over if Momma hadn’t held them back. “Girls,” she said, “your sister’s on crutches. You’re just going to have to get it in your heads, she isn’t as strong as she used to be.”
I didn’t like Momma saying that, and Daddy knew I didn’t. When we was all squeezed into that truck, he said, “Well, if you ask me, Ann Fay is tougher than ever.”
He turned the key and pressed the starter button and said, “Who’s going to help me shift this thing?”
I knew he meant me because I was straddling the gear stick, which come up out of the floor. But after a minute I noticed another reason he wanted me to shift. He wasn’t using his right arm to drive. Just his left one.
“What happened to your arm, Daddy?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing much, honey. Just a little war wound in the shoulder. It’s the reason they sent me home early. But I’ll be all right. As long as I got your right arm, I can do without mine.”
We drove home like that, Daddy steering and pushing the pedals and me shifting the gears. I knew I was as put together as I could get. The best part of me was home again. He had a good left leg and I had a good right arm and that was enough for me.
Daddy said he would take us to a diner to celebrate, but I said I was dying to get home. I said I’d help cook the dinner if they’d just take me there.
Ida started into whining right off. “But Daddy, you promised.”
And Ellie said, “Yeah, Daddy.”
Daddy said, “Ann Fay gets to decide. It’s her big day.” “Well, then,” I said. “Let’s stop off for a root beer.” So we did. But the whole time we was sitting on the bench outside that gas station, each of us drinking our very own dope, I just wanted to get back in that truck and drive out into the country.
Just before I emptied my bottle, Daddy said, “Ann Fay, I brought you something back from the war.” Then he walked over to the pickup and reached under the seat for something he had put there. It was a brown paper sack. He brought it back and said, “Go ahead. Look inside.”
All I wanted Daddy to bring me from the war was himself. I couldn’t imagine what else he had. I looked inside and there was a bunch of papers all folded up together. I thought maybe they was wrapped around something fragile, so I pulled them out real careful and unfolded them, and I just couldn’t believe what I seen.
Them pages was covered with pictures of tigers and lions and elephants, and on the bottom of every one it said, Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.
Well, I reckon my daddy thought I wasn’t happy to see them pictures on account of how I put my head between my knees and cried. But I just wasn’t expecting them. All that time I grieved for not having any part of Bobby—not even Pete—to remember him by, it never once crossed my mind that Daddy had a piece. I reckon I was so worried about him not coming back from the war that I never thought he might come and bring a little bit of Bobby with him.
Daddy put his arms around me and rocked me and I hung on to him and sucked in the smell of his cigarettes and his hair tonic. And I felt Momma and the girls hanging on to him and me both.
It wasn’t ever going to be like it was before, but at least Bobby had found a way to come back to us.
“Let’s go home,” I said. All of a sudden I felt like I was going to split wide open if I didn’t get there.
When it was just about noon, we pulled into our dirt road. I was sucking it all in—the smell of the red dust we raised as we went down the road, the sight of the honeysuckles in the side ditch, and the little colored church sitting off to the right.
When we come around the last curve in the road, I seen our house sitting there, the same as always. The sun was bouncing off the windows. Momma’s roses was blooming out front. And the mimosa tree was covered over in fluffy pink blossoms again.
The vegetable garden was growing up in weeds and someone was out there hoeing. Junior Bledsoe. He pulled off his straw hat and waved it like he was welcoming a soldier home from the war. Then he come a-running.
By the time we was out of the truck, his momma come out of the house and was hugging me like I was her lost puppy dog. “Lord, have mercy! I missed you, girl.” She stepped back and looked me up and down. “You need some meat on those bones, and I fixed a big dinner. So you better come and eat.”
Junior was waiting behind his momma then, swatting that straw hat against his thigh and studying me, like maybe he thought I was different now.
But I reckon he decided I wasn’t—because he put his straw hat on my head and said, “Hey, Ann Fay, you better hurry up and eat some ’taters and fried chicken. That garden needs to be weeded—real bad.”
“Well then, Junior Bledsoe,” I said, “you and me better crank up that tiller.”