CHAPTER 14

The bank closed early that day.

Alice-Ann caught the first bus out, took the last seat on the right, and stared out the window —recently washed to a sheen. Familiar landmarks and signs came and went, and as Alice-Ann counted them —three patches of farmland before her own, five signs for Mason’s Seafood Restaurant in Savannah (World’s Biggest Shrimp) —she contemplated how she’d enter the house with such grief washing over her and yet keep her deep love for Boyd MacKay secret.

Ben Brown rolled the bus in front of the long driveway to the farmhouse where she’d grown up and yet which, at that very moment, seemed a stranger. Foreign. Like the Pacific.

When the bus stopped, she gathered her purse and gloves and the hat she hadn’t bothered to don, and walked up the aisle between the seats. There was no one else on the bus, their farm being the one farthest from town. Halfway down the aisle, she paused.

When had the other passengers gotten off?

Had there been other passengers?

Ben Brown grabbed the lever to open the door, clearing his throat and looking back at her. “Shame about the MacKay boy,” he said. “Always liked him.”

Alice-Ann swallowed. Nodded as she fingered the bracelet.

“I hear tell,” he went on as though he couldn’t see the mounting grief bubbling up inside her, “that the plane got shot down sometime back, but until the government could confirm it, they didn’t bother to let the family know.” Alice-Ann gripped the back of the seat nearest her and squeezed. “Can you imagine such a thing?”

“No,” she said. Then, catching herself, “No, sir.”

He slid his beefy hand along the back of his neck and massaged the muscles with nubby fingers. “Makes me glad I never married,” he added. “Never had children.” His eyes caught hers and he winced. “Ah, I’m sorry, girl. He and your brother were good friends, if I remember correctly.”

Alice-Ann looked at her shoes. The same ones she’d worn on the night of her party. Aunt Bess had purchased them for her . . . she’d so hoped they’d make her look grown-up and that Mack would see her as a woman that night, all dressed up and ready to be kissed.

But he hadn’t kissed her. He’d left her only to dream of the day he would. The day he could. But he’d never —

She pressed her lips together, imagining his taste. Wondering at the feel of it. What it might be like if —“I’d best get on home,” she said. She rushed up the remainder of the aisle and thundered down the steps.

She’d made it halfway to the house, the heat wrapping around her like death, squeezing air out of her lungs. Each step forward came on legs of lead, and her skin and scalp glistened and prickled with sweat. Not that Alice-Ann cared. For once, the humidity caused no distress. At least she could feel it. Mack . . . he felt nothing. Mack, his body somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, assuming there had been anything left to drop into its deep recesses.

Alice-Ann gasped at the thought and blinked back her tears as a scream —high-pitched and distressful —came from the house. She jumped. Irene.

She ran the rest of the way to the house, kicking up dust, the strain pulling at her calf muscles. When she reached the oaks stretching near and shading the house, she hollered out her aunt’s name, grateful to be out of the sun but unsure as to whether or not to enter the house.

She’d seen many an animal being born —calves and piglets, kids and foals —but never a human being. Even though she fairly understood the logistics, she wasn’t altogether certain she wanted to be a part of what was taking place inside her home at this very moment.

She contemplated calling for Aunt Bess again when Nelson popped out of the open front door, pushing the screen with the ball of his hand. “Alice-Ann,” he said, panting, rubbing his neck in the same way Ben Brown had done only minutes before.

Her eyes widened and she blurted, “Did you hear about Mack?”

Her brother swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah,” he said, looking down at his dusty work boots. Or maybe the boards in the porch; she wasn’t sure. “Pops heard at the feed and seed and —when he told me . . .” His eyes returned to hers. “That’s when Irene —”

Another cry came from upstairs and they both looked upward to the painted-blue porch ceiling.

“Did her mama get here?”

Nelson placed his hands on his hips, splayed his fingers, and nodded. “Maybe ten minutes or so ago, I reckon.” He walked over to the swing at the far end of the porch and sat. His feet pushed back and his knees locked, holding the swing up and out. “Aunt Bess said to come on out here. To stay out of her way.”

Alice-Ann moved closer. “Where’s Papa?”

Nelson walked the swing back to its original position. “Next door, I reckon. He went to call Doc Evans.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “But he hasn’t got back yet and . . . you probably ought to go on in there and see if you can help.”

“Me?”

“Well, you’re a woman, aren’t you?”

Alice-Ann blinked. “That hardly gives me a degree in —” Another cry broke the heated stillness and again they looked up briefly. But then, seeing her father lumbering across the cornfield, she said, “There’s Papa.” The stalks nearly reached his shoulders; soon, they’d tower his full height.

Alice-Ann left the porch to meet him, aware that Nelson had followed but stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Papa,” she said, hearing the strain in her voice, wishing she could throw her arms around him. Wanting so badly to tell him that the love of her life had died and, because he knew how that felt, asking if he would please hold her . . . and tell her everything would be okay. Surely one day. One day.

But today —today of all days —Irene had chosen to go into labor and Papa appeared occupied with only that.

He wiped his mouth with a semi-clean bandanna he pulled from the pocket of his bib overalls. “Nelson,” he shouted, all but ignoring his daughter.

Nelson reached them before Alice-Ann could fully turn. “Is he coming?” her brother asked. “The doc?”

Their father shook his head. “Claudette answered when I called. Said her daddy was out there at the MacKays’.”

“Well —” Nelson breathed out. “I —Pops, what are we supposed to do? Aunt Bess says she only helped once or twice when she was a young girl and Irene’s mama —”

The screen door squeaked open and the three turned to see Aunt Bess sauntering toward them. “Where’s Doc Evans?” she demanded.

Papa repeated the news. She sighed as she cupped Alice-Ann’s chin. “You all right, little thing? What with this terrible news from town?”

Alice-Ann bit her bottom lip to ward off the tears as she nodded.

“I know you’ll grieve later, but right now we’ve got bigger fish to fry.” She looked at her brother. “Brother, you’re just gonna have to go get him. I think the baby may be coming out backside first.”

Nelson kicked at the dirt with his shoe, one eye squinted as the other studied their aunt. “What does that mean?”

“Think and you’ll figure it out,” she told him.

Realization dawned and he looked at their father. “What are we gonna do, Pops?”

Papa scratched his forehead with grimy fingernails, then looked out over the cornfield. “Maybe one of the colored ladies out in the county farther on —maybe one of them knows how —”

“They’d all be out in their own fields, Papa,” Alice-Ann interjected. “We’d have to find one of them; they’d have to go home and get cleaned up . . .”

Papa nodded. “You’re right. You’re right.”

“Then what, Pops?”

“Well, look here,” he said, then shook his head. “No . . .”

Alice-Ann swatted at a mosquito that she thought more likely in need of her salty sweat than her blood. “What, Papa?”

“Pops?”

“Whatcha got on your mind, Emmitt?” Aunt Bess asked.

He stuffed the bandanna back into his pocket. “One of the Germans right here in our own fields . . . he speaks pretty good English. . . . He told me out there the other day that in Germany he worked with his daddy —you know, before the war got started over there —and that his daddy was a doctor. Maybe he —”

“Pop,” Nelson said, his voice incredulous, “no piece of German scum is going to touch my wife.”

Papa opened his mouth to speak as another cry tore out from the open upstairs window. The foursome looked up to see Irene’s mother at the screen. “What are you doing?” she shouted. “Somebody’s got to do something here! Bess? Where is that doctor?”

Aunt Bess turned a stern eye to Nelson. “I don’t care if that man is German or Japanese or Pekingese, you hear me? That girl up there is in trouble. She’s your wife. Now go find the man and don’t give me any grief over it.” She made three long strides toward the house before turning again. “And if I were you, I’d be praying he knows something about these kinds of things instead of worrying about his lineage.”

When Aunt Bess made it back into the house, Nelson turned to their father. “Pops?”

If Nelson had expected empathy, he didn’t get it. “I’ve not seen Bess like this too many times in my life, boy,” he said. “I ’spect we’d best go find that German.”

How could she, Alice-Ann wondered later, survive the night without Mack to write to about the events of that evening? Who else would she tell about the German man who’d come in from the fields covered in dust and grime, about how he’d washed up in their indoor bath and that when he’d come out, he looked as much like a human being as the rest of them? His blond hair spiked from the water, his blue eyes clear and intense like a summer’s day.

Every fiber of her being cried out to sit at her desk, paper angled just so in front of her. Dearest Mack, she’d write, her pen scratching against the paper, and then go on to tell him how she’d noted the German’s hands. His fingers. That after seeing Ben Brown’s fat ones, and Nelson’s splayed at his hips, and Papa’s nails edged in grime, this man had exited the bath wiping his hands on one of Aunt Bess’s hand-stitched towels, pulling his long, slender, and pale fingers one at a time. So hard she wondered why they hadn’t popped out of their sockets.

And then, she’d write,

he walked into Nelson and Irene’s bedroom as though he’d been within its floral-papered walls a thousand times or more —or even only a few —and closed the door behind him. I heard him, Mack. I heard him telling Aunt Bess and Irene’s mother what to do, every step of the way, because I stayed upstairs, sitting on the top step, where I could see the door if I looked one way, and Papa and Nelson in the living room if I looked through the slats of the railing.

Papa practically had to sit on Nelson to let the German touch Irene, but I stayed calm and I listened, Mack, and I heard. The German knew what he was doing. He turned my little nephew around only moments before Irene pushed him out into the world.

Alice-Ann wasn’t sure who’d cried louder, the baby or Irene.

Of course, Aunt Bess sobbed into her handkerchief. So did Irene’s mother —into her own —and declared the baby beyond perfect.

Papa grinned a lot, chuckling a time or two, and Nelson knelt next to the bed, kissed his wife, and examined his son beneath the folds of the blanket Aunt Bess had crocheted for the occasion.

But I, she would write, if only she could, I stayed at the door and watched . . . and wondered why today of all days this baby had to be born. How can we go on now, from this day forward, celebrating his birthday year after year, knowing the day also marks the anniversary Bynum heard of your death?

She had thanked the German and offered him a glass of iced tea when the ordeal was over and the adults continued to ogle. He’d readily accepted, following her down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Do you have a name?” she asked as she handed him the glass.

“Danke,” he said. “Thank you.” He swallowed the tea down in quick gulps and she realized he’d come in from the fields and that he’d probably been parched the entire time and that someone should have realized this fact sooner.

“Your name is Danke?” she asked, mainly to cover her shame for not offering the drink before.

His chuckle caught her off guard —his teeth pearly white and even, which caused her to press her lips over her crooked ones. “Nein . . . um, no. My name is Adler. Danke is German for ‘thank you.’”

Alice-Ann smiled without warning. “Oh,” she said, feeling the blush that pinked her cheeks. “How do you say, ‘You’re welcome’?”

“Bitte.”

“Bitte,” she repeated.

Adler handed her the glass. “That is good.”

“Danke,” she said, then laughed easily, wondering if he meant her attempt at speaking his language or the tea.

“May I —may I have a little more?” he asked. “I am thirsty still.”

“Of course,” she said, embarrassed that he’d had to inquire of something she should have offered when he’d finished the first glass. Alice-Ann poured the tea as close to the top as she dared. “You can sit at the table if you’d like.”

Adler looked at the table, then back at her as he took the refilled glass. “No. This is fine.”

“Do you mind?” she began. “May I ask . . . ?”

“Of course. Anything.” He drank the second glass down more slowly, but still within one long swallow.

“How old are you?”

“I am twenty-five. And you?”

“I’ll be nineteen in December.”

He grinned. “Then you are eighteen.”

Feeling both childish and foolish, she took the glass and asked, “More?”

“No. Danke. I am good now.”

Hearing footsteps overhead, she glanced up, then said, “Truly. Thank you —danke —for what you did to help my sister-in-law and my new nephew.”

Adler stood with his feet placed wide apart. A soldier at attention. “You have all been very kind to me. Your Vater —um —your father —he looks at me and I think he sees a man, not a Nazi.”

Alice-Ann placed the glass on the countertop and the ice rattled as it settled in the bottom. “Are you? A Nazi, I mean?”

“No,” he said without hesitating. “Not here,” he added, pointing to his chest. “In the heart.” Adler blinked. “You must understand, your American men and women joined because they wanted to defend what was theirs. I didn’t ask to —Hitler’s war is not my war.” He sighed. Blinked again as if he were pushing back a memory, then said, “My best friend was a Jew.”

And then, she would write to Mack if only she could, he wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. I’ve heard that Hitler has done terrible things to the Jews, but I don’t know what. Aunt Bess and Mrs. Hillis tell Maeve and me not to go into the movies until after the newsreels are finished. To protect us, I know, but it keeps me in the dark about something I think I should know.

But I realized right then, Mack, that not every German is heartless and maybe not even all the Japanese are either. In fact, Papa reminded me later, some part of our family somewhere had come from Germany back in the early 1800s.

But I don’t know any Japanese. Still, I’m sure . . .

Nelson came into the kitchen then and offered his hand to the German without hesitation. “Thank you. I —I wish I could do something for you. Pay you or . . .”

“Your family has been very kind. That is enough.”

“His best friend was Jewish,” Alice-Ann added as though she had suddenly become the German man’s best friend.

“We have a Jewish family here in Bynum,” Nelson said, then shook his head in a way that told Alice-Ann he’d realized the shallowness of his words. But he continued on anyway. “They own Lewen’s Department Store.”

Adler nodded like the news mattered to him. “What will you name your son, then?” he asked.

Nelson looked at Alice-Ann. “Irene and I decided . . .” He smiled. Or perhaps he winced. “We’re going to call him Mack.” He returned his gaze to Adler. “For my best friend, who . . . died . . . in the war.”

“Mack,” Alice-Ann whispered, realizing in her heart that, for the first time since he’d heard the news of his friend’s death, her brother actually felt the sting of it too.

Well, I suppose that’s something, she would write to Mack later, if she could.

You will no longer be with us, but he will grow up and folks will say his name and they will remember.

Love always,

Alice-Ann